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has all the color and energy of popular speech. But see! Dumas in
depicting this woman preserved exquisite measure. Madame Guichard says
many pert and droll things; she never utters a coarse word. Her
language is picturesque; it is free from slang. Hers is a vulgar
nature, but she does not offend delicate ears by the grossness of her
utterance. Dumas never drew a more living picture; she is the joy of
this rather sad play.

All that remain to be reviewed are 'L'Etrangere,' 'La Princesse de
Bagdad,' and 'Francillon'; all of which were given at the Comedie
Francaise. 'L'Etrangere' is indeed a melodrama, with an admixture of
comedy. Had he gone further in that direction, Dumas might have made a
new sort of play, which would perhaps have reigned a long time on the
stage. But after this trial, successful though it was, he stopped. 'La
Princesse de Bagdad' entirely failed. 'Francillon' was Dumas's last
success at the Comedie Francaise.

After 1887 Dumas gave nothing to the stage. He had completed a great
five-act play, 'The Road to Thebes,' which the manager of the Comedie
Francaise hoped every year to put on the boards. Dumas kept promising
it; but either from distrust of himself or of the public, or from
fatigue, or fear of meeting with failure, he asked for new delays,
until the day when he declared that not only the play would not be
acted during his life, but that he would not even allow it to be acted
after his death.

This death he saw coming, with sad but calm eyes. It was a sorrow for
us to see this man, whom we had known so quick and alert, grow weaker
every day, showing the progress of disease in his shriveled features
and body. The complexion had lost all color, the cheeks had become
flaccid, the eye had no life left.

On October 1st, 1895, he wrote to his friend Jules Claretie:--"Do not
depend upon me any more; I am vanquished. There are moments when I
mourn my loss, as Madame D'Houdetot said when dying." He was at Puys,
by the seaside, when he wrote that despairing letter. He returned to
Marly, there to die, surrounded by his family, on November 28th, 1895,
in a house which he loved and which had been bequeathed to him years
before by an intimate friend.

His loss threw into mourning the world of letters, and the whole of
Paris. People discovered then--for death loosens every tongue and
every pen--how kind and generous in reality was Dumas, who had often
been accused of avarice by those who contrasted h