Dumas's next play, "classical" in form, was _Christine_, the long-deferred _Christine_, for the Odéon. The anecdotes about the difficulties with the classical actress, Mile. Mars, are familiar. Dumas was now one of the most notable men in Paris, and in the July days of 1830 he added to his notoriety, conducting himself much like Mr. Jingle on the same historic occasion. He was prominent, with a fowling-piece, in the street-fighting, and it seems that he really did seize the powder magazine at Soissons, by that "native cheek" which never failed him at need. The details are as good as anything in his novels, but Dumas surely invented the lady who, beholding him armed with pistols, declared that it was "a revolt of the blacks." His unlucky colour and his crisp thick hair gave people so many opportunities for jests, that Dumas anticipated the world and made the jokes himself. Perhaps the accident of blood and complexion was one of the reasons that prevented him from taking himself seriously. We need not linger over his political adventures: they led him into La Vendée, where he found the elements of romance. Dumas, I think, was by nature as Royalist as Athos, who, in his advice to Raoul, expresses the very creed of the great Montrose. He ought to have fought for the Duchesse de Berry and the Queen of Naples, but circumstances threw him with the Orleanists and Garibaldi, though he loved Louis Philippe no more than other gentlemen did. He tried to be elected for the Assembly: he might as well have tried to get into the Academy, he was not _un homme sérieux._ Dumas's career as a novelist was brightest in the forties of the nineteenth century. In the thirties he was much more occupied with plays, whereof _Antony_ caused most noise. He went on producing plays of the most various types--he travelled, he married, but soon "went by," he made historical compilations, and glided into the field which chiefly concerns us, that of historical romance. Omitting _Le Capitaine Paul_ (Paul Jones) of 1838, and _Le Capitaine Pamphile_, a most amusing book (1840), we find _Le Chevalier d'Harmental_ (1843), _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ (1844), _Vingt Ans Après_ (1845), _La Reine Margot_ (1845), _Le Comte de Monte Cristo_ (1845), _La Dame de Monsoreau_ (1846), _Joseph Balsamo_ (1846-1848), _Les Quarante Cinq_ (1848), _Le Vicomte de Bragelonne_ (1848-1850), not to specify dozens of others, including unavailing things like _Jeanne d'Arc_, charming things like _La Tulipe Noire,_ and the novels on the Regency, and the long series on the French Revolution.