The Nutcracker

I've never read any Dumas before and I really enjoy his prose, but there's a thing this story does where it stops and the middle half of the book is another story (backstory?) and that was a slooogggg. I'm used to the Ballet and it was very funny to realize that the entire last chunk of Act 1 and entirety of Act 2 is like the last 10 pages of the book.