Dumas’ Paris

Alexandre Dumas

Dumas’ Paris

By

Francis Miltoun
Author of “Dickens’ London,” “Cathedrals of Southern
France,” “Cathedrals of Northern France,” etc.

With two Maps and many Illustrations

Boston
L. C. Page & Company
MDCCCCV

Copyright, 1904
By L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)

All rights reserved

Published November, 1904

COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Dumas’ Paris

CHAPTER I.

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION

There have been many erudite works, in French and other languages, describing the antiquities and historical annals of Paris from the earliest times; and in English the mid-Victorian era turned out—there are no other words for it—innumerable “books of travel” which recounted alleged adventures, strewn here and there with bits of historical lore and anecdotes, none too relevant, and in most cases not of undoubted authenticity.

Of the actual life of the people in the city of light and learning, from the times of Napoleon onward, one has to go to the fountainhead of written records, the acknowledged masterworks in the language of the country itself, the reports and annuaires of various sociétês, commissions, and what not, and collect therefrom such information as he finds may suit his purpose.

In this manner may be built up a fabric which shall be authentic and proper, varied and, most likely, quite different in its plan, outline, and scope from other works of a similar purport, which may be recalled in connection therewith.

Paris has been rich in topographical historians, and, indeed, in her chroniclers in all departments, and there is no end of relative matter which may be evolved from an intimacy with these sources of supply. In a way, however, this information ought to be supplemented by a personal knowledge on the part of the compiler, which should make localities, distances, and environments—to say nothing of the actual facts and dates of history—appear as something more than a shrine to be worshipped from afar.

Given, then, these ingredients, with a love of the subject,—no less than of the city of its domicile,—it has formed a pleasant itinerary in the experiences of the writer of this book to have followed in the footsteps of Dumas père, through the streets that he knew and loved, taking note meanwhile of such contemporary shadows as were thrown across his path, and such events of importance or significance as blended in with the scheme of the literary life of the times in which he lived, none the less than of those of the characters in his books.

Nearly all the great artists have adored Paris—poets, painters, actors, and, above all, novelists.

From which it follows that Paris is the ideal city for the novelist, who, whether he finds his special subjects in her streets or not, must be inspired by this unique fulness and variety of human life. Nearly all the great French novelists have adored Paris. Dumas loved it; Victor Hugo spent years of his time in riding about her streets on omnibuses; Daudet said splendid things of it, and nearly, if not quite, all the great names of the artistic world of France are indissolubly linked with it.

Paris to-day means not “La Ville,” “La Cité,” or “L’Université,” but the whole triumvirate. Victor Hugo very happily compared the three cities to a little old woman between two handsome, strapping daughters.

It was Beranger who announced his predilection for Paris as a birthplace. Dumas must have felt something of the same emotion, for he early gravitated to the “City of Liberty and Equality,” in which—even before the great Revolution—misfortune was at all times alleviated by sympathy.

From the stones of Paris have been built up many a lordly volume—and many a slight one, for that matter—which might naturally be presumed to have recounted the last word which may justifiably have been said concerning the various aspects of the life and historic events which have encircled around the city since the beginning of the moyen age.

This is true or not, according as one embraces a wide or a contracted horizon in one’s view.

For most books there is, or was at the time of their writing, a reason for being, and so with familiar spots, as with well-worn roads, there is always a new panorama projecting itself before one.

The phenomenal, perennial, and still growing interest in the romances of Dumas the elder is the excuse for the present work, which it is to be hoped is admittedly a good one, however far short of exhaustiveness—a much overworked word, by the way—the volume may fall.

It were not possible to produce a complete or “exhaustive” work on any subject of a historical, topographical or æsthetic nature: so why claim it? The last word has not yet been said on Dumas himself, and surely not on Paris—no more has it on Pompeii, where they are still finding evidences of a long lost civilization as great as any previously unearthed.

It was only yesterday, too (this is written in the month of March, 1904), that a party of frock-coated and silk-hatted benevolent-looking gentlemen were seen issuing from a manhole in the Université quartier of Paris. They had been inspecting a newly discovered thermale établissement of Roman times, which led off one of the newly opened subterranean arteries which abound beneath Paris.

It is said to be a rival of the Roman bath which is enclosed within the walls of the present Musée Cluny, and perhaps the equal in size and splendour of any similar remains extant.

This, then, suggests that in every land new ground, new view-points, and new conditions of life are making possible a record which, to have its utmost value, should be a progressively chronological one.

And after this manner the present volume has been written. There is a fund of material to draw upon, historic fact, pertinent and contemporary side-lights, and, above all, the environment which haloed itself around the personality of Dumas, which lies buried in many a cache which, if not actually inaccessible, is at least not to be found in the usual books of reference.

Perhaps some day even more will have been collected, and a truly satisfying biographical work compiled. If so, it will be the work of some ardent Frenchman of a generation following that in which Alexandre Dumas lived, and not by one of the contemporaries of even his later years. Albert Vandam, perhaps, might have done it as it should have been done; but he did not do so, and so an intimate personal record has been lost.

Paris has ever been written down in the book of man as the city of light, of gaiety, and of a trembling vivacity which has been in turn profligate, riotous, and finally criminal.

All this is perhaps true enough, but no more in degree than in most capitals which have endured so long, and have risen to such greatness.

With Paris it is quantity, with no sacrifice of quality, that has placed it in so preëminent a position among great cities, and the life of Paris—using the phrase in its most commonly recognized aspect—is accordingly more brilliant or the reverse, as one views it from the boulevards or from the villettes.

DUMAS’ HOUSE AT VILLERS-COTTERETS

French writers, the novelists in particular, have well known and made use of this; painters and poets, too, have perpetuated it in a manner which has not been applied to any other city in the world.

To realize the conditions of the life of Paris to the full one has to go back to Rousseau—perhaps even farther. His observation that “Les maisons font la ville, mais le citoyens font la cité,” was true when written, and it is true to-day, with this modification, that the delimitation of the confines of la ville should be extended so far as to include all workaday Paris—the shuffling, bustling world of energy and spirit which has ever insinuated itself into the daily life of the people.

The love and knowledge of Alexandre Dumas père for Paris was great, and the accessory and detail of his novels, so far as he drew upon the capital, was more correct and apropos. It was something more than a mere dash of local colour scattered upon the canvas from a haphazard palette. In minutiæ it was not drawn as fine as the later Zola was wont to accomplish, but it showed no less detail did one but comprehend its full meaning.

Though born in the provincial town Villers-Cotterets,—seventy-eight kilomètres from Paris on the road to Soissons,—Dumas came early in touch with the metropolis, having in a sort of runaway journey broken loose from his old associations and finally becoming settled in the capital as a clerk in the Bureau d’Orleans, at the immature age of twenty. Thus it was that his impressions and knowledge of Paris were founded upon an experience which was prolonged and intimate, extending, with brief intervals of travel, for over fifty years.

He had journeyed meantime to Switzerland, England, Corsica, Naples, the Rhine, Belgium,—with a brief residence in Italy in 1840-42,—then visiting Spain, Russia, the Caucasus, and Germany.

This covered a period from 1822, when he first came to Paris, until his death at Puys, near Dieppe, in 1870; nearly a full half-century amid activities in matters literary, artistic, and social, which were scarce equalled in brilliancy elsewhere—before or since.

In spite of his intimate association with the affairs of the capital,—he became, it is recalled, a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies at the time of the Second Republic,—Dumas himself has recorded, in a preface contributed to a “Histoire de l’Eure,” by M. Charpillon (1879), that if he were ever to compile a history of France he should first search for les pierres angulaires of his edifice in the provinces.

This bespeaks a catholicity which, perhaps, after all, is, or should be, the birthright of every historical novelist.

He said further, in this really valuable and interesting contribution, which seems to have been entirely overlooked by the bibliographers, that “to write the history of France would take a hundred volumes”—and no doubt he was right, though it has been attempted in less.

And again that “the aggrandizement of Paris has only been accomplished by a weakening process having been undergone by the provinces.” The egg from which Paris grew was deposited in the nest of la cité, the same as are the eggs laid par un cygne.

He says further that in writing the history of Paris he would have founded on “Lutetia (or Louchetia) the Villa de Jules, and would erect in the Place de Notre Dame a temple or altar to Ceres; at which epoch would have been erected another to Mercury, on the Mount of Ste. Geneviève; to Apollo in the Rue de la Barillerie, where to-day is erected that part of Tuileries built by Louis XIV., and which is called Le Pavillon de Flore.

“Then one would naturally follow with Les Thermes de Julien, which grew up from the Villa de Jules; the reunion under Charlemagne which accomplished the Sorbonne (Sora bona), which in turn became the favourite place of residence of Hugues Capet, the stronghold of Philippe-Auguste, the bibliothèque of Charles V., the monumental capital of Henri VI. d’Angleterre; and so on through the founding of the first printing establishment in France by Louis XI.; the new school of painting by François I.; of the Académie by Richelieu; ... to the final curtailment of monarchial power with the horrors of the Revolution and the significant events which centred around the Bastille, Versailles, and the Tuileries.”

Leaving the events of the latter years of the eighteenth century, and coming to the day in which Dumas wrote (1867), Paris was truly—and in every sense—

“The capital of France, and its history became not only the history of France but the history of the world.... The city will yet become the capital of humanity, and, since Napoleon repudiated his provincial residences and made Paris sa résidence impériale, the man of destiny who reigns in Paris in reality reigns throughout the universe.”

There may be those who will take exception to these brilliant words of Dumas. The Frenchman has always been an ardent and soi-disant bundle of enthusiasm, but those who love him must pardon his pride, which is harmless to himself and others alike, and is a far more admirable quality than the indifference and apathy born of other lands.

His closing words are not without a cynical truth, and withal a pride in Paris:

“It is true that if we can say with pride, we Parisians, ‘It was Paris which overthrew the Bastille,’ you of the provinces can say with equal pride, ‘It was we who made the Revolution.’”

As if to ease the hurt, he wrote further these two lines only:

“At this epoch the sister nations should erect a gigantic statue of Peace. This statue will be Paris, and its pedestal will represent La Province.”

His wish—it was not prophecy—did not, however, come true, as the world in general and France and poor rent Alsace et Lorraine in particular know to their sorrow; and all through a whim of a self-appointed, though weakling, monarch.

The era of the true peace of the world and the monument to its glory came when the French nation presented to the New World that grand work of Bartholdi, “Liberty Enlightening the World,” which stands in New York harbour, and whose smaller replica now terminates the Allée des Cygnes.

The grasp that Dumas had of the events of romance and history served his purpose well, and in the life of the fifties in Paris his was a name and personality that was on everybody’s lips.

How he found time to live the full life that he did is a marvel; it certainly does not bear out the theory of heredity when one considers the race of his birth and the “dark-skinned” languor which was supposedly his heritage.

One edition of his work comprises two hundred and seventy-seven volumes, and within the year a London publisher has announced some sixty volumes “never before translated.” Dumas himself has said that he was the author of over seven hundred works.

In point of time his romances go back to the days of the house of Valois and the Anglo-French wars (1328), and to recount their contents is to abstract many splendid chapters from out the pages of French history.

It would seem as though nearly every personage of royalty and celebrity (if these democratic times will allow the yoking together of the two; real genuine red republicans would probably link royalty and notoriety) stalked majestically through his pages, and the record runs from the fourteenth nearly to the end of the nineteenth century, with the exception of the reign of Louis XI.

An ardent admirer of Sir Walter Scott has commented upon this lapse as being accounted for by the apparent futility of attempting to improve upon “Quentin Durward.” This is interesting, significant, and characteristic, but it is not charitable, generous, or broad-minded.

CHAPTER II.

DUMAS’ EARLY LIFE IN PARIS

At fifteen (1817), Dumas entered the law-office of one Mennesson at Villers-Cotterets as a saute-ruisseau (gutter-snipe), as he himself called it, and from this time on he was forced to forego what had been his passion heretofore: bird-catching, shooting, and all manner of woodcraft.

When still living at Villers-Cotterets Dumas had made acquaintance with the art of the dramatist, so far as it was embodied in the person of Adolphe de Leuven, with whom he collaborated in certain immature melodramas and vaudevilles, which De Leuven himself took to Paris for disposal.

“No doubt managers would welcome them with enthusiasm,” said Dumas, “and likely enough we shall divert a branch of that Pactolus River which is irrigating the domains of M. Scribe” (1822).

Later on in his “Mémoires” he says: “Complete humiliation; we were refused everywhere.”

STATUE OF DUMAS AT VILLERS-COTTERETS

From Villers-Cotterets the scene of Dumas’ labours was transferred to Crépy, three and a half leagues distant, a small town to which he made his way on foot, his belongings in a little bundle “not more bulky than that of a Savoyard when he leaves his native mountains.”

In his new duties, still as a lawyer’s clerk, Dumas found life very wearisome, and, though the ancient capital of the Valois must have made an impress upon him,—as one learns from the Valois romances,—he pined for the somewhat more free life which he had previously lived; or, taking the bull by the horns, deliberated as to how he might get into the very vortex of things by pushing on to the capital.

As he tritely says, “To arrive it was necessary to make a start,” and the problem was how to arrive in Paris from Crépy in the existing condition of his finances.

By dint of ingenuity and considerable activity Dumas left Crépy in company with a friend on a sort of a runaway holiday, and made his third entrance into Paris.

It would appear that Dumas’ culinary and gastronomic capabilities early came into play, as we learn from the “Mémoires” that, when he was not yet out of his teens, and serving in the notary’s office at Crépy, he proposed to his colleague that they take this three days’ holiday in Paris.

They could muster but thirty-five francs between them, so Dumas proposed that they should shoot game en route. Said Dumas, “We can kill, shall I say, one hare, two partridges, and a quail.... We reach Dammartin, get the hinder part of our hare roasted and the front part jugged, then we eat and drink.” “And what then?” said his friend. “What then? Bless you, why we pay for our wine, bread, and seasoning with the two partridges, and we tip the waiter with the quail.”

The journey was accomplished in due order, and he and his friend put up at the Hôtel du Vieux-Augustins, reaching there at ten at night.

In the morning he set out to find his collaborateur De Leuven, but the fascination of Paris was such that it nearly made him forswear regard for the flight of time.

He says of the Palais Royale: “I found myself within its courtyard, and stopped before the Theatre Français, and on the bill I saw:

“‘Demain, Lundi
Sylla
Tragédie dans cinq Actes
Par M. de Jouy’

“I solemnly swore that by some means or other ... I would see Sylla, and all the more so because, in large letters, under the above notice, were the words, ‘The character of Sylla will be taken by M. Talma.’”

In his “Mémoires” Dumas states that it was at this time he had the temerity to call on the great Talma. “Talma was short-sighted,” said he, “and was at his toilet; his hair was close cut, and his aspect under these conditions was remarkably un-poetic.... Talma was for me a god—a god unknown, it is true, as was Jupiter to Semele.”

And here comes a most delicious bit of Dumas himself, Dumas the egotist:

“Ah, Talma! were you but twenty years younger or I twenty years older! I know the past, you cannot foretell the future.... Had you known, Talma, that the hand you had just touched would ultimately write sixty or eighty dramas ... in each of which you would have found the material for a marvellous creation....”

Dumas may be said to have at once entered the world of art and letters in this, his third visit to Paris, which took place so early in life, but in the years so ripe with ambition.

Having seen the great Talma in Sylla, in his dressing-room at the Theatre Français, he met Delavigne, who was then just completing his “Ecole des Viellards,” Lucien Arnault, who had just brought out “Regulus;” Soumet, fresh from the double triumph of “Saul” and “Clymnestre;” here, too, were Lemercier, Delrien, Viennet, and Jouy himself; and he had met at the Café du Roi, Theadlon, Francis, Rochefort, and De Merle; indeed by his friend De Leuven he was introduced to the assemblage there as a “future Corneille,” in spite of the fact that he was but a notary’s clerk.

Leaving what must have been to Dumas the presence, he shot a parting remark, “Ah, yes, I shall come to Paris for good, I warrant you that.”

In “The Taking of the Bastille” Dumas traces again, in the characters of Pitou and old Father Billot, much of the route which he himself took on his first visit to Paris. The journey, then, is recounted from first-hand information, and there will be no difficulty on the part of any one in tracing the similarity of the itinerary.

Chapter I., of the work in question, brings us at once on familiar ground, and gives a description of Villers-Cotterets and its inhabitants in a manner which shows Dumas’ hand so unmistakably as to remove any doubts as to the volume of assistance he may have received from others, on this particular book at least.

“On the borders of Picardy and the province of Soissons, and on that part of the national territory which, under the name of the Isle of France, formed a portion of the ancient patrimony of our kings, and in the centre of an immense crescent, formed by a forest of fifty thousand acres, which stretches its horns to the north and south, rises, almost buried amid the shades of a vast park planted by François I. and Henri II., the small city of Villers-Cotterets. This place is celebrated from having given birth to Charles Albert Demoustier, who, at the period when our present history commences, was there writing his Letters to Emilie on Mythology, to the unbounded satisfaction of the pretty women of those days, who eagerly snatched his publications from each other as soon as printed.

“Let us add, to complete the poetical reputation of this little city, whose detractors, notwithstanding its royal château and its two thousand four hundred inhabitants, obstinately persist in calling it a mere village—let us add, we say, to complete its poetical reputation, that it is situated at two leagues distance from Laferte-Milan, where Racine was born, and eight leagues from Château-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine.

“Let us also state that the mother of the author of ‘Britannicus’ and ‘Athalie’ was from Villers-Cotterets.

“But now we must return to its royal château and its two thousand four hundred inhabitants.

“This royal château, begun by François I., whose salamanders still decorate it, and finished by Henri II., whose cipher it bears entwined with that of Catherine de Medici and encircled by the three crescents of Diana of Poictiers, after having sheltered the loves of the knight king with Madame d’Etampes, and those of Louis Philippe of Orleans with the beautiful Madame de Montesson, had become almost uninhabited since the death of this last prince; his son, Philippe d’Orleans, afterward called Egalité, having made it descend from the rank of a royal residence to that of a mere hunting rendezvous.

“It is well known that the château and forest of Villers-Cotterets formed part of the appanage settled by Louis XIV. on his brother Monsieur, when the second son of Anne of Austria married the sister of Charles II., the Princess Henrietta of England.

“As to the two thousand four hundred inhabitants of whom we have promised our readers to say a word, they were, as in all localities where two thousand four hundred people are united, a heterogeneous assemblage.

“Firstly: Of the few nobles, who spent their summers in the neighbouring châteaux and their winters in Paris, and who, mimicking the prince, had only a lodging-place in the city.

“Secondly: Of a goodly number of citizens, who could be seen, let the weather be what it might, leaving their houses after dinner, umbrella in hand, to take their daily walk, a walk which was regularly bounded by a deep, invisible ditch which separated the park from the forest, situated about a quarter of a league from the town, and which was called, doubtless on account of the exclamation which the sight of it drew from the asthmatic lungs of the promenaders, satisfied at finding themselves not too much out of breath, the ‘Ha, ha!’

“Thirdly: Of a considerably greater number of artisans who worked the whole of the week and only allowed themselves to take a walk on the Sunday; whereas their fellow townsmen, more favoured by fortune, could enjoy it every day.

“Fourthly and finally: Of some miserable proletarians, for whom the week had not even a Sabbath, and who, after having toiled six days in the pay of the nobles, the citizens, or even of the artisans, wandered on the seventh day through the forest to gather up dry wood or branches of the lofty trees, torn from them by the storm, that mower of the forest, to whom oak-trees are but ears of wheat, and which it scattered over the humid soil beneath the lofty trees, the magnificent appanage of a prince.

“If Villers-Cotterets (Villerii ad Cotiam Retiæ) had been, unfortunately, a town of sufficient importance in history to induce archæologists to ascertain and follow up its successive changes from a village to a town and from a town to a city—the last, as we have said, being strongly contested, they would certainly have proved this fact, that the village had begun by being a row of houses on either side of the road from Paris to Soissons; then they would have added that its situation on the borders of a beautiful forest having, though by slow degrees, brought to it a great increase of inhabitants, other streets were added to the first, diverging like the rays of a star and leading toward other small villages with which it was important to keep up communication, and converging toward a point which naturally became the centre, that is to say, what in the provinces is called Le Carrefour,—and sometimes even the Square, whatever might be its shape,—and around which the handsomest buildings of the village, now become a burgh, were erected, and in the middle of which rises a fountain, now decorated with a quadruple dial; in short, they would have fixed the precise date when, near the modest village church, the first want of a people, arose the first turrets of the vast château, the last caprice of a king; a château which, after having been, as we have already said, by turns a royal and a princely residence, has in our days become a melancholy and hideous receptacle for mendicants under the direction of the Prefecture of the Seine, and to whom M. Marrast issues his mandates through delegates of whom he has not, nor probably will ever have, either the time or the care to ascertain the names.”

The last sentence seems rather superfluous,—if it was justifiable,—but, after all, no harm probably was done, and Dumas as a rule was never vituperative.

Continuing, these first pages give us an account of the difficulties under which poor Louis Ange Pitou acquired his knowledge of Latin, which is remarkably like the account which Dumas gives in the “Mémoires” of his early acquaintance with the classics.

When Pitou leaves Haramont, his native village, and takes to the road, and visits Billot at “Bruyere aux Loups,” knowing well the road, as he did that to Damploux, Compiègne, and Vivières, he was but covering ground equally well known to Dumas’ own youth.

Finally, as he is joined by Billot en route for Paris, and takes the highroad from Villers-Cotterets, near Gondeville, passing Nanteuil, Dammartin, and Ermenonville, arriving at Paris at La Villette, he follows almost the exact itinerary taken by the venturesome Dumas on his runaway journey from the notary’s office at Crépy-en-Valois.

Crépy-en-Valois was the near neighbour of Villers-Cotterets, which jealously attempted to rival it, and does even to-day. In “The Taking of the Bastille” Dumas only mentions it in connection with Mother Sabot’s âne, “which was shod,”—the only ass which Pitou had ever known which wore shoes,—and performed the duty of carrying the mails between Crépy and Villers-Cotterets.

At Villers-Cotterets one may come into close contact with the château which is referred to in the later pages of the “Vicomte de Bragelonne.” “Situated in the middle of the forest, where we shall lead a most sentimental life, the very same where my grandfather,” said Monseigneur the Prince, “Henri IV. did with ‘La Belle Gabrielle.’”

So far as lion-hunting goes, Dumas himself at an early age appears to have fallen into it. He recalls in “Mes Mémoires” the incident of Napoleon I. passing through Villers-Cotterets just previous to the battle of Waterloo.

“Nearly every one made a rush for the emperor’s carriage,” said he; “naturally I was one of the first.... Napoleon’s pale, sickly face seemed a block of ivory.... He raised his head and asked, ‘Where are we?’ ‘At Villers-Cotterets, Sire,’ said a voice. ‘Go on.’” Again, a few days later, as we learn from the “Mémoires,” “a horseman coated with mud rushes into the village; orders four horses for a carriage which is to follow, and departs.... A dull rumble draws near ... a carriage stops.... ‘Is it he—the emperor?’ Yes, it was the emperor, in the same position as I had seen him before, exactly the same, pale, sickly, impassive; only the head droops rather more.... ‘Where are we?’ he asked. ‘At Villers-Cotterets, Sire.’ ‘Go on.’”

That evening Napoleon slept at the Elysée. It was but three months since he had returned from Elba, but in that time he came to an abyss which had engulfed his fortune. That abyss was Waterloo; only saved to the allies—who at four in the afternoon were practically defeated—by the coming up of the Germans at six.

Among the books of reference and contemporary works of a varying nature from which a writer in this generation must build up his facts anew, is found a wide difference in years as to the date of the birth of Dumas père.

As might be expected, the weight of favour lies with the French authorities, though by no means do they, even, agree among themselves.

His friends have said that no unbiassed, or even complete biography of the author exists, even in French; and possibly this is so. There is about most of them a certain indefiniteness and what Dumas himself called the “colour of sour grapes.”

The exact date of his birth, however, is unquestionably 1802, if a photographic reproduction of his natal certificate, published in Charles Glinel’s “Alex. Dumas et Son Œuvre,” is what it seems to be.

Dumas’ aristocratic parentage—for such it truly was—has been the occasion of much scoffing and hard words. He pretended not to it himself, but it was founded on family history, as the records plainly tell, and whether Alexandre, the son of the brave General Dumas, the Marquis de la Pailleterie, was prone to acknowledge it or not does not matter in the least. The “feudal particle” existed plainly in his pedigree, and with no discredit to any concerned.

[Larger Image]

FACSIMILE OF DUMAS’ OWN STATEMENT OF HIS BIRTH

General Dumas, his wife, and his son are buried in the cemetery of Villers-Cotterets, where the exciting days of the childhood of Dumas, the romancer, were spent, in a plot of ground “conceded in perpetuity to the family.” The plot forms a rectangle six metres by five, surrounded by towering pines.

The three monuments contained therein are of the utmost simplicity, each consisting of an inclined slab of stone.

