Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/187

 immoral by heredity. Subsequent research proved the soundness of this deduction.

Dumas's talent was not confined to exertions on his own behalf. "How often," says Blaze de Bury, "has he served as the anonymous collaborator of his confrères! I have seen him thus deny himself any credit for a score of plays which have been signed with other names, but of which he had written two-thirds." In one case a friend brought Dumas a play which had been sent back from a theatre to be cut down, as they considered it too long. The great man read the piece, which was a short one, and told his friend that far from being too long, it was not long enough. He pointed out how the theme should be developed and extended, and made into a full-sized play. The author followed the advice he had received; and the piece thus remodelled was duly accepted and performed.

But "the dramatic instinct" is not without its disadvantages, as Dumas has amusingly shown.

"At a first night," he mourns, "I am the worst spectator in the world. If it is an imaginative piece that is being played, the characters have scarcely appeared before they are no longer the author's, but mine. In the first entr'acte I take them; I appropriate them. Instead of their unknown future of the next four acts, I introduce them into four of