sis. He tended her,
he watched over his piece, he almost dragged the Duc d'Orleans to the
theatre. On that night he made the acquaintance of Hugo and Alfred de
Vigny. Dumas passed the evening between the theatre and his mother's
bedside. When the curtain fell, he was "called on"; the audience stood
up uncovered, the Duc d'Orleans and all!

Next morning Dumas, like Byron, "woke to find himself famous." He had
"made his name" in the only legitimate way,--by his work. Troubles
followed, difficulties with the Censorship, duels and rumors of duels,
and the whole romantic upheaval which accompanied the Revolution of
1830. Dumas was attached again to the Orleans household. He dabbled in
animal magnetism, which had been called mesmerism, and now is known as
hypnotism. The phenomena are the same; only the explanations vary.
About 1830 there was a mania for animal magnetism in Paris; Lady
Louisa Stuart recounted some of the marvels to Sir Walter Scott, who
treated the reports with disdain. When writing his romance 'Joseph
Balsamo' (a tale of the French Revolution), Dumas made studies of
animal magnetism, and was, or believed himself to be, an adept. The
orthodox party of modern hypnotists merely hold that by certain
physical means, a state of somnambulism can be produced in certain
people. Once in that state, the patients are subject, to "suggestion,"
and are obedient to the will of the hypnotizer. He for his part exerts
no "magnetic current," no novel unexplained force or fluid. Some
recent French and English experiments are not easily to be reconciled
with this hypothesis. Dumas himself believed that he exerted a
magnetic force, and without any "passes" or other mechanical means,
could hypnotize persons who did not know what he was about, and so
were not influenced by "suggestion." In a few cases he held that his
patients became clairvoyant; one of them made many political
prophecies,--all unfulfilled. Another, in trance, improved vastly as a
singer; "her normal voice stopped at _contre-si_. I bade her rise to
_contre-re_, which she did; though incapable of it when awake." So
far, this justifies the plot of Mr. Du Maurier's novel 'Trilby.' Dumas
offers no theory; he states facts, as he says, including
"post-hypnotic suggestion."

These experiments were made by Dumas merely as part of his studies for
'Joseph Balsamo' (Cagliostro); his conclusion was that hypnotism is
not yet reduced to a scientific formula. In fiction it is al