Alexandre Dumas

“ People of Paris, you will not stand by such violent conduct; the accused should be sacred in your eyes; they are placed under the protection of the law; to insult them, [Pg 13] to hinder their defence, to anticipate the decrees of justice, is to violate the laws of every civilised society; it is to be wanting in the first principles of liberty; it is worse than a crime; it is cowardly! There is not a single citizen among this great and glorious people who cannot but feel that it is his honoured duty to prevent an outrage that will be a blot upon our Revolution. Let justice be done! ”

“ But it happens that, thanks to these deuced articles and those blessed Memoirs, people laugh in my face when I say that Véron has intellect. It is in vain for me to be vexed and angry, and shout out and appeal to people who have supped with him, good judges in the matter of wit, to believe me; everybody replies, even those who have not supped with him: That is all very well! You say this because you owe M. Véron twelve thousand lines! As if because one owes a man twelve thousand lines it were a sufficient excuse for saying that he has intellect! ”

“ If thou sufferest, it is well to die; if thou art happy or thinkest thou art so, thou wilt gain by death since thy illusion would not have lasted long. Thou passest from a terrestrial habitation to a pure and celestial one. Why look back when thy foot is upon the threshold of its portals? The eternal distributor of good and evil, our Sovereign Master, calls thee to Himself; it is by His desire thy prison flies open; thy heavy chains are broken and thy exile is ended; therefore rejoice! Thou wilt soar to the throne of thy King and Saviour! ”

“ His heart, ready to sympathise with everything that was great and generous, had already been alienated from Royalism; already the man, poet and philosopher, was kicking beneath the priestly robe. The century which had just venerated and extolled his genius, reproached him under its breath for resisting the way of progress. Intractable and headstrong by nature, with a rugged and reclusive intellect, the Abbé de Lamennais was by temperament a free lance. ”

“ If the principle M. Guizot lays down be true: "Bodies always fall on the side towards which they incline," the Mapah was bound to fall some day or other, for he inclined to many sides! Gambling and love admirably suited the instincts of that eccentric life; but gambling—houses were closed! And the woman he loved died! Then was it that the god was born in him from inconsolable love and the suppressed passion for play. He was seized by illness, during which the spirit of this dead woman visited him every night, and revealed to him the doctrines of his new religion. ”

“ This is the returning spirit of social probity, entering the political [Pg 26] conscience; it is the soul of the nation, in a word, that was thought to have fainted, risen to the sky, gone, no one knew where, which comes back to reanimate the vast democratic masses, which it had abandoned to a lethargy that surrounding nations, jealous and inimical, had been all too eager to proclaim as the sleep of death! At such a crisis the government, by the mere returning of the masses to honesty, seems like a ship that has lost its direction, which staggers and wavers and knows not where it is going! ”

“ Behold! the approach of the day that thou fain wouldst have tried to bring nearer by thy prayers, if a jealous fate had not deferred it; for which thou didst often sigh; behold the moment which is to remove the capricious yoke of fortune from the trammels of human society, from the venomous attacks of thy fellow-creatures. Thou thinkest thou wilt cease to exist and that thought torments thee.... Well, but what proves to thee that thou wilt be annihilated? All the ages have retained a hope in immortality. The belief in a spiritual life was not merely a dogma of a few religious creeds ”

“ Three or four days later, he had made a coat, waistcoat and trousers out of it, and promenaded the streets of Lèves, amidst the enthusiastic applause of his fellow-citizens, clad entirely in green cloth, like one of the Earl of Lincoln's archers! But the life the Lévois led in the palace was too delightful to last for long; authority bestirred itself; they brought the riflemen out of their barracks once more, and beat the rappel, and, a certain number of the National Guard having taken up arms, they directed their combined forces upon the palace. ”

“ Monseigneur is too much of an artist and a connoisseur to make a mistake. Criticism must be at fault, the old witch! Detestable old Sibyl!' But in the hands of a stranger, an indifferent person, whom it cost nothing and who had no reason for taking its part, no, no, no. My poor Marino Faliero, do not be anxious, thou shalt not go!"
And it was in vain that I begged and prayed and urged him; Delacroix stuck to his word. Certain that the Duc d'Orléans should not think my action wrong, I went as far as eight thousand francs. Delacroix obstinately refused. The picture is still in his studio. ”

