Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/257

 ill-fated devotion of La Mole. The great personages of history here are drawn boldly, and with seeming carelessness, but how human they are—how full of character and life! The Charles IX. of history, as Parigot testifies, is not "betrayed" by the Charles of romance; the portrait of Catherine de Medici, if somewhat overdrawn, is full of that Italian guile with which the records credit her, and the frank, ingenuous, supple-minded Béarnais, Henri of Navarre, is one of the triumphs of Dumas's vivifying genius. The intrigue of the romance is full of absorbing interest: Will Henri of Navarre become King of France? Will Catherine be able to prevent him from reaching the throne? And with this, other threads are interwoven: the Huguenot-Catholic plots, the brotherly love of La Mole and Coconnas, these in turn being interspersed with those terrible episodes, the massacre of St Bartholomew, and the reading of the poisoned book.

Yet, throughout "La Reine Margot" our "haphazard" author (the words belongs to his critics) has exercised a double restraint: he neither harrows the reader unbearably nor does he take advantage of the scandalous facts which informal history affords, relating to the court of the Valois. Mr Lang, in