Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/247

 But (not for the first time) Dumas did himself an injustice. One has no feeling of repetition about "Bragelonne." If it is, as some critics assert, "full of improbabilities," it is yet very faithful to the chronicles of the court. "Those who rage about the far-fetched incidents," writes M. Parigot, "with which these romances of Dumas are simply crammed, make us smile. Have they never read the history written by Madame de La Fayette? And Guiche in the chimney? And the women spies? And the caskets of Malicorne? And the plots of de Wardes?"

The Trilogy of the Four is, after all, one great prose epic on friendship—the love of man for man. Professor Carpenter has seen this clearly, and expressed well:

"So far as I am concerned there is no more poignant scene in literature than that in which, after twenty years of separation, the four who once were but a single will and a single force—hence, dauntless and invincible—found in the gloom of battle their swords clash on those of their peers, and realised that they were arrayed against each other. How paltry beside this seem lovers' quarrels! And yet there is nothing of the mock-heroic in Dumas's treatment of the famous friendship. These were men of clay, prone to vice and error, redeemed only by their sense of the sacred-