The inscriptions are as follows:

There would seem to be no good reason why a book treating of Dumas’ Paris might not be composed entirely of quotations from Dumas’ own works. For a fact, such a work would be no less valuable as a record than were it evolved by any other process. It would indeed be the best record that could possibly be made, for Dumas’ topography was generally truthful if not always precise.

There are, however, various contemporary side-lights which are thrown upon any canvas, no matter how small its area, and in this instance they seem to engulf even the personality of Dumas himself, to say nothing of his observations.

Dumas was such a part and parcel of the literary life of the times in which he lived that mention can scarce be made of any contemporary event that has not some bearing on his life or work, or he with it, from the time when he first came to the metropolis (in 1822) at the impressionable age of twenty, until the end.

It will be difficult, even, to condense the relative incidents which entered into his life within the confines of a single volume, to say nothing of a single chapter. The most that can be done is to present an abridgment which shall follow along the lines of some preconceived chronological arrangement. This is best compiled from Dumas’ own words, leaving it to the additional references of other chapters to throw a sort of reflected glory from a more distant view-point.

The reputation of Dumas with the merely casual reader rests upon his best-known romances, “Monte Cristo,” 1841; “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” 1844; “Vingt Ans Après,” 1845; “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne,” 1847; “La Dame de Monsoreau,” 1847; and his dramas of “Henri III. et Sa Cour,” 1829, “Antony,” 1831, and “Kean,” 1836.

His memoirs, “Mes Mémoires,” are practically closed books to the mass of English readers—the word books is used advisedly, for this remarkable work is composed of twenty stout volumes, and they only cover ten years of the author’s life.

Therein is a mass of fact and fancy which may well be considered as fascinating as are the “romances” themselves, and, though autobiographic, one gets a far more satisfying judgment of the man than from the various warped and distorted accounts which have since been published, either in French or English.

Beginning with “Memories of My Childhood” (1802-06), Dumas launches into a few lines anent his first visit to Paris, in company with his father, though the auspicious—perhaps significant—event took place at a very tender age. It seems remarkable that he should have recalled it at all, but he was a remarkable man, and it seems not possible to ignore his words.

“We set out for Paris, ah, that journey! I recollect it perfectly.... It was August or September, 1805. We got down in the Rue Thiroux at the house of one Dollé.... I had been embraced by one of the most noble ladies who ever lived, Madame la Marquise de Montesson, widow of Louis-Philippe d’Orleans.... The next day, putting Brune’s sword between my legs and Murat’s hat upon my head, I galloped around the table; when my father said, ‘Never forget this, my boy.’... My father consulted Corvisart, and attempted to see the emperor, but Napoleon, the quondam general, had now become the emperor, and he refused to see my father.... To where did we return? I believe Villers-Cotterets.”

Again on the 26th of March, 1813, Dumas entered Paris in company with his mother, now widowed. He says of this visit:

“I was delighted at the prospect of this my second visit.... I have but one recollection, full of light and poetry, when, with a flourish of trumpets, a waving of banners, and shouts of ‘Long live the King of Rome,’ was lifted up above the heads of fifty thousand of the National Guard the rosy face and the fair, curly head of a child of three years—the infant son of the great Napoleon.... Behind him was his mother,—that woman so fatal to France, as have been all the daughters of the Cæsars, Anne of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and Marie Louise,—an indistinct, insipid face.... The next day we started home again.”

Through the influence of General Foy, an old friend of his father’s, Dumas succeeded in obtaining employment in the Orleans Bureau at the Palais Royal.

His occupation there appears not to have been unduly arduous. The offices were in the right-hand corner of the second courtyard of the Palais Royal. He remained here in this bureau for a matter of five years, and, as he said, “loved the hour when he came to the office,” because his immediate superior, Lassagne,—a contributor to the Drapeau Blanc,—was the friend and intimate of Désaugiers, Théaulon, Armand Gouffé, Brozier, Rougemont, and all the vaudevillists of the time.

Dumas’ meeting with the Duc d’Orleans—afterward Louis-Philippe—is described in his own words thus: “In two words I was introduced. ‘My lord, this is M. Dumas, whom I mentioned to you, General Foy’s protégé.’ ‘You are the son of a brave man,’ said the duc, ‘whom Bonaparte, it seems, left to die of starvation.’... The duc gave Oudard a nod, which I took to mean, ‘He will do, he’s by no means bad for a provincial.’” And so it was that Dumas came immediately under the eye of the duc, engaged as he was at that time on some special clerical work in connection with the duc’s provincial estates.

The affability of Dumas, so far as he himself was concerned, was a foregone conclusion. In the great world in which he moved he knew all sorts and conditions of men. He had his enemies, it is true, and many of them, but he himself was the enemy of no man. To English-speaking folk he was exceedingly agreeable, because,—quoting his own words,—said he, “It was a part of the debt which I owed to Shakespeare and Scott.” Something of the egoist here, no doubt, but gracefully done nevertheless.

With his temperament it was perhaps but natural that Dumas should have become a romancer. This was of itself, maybe, a foreordained sequence of events, but no man thinks to-day that, leaving contributary conditions, events, and opportunities out of the question, he shapes his own fate; there are accumulated heritages of even distant ages to contend with. In Dumas’ case there was his heritage of race and colour, refined, perhaps, by a long drawn out process, but, as he himself tells in “Mes Mémoires,” his mother’s fear was that her child would be born black, and he was, or, at least, purple, as he himself afterward put it.

CHAPTER III.

DUMAS’ LITERARY CAREER

Just how far Dumas’ literary ability was an inheritance, or growth of his early environment, will ever be an open question. It is a manifest fact that he had breathed something of the spirit of romance before he came to Paris.

Although it was not acknowledged until 1856, “The Wolf-Leader” was a development of a legend told to him in his childhood. Recalling then the incident of his boyhood days, and calling into recognition his gift of improvisation, he wove a tale which reflected not a little of the open-air life of the great forest of Villers-Cotterets, near the place of his birth.

Here, then, though it was fifty years after his birth, and thirty after he had thrust himself on the great world of Paris, the scenes of his childhood were reproduced in a wonderfully romantic and weird tale—which, to the best of the writer’s belief, has not yet appeared in English.

To some extent it is possible that there is not a little of autobiography therein, not so much, perhaps, as Dickens put into “David Copperfield,” but the suggestion is thrown out for what it may be worth.

It is, furthermore, possible that the historic associations of the town of Villers-Cotterets—which was but a little village set in the midst of the surrounding forest—may have been the prime cause which influenced and inspired the mind of Dumas toward the romance of history.

In point of chronology, among the earliest of the romances were those that dealt with the fortunes of the house of Valois (fourteenth century), and here, in the little forest town of Villers-Cotterets, was the magnificent manor-house which belonged to the Ducs de Valois; so it may be presumed that the sentiment of early associations had somewhat to do with these literary efforts.

All his life Dumas devotedly admired the sentiment and fancies which foregathered in this forest, whose very trees and stones he knew so well. From his “Mémoires” we learn of his indignation at the destruction of its trees and much of its natural beauty. He says:

“This park, planted by François I., was cut down by Louis-Philippe. Trees, under whose shade once reclined François I. and Madame d’Etampes, Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers, Henri IV. and Gabrielle d’Estrées—you would have believed that a Bourbon would have respected you. But over and above your inestimable value of poetry and memories, you had, unhappily, a material value. You beautiful beeches with your polished silvery cases! you beautiful oaks with your sombre wrinkled bark!—you were worth a hundred thousand crowns. The King of France, who, with his six millions of private revenue, was too poor to keep you—the King of France sold you. For my part, had you been my sole possession, I would have preserved you; for, poet as I am, one thing that I would set before all the gold of the earth: the murmur of the wind in your leaves; the shadow that you made to flicker beneath my feet; the visions, the phantoms, which, at eventide, betwixt the day and night, in the doubtful hour of twilight, would glide between your age-long trunks as glide the shadows of the ancient Abencerrages amid the thousand columns of Cordova’s royal mosque.”

What wonder, with these lines before one, that the impressionable Dumas was so taken with the romance of life and so impracticable in other ways.

From the fact that no thorough biography of Dumas exists, it will be difficult to trace the fluctuations of his literary career with preciseness. It is not possible even with the twenty closely packed volumes of the “Mémoires”—themselves incomplete—before one. All that a biographer can get from this treasure-house are facts,—rather radiantly coloured in some respects, but facts nevertheless,—which are put together in a not very coherent or compact form.

They do, to be sure, recount many of the incidents and circumstances attendant upon the writing and publication of many of his works, and because of this they immediately become the best of all sources of supply. It is to be regretted that these “Mémoires” have not been translated, though it is doubtful if any publisher of English works could get his money back from the transaction.

Other clues as to his emotions, and with no uncertain references to incidents of Dumas’ literary career, are found in “Mes Bêtes,” “Ange Pitou,” the “Causeries,” and the “Travels.” These comprise many volumes not yet translated.

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FACSIMILE OF A MANUSCRIPT PAGE FROM ONE OF DUMAS’ PLAYS

Dumas was readily enough received into the folds of the great. Indeed, as we know, he made his entrée under more than ordinary, if not exceptional, circumstances, and his connection with the great names of literature and statecraft extended from Hugo to Garibaldi.

As for his own predilections in literature, Dumas’ own voice is practically silent, though we know that he was a romanticist pure and simple, and drew no inspiration or encouragement from Voltairian sentiments. If not essentially religious, he at least believed in its principles, though, as a warm admirer has said, “He had no liking for the celibate and bookish life of the churchman.”

Dumas does not enter deeply into the subject of ecclesiasticism in France. His most elaborate references are to the Abbey of Ste. Genevieve—since disappeared in favour of the hideous pagan Panthéon—and its relics and associations, in “La Dame de Monsoreau.” Other of the romances from time to time deal with the subject of religion more or less, as was bound to be, considering the times of which he wrote, of Mazarin, Richelieu, De Rohan, and many other churchmen.

Throughout the thirties Dumas was mostly occupied with his plays, the predominant, if not the most sonorous note, being sounded by “Antony.”

As a novelist his star shone brightest in the decade following, commencing with “Monte Cristo,” in 1841, and continuing through “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne” and “La Dame de Monsoreau,” in 1847.

During these strenuous years Dumas produced the flower of his romantic garland—omitting, of course, certain trivial and perhaps unworthy trifles, among which are usually considered, rightly enough, “Le Capitaine Paul” (Paul Jones) and “Jeanne d’Arc.” At this period, however, he produced the charming and exotic “Black Tulip,” which has since come to be a reality. The best of all, though, are admittedly the Mousquetaire cycle, the volumes dealing with the fortunes of the Valois line, and, again, “Monte Cristo.”

By 1830, Dumas, eager, as it were, to experience something of the valiant boisterous spirit of the characters of his romances, had thrown himself heartily into an alliance with the opponents of Louis-Philippe. Orleanist successes, however, left him to fall back upon his pen.

In 1844, having finished “Monte Cristo,” he followed it by “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” and before the end of the same year had put out forty volumes, by what means, those who will read the scurrilous “Fabrique des Romans”—and properly discount it—may learn.

The publication of “Monte Cristo” and “Les Trois Mousquetaires” as newspaper feuilletons, in 1844-45, met with amazing success, and were, indeed, written from day to day, to keep pace with the demands of the press.

Here is, perhaps, an opportune moment to digress into the ethics of the profession of the “literary ghost,” and but for the fact that the subject has been pretty well thrashed out before,—not only with respect to Dumas, but to others as well,—it might justifiably be included here at some length, but shall not be, however.

The busy years from 1840-50 could indeed be “explained”—if one were sure of his facts; but beyond the circumstances, frequently availed of, it is admitted, of Dumas having made use of secretarial assistance in the productions which were ultimately to be fathered by himself, there is little but jealous and spiteful hearsay to lead one to suppose that he made any secret of the fact that he had some very considerable assistance in the production of the seven hundred volumes which, at a late period in his life, he claimed to have produced.

The “Maquet affaire,” of course, proclaims the whilom Augustus Mackeat as a collaborateur; still the ingenuity of Dumas shines forth through the warp and woof in an unmistakable manner, and he who would know more of the pros and cons is referred to the “Maison Dumas et Cie.”

Maquet was manifestly what we have come to know as a “hack,” though the species is not so very new—nor so very rare. The great libraries are full of them the whole world over, and very useful, though irresponsible and ungrateful persons, many of them have proved to be. Maquet, at any rate, served some sort of a useful purpose, and he certainly was a confidant of the great romancer during these very years, but that his was the mind and hand that evolved or worked out the general plan and detail of the romances is well-nigh impossible to believe, when one has digested both sides of the question.

An English critic of no inconsiderable knowledge has thrown in his lot recently with the claims of Maquet, and given the sole and entire production of “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” “Monte Cristo,” “La Dame de Monsoreau,” and many other of Dumas’ works of this period, to him, placing him, indeed, with Shakespeare, whose plays certain gullible persons believe to have been written by Bacon. The flaw in the theory is apparent when one realizes that the said Maquet was no myth—he was, in fact, a very real person, and a literary personage of a certain ability. It is strange, then, that if he were the producer of, say “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” which was issued ostensibly as the work of Dumas, that he wrote nothing under his own name that was at all comparable therewith; and stranger still, that he was able to repeat this alleged success with “Monte Cristo,” or the rest of the Mousquetaire series, and yet not be able to do the same sort of a feat when playing the game by himself. One instance would not prove this contention, but several are likely to not only give it additional strength, but to practically demonstrate the correct conclusion.

The ethics of plagiarism are still greater and more involved than those which make justification for the employment of one who makes a profession of library research, but it is too involved and too vast to enter into here, with respect to accusations of its nature which were also made against Dumas.

As that new star which has so recently risen out of the East—Mr. Kipling—has said, “They took things where they found them.” This is perhaps truthful with regard to most literary folk, who are continually seeking a new line of thought. Scott did it, rather generously one might think; even Stevenson admitted that he was greatly indebted to Washington Irving and Poe for certain of the details of “Treasure Island”—though there is absolutely no question but that it was a sort of unconscious absorption, to put it rather unscientifically. The scientist himself calls it the workings of the subconscious self.

As before said, the Maquet affaire was a most complicated one, and it shall have no lengthy consideration here. Suffice to say that, when a case was made by Maquet in court, in 1856-58, Maquet lost. “It is not justice that has won,” said Maquet, “but Dumas.”

Edmond About has said that Maquet lived to speak kindly of Dumas, “as did his legion of other collaborateurs; and the proudest of them congratulate themselves on having been trained in so good a school.” This being so, it is hard to see anything very outrageous or preposterous in the procedure.

Blaze de Bury has described Dumas’ method thus:

“The plot was worked over by Dumas and his colleague, when it was finally drafted by the other and afterward rewritten by Dumas.”

M. About, too, corroborates Blaze de Bury’s statement, so it thus appears legitimately explained. Dumas at least supplied the ideas and the esprit.

In Dumas’ later years there is perhaps more justification for the thought that as his indolence increased—though he was never actually inert, at least not until sickness drew him down—the authorship of the novels became more complex. Blaze de Bury put them down to the “Dumas-Legion,” and perhaps with some truth. They certainly have not the vim and fire and temperament of individuality of those put forth from 1840 to 1850.

Dumas wrote fire and impetuosity into the veins of his heroes, perhaps some of his very own vivacious spirit. It has been said that his moral code was that of the camp or the theatre; but that is an ambiguity, and it were better not dissected.

Certainly he was no prude or Puritan, not more so, at any rate, than were Burns, Byron, or Poe, but the virtues of courage, devotion, faithfulness, loyalty, and friendship were his, to a degree hardly excelled by any of whom the written record of cameraderie exists.

Dumas has been jibed and jeered at by the supercilious critics ever since his first successes appeared, but it has not leavened his reputation as the first romancer of his time one single jot; and within the past few years we have had a revival of the character of true romance—perhaps the first true revival since Dumas’ time—in M. Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

We have had, too, the works of Zola, who, indomitable, industrious, and sincere as he undoubtedly was, will have been long forgotten when the masterpieces of Dumas are being read and reread. The Mousquetaire cycle, the Valois romances, and “Monte Cristo” stand out by themselves above all others of his works, and have had the approbation of such discerning fellow craftsmen as George Sand, Thackeray, and Stevenson, all of whom may be presumed to have judged from entirely different points of view. Thackeray, indeed, plainly indicated his greatest admiration for “La Tulipe Noire,” a work which in point of time came somewhat later. At this time Dumas had built his own Chalet de Monte Cristo near St. Germain, a sort of a Gallic rival to Abbotsford. It, and the “Théâtre Historique,” founded by Dumas, came to their disastrous end in the years immediately following upon the Revolution of 1848, when Dumas fled to Brussels and began his “Mémoires.” He also founded a newspaper called Le Mousquetaire, which failed, else he might have retrenched and satisfied his creditors—at least in part.

He travelled in Russia, and upon his return wrote of his journey to the Caspian. In 1860 he obtained an archæological berth in Italy, and edited a Garibaldian newspaper.

By 1864, the “Director of Excavations at Naples,” which was Dumas’ official title, fell out with the new government which had come in, and he left his partisan journal and the lava-beds of Pompeii for Paris and the literary arena again; but the virile power of his early years was gone, and Dumas never again wielded the same pen which had limned the features of Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D’Artagnan.

In 1844 Dumas participated in a sort of personally-conducted Bonapartist tour to the Mediterranean, in company with the son of Jerome Napoleon. On this journey Dumas first saw the island of Monte Cristo and the Château d’If, which lived so fervently in his memory that he decided that their personality should be incorporated in the famous tale which was already formulating itself in his brain.

Again, this time in company with the Duc de Montpensier, he journeyed to the Mediterranean, “did” Spain, and crossed over to Algiers. When he returned he brought back the celebrated vulture, “Jugurtha,” whose fame was afterward perpetuated in “Mes Bêtes.”

That there was a deal of reality in the characterization and the locale of Dumas’ romances will not be denied by any who have acquaintance therewith. Dumas unquestionably took his material where he found it, and his wonderfully retentive memory, his vast capacity for work, and his wide experience and extensive acquaintance provided him material that many another would have lacked.

M. de Chaffault tells of his having accompanied Dumas by road from Sens to Joigny, Dumas being about to appeal to the republican constituency of that place for their support of him as a candidate for the parliamentary elections.

“In a short time we were on the road,” said the narrator, “and the first stage of three hours seemed to me only as many minutes. Whenever we passed a country-seat, out came a lot of anecdotes and legends connected with its owners, interlarded with quaint fancies and epigrams.”

Aside from the descriptions of the country around about Crépy, Compiègne, and Villers-Cotterets which he wove into the Valois tales, “The Taking of the Bastille,” and “The Wolf-Leader,” there is a strong note of personality in “Georges;” some have called it autobiography.

The tale opens in the far-distant Isle of France, called since the English occupation Mauritius, and in the narrative of the half-caste Georges Munier are supposed to be reflected many of the personal incidents of the life of the author.

This story may or may not be a mere repetition of certain of the incidents of the struggle of the mulatto against the barrier of the white aristocracy, and may have been an echo in Dumas’ own life. It is repeated it may have been this, or it may have been much more. Certain it is, there is an underlying motive which could only have been realized to the full extent expressed therein by one who knew and felt the pangs of the encounter with a world which only could come to one of genius who was by reason of race or creed outclassed by his contemporaries; and therein is given the most vivid expression of the rise of one who had everything against him at the start.

This was not wholly true of Dumas himself, to be sure, as he was endowed with certain influential friends. Still it was mainly through his own efforts that he was able to prevail upon the old associates and friends of the dashing General Dumas, his father, to give him his first lift along the rough and stony literary pathway.

In this book there is a curious interweaving of the life and colour which may have had not a little to do with the actual life which obtained with respect to his ancestors, and as such, and the various descriptions of negro and Creole life, the story becomes at once a document of prime interest and importance.

Since Dumas himself has explained and justified the circumstance out of which grew the conception of the D’Artagnan romances, it is perhaps advisable that some account should be given of the original D’Artagnan.

Primarily, the interest in Dumas’ romance of “Les Trois Mousquetaires” is as great, if not greater, with respect to the characters as it is with the scenes in which they lived and acted their strenuous parts. In addition, there is the profound satisfaction of knowing that the rollicking and gallant swashbuckler has come down to us from the pages of real life, as Dumas himself recounts in the preface to the Colman Lévy edition of the book. The statement of Dumas is explicit enough; there is no mistaking his words which open the preface:

“Dans laquelle
Il est établi que, malgré leurs noms en os et en is,
Les héros de l’histoire
Que nous allons avoir l’honneur de raconter à nos lecteurs
N’ont rien de mythologique.”

The contemporary facts which connect the real Comte d’Artagnan with romances are as follows:

Charles de Batz de Castlemore, Comte d’Artagnan, received his title from the little village of Artagnan, near the Gascon town of Orthez in the present department of the Hautes-Pyrénées. He was born in 1623. Dumas, with an author’s license, made his chief figure a dozen years older, for the real D’Artagnan was but five years old at the time of the siege of La Rochelle of which Dumas makes mention. On the whole, the romance is near enough to reality to form an ample endorsement of the author’s verity.

D’ARTAGNAN

The real D’Artagnan made his way to Paris, as did he of the romance. Here he met his fellow Béarnais, one M. de Treville, captain of the king’s musketeers, and the illustrious individuals, Armand de Sillegue d’Athos, a Béarnais nobleman who died in 1645, and whose direct descendant, Colonel de Sillegue, commanded, according to the French army lists of a recent date, a regiment of French cavalry; Henry d’Aramitz, lay abbé of Oloron; and Jean de Portu, all of them probably neighbours in D’Artagnan’s old home.

D’Artagnan could not then have been at the siege of La Rochelle, but from the “Mémoires de M. d’Artagnan,” of which Dumas writes in his preface, we learn of his feats at arms at Arras, Valenciennes, Douai, and Lille, all places where once and again Dumas placed the action of the novels.

The real D’Artagnan died, sword in hand, “in the imminent deadly breach” at Maestricht, in 1673. He served, too, under Prince Rupert in the Civil War, and frequently visited England, where he had an affaire with a certain Milady, which is again reminiscent of the pages of Dumas.

This D’Artagnan in the flesh married Charlotte Anne de Chanlecy, and the last of his direct descendants died in Paris in the latter years of the eighteenth century, but collateral branches of the family appear still to exist in Gascony, and there was a certain Baron de Batz, a Béarnais, who made a daring attempt to save Marie Antoinette in 1793.

The inception of the whole work in Dumas’ mind, as he says, came to him while he was making research in the “Bibliothèque Royale” for his history of Louis XIV.

Thus from these beginnings grew up that series of romances which gave undying fame to Alexandre Dumas, and to the world of readers a series of characters and scenes associated with the mediæval history of France, which, before or since, have not been equalled.

Alexandre Dumas has been described as something of the soldier, the cook, and the traveller, more of the journalist, diplomatist, and poet, and, more than all else, the dramatist, romancer, and raconteur. He himself has said that he was a “veritable Wandering Jew of literature.”

His versatility in no way comprised his abilities, and, while conceit and egoism played a not unimportant share in his make-up, his affability—when he so chose—caused him to be ranked highly in the estimation of his equals and contemporaries. By the cur-dogs, which always snap at the heels of a more splendid animal, he was not ranked so high.

Certain of these were for ever twitting him publicly of his creed, race, and foibles. It is recorded by Theodore de Bauville, in his “Odes,” that one Jacquot hailed Dumas in the open street with a ribald jeer, when, calmly turning to his detractor, Dumas said, simply: “Hast thou dined to-day, Jacquot?” Then it was that this said Jacquot published the slanderous brochure, “La Maison Dumas et Cie,” which has gone down as something considerable of a sensation in the annals of literary history; so much so, indeed, that most writers who have had occasion to refer to Dumas’ literary career have apparently half-believed its accusations, which, truth to tell, may have had some bearing on “things as they were,” had they but been put forward as a bit of temperate criticism rather than as a sweeping condemnation.

To give the reader an idea of the Dumas of 1840, one can scarcely do better than present his portrait as sketched by De Villemessant, the founder and brilliant editor of the Figaro, when Dumas was at the height of his glory, and a grasp of his hand was better than a touch of genius to those receiving it:

“At no time and among no people had it till then been granted to a writer to achieve fame in every direction; in serious drama and in comedy, and novels of adventure and of domestic interest, in humourous stories and in pathetic tales, Alexandre Dumas had been alike successful. The frequenters of the Théâtre Français owed him evenings of delight, but so did the general public as well. Dumas alone had had the power to touch, interest, or amuse, not only Paris or France, but the whole world. If all other novelists had been swallowed up in an earthquake, this one would have been able to supply the leading libraries of Europe. If all other dramatists had died, Alexandre Dumas could have occupied every stage; his magic name on a playbill or affixed to a newspaper feuilleton ensured the sale of that issue or a full house at the theatre. He was king of the stage, prince of feuilletonists, the literary man par excellence, in that Paris then so full of intellect. When he opened his lips the most eloquent held their breath to listen; when he entered a room the wit of man, the beauty of woman, the pride of life, grew dim in the radiance of his glory; he reigned over Paris in right of his sovereign intellect, the only monarch who for an entire century had understood how to draw to himself the adoration of all classes of society, from the Faubourg St. Germain to the Batignolles.

