Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/12

iv are others who, so long as they are amused, do not much care whether it is fact or fiction that has entertained them, the point being the entertainment. It is to those people that The Marriages of Père Olifus may be specially recommended.

With regard to the first story, M. de Chauvelin's Will, there has been a curious misconception on the part of some modern critics. They have alleged that Dumas wrote it about 1861, and that it in some part consists of a réchauffe of a chapter from his Memoirs and passages from his History of Louis XV. The fact, however, is that the book was composed in 1849 and published in 1850. Dumas appears to have been engaged upon it and his history simultaneously, and to have completed both before he wrote the chapter in question in his Memoirs. As both the history and the story include an account of the death of Louis XV., and the Memoirs almost as necessarily include an account of M. Villenave, from whom Dumas asserts that he heard the story, it is difficult to see how he can fairly be blamed for repetition.

It would be interesting to know if M. Villenave really related the story Oi M, de Chauvelin's Will. If he did relate it, then Dumas was justified in alluding in his history to M. de Chauvelin and the effect of his death upon Louis XV. If, on the other hand, Dumas merely puts the story into M. Villenave's mouth for the reason that he was in his youth a member of M. de Chauvelin's household, then we should much like to know its real origin. It is certain that neither Madame de Campan nor the Baron de Besenval so much as allude to M. de Chauvelin in their Memoirs. One king at least besides Louis XV., believing that his own life depended upon that of another, felt anxiety for that other's health, as readers of Quentin Durward know; and Dumas' imagination working on this basis would easily have evolved the story of M. de Chauvelin's Will from start to finish. In this case, however, M. de Chauvelin would make no appearance in the history of Louis XV. It is probable that he did die in the presence of the King, that his Majesty was depressed by the circumstance, and that the rest of the tale is fiction.

With one further volume we shall complete the stories contained in the Mille et Un Fantômes. R.S.G.