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You remember Dumas's description of it, and La Fontaine's Songe de Vaux, in which he says that everything conspired for the pleasure of the King, music, fountains, Molière's plays, in which he was praised, even the moon and the stars seemed to shine for him, on those nights at Vaux. "And the fruits of the earth, and of the greenhouses yielded up their treasures for him," said M. La Tour.
Jones's act we are, as the French say, "in full drama" all the time, while in Dumas's we await the coming of the drama, and only by exerting all his wit, not to say over-exerting it, does he prevent our feeling impatient. I am not claiming superiority for either method; I merely point to a good example of two different ways of attacking the same problem.
If we compare the 'League of Youth' with Scribe's 'Bertrand et Raton, or with Sardou's 'Rabagas'; if we compare the 'Pillars of Society' with Dumas's 'Étrangère, or Augier's 'Effrontés' we cannot fail to find a striking similarity of structure.
And among these, even if you should think me childish, I must count my d'Artagnan not d'Artagnan of the memoirs whom Thackeray pretended to prefer a preference, I take the freedom of saying, in which he stands alone; not the d'Artagnan of flesh and blood, but him of the ink and paper; not Nature's, but Dumas's.
See Stevenson's essay, A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas's , in Memories and Portraits. Vicomte de Bragelonne is the title of the sequel to Twenty Years After, which is the sequel to the Musketeers. His translation appeared in 1603, and may now be obtained complete in the handy "Temple" classics. "The ghost of a linen decency yet haunts us."
Did Thackeray borrow it from the romance or from the libretto? Or did he reinvent it for himself, forgetting that it had already served? He was in Paris when Donizetti's tuneful music was first heard; and he was going to the opera as often as he could. He was fond of Dumas's interminable tales of adventure; and he had a special liking for Athos.
Jarrett was wild with rage and I was wild with joy. He knew my horror of reporters, and he had introduced this one in an underhand way, hoping to get a good advertisement out of it. The journalist imagined that we were having a dress rehearsal of Froufrou, and we were merely rehearsing Alexandre Dumas's Princesse Georges for the sake of refreshing our memory.
Susan injected international interest into these conventions by reading Alexander Dumas's arguments for woman suffrage, letters from Victor Hugo and English suffragists, and a report by Mrs. Stanton's son, Theodore, now a journalist, of the International Congress in Paris in 1878, which discussed the rights of women.
Did you ever read the "Tulipe Noire," as modest as a story by Miss Edgeworth? I think of the prodigal banquets to which this Lucullus of a man has invited me, with thanks and wonder. To what a series of splendid entertainments he has treated me! Where does he find the money for these prodigious feasts? They say that all the works bearing Dumas's name are not written by him. Well?
I recommend Dumas's books at this crisis, but they should be read with acceptance; as stories, their value lying largely in this, that no matter who is murdered or what horror occurs, you somehow feel no more particular call upon your compassion than is made when you read afresh the terrible catastrophes of Jack the Giant-Killer.
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