Olympe de Cléves 1

Although Monsieur Dumas cites contemporary authority for the final catastrophe as having actually taken place, to assume that any other portion of Banniere's career, as traced in this story, is founded upon fact. Dumas is himself responsible for the plot so far as it is concerned with the fortunes of Olympe and her ardent and headstrong lover.

But the scenes which deal with the conspiracy to corrupt young Louis XV., and force him to adopt a career of unredeemed profligacy, are founded upon indisputable evidence, adapted, of course, to the exigencies of the narrative. The authority of contemporaneous memoirs may be cited in support of some of the most improbable details; for example, the queen's coldness toward the king, and the various anecdotes concerning Mademoiselle de Charolais.

With his usual matchless skill, Alexandre Dumas has so interwoven history and romance that each embellishes the other; and the result is a harmonious and intensely interesting whole, albeit the period was conspicuously lacking in those stirring, chivalric incidents which furnished the themes for the marvelous romances of the days of the Valois kings and the first Bourbons.

By universal consent Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), Pere is now acknowledged the most entertaining of the writers of romance. For variety of incidents, sprightliness of dialogue, and vividness of narrative no tales of adventure can compete with such works as The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo. It is doubtful also, whether the life of any novelist comes as near as the life of Alexandre Dumas to what is expected of an entertaining work of fiction. Viewed as a hero of romance, the great novelist is almost as striking a figure as his picturesque and fascinating D'Artagnan, so that his Memoirs and the numerous volumes in which he relates the story of his travels seem to differ from his other narrative works only in the use, for the hero, of the first instead of the third person of the verb.