Dumas hesitated which road to follow. An incident which
created a great deal of comment threw him back towards the stage, and
towards a new form of comedy.

M. Emile de Girardin, one of the best known publicists of the Second
Empire, had bethought himself, when over fifty years of age, and
knowing nothing of this kind of work, to write a play. He had been a
great friend of Dumas pere, and had kept up the most affectionate
intercourse with his son. He had asked him to fit his play for the
stage. It possessed one really dramatic idea. Dumas, in order to
oblige his father's friend, made out of it 'Le Supplice d'une Femme'
(A Woman's Torture). Emile de Girardin, who was self-conceited and
somewhat despotic, refused to recognize his offspring in the bear that
Dumas had licked. He declined to sign the play: "Neither shall I,"
Dumas retorted.

'A Woman's Torture' was acted at the Comedie Francaise with
extraordinary success. This success was for Dumas a warning and a
lesson. 'A Woman's Torture' was a three-act play, short, concise,
panting, which hurried to the _coup de theatre_ of the second act,
upon which the drama revolved, and rushed to its conclusion. The time
of five-act comedies, with ample expositions, copious developments,
philosophical disquisitions, curious and fanciful episodes, was gone.
Henceforth the dramatist had to deal with a hurried and _blase_
public, which, taking dinner at eight, could give to the theatre but a
short time, and an attention disturbed by the labor of digestion. 'A
Woman's Torture,' which lasted only an hour and a half, and proceeded
only by rapid strokes, was exactly what that public wanted. After that
time Dumas wrote only three-act and one-act plays; using four acts
only for 'Les Idees de Madame Aubray' (Madame Aubray's Ideas); and
these four acts are very short. In 1867 this play announced Dumas's
return to the stage; and Dumas is here more paradoxical than he had
ever been. His theme looked like a wager not simply against bourgeois
prejudices, but even against good sense, and, I dare to say, against
justice. This wager was won by Dumas, thanks to an incredible display
of skill. He took up the thesis a second time in 'Denise,' and won his
wager again, but with less difficulty. In 'Denise' the lover struggles
only against social prejudices, and allows himself to be carried away
by one of those emotional fits which disturb and confound human
reason. In 'Madame Aubray's Ideas' the triump