Alexandre

“ Hence have arisen our reverses and our defeats, and the taking of Paris and the exile to the isle of Elba."
[Pg 349]
"Well, we will drop Bonaparte now, M. Oblet."
"Madame, you yourself introduced the man into the conversation and not I; I never speak of the man."
"But suppose if Alexandre..."
"If your son, madame, one day becomes emperor of the French, since he will have, or rather as he already has, a splendid hand, his orders will be literally carried out, unless his marshals do not know how to read." ”

“ I ought to do my comrades the justice of saying that this victory was followed by unanimous applause.
I then put my jacket on again, and collected my books, murmuring:
"You see! you see! you see!" which seemed to mean, "Look at me, see what I am! a coward at bottom, but when driven to desperation, an Alexander, a Hannibal, or a Cæsar; you see!" ”

“ In 1792 he married the daughter of an innkeeper at Villers-Cotterets, a good wife to him and a [Pg xxi] good mother to his son. In Egypt he disliked the arbitrary proceedings of Napoleon, went home, and never was employed again. He had mitigated, as far as in him lay, the sanguinary ferocities of the Revolutionaries. A good man and a good sportsman, he died while Alexandre, born July 24th, 1802, was a little boy. The child had been sent to sleep at a house near his father's, and was awakened by a loud knock at the moment of the General's death. ”

“ Alexandre Dumas, I baptise thee Poet, in the name of Shakespeare, of Corneille, and of Schiller! Return to the country—go back to your office, and if you have a true call, the Angel of Poetry will be sure to find you, wherever you are! ”

“ It was Alexander's wish that his entry should be a triumph; so when he learned that the quartermasters of the army were only a few leagues from the town, he sent out runners to invite the royal ambassadors, the cardinals, the prelates, the Roman barons, and municipal dignitaries to make procession with all their suite to meet the Duke of Valentinois; and as it always happens that the pride of those who command is surpassed by the baseness of those who obey, the orders were not only fulfilled to the letter, but beyond it. ”

“ For, indeed, it is very easy to call a man His Majesty five days before his abdication and a monarch and a father whom one has just addresssed as Ajax, Alexander, Cæsar, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. Undeceive yourselves! To-day, His Majesty is the Emperor Alexander; as for that other emperor, the Emperor Napoleon, we shall see, or rather we have already seen, what has become of him since his return from the isle of Elba. ”

“ He was born into the atmosphere of fiery light and fierce heat which the Revolution had left behind it. He was destined to possess a good share of blue and of black blood, for his grandfather was no other than the Marquis Antoine-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, self-exiled to San Domingo, and his grandmother was a negro-woman, Louise-Cessette Dumas. ”

“ The light-hearted gaiety of the father and the sardonic gravity of the son, offered a contrast too marked to be missed by the wits. Alexandre is Dumas fils, but you—you are not Dumas père—you never will be!" said "the Lady of the Camélias" to the great man. "He is a big child of mine, born when I was quite young," said the son. Each seemed to provoke wit in the other. The elder was one day dining with his son, who had taken a house where the trees in the garden quite blocked up the light. "Open your windows," said old Dumas, "and let your garden have a little fresh air!" ”

“ Two years later, when the Prussians had departed, Alexandre Dumas was able to take his father home to Villers-Cotterets, where he had wished to lie. A host of distinguished authors and actors came to bid their old confrère farewell, but the simple reverence and affection shown by the dead man's old village friends was a far truer token of the love that he had won. When the train arrived with the coffin, the people were quietly waiting in the streets to greet it, and young and old pressed forward to contend with the bearers for the honour of carrying the body of their lost, dear friend. ”

“ She tolerated little Marie, Dumas's daughter, but hated young Alexandre, because of the love his father bore him. The two were obliged to meet by stealth, for the young man was not allowed in the house. As the actress "Mademoiselle Ferrier" forced Dumas to give her parts to which her talents were not equal; as a mistress she was furiously jealous of every other woman, and played practical jokes of doubtful taste on the master. Dumas bore patiently with her extravagance, her constant interruption of his work, and the daily quarrel which seemed necessary to her existence ”