“Just as he united in himself capabilities of many kinds, so he displayed in his person the perfection of many races. From the negro he had derived the frizzled hair and those thick lips on which Europe had laid a delicate smile of ever-varying meaning; from the southern races he derived his vivacity of gesture and speech, from the northern his solid frame and broad shoulders and a figure which, while it showed no lack of French elegance, was powerful enough to have made green with envy the gentlemen of the Russian Life-Guards.”

Dumas’ energy and output were tremendous, as all know. It is recorded that on one occasion,—in the later years of his life, when, as was but natural, he had tired somewhat,—after a day at la chasse, he withdrew to a cottage near by to rest until the others should rejoin him, after having finished their sport. This they did within a reasonably short time,—whether one hour or two is not stated with definiteness,—when they found him sitting before the fire “twirling his thumbs.” On being interrogated, he replied that he had not been sitting there long; in fact, he had just written the first act of a new play.

The French journal, La Revue, tells the following incident, which sounds new. Some years before his death, Dumas had written a somewhat quaint letter to Napoleon III., apropos of a play which had been condemned by the French censor. In this epistle he commenced:

“Sire:—In 1830, and, indeed, even to-day, there are three men at the head of French literature. These three men are Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and myself. Although I am the least of the three, the five continents have made me the most popular, probably because the one was a thinker, the other a dreamer, while I am merely a writer of commonplace tales.”

This letter goes on to plead the cause of his play, and from this circumstance the censorship was afterward removed.

A story is told of an incident which occurred at a rehearsal of “Les Trois Mousquetaires” at the “Ambigu.” This story is strangely reminiscent of another incident which happened at a rehearsal of Halévy’s “Guido et Génevra,” but it is still worth recounting here, if only to emphasize the indomitable energy and perspicacity of Dumas.

It appears that a pompier—that gaudy, glistening fireman who is always present at functions of all sorts on the continent of Europe—who was watching the rehearsal, was observed by Dumas to suddenly leave his point of vantage and retire. Dumas followed him and inquired his reason for withdrawing. “What made you go away?” Dumas asked of him. “Because that last act did not interest me so much as the others,” was the answer. Whereupon Dumas sent for the prompt-book and threw that portion relating to that particular tableau into the fire, and forthwith set about to rewrite it on the spot. “It does not amuse the pompier,” said Dumas, “but I know what it wants.” An hour and a half later, at the finish of the rehearsal, the actors were given their new words for the seventh tableau.

In spite of the varied success with which his plays met, Dumas was, we may say, first of all a dramatist, if construction of plot and the moving about of dashing and splendid figures counts for anything; and it most assuredly does.

This very same qualification is what makes the romances so vivid and thrilling; and they do not falter either in accessory or fact.

The cloaks of his swashbucklering heroes are always the correct shade of scarlet; their rapiers, their swords, or their pistols are always rightly tuned, and their entrances and their exits correctly and most appropriately timed.

When his characters represent the poverty of a tatterdemalion, they do it with a sincerity that is inimitable, and the lusty throatings of a D’Artagnan are never a hollow mockery of something they are not.

Dumas drew his characters of the stage and his personages of the romances with the brilliance and assurance of a Velasquez, rather than with the finesse of a Praxiteles, and for that reason they live and introduce themselves as cosmopolitans, and are to be appreciated only as one studies or acquires something of the spirit from which they have been evolved.

Of Dumas’ own uproarious good nature many have written. Albert Vandam tells of a certain occasion when he went to call upon the novelist at St. Germain,—and he reckoned Dumas the most lovable and genial among all of his host of acquaintances in the great world of Paris,—that he overheard, as he was entering the study, “a loud burst of laughter.” “I had sooner wait until monsieur’s visitors are gone,” said he. “Monsieur has no visitors,” said the servant. “Monsieur often laughs like that at his work.”

Dumas as a man of affairs or as a politician was not the success that he was in the world of letters. His activities were great, and his enthusiasm for any turn of affairs with which he allied himself remarkable; but, whether he was en voyage on a whilom political mission, at work as “Director of Excavations” at Pompeii, or founding or conducting a new journal or a new playhouse, his talents were manifestly at a discount. In other words, he was singularly unfit for public life; he was not an organizer, nor had he executive ability, though he had not a little of the skill of prophecy and foresight as to many turns of fortune’s wheel with respect to world power and the comity of nations.

Commenting upon the political state of Europe, he said: “Geographically, Prussia has the form of a serpent, and, like it, she appears to be asleep, in order to gain strength to swallow everything around her.” All of his prophecy was not fulfilled, to be sure, but a huge slice was fed into her maw from out of the body of France, and, looking at things at a time fifty years ahead of that of which Dumas wrote,—that is, before the Franco-Prussian War,—it would seem as though the serpent’s appetite was still unsatisfied.

In 1847, when Dumas took upon himself to wish for a seat in the government, he besought the support of the constituency of the borough in which he had lived—St. Germain. But St. Germain denied it him—“on moral grounds.” In the following year, when Louis-Philippe had abdicated, he made the attempt once again.

The republican constituency of Joigny challenged him with respect to his title of Marquis de la Pailleterie, and his having been a secretary in the Orleans Bureau. The following is his reply—verbatim—as publicly delivered at a meeting of electors, and is given here as illustrating well the earnestness and devotion to a code which many Puritan and prudish moralists have themselves often ignored:

“I was formerly called the Marquis de la Pailleterie, no doubt. It was my father’s name, and one of which I was very proud, being then unable to claim a glorious one of my own make. But at present, when I am somebody, I call myself Alexandre Dumas, and nothing more; and every one knows me, yourselves among the rest—you, you absolute nobodies, who have come here merely to boast, to-morrow, after having given me insult to-night, that you have known the great Dumas. If such were your avowed ambition, you could have satisfied it without having failed in the common courtesies of gentlemen. There is no doubt, either, about my having been a secretary to the Duc d’Orleans, and that I have received many favours from his family. If you are ignorant of the meaning of the phrase, ‘The memories of the heart,’ allow me, at least, to proclaim loudly that I am not, and that I entertain toward this family of royal blood all the devotion of an honourable man.”

That Dumas was ever accused of making use of the work of others, of borrowing ideas wherever he found them, and, indeed, of plagiarism itself,—which is the worst of all,—has been mentioned before, and the argument for or against is not intended to be continued here.

Dumas himself has said much upon the subject in defence of his position, and the contemporary scribblers of the time have likewise had their say—and it was not brief; but of all that has been written and said, the following is pertinent and deliciously naïve, and, coming from Dumas himself, has value:

“One morning I had only just opened my eyes when my servant entered my bedroom and brought me a letter upon which was written the word urgent. He drew back the curtains; the weather—doubtless by some mistake—was fine, and the brilliant sunshine entered the room like a conqueror. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the letter to see who had sent it, astonished at the same time that there should be only one. The handwriting was quite unknown to me. Having turned it over and over for a minute or two, trying to guess whose the writing was, I opened it and this is what I found:

“‘Sir:—I have read your “Three Musketeers,” being well to do, and having plenty of spare time on my hands—’

“(‘Lucky fellow!’ said I; and I continued reading.)

“‘I admit that I found it fairly amusing; but, having plenty of time before me, I was curious enough to wish to know if you really did find them in the “Memoirs of M. de La Fère.” As I was living in Carcassonne, I wrote to one of my friends in Paris to go to the Bibliothèque Royale, and ask for these memoirs, and to write and let me know if you had really and truly borrowed your facts from them. My friend, whom I can trust, replied that you had copied them word for word, and that it is what you authors always do. So I give you fair notice, sir, that I have told people all about it at Carcassonne, and, if it occurs again, we shall cease subscribing to the Siècle.

“‘Yours sincerely,
“‘——.’

“I rang the bell.

“‘If any more letters come for me to-day,’ said I to the servant, ‘you will keep them back, and only give them to me sometime when I seem a bit too happy.’

“‘Manuscripts as well, sir?’

“‘Why do you ask that question?’

“‘Because some one has brought one this very moment.’

“‘Good! that is the last straw! Put it somewhere where it won’t be lost, but don’t tell me where.’

“He put it on the mantelpiece, which proved that my servant was decidedly a man of intelligence.

“It was half-past ten; I went to the window. As I have said, it was a beautiful day. It appeared as if the sun had won a permanent victory over the clouds. The passers-by all looked happy, or, at least, contented.

“Like everybody else, I experienced a desire to take the air elsewhere than at my window, so I dressed, and went out.

“As chance would have it—for when I go out for a walk I don’t care whether it is in one street or another—as chance would have it, I say, I passed the Bibliothèque Royale.

“I went in, and, as usual, found Pâris, who came up to me with a charming smile.

“‘Give me,’ said I, ‘the “Memoirs of La Fère.”’

“He looked at me for a moment as if he thought I was crazy; then, with the utmost gravity, he said, ‘You know very well they don’t exist, because you said yourself they did!’

“His speech, though brief, was decidedly pithy.

“By way of thanks I made Pâris a gift of the autograph I had received from Carcassonne.

“When he had finished reading it, he said, ‘If it is any consolation to you to know it, you are not the first who has come to ask for the “Memoirs of La Fère”; I have already seen at least thirty people who came solely for that purpose, and no doubt they hate you for sending them on a fool’s errand.’

“As I was in search of material for a novel, and as there are people who declare novels are to be found ready-made, I asked for the catalogue.

“Of course, I did not discover anything.”

Every one knows of Dumas’ great fame as a gastronome and epicure; some recall, also, that he himself was a cuisinier of no mean abilities. How far his capacities went in this direction, and how wide was his knowledge of the subject, can only be gleaned by a careful reading of his great “Dictionnaire de Cuisine.” Still further into the subject he may be supposed to have gone from the fact that he also published an inquiry, or an open letter, addressed to the gourmands of all countries, on the subject of mustard.

It is an interesting subject, to be sure, but a trifling one for one of the world’s greatest writers to spend his time upon; say you, dear reader? Well! perhaps! But it is a most fascinating contribution to the literature of epicurism, and quite worth looking up and into. The history of the subtle spice is traced down through Biblical and Roman times to our own day, chronologically, etymologically, botanically, and practically. It will be, and doubtless has been, useful to other compilers of essays on good cheer.

Whatever may be the subtle abilities which make the true romancer, or rather those which make his romances things of life and blood, they were possessed by Alexandre Dumas.

Perhaps it is the more easy to construct a romantic play than it is to erect, from matter-of-fact components, a really engrossing romantic novel. Dumas’ abilities seem to fit in with both varieties alike, and if he did build to order, the result was in most cases no less successful than if evolved laboriously.

It is a curious fact that many serial contributions—if we are to believe the literary gossip of the time—are only produced as the printer is waiting for copy. The formula is manifestly not a good one upon which to build, but it has been done, and successfully, by more writers than one, and with scarce a gap unbridged.

Dickens did it,—if it is allowable to mention him here,—and Dumas himself did it,—many times,—and with a wonderful and, one may say, inspired facility, but then his facility, none the less than his vitality, made possible much that was not granted to the laborious Zola.

Dumas was untiring to the very last. His was a case of being literally worked out—not worked to death, which is quite a different thing.

It has been said by Dumas fils that in the latter years of the elder’s life he would sit for length upon length of time, pen in hand, and not a word would flow therefrom, ere the ink had dried.

An interesting article on Dumas’ last days appeared in La Revue in 1903. It dealt with the sadness and disappointments of Dumas’ later days, in spite of which the impression conveyed of the great novelist’s personality is very vivid, and he emerges from it much as his books would lead one to expect—a hearty, vigorous creature, surcharged with vitality, with desire to live and let live, a man possessed of almost equally prominent faults and virtues, and generous to a fault.

Money he had never been able to keep. He had said himself, at a time when he was earning a fortune, “I can keep everything but money. Money unfortunately always slips through my fingers.” The close of his life was a horrible struggle to make ends meet. When matters came to a crisis Dumas would pawn some of the valuable objets d’art he had collected in the opulent past, or ask his son for assistance. But, though the sum asked was always given, there were probably few things which the old man would not have preferred to this appeal to the younger author.

As he grew old, Dumas père became almost timid in his attitude toward the son, whose disapproval had frequently found expression in advice and warning. But Dumas could not settle down, and he could not become careful. Neither of these things was in his nature, and there was consequently always some little undercurrent of friction between them. To the end of his days his money was anybody’s who liked to come and ask for it, and nothing but the final clouding of his intellectual capacity could reduce his optimism. Then, it is true, he fell into a state of sustained depression. The idea that his reputation would not last haunted him.

In 1870, when Dumas was already very ill, his son, anxious that he should not be in Paris during its investment by the Germans, took him to a house he had at Puys, near Dieppe. Here the great man rapidly sank, and, except at meal-times, passed his time in a state of heavy sleep, until a sudden attack of apoplexy finally seized him. He never rallied after it, and died upon the day the Prussian soldiers took possession of Dieppe.

Many stories are rife of Dumas the prodigal. Some doubtless are true, many are not. Those which he fathers himself, we might well accept as being true. Surely he himself should know.

The following incident which happened in the last days of his life certainly has the ring of truth about it.

When in his last illness he left Paris for his son’s country house near Dieppe, he had but twenty francs, the total fortune of the man who had earned millions.

On arriving at Puys, Dumas placed the coin on his bedroom chimneypiece, and there it remained all through his illness.

One day he was seated in his chair near the window, chatting with his son, when his eye fell on the gold piece.

A recollection of the past crossed his mind.

“Fifty years ago, when I went to Paris,” he said, “I had a louis. Why have people accused me of prodigality? I have always kept that louis. See—there it is.”

And he showed his son the coin, smiling feebly as he did so.

CHAPTER IV.

DUMAS’ CONTEMPORARIES

Among those of the world’s great names in literature contemporary with Dumas, but who knew Paris ere he first descended upon it to try his fortune in its arena of letters, were Lamartine, who already, in 1820, had charmed his public with his “Meditations;” Hugo, who could claim but twenty years himself, but who had already sung his “Odes et Ballades,” and Chateaubriand.

Soulié and De Vigny won their fame with poems and plays in the early twenties, De Musset and Chénier followed before a decade had passed, and Gautier was still serving his apprenticeship.

It was the proud Goethe who said of these young men of the twenties, “They all come from Chateaubriand.” Béranger, too, “the little man,” even though he was drawing on toward the prime of life, was also singing melodiously: it was his chansons, it is said, that upset the Bourbon throne and made way for the “citizen-king.” Nodier, of fanciful and fantastic rhyme, was already at work, and Mérimée had not yet taken up the administrative duties of overseeing the preserving process which at his instigation was, at the hands of a paternal government, being applied to the historical architectural monuments throughout France; a glory which it is to be feared has never been wholly granted to Mérimée, as was his due.

TWO FAMOUS CARICATURES OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Guizot, the bête noire of the later Louis-Philippe, was actively writing from 1825 to 1830, and his antagonist, Thiers, was at the same period producing what Carlyle called the “voluminous and untrustworthy labours of a brisk little man in his way;” which recalls to mind the fact that Carlylean rant—like most of his prose—is a well-nigh insufferable thing.

At this time Mignet, the historian, was hard at work, and St. Beauve had just deserted materia medica for literature. Michelet’s juvenile histories were a production of the time, while poor, unhonoured, and then unsung, Balzac was grinding out his pittance—in after years to grow into a monumental literary legacy—in a garret.

Eugène Sue had not yet taken to literary pathways, and was scouring the seas as a naval surgeon.

The drama was prolific in names which we have since known as masters, Scribe, Halévy, and others.

George Sand, too, was just beginning that grand literary life which opened with “Indiana” in 1832, and lasted until 1876. She, like so many of the great, whose name and fame, like Dumas’ own, has been perpetuated by a monument in stone, the statue which was unveiled in the little town of her birth on the Indre, La Châtre, in 1903.

Like Dumas, too, hers was a cyclopean industry, and so it followed that in the present twentieth century (in the year 1904), another and a more glorious memorial to France’s greatest woman writer was unveiled in the Garden of the Luxembourg.

Among the women famous in the monde of Paris at the time of Dumas’ arrival were Mesdames Desbordes-Valmore, Amable Tastu, and Delphine Gay.

“For more than half a century this brilliant group of men and women sustained the world of ideas and poetry,” said Dumas, in his “Mémoires,” “and I, too,” he continued, “have reached the same plane ... unaided by intrigue or coterie, and using none other than my own work as the stepping-stone in my pathway.”

Dumas cannot be said to have been niggardly with his praise of the work of others. He said of a sonnet of Arnault’s—“La Feuille”—that it was a masterpiece which an André Chénier, a Lamartine, or a Hugo might have envied, and that for himself, not knowing what his “literary brothers” might have done, he would have given for it “any one of his dramas.”

It was into the office of Arnault, who was chief of a department in the Université, that Béranger took up his labours as a copying-clerk,—as did Dumas in later years,—and it was while here that Béranger produced his first ballad, the “Roi d’Yvetot.”

In 1851 Millet was at his height, if one considers what he had already achieved by his “great agrarian poems,” as they have been called. Gautier called them “Georgics in paint,” and such they undoubtedly were. Millet would hardly be called a Parisian; he was not of the life of the city, but rather of that of the countryside, by his having settled down at Barbizon in 1849, and practically never left it except to go to Paris on business.

His life has been referred to as one of “sublime monotony,” but it was hardly that. It was a life devoted to the telling of a splendid story, that of the land as contrasted with that of the paved city streets.

Corot was a real Parisian, and it was only in his early life in the provinces that he felt the bitterness of life and longed for the flagstones of the quais, for the Tuileries, the Seine, and his beloved Rue de Bac, where he was born on 10th Thermidor, Year IV. (July 28, 1796). Corot early took to painting the scenes of the metropolis, as we learn from his biography, notably at the point along the river bank where the London steamer moors to-day. But these have disappeared; few or none of his juvenile efforts have come down to us.

Corot returned to Paris, after many years spent in Rome, during the reign of Louis-Philippe, when affairs were beginning to stir themselves in literature and art. In 1839 his “Site d’Italie” and a “Soir” were shown at the annual Salon,—though, of course, he had already been an exhibitor there,—and inspired a sonnet of Théophile Gautier, which concludes:

“Corot, ton nom modest, écrit dans un coin noir.”

Corot’s pictures were unfortunately hung in the darkest corners—for fifteen years. As he himself has said, it was as if he were in the catacombs. In 1855 Corot figured as one of the thirty-four judges appointed by Napoleon III. to make the awards for paintings exhibited in the world’s first Universal Exhibition. It is not remarked that Corot had any acquaintance or friendships with Dumas or with Victor Hugo, of whom he remarked, “This Victor Hugo seems to be pretty famous in literature.” He knew little of his contemporaries, and the hurly-burly knew less of him. He was devoted, however, to the genius of his superiors—as he doubtless thought them. Of Delacroix he said one day, “He is an eagle, and I am only a lark singing little songs in gray clouds.”

A literary event of prime importance during the latter years of Dumas’ life in Paris, when his own purse was growing thin, was the publication of the “Histoire de Jules César,” written by Napoleon III.

Nobody ever seems to have taken the second emperor seriously in any of his finer expressions of sentiment, and, as may be supposed, the publication of this immortal literary effort was the occasion of much sarcasm, banter, violent philippic, and sardonic criticism.

Possibly the world was not waiting for this work, but royalty, no less than other great men, have their hobbies and their fads; Nero fiddled, and the first Napoleon read novels and threw them forthwith out of the carriage window, so it was quite permissible that Napoleon III. should have perpetuated this life history of an emperor whom he may justly and truly have admired—perhaps envied, in a sort of impossible way.

Already Louis Napoleon’s collection of writings was rather voluminous, so this came as no great surprise, and his literary reputation was really greater than that which had come to him since fate made him the master of one of the foremost nations of Europe.

From his critics we learn that “he lacked the grace of a popular author; that he was quite incapable of interesting the reader by a charm of manner; and that his style was meagre, harsh, and grating, but epigrammatic.” No Frenchman could possibly be otherwise.

Dumas relates, again, the story of Sir Walter Scott’s visit to Paris, seeking documents which should bear upon the reign of Napoleon. Dining with friends one evening, he was invited the next day to dine with Barras. But Scott shook his head. “I cannot dine with that man,” he replied. “I shall write evil of him, and people in Scotland would say that I have flung the dishes from his own table at his head.”

It is not recorded that Dumas’ knowledge of swordsmanship was based on practical experience, but certainly no more scientific sword-play of passe and touche has been put into words than that wonderful attack and counter-attack in the opening pages of “Les Trois Mousquetaires.”

Of the duel d’honneur there is less to be said, though Dumas more than once sought to reconcile estranged and impetuous spirits who would have run each other through, either by leaden bullet or the sword. A notable instance of this was in the memorable affaire between Louis Blanc of L’Homme-Libre and Dujarrier-Beauvallon of La Presse. The latter told Dumas that he had no alternative but to fight, though he went like a lamb to the slaughter, and had no knowledge of the code nor any skill with weapons.

Dumas père was implored by the younger Dumas—both of whom took Dujarrier’s interests much to heart—to go and see Grisier and claim his intervention. “I cannot do it,” said the elder; “the first and foremost thing to do is to safeguard his reputation, which is the more precious because it is his first duel.” The Grisier referred to was the great master of fence of the time who was immortalized by Dumas in his “Maître d’Armes.”

Dumas himself is acknowledged, however, on one occasion, at least, to have acted as second—co-jointly with General Fleury—in an affaire which, happily, never came off.

It was this Blanc-Dujarrier duel which brought into further prominent notice that most remarkable and quasi-wonderful woman, Lola Montez; that daughter of a Spaniard and a Creole, a native of Limerick, pupil of a boarding-school at Bath, and one-time resident of Seville; to which may be added, on the account of Lord Malmesbury, “The woman who in Munich set fire to the magazine of revolution which was ready to burst forth all over Europe.”

She herself said that she had also lived in Calcutta as the wife of an officer in the employ of the East India Company; had at one time been reduced to singing in the streets at Brussels; had danced at the Italian Opera in London,—“not much, but as well as half the ugly wooden women who were there,”—and had failed as a dancer in Warsaw.

“This illiterate schemer,” says Vandam, “who probably knew nothing of geography or history, had pretty well the Almanach de Gotha by heart.” “Why did I not come earlier to Paris?” she once said. “What was the good? There was a king there bourgeois to his finger-nails, tight-fisted besides, and notoriously the most moral and the best father in all the world.”

This woman, it seems, was a beneficiary in the testament of Dujarrier, who died as a result of his duel, to the extent of eighteen shares in the Théâtre du Palais Royal, and in the trial which followed at Rouen, at which were present all shades and degrees of literary and professional people, Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, and others, she insisted upon appearing as a witness, for no reason whatever, apparently, than that of further notoriety. “Six months from this time,” as one learns from Vandam, “her name was almost forgotten by all of us except Alexandre Dumas, who once and again alluded to her.” “Though far from superstitious, Dumas, who had been as much smitten with her as most of her admirers, avowed that he was glad that she had disappeared. ‘She has the evil eye,’ said he, ‘and is sure to bring bad luck to any one who closely links his destiny with hers.’”

There is no question but that Dumas was right, for she afterward—to mention but two instances of her remarkably active career—brought disaster “most unkind” upon Louis I. of Bavaria; committed bigamy with an English officer who was drowned at Lisbon; and, whether in the guise of lovers or husbands, all, truly, who became connected with her met with almost immediate disaster.

The mere mention of Lola Montez brings to mind another woman of the same category, though different in character, Alphonsine Plessis, more popularly known as La Dame aux Camélias. She died in 1847, and her name was not Marie or Marguérite Duplessis, but as above written.

Dumas fils in his play did not idealize Alphonsine Plessis’ character; indeed, Dumas père said that he did not even enlarge or exaggerate any incident—all of which was common property in the demi-monde—“save that he ascribed her death to any cause but the right one.” “I know he made use of it,” said the father, “but he showed the malady aggravated by Duval’s desertion.”

We learn that the elder Dumas “wept like a baby” over the reading of his son’s play. But his tears did not drown his critical faculty. “At the beginning of the third act,” said Dumas père, “I was wondering how Alexandre would get his Marguérite back to town, ... but the way Alexandre got out of the difficulty proves that he is my son, every inch of him, and at the very outset of his career he is a better dramatist than I am ever likely to be.”

“Alphonsine Plessis was decidedly a real personage, but not an ordinary one in her walk of life,” said Doctor Véron. “A woman of her refinement might not have been impossible in a former day, because the grisette—and subsequently the femme entretenue—was not then even surmised. She interests me much; she is the best dressed woman in Paris, she neither conceals nor hides her vices, and she does not continually hint about money; in short, she is wonderful.”

“La Dame aux Camélias” appeared within eighteen months of the actual death of the heroine, and went into every one’s hands, interest being whetted meanwhile by the recent event, and yet more by much gossip—scandal if you will—which universally appeared in the Paris press. Her pedigree was evolved and diagnosed by Count G. de Contades in a French bibliographical journal, Le Livre, which showed that she was descended from a “guénuchetonne” (slattern) of Longé, in the canton of Brionze, near Alençon; a predilection which the elder Dumas himself had previously put forth when he stated that, “I am certain that one might find taint either on the father’s side, or on the mother’s, probably on the former’s, but more probably still on both.”

The following eulogy, extracted from a letter written to Dumas fils by Victor Hugo upon the occasion of the inhumation of the ashes of Alexandre Dumas at Villers-Cotterets, whither they were removed from Puits, shows plainly the esteem in which his literary abilities were held by the more sober-minded of his compeers:

“Mon cher Confrère:—I learn from the papers of the funeral of Alexandre Dumas at Villers-Cotterets.... It is with regret that I am unable to attend.... But I am with you in my heart.... What I would say, let me write.... No popularity of the past century has equalled that of Alexandre Dumas. His successes were more than successes: they were triumphs.... The name of Alexandre Dumas is more than ‘Français, il est Européen;’ and it is more than European, it is universal. His theatre has been given publicity in all lands, and his romances have been translated into all tongues. Alexandre Dumas was one of those men we can call the sowers of civilization.... Alexandre Dumas is seducing, fascinating, interesting, amusing, and informing.... All the emotions, the most pathetic, all the irony, all the comedy, all the analysis of romance, and all the intuition of history are found in the supreme works constructed by this great and vigorous architect.

“... His spirit was capable of all the miracles he performed; this he bequeathed and this survives.... Your renown but continues his glory.

“... Your father and I were young together.... He was a grand and good friend.... I had not seen him since 1857.... As I entered Paris Alexandre Dumas was leaving. I did not have even a parting shake of the hand.

“The visit which he made me in my exile I will some day return to his tomb.

“Cher confrère, fils de mon ami, je vous embrasse.

“Victor Hugo.”

Of Dumas, Charles Reade said: “He has never been properly appreciated; he is the prince of dramatists, the king of romancists, and the emperor of good fellows.”

Dumas fils he thought a “vinegar-blooded iconoclast—shrewd, clever, audacious, introspective, and mathematically logical.”

The Cimetière du Père La Chaise has a contemporary interest with the names of many who were contemporaries of Dumas in the life and letters of his day.

Of course, sentimental interest first attaches itself to the Gothic canopy—built from the fragments of the convent of Paraclet—which enshrines the remains of Abelard and Heloïse (1142-64), and this perhaps is as it should be, but for those who are conversant with the life of Paris of Dumas’ day, this most “famous resting-place” has far more interest because of its shelter given to so many of Dumas’ contemporaries and friends.

Scribe, who was buried here 1861; Michelet, d. 1874; Delphine Cambacérès, 1867; Lachambeaudie, 1872; Soulie, 1847; Balzac, 1850; Ch. Nodier, 1844; C. Delavigne, 1843; Delacroix, the painter, 1865; Talma, the tragedian, 1826; Boieldieu, the composer, 1834; Chopin, 1849; Herold, 1833; General Foy, 1825; David d’Angers, 1856; Hugo, 1828 (the father of Victor Hugo); David, the painter, 1825; Alfred de Musset, 1857; Rossini, 1868.

TOMB OF ABELARD AND HÉLOÏSE

CHAPTER V.

THE PARIS OF DUMAS

Dumas’ real descent upon the Paris of letters and art was in 1823, when he had given up his situation in the notary’s office at Crépy, and after the eventful holiday journey of a few weeks before. His own account of this, his fourth entrance into the city, states that he was “landed from the coach at five A. M. in the Rue Bouloi, No. 9. It was Sunday morning, and Bourbon Paris was very gloomy on a Sunday.”

Within a short time of his arrival the young romancer was making calls, of a nature which he hoped would provide him some sort of employment until he should make his way in letters, upon many bearers of famous Bourbon names who lived in the Faubourgs St. Germain and St. Honoré—all friends and compatriots of his father.

He had brought with him letters formerly written to his father, and hoped to use them as a means of introduction. He approached Marshal Jourdain, General Sebastiani, the Duc de Bellune, and others, but it was not until he presented himself to General Foy, at 64 Rue du Mont Blanc,—the deputy for his department,—that anything to his benefit resulted.

Finally, through the kindly aid of General Foy, Dumas—son of a republican general though he was—found himself seated upon a clerk’s stool, quill in hand, writing out dictation at the secretary’s bureau of the Duc d’Orleans.

“I then set about to look for lodgings,” said Dumas, “and, after going up and down many staircases, I came to a halt in a little room on a fourth story, which belonged to that immense pile known as the ‘Pâté des Italiens.’ The room looked out on the courtyard, and I was to have it for one hundred and twenty francs per annum.”

From that time on Dumas may be said to have known Paris intimately—its life, its letters, its hotels and restaurants, its theatres, its salons, and its boulevards.

So well did he know it that he became a part and parcel of it.

His literary affairs and relations are dealt with elsewhere, but the various aspects of the social and economic life of Paris at the time Dumas knew its very pulse-beats must be gleaned from various contemporary sources.

The real Paris which Dumas knew—the Paris of the Second Empire—exists no more. The order of things changeth in all but the conduct of the stars, and Paris, more than any other centre of activity, scintillates and fluctuates like the changings of the money-markets.

The life that Dumas lived, so far as it has no bearing on his literary labours or the evolving of his characters, is quite another affair from that of his yearly round of work.

He knew intimately all the gay world of Paris, and fresh echoes of the part he played therein are being continually presented to us.

He knew, also, quite as intimately, certain political and social movements which took place around about him, in which he himself had no part.

It was in the fifties of the nineteenth century that Paris first became what one might call a coherent mass. This was before the days of the application of the adjective “Greater” to the areas of municipalities. Since then we have had, of course, a “Greater Paris” as we have a “Greater London” and a “Greater New York,” but at the commencement of the Second Empire (1852) there sprang into being,—“jumped at one’s eyes,” as the French say,—when viewed from the heights of the towers of Notre Dame, an immense panorama, which showed the results of a prodigious development, radiating far into the distance, from the common centre of the Ile de la Cité and the still more ancient Lutèce.

Up to the construction of the present fortifications,—under Louis-Philippe,—Paris had been surrounded, at its outer confines, by a simple octroi barrier of about twenty-five kilometres in circumference, and pierced by fifty-four entrances. Since 1860 this wall has been raised and the limits of what might be called Paris proper have been extended up to the fortified lines.

This fortification wall was thirty-four kilometres in length; was strengthened by ninety-four bastions, and surrounded and supported by thirteen detached forts. Sixty-five openings gave access to the inner city, by which the roadways, waterways, and railways entered. These were further distinguished by classification as follows: portes—of which there were fifty; poternes—of which there were five; and passages—of which there were ten. Nine railways entered the city, and the “Ceinture” or girdle railway, which was to bind the various gares, was already conceived.

At this time, too, the Quais received marked attention and development; trees were planted along the streets which bordered upon them, and a vast system of sewerage was planned which became—and endures until to-day—one of the sights of Paris, for those who take pleasure in such unsavoury amusements.

Lighting by gas was greatly improved, and street-lamps were largely multiplied, with the result that Paris became known for the first time as “La Ville Lumière.”

A score or more of villages, or bourgs, before 1860, were between the limits of these two barriers, but were at that time united by the loi d’annexion, and so “Greater Paris” came into being.

The principle bourgs which lost their identity, which, at the same time is, in a way, yet preserved, were Auteuil, Passy, les Ternes, Batignolles, Montmartre, la Chapelle, la Villette, Belleville, Ménilmontant, Charenton, and Bercy; and thus the population of Paris grew, as in the twinkling of an eye, from twelve hundred thousand to sixteen hundred thousand; and its superficial area from thirty-four hundred hectares to more than eight thousand—a hectare being about the equivalent of two and a half acres.

During the period of the “Restoration,” which extended from the end of the reign of the great Napoleon to the coming of Louis-Philippe (1814-30), Paris may be said to have been in, or at least was at the beginning of, its golden age of prosperity.

In a way the era was somewhat inglorious, but in spite of liberal and commonplace opinion, there was made an earnest effort to again secure the pride of place for French letters and arts; and it was then that the romantic school, with Dumas at its very head, attained its first importance.

It was not, however, until Louis-Philippe came into power that civic improvements made any notable progress, though the Pont des Invalides had been built, and gas-lamps, omnibuses, and sidewalks, had been introduced just previously.

Under Louis-Philippe were completed the Église de la Madeleine and the Arc de Triomphe d’Etoile. The Obelisk,—a gift from Mohammed Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, to Louis-Philippe,—the Colonne de Juillet, and the Ponts Louis-Philippe and du Carrousel were built, as well as the modern fortifications of Paris, with their detached forts of Mont Valerien, Ivry, Charenton, Nogent, etc.

There existed also the encircling boulevards just within the fortifications, and yet another parallel series on the north, beginning at the Madeleine and extending to the Colonne de Juillet.

It was not, however, until the Second Republic and the Second Empire of Napoleon III. that a hitherto unparallelled transformation was undertaken, and there sprung into existence still more broad boulevards and spacious squares, and many palatial civic and private establishments, the Bourse, the New Opera, and several theatres, the Ceinture Railway, and the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes.

By this time Dumas’ activities were so great, or at least the product thereof was so great, that even his intimate knowledge of French life of a more heroic day could not furnish him all the material which he desired.

It was then that he produced those essentially modern stories of life in Paris of that day, which, slight though they are as compared with the longer romances, are best represented by the “Corsican Brothers,” “Captain Pamphile,” and “Gabriel Lambert.”

Among the buildings at this time pulled down, on the Place du Carrousel, preparatory to the termination of the Louvre, was the Hôtel Longueville, the residence of the beautiful duchess of that name, celebrated for her support of the Fronde and her gallantries, as much as for her beauty. Dumas would have revelled in the following incident as the basis of a tale. In the arched roof of one of the cellars of the duchess’ hôtel two skeletons of a very large size and in a perfect state of preservation were discovered, which have since been the object of many discussions on the part of the antiquarians, but adhuc sub judice lis est. Another discovery was made close by the skeletons, which is more interesting from a literary point of view; namely, that of a box, in carved steel, embellished with gilded brass knobs, and containing several papers. Among them was an amatory epistle in verse, from the Prince de Marsillac to the fair duchess. The other papers were letters relating to the state of affairs at that time; some from the hand of the celebrated Turenne, with memorandums, and of the Prince de Conti, “of great value to autograph collectors,” said the newspaper accounts of the time, but assuredly of still more value to historians, or even novelists.

At this time Paris was peopled with many hundreds—perhaps thousands—of mauvais sujets, and frequent robberies and nightly outrages were more numerous than ever. The government at last hit on the plan of sending to the bagnes of Toulon and Brest for several of the turnkeys and gaolers of those great convict dépôts, to whom the features of all their former prisoners were perfectly known. These functionaries, accompanied by a policeman in plain clothes, perambulated every part of Paris by day, and by night frequented all the theatres, from the Grand Opéra downward, the low cafés and wine-shops. It appears that more than four hundred of these desperadoes were recognized and retransferred to their old quarters at Toulon. Some of these worthies had been carrying on schemes of swindling on a colossal scale, and more than one is described as having entered into large speculations on the Bourse. Perhaps it was from some such circumstance as this that Dumas evolved that wonderful narrative of the life of a forger, “Gabriel Lambert.” One of the most noted in the craft was known by the soubriquet of Pierre Mandrin, the name of that célébré being conferred on account of his superiority and skill in assuming disguises. When arrested he was figuring as a Polish count, and covered with expensive rings and jewelry. The career of this ruffian is interesting. In 1839, while undergoing an imprisonment of two years for robbery, he attempted to make his escape by murdering the gaoler, but failed, however, and was sent to the galleys at Toulon for twenty years. In 1848 he did escape from Brest, and, notwithstanding the greatest exertions on the part of the police, he succeeded in crossing the whole of France and gaining Belgium, where he remained for some time. Owing to the persecutions of the Belgian police, he subsequently returned to France. He was so unfortunate as to be captured in the very act of breaking into a house at Besançon, but his prodigious activity enabled him once again to escape while on his way to prison, and he came to Paris. Being possessed of some money, he resolved to abandon his evil courses, and set up a greengrocer’s shop in the Rue Rambuteau, which went on thrivingly for some time. But such an inactive life was insupportable to him, and he soon resumed his former exciting pursuits. Several robberies committed with consummate skill soon informed the police of the presence in Paris of some great master of the art of Mercury. The most experienced officers were accordingly sent out, but they made no capture until one of the Toulon gaolers fancied he recollected the convict under the features of an elegantly attired lion on the Boulevard des Italiens. A few hours afterward the luckless échappé was safely lodged at the Conciergerie. At his lodgings, besides the usual housebreaking implements, a complete assortment of costumes of every kind was discovered—from that of the dandy of the first water to the blouse of the artisan.

There is something more than a morbid interest which attaches itself to the former homes and haunts of a great author or artist. The emotion is something akin to sentiment, to be sure, but it is pardonable; far more so than the contemplation of many more popular and notorious places.

He who would follow the footsteps of Alexandre Dumas about Paris must either be fleet of foot, or one who can sustain a long march. At any rate, the progress will take a considerable time.

It is impossible to say in how many places he lived, though one gathers from the “Mémoires,” and from contemporary information, that they numbered many score, and the uncharitable have further said that he found it more economical to move than to pay his rents. Reprehensible as this practice may be, Dumas was no single exponent of it—among artists and authors; and above all in his case, as we know, it resulted from imprudence and ofttimes misplaced confidence and generosity.

One of Dumas’ early homes in Paris, jocularly called by him “La Pâté d’Italie,” was situated in that famous centre of unconventionality, the Boulevard des Italiens, a typical tree-shaded and café-lined boulevard.

Its name was obviously acquired from its resemblance to, or suggestion of being constructed of, that mastic which is known in Germany as noodles, in Italy as macaroni, and in English-speaking countries as dough.

To-day the structure, as it then was, exists no more, though the present edifice at the corner of the Rue Louis le Grand, opposite the vaudeville theatre, has been assuredly stated as in no wise differing in general appearance from its prototype, and, as it is after the same ginger-cake style of architecture, it will serve its purpose.

Albert Vandam, in “An Englishman in Paris,” that remarkable book of reminiscence whose authorship was so much in doubt when the work was first published, devoted a whole chapter to the intimacies of Dumas père; indeed, nearly every feature and character of prominence in the great world of Paris—at the time of which he writes—strides through the pages of this remarkably illuminating book, in a manner which is unequalled by any conventional volume of “Reminiscence,” “Observations,” or “Memoirs” yet written in the English language, dealing with the life of Paris—or, for that matter, of any other capital.

His account, also, of a “literary café” of the Paris of the forties could only have been written by one who knew the life intimately, and, so far as Dumas’ acquaintances and contemporaries are concerned, Vandam’s book throws many additional side-lights on an aspect which of itself lies in no perceptible shadow.

Even in those days the “boulevards”—the popular resort of the men of letters, artists, and musical folk—meant, as it does to-day, a somewhat restricted area in the immediate neighbourhood of the present Opera. At the corner of the Rue Lafitte was a tobacconist’s shop, whose genius was a “splendid creature,” of whom Alfred de Musset became so enamoured that his friends feared for an “imprudence on his part.” The various elements of society and cliques had their favourite resorts and rendezvous; the actors under the trees in the courtyard of the Palais Royal; the ouvrier and his family meandered in the Champs Elysées or journeyed countryward to Grenelle; while the soldiery mostly repaired to La Plaine de St. Denis.

A sister to Thiers kept a small dining establishment in the Rue Drouet, and many journalistic and political gatherings were held at her tables d’hôte. When asked whether her delicious pheasants were of her illustrious brother’s shooting, she shook her head, and replied: “No, M. the President of the Council has not the honour to supply my establishment.”

Bohemia, as Paris best knew it in the fifties, was not that pleasant land which lies between the Moravian and the Giant Mountains; neither were the Bohemians of Paris a Slavonic or Teutonic people of a strange, nomad race.

But the history of the Bohemia of arts and letters—which rose to its greatest and most prophetic heights in the Paris of the nineteenth century—would no doubt prove to be as extensive a work as Buckle’s “History of Civilization,” though the recitation of tenets and principles of one would be the inevitable reverse of the other.

The intellectual Bohemian—the artist, or the man of letters—has something in his make-up of the gipsy’s love of the open road; the vagabond who instinctively rebels against the established rules of society, more because they are established than for any other reason.

Henri Mürger is commonly supposed to have popularized the “Bohemia” of arts and letters, and it is to him we owe perhaps the most graphic pictures of the life which held forth in the Quartier Latin, notorious for centuries for its lack of discipline and its defiance of the laws of Church, state, and society. It was the very nursery of open thought and liberty against absolutism and the conventional proprieties.

Gustave Nadaud described this “unknown land” in subtle verse, which loses not a little in attempted paraphrase:

“There stands behind Ste. Geneviève,
A city where no fancy paves
With gold the narrow streets,
But jovial youth, the landlady
On gloomy stairs, in attic high,
Gay hope, her tenant, meets.
·····
’Twas there that the Pays Latin stood,
’Twas there the world was really good,
’Twas there that she was gay.”

Of the freedom and the unconventionally of the life of the Bohemian world of Paris, where the lives of literature and art blended in an almost imperceptible manner, and the gay indifference of its inhabitants, one has but to recall the incident where George Sand went to the studio of the painter Delacroix to tell him that she had sad news for him; that she could never love him; and more of the same sort. “Indeed,” said Delacroix, who kept on painting.—“You are angry with me, are you not? You will never forgive me?”—“Certainly I will,” said the painter, who was still at his work, “but I’ve got a bit of sky here that has caused me a deal of trouble and is just coming right. Go away, or sit down, and I will be through in ten minutes.” She went, and of course did not return, and so the affaire closed.

Dumas was hardly of the Pays Latin. He had little in common with the Bohemianism of the poseur, and the Bohemia of letters and art has been largely made up of that sort of thing.

More particularly Dumas’ life was that of the boulevards, of the journalist, of tremendous energy and output rather than that of the dilettante, and so he has but little interest in the south bank of the Seine.

Michelet, while proclaiming loudly for French literature and life in Le Peuple, published in 1846, desponds somewhat of his country from the fact that the overwhelming genius of the popular novelists of that day—and who shall not say since then, as well—have sought their models, too often, in dingy cabarets, vile dens of iniquity, or even in the prisons themselves.

He said: “This mania of slandering oneself, of exhibiting one’s sores, and going, as it were, to look for shame, will be mortal in the course of time.”

This may, to a great extent, have been true then—and is true to-day—manifestly, but no lover of the beautiful ought to condemn a noisome flower if but its buds were beautiful, and Paris—the Paris of the Restoration, the Empire, or the Republic—is none the worse in the eyes of the world because of the iniquities which exist in every large centre of population, where creeds and intellects of all shades and capacities are herded together.

The French novelist, it is true, can be very sordid and banal, but he can be as childlike and bland as an unsophisticated young girl—when he has a mind to.

Dumas’ novels were not lacking in vigour, valour, or action, and he wrote mostly of romantic times; so Michelet could not have referred to him. Perhaps he had the “Mysteries of Paris” or “The Wandering Jew” in mind, whose author certainly did give full measure of sordid detail; but then, Sue has been accused before now as not presenting a strictly truthful picture.

So much for the presentation of the tableaux. But what about the actual condition of the people at the time?

Michelet’s interest in Europe was centred on France and confined to le peuple; a term in which he ofttimes included the bourgeois, as well he might, though he more often regarded those who worked with their hands. He repeatedly says: “I myself have been one of those workmen, and, although I have risen to a different class, I retain the sympathies of my early conditions.”

Michelet’s judgment was quite independent and original when he compared the different classes; and he had a decided preference for that section which cultivates the soil, though by no means did he neglect those engaged in trade and manufacture. The ouvrier industriel was as much entitled to respect as the labourer in the fields, or even the small tenant-farmer. He regretted, of course, the competition which turned industrialisme into a cut-throat policy. He furthermore had this to say concerning foreign trade:

“Alsace and Lyons have conquered art and science to achieve beauty for others.... The ‘fairy of Paris’ (the modiste) meets, from minute to minute, the most unexpected flights of fancy—and she or he does to-day, be it recalled. Les étrangers come in spite of themselves, and they buy of her (France); ils achètent—but what?—patterns, and then go basely home and copy them, to the loss, but to the glory, of France.

“The Englishman or the German buys a few pieces of goods at Paris or Lyons; just as in letters France writes and Belgium sells.”

On the whole, Michelet thought that the population was more successful in tilling the soil than in the marts of the world; and there is this to be said, there is no question but what France is a self-contained country, though its arts have gone forth into the world and influenced all nations.

Paris is, ever has been, and proudly—perhaps rightly—thinks that it ever will be, the artistic capital of the world.

Georges Avenel has recently delivered himself of a screed on the “Mechanism of Modern Life,” wherein are many pertinent, if sometimes trite, observations on the more or less automatic processes by which we are lodged, fed, and clothed to-day.

He gives rather a quaint, but unquestionably true, reason for the alleged falling-off in the cookery of French—of course he means Parisian—restaurants. It is, he says, that modern patrons will no longer pay the prices, or, rather, will not spend the money that they once did. In the first half of the last century—the time of Dumas’ activities and achievements—he tells us that many Parisian lovers of good fare were accustomed to “eat a napoleon” daily for their dinner. Nowadays, the same persons dine sufficiently at their club for eight and a half francs. Perhaps the abatement of modern appetites has something to say to this, as many folk seldom take more than thirty-five or forty minutes over their evening meal. How would this compare with the Gargantuan feasts described by Brillat-Savarin and others, or the gastronomic exploits of those who ate two turkeys at a sitting?

Clearly, for comfort, and perhaps luxury, the Parisian hotels and restaurants of a former day compare agreeably with those of our own time; not so much, perhaps, with regard to time and labour-saving machinery, which is the equipment of the modern batterie de cuisine, but with the results achieved by more simple, if more laborious, means, and the appointments and surroundings amid which they were put upon the board. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” is still applicable, whether its components be beaten or kneaded by clockwork or the cook’s boy.

With the hotels himself, Avenel is less concerned, though he reminds us again that Madame de Sevigné had often to lie upon straw in the inns she met with in travelling, and looked upon a bed in a hotel, which would allow one to undress, as a luxury. We also learn that the travellers of those days had to carry their own knives, the innkeeper thinking that he did enough in providing spoons and forks. Nor were hotels particularly cheap, a small suite of rooms in a hotel of the Rue Richelieu costing 480 francs a week. It was Napoleon III. who, by his creation of the Hôtel de Louvre,—not the present establishment of the same name, but a much larger structure,—first set the fashion of monster hostelries. But what was this compared with the Elysées Palace, which M. d’Avenel chooses as his type of modern luxury, with its forty-three cooks, divided into seven brigades, each commanded by an officer drawing 3,750 francs a year, and its thirty-five hundred pairs of sheets and fifty thousand towels, valued together at little short of 250,000 francs? Yet, as we well know, even these totals pale before some of the hotels of America, in which M. d’Avenel sees the ne plus ultra of organization and saving of labour by the ingenious use of machinery, and incidentally a great deal of the sentiment of good cheer, which was as much an ingredient of former hospitality as was the salt and pepper of a repast.

It is pleasant to read of Alexandre Dumas’ culinary skill, though the repetition of the fact has appeared in the works of well-nigh every writer who has written of the Paris of the fifties and sixties. The dinners at his apartments in the Boulevard Malesherbes were worthy of Soyer or even of Brillat-Savarin himself in his best days. In his last “Causeries Culinaires,” the author of “Monte Cristo” tells us that the Bourbon kings were specially fond of soup. “The family,” he writes, “from Louis XIV. to the last of their race who reigned in France, have been great eaters. The Grand Monarque commenced his dinner by two and sometimes three different kinds of soup; Louis-Philippe by four plates of various species of this comestible; in the fifth plate his Majesty usually mixed portions of the four varieties he had eaten, and appeared to enjoy this singular culinary combination.”

Dumas’ reputation as an epicure must have been formed early; he describes in his “Mémoires” how, on a certain occasion, when he had first become installed in Paris, he met a gentleman, Charles Nodier, in the stalls of the Porte St. Martin, who was reading a well-worn Elzevir entitled “La Pastissier Française.” He says, “I address him.... ‘Pardon my impertinence, but are you very fond of eggs?’ ‘Why so?’ ‘That book you are reading, does it not give recipes for cooking eggs in sixty different ways?’ ‘It does.’ ‘If I could but procure a copy.’ ‘But this is an Elzevir,’ says my neighbour.”

The Parisian is without a rival as an epicure and a gastronome, and he associates no stigma with the epithet. In Anglo-Saxon lands the reverse is the case, though why it is hard to see.

“Frog-legs” came to be a tidbit in the tables d’hôte of New York and London many years ago, but sympathy has been withheld from the luscious escargot. There be those fearless individuals who by reason of the entente cordiale have tasted of him and found him good, but learning that in the cookshops of Paris they have at last learned to fabricate them to equal the native grown article of Bourgogne, have tabooed them once for all, and threaten to withdraw their liking for that other succulent dainty, the frog.

At any rate, the schoolboy idea that the Parisian’s staple fare is snails and frogs is quite exploded, and small wonder it is that Anglo-Saxon palates never became wholly inured to them. But what about England’s peculiar dishes? Marrow-bones and stewed eels, for instance?

Dumas’ familiarity with the good things of the table is nowhere more strongly advanced than in the opening chapter of “The Queen’s Necklace,” wherein the author recounts the incident of “the nobleman and his maître d’hôtel.”

The scene was laid in 1784, and runs as follows:

“The marshal turned toward his maître d’hôtel, and said, ‘Sir, I suppose you have prepared me a good dinner?’

“‘Certainly, your Grace.’

“‘You have the list of my guests?’

“‘I remember them perfectly.’

“‘There are two sorts of dinners, sir,’ said the marshal.

“‘True, your Grace, but—’

“‘In the first place, at what time do we dine?’

“‘Your Grace, the citizens dine at two, the bar at three, the nobility at four—’

“‘And I, sir?’

“‘Your Grace will dine to-day at five.’

“‘Oh, at five!’

“‘Yes, your Grace, like the king—’

“‘And why like the king?’

“‘Because, on the list of your guests is the name of a king.’

“‘Not so, sir, you mistake; all my guests to-day are simple noblemen.’

“‘Your Grace is surely jesting; the Count Haga, who is among the guests—’

“‘Well, sir!’

“‘The Count Haga is a king.’ (The Count Haga was the well-known name of the King of Sweden, assumed by him when travelling in France.)

“‘In any event, your Grace cannot dine before five o’clock.’

“‘In heaven’s name, do not be obstinate, but let us have dinner at four.’

“‘But at four o’clock, your Grace, what I am expecting will not have arrived. Your Grace, I wait for a bottle of wine.’

“‘A bottle of wine! Explain yourself, sir; the thing begins to interest me.’

“‘Listen, then, your Grace; his Majesty, the King of Sweden—I beg pardon, the Count Haga, I should have said—drinks nothing but Tokay.’

“‘Well, am I so poor as to have no Tokay in my cellar? If so, I must dismiss my butler.’

“‘Not so, your Grace; on the contrary, you have about sixty bottles.’

“‘Well, do you think Count Haga will drink sixty bottles with his dinner?’

“‘No, your Grace; but when Count Haga first visited France when he was only prince royal, he dined with the late king, who had received twelve bottles of Tokay from the Emperor of Austria. You are aware that the Tokay of the finest vintages is reserved exclusively for the cellar of the emperor, and that kings themselves can only drink it when he pleases to send it to them.’

“‘I know it.’

“‘Then, your Grace, of these twelve bottles of which the prince royal drank, only two remain. One is in the cellar of his Majesty Louis XVI.—’

“‘And the other?’

“‘Ah, your Grace!’ said the maître d’hôtel, with a triumphant smile, for he felt that, after the long battle he had been fighting, the moment of victory was at hand, ‘the other one was stolen.’

“‘By whom, then?’

“‘By one of my friends, the late king’s butler, who was under great obligations to me.’

“‘Oh! and so he gave it to you.’

“‘Certainly, your Grace,’ said the maître d’hôtel, with pride.

“‘And what did you do with it?’

“‘I placed it carefully in my master’s cellar.’

“‘Your master? And who was your master at that time?’

“‘His Eminence the Cardinal de Rohan.’

“‘Ah, mon Dieu! at Strasbourg?’

“‘At Saverne.’

“‘And you have sent to seek this bottle for me!’ cried the old marshal.

“‘For you, your Grace,’ replied the maître d’hôtel, in a tone which plainly said, ‘ungrateful as you are.’

“The Duke de Richelieu seized the hand of the old servant, and cried, ‘I beg pardon; you are the king of maîtres d’hôtel.’”

The French noblesse of the eighteenth century may have had retainers of the perspicacity and freedom of manners of this servant of the Maréchal de Richelieu, but it is hard to picture them in real life to-day. At any rate, it bespeaks Dumas’ fondness of good eating and good drinking that he makes so frequent use of references thereto, not only in this novel of a later day, but throughout the mediæval romances as well.

Dumas’ knowledge of gastronomy again finds its vent in “The Count of Monte Cristo,” when the unscrupulous Danglars is held in a dungeon pending his giving up the five millions of francs which he had fraudulently obtained.

It is not a very high-class repast that is discussed, but it shows at least Dumas’ familiarity with the food of man.

“At twelve the guard before Danglars’ cell was replaced by another functionary, and, wishing to catch sight of his new guardian, Danglars approached the door again. He was an athletic, gigantic bandit, with large eyes, thick lips, and a flat nose; his red hair fell in dishevelled masses like snakes around his shoulders. ‘Ah! ah!’ cried Danglars, ‘this fellow is more like an ogre than anything else; however, I am rather too old and tough to be very good eating!’ We see that Danglars was quite collected enough to jest; at the same time, as though to disprove the ogreish propensities, the man took some black bread, cheese, and onions from his wallet, which he began devouring voraciously. ‘May I be hanged,’ said Danglars, glancing at the bandit’s dinner through the crevices of the door, ‘may I be hanged if I can understand how people can eat such filth!’ and he withdrew to seat himself upon his goatskin, which recalled to him the smell of the brandy....

“Four hours passed by, the giant was replaced by another bandit. Danglars, who really began to experience sundry gnawings at the stomach, rose softly, again applied his eye to the crack of the door, and recognized the intelligent countenance of his guide. It was, indeed, Peppino, who was preparing to mount guard as comfortably as possible by seating himself opposite to the door, and placing between his legs an earthen pan, containing chick-pease stewed with bacon. Near the pan he also placed a pretty little basket of grapes and a bottle of Vin d’Orvieto. Peppino was decidedly an epicure. While witnessing these preparations, Danglars’ mouth watered.... ‘I can almost imagine,’ said he, ‘that I were at the Café de Paris.’”

Dumas, like every strong personality, had his friends and his enemies. It is doubtful which class was in the ascendency as to numbers. When asked, on one occasion, when he had been dining at the Café de Paris, if he were an archæologist,—he had been admiring a cameo portrait of Julius Cæsar,—he replied, “No, I am absolutely nothing.” His partisans were many, and they were as devoted as his enemies were jealous and uncharitable. Continuing, he said, “I admire this portrait in the capacity of Cæsar’s historian.” “Indeed,” said his interlocutor, “it has never been mentioned in the world of savants.” “Well,” said Dumas, “the world of savants never mentions me.”

This may be conceit or modesty, accordingly as one takes one view or another. Dumas, like most people, was not averse to admiration. Far from it. He thrived exceedingly on it. But he was, as he said, very much alone, and quite felt a nobody at times. Of his gastronomic and epicurean abilities he was vainly proud.

The story is told of the sole possession by Dumas of a certain recipe for stewed carp. Véron, the director of the opera, had instructed his own cook to serve the celebrated dish; she, unable to concoct it satisfactorily, announced her intention of going direct to the novelist to get it from his own lips. Sophie must have been a most ingenious and well-informed person, for she approached Dumas in all hostility and candour. She plunged direct into the subject, presuming that he had acquired the knowledge of this special tidbit from some outside source.

Dumas was evidently greatly flattered, and gave her every possible information, but the experiment was not a success, and the fair cordon-bleu began to throw out the suspicion that Dumas had acquired his culinary accomplishments from some other source than that he had generally admitted. It was at this time that Dumas was at the crux of his affairs with his collaborators.

Accordingly Sophie made her pronouncement that it was with Dumas’ cooking as it was with his romances, and that he was “un grand diable de vaniteux.”

At his home in the Rue Chaussée d’Antin Dumas served many an epicurean feast to his intimates; preparing, it is said, everything with his own hands, even to the stripping of the cabbage-leaves for the soupe aux choux, “sleeves rolled up, and a large apron around his waist.”

A favourite menu was soupe aux choux, the now famous carp, a ragoût de mouton, à l’Hongroise; roti de faisans, and a salade Japonaise—whatever that may have been; the ices and gateaux being sent in from a pâtissier’s.

The customs of the theatre in Paris are, and always have been, peculiar. Dumas himself tells how, upon one occasion, just after he had come permanently to live there, he had placed himself beside an immense queue of people awaiting admission to the Porte St. Martin.

He was not aware of the procedure of lining up before the entrance-doors, and when one well up in the line offered to sell him his place for twenty sous—held since midday—Dumas willingly paid it, and, not knowing that it did not include admission to the performance, was exceedingly distraught when the time came to actually pay for places. This may seem a simple matter in a later day, and to us who have become familiar with similar conditions in Paris and elsewhere; but it serves to show the guilelessness of Dumas, and his little regard for business procedure of any sort.

The incident is continued in his own words, to the effect that he “finally purchased a bit of pasteboard that once had been white, which I presented to the check-taker and received in return another of red.... My appearance in the amphitheatre of the house must have been astonishing. I was the very latest Villers-Cotterets fashion, but a revolution had taken place in Paris which had not yet reached my native place. My hair was long, and, being frizzled, it formed a gigantic aureole around my head. I was received with roars of laughter.... I dealt the foremost scoffer a vigorous slap in the face, and said, at the same time, ‘My name is Alexandre Dumas. For to-morrow, I am staying at the Hôtel des Vieux-Augustins, and after that at No. 1 Place des Italiens.’”

By some incomprehensible means Dumas was hustled out of the theatre and on to the sidewalk—for disturbing the performance, though the performance had not yet begun. He tried his luck again, however, and this time bought a place at two francs fifty centimes.

Every visitor to Paris has recognized the preëminence of the “Opera” as a social institution. The National Opera, or the Théâtre Impérial de l’Opéra, as it was originally known, in the Rue Lepelletier, just off the Boulevard des Italiens, was the progenitor of the splendid establishment which now terminates the westerly end of the Avenue de l’Opera. The more ancient “Grand Opera” was uncontestably the most splendid, the most pompous, and the most influential of its contemporary institutions throughout Europe.

The origin of the “Grand Opera” was as remote as the times of Anne of Austria, who, it will be recalled, had a most passionate regard for musique and spectacle, and Mazarin caused to be brought from Italy musicians who represented before the queen “musical pieces” which proved highly successful.

Later, in 1672, Louis XIV. accorded the privilege of the Opera to Lulli, a distinguished musician of Florence, and the theatre of the Palais Royal was ceded to the uses of Académie de Musique.

After the fire of 1763, the Opera was transferred to the Tuileries, but removed again, because of another fire, to the Porte St. Martin, where it remained until 1794, when it was transferred to a new house which had been constructed for it in the Rue Richelieu.

Again in 1820 it was removed to a new establishment, which had been erected on the site of the former Hôtel de Choiseul.

This house had accommodations for but two thousand spectators, and, in spite of its sumptuousness and rank, was distinctly inferior in point of size to many opera-houses and theatres elsewhere.

Up to this time the management had been governed after the manner of the old régime, “by three gentlemen of the king’s own establishment, in concurrence with the services of a working director,” and the royal privy purse was virtually responsible for the expenses. Louis-Philippe astutely shifted the responsibility to the public exchequer.

In 1831, Dr. Louis Véron, the founder of the Revue de Paris,—since supplanted by the Revue des Deux Mondes,—became the manager and director. Doctor Véron has been called as much the quintessence of the life of Paris of the first half of the nineteenth century as was Napoleon I. of the history of France.

Albert Vandam, the author of “An Englishman in Paris,” significantly enough links Véron’s name in his recollections with that of Dumas, except that he places Dumas first.

“Robert le Diable” and Taglioni made Véron’s success and his fortune, though he himself was a master of publicity. From 1831 onward, during Véron’s incumbency, the newspapers contained column after column of the “puff personal,” not only with respect to Véron himself, but down through the galaxy of singers and dancers to the veriest stage-carpenter, scenic artist, and call-boy.

The modern managers have advanced somewhat upon these premature efforts; but then the art was in its infancy, and, as Véron himself was a journalist and newspaper proprietor, he probably well understood the gentle art of exchanging favouring puffs of one commodity for those of another.

These were the days of the first successes of Meyerbeer, Halévy, Auber, and Duprez; of Taglioni, who danced herself into a nebula of glory, and later into a shadow which inspired the spiteful critics into condemnation of her waning power.

It has been said that Marie Taglioni was by no means a good-looking woman. Indeed, she must have been decidedly plain. Her manners, too, were apparently not affable, and “her reception of Frenchmen was freezing to a degree—when she thawed it was to Russians, Englishmen, or Viennese.” “One of her shoulders was higher than the other, she limped slightly, and, moreover, waddled like a duck.” Clearly a stage setting was necessary to show off her charms. She was what the French call “une pimbêche.”

The architectural effect produced by the exterior of this forerunner of the present opera was by no means one of monumental splendour. Its architect, Debret, was scathingly criticized for its anomalies. A newspaper anecdote of the time recounts the circumstance of a provincial who, upon asking his way thither, was met with the direction, “That way—the first large gateway on your right.”

Near by was the establishment of the famous Italian restaurateur, Paolo Broggi, the resort of many singers, and the Estaminet du Divan, a sort of humble counterpart of the Café Riche or the Café des Anglais, but which proclaimed a much more literary atmosphere than many of the bigger establishments on the boulevards. Vandam relates of this house of call that “it is a positive fact that the garçon would ask, ‘Does monsieur desire Sue’s or Dumas’ feuilleton with his café?’”

Of the Opera which was burned in 1781, Dumas, in “The Queen’s Necklace,” has a chapter devoted to “Some Words about the Opera.” It is an interesting, albeit a rather superfluous, interpolation in a romance of intrigue and adventure:

“The Opera, that temple of pleasure at Paris, was burned in the month of June, 1781. Twenty persons had perished in the ruins; and, as it was the second time within eighteen years that this had happened, it created a prejudice against the place where it then stood, in the Palais Royal, and the king had ordered its removal to a less central spot. The place chosen was La Porte St. Martin.

“The king, vexed to see Paris deprived for so long of its Opera, became as sorrowful as if the arrivals of grain had ceased, or bread had risen to more than seven sous the quartern loaf. It was melancholy to see the nobility, the army, and the citizens without their after-dinner amusement; and to see the promenades thronged with the unemployed divinities, from the chorus-singers to the prima donnas.

“An architect was then introduced to the king, full of new plans, who promised so perfect a ventilation, that even in case of fire no one could be smothered. He would make eight doors for exit, besides five large windows placed so low that any one could jump out of them. In the place of the beautiful hall of Moreau he was to erect a building with ninety-six feet of frontage toward the boulevard, ornamented with eight caryatides on pillars forming three entrance-doors, a bas-relief above the capitals, and a gallery with three windows. The stage was to be thirty-six feet wide, the theatre seventy-two feet deep and eighty across, from one wall to the other. He asked only seventy-five days and nights before he opened it to the public.

“This appeared to all a mere gasconade, and was much laughed at. The king, however, concluded the agreement with him. Lenoir set to work, and kept his word. But the public feared that a building so quickly erected could not be safe, and when it opened no one would go.

“Even the few courageous ones who did go to the first representation of ‘Adele de Ponthieu’ made their wills first. The architect was in despair. He came to the king to consult him as to what was to be done.

“It was just after the birth of the dauphin; all Paris was full of joy. The king advised him to announce a gratuitous performance in honour of the event, and give a ball after. Doubtless plenty would come, and if the theatre stood, its safety was established.

“‘Thanks, Sire,’ said the architect.

“‘But reflect, first,’ said the king, ‘if there be a crowd, are you sure of your building?’

“‘Sire, I am sure, and shall go there myself.’

“‘I will go to the second representation,’ said the king.

“The architect followed this advice. They played ‘Adele de Ponthieu’ to three thousand spectators, who afterward danced. After this there could be no more fear.”

It was three years after that Madame and the cardinal went to the celebrated ball, the account of which follows in the subsequent chapter of the romance.

Dumas as a dramatist was not so very different from Dumas the novelist. When he first came to Paris the French stage was by no means at a low and stagnant ebb—at least, it was not the thin, watery concoction that many English writers would have us believe; and, furthermore, the world’s great dramatist—Shakespeare—had been and was still influencing and inspiring the French playwright and actor alike.

It was the “Hamlet” of Ducis—a very French Hamlet, but still Hamlet—and the memory of an early interview with Talma that first set fire to the fuel of the stage-fever which afterward produced Dumas the dramatist.

Dumas was not always truthful, or, at least, correct, in his facts, but he did not offend exceedingly, and he was plausible; as much so, at any rate, as Scott, who had erred to the extent of fifteen years in his account of the death of Amy Robsart.

In 1824 was born Alexandre Dumas fils, and at this time the parent was collaborating with Soulié in an attempted, but unfinished, dramatization of Scott’s “Old Mortality.”

By 1830, after he had left official work, Dumas had produced that drama of the Valois, “Henri III.,” at the Théâtre Français, where more than a century before Voltaire had produced his first play, “Œdipe,” and where the “Hernani” of Victor Hugo had just been produced.

It was a splendid and gorgeous event, and the adventures of the Duchesse de Guise, St. Mégrin, Henri III. and his satellites proved to the large and distinguished audience present no inconspicuous element in the success of the future king of romance. It was a veritable triumph, and for the time the author was more talked of and better known than was Hugo, who had already entered the arena, but whose assured fame scarcely dates from before “Hernani,” whose first presentation—though it was afterward performed over three hundred times in the same theatre—was in February of the same year.

Voltaire had been dead scarce a half-century, but already the dust lay thick on his dramatic works, and the world of Paris was looking eagerly forward to the achievements of the new school. One cannot perhaps claim for Dumas that he was in direct lineage of Shakespeare,—as was claimed for Hugo, and with some merit,—but he was undoubtedly one of the first of the race of the popular French playwrights whose fame is perpetuated to-day by Sardou. At any rate, it was a classic struggle which was inaugurated in France—by literature and the drama—in the early half of the nineteenth century, and one which was a frank rebellion against the rigid rules by which their arts had been restrained—especially dramatic art.

D’ARTAGNAN
From the Dumas Statue by Gustave Doré

With all due credit, then, to Hugo, it was Dumas who led the romanticists through the breach that was slowly opening; though at the same time one may properly enough recall the names of Alfred de Musset, Theophile Gautier, and Gerard de Nerval.

Dumas’ next play was in “classical form”—“Christine.”

Mere chance brought Dumas into an acquaintance with the history of Christine of Sweden, and, though the play was written and accepted before “Henri III. et Sa Cour,” it was not until some time later that it was produced at the Odéon; the recollection of which also brings up the name of Mlle. Mars.

The statue in Paris in the Place Malesherbes, erected to the memory of Dumas, has been highly commended in conception and execution. It was the work of Gustave Doré, and, truth to tell, it has some wonderfully effective sculptures in bronze. A group of three symbolical figures en face, and a lifelike and life-sized representation of the courageous D’Artagnan d’arrière. These details are charming when reproduced on paper by process of photography or the hand of an artist. Indeed, they are of much the same quality when viewed as details, but in the ensemble, combined with a cold, inartistic base or pedestal, which is crowned by a seated effigy of Dumas—also life-size—clad in the unlovely raiment of the latter nineteenth century, there is much to be desired.

Statues, be they bronze or marble, are often artistically successful when their figures are covered with picturesque mediæval garments, but they are invariably a failure, in an artistic sense, when clothed in latter-day garb. Doublet and hose, and sword and cloak lend themselves unmistakably to artistic expression. Trousers and top-hats do not. Just back of the Place Malesherbes is the Avenue de Villiers—a street of fine houses, many of them studio apartments, of Paris’s most famous artists. Here at No. 94 lived Alexandre Dumas during the later years of his life; so it is fitting that his monument should be placed in this vicinity. The house was afterward occupied by Dumas fils, and more lately by his widow, but now it has passed into other hands.

Of interest to Americans is the fact which has been recorded by some one who was au courant with Parisian affairs of the day, “that the United States Minister to France, Mr. John Bigelow, breakfasted with Dumas at St. Gratien, near Paris,” when it came out that he (Dumas) had a notion to go out to America as a war correspondent for the French papers; the Civil War was not then over. Unhappily for all of us, he did not go, and so a truly great book was lost to the world.

In this same connection it has been said that Dumas’ “quadroon autographs” were sold in the United States, to provide additional funds for the widows and orphans of slain abolitionists. As it is apocryphally said that they sold for a matter of a hundred and twenty dollars each, the sum must have reached considerable proportions, if their number was great.

CHAPTER VI.

OLD PARIS

The Paris of Dumas was Méryon’s—though it is well on toward a half-century since either of them saw it. Hence it is no longer theirs; but the master romancer and the master etcher had much in common.

They both drew with a fine, free hand, the one in words that burn themselves in the memory, and the other in lines which, once bitten on the copper plate, are come down to us in indelible fashion. The mention of Méryon and his art is no mere rambling of the pen. Like that of Dumas, his art depicted those bold, broad impressions which rebuilt “old Paris” in a manner which is only comparable to the background which Dumas gave to “Les Trois Mousquetaires.”

The iconoclastic Haussman caused much to disappear, and it is hard to trace the footsteps of many a character of history and romance, whose incomings and outgoings are otherwise very familiar to us.

There are many distinct cities which go to make up Paris itself, each differing from the other, but Dumas and Méryon drew them each and all with unerring fidelity: Dumas the University Quarter and the faubourgs in “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” and Méryon the Cité in “The Stryge.”

The sheer beauty and charm of old-world Paris was never more strongly suggested than in the work of these two masters, who have given a permanence to the abodes of history and romance which would otherwise have been wanting. It is a pleasurable occupation to hunt up the dwellings of those personages who may, or may not, have lived in the real flesh and blood. The mere fact that they lived in the pages of a Dumas—or for that matter of a Balzac or a Hugo—is excuse enough for most of us to seek to follow in their footsteps.

In spite of the splendour of the present and the past, Paris is by no means too great to prevent one’s tracing its old outlines, streets, and landmarks, even though they have disappeared to-day, and the site of the famous Hôtel Chevreuse or the Carmelite establishment in the Rue Vaugirard—against whose wall D’Artagnan and his fellows put up that gallant fight against the cardinal’s guard—are in the same geographical positions that they always were, if their immediate surroundings have changed, as they assuredly have.

Indeed, the sturdy wall which kept the Carmelite friars from contact with the outer world has become a mere hoarding for gaudily coloured posters, and the magnificent Hôtel Chevreuse on the Boulevard St. Germain has been incorporated into a modern apartment-house, and its garden cut through by the Boulevard Raspail.

The destruction of “Old Paris”—the gabled, half-timbered, mediæval city—is not only an artistic regret, but a personal one to all who know intimately the city’s history and romance. It was inevitable, of course, but it is deplorable.

Méryon, too, like Dumas, etched details with a certain regard for effect rather than a colder preciseness, which could hardly mean so much as an impression of a mood. They both sought the picturesque element, and naturally imparted to everything modern with which they came into contact the same charm of reality which characterized the tangible results of their labours.

Nothing was left to chance, though much may—we have reason to think—have been spontaneous. The witchery of a picturesque impression is ever great, but the frequency of its occurrence is growing less and less.

To-day we have few romancers, few painters or etchers of fleeting moods or impressions, and are fast becoming schooled in the tenets of Zola and Baudry, to the glorification of realism, but to the death and deep burial of the far more healthy romanticism of the masters of a few generations since.

To the Roman occupation of Paris succeeded that of the Franks, and Clovis, son of Childérie and grandson of Merovée, after his conversion to Christianity at Reims, established the seat of his empire at Paris.

Childebert, the descendant of Clovis,—who had taken unto himself the title King of Paris,—in 524 laid the foundation of the first Église de Notre Dame.

The kings of the second race lived in Paris but little, and under the feeble successors of Charlemagne the city became the particular domain of the hereditary counts. In the year 845 the Normans came up the river by boat and razed all of that part known even to-day as La Cité, hence the extreme improbability of there being existing remains of an earlier date than this, which are to-day recognizable. After successive disasters and invasions, it became necessary that new quartiers and new streets should be formed and populated, and under the reign of Louis VII. the walls were extended to include, on the right bank, Le Bourg l’Abbé, Le Bourg Thibourg, Le Beau-Bourg, Le Bourg St. Martin,—regions which have since been occupied by the Rues St. Martin, Beaubourg, Bourtebourg, and Bourg l’Abbé,—and, on the right bank, St. Germain des Prés, St. Victor, and St. Michel.

Since this time Paris has been divided into three distinct parts: La Ville, to the north of the Seine, La Cité, in the centre, and L’Université, in the south.

The second enceinte did not long suffice to enclose the habitations of the people, and in the year 1190 Philippe-Auguste constructed the third wall, which was strengthened by five hundred towers and surrounded by a deep fosse, perpetuated to-day as the Rempart des Fosses. At this time the first attempts were made at paving the city streets, principally at the instigation of the wealthy Gérard de Poissy, whose name has since been given to an imposing street on the south bank.

Again, in 1356, the famous Etienne Marcel commenced the work of the fourth enceinte. On the south, the walls were not greatly extended, but on the north they underwent a considerable aggrandizement. Fortified gateways were erected at the extremity of the Rue de St. Antoine, and others were known variously as the Porte du Temple and Porte St. Denis. Other chief features of the time—landmarks one may call them—were the Porte St. Honoré, which was connected with the river-bank by a prolonged wall, the Tour du Bois, and a new fortification—as a guardian against internal warfare, it would seem—at the upper end of the Ile de la Cité.

Toward the end of the reign of Louis XI. the city had become repeopled, after many preceding years of flood, ravage, and famine, and contained, it is said, nearly three hundred thousand souls.

From this reign, too, dates the establishment of the first printing-shop in Paris, the letter-post, and the poste-chaise. Charles VII., the son of Louis XI., united with the Bibliothèque Royal those of the Kings of Naples.

Louis XII., who followed, did little to beautify the city, but his parental care for the inhabitants reduced the income of the tax-gatherer and endeared his name to all as the Père du Peuple.

François I.—whose glorious name as the instigator of much that has since become national in French art—considerably enlarged the fortifications on the west, and executed the most momentous embellishments which had yet taken place in the city. In public edifices he employed, or caused his architects to employ, the Greek orders, and the paintings by Italian hands and the sculptures of Goujon were the highest expressions of the art of the Renaissance, which had grown so abundantly from the seed sown by Charles VIII. upon his return from his wanderings in Italy.

It may be questioned if the art of the Renaissance is really beautiful; it is, however, undeniably effective in its luxuriant, if often ill-assorted, details; so why revile it here? It was the prime cause, more than all others put together, of the real adornment of Paris; and, in truth, was far more successful in the application of its principles here than elsewhere.

During the reign of François I. were built, or rebuilt, the great Églises de St. Gervais, St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and St. Merry, as well as the Hôtel de Ville. The Louvre was reconstructed on a new plan, and the Faubourg St. Germain was laid out anew.

Under Henri II. the work on the Louvre was completed, and the Hôpital des Petites Maisons constructed. It was Henri II., too, who first ordained that the effigies of the kings should be placed upon all coins.

The principal edifices built under Charles IX. were the Palais des Tuileries, Hôtel de Soissons, the Jesuit College, and the Hôpital du St. Jacques du Haut Pas.

Henri III. erected the church of the Jesuits in the Rue St. Antoine, the Église de St. Paul et St. Louis, the Monastère des Feuillants, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and the Théâtre Italien.

Under Henri IV. was achieved the Pont Neuf, whose centre piers just impinge upon the lower end of the Ile de la Cité; the Quais de l’Arsenal, de l’Horloge, des Orphelins, de l’Ecole, de la Mégisserie, de Conti, and des Augustins; la Place Dauphine, and the Rue Dauphine. The Place Royale came to replace—in the Quartier du Marais—the old Palais des Tournelles, the pleasure of so many kings, François I. in particular.

Louis XIII., the feeble king who reigned without governing, saw many improvements, which, however, grew up in spite of the monarch rather than because of him.

There was a general furbishing up of the streets and quais. Marie de Medicis built the Palais du Luxembourg and planted the Cours la Reine; many new bridges were constructed and new monuments set up, among others the Palais Royal, at this time called the Palais Cardinal; the Église St. Roch; the Oratoire; le Val-de-Grace; les Madelonnettes; la Salpêtrièré; the Sorbonne, and the Jardin des Plantes. Many public places were also decorated with statues: the effigy of Henri IV. was placed on the Pont Neuf, and of Louis XII. in the Place Royale.

By this time the population had overflowed the walls of Philippe-Auguste, already enlarged by François I., and Louis XIV. overturned their towers and ramparts, and filled their fosses, believing that a strong community needed no such protections.

These ancient fortifications were replaced by the boulevards which exist even unto to-day—not only in Paris, but in most French towns and cities—unequalled elsewhere in all the world.

Up to the reign of Louis XIV. the population of Paris had, for the most part, been lodged in narrow, muddy streets, which had subjected them to many indescribable discomforts. Meanwhile, during the glorious reign of Louis XIV., Paris achieved great extension of area and splendour; many new streets were opened in the different quartiers, others were laid out anew or abolished altogether, more than thirty churches were built,—“all highly beautiful,” say the guide-books. But they are not: Paris churches taken together are a decidedly mixed lot, some good in parts and yet execrable in other parts, and many even do not express any intimation whatever of good architectural forms.

PONT NEUF.—PONT AU CHANGE

The Pont au Change was rebuilt, and yet four other bridges were made necessary to permit of better circulation between the various faubourgs and quartiers.

To the credit of Louis XIV. must also be put down the Hôtel des Invalides, the Observatoire, the magnificent colonnade of the Louvre, the Pont Royal, the Collège des Quatre Nations, the Bibliothèque Royale, numerous fountains and statues, the royal glass, porcelain, and tapestry manufactories, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and the Boulevards St. Denis and St. Martin.

Saint Foix (in his “Essais sur Paris”) has said that it was Louis XIV. who first gave to the reign of a French monarch the éclat of grandeur and magnificence, not only for his court, but for his capital and his people.

Under the succeeding reign of Louis XV. the beautifying of Paris took another flight. On the place which first bore the name of the monarch himself, but which is to-day known as the Place de la Concorde, were erected a pair of richly decorated monuments which quite rivalled in achievement the superb colonnaded Louvre of the previous reign, the Champs Elysées were replanted, the École Militaire, the École de Droit, and the Hôtel de la Monnaie were erected, and still other additional boulevards and magnificent streets were planned out.

A new church came into being with St. Genevieve, which afterward became the Panthéon.

The reign following saw the final achievement of all these splendid undertakings; then came the Revolution, that political terror which would have upset all established institutions; and if Paris, the city of splendid houses, did not become merely a cemetery of tombs, it was not because maniacal fanaticism and fury were lacking.

Religious, civic, and military establishments were razed, demolished, or burnt, regardless of their past associations or present artistic worth.

In a way, however, these sacrilegious demolitions gave cause to much energetic rebuilding and laying out of the old city anew, in the years immediately succeeding the period of the Revolution, which as an historical event has no place in this book other than mere mention, as it may have been referred to by Dumas.

It was Napoleon who undertook the rehabilitation of Paris, with an energy and foresight only equalled by his prowess as a master of men.

He occupied himself above all with what the French themselves would call those monuments et decorations utiles, as might be expected of his abilities as an organizer. The canal from the river Ourcq through La Villette to the Seine was, at the Fosses de la Bastille, cleared and emptied of its long stagnant waters; abattoirs were constructed in convenient places, in order to do away with the vast herds of cattle which for centuries had been paraded through the most luxurious of the city’s streets; new markets were opened, and numerous fountains and watering-troughs were erected in various parts of the city; four new and ornate bridges were thrown across the Seine, the magnificent Rues Castiglione and de la Paix, extending from the Tuileries to the interior boulevards, were opened up; the Place Vendome was then endowed with its bronze column, which stands to-day; the splendid and utile Rue de Rivoli was made beside the garden of the Tuileries (it has since been prolonged to the Hôtel de Ville).

Napoleon also founded the Palais de la Bourse (1808), and caused to be erected a superb iron grille which should separate the Place du Carrousel from the Tuileries.

Under the Restoration little happened with regard to the beautifying and aggrandizing of the city, though certain improvements of a purely economic and social nature made their own way.

The literature and art of Dumas and his compeers were making such sturdy progress as to give Paris that preëminence in these finer elements of life, which, before or since, has not been equalled elsewhere.

Since the Revolution of 1830 have been completed the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile (commenced by Napoleon I.), the Église de la Madeleine, the fine hotel of the Quai d’Orsay, the Palais des Beaux Arts, the restoration of the Chambre des Députés (the old Palais Bourbon), and the statues set up in the Place de la Concorde; though it is only since the ill-starred Franco-Prussian affaire of 1871 that Strasbourg’s doleful figure has been buried in jet and alabaster sentiments, so dear to the Frenchman of all ranks, as an outward expression of grief.

At the commencement of the Second Empire the fortifications, as they then existed, possessed a circumference of something above thirty-three kilometres—approximately nineteen miles. The walls are astonishingly thick, and their fossés wide and deep. The surrounding exterior forts “de distance en distance” are a unique feature of the general scheme of defence, and played, as it will be recalled, no unimportant part in the investiture of the city by the Germans in the seventies.

A French writer of the early days of the last Empire says: “These new fortifications are in their ensemble a gigantic work.” They are, indeed—though, in spite of their immensity, they do not impress the lay observer even as to impregnability as do the wonderful walls and ramparts of Carcassonne, or dead Aigues-Mortes in the Midi of France; those wonderful somnolent old cities of a glorious past, long since departed.

The fortifications of Paris, however, are a wonderfully utile thing, and must ever have an unfathomable interest for all who have followed their evolution from the restricted battlements of the early Roman city.

The Parisian has, perhaps, cause to regret that these turf-covered battlements somewhat restrict his “promenades environnantes,” but what would you? Once outside, through any of the gateways, the Avenue de la Grande Armée,—which is the most splendid,—or the Porte du Canal de l’Ourcq,—which is the least luxurious, though by no means is it unpicturesque; indeed, it has more of that variable quality, perhaps, than any other,—one comes into the charm of the French countryside; that is, if he knows in which direction to turn. At any rate, he comes immediately into contact with a life which is quite different from any phase which is to be seen within the barrier.

From the Revolution of 1848 to the first years of the Second Empire, which ought properly to be treated by itself,—and so shall be,—there came into being many and vast demolitions and improvements.

Paris was a vast atelier of construction, where agile minds conceived, and the artisan and craftsman executed, monumental glories and improvements which can only be likened to the focusing of the image upon the ground glass.

The prolongation of the Rue de Rivoli was put through; the Boulevards Sebastopol, Malesherbes,—where in the Place Malesherbes is that appealing monument to Dumas by Gustave Doré,—du Prince Eugène, St. Germain, Magenta, the Rue des Écoles, and many others. All of which tended to change the very face and features of the Paris the world had known hitherto.

The “Caserne Napoleon” had received its guests, and the Tour St. Jacques, from which point of vantage the “clerk of the weather” to-day prognosticates for Paris, had been restored. Magnificent establishments of all sorts and ranks had been built, the Palais de l’Industrie (since razed) had opened its doors to the work of all nations, in the exhibition of 1855.

Of Paris, one may well concentrate one’s estimate in five words: “Each epoch has been rich,” also prolific, in benefits, intentions, and creations of all manner of estimable and admirable achievements.

By favour of these efforts of all the reigns and governments which have gone before, the Paris of to-day in its architectural glories, its monuments in stone, and the very atmosphere of its streets, places, and boulevards, is assuredly the most marvellous of all the cities of Europe.

It may not be an exceedingly pleasant subject, but there is, and always has been, a certain fascination about a visit to a cemetery which ranks, in the minds of many well-informed and refined persons, far above even the contemplation of great churches themselves.

It may be a morbid taste, or it may not. Certainly there seems to be no reason why a considerable amount of really valuable facts might not be impressed upon the retina of a traveller who should do the round of Campos Santos, Cimetières and burial-grounds in various lands.

In this respect, as in many others, Paris leads the way for sheer interest in its tombs and sepulchres, at Montmartre and Père la Chaise.

In no other burial-ground in the world—unless it be Mount Auburn, near Boston, where, if the world-wide name and fame of those there buried are not so great as those at Paris, their names are at least as much household words to English-speaking folk, as are those of the old-world resting-place to the French themselves—are to be found so many celebrated names.

There are a quartette of these famous resting-places at Paris which, since the coming of the nineteenth century, have had an absorbing interest for the curiously inclined. Père la Chaise, Montmartre, the royal sepulchres in the old abbey church of St. Denis, and the churchyard of St. Innocents.

“Man,” said Sir Thomas Brown, “is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.” Why this should be so, it is not the province of this book to explain, nor even to justify the gorgeous and ill-mannered monuments which are often erected over his bones.

PORTRAIT OF HENRY IV.

The catacombs of Paris are purposely ignored here, as appealing to a special variety of morbidity which is as unpleasant to deal with and to contemplate as are snakes preserved in spirit, and as would be—were we allowed to see them—the sacred human reliques which are preserved, even to-day, at various pilgrims’ shrines throughout the Christian world. That vast royal sepulchre of the abbey church of St. Denis, which had been so outrageously despoiled by the decree of the Convention in 1793, was in a measure set to rights by Louis XVIII., when he caused to be returned from the Petits Augustins, now the Palais des Beaux Arts, and elsewhere, such of the monuments as had not been actually destroyed. The actual spoliation of these shrines belongs to an earlier day than that of which this book deals.

The history of it forms as lurid a chapter as any known to the records of riot and sacrilege in France; and the more the pity that the motion of Barrere (“La main puissante de la République doit effacer inpitoyablement ces epitaphes”) to destroy these royal tombs should have had official endorsement.

The details of these barbarous exhumations were curious, but not edifying; the corpse of Turenne was exhibited around the city; Henri IV.—“his features still being perfect”—was kicked and bunted about like a football; Louis XIV. was found in a perfect preservation, but entirely black; Louis VIII. had been sewed up in a leather sack; and François I. and his family “had become much decayed;” so, too, with many of the later Bourbons.

In general these bodies were deposited in a common pit, which had been dug near the north entrance to the abbey, and thus, for the first time in the many centuries covered by the period of their respected demises, their dust was to mingle in a common blend, and all factions were to become one.

Viollet-le-Duc, at the instruction of Napoleon III., set up again, following somewhat an approximation of the original plan, the various monuments which had been so thoroughly scattered, and which, since their return to the old abbey, had been herded together without a pretence at order in the crypt.

Paris had for centuries been wretchedly supplied with cimetières. For long one only had existed, that of the churchyard of St. Innocents’, originally a piece of the royal domain lying without the walls, and given by one of the French kings as a burial-place for the citizens, when interments within the city were forbidden.

It has been calculated that from the time of Philippe-Auguste over a million bodies had been interred in these fosses communes.

In 1785 the Council of State decreed that the cemetery should be cleared of its dead and converted into a market-place. Cleared it was not, but it has since become a market-place, and the waters of the Fontaine des Innocents filter briskly through the dust of the dead of ages.

Sometime in the early part of the nineteenth century the funeral undertakings of Paris were conducted on a sliding scale of prices, ranging from four thousand francs in the first class, to as low as sixteen francs for the very poor; six classes in all.

This law-ordered tarif would seem to have been a good thing for posterity to have perpetuated.

The artisan or craftsman who fashions the funeral monuments of Paris has a peculiar flight of fancy all his own; though, be it said, throughout the known world, funeral urns and monuments have seldom or never been beautiful, graceful, or even austere or dignified: they have, in fact, mostly been shocking travesties of the ideals and thoughts they should have represented.

It is remarkable that the French architect and builder, who knows so well how to design and construct the habitation of living man, should express himself so badly in his bizarre funeral monuments and the tawdry tinsel wreaths and flowers of their decorations.

An English visitor to Paris in the thirties deplored the fact that her cemeteries should be made into mere show-places, and perhaps rightly enough. At that time they served as a fashionable and polite avenue for promenades, and there was (perhaps even is to-day) a guide-book published of them, and, since grief is paradoxically and proverbially dry, there was always a battery of taverns and drinking-places flanking their entrances.

It was observed by a writer in a Parisian journal of that day that “in the Cimetière du Montmartre—which was the deposit for the gay part of the city—nine tombs out of ten were to the memory of persons cut off in their youth; but that in Père la Chaise—which served principally for the sober citizens of Paris—nine out of ten recorded the ages of persons who had attained a good old age.”

CHAPTER VII.

WAYS AND MEANS OF COMMUNICATION

The means of communication in and about Paris in former days was but a travesty on the methods of the “Metropolitain,” which in our time literally whisks one like the wings of the morning, from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Vincennes, and from the Place de la Nation to the Trocadero.

In 1850 there were officially enumerated over twenty-eight hundred boulevards, avenues, rues, and passages, the most lively being St. Honoré, Richelieu, Vivienne, Castiglione, de l’Université,—Dumas lived here at No. 25, in a house formerly occupied by Chateaubriand, now the Magazin St. Thomas,—de la Chaussée d’Antin, de la Paix, de Grenelle, de Bac, St. Denis, St. Martin, St. Antoine, and, above all, the Rue de Rivoli,—with a length of nearly three miles, distinguished at its westerly end by its great covered gallery, where the dwellings above are carried on a series of 287 arcades, flanked by boutiques, not very sumptuous to-day, to be sure, but even now a promenade of great popularity. At No. 22 Rue de Rivoli, near the Rue St. Roch, Dumas himself lived from 1838 to 1843.

There were in those days more than a score of passages, being for the most part a series of fine galleries, in some instances taking the form of a rotunda, glass-covered, and surrounded by shops with appartements above. The most notable were those known as the Panoramas Jouffroy, Vivienne, Colbert, de l’Opera, Delorme, du Saumon, etc.

There were more than a hundred squares, or places—most of which remain to-day. The most famous on the right bank of the Seine are de la Concorde, Vendome, du Carrousel, du Palais Royal, des Victoires, du Châtelet, de l’Hôtel de Ville, Royale, des Vosges, and de la Bastille; on the left bank, du Panthéon, de St. Sulpice, du Palais Bourbon. Most of these radiating centres of life are found in Dumas’ pages, the most frequent mention being in the D’Artagnan and Valois romances.

Among the most beautiful and the most frequented thoroughfares were—and are—the tree-bordered quais, and, of course, the boulevards.

The interior boulevards were laid out at the end of the seventeenth century on the ancient ramparts of the city, and extended from the Madeleine to La Bastille, a distance of perhaps three miles. They are mostly of a width of thirty-two metres (105 feet).

This was the boulevard of the time par excellence, and its tree-bordered allées—sidewalks and roadways—bore, throughout its comparatively short length, eleven different names, often changing meanwhile as it progressed its physiognomy as well.

On the left bank, the interior boulevard was extended from the Jardin des Plantes to the Hôtel des Invalides; while the “boulevards extérieurs” formed a second belt of tree-shaded thoroughfares of great extent.

Yet other boulevards of ranking greatness cut the rues and avenues tangently, now from one bank and then from the other; the most splendid of all being the Avenue de l’Opéra, which, however, did not come into being until well after the middle of the century. Among these are best recalled Sébastopol, St. Germain, St. Martin, Magenta, Malesherbes, and others. The Place Malesherbes, which intersects the avenue, now contains the celebrated Dumas memorial by Doré, and the neighbouring thoroughfare was the residence of Dumas from 1866 to 1870.

Yet another class of thoroughfares, while conceived previous to the chronological limits which the title puts upon this book, were the vast and splendid promenades and rendezvous, with their trees, flowers, and fountains; such as the gardens of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg, the Champs Elysées, the Esplanade des Invalides, and the Bois de Boulogne and de Vincennes.

Dibdin tells of his entrée into Paris in the early days of the nineteenth century, having journeyed by “malle-poste” from Havre, in the pages of his memorable bibliographical tour.

His observations somewhat antedate the Paris of Dumas and his fellows, but changes came but slowly, and therein may be found a wealth of archæological and topographical information concerning the French metropolis; though he does compare, detrimentally, the panorama of Paris which unrolls from the heights of Passy, to that of London from Highgate Woods.

On the contrary, his impressions change after passing the barriers. “Nothing in London,” says he, “can enter into comparison with the imposing spectacle which is presented by the magnificent Champs Elysées, with the Château of the Tuileries en face, and to the right the superb dome of the Invalides glistening in the rays of the setting sun.”

Paris had at this time 2,948 “voitures de louage,” which could be hired for any journey to be made within reasonable distance; and eighty-three which were run only on predetermined routes, as were the later omnibuses and tram-cars. These 2,948 carriages were further classified as follows; 900 fiacres; 765 cabriolets, circulating in the twelve interior arrondissements; 406 cabriolets for the exterior; 489 carrosses de remise (livery-coaches), and 388 cabriolets de remise.

The préfet de police, Count Anglès, had received from one Godot, an entrepreneur,—a sort of early edition of what we know to-day as a company promoter,—a proposition to establish a line of omnibuses along the quais and boulevards. Authorization for the scheme was withheld for the somewhat doubtful reason that “the constant stoppage of the vehicles to set down and take up passengers would greatly embarrass other traffic;” and so a new idea was still-born into the world, to come to life only in 1828, when another received the much coveted authority to make the experiment.

Already such had been established in Bordeaux and Nantes, by an individual by the name of Baudry, and he it was who obtained the first concession in Paris.

The first line inaugurated was divided into two sections: Rue de Lancry—Madeleine, and Rue de Lancry—Bastille.

It is recorded that the young—but famous—Duchesse de Berry was the first to take passage in these “intramural diligences,” which she called “le carrosse des malheureux;” perhaps with some truth, if something of snobbishness.

There seems to have been a considerable difficulty in attracting a clientèle to this new means of communication. The public hesitated, though the prices of the places were decided in their favour, so much so that the enterprise came to an untimely end, or, at least, its founder did; for he committed suicide because of the non-instantaneous success of the scheme.

The concession thereupon passed into other hands, and there was created a new type of vehicle of sixteen places, drawn by two horses, and priced at six sous the place. The new service met with immediate, if but partial, success, and with the establishment of new routes, each served by carriages of a distinctive colour, its permanence was assured.

Then came the “Dames Blanches,”—the name being inspired by Boieldieu’s opera,—which made the journey between the Porte St. Martin and the Madeleine in a quarter of an hour. They were painted a cream white, and drawn by a pair of white horses, coiffed with white plumes.

After the establishment of the omnibus came other series of vehicles for public service: the “Ecossaises,” with their gaudily variegated colours, the “Carolines,” the “Bearnaises,” and the “Tricycles,” which ran on three wheels in order to escape the wheel-tax which obtained at the time.

In spite of the rapid multiplication of omnibus lines under Louis-Philippe, their veritable success came only with the ingenious system of transfers, or “la correspondance;” a system and a convenience whereby one can travel throughout Paris for the price of one fare. From this reason alone, perhaps, the omnibus and tram system of Paris is unexcelled in all the world. This innovation dates, moreover, from 1836, and, accordingly, is no new thing, as many may suppose.

Finally, more recently,—though it was during the Second Empire,—the different lines were fused under the title of the “Compagnie Générale des Omnibus.”

“La malle-poste” was an institution of the greatest importance to Paris, though of course no more identified with it than with the other cities of France between which it ran. It dated actually from the period of the Revolution, and grew, and was modified, under the Restoration. It is said that its final development came during the reign of Louis XVIII., and grew out of his admiration for the “élégance et la rapidité des malles anglaises,” which had been duly impressed upon him during his sojourn in England.

This may be so, and doubtless with some justification. En passant it is curious to know, and, one may say, incredible to realize, that from the G. P. O. in London, in this year of enlightenment, there leaves each night various mail-coaches—for Dover, for Windsor, and perhaps elsewhere. They do not carry passengers, but they do give a very bad service in the delivery of certain classes of mail matter. The marvel is that such things are acknowledged as being fitting and proper to-day.

In 1836 the “malle-poste” was reckoned, in Paris, as being élégante et rapide, having a speed of not less than sixteen kilometres an hour over give-and-take roads.

Each evening, from the courtyard of the Hôtel des Postes, the coaches left, with galloping horses and heavy loads, for the most extreme points of the frontier; eighty-six hours to Bordeaux at first, and finally only forty-four (in 1837); one hundred hours to Marseilles, later but sixty-eight.

GRAND BUREAU DE LA POSTE

Stendhal tells of his journey by “malle-poste” from Paris to Marseilles in three days, and Victor Hugo has said that two nights on the road gave one a high idea of the solidité of the human machine; and further says, of a journey down the Loire, that he recalled only a great tower at Orleans, a candlelit salle of an auberge en route, and, at Blois, a bridge with a cross upon it. “In reality, during the journey, animation was suspended.”

What we knew, or our forefathers knew, as the “poste-chaise,” properly “chaise de poste,” came in under the Restoration. All the world knows, or should know, Edouard Thierry’s picturesque description of it. “Le rêve de nos vingt ans, la voiture où l’on n’est que deux ... devant vous le chemin libre, la plaine, la pente rapide, le pont.” “You traverse cities and hamlets without number, by the grands rues, the grande place, etc.”

In April, 1837, Stendhal quitted Paris under exactly these conditions for his tour of France. He bought “une bonne calèche,” and left via Fontainebleau, Montargis, and Cosne. Two months after, however, he returned to the metropolis via Bourges, having refused to continue his journey en calèche, preferring the “malle-poste” and the diligence of his youth.

Public diligences, however, had but limited accommodation on grand occasions; Victor Hugo, who had been invited to the consecration of Charles X. at Reims, and his friend, Charles Nodier, the bibliophile,—also a friend of Dumas, it is recalled,—in company with two others, made the attempt amid much discomfort in a private carriage,—of a sort,—and Nodier wittily tells of how he and Hugo walked on foot up all the hills, each carrying his gripsack as well.

More than all others the “Coches d’Eau” are especially characteristic of Paris; those fly-boats, whose successors ply up and down the Seine, to the joy of Americans, the convenience of the Parisian public, and—it is surely allowable to say it—the disgust of Londoners, now that their aged and decrepit “Thames steamboats” are no more.

These early Parisian “Coches d’Eau” carried passengers up and down river for surprisingly low fares, and left the city at seven in the morning in summer, and eight in winter.

The following is a list of the most important routes:

All of these services catered for passengers and goods, and were, if not rapid, certainly a popular and comfortable means of communication.

An even more popular journey, and one which partook more particularly of a pleasure-trip, was that of the galiote, which left each day from below the Pont-Royal for St. Cloud, giving a day’s outing by river which to-day, even, is the most fascinating of the many petits voyages to be undertaken around Paris.

The other recognized public means of communication between the metropolis and the provincial towns and cities were the “Messageries Royales,” and two other similar companies, “La Compagne Lafitte et Caillard” and “Les Françaises.”

These companies put also before the Parisian public two other classes of vehicular accommodation, the “pataches suspendues,” small carriages with but one horse, which ran between Paris and Strasburg, Metz, Nancy, and Lyons at the price of ten sous per hour.

Again there was another means of travel which originated in Paris; it was known as the “Messageries à Cheval.” Travellers rode on horses, which were furnished by the company, their bagages being transported in advance by a “chariot.” In fine weather this must certainly have been an agreeable and romantic mode of travel in those days; what would be thought of it to-day, when one, if he does not fly over the kilometres in a Sud—or Orient—Express, is as likely as not covering the Route Nationale at sixty or more kilometres the hour in an automobile, it is doubtful to say.

Finally came the famous diligence, which to-day, outside the “Rollo” books and the reprints of old-time travel literature, is seldom met with in print.

“These immense structures,” says an observant French writer, “which lost sometimes their centre of gravity, in spite of all precaution and care on the part of the driver and the guard, were, by an Ordonnance Royale of the 16th of July, 1828, limited as to their dimensions, weight, and design.”

Each diligence carried as many spare parts as does a modern automobile, and workshops and supply-depots were situated at equal distances along the routes. Hugo said that the complexity of it all represented to him “the perfect image of a nation; its constitution and its government. In the diligence was to be found, as in the state, the aristocracy in the coupé, the bourgeoisie in the interior, the people in la rotonde, and, finally, ‘the artists, the thinkers, and the unclassed’ in the utmost height, the impériale, beside the conducteur, who represented the law of the state.

“This great diligence, with its body painted in staring yellow, and its five horses, carries one in a diminutive space through all the sleeping villages and hamlets of the countryside.”

From Paris, in 1830, the journey by diligence to Toulouse—182 French leagues—took eight days; to Rouen, thirteen hours; to Lyons, par Auxerre, four days, and to Calais, two and a half days.

The diligence was certainly an energetic mode of travel, but not without its discomforts, particularly in bad weather. Prosper Merimée gave up his winter journey overland to Madrid in 1859, and took ship at Bordeaux for Alicante in Spain, because, as he says, “all the inside places had been taken for a month ahead.”

The coming of the chemin de fer can hardly be dealt with here. Its advent is comparatively modern history, and is familiar to all.

Paris, as might naturally be supposed, was the hub from which radiated the great spokes of iron which bound the uttermost frontiers intimately with the capital.

There were three short lines of rail laid down in the provinces before Paris itself took up with the innovation: at Roanne, St. Etienne-Andrézieux, Epinac, and Alais.

By la loi du 9 Juillet, 1835, a line was built from Paris to St. Germain, seventeen kilometres, and its official opening for traffic, which took place two years later, was celebrated by a déjeuner de circonstance at the Restaurant du Pavillon Henri Quatre at St. Germain.

Then came “Le Nord” to Lille, Boulogne, and Calais; “L’Ouest” to Havre, Rouen, Cherbourg, and Brest; “L’Est” to Toul and Nancy; “L’Orleans” to Orleans and the Loire Valley; and, finally, the “P. L. M.” (Paris-Lyon et Méditerranée) to the south of France. “Then it was that Paris really became the rich neighbour of all the provincial towns and cities. Before, she had been a sort of pompous and distant relative”—as a whimsical Frenchman has put it.

The mutability of time and the advent of mechanical traction is fast changing all things—in France and elsewhere. The Chevaux Blancs, Deux Pigeons, Cloches d’Or, and the Hôtels de la Poste, de la Croix, and du Grand Cerf are fast disappearing from the large towns, and the way of iron is, or will be, a source of inspiration to the poets of the future, as has the postillon, the diligence, and the chaise de poste in the past. Here is a quatrain written by a despairing aubergiste of the little town of Salons, which indicates how the innovation was received by the provincials—in spite of its undeniable serviceability:

“En l’an neuf cent, machine lourde
A tretous farfit damne et mal,
Gens moult rioient d’icelle bourde,
Au campas renovoient cheval.”

The railways which centre upon Paris are indeed the ties that bind Paris to the rest of France, and vice versa. Their termini—the great gares—are at all times the very concentrated epitome of the life of the day.

The new gares of the P. L. M. and the Orleans railways are truly splendid and palatial establishments, with—at first glance—little of the odour of the railway about them, and much of the ceremonial appointments of a great civic institution; with gorgeous salles à manger, waiting-rooms, and—bearing the P. L. M. in mind in particular—not a little of the aspect of an art-gallery.

The other embarcadères are less up-to-date—that vague term which we twentieth-century folk are wont to make use of in describing the latest innovations. The Gare St. Lazare is an enormous establishment, with a hotel appendage, which of itself is of great size; the Gare du Nord is equally imposing, but architecturally unbeautiful; while the Gare de l’Est still holds in its tympanum the melancholy symbolical figure of the late lamented Ville de Strasbourg, the companion in tears, one may say, of that other funereally decorated statue on the Place de la Concorde.

Paris, too, is well served by her tramways propelled by horses,—which have not yet wholly disappeared,—and by steam and electricity, applied in a most ingenious manner. By this means Paris has indeed been transformed from its interior thoroughfares to its uttermost banlieu.

The last two words on the subject have reference to the advent and development of the bicycle and the automobile, as swift, safe, and economical means of transport.

The reign of the bicycle as a pure fad was comparatively short, whatever may have been its charm of infatuation. As a utile thing it is perhaps more worthy of consideration, for it cannot be denied that its development—and of its later gigantic offspring, the automobile—has had a great deal to do with the better construction and up-keep of modern roadways, whether urban or suburban.

“La petite reine bicyclette” has been fêted in light verse many times, but no one seems to have hit off its salient features as did Charles Monselet. Others have referred to riders of the “new means of locomotion” as “cads on casters,” and a writer in Le Gaulois stigmatized them as “imbéciles à roulettes,” which is much the same; while no less a personage than Francisque Sarcey demanded, in the journal La France, that the police should suppress forthwith this eccentricité.

Charles Monselet’s eight short lines are more appreciative:

“Instrument raide
En fer battu
Qui dépossède
Le char torlu;
Vélocipède
Rail impromptu,
Fils d’Archimède,
D’où nous viens-tu?”

Though it is apart from the era of Dumas, this discursion into a phase of present-day Paris is, perhaps, allowable in drawing a comparison between the city of to-day and that even of the Second Empire, which was, at its height, contemporary with Dumas’ prime.

If Paris was blooming suddenly forth into beauty and grace in the period which extended from the Revolution to the Franco-Prussian War, she has certainly, since that time, not ceased to shed her radiance; indeed, she flowers more abundantly than ever, though, truth to tell, it is all due to the patronage which the state has ever given, in France, to the fostering of the arts as well as industries.

And so Paris has grown,—beautiful and great,—and the stranger within her gates, whether he come by road or rail, by automobile or railway-coach, is sure to be duly impressed with the fact that Paris is for one and all alike a city founded of and for the people.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BANKS OF THE SEINE

The city of the ancient Parisii is the one particular spot throughout the length of the sea-green Seine—that “winding river” whose name, says Thierry, in his “Histoire des Gaulois,” is derived from a Celtic word having this signification—where is resuscitated the historical being of the entire French nation.

Here it circles around the Ile St. Louis, cutting it apart from the Ile de la Cité, and rushing up against the northern bank, periodically throws up a mass of gravelly sand, just in the precise spot where, in mediæval times, was an open market-place.

Here the inhabitants of the city met the country dealers, who landed produce from their boats, traded, purchased, and sold, and departed whence they came, into the regions of the upper Seine or the Marne, or downward to the lower river cities of Meulan, Mantes, and Vernon.

At this time Paris began rapidly to grow on each side of the stream, and became the great market or trading-place where the swains who lived up-river mingled with the hewers of wood from the forests of La Brie and the reapers of corn from the sunny plains of La Beauce.

These country folk, it would appear, preferred the northern part of Paris to the southern—it was less ceremonious, less ecclesiastical. If they approached the city from rearward of the Université, by the Orleans highroad, they paid exorbitant toll to the Abbot of St. Germain des Prés. Here they paid considerably less to the Prévôt of Paris. And thus from very early times the distinction was made, and grew with advancing years, between the town, or La Ville, which distinguished it from the Cité and the Université.

This sandy river-bank gradually evolved itself into the Quai and Place de la Grève,—its etymology will not be difficult to trace,—and endured in the full liberty of its olden functions as late as the day of Louis XV. Here might have been seen great stacks of firewood, charcoal, corn, wine, hay, and straw.

THE ODÉON IN 1818

Aside from its artistic and economic value, the Seine plays no great part in the story of Paris. It does not divide what is glorious from what is sordid, as does “London’s river.” When one crosses any one of its numerous bridges, one does not exchange thriftiness and sublimity for the commonplace. Les Invalides, L’Institut, the Luxembourg, the Panthéon, the Odéon, the Université,—whose buildings cluster around the ancient Sorbonne,—the Hôtel de Cluny, and the churches of St. Sulpice, St. Etienne du Mont, and St. Severin, and, last but not least, the Chamber of Deputies, all are on the south side of Paris, and do not shrink greatly in artistic or historical importance from Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Tour St. Jacques, the Place de la Bastille, the Palais Royal, or the Théâtre-Français.

The greatest function of the Seine, when one tries to focus the memory on its past, is to recall to us that old Paris was a trinity. Born of the river itself rose the Cité, the home of the Church and state, scarce finding room for her palaces and churches, while close to her side, on the south bank, the Université spread herself out, and on the right bank the Ville hummed with trade and became the home of the great municipal institutions.

Dumas shifts the scenes of his Parisian romances first from one side to the other, but always his mediæval Paris is the same grand, luxurious, and lively stage setting. Certainly no historian could hope to have done better.

Intrigue, riot, and bloodshed of course there were; and perhaps it may be thought in undue proportions. But did not the history of Paris itself furnish the romancer with these very essential details?

At all events, there is no great sordidness or squalor perpetuated in Dumas’ pages. Perhaps it is for this reason that they prove so readable, and their wearing qualities so great.

There is in the reminiscence of history and the present aspect of the Seine, throughout its length, the material for the constructing a volume of bulk which should not lack either variety, picturesqueness, or interest. It furthermore is a subject which seems to have been shamefully neglected by writers of all ranks.

Turner, of the brilliant palette, pictured many of its scenes, and his touring-companion wrote a more or less imaginative and wofully incorrect running commentary on the itinerary of the journey, as he did also of their descent of the Loire. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, accompanied by a series of charming pictures by Joseph Pennell (the first really artistic topographical illustrations ever put into the pages of a book), did the same for the Saône; and, of course, the Thames has been “done” by many writers of all shades of ability, but manifestly the Seine, along whose banks lie the scenes of some of the most historic and momentous events of mediæval times, has been sadly neglected.

Paris is divided into practically two equal parts by the swift-flowing current of the Seine, which winds its way in sundry convolutions from its source beyond Chatillon-sur-Seine to the sea at Honfleur.

The praises of the winding river which connects Havre, Rouen, Vernon, Mantes, and Paris has often been sung, but the brief, virile description of it in the eighty-seventh chapter of Dumas’ “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne” has scarcely been equalled. Apropos of the journey of Madame and Buckingham Paris-ward, after having taken leave of the English fleet at Havre, Dumas says of this greatest of French waterways:

“The weather was fine. Spring cast its flowers and its perfumed foliage upon the path. Normandy, with its vast variety of vegetation, its blue sky, and silver rivers, displayed itself in all its loveliness.”

Through Paris its direction is from the southeast to the northwest, a distance, within the fortifications, of perhaps twelve kilometres.

Two islands of size cut its currents: the Ile St. Louis and the Ile de la Cité. A description of its banks, taken from a French work of the time, better defines its aspect immediately after the Revolution of 1848 than any amount of conjecture or present-day observation, so it is here given:

“In its course through the metropolis, the Seine is bordered by a series of magnificent quais, which in turn are bordered by rows of sturdy trees.

“The most attractive of these quais are those which flank the Louvre, the Tuileries, D’Orsay, Voltaire, and Conti.

“Below the quais are deposed nine ports, or gares, each devoted to a special class of merchandise, as coal, wine, produce, timber, etc.

“The north and south portions of the city are connected by twenty-six ponts (this was in 1852; others have since been erected, which are mentioned elsewhere in the book).

“Coming from the upper river, they were known as follows: the Ponts Napoléon, de Bercy, d’Austerlitz, the Passerelle de l’Estacade; then, on the right branch of the river, around the islands, the Ponts Maril, Louis-Philippe, d’Arcole, Notre Dame, and the Pont au Change; on the left branch, the Passerelle St. Louis or Constantine, the Ponts Tournelle, de la Cité, de l’Archevêche, le Pont aux Doubles, le Petit Pont, and the Pont St. Michel; here the two branches join again: le Pont Neuf, des Arts, du Carrousel, Royal, Solferino, de la Concorde, des Invalides, de l’Alma, de Jena, and Grenelle.

“Near the Pont d’Austerlitz the Seine receives the waters of the petite Rivière de Bièvre, or des Gobelins, which traverses the faubourgs.”

Of the bridges of Paris, Dumas in his romances has not a little to say. It were not possible for a romanticist—or a realist, for that matter—to write of Paris and not be continually confronting his characters with one or another of the many splendid bridges which cross the Seine between Conflans-Charenton and Asnières.

In the “Mousquetaires” series, in the Valois romances, and in his later works of lesser import, mention of these fine old bridges continually recurs; more than all others the Pont Neuf, perhaps, or the Pont au Change.

In “Pauline” there is a charming touch which we may take to smack somewhat of the author’s own predilections and experiences. He says, concerning his embarkation upon a craft which he had hired at a little Norman fishing-village, as one jobs a carriage in Paris: “I set up to be a sailor, and served apprenticeship on a craft between the Pont des Tuileries and the Pont de la Concorde.”

Of the Seine bridges none is more historic than the Pont Neuf, usually reckoned as one of the finest in Europe; which recalls the fact that the French—ecclesiastic and laymen architects alike—were master bridge-builders. For proof of this one has only to recall the wonderful bridge of St. Bénezet d’Avignon, the fortified bridges of Orthos and Cahors, the bridge at Lyons, built by the Primate of Gaul himself, and many others throughout the length and breadth of France.

The Pont Neuf was commenced in the reign of Henri III. (1578), and finished in the reign of Henri IV. (1604), and is composed of two unequal parts, which come to their juncture at the extremity of the Ile de la Cité.

In the early years a great bronze horse, known familiarly as the “Cheval de Bronze,” but without a rider, was placed upon this bridge. During the Revolution, when cannon and ammunition were made out of any metal which could be obtained, this curious statue disappeared, though later its pedestal was replaced—under the Bourbons—by an equestrian statue of the Huguenot king.

The Pont des Arts, while not usually accredited as a beautiful structure,—and certainly not comparable with many other of its fellows,—is interesting by reason of the fact that its nine iron arches, which led from the Quai du Louvre to the Quai de la Monnai, formed the first example of an iron bridge ever constructed in France. Its nomenclature is derived from the Louvre, which was then called—before the title was applied to the Collège des Quatre Nations—the Palais des Arts. In Restoration times it was one of the fashionable promenades of Paris.

The Pont au Change took its name from the changeurs, or money-brokers, who lived upon it during the reign of Louis le Jeune in 1141. It bridged the widest part of the Seine, and, after being destroyed by flood and fire in 1408, 1616, and 1621, was rebuilt in 1647. The houses which originally covered it were removed in 1788 by the order of Louis XVI. In “The Conspirators,” Dumas places the opening scene at that end of the Pont Neuf which abuts on the Quai de l’École, and is precise enough, but in “Marguerite de Valois” he evidently confounds the Pont Neuf with the Pont au Change, when he puts into the mouth of Coconnas, the Piedmontese: “They who rob on the Pont Neuf are, then, like you, in the service of the king. Mordi! I have been very unjust, sir; for until now I had taken them for thieves.”

The Pont Louis XV. was built in 1787 out of part of the material which was taken from the ruins of the Bastille.

Latterly there has sprung up the new Pont Alexandre, commemorative of the Czar’s visit to Paris, which for magnificent proportions, beauty of design and arrangement, quite overtops any other of its kind, in Paris or elsewhere.

The quais which line the Seine as it runs through Paris are like no other quais in the known world. They are the very essence and epitome of certain phases of life which find no counterpart elsewhere.

The following description of a bibliomaniac from Dumas’ “Mémoires” is unique and apropos:

“Bibliomaniac, evolved from book and mania, is a variety of the species man—species bipes et genus homo.

“This animal has two feet and is without features, and usually wanders about the quais and boulevards, stopping in front of every stall and fingering all the books. He is generally dressed in a coat which is too long and trousers which are too short, his shoes are always down at heel, and on his head is an ill-shapen hat. One of the signs by which he may be recognized is shown by the fact that he never washes his hands.”

The booksellers’ stalls of the quais of Paris are famous, though it is doubtful if genuine bargains exist there in great numbers. It is significant, however, that more volumes of Dumas’ romances are offered for sale—so it seems to the passer-by—than of any other author.

The Seine opposite the Louvre, and, indeed, throughout the length of its flow through Paris, enters largely into the scheme of the romances, where scenes are laid in the metropolis.

Like the throng which stormed the walls of the Louvre on the night of the 18th of August, 1527, during that splendid royal fête, the account of which opens the pages of “Marguerite de Valois,” the Seine itself resembles Dumas’ description of the midnight crowd, which he likens to “a dark and rolling sea, each swell of which increases to a foaming wave; this sea, extending all along the quai, spent its waves at the base of the Louvre, on the one hand, and against the Hôtel de Bourbon, which was opposite, on the other.”

In the chapter entitled “What Happened on the Night of the Twelfth of July,” in “The Taking of the Bastille,” Dumas writes of the banks of the Seine in this wise:

“Once upon the quai, the two countrymen saw glittering on the bridge near the Tuileries the arms of another body of men, which, in all probability, was not a body of friends; they silently glided to the end of the quai, and descended the bank which leads along the Seine. The clock of the Tuileries was just then striking eleven.

“When they had got beneath the trees which line the banks of the river, fine aspen-trees and poplars, which bathe their feet in its current, when they were lost to the sight of their pursuers, hid by their friendly foliage, the farmers and Pitou threw themselves on the grass and opened a council of war.”

Just previously the mob had battered down the gate of the Tuileries, as a means of escape from the pen in which the dragoons had crowded the populace.

“‘Tell me now, Father Billot,’ inquired Pitou, after having carried the timber some thirty yards, ‘are we going far in this way?’

“‘We are going as far as the gate of the Tuileries.’

“‘Ho, ho!’ cried the crowd, who at once divined his intention.

“And it made way for them more eagerly even than before.

“Pitou looked about him, and saw that the gate was not more than thirty paces distant from them.

“‘I can reach it,’ said he, with the brevity of a Pythagorean.

“The labour was so much the easier to Pitou from five or six of the strongest of the crowd taking their share of the burden.

“The result of this was a very notable acceleration in their progress.

“In five minutes they had reached the iron gates.

“‘Come, now,’ cried Billot, ‘clap your shoulders to it, and all push together.’

“‘Good!’ said Pitou. ‘I understand now. We have just made a warlike engine; the Romans used to call it a ram.’

“‘Now, my boys,’ cried Billot, ‘once, twice, thrice,’ and the joist, directed with a furious impetus, struck the lock of the gate with resounding violence.

“The soldiers who were on guard in the interior of the garden hastened to resist this invasion. But at the third stroke the gate gave way, turning violently on its hinges, and through that gaping and gloomy mouth the crowd rushed impetuously.

“From the movement that was then made, the Prince de Lambesq perceived at once that an opening had been effected which allowed the escape of those whom he had considered his prisoners. He was furious with disappointment.”

CHAPTER IX.

THE SECOND EMPIRE AND AFTER

The Revolution of 1848 narrowed itself down to the issue of Bourbonism or Bonapartism. Nobody had a good word to say for the constitution, and all parties took liberties with it. It was inaugurated as the most democratic of all possible charters. It gave a vote to everybody, women and children excepted. It affirmed liberty with so wide a latitude of interpretation as to leave nothing to be desired by the reddest Republican that ever wore pistols in his belt at the heels of the redoubtable M. Marc Caussidière, or expressed faith in the social Utopia of the enthusiastic M. Proudhon. Freedom to speak, to write, to assemble, and to vote,—all were secured to all Frenchmen by this marvellous charter. When it became the law of the land, everybody began to nibble at and destroy it. The right of speaking was speedily reduced to the narrowest limits, and the liberty of the press was pared down to the merest shred. The right of meeting was placed at the tender mercies of the prefect of police, and the right of voting was attacked with even more zeal and fervour. The Revolution proved more voracious than Saturn himself, in devouring its children, and it made short work of men and reputations. It reduced MM. de Lamartine, Armand Marrast, and General Cavaignac into nothingness; sent MM. Louis Blanc, Ledru Rollin, and Caussidière into the dreary exile of London, and consigned the fiery Barbés, the vindictive Blanqui, the impatient Raspail, and a host of other regenerators of the human race, to the fastnesses of Vincennes. Having done this, the Revolution left scarcely a vestige of the constitution,—nothing but a few crumbs, and those were not crumbs of comfort, which remained merely to prove to the incredulous that such a thing as the constitution once existed.

The former king and queen took hidden refuge in a small cottage at Honfleur, whence they were to depart a few days later for England—ever a refuge for exiled monarchists. Escape became very urgent, and the king, with an English passport in the name of William Smith, and the queen as Madame Lebrun, crossed over to Le Havre and ultimately to England. Lamartine evidently mistakes even the time and place of this incident, but newspaper accounts of the time, both French and English, are very full as to the details. On landing at the quai at Le Havre, the ex-royal party was conducted to the “Express” steam-packet, which had been placed at their disposal for the cross-channel journey. Dumas takes the very incident as a detail for his story of “Pauline,” and his treatment thereof does not differ greatly from the facts as above set forth. Two years later (August 26, 1850), at Claremont, in Surrey, in the presence of the queen and several members of his family, Louis-Philippe died. He was the last of the Bourbons, with whom Dumas proudly claimed acquaintanceship, and as such, only a short time before, was one of the mightiest of the world’s monarchs, standing on one of the loftiest pinnacles of an ambition which, in the mind of a stronger or more wilful personality, might have accomplished with success much that with him resulted in defeat.

After the maelstrom of discontent—the Revolution of 1848—had settled down, there came a series of events well-nigh as disturbing. Events in Paris were rapidly ripening for a change. The known determination of Louis Napoleon to prolong his power, either as president for another term of four years, or for life, or as consul or emperor of the French, and the support which his pretensions received from large masses of the people and from the rank and file of the army, had brought him into collision with a rival—General Changarnier—almost as powerful as himself, and with an ambition quite as daring as his own.

What Louis Napoleon wanted was evident. There was no secret about his designs. The partisans of Henri V. looked to Changarnier for the restoration of peace and legitimacy, and the Orleanists considered that he was the most likely man in France to bring back the house of Orleans, and the comfortable days of bribery, corruption, and a thriving trade; while the fat bourgeoisie venerated him as the unflinching foe of the disturbers of order, and the great bulwark against Communism and the Red Republic.

Still, this was manifestly not to be, though no one seemed to care a straw about Louis Napoleon’s republic, or whether or no he dared to declare himself king or emperor, or whether they should be ruled by Bonapartist, Bourbon, or Orleanist.

These were truly perilous times for France; and, though they did not culminate in disaster until twenty years after, Louis Napoleon availed himself of every opportunity to efface from the Second Republic, of which he was at this time the head, every vestige of the democratic features which it ought to have borne.

At the same time he surrounded himself with imposing state and pomp, so regal in character that it was evidently intended to accustom the public to see in him the object of that homage which is usually reserved for crowned heads alone, and thus gradually and imperceptibly to prepare the nation to witness, without surprise, his assuming, when the favourable occasion offered, the purple and diadem of the empire.

For instance, he took up his residence in the ancient palace of the sovereigns of France, the Tuileries, and gave banquets and balls of regal magnificence; he ordered his effigy to be struck upon the coinage of the nation, surrounded by the words “Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,” without any title, whether as president or otherwise, being affixed. He restored the imperial eagles to the standards of the army; the official organ, the Moniteur, recommended the restoration of the titles and orders of hereditary nobility; the trees of liberty were uprooted everywhere; the Republican motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” was erased from the public edifices; the colossal statue of Liberty, surmounted by a Phrygian cap, which stood in the centre of the Place de Bourgogne, behind the Legislative Assembly, was demolished; and the old anti-Republican names of the streets were restored, so that the Palais National again became the Palais Royal; the Théâtre de la Nation, the Théâtre Français; the Rue de la Concorde, the Rue Royal, etc.; and, in short, to all appearances, Louis Napoleon began early in his tenure of office to assiduously pave the way to the throne of the empire as Napoleon III.

PALAIS ROYAL, STREET FRONT

The London Times correspondent of that day related a characteristic exercise of this sweeping instruction of the Minister of the Interior to erase the words “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” from all public buildings. (The three revolutionary watchwords had, in fact, been erased the previous year from the principal entrance to the Elysée, and the words “République Française,” in large letters, were substituted.)

“There is, I believe, only one public monument in Paris—the Ecole de Droit—where the workmen employed in effacing that inscription will have a double duty. They will have to interfere with the ‘Liberalism’ of two generations. Immediately under the coat of yellow paint which covered the façade of the building, and on which time and the inclemency of the seasons have done their work, may still be traced, above the modern device, the following words, inscribed by order of the Commune of Paris during the Reign of Terror: ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, Unité, Indivisibilité de la République Française!’ As the effacing of the inscription of 1848 is not now by means of whitewash or paint, but by erasure, both the inscriptions will disappear at the same moment.”

Among the most important demolitions and renovations of the sixties was the work undertaken on the Louvre at the orders of the ambitious emperor, Napoleon III. The structure was cloven to the foundations, through the slated roof, the gilded and painted ceiling, the parqueted floors; and, where one formerly enjoyed an artistic feast that had taken four centuries to provide, one gazed upon, from the pavement to the roof, a tarpaulin that closed a vista which might otherwise have been a quarter of a mile in length.

Builders toiled day and night to connect the Louvre with the main body of the Palace of the Tuileries, which itself was to disappear within so short a time. Meanwhile so great a displacement of the art treasures was undergone, that habitués knew not which way to turn for favourite pictures, with which the last fifty years had made them so familiar.

To those of our elders who knew the Paris of the early fifties, the present-day aspect—in spite of all its glorious wealth of boulevards and architectural splendour—will suggest the mutability of all things.

It serves our purpose, however, to realize that much of the character has gone from the Quartier Latin; that the Tuileries disappeared with the Commune, and that the old distinctions between Old Paris, the faubourgs, and the Communal Annexes, have become practically non-existent with the opening up of the Haussman boulevards, at the instigation of the wary Napoleon III. Paris is still, however, an “ancienne ville et une ville neuve,” and the paradox is inexplicable.

The differences between the past and the present are indeed great, but nowhere—not even in the Tower of London, which is usually given as an example of the contrast and progress of the ages—is a more tangible and specific opposition shown, than in what remains to-day of mediæval Paris, in juxtaposition with the later architectural embellishments. In many instances is seen the newest of the “art nouveau”—as it is popularly known—cheek by jowl with some mediæval shrine.

It is difficult at this time to say what effect these swirls and blobs, which are daily thrusting themselves into every form of architectural display throughout Continental Europe, would have had on these masters who built the Gothic splendours of France, or even the hybrid rococo style, which, be it not denied, is in many instances beautiful in spite of its idiosyncrasies.

To those who are familiar with the “sights” of Paris, there is nothing left but to study the aspects of the life of the streets, the boulevards, the quais, the gardens, the restaurants, and the cafés. Here at least is to be found daily, and hourly, new sensations and old ones, but at all events it is an ever-shifting scene, such as no other city in the world knows.

The life of the faubourgs and of the quartiers has ever been made the special province of artists and authors, and to wander through them, to sit beneath the trees of the squares and gardens, or even outside a café, is to contemplate, in no small degree, much of the incident and temperament of life which others have already perpetuated and made famous.

There is little new or original effort which can be made, though once and again a new performer comes upon the stage,—a poet who sings songs of vagabondage, a painter who catches a fleeting impression, which at least, if not new, seems new. But in the main one has to hark back to former generations, if one would feel the real spirit of romance and tradition. There are few who, like Monet, can stop before a shrine and see in it forty-three varying moods—or some other incredible number, as did that artist when he limned his impressions of the façade of the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame de Rouen.

Such landmarks as the Place de la Bastille, the Pantheon,—anciently the site of the Abbey de Ste. Geneviève,—the Chambre des Députés,—the former Palais Bourbon,—the Tour St. Jacques, the Fountain des Innocents, St. Germain l’Auxerrois, the Palais du Luxembourg, the Louvre, and quite all the historic and notable buildings one sees, are all pictured with fidelity, and more or less minuteness, in the pages of Dumas’ romances.

Again, in such other localities as the Boulevard des Italiens, the Café de Paris, the Théâtre Français, the Odêon, the Palais Royal,—where, in the “Orleans Bureau,” Dumas found his first occupation in Paris,—took place many incidents of Dumas’ life, which are of personal import.

For recollections and reminders of the author’s contemporaries, there are countless other localities too numerous to mention. In the Rue Pigalle, at No. 12, died Eugene Scribe; in the Rue de Douai lived Edmond About, while in the Rue d’Amsterdam, at No. 77, lived Dumas himself, and in the Rue St. Lazare, Madame George Sand. Montmartre is sacred to the name of Zola in the minds of most readers of latter-day French fiction, while many more famous names of all ranks, of litterateurs, of actors, of artists and statesmen,—all contemporaries and many of them friends of Dumas,—will be found on the tombstones of Père la Chaise.

The motive, then, to be deduced from these pages is that they are a record of many things associated with Alexandre Dumas, his life, and his work. Equally so is a fleeting itinerary of strolls around and about the Paris of Dumas’ romances, with occasional journeys into the provinces.

77 Rue d’Amsterdam

Rue de St. Denis

Thus the centuries have done their work of extending and mingling,—“le jeu est fait,” so to speak,—but Paris, by the necessities of her growth and by her rather general devotion to one stately, towering form of domestic architecture, has often made the separation of old from new peculiarly difficult to a casual eye. It is indeed her way to be new and splendid, to be always the bride of cities, espousing human destiny. And, truly, it is in this character that we do her homage with our visits, our money, and our admiration. Out of gray, unwieldy, distributed London one flies from a vast and romantic camp to a city exact and beautiful. So exact, so beautiful, so consistent in her vivacity, so neat in her industry, so splendid in her display, that one comes to think that the ultimate way to enjoy Paris is to pass unquestioning and unsolicitous into her life, exclaiming not “Look here,” and “Look there” in a fever of sightseeing, but rather baring one’s breast, like Daudet’s ouvrier, to her assaults of glistening life.

The Paris of to-day is a reconstructed Paris; its old splendours not wholly eradicated, but changed in all but their associations. The life of Paris, too, has undergone a similar evolution, from what it was even in Dumas’ time.

The celebrities of the Café de Paris have mostly, if not quite all, passed away. No more does the eccentric Prince Demidoff promulgate his eccentricities into the very faces of the onlookers; no more does the great Dumas make omelettes in golden sugar-bowls; and no more does he pass his criticisms—or was it encomiums?—on the veau sauté.

The student revels of the quartier have become more sedate, if not more fastidious, and there is no such Mardi Gras and Mi-Carême festivities as used to hold forth on the boulevards in the forties. And on the Buttes Chaumont and Montmartre are found batteries of questionable amusements,—especially got up for the delectation of les Anglais, provincials, and soldiers off duty,—in place of the cabarets, which, if of doubtful morality, were at least a certain social factor.

New bridges span the Seine, and new thoroughfares, from humble alleys to lordly and magnificent boulevards, have clarified many a slum, and brightened and sweetened the atmosphere; so there is some considerable gain there.

The Parisian cabby is, as he always was, a devil-may-care sort of a fellow, who would as soon run you down with his sorry old outfit as not; but perhaps even his characteristics will change sooner or later, now that the automobile is upon us in all its proclaimed perfection.

The “New Opera,” that sumptuous structure which bears the inscription “Académie Nationale de Musique,” begun by Garnier in 1861, and completed a dozen years later, is, in its commanding situation and splendid appointments, the peer of any other in the world. In spite of this, its fame will hardly rival that of the Comédie Française, or even the Opéra Comique of former days, and the names of latter-day stars will have difficulty in competing with those of Rachel, Talma, and their fellow actors on the stage of other days.

Whom, if you please, have we to-day whose name and fame is as wide as those just mentioned? None, save Madame Bernhardt, who suggests to the well-informed person—who is a very considerable body—the preëminent influences which formerly emanated from Paris in the fifties. But this of itself is a subject too vast for inclusion here, and it were better passed by. So, too, with the Parisian artists who made the art of the world in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Decamps, Delacroix, Corot, and Vernet are names with which to conjure up reminiscences as great as those of Rubens, Titian, and Van Dyke. This may be disputed, but, if one were given the same familiarity therewith, it is possible that one’s contrary opinion would be greatly modified.

To-day, in addition to the glorious art collection of former times, there are the splendid, though ever shifting, collections of the Musée du Luxembourg, the mural paintings of the Hôtel de Ville, which are a gallery in themselves, and the two spring Salon exhibitions, to say nothing of the newly attempted Salon d’Automne. Curiously enough, some of us find great pleasure in the contemplation of the decorations in the interiors of the great gares of the Lyons or the Orleans railways. Certainly these last examples of applied art are of a lavishness—and even excellence—which a former generation would not have thought of.

The Arc de Triomphe d’Étoile, of course, remains as it always has since its erection at the instigation of Napoleon I.; while the Bois de Boulogne came into existence as a municipal pleasure-ground only in the early fifties, and has since endured as the great open-air attraction of Paris for those who did not wish to go farther afield.

The churches have not changed greatly in all this time, except that they had some narrow escapes during the Franco-Prussian War, and still narrower ones during the Commune. It may be remarked here en passant that, for the first time in seventy years, so say the records, there has just been taken down the scaffolding which, in one part or another, has surrounded the church of St. Eustache. Here, then, is something tangible which has not changed until recently (March, 1904), since the days when Dumas first came to Paris.

The Paris of the nineteenth century is, as might naturally be inferred, that of which the most is known; the eighteenth and seventeenth are indeed difficult to follow with accuracy as to the exact locale of their events; but the sixteenth looms up—curiously enough—more plainly than either of the two centuries which followed. The histories, and even the guide-books, will explain why this is so, so it shall have no place here.

Order, of a sort, immediately came forth from out the chaos of the Revolution. The great Napoleon began the process, and, in a way, it was continued by the plebeian Louis-Philippe, elaborated in the Second Empire, and perfected—if a great capital such as Paris ever really is perfected—under the Third Republic.

Improvement and demolition—which is not always improvement—still go on, and such of Old Paris as is not preserved by special effort is fast falling before the stride of progress.

A body was organized in 1897, under the name of the “Commission du Vieux Paris,” which is expected to do much good work in the preservation of the chronicles in stone of days long past.

The very streets are noisy with the echo of an unpeaceful past; and their frequent and unexpected turnings, even in these modern days, are suggestive of their history in a most graphic manner.

The square in front of the Fontaine des Innocents is but an ancient burial-ground; before the Hôtel de Ville came Etienne Marcel; and Charlemagne to the cathedral; the Place de la Concorde was the death-bed of the Girondins, and the Place de la Madeleine the tomb of the Capetians; and thus it is that Paris—as does no other city—mingles its centuries of strife amid a life which is known as the most vigorous and varied of its age.

To enter here into a detailed comparison between the charm of Paris of to-day and yesterday would indeed be a work of supererogation; and only in so far as it bears directly upon the scenes and incidents amid which Dumas lived is it so made.

CHAPTER X.

LA VILLE

It would be impossible to form a precise topographical itinerary of the scenes of Dumas’ romances and the wanderings of his characters, even in Paris itself. The area is so very wide, and the number of localities, which have more than an incidental interest, so very great, that the futility of such a task will at once be apparent.

Probably the most prominent of all the romances, so far as identifying the scenes of their action goes, are the Valois series.

As we know, Dumas was very fond of the romantic house of Valois, and, whether in town or country, he seemed to take an especial pride in presenting details of portraiture and place in a surprisingly complete, though not superfluous, manner.

The Louvre has the most intimate connection with both the Valois and the D’Artagnan romances, and is treated elsewhere as a chapter by itself.

Dumas’ most marked reference to the Hôtel de Ville is found in the taking of the Bastille, and, though it is not so very great, he gives prominence to the incident of the deputation of the people who waited upon De Flesselles, the prévôt, just before the march upon the Bastille.

In history we know the same individual as “Messire Jacques de Flesselles, Chevalier, Conseiller de la Grande Chambre, Maître Honoraire des Requêtes, Conseiller d’Etat.” The anecdote is recorded in history, too, that Louis XVI., when he visited the Hôtel de Ville in 1789, was presented with a cockade of blue and red, the colours of the ville—the white was not added till some days later.

“Votre Majesté,” dit le maire, “veut-elle accepte le signe distinctif des Français?”

For reply the king took the cockade and put it on his chapeau, entered the grande salle, and took his place on the throne.

All the broils and turmoils which have taken place since the great Revolution, have likewise had the Hôtel de Ville for the theatre where their first scenes were represented.

It was invaded by the people during the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, as well as in the Commune in 1871, when, in addition to the human fury, it was attacked by the flames, which finally brought about its destruction. Thus perished that noble structure, which owed its inception to that art-loving monarch, François I.

PLACE DE LA GRÈVE

The present-day Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville is the successor of the Quai des Ormes, which dates from the fourteenth century, and the Quai de la Grève, which existed as early as 1254, and which descended by an easy slope to the strand from which it took its name.

Adjoining the quai was the Place de la Grève, which approximates the present Place de l’Hôtel de Ville.

A near neighbour of the Hôtel de Ville is the Tour de St. Jacques la Boucherie, where sits to-day Paris’s clerk of the weather.

It was here that Marguerite de Valois, in company with the Duchesse de Nevers, repaired from their pilgrimage to the Cimetière des Innocents, to view the results of the Huguenot massacre of the preceding night.

“‘And where are you two going?’ inquired Catherine, the queen’s mother. ‘To see some rare and curious Greek books found at an old Protestant pastor’s, and which have been taken to the Tour de St. Jacques la Boucherie,’ replied the inquisitive and erudite Marguerite. For, be it recalled, her knowledge and liking of classical literature was most profound.”

This fine Gothic tower, which is still a notable landmark, is the only relique of the Church of St. Jacques. A bull of Pope Calixtus II., dated 1119, first makes mention of it, and François I. made it a royal parish church.

The tower itself was not built until 1508, having alone cost 1,350 livres. It has often been pictured and painted, and to-day it is a willing or unwilling sitter to most snap-shot camerists who come within focus of it, but no one has perceived the spirit of its genuine old-time flavour as did Méryon, in his wonderful etching—so sought for by collectors—called “Le Stryge.”

The artist’s view-point, taken from the gallery of Nôtre Dame,—though in the early nineteenth century,—with the grotesque head and shoulders of one of those monstrous figures, half-man, half-beast, with which the galleries of Nôtre Dame are peopled, preserves, with its very simplicity and directness, an impression of Vieux Paris which is impossible to duplicate to-day.

The Place de la Grève was for a time, at least, the most famous or infamous of all the places of execution in Paris. One reads of it largely in “Marguerite de Valois” in this connection, and in “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne” it again crops up, but in a much more pleasant manner.

TOUR DE ST. JACQUES LA BOUCHERIE
(Méryon’s Etching, “Le Stryge”)

Dumas, ever praiseful of good wine and good food, describes Vatel, the maître d’hôtel of Fouquet, as crossing the square with a hamper filled with bottles, which he had just purchased at the cabaret of the sign of “L’Image de Nôtre Dame;” a queer name for a wine-shop, no doubt, and, though it does not exist to-day, and so cannot be authenticated, it may likely enough have had an existence outside the novelist’s page. At all events, it is placed definitely enough, as one learns from the chapter of “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne,” entitled “The Wine of M. de la Fontaine.”

“‘What the devil are you doing here, Vatel?’ said Fouquet. ‘Are you buying wine at a cabaret in the Place de Grève?’... ‘I have found here, monsieur, a “vin de Joigny” which your friends like. This I know, as they come once a week to drink it at the “Image de Nôtre Dame.”’”

In the following chapter Dumas reverts to the inglorious aspect of the Place and the Quai de la Grève as follows:

“At two o’clock the next day, fifty thousand spectators had taken their position upon the place, around two gibbets which had been elevated between the Quai de la Grève and Quai Pelletier; one close to the other, with their backs to the parapet of the river. In the morning, also, all the sworn criers of the good city of Paris had traversed the quarters of the city, particularly the Halles and the faubourgs, announcing with their hoarse and indefatigable voices the great justice done by the king upon two peculators; two thieves, devourers of the people. And these people, whose interests were so warmly looked after, in order not to fail in respect for their king, quitted shops, stalls, and ateliers, to go and evince a little gratitude to Louis XIV., absolutely like invited guests, who feared to commit an impoliteness in not repairing to the house of him who invited them. According to the tenor of the sentence, which the criers read loudly and badly, two farmers of the revenues, monopolists of money, dilapidators of the royal provisions, extortioners and forgers, were about to undergo capital punishment on the Place de Grève, with their names affixed over their heads, according to their sentence. As to those names, the sentence made no mention of them. The curiosity of the Parisians was at its height, and, as we have said, an immense crowd waited with feverish impatience the hour fixed for the execution.”

D’Artagnan, who, in the pages of “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne,” was no more a young man, owned this very cabaret, the “Image de Nôtre Dame.” “‘I will go, then,’ says he, ‘to the “Image de Nôtre Dame,” and drink a glass of Spanish wine with my tenant, which he cannot fail to offer me.’”

En route to the cabaret, D’Artagnan asked of his companion, “Is there a procession to-day?” “It is a hanging, monsieur.” “What! a hanging on the Grève? The devil take the rogue who gets himself hung the day I go to take my rent,” said D’Artagnan.

The old mousquetaire did not get his rent, there was riot and bloodshed galore, “L’Image de Nôtre Dame” was set on fire, and D’Artagnan had one more opportunity to cry out “A moi, Mousquetaires,” and enter into a first-class fight; all, of course, on behalf of right and justice, for he saved two men, destined to be gibbeted, from the more frightful death of torture by fire, to which the fanatical crowd had condemned them.

The most extensive reference to the Place de la Grève is undoubtedly in the “Forty-Five Guardsmen,” where is described the execution of Salcède, the coiner of false money and the co-conspirator with the Guises.

“M. Friard was right when he talked of one hundred thousand persons as the number of spectators who would meet on the Place de la Grève and its environs, to witness the execution of Salcède. All Paris appeared to have a rendezvous at the Hôtel de Ville; and Paris is very exact, and never misses a fête; and the death of a man is a fête, especially when he has raised so many passions that some curse and others bless him.

“The spectators who succeeded in reaching the place saw the archers and a large number of Swiss and light horse surrounding a little scaffold raised about four feet from the ground. It was so low as to be visible only to those immediately surrounding it, or to those who had windows overlooking the place. Four vigorous white horses beat the ground impatiently with their hoofs, to the great terror of the women, who had either chosen this place willingly, or had been forcibly pushed there.

“These horses were unused, and had never done more work than to support, by some chance, on their broad backs, the chubby children of the peasants. After the scaffold and the horses, what next attracted all looks was the principal window of the Hôtel de Ville, which was hung with red velvet and gold, and ornamented with the royal arms. This was for the king. Half-past one had just struck when this window was filled. First came Henri III., pale, almost bald, although he was at that time only thirty-five, and with a sombre expression, always a mystery to his subjects, who, when they saw him appear, never knew whether to say ‘Vive le roi!’ or to pray for his soul. He was dressed in black, without jewels or orders, and a single diamond shone in his cap, serving as a fastening to three short plumes. He carried in his hand a little black dog that his sister-in-law, Marie Stuart, had sent him from her prison, and on which his fingers looked as white as alabaster.

“Behind the king came Catherine de Medici, almost bowed by age, for she might be sixty-six or sixty-seven, but still carrying her head firm and erect, and darting bitter glances from under her thick eyebrows. At her side appeared the melancholy but sweet face of the queen, Louise de Touraine. Catherine came as a triumph, she as a punishment. Behind them came two handsome young men, brothers, the eldest of whom smiled with wonderful beauty, and the younger with great melancholy. The one was Anne, Duc de Joyeuse, and the other Henri de Joyeuse, Comte de Bouchage. The people had for these favourites of the king none of the hatred which they had felt toward Maugiron, Quelus, and Schomberg.

“Henri saluted the people gravely; then, turning to the young men, he said, ‘Anne, lean against the tapestry; it may last a long time.’...

“Henri, in anger, gave the sign. It was repeated, the cords were refastened, four men jumped on the horses, which, urged by violent blows, started off in opposite directions. A horrible cracking and a terrible cry was heard. The blood was seen to spout from the limbs of the unhappy man, whose face was no longer that of a man, but of a demon.

“‘Ah, heaven!’ he cried; ‘I will speak, I will tell all. Ah! cursed duch—’

“The voice had been heard above everything, but suddenly it ceased.

“‘Stop, stop,’ cried Catherine, ‘let him speak.’

“But it was too late; the head of Salcède fell helplessly on one side, he glanced once more to where he had seen the page, and then expired.”

Near the Hôtel de Ville is “Le Châtelet,” a name familiar enough to travellers about Paris. It is an omnibus centre, a station on the new “Metropolitan,” and its name has been given to one of the most modern theatres of Paris.

Dumas, in “Le Collier de la Reine,” makes but little use of the old Prison du Grand Châtelet, but he does not ignore it altogether, which seems to point to the fact that he has neglected very few historic buildings, or, for that matter, incidents of Paris in mediæval times, in compiling the famous D’Artagnan and Valois romances.

The Place du Châtelet is one of the most celebrated and historic open spots of Paris. The old prison was on the site of an old Cæsarian forum. The prison was destroyed in 1806, but its history for seven centuries was one of the most dramatic.

One may search for Planchet’s shop, the “Pilon d’Or,” of which Dumas writes in “The Vicomte de Bragelonne,” in the Rue des Lombards of to-day, but he will not find it, though there are a dozen boutiques in the little street which joins the present Rue St. Denis with the present Boulevard Sebastopol, which to all intents and purposes might as well have been the abode of D’Artagnan’s old servitor.

The Rue des Lombards, like Lombard Street in London, took its names from the original money-changers, who gathered here in great numbers in the twelfth century. Planchet’s little shop was devoted to the sale of green groceries, with, presumably, a sprinkling of other attendant garnishings for the table.

To-day, the most notable of the shops here, of a similar character, is the famous magasin de confiserie, “Au Fidèle Berger,” for which Guilbert, the author of “Jeune Malade,” made the original verses for the wrappers which covered the products of the house. A contemporary of the poet has said that the “enveloppe était moins bonne que la marchandaise.”

The reader may judge for himself. This is one of the verses:

“Le soleil peut s’eteindre et le ciel s’obscurcir,
J’ai vu ma Marita, je n’ai plus qu’à mourir.”

Every lover of Dumas’ romances, and all who feel as though at one time or another they had been blessed with an intimate acquaintance with that “King of Cavaliers,”—D’Artagnan,—will have a fondness for the old narrow ways in the Rue d’Arbre Sec, which remains to-day much as it always was.

It runs from the Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville,—once the unsavoury Quai de la Grève,—toward Les Halles; and throughout its length, which is not very great, it has that crazy, tumble-down appearance which comes, sooner or later, to most narrow thoroughfares of mediæval times.

It is not so very picturesque nor so very tumble-down, it is simply wobbly. It is not, nor ever was, a pretentious thoroughfare, and, in short, is distinctly commonplace; but there is a little house, on the right-hand side, near the river, which will be famous as long as it stands, as the intimate scene of much of the minor action of “Marguerite de Valois,” “Chicot the Jester,” and others of the series.

HÔTEL DES MOUSQUETAIRES, RUE D’ARBRE SEC

This maison is rather better off than most of its neighbours, with its white-fronted lower stories, its little balcony over the Crémerie, which now occupies the ground-floor, and its escutcheon—a blazing sun—midway in its façade.

Moreover it is still a lodging-house,—an humble hotel if you like,—at any rate something more than a mere house which offers “logement à pied.” Indeed its enterprising proprietor has erected a staring blue and white enamel sign which advertises his house:

HÔTEL
DES MOUSQUETAIRES

There is, perhaps, no harm in all this, as it would seem beyond all question to have some justification for its name, and it is above all something more tangible than the sites of many homes and haunts which may to-day be occupied with a modern magasin, à tous génres, or a great tourist