Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/164

 "Oh, M'sieu," replied the judge, "there are degrees."...

We cannot resist quoting here how Dumas took his revenge on the Rouen folk, who it appears had also hissed his plays. "One day," he says, "a Neapolitan boasted to me of having hissed Rossini and Malibran, the 'Barbiere' and 'Desdemona.'

That must be true,' I answered, because Rossini and Malibran boast, on their part, of having been hissed by the Neapolitans. So I boast of being hissed by the Rouenese. The Rouen people, he added, 'hiss me because they object to me. Why shouldn't they? They objected to Joan of Arc!

"Vanity," says Villemessant, "was a part of his talent; just as a balloon cannot rise, until it is filled with air." "The public," adds Du Camp, "are too exacting: they expect a man to have every talent in the world, and not to know it." Dumas's artless self-admiration was made the moral of a hundred malicious stories. It is said that his son remarked of him: "he is so vain that he would like to get up behind his own coach to make people think he owned a black footman." We have not traced this speech to its source, but we shall not believe that Dumas fils said it, without the strongest proof. There is, however, a story told by Mr W. H. Pollock, which is more pro-