“ Suddenly Alexander beheld the old King Ferdinand returning to his side, and at the very moment when he least expected it. The pope was too clever a politician to accept a reconciliation without finding out the cause of it; he soon learned what plots were hatching at the French court against the kingdom of Naples, and the whole situation was explained. ”

“ To him, living eternally in this thought, actuality disappeared in the future; wherever the hurricane of war may have swept him, France, above all things else, above all nations, filled his thoughts. “What will my Athenians think?” said Alexander, after Issus and Arbela. “I hope the French will be content with me,” said Bonaparte, after Rivoli and the Pyramids.
Before battle, this modern Alexander gave little thought to what he should do in case of victory, but much in case of defeat. He, more than any man, was convinced that trifles often decide the greatest events ”

“ His uncle Frederic succeeded; and so, in the three years of his papacy, Alexander VI had seen five kings upon the throne of Naples, while he was establishing himself more firmly upon his own pontifical seat—Ferdinand I, Alfonso I, Charles VIII, Ferdinand II, and Frederic. All this agitation about his throne, this rapid succession of sovereigns, was the best thing possible for Alexander; for each new monarch became actually king only on condition of his receiving the pontifical investiture. The consequence was that Alexander was the only gainer in power and credit by these changes ”

“ When she had appeared at Peterhof before the Emperor Alexander, before his brothers Constantine, Nicolas and Michel, before the reigning empress and the dowager empress, Mademoiselle Georges, preceded by the reputation of her great fame, appeared at the theatre in St. Petersburg. It goes without saying that at the theatre of St. Petersburg the orthodox style of drama was in vogue. Alexander might carry off Napoleon's actors; but, alas! he could not carry away his poets: poets were too rare in France for Napoleon not to keep an eye on those he possessed. ”

“ The following Sunday, when my son Alexandre and one or two intimate friends were assembled in my room, a second Auvergnat boy, with a second monkey, demanded admittance, and said that a friend having told him that M. Dumas had bought his monkey for forty francs, two white mice, and a guinea-pig, he was prepared to offer his for the same price. My friends urged me to buy the second monkey.
'Do buy this charming creature,' said my artist friend Giraud. ”

“ I will remain because I have been accustomed for thirty years to go and take the orderly word of the king, and to have said to me, 'Good-evening, D'Artagnan,' with a smile I did not beg for! ”

“ If he has shown us humanity more generous than it is, do not reproach him for that: he has painted it in his own image." "Old folk blessed him," wrote Jules Janin, "for he made easy the path to the grave; the women called upon him to aid them against their sadness, and the young men swore by the romances of their poet." "All our hospital patients recover or die with one of your father's books under their pillow," said a surgeon to Alexandre Dumas fils. ”

“ His hair was yellow-tawny, like a lion’s, his eyes were bright and glistening, piercing like blazing stars; grim and fierce was his look, one of his eyes black as a coal, the other yellow like gold; his voice was loud, even from his first cry, nor could any hear it without inward fear. Alexander was his name, and the wisest man of all the world, Aristotle, was his tutor, nor would he learn of other. ”

“ I am certain it would have been granted,' I remarked, because I felt convinced that Her Majesty would have been only too pleased to confer an honour upon such a man.
"'Well, I did think of it,' came the reply; 'a woman as remarkable as she is, who will probably remain the first woman of the century, ought to have met the greatest man in France! It is a pity, for she will go away without having seen the best sight in France—Alexandre, King of the world of Romance—Dumas the Ignorant!' [1] Then he roared with laughter, and went away."
The romancer was still full of energy, physical and mental. ”

“ To speak seriously, I can here discern nothing of Alexander, but his bare name; his Genius, his Humour, his Qualities, appear to me no where. I expect to find in an impetuous Hero such extraordinary motions, as should excite my passion; but I find a Prince of so little spirit, that he makes no manner of impression upon me. I imagin’d to find in Porus, a greatness of soul, which would be somewhat more surprizing to us; an Indian Hero should have a different character from one of ours. ”

“ D’Artagnan already fancied himself, so rapid is the flight of our dreams upon the wings of imagination, accosted by a messenger from the young woman, who brought him some billet appointing a meeting, a gold chain, or a diamond. ”

