Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/36

 determined to face the situation, since there was no help for it, and assuming a boldness which he certainly did not feel, he accosted the first boy he met and challenged him to fight. Young Dumas's impetuosity soon carried all before it; his opponent was thoroughly beaten, and ever after that little Alexandre was respected and let alone.

In due course the boy was prepared to receive his first communion, and there naturally followed for him a period of religious exaltation. He tells us that when the time came he swooned from excess of emotion. But Dumas was never one on whom religion in the narrow sense obtained any hold, and he soon recovered from this morbid state of ultra-piety. More lasting was the love of sport which he acquired in his boyhood. He was friendly with all the keepers and poachers, and—when at last he possessed a gun of his own—did a little sly shooting on his own account. His adventures at the boar-hunts and other sporting expeditions in which he was allowed to take part are told by Dumas with much gaiety and relish, and his character-sketches of his companions are drawn to the life.

Alexandre was not by any means a studious boy, and he watched with anxiety the various vain efforts made to get him into colleges set apart for the sons of officers. When a vacancy occurred in the