For the book becomes very dull after his supposed death (he _does_ die, but not at once), and only revives when, some way into the second volume, an elaborate attempt to revenge him is made by his servant, Sanche, _ame damnee_ and also _damnante_ (if one may coin this variant), who is, as it turns out, his irregular father. This again rather stagy character organises a formidable body of wandering _reitres_, gipsies, and miscellaneous ruffians to attack and sack the marquis's house--a plan which, though ultimately foiled, brings about a very refreshing series of hurly-burlys and hullabaloos for some hundred and fifty pages. The narrative is full of improbable impossibilities, and contrasts singularly with the fashion in which Dumas, throughout all his great books (and not a few of his not so great ones), manages to _escamoter_ the difficulty. The boy Mario,[193] orphan of the murdered brother, left unknown for many years, recognised by his uncle, avenger of his father on Sanche, as Bois-Dore himself had been on Alvimar, is altogether too clever and effective for his age; and the conduct of Bellinde, Bois-Dore's cashiered _gouvernante_, is almost preposterous throughout. But it is what a schoolboy of the old days would have called a "jolly good scrimmage," and restores the interest of the book for most of the second volume. The end--scarcely, one would think, very interesting to any one--is quite spoilt for some by another example of George Sand's inveterate passion for "maternal" love-making and matches where the lady is nearly double the age of her husband. Others--or the same--may not be propitiated for this by the "horrors"[194] which the author has liberally thrown in. But the larger part of the book, like the larger part of _Consuelo_, is quite good stuff. [Sidenote: _Le Marquis de Villemer._]