Alexandre Dumas

“ Roux-Laborie made him sit down in the prince's own armchair, and said to him—
"You are anxious to recover your position, to retrieve your broken fortunes; it depends upon yourself whether you obtain far more than even that which you desire."
"What must I do?" asked Maubreuil.
"You have courage, resolution: rid us of the emperor. If he were dead, France, the army, everything would be ours, and you would receive an income of 200,000 livres; you would be made a duke, lieutenant-general and governor of a province." ”

“ Then began for me those first days, the reflection of which has lasted throughout the whole of my life: that delicious struggle of love, which asks unceasingly and is not discouraged by an eternity of refusal; the obtaining of favour after favour, each of which, when gained, fills the soul with ecstasy; the early fleeting dawn of life which hovers above the earth, shaking down handfuls of flowers upon the heads of mortals, and then, under the influence of the rising sun, adds consciousness to its joy and is soon enveloped in the ardent heat of passion. ”

“ Talma was having a bath; he was studying Lucien Arnault's Tibère, in which he hoped to make his reappearance. Condemned by a disease of the bowels to die literally of starvation, he was terribly thin; but he seemed to find consolation even in his emaciated state and to derive hope of a success from it.
"Well, my boys," he said to us, as he pressed his hanging cheeks between his hands, "won't these be just right for the part of old Tiberius?"
Oh! how great and glorious a thing art is! It shows more devotion than a friend, is more faithful than a mistress, more consoling than a confessor! ”

“ I found myself back at Villers-Cotterets, and the news that met me on my arrival was—
"Do you know that Adèle Dalvin is going to be married?"
"No, I had not heard it, but it is quite likely," I replied.
Oh! what were the elegies of Parny on Éléonore's faithlessness, or Bertin's lamentations on the infidelity of Eucharis; oh, my God, how bloodless they seemed, when I tried to re-read them, with my own heart wounded!
Alas! poor Adèle! she was not making a love match: she was going to marry a man double her own age; he had lived for years in Spain, and he had brought home a small fortune. ”

“ Louis-Philippe died at Claremont. And who knows, prince, where your son, the Count de Chambord, will die? Where your cousin the Count de Paris? I ask the question of you who are about to know the secret of that eternal life which hides away from us all the mysteries of life and of death. And we would further point out to you, prince, that not one of your race will die in the Tuileries, or will rest as kings in the tombs of their fathers. ”

“ I feel convinced that it was Hugo's Odes et Ballades and [Pg 352] Lamartine's Méditations which led Frédéric Soulié to write in prose. Rest in peace, friend of my youth, companion of my first serious efforts, I will depict thee as thou wert; I will design a statue of thee, not a bust; I will isolate thee; I will place thee on the pedestal of thy works, so that all those who never knew thee may take the measure of thy impressive figure; for thou art one of those who can be studied from all aspects, and who, living or dead, have no need to be afraid of being placed in a full light. ”

“ People wore violets in all sorts of fashions—in hats, hanging by their sides, as trimmings to dresses. Some, more fanatic than others, wore a gold violet in their buttonholes, as an order of chivalry. There was quite as great a reaction against the Bourbons as there had been in their favour a year before.
When Talma, Mars and Georges appeared, they were overwhelmed with applause. Georges saw the emperor again at the Tuileries. By dint of his powerful character, Napoleon seemed to have put everything behind him. ”

“ Alas! we were not rich enough to afford the luxury of a letter a day. At last we said our final farewell. It was a cruel farewell—a separation of hearts even more than a corporeal separation.
I cannot explain how I got from Villers-Cotterets to Dreux—although I can recollect the most trivial details of my youth, almost of my babyhood. It is evident I must have gone through Paris, since that is the direct route; but how could I forget having passed through Paris? I cannot tell whether I stopped there or not. I have not the faintest recollection whether I saw Adolphe or not. ”

“ O Faucher! is it really credible that you, who are so halfhearted a Republican, you who were so ill-advised, according to my opinion, as to pay a subsidy to the Théâtre-Français to have the dead exhumed and, the living buried,—is it really credible, I repeat, that so indifferent a Republican as yourself, did not wish it said, on the stage that Corneille created, that genius is higher than royalty, and that Corneille was greater as a poet than Louis XIV. was as a monarch? ”

