Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/270

 Tulipe Noire'. He was also vastly amused with Dumas's 'Mémoires.

The tale, which purports to have been confided to Dumas by Olifus himself, is too strange not to have had some such origin. As we read it, it is told with as much reticence as the exigencies of the story and the promptings of humour allow; but the adventures of the seaman with his "sea-wife" too closely resemble the style of the narratives of "The Arabian Nights" or "Boccaccio," to recommend themselves to a prudish translator.

For his next story Dumas went to German history, and chose the time when the patriotic sccret society of the "Tugendbund" was conspiring to assassinate Napoleon and to throw off the French yoke. Probably with the help of a 'prentice who "knew his Germany," Dumas wrote "Le Trou de l'Enfer," a powerful, poignant story, of how a young Antony living, à la Schiller's "Robber," a life sufficient unto himself, strove successfully to possess a young goatherdess, and the wife of his best friend, for whom he had conceived a self-willed passion. "Dieu dispose," which Mr Swinburne considers to possess great merit, was written in Brussels in 1852. It tells of the retribution which gradually overtakes the seducer, and the reader follows the sure though tortuous course of Nemesis with the interest which Dumas himself rarely fails