Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/152

 quite inadequate response to this invitation gave the dramatist another painful shock of self-revelation.

In 1866 the war between Austria and Prussia broke out, and Dumas, his love of history and of travel both urging him, set out for Frankfort, to study the crisis presented by the growing power of Prussia in mid- Europe, and to traverse the yet-warm battlefields of the campaign. The result was "La Terreur Prussienne," in which the author, filled with disquietude, sees in Prussian predominance a menace to other nations, and to France above all.

Forced to earn money as best he could, Dumas went down to the Havre Exhibition of 1868, and lectured there, and at Caen, Rouen and other towns, on his way back. Two or three of his plays were revived about this time, but the old spirit of hostility was again shown by the critics, who managed to wound the now enfeebled playwright. To the last he was ridiculed, abused and slandered. Lamartine, for whom the romancer had always felt a warm admiration, died in 1869, worn out with the struggle against his debts and his enemies; and the news saddened Dumas, for it gave him a foreboding of his own end. This brilliant and illustrious life was itself drawing very near to a close, amidst humiliating