isposition of the scenes, both flexible and
logical! And through the action, which moves on with wonderful
straightforwardness and breadth, how many portraits, drawn with a
steady hand, each one bearing such distinctive features that you would
know them if you met them on the street! Olivier de Jalin, the refined
Parisian, the dialectician of the play, who is no other than Dumas
himself; Raymond de Nanjac, handsome and honest, but not keen or
Parisian; and that giddy Valentine de Sanctis, whose head turns with
the wind, whose tongue cannot rest one moment; and especially Suzanne
d'Ange, so witty, so complex, so devious in her motions, so
_roublarde_, as a Parisian of to-day would say.

Between 'The Demi-Monde,' and 'La Question d'Argent' (The Money
Question), which followed, Dumas spent two years at work. 'La Question
d'Argent' is a favorite play with the connoisseurs; but its reception
by the public was of the coldest. It is a noteworthy fact that plays
turning upon money have never been successful. Le Sage's 'Turcaret' is
a dramatic masterpiece: it never had the luck to please the crowd.
Dumas's Jean Giraud is, however, a very curiously studied character.
The author has represented in him the commonest type of the shady
money-man, the unconscious rascal. And very skillfully he made an
individual out of that general type, by giving to Jean Giraud a
certain rough good-nature; the appearance of a good fellow, with a
certain degree of fineness; a mixture of humility and self-conceit, of
awkwardness and impudence, and even some ideas as to the power of
money that do not lack dignity, and some real liberality of sentiment
and act,--for wealth alone, though acquired by ignominious means,
suggests and dictates to the great robbers some advantageous movements
which the small rascal cannot indulge in: and around this Turcaret of
the Second Empire how many pictures of honest people, every one of
whom, in his or her way, is good and fine!

One year later Dumas carried to the Gymnase, his favorite theatre, 'Le
Fils Naturel' (The Natural Son); and the next year 'Un Pere Prodigue'
(A Prodigal Father; known also in English through a free adaptation as
'My Awful Dad').

In 'Le Fils Naturel' Dumas for the first time wrote a theme-play, a
kind of work in which he was to become a master. Hitherto we have seen
him drawing pictures of manners. To be sure, philosophical
considerations on the period depicted are not wanting, but the play