Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/216

 "Indeed—how do you know what?"

"I've been told so."

"Poor boy! Read it yourself, first, and then you'll change your mind."

Dumas took his friend's advice, and read Thierry, and a high ambition possessed him.

"One day," he tells us, "Lamartine asked me to what I attributed the success of his 'Histoire des Girondins.

To the fact that you raised history to the height of the romance,' I replied."

"In Dumas," says Swinburne, "the novelist and the dramatist were thoroughly at one." We are told, and can well believe, that when the immense success of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" called for a dramatised version of the book, little more than scissors and paste, some skill in selection, and a change of form, were needed to turn the romance into a play. On the other hand, "Henri Trois et sa Cour" and "La Tour de Nesle" read like cape-and-sword romances in stage dress.

We know that in Dumas a desire to write fiction had always lurked behind the lust for theatrical fame. About the time that his first vaudeville was performed, the first book, a little collection of short stories, appeared. These, as we have said, were the "Nouvelles Contemporaines" of 1826, afterwards included in the "Souvenirs d'Antony" of