Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1895-12-04

and woke again at $50 o'clock. He fee
bly, uttered a few words to those about
his bedside and then sank and died.
President Faure and ex-Empress Eu-
genie have made frequent inquiries re-
garding the condition of the distin-
guished patient since his serious illness
was first made known.
Alexander Dumas was born in 1924,
when his father was only p years of
age. The young Alexander published
his first work when he was in his seven
teenth year; it was a volume of poems
and called "Les Peches de Jeunesse."
The sin of poetry he repented of, and
his next appearance was as q novelist,
IN 1S41, with a rather tedious romance,
-Four Women and a Parrot" In the
following year he published lie Roman
dune Femme, Cesarine" and LA Dame
aux Camelias,'' all marked with such
dramatic power that the authors sue
cess as a dramatist could be foreseen
and foretoid.
The triumph of "La Dame aux Came
las" at the Vaudeville. with Nine.
Doche and Fechter in the leading roles.
was colossal, and it is today as attract
i've as ever in every country. His other
victories-"Le Demi-Monde,'' ia Fem
me de Claude" 'sEtrangere,'' "Denise,"
"Francillon," Monsieur Alphonse," all
models Of construction and character
draWing-are familiar to the public. In
all the author regarded society from
the pathological point of view; he was
always on the lookout for some moral
malady, the more extraordinary the bet
ter, and in all he worked out his theories
with cold precision.
NJ. Dumas was a remarkable example
of inheritance of talent, says a writer in
d critical estimate of the man. Yet be-
tween the author of "La Dame aux
Camelias' and the author of LES Trois
Mousquetaires" there was as great a
difference as between the Armand Duval
of the former and the D'Artagnan of the
latter. The son once attempted to ex-
plain the difference by saying: "My
father was born in a poetic age, and
he is an idealist; I was born in a
materialistic age, and am a realist. My
father takes his subjects from dream
land; | take mine from life. He works
with his eyes shut, / with mine open.
lie starts from a fact; I from an idea"
The father, however, was nearer the
truth and epigrammatically neater when
lie summed up with the words: "He is
Il photographer; [ am a painter" b
father owed the larger part of his sue
cess to his power as a story teller
Astounding in action, splendid in color,
full of life, gayety and charm, always
goodly and glad; never sick and sorry.
III was a force of nature" said Niche
let, "and, like nature, he had no theo-
ries. The son. on the other hand. is of
theorizing all compact, and never hest
tates about working his theses into para
dox."
At Is, after a thorough training at
the Institution Goubaux and the College
Bourbon, M. Dumas fills left school for
the world Of letters and the society, to
which his father, then at his apogee,
belonged. He started in fiction and sue
ceeded, so he went on to drama and sue
ceeded; be went on to theorizing about
art, morals, politics and religion and sue
ceeded. He was a member of the In
stitute in 1874, and is the acknowledged
best playwright and one of the greatest
artists in words of latter-day France.
His novels, from "La Dame aux Came
las 0S48) to 'L'Affaire Clemenceau
1SS0, are considered classics, while his
essays, letters, speeches, prefaces and
projections are brilliant and admirable in
form, and in matter daring, ~paradoxical
and suggestive in a high degree. Of his
sixteen plays there is scarce one that is
not literature, while five Or six of them
are masterpieces of construction, char
acterization and writing. He was a
brilliant yet dubious combination of Afri-
can and French, his great-grandfather
having been a full-blooded African ne
gro. He was made Il grand officer of
the Legion of Honor December %, 1894.
His wife died April II. 1895.