Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/203

 officer, in an attempt to desert. By energetically attacking first his young patron the Duke de Chartres, and then M. Guizot, Dumas obtained a commutation of the sentence, for, as he had foreseen, the man proved to be mad, and was finally taken care of.

In his epilogue to "Comte Hermann" the author pleaded, with much earnestness and good sense, that executions should not be held semi-publicly, a way which summons false pride to the heart of the condemned and hardens him to die unrepentant. He asked that the sentence should be carried out in the prison cell itself, and should be accomplished, more swiftly and painlessly, by electricity. Since the words were written the French have advanced somewhat towards Dumas's ideal; the Americans have realised it to the full. As in private life our author was a friend of the poor, the sorrowing and the suffering, so in the world's history he invariably championed the cause of the fallen. "In his stories," says Ferry, "he never lost an opportunity of re-crowning the vanquished, of raising up fallen causes, and of asking the pity of posterity for those men who had sacrificed themselves for it."

Dumas passed through that evolution of the soul so frequent with thinkers,—dogmatism,—doubt—and a new faith, based on reason, and the divine