“ Delaroche is a man of fifty-six, with smooth hair, once black and now turning grey, a broad bare forehead, dark eyes fuller of intelligence than of vivacity, and no beard or whiskers. He is of middle height, well-set up, even to gracefulness; his movements are slow, his speech is cold; words and actions, one clearly feels, are subjected to reflection, and, instead of being spontaneous, like Vernet's, only come, so to speak, as the result of thought. ”

“ The Revolution! Gentlemen, you attack the Revolution! What folly! The Revolution includes the whole nation, except those who exploit it; it is our country, fulfilling the sacred mission of freeing the people entrusted to it by Providence; it is the whole of France, doing its duty to the world! As for ourselves, we believe in our hearts that we have done our duty to France, and every time she has need of us, no matter what she, our revered mother, asks of us, we, her faithful sons, will obey her! ”

“ This disgust with life almost at the beginning of it, this terrible phenomenon hitherto unprecedented, is largely owing to the baneful influence of those dangerous spectacles where the most unbridled passions are exhibited in all their nakedness, and to that new school of literature where everything worthy of respect is scoffed at. To permit this corruption of youth, or rather to foster its corruption, is to prepare a stormy and a troubled future; it is to compromise the cause of Liberty, to poison our growing institutions in the bud ”

“ Tell me, friend, is such a people fit for liberty? Is it not rather condemned to grow old and still be kept in the infantine swaddling clothes of a two-fold bondage?
"Men are still but children. Nevertheless, the human race increases and goes on progressing continually, and meanwhile stretches its bonds till they break. The time draws near when it will no longer listen to the lame man who calls upon it to stop, when it will no longer ask its way of the blind. May the world become enlightened! ”

“ The unfortunate workmen struggled in silence for a long time, trying, as each quarter came round, to move into smaller rooms, to more noxious quarters; trying, day by day, to economise something in the shape of their meals and those of their children. But, at last, when they came face to face with the deadening effect of bad air and of starvation for want of bread, there went up from the Croix-Rousse,—appropriate names, are they not?—that is to say, from the working portion of the city—a great sob, like that which Dante heard when he was passing through the first circle of the Inferno. ”

“ You are acquainted with Horace Vernet, are you not? I will not say as painter—pooh! who does not know, indeed, the artist of the Bataille de Montmirail, of the Prise de Constantine, of the Déroute de la Smala? No, I mean as man. You will have seen him pass a score of times, chasing the stag or the boar, in shooting costume; or crossing the place du Carrousel, or parading in the court of the Tuileries, in the brilliant uniform of a staff officer. ”

“ I am not a Voltaire, I know; but neither are you a Pope. All things considered, perhaps the relation between us is equivalent to that which existed between those two personages. Meanwhile, take this until something better turns up. Classic by principle and by habit I have not hitherto believed myself possessed of sufficient genius to dispense with both rhyme and reason. But who knows? Perhaps, some day, I shall be in a condition to try my hand at the romantic guerre: if I put myself at a distance from the age when people rave extravagantly I shall draw nearer to that of dotage. ”

“ They all go to Rome to study Raphael or Michael Angelo! Not a painter, not a single original sculptor of our time was a pupil at Rome; neither Delacroix, nor Rousseau, Diaz, Dupré, Cabot, Boulanger, Müller, Isabey, Brascassat, Giraud, Barrye, Clésinger, Gavarni, Rosa Bonheur, nor ... upon my word, I was tempted to say—nor anybody! But as the institution is absurd it will still continue to exist. With half the money to spend they could turn out twice as many actors, painters and sculptors; only, they would turn them out capable instead of incapable. ”

“ Vous qui appelez M. Béranger votre père, vous devriez savoir ce que tout le monde sait: d'abord, que le modeste grand poète n'est pas un philosophe épicurien, comme il vous plaît de le dire, mais bien un philosophe pénétré du plus profond amour de l'humanité. M. Béranger habite Paris, parce que c'est à Paris, et non ailleurs, qu'il peut remplir son beau rôle de dévouement. Demandez à tous ceux qui souffrent, n'importe à quelle opinion ils appartiennent, si M. Béranger leur a jamais refusé de les aider, de les secourir. Toute la vie de cet homme de bien est employée à rendre service. ”

“ They were stupefied behind the scenes; they had never seen a success taking such a form before, never before had applause gone so straight from the audience to the actors; and what an audience it was too! The fashionable world, the exquisites who take the best boxes at theatres, those who only applaud from habit, who, this time, made themselves hoarse with shouting so loudly, and had split their gloves with clapping! Crosnier was hidden. Bocage was as happy as a child. Dorval was mad! ”

