Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/121

date for the Chamber of Deputies—not for his native department of the Aisne, where, in consequence of the Soissons exploit, he was considered an extreme "red"; nor for St Germain, because in the revolutionary days of February he had lost his command of the national guard there, by suggesting that he should lead his 750 comrades to Paris, à la Marseillaise, to the help of the people. It was suggested to him that the department of Yonne would be sure to acclaim him, and accordingly he went off to Lower Burgundy. When it was too late Dumas discovered that his chances in this district were fatally compromised because of his "Royalist sympathies"! He was mobbed, and fired at in the street. In vain he harangued a hostile crowd of three thousand Yonnais, and converted them into ardent supporters; he was not elected—perhaps because he had prophesied Prussia's conquest of France, twenty-two years later—although in his chant "Mourir pour la Patrie," which Dumas had introduced into his play of "Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge," he had given the Paris mob its "Marseillaise." (He had previously refused to write a "national anthem" to suit the Government.) Dumas was destined never to achieve a place in French politics, however ardently he desired it.