urned to France. The Revolution
broke out, and the father of Alexandre Dumas fought in the armies of
the Republic. The cruel mob called him by way of mockery, "Monsieur
Humanity," because he endeavored to rescue the victims of their
ferocity. He was a man of great courage and enormous physical
strength. Napoleon, in honor of one of his feats of arms, called him
in a dispatch "The Horatius Cocles of the Republic." He was with
Napoleon in Egypt, where a quarrel arose, as he suspected and opposed
the ambition of the future emperor. Though Dumas found a treasure in a
bey's house, he honorably presented it to his government. He died in
France, a poor man, in 1806.

Dumas was not at home when his father died. He was staying, a
child of four, with his cousin Marianne.

"At midnight I was awakened, or rather my cousin and I were
awakened, by a great blow struck on the door of our room. By
the light of a night lamp I saw my cousin start up, much
alarmed. No mortal could have knocked at our chamber door,
for the outer doors were locked. [He gives a plan of the
house.] I got out of bed to open the door. 'Where are you
going, Alexandre?' cried my cousin.

"'To let in papa, who is coming to say adieu.'

"The girl dragged me back to bed; I cried, 'Adieu, papa,
adieu!' Something like a sighing breath passed over my
face.... My father had died at the hour when we heard the
knock!"

This anecdote may remind the reader of what occurred at Abbotsford on
the night when Mr. Bullock died in London. Dumas tells another tale of
the same kind ('Memoirs,' Vol. xi., page 255: Brussels, 1852). On the
night of his mother's death he in vain sought a similar experience.
These things "come not by observation"; but Dumas, like Scott, had a
mind not untuned to such themes, though not superstitious.

Young Dumas, like most men of literary genius, taught himself to read.
A Buffon with plates was the treasure of the child, already a lover of
animals. To know more about the beasts he learned to read for his own
pleasure. Of mythology he was as fond as Keats. His intellectual life
began (like the imaginative life of our race) in legends of beasts and
gods. For Dumas was born _un primitif_, as the French say; his taste
was the old immortal human taste for romance, for tales of adventure,
love, and war. This predilection is now of course often scouted by
critics who are over-civilized and under-educated.