ALEXANDER DUMAS AND HIS FATHER.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 62, 6 December 1907, Page 5

ALEXANDER DUMAS AND HIS FATHER.

e ■ _— —^ —_ ■ ■ .' j. Everyone knows that Dumas's grandfather r married a black woman, of . St. Domingo, s called Louise Dumas. f Tho grandfather was called the Marquis ? Davy do la Pailloterie, and his grandson set 0 all Paris laughing when he, with that buoy- [, ant audacity which never failed him, claimed t tho title, and assumed the family arms. ;. His father was, of course, a mulatto—not a o creolo, as he has sometimes been improperly 11 called—and-Alosander-Dumas himself-was, therefore, a quadroon. . . ■ The father was a gallant officer, and the early' chapters 'of the son's memoirs are largely occupied with his history. Ho was a man of high temper,, perpetually- quarrells ing and making,it up with Napoleon,.but was ;, eventually dismissed by : his general, who sent li him back'from Egypt, to die in obscurity, alo most' with a broken heart, at tho little town o of in tho department of !- Aisno. - : ■• . . ;. A very remarkable man was this General .- Dumas, about whom strange stories are told, t quite in ' the style of the once-celebrated ;1 novel, "Guy Livingstone." d "Ho was a kind of Porthos" (says Mr. ~ Andrew Lang). "Clasping his horse, bei- twoen the knees, and seizing a beam' overe head .with his hands; he lifted the steed off [- the ground; Fnding that a wall opposed a ,f charge which ho was leading, he threw his e regiment one by one over the.wall, and then climbed it himself." ' . One thing is certain about this herculean gonoral. His wife was devoted to him; his son adored him. ■ ■ • ■ ' On, tho night, on which his father i-ied r Alexander who was quite a small boy, wa<> n awakened by a loud knock at'his door, for 0 which there was rtr apparent cause. "I. am \i going to opon'tho door for papa, who has ii come to say good-byo to us," said the child, - when he was. interrogated. 1 The next morning there ensues a : char-! s actoristic scene. Having asked what had ', happened to his father, and being told that s tiod had taken him away, the boy at once t went to a room in his father's house, where - his Rims wore kept. ' • o "Then, armed with this gun, I climbed the e staira. I met my mother on the first lande ing. She was coming out of the deatjio chamber, weeping bitterly. 'Where arc yon s going?' she asked, surprised to see me there e when she thought I was at. my uncle's. 1 i, am going to heaven,' I replied. 'What I e You are going to heaven?' 'Yes; lot me d go.' 'What arc you going to do in heaven, r my poor child?' 'I am going to kill the ,1 good God for killing pnpa.' My; mother . seized mo in her arms and pressed mo closely , t.) her. 'Oh my child, , she nriod, 'do not i. say such things; wo are quito unhappy e enough already.'." ' s They wore, indeed, unhappy enough alt rendy.—"Daily Telegraph."