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Hammer Away. Thereafter Maquet could not supply rough copy to Dumas fest enough. "Some copy, as fast as possible," Dumas wrote, "even if it's only a dozen pages. . . . Hammer away, hammer away. . . . I'm completely dried up." Dumas himself embellished Maquet's plots, dubbed in episodes, invented complications.
History as truth interested Dumas, but did not constrain him. "It is permissible to violate history," he said, "on condition that you have a child by her." When people asked him how he produced such a never-ending succession of novels, plays, stories, Dumas said: "Ask a plum tree how it produces plums."
But the fruitful collaboration was broken up at last. Enemies made trouble. Maquet went into business for himself, prospered nicely while Dumas squandered fortunes. Dumas missed his second brain. "There would be forty fine stories more," he once sighed, "if the best, the firmest, and the most productive friendship that ever existed had not been broken by the tittle-tattle of false friends."
Toward the end of Dumas' life his son once found him reading The Three Musketeers. Said the old man: "I always promised myself to read it when I grew old, to see for myself what it is worth." "What do you think of it?" "It's good."
In 1870, Dumas died at Dieppe. That night the Germans occupied the town.