When it was currently reported that Gérard de Nerval had become insane, Alexander Dumas, who was then publishing that amusing journal _Le Mousquetaire,_ endeavored to explain and interpret the poet's peculiar form of mental alienation. Gérard, who presently came to himself, as was his wont, took note of the study, and in return dedicated to Dumas his _Filles du Feu_, thus acknowledging the obligation conferred by the great novelist in inditing the epitaph of the poet's "lost wits." This dedication, now done into English for the first time, is interesting and important, as embodying the author's own interpretation of his singular mental constitution. He confesses that he is unable to compose without incarnating himself in his creations so thoroughly as to lose his own identity. In illustration, he throws into the text the tragic history of a mythical hero. It is easy to trace in this story of a nameless prince, unable to prove his lofty origin, involved in a network of misfortunes through the crafty machinations of the arch plotter La Rancune (malice) and abandoned by his mistress, the beautiful guiding Star of his destiny, allegorical allusions to the poet, the heir of genius and of glory, unable to prove or justify his noble birthright, his highest impulses misunderstood and trampled upon by a heartless and vulgar world. LUCIE PAGE. I dedicate this book to you, my dear Master, as I dedicated _Lorely_ to Jules Janin. I was indebted to him for the same service that I owe to you. A few years ago, it was reported that I was dead, and he wrote my biography. A few days ago, I was thought to have lost my reason, and you honoured me by devoting some of your most graceful lines to the epitaph of my intelligence. Such an inheritance of glory has fallen to me before my time. How shall I venture, yet living, to deck my forehead with these shining crowns? It becomes me to assume an air of modesty and beg the public to accept, with suitable deductions, the eulogy bestowed upon my ashes, or rather upon the lost wits contained in the bottle which, like Astolpho, I have been to seek in the moon, and which, I trust, I have now restored to their normal place in the seat of thought. Being, therefore, no longer mounted upon the hippogriff, and having, in the popular conception, recovered what is vulgarly termed reason,--let us proceed to the exercise of that faculty. Here is a fragment of what you wrote concerning me, the tenth of last December: