Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/232

 by M. Hippolyte Auger as at least half his own. It is impossible to test the truth of that author's assertions at this remote date, so that the degree of blame—if any—which can attach to Dumas cannot now be measured, but we may add that we believe the story is not the great writer's. "Amaury" was also published about this time, and Dumas gives an account of its origin in which he disavows the authorship; but it may or may not be genuine, for he always delighted in this form of mystification. It is probably true that M. Paul Meurice wrote the story with Dumas, for the style is not our author's. He has told us, however, that it was suggested by the case of his friend Felix Deviolaine, who was consumptive, and who, happily, recovered; but in the story Madeleine D'Avrigny is not cured, and so faithful and poignant was the description of the malady's progress that one M. Noailles, whose daughter was also suffering from the disease, appealed to the author to suspend the serial publication of "Amaury," if Madeleine was meant to die. The feuilleton was therefore suspended until after the poor girl's death, and the kind-hearted Dumas went so far as to improvise in manuscript a miraculous recovery and happy fate for the poor heroine, for the especial benefit of the doomed girl and her husband.

One of the best of Dumas's minor romances is that of "Sylvandire," at one time known in England