“ And this hot constitution, it may be, rendered Alexander so addicted to drinking, and so choleric. His temperance, as to the pleasures of the body, was apparent in him in his very childhood, as he was with much difficulty incited to them, and always used them with great moderation; though in other things he was extremely eager and vehement, and in his love of glory, and the pursuit of it, he showed a solidity of high spirit and magnanimity far above his age. ”

“ He truly says, "Let the man who speaks evil of Alexander not merely bring forward those passages of Alexander's life which were really evil, but let him collect and review all the actions of Alexander, and then let him thoroughly consider first who and what manner of man he himself is, and what has been his own career; and then let him consider who and what manner of man Alexander was, and to what an eminence of human grandeur HE arrived. ”

“ The soldiers saw with dismay the brilliant moon, for whose help in arranging their bivouac they had been so thankful, swallowed up, as it seemed, by an advancing darkness, and they drew the gloomiest omens from the sight. But Alexander was equal to the occasion. A disciple of Aristotle, the greatest natural philosopher of the ancient world, he knew the cause of the phenomenon, but as a practical man, whose business it was to understand the natures with which he had to deal, he knew also that a scientific explanation of that cause would be useless. ”

“ When he asked them by means of interpreters what was the meaning of their action, they replied as follows: "king Alexander, every man possesses as much of the earth as this, upon which we have stepped; but thou being only a man like the rest of us, except in being meddlesome and arrogant, art come over so great a part of the earth from thy own land, giving trouble botli to thyself and others. ”

“ O Alexander, get out of my sunshine with your bugbear of a Charles Lamb! "I have heard you for some time with patience. I have been cool,—quite cool; but don't put me in a frenzy!"
Well, friend, when you have satisfied yourself with the limiting, you begin on the descriptive adjectives, and pronounce me egotistical. Certainly. I should be unlike all others of my race, if I were not. It is a wise and merciful arrangement of Providence, that every one is to himself the centre of the universe. What a fatal world would this be, if it were otherwise! ”

“ With the fluty song beguiling him, he left the road and walked by the banks of the Broad Beck, until his bathing pool shone out among the birches. He saw himself mirrored dimly in the water, and the blurred image appeared to him as the true presentment of the thing he was, vague and incomplete, the rough shape his soul must perfect. The trees, in their drooping, veiled the fading light and curtained Alexander from the rest of the world, but he felt the Blue Hill behind him and fancied he could hear its breathing. ”

“ The friendly attendant came forward to meet the new-comers. The prince caught him by the arm. “Swear,” he said, “by Melkarth, to help us, and don’t utter another sound, or you die this instant.” The man stammered out the oath.
“That is well,” said the prince, “we knew that we could trust you. You shall have wealth and honour. When Alexander is master of Tyre, you shall be priest of the temple. Now listen to what we want. We must have this Greek prisoner who is to be sacrificed to the god at the feast of the new moon. He is dear to our king, and must not die.” ”

“ But Alexander, dear," and she gave a little twist to the top button of his coat, "I don't love you, because you have never shown yourself capable of bold deeds or brave actions. I am woman enough to worship a man who can do things of that kind. The age of chivalry is not dead. There are heroes in this world, and though I'm awfully fond of you, Alexander, I'm going to wait until I meet my ideal." ”

“ Let him then ask himself whether he is a fit person to censure and revile such a man as Alexander. I believe that there was in his time no nation of men, no city, nay, no single individual, with whom Alexander's name had not become a familiar word. I therefore hold that such a man, who was like no ordinary mortal was not born into the world without some special providence. ”

“ D’Artagnan looked his friend earnestly in the face. “You know one thing,” continued the comte, leaning upon the arm of the captain; “you know that in the course of my life I have been afraid of but few things. Well! I have an incessant gnawing, insurmountable fear that an hour will come in which I shall hold the dead body of that boy in my arms.” ”

“ What does it matter, father, if no one will any more? What does it matter, if this woman loves me, if her whole life is changed through the love which she has for me and the love which I have for her? ”