Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/210

 blood, that she moulded him of whom you were born, and who, soldier and general of the Republic, strangled a horse between his legs, broke a helmet with his teeth, and, alone, defended the bridge of Brixen against a vanguard of twenty men! Rome would have bestowed the honours of a triumph upon him and made him consul: France, calmer and more economical, shut the doors of the college upon his son. That son, growing to manhood in the wide forests—in the open air and under the blue heavens—urged on by want and by his genius, flung himself, one fine day, into the great city, and marched into literature by the breach he made, as his father marched into the camp of the enemy.

"Then commenced that cyclopean work which lasted for forty years. Tragedy, dramas, history, romance, comedy, travel, you cast all of them in the furnace and the mould of your brain, and you peopled the world of fiction with new creations. The newspaper, the book, the theatre, burst asunder, too narrow for your puissant shoulders; you fed France, Europe, America, with your works; you made the wealth of publishers, translators, plagiarists; printers and copyists toiled after you in vain. In the fever of production you did not always try to prove the metal you employed, and sometimes you tossed into the furnace whatever came to your hand. The fire made the selection: what was your own is