He was introduced to the great Talma: what
a moment for Talma, had he known it! He saw the theatres. He went home,
but returned to Paris, drew a small prize in a lottery, and sat next a
gentleman at the play, a gentleman who read the rarest of Elzevirs, "Le
Pastissier Francais," and gave him a little lecture on Elzevirs in
general. Soon this gentleman began to hiss the piece, and was turned
out. He was Charles Nodier, and one of the anonymous authors of the play
he was hissing! I own that this amusing chapter lacks verisimilitude. It
reads as if Dumas had chanced to "get up" the subject of Elzevirs, and
had fashioned his new knowledge into a little story. He could make a
story out of anything--he "turned all to favour and to prettiness." Could
I translate the whole passage, and print it here, it would be longer than
this article; but, ah, how much more entertaining! For whatever Dumas
did he did with such life, spirit, wit, he told it with such vivacity,
that his whole career is one long romance of the highest quality.
Lassagne told him he must read--must read Goethe, Scott, Cooper,
Froissart, Joinville, Brantome. He read them to some purpose. He
entered the service of the Duc d'Orleans as a clerk, for he wrote a clear
hand, and, happily, wrote at astonishing speed. He is said to have
written a short play in a cottage where he went to rest for an hour or
two after shooting all the morning. The practice in a notary's office
stood him, as it stood Scott, in good stead. When a dog bit his hand he
managed to write a volume without using his thumb. I have tried it, but
forbear--in mercy to the printers. He performed wild feats of rapid
caligraphy when a clerk under the Duc d'Orleans, and he wrote his plays
in one "hand," his novels in another. The "hand" used in his dramas he
acquired when, in days of poverty, he used to write in bed. To this
habit he also attributed the _brutalite_ of his earlier pieces, but there
seems to be no good reason why a man should write like a brute because it
is in bed that he writes.

In those days of small things he fought his first duel, and made a study
of Fear and Courage. His earliest impulse was to rush at danger; if he
had to wait, he felt his courage oozing out at the tips of his fingers,
like Bob Acres, but in the moment of peril he was himself again. In
dreams he was a coward, because, as he argues, the natural man _is_ a
poltroon, and conscience, honour, all the spi