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 THE MARRIAGES OF PÈRE OLIFUS

CHAPTER I

THE RAVEN FANCIER

NE morning in the month of March, 1S48, on passing from my bedroom to my study, I found lying on my desk as usual a pile of newspapers, and atop of this pile of newspapers a pile of letters.

Among the letters was one missive with a great red seal which attracted my particular attention. It was unstamped and addressed merely to " Monsieur Alexandre Dumas, Paris,"—circumstances which pointed to its having been delivered by hand.

The writing had a character of its own, something midway between the English and the German styles. Whoever had traced the words was evidently a person used to command and possessed of a certain determination of mind, the whole modified by outbursts of feeling and eccentricities of thought that at times made him altogether a different man from what he usually appeared.

I am very fond, when I receive a letter in an unknown hand and the said letter appears to come from somebody of importance, I am very fond of conjecturing beforehand, from the two or three lines of address traced by the individual in question, his rank, personal habits and general character.

After duly making my reflexions, I opened the letter and read as follows:

"The Hague, Feb. 22, 1848.

"Sir,—I do not know whether Eugène Vivier, the distinguished artist who came to pay us a visit in the course of last winter, and whose acquaintance I had the happiness to make, has told you I am one of your most constant readers, I may indeed claim to belong to their number, great as it is. To mention that I have read Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle, Amaury, Les Trois Mousquetaires, Vingt Alls Après, Bragelonne and 'Monte Cristo, would be paying you too unmeaning a compliment.

"I have long been wishing to offer you a souvenir and at the same time make you acquainted with one of our greatest national artists. Monsieur Backhuisen.

"Allow me therefore, sir, to send you herewith four drawings of this artist's, representing the most striking scenes of your Romance of The Three Musketeers.

"I bid you farewell and beg you to believe, sir, your very good friend ""

I must confess this letter, dated 22nd February, 1848, that is to say the day on which the Parisian revolution broke out, and received on the next day but one after that in which the mob had wanted to kill me on the ground that I was a friend of Princes, caused me a sensible thrill of gratification.

The fact is, to the poet the foreigner represents posterity, standing as he does outsice our petty literary animosities, our trivial artistic jealousies! The foreigner, like the future, judges the author by his works, and the wreath that comes across the frontier is woven of the same flowers as those we cast upon a tomb.

Nevertheless curiosity was even stronger than gratitude. The first thing I did was to open the package that lay in one corner of my desk, and there I found according to promise four charming drawings,—one representing D'Artagnan and his yellow horse arriving at Meung, another the ball at which Milady cuts the diamond studs from Buckingham's doublet, another the bastion of Saint-Gervais and the fourth the death of Milady.

This done, I wrote to the Prince to thank him. I had long known my correspondent to be a true artist. I was aware that he was a composer of distinction, and two brother Princes, men not likely to be mistaken in their judgment either of men or things, had often told me about him, the Duc