Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/67

 her cheerful society, and the pair fell in love. When Madame Dumas followed her son to Paris, he found her rooms elsewhere, and Alexandre Dumas fils was born of this intimacy, in 1824. When worldly temptations came upon the vain young genius he separated from his mistress, and little by little lost sight of her. Although the object of jealous rivalry and of a struggle for possession between father and mother, and although alternately under the control of each, the younger Dumas grew up to love his two parents, so strangely different in nature and position, with almost equal affection. As long as the father possessed a franc the son was welcome to it, and this affection was repaid to the full in the last sad days of the elder man's life.

What Dumas might have been, had he remained true to his first love, we can only conjecture. That it would have been for the good of his genius, his happiness, and his success, those who have read the story of this sweet and able woman's life cannot doubt. Although at first there was a bitterness between them after the separation, she remained through life proud of the success of her famous lover, and during the last years was reconciled to him. Her death in 1868 was one of the sorrows of the old Dumas, when he himself was nearing his end.