The celebrated Alphonse Karr, a devoted lover of flowers, took the trouble to make a "romancers' garden," composed of trees and flowers which contemporary novelists, finding the laws of nature too narrow for them, had described in their books. This imaginary garden owed to George Sand a blue chrysanthemum, to Victor Hugo a Bengal rose without thorns, to Balzac a climbing azalea, to Jules Janin a blue pink, to Madame de Genlis a green rose, to Eugene Sue a variety of cactus growing in Paris in the open air, to Paul Féval a variety of larch which retained its leaves during winter, to Forgues a pretty little pink clematis which flourished around the windows in the Latin quarter, to Rolle a scented camellia, and to Dumas the black tulip and a white lotus. The black tulip, it may be remarked, though unknown in Dumas' day, has now become an accomplished fact. Dumas, though not a botanist, had charming, if not very precise, notions about flowers,--as about animals,--and to him they doubtless said: "Nous sommes les filles du feu secret, Du feu qui circule dans les veines de la terre; Nous sommes les filles de l'aurore et de la rosée, Nous sommes les filles de l'air, Nous sommes les filles de l'eau; Mais nous sommes avant tout les filles du ciel." Dumas wandered much farther afield than the land of his beloved Valois. To Italy, to Spain, to Algeria, to Corsica, to Germany, and even to Russia. Mostly he made use of his experiences in his books of travel, of which "Les Impressions du Voyage" is the chief. Who would read the narrative of the transactions which took place in Russia's capital in the early nineteenth century, should turn to "Les Mémoires d'un Maître d'Armes," or "Dix-huit Mois à St. Petersburgh." It presents a picture of the Russian life of the time, in which--the critics agree--there is but slight disguise. Its story--for it is confessedly fiction--turns upon the fortunes of a young subaltern, who played a considerable part in the conspiracy of 1825, and, it has been said by a contemporary writer of the time, hardly any circumstance but the real name of the young man is disguised. It is in the main, or, at least, it has for its principal incident, the story of a political exile, and it is handled with Dumas' vivid and consummate skill, which therein proves again that the mere romancist had a good deal of the historian about him.