Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/135

 desire." ... "The English think that the bigger a thing is, the greater it is." ... "England fully deserves the title of a great nation, if power implies greatness." ... "Everything is forbidden in England on a Sunday; after having worked six days one does not rest on the seventh, there, on s'ennuie! London on a Sunday gives one an idea of what the kingdom of the Sleeping Beauty was like before the Princess was awakened." ... "The Englishman generally has the spleen in November. You may fancy that that is because of the fog, which commences in November and doesn't go away until May. Not at all! They have the spleen because they have been deprived of the fog for four months. You may ask me what the English make their fogs of? Of coal, I suppose, but that is a detail. It was not the good God who made the fog, it was the English."

"Posterity commences at the frontier." So said Dumas, a little sadly. "The old order" had changed, and fickle Paris, Paris of the Second Empire, turned a contemptuous shoulder on its old favourite. France had cooled down after the Revolution; analytic fiction had superseded the romantic. Partly to rest from desk-work, partly to warm his genius in the admiration of those strange lands where his works were so well known and so welcome, Dumas took to travel more and more readily. In the