Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/94

 But if he had not been shot, and if the cholera had failed to kill him, Dumas was still in some danger. One of the king's aides-de-camp gave the literary politician a hint that the question of his arrest was being considered, and advised a temporary absence from Paris. Accordingly Dumas set out in July, 1832 for Switzerland.

This tour, the account of which delighted the public by its freshness, gaiety and picturesque style, possessed one or two notable features. With true journalistic instinct Dumas called on Chateaubriand, the self-exiled Royalist poet, and chatted to him of politics; he interviewed Jacques Balmat, and heard from the lips of the guide his narrative of the first ascent of Mont Blanc; and he wrote the famous fable of the "bear-beefsteak," which he pretended to have eaten at a certain inn. Thenceforth travellers by the score stopped at that inn and called for bear-steak, and the unhappy landlord, quite unable to satisfy the guests either with his explanations or with the required dish, went nearly mad, and cursed the very name of Dumas.

The most interesting portion of the "Impressions de Voyage en Suisse," from a serious point of view, is the account of Dumas's interview at Arenenburg with Hortense Bonaparte, ex-Queen of Holland, and mother of Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III. The young Republican philosopher did not hold