“ Casimir Delavigne, the dramatic Coriolanus, after having been rejected by the Volscians of the boulevards, with Marino Faliero in his hand, instead of falling beneath the dagger of M. de Mongenet, had been received back triumphantly into the Théâtre-Français. The flight, after all, had been but a passing coolness after the immense success of the École des Vieillards. Casimir had had a sort of decline; Mademoiselle Mars had not been able to uphold the Princesse Aurélié, a kind of Neapolitan imbroglio which everybody has forgotten to-day, happily for the memory of its author. ”

“ Que je le broie ici! qui je l'écrase ... comme
Ceci!
(Il brise le portrait de Marion.)
Le juge! Allez, messieurs, faites des lois,
Et jugez! Que m'importe, à moi, que le faux poids
Qui fait toujours pencher votre balance infâme
Soit la tête d'un homme ou l'honneur d'une femme!"
I challenge anyone to find a more powerful or affecting passage in any language that has been written since the day when the lips of man uttered a first cry, a first complaint. Finally, Didier forgives Marion for being Marion, and, for a moment, the redeemed courtesan again becomes the lover. ”

“ Happily, friend, liberty has her secrets, her resources. This people, which seems to us for ever brutalised, is, however, educating itself and every day becomes more enlightened! Friend, we will forgive the slaves for running after distractions; we will bear with the immodest mother who prides herself that her daughters will pass for virgins when they have been blessed. We will not be surprised that old scoundrels hope to sweat out the seeds of their crimes, exhausting themselves to carry despicable images. ”

“ To do so would be to betray the cause of religion openly at a time when its glory is publicly attacked and when faith is exposed to the insults of a buffoon who trades on its mysteries and profanes its holy things; who confounds and upsets the very foundations of religion in the heart of the Louvre, in the home of a Christian prince, before wise magistrates zealous in God's cause, holding up to derision numberless good pastors as no better than Tartuffes! ”

“ A poet, I have ever pitied noble misfortune; as son of the people, I have never abjured renown. At that time this world appeared to me to be free and powerful under heaven, and I believed that the last salute of the universe to the phantom of ancient days would be its first aspiration towards future splendours. ”

“ Liberty has passed over you like a fleeting shadow, a shadow that has terrified your ancient oppressors: to them it appears as a symbol of justice! After the dark days had passed, you looked heavenwards, and thought you saw more kindly signs there; you said to yourself: 'The time of deliverance approaches; this earth which covers the bones of our ancestors shall yet be our own; we will no longer heed the voice of the stranger dictating his insolent commands to us.... ”

“ But when the player takes everything from the prompter, everything from the first to the last line of his part; when your voice covers his; when it is yours alone which is heard whilst he gesticulates, certainly this is playing through the prompter! Is it not this, monsieur, which has happened, not only at the first, but even at every performance of the Guelfes? Is it not you who really played M. Firmin's part? ”

“ Such a government or rather governments show signs of their decline when men of heart and understanding refuse to rally to their help, or when those who had done so by mistake quit it from disgust. It does not follow that these desertions bring about an immediate fall—it may not be for years after, but it is a certain sign that they will fall some day, alone, or by their own act, and the public conscience, at this stage of their decline, needs but to give it a slight push to complete the ruin! ”

“ Meyerbeer should leave his scores to make their own successes; we should gain one opera out of every three. I admire the more this quality of tenacity of purpose in a man since it is entirely lacking in myself. I have always let managers look after their interests and mine on first nights; and, next day, upon my word! let people say what they like, whether good or ill! I have been working for the stage for twenty-five years now, and writing books for as long: I challenge a single newspaper editor to say he has seen me in his office to ask the favour of a single puff. ”

“ I must purify myself in the unquenchable fires of never-dying sorrow; and ascend to the dignity of my being by means of profound and poignant regret for having sullied my soul. When I shall have earned rest by my sufferings, my youth will have gone.... But there is another life and, when I cross its threshold, I shall be re-clothed in the robe of immortal youth! ”

“ The triple emanation of the Republican, Carlist and Napoléonic phases went through the atmosphere like a sudden gust of storm, bearing on its wings the harsh cries of some unbridled, frenzied carnival, when, all at once, people learnt that, in a couple of days' time, an anniversary service was to be celebrated at Saint-Roch, in expiation of the assassination at the Place Louvois. A political assassination is such a detestable thing in the opinion of all factions, that it ought always to be allowable to offer expiatory masses for the assassinated ”