Dumas Paris
Book Excerpt
His wish--it was not prophecy--did not, however, come true, as the world in general and France and poor rent Alsace et Lorraine in particular know to their sorrow; and all through a whim of a self-appointed, though weakling, monarch.
The era of the true peace of the world and the monument to its glory came when the French nation presented to the New World that grand work of Bartholdi, "Liberty Enlightening the World," which stands in New York harbour, and whose smaller replica now terminates the Allee des Cygnes.
The grasp that Dumas had of the events of romance and history served his purpose well, and in the life of the fifties in Paris his was a name and personality that was on everybody's lips.
How he found time to live the full life that he did is a marvel; it certainly does not bear out the theory of heredity when one considers the race of his birth and the "dark-skinned" languor which was supposedly his