Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/183

 the fields, the air, the wide world and nature—which are denied to those who do not possess the power of seeing what I see?"

The most striking, most intuitive intellectual quality which Dumas possessed was what is known as the "dramatic instinct." He seems from the first to have seen life from the vivid, picturesque point of view. As a lad, ignorant of the stage, and collaborating with much more experienced men, his "cockney sportsman" was the successful feature of "La Chasse et l'Amour," the first piece performed in which he had any share.

His method of preparing his plays was interesting and characteristic.

"When I am engaged upon a work which occupies all my thoughts," he says, "I feel the need of narrating it aloud; in reciting thus I invent; and at the end of one or other of these narrations I find some fine morning that the play is completed. But it often happens that this method of working—that is to say, not beginning a piece until I have finished the plot—is a very slow one. In this way I kept 'Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle' in my head for nearly five years."

We may add that finally the piece was not read, but described to the committee of the Comédie Française, and at the end of Dumas's vivid recital, was accepted by acclamation! The fact was, it was