ABSTRACT
Among the French authors Alexander Dumas fils is alone in having enjoyed anything like a continuing reputation after his death. If art was only the exact reproduction of nature, it would always remain inside it, since it could never claim the scale, the extent, the richness, the completeness, or the variety of the model, and, considered inferior, it would become useless. Meanwhile, although it is always lesser than nature when considered overall, it can still be its equal; it can be its superior when it makes a choice among innumerable parts. Although it is always lesser than nature when considered overall, it can be its equal; it can be its superior when it makes a choice among innumerable parts. Like all the other Second Empire writers Gustave Droz was definitely part of Napoleon III's establishment, even if in his work he frequently criticizes high society in a satirical fashion.
