His enormous popularity, the widest in the world of letters,
owes absolutely nothing to prurience or curiosity. The air which he
breathes is a healthy air, is the open air; and that by his own
choice, for he had every temptation to seek another kind of vogue,
and every opportunity.
Two anecdotes are told of Dumas' books, one by M. Edmond About, the
other by his own son, which show, in brief space, why this novelist
is so beloved, and why he deserves our affection and esteem. M.
Villaud, a railway engineer who had lived much in Italy, Russia, and
Spain, was the person whose enthusiasm finally secured a statue for
Dumas. He felt so much gratitude to the unknown friend of lonely
nights in long exiles, that he could not be happy till his gratitude
found a permanent expression. On returning to France he went to
consult M. Victor Borie, who told him this tale about George Sand.
M. Borie chanced to visit the famous novelist just before her death,
and found Dumas' novel, "Les Quarante Cinq" (one of the cycle about
the Valois kings) lying on her table. He expressed his wonder that
she was reading it for the first time.
"For the first time!--why, this is the fifth or sixth time I have
read 'Les Quarante Cinq,' and the others. When I am ill, anxious,
melancholy, tired, discouraged, nothing helps me against moral or
physical troubles like a book of Dumas." Again, M. About says that
M.
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