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 spiritual and commanding part of our nature, goes to sleep in
dreams. The animal terror asserts itself unchecked. It is a theory
not without exceptions. In dreams one has plenty of conscience (at
least that is my experience), though it usually takes the form of
remorse. And in dreams one often affronts dangers which, in waking
hours, one might probably avoid if one could.


Dumas' first play, an unimportant vaudeville, was acted in 1825.