'Christine' had been wrecked among the cross-currents of theatrical life. 'Henri III.' was more fortunate. Dumas was indeed obliged to choose between his little office and the stage; he abandoned his secretaryship. In 1829 occurred this "duel between his past and his future." Just before the first night of the drama, Dumas's mother, whom he tenderly loved, was stricken down by paralysis. He tended her, he watched over his piece, he almost dragged the Duc d'Orléans to the theatre. On that night he made the acquaintance of Hugo and Alfred de Vigny. Dumas passed the evening between the theatre and his mother's bedside. When the curtain fell, he was "called on"; the audience stood up uncovered, the Duc d'Orléans and all! Next morning Dumas, like Byron, "woke to find himself famous." He had "made his name" in the only legitimate way,--by his work. Troubles followed, difficulties with the Censorship, duels and rumors of duels, and the whole romantic upheaval which accompanied the Revolution of 1830. Dumas was attached again to the Orléans household. He dabbled in animal magnetism, which had been called mesmerism, and now is known as hypnotism. The phenomena are the same; only the explanations vary. About 1830 there was a mania for animal magnetism in Paris; Lady Louisa Stuart recounted some of the marvels to Sir Walter Scott, who treated the reports with disdain. When writing his romance 'Joseph Balsamo' (a tale of the French Revolution), Dumas made studies of animal magnetism, and was, or believed himself to be, an adept. The orthodox party of modern hypnotists merely hold that by certain physical means, a state of somnambulism can be produced in certain people. Once in that state, the patients are subject, to "suggestion," and are obedient to the will of the hypnotizer. He for his part exerts no "magnetic current," no novel unexplained force or fluid. Some recent French and English experiments are not easily to be reconciled with this hypothesis. Dumas himself believed that he exerted a magnetic force, and without any "passes" or other mechanical means, could hypnotize persons who did not know what he was about, and so were not influenced by "suggestion." In a few cases he held that his patients became clairvoyant; one of them made many political prophecies,--all unfulfilled. Another, in trance, improved vastly as a singer; "her normal voice stopped at _contre-si_. I bade her rise to _contre-re_, which she did; though incapable of it when awake." So far, this justifies the plot of Mr. Du Maurier's novel 'Trilby.' Dumas offers no theory; he states facts, as he says, including "post-hypnotic suggestion."