Superior persons
will never share the love of Dumas which was common to Thackeray and
Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson. From Buffon he went on to the 'Letters to
Emil' (letters on mythology), and to the 'Arabian Nights.' An
imaginative child, he knew the "pains of sleep" as Coleridge did, and
the terrors of vain imagination. Many children whose manhood is not
marked by genius are visionaries. A visionary too was little Dumas,
like Scott, Coleridge, and George Sand in childhood. To the material
world he ever showed a bold face. "I have never known doubt or
despair," he says; his faith in God was always unshaken; the doctrine
of immortality he regarded rather with hope than absolute belief. Yet
surely it is a corollary to the main article of his creed.

At ten, Dumas went to a private school kept by an Abbe Gregoire. At
the Restoration, a boy of twelve, he made and he adhered to an
important resolution. He chose to keep his grandmaternal name of
Dumas, like his father, and to drop the name and arms of De la
Pailleterie, with all the hopes of boons from the restored Royalists.
Dumas remained a man of the popular party, though he had certain
relations of friendship with the house of Orleans. But he entertained
no posthumous hatred of the old monarchy and the old times. His kings
are nearly as good, in his romances, as Sir Walter's own, and his
Henri III. and Henri IV. may be named with Scott's Gentle King Jamie
and Louis XI.

Madame Dumas, marquise as she was by marriage, kept a tobacconist's
shop; and in education, Dumas was mainly noted for his calligraphy.
Poaching was now the boy's favorite amusement; all through his life he
was very fond of sport. Napoleon returned from Elba; Dumas saw him
drive through Villers-Cotterets on his way to Waterloo. Soon
afterwards came in stragglers; the English, they said, had been
defeated at five o'clock on June 18th, but the Prussians arrived at
six o'clock and won the battle. What the English were doing between
five and six does not appear; it hardly seems that they quitted the
field. The theory of that British defeat at Waterloo was never
abandoned by Dumas. He saw Napoleon return through Villers-Cotterets.
"Wellington, Buelow, Bluecher, were but masks of men; really they were
spirits sent by the Most High to defeat Napoleon." It is a pious
opinion!

At the age of fifteen Dumas, like Scott, became a notary's clerk.
About this time he saw 'Hamlet' played, in the version of Ducis.
Corne