T HE triumph of Antony restored all Dumas's exuberant self-
confidence. As a man he was popular -- thirty, slender, well
set-up and dandified. His great thatch of hair, his blue eyes --
'two points of light' -- and his little black moustache, gave him a
curious charm. His successes with women surrounded him with an
aura of prestige. Milanie Waldor did not survive the success of his
play. Once an author has transformed a woman into a 'character', she
is dead for him. Besides, that particular woman, jelous, anaemic,
eaten up with literary ambitions, entirely concerned with her own
reputation, was becoming intolerable.

The Don Juan type has many varieties. There is the mocking and
ferocious Don Juan, who takes his revenge on all women for the scorn
shown him by one, or because of the accident of his birth, or his
personal ugliness. There is the diabolical Don Juan who is less
concerned to be loved than to defy all laws, divine and human. There
is the disappointed Don Juan, for ever seeking love in its perfection,
never finding it, but gloomily keeping up the search. Finally, there is
the sensual Don Juan who, without evil intentions, collects women
merely because he desires them, just in the same way as he would
pick fruit when he is thirsty. This last is neither satanic nor vicious.
He has no wish to cause pain to any of his mistresses, but tries to keep
all of them, which, though showing a charitable feeling on his part, is
apt to be exhausting, and, since they are jealous, compels him to lie
to all of them, with the result that he finds himself in the special district
of Hell reserved for liars -- the Circle of Insecurity.

This was precisely what happened to Dumas. He had not, strictly
speaking, broken with Mélanie Waidor, but all the symbolic geraniums
standing in the windows of their hearts were faded. In October 1830,
after his return from La Jarrie, he was still promising her a child:
'Yes, my love, I am always thinking of our little Antony', for the natural

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