that I must
die if I continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if that should be
required, to die in throwing it off. I triumphed. But, reader, think of
me as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing,
throbbing, palpitating, shattered. During the whole period of
diminishing the opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one
mode of existence into another. The issue was not death, but a sort of
physical regeneration.

One memorial of my former condition still remains--my dreams are not yet
perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not
wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but
not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of
Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is
still--in Milton's tremendous line--"With dreadful faces throng'd and
fiery arms."

* * * * *

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Memoirs

Alexandre Dumas _pere_, the great French novelist and
dramatist, who here tells the story of his youth, was born on
July 24, 1802, and died on December 5, 1870. He was a man of
prodigious vitality, virility, and invention; abounding in
enjoyment, gaiety, vanity, and kindness; the richness, force,
and celerity of his nature was amazing. In regard to this
peculiar vivacity of his, it is interesting to remember that
one of his grandparents was a full-blooded negress. Dumas'
literary work is essentially romantic; his themes are courage,
loyalty, honour, love, pageantry, and adventure; he belongs to
the tradition of Scott and Schiller, but as a story-teller
excels every other. His plays and novels are both very
numerous; the "OEuvres Completes," published between 1860 and
1884, fill 277 volumes. Probably "Monte Cristo" and "The Three
Musketeers" are the most famous of his stories. He was an
untiring and exceedingly rapid worker, a great collaborator
employing many assistants, and was also a shameless
plagiarist; but he succeeded in impressing his own quality on
all that he published. Besides plays and novels there are
several books of travel. His son, Alexandre, was born in 1824.
The "Memoirs," published in 1852, which are here followed
through their author's struggles to his triumph, may be the
work of the novelist as well as of the chronicler, but they