“ I was in the wings, behind Talma and Mademoiselle Duchesnois, to whom an actress, who had just arrived from the first, or rather from the second, capital of the Russian Empire, was relating how one of her friends, overtaken by the flood, had only had time to climb up on a crane.
"What! on a crane?" said Mademoiselle Duchesnois, in great astonishment. "Is it possible, Talma?"
"Oh! my dear," replied the actor questioned so oddly, "no one ought to know better than yourself that it is done every day." ”

“ Although a man of great talent, he was of the number of those who display it only when pen in hand. His conversation, pleasant and affectionate, was colourless and insipid; as he lacked dignity of expression and strength of intonation, so he lacked strength and dignity of actual words. He attracted no notice at a salon: people needed to have Casimir Delavigne pointed out before they paid any attention to him. There are men who bear the stamp of their kingly dignity about with them: wherever these people go they instantly command attention; at the end of an hour's intercourse they reign. ”

“ It is impossible, I say, to find any actor so endowed with this type of magnificence as was Talma. Melancholy in Orestes, terrible in Néro, hideous in Gloucester, he could adapt his voice, his looks, his gestures to each character. Mademoiselle Mars was but the perfection of the graceful; Mademoiselle Rachel was but the imperfection of the beautiful; Talma was the ideally great. Actors lament that nothing of theirs survives themselves. O Talma! ”

“ Of course the work was declined after it had been read; but—like the pebble which lies near the rose and shares the scent of the queen of flowers—there remained to de Leuven, from his declined work, an entry into the green-rooms. Oh! that entree to the green-rooms, what a weariness it is to those who have attained it, whilst by those who have not attained it, it is regarded as the most coveted thing on earth! Adolphe, however, had been in it for such a short time that ennui had not yet had time to spring up, and so the dazzling glow of the honour still remained with him. ”

“ He died young. He died, not only in the full tide of his talent, but even before he had produced the perfect and finished work he would certainly have created, some day or other, had not death hastened its footsteps. Soulié's brain was a little confused and obscure; his thoughts were only lighted up on one side, after the fashion of this planet; the reverse side to the one illuminated by the sun was pitifully dark. Soulié did not know how to begin either a novel or a drama. ”

“ At these words, and just as the whole audience burst into applause, a loud whistle sounded from one of the boxes. I turned round, and everybody in the orchestra and the pit did likewise. The hired applauders rose in a body and, climbing on the forms, shouted, "Put him out!" This formidable mountain could be seen rising up in the centre of the theatre, like the enormous counterfeit Parnassus of M. Titon-Dutillet at the Bibliothèque. But the whistler continued to whistle, hidden in his box, sheltered behind the railing as behind an impregnable rampart. ”

“ I can think of nothing more delightful than returning home, at ten or eleven o'clock at night, under the dense moving vault of the tall trees: in the solemn stillness of the night it seemed like some ancient Elysium, with mute shades walking under in the darkness; for the shades that pace our terrestrial Elysiums speak so low, so very low, that we swear they are dumb. I had been obliged to return to Villers-Cotterets to take back Adèle, and to make her understand, without hurting her feelings, how important it was that I should maintain friendly intercourse with the Collard family. ”

“ Now let us pass on to the Journal de Paris. "It is a good thing to know," quoth the Journal de Paris, "that Bonaparte's name is not Napoleon, but Nicolas."
Really, Mr. Editor, what an excessively sublime apotheosis you make of yesterday's poor emperor! Instead of showing base ingratitude, like your contemporary, you flatter outrageously. Bonaparte did no more than presume to call himself Napoléon,—that is, the lion of the desert,—and here you make him Nicolas, which means Conqueror of the peoples. Ah! ”

“ How tender were Talma's tones in the first act, how impatient in the second, uneasy in the third, threatening in the fourth, dejected in the fifth! The part is gracious, noble, pleasing and harmoniously consistent throughout. How the old man's heart goes out to Hortense partly from paternal feeling, partly as a lover! And, while complaining of the wife who allows herself to be snared, like a foolish lark, by the mirror of youth and the babblings of coquetry, how he despises the man who has in some inexplicable way managed to catch her fancy! ”

“ Nero ruled triumphant in the theatre. Had not Sylla, Cæsar and Pompey exhausted all other kinds of triumph? Well, my dear sir, that race of chevaliers has been perpetuated under the name of claqueurs. The Opéra has them, the Théâtre-Français has them, the Odéon has them—and is fortunate in having them!—finally, the Porte-Saint-Martin has them; nowadays their mission is not only to support poor actors—it consists even more, as you have just seen, in preventing bad plays from collapsing. They are called romains, from their origin; but our romains are not recruited from among the nobility. ”

“ O Sorrow, thou sublime mystery by which a man's spirit is raised and his soul expanded! Sorrow, without which there would be no poetry, for poetry is nearly always made up of joy and hope in equal parts, with an equivalent amount of sorrow!
Sorrow, which leaves its trace for life; a furrow moistened by tears, whence Prayer springs, the mother of those three heavenly, noble daughters, whose names are Faith, Hope and Charity! The benediction of a poet is ever thine, O Sorrow! ”

“ A week before Adolphe's return had brought to me the first vivifying gleam of light from the outside world 3 the hemmed-in and restricted life of a provincial town had seemed to me the limit of my ambition, a salary of say fifteen or eighteen hundred francs 3 for I never dreamt of becoming a solicitor: first because I had no vocation for it; for although I had spent three years in copying deeds of sale, bonds and marriage contracts, at Maître Mennesson's, I was no more learned in the law than I was in music, after three years of solfeggio with old Hiraux. ”

“ Bring M. de Maubreuil to me! Why so? He must be conducted to Anglès, he must go to Anglès! You know quite well it is Anglès who is attending to all this." "Very well, be it so; I will take him there," replied the Secretary to the Provisional Government. "When?" "This very evening." "My dear fellow, you are beyond price." "Take back that word, monseigneur." And Roux-Laborie bowed, went out and ran to Maubreuil's house. Maubreuil was not at home.
When Maubreuil was not at home, everyone knew where he was. He was gaming. What game was it? There are so many gambling hells in Paris! ”

“ Beloved and kindly general! loyal soul! noble heart! you are now, alas! dead, before those dreams were realised; you died without knowing they were to be realised one day,—you are dead, and gratitude and grief have inspired me, on the borders of that tomb into which you descended before your time, to write I will not say the first good lines I made,—that would perhaps be too ambitious,—but the first of my lines which are worth the trouble of being quoted. Here are those I recall; the rest I have completely forgotten:—
"Ainsi de notre vieille gloire
Chaque jour emporte un débris! ”

“ Well, then, the man who will be endowed with the genius to do for comedy, tragedy and the drama that which Mummius, in his ignorance, in his vandalism, in his barbarity, did for gold, silver and brass, who will smelt by aid of the fire of inspiration, and who will melt into one single mould Æschylus, Shakespeare and Molière, he, my dear friend, will have discovered a bronze as precious as the bronze of Corinth. ”

“ Then poor Adolphe little by little conceived a singular idea, which was to make me share, on my own behalf, the hopes he had indulged in for himself; to rouse in me the ambition to become, if not a Scribe, an Alexandre Duval, an Ancelot, a Jouy, an Arnault or a Casimir Delavigne, at least a Fulgence, a Mazère or a Vulpian. ”

“ Augustine, on the contrary, had a skin as white as milk, large tranquil blue eyes, dark chestnut hair, forming an admirable framework round her face, sloping shoulders charmingly moulded, and a figure that was not too slender; unlike her sister Cécile, she was gracefully feminine in all her ways. Raphael would have been puzzled to choose between her and Louise Collard for a model for his Madonna, and like the Greek sculptor, he would have selected beautiful points from them both to reach that perfect standard to which Art everywhere attains when it surpasses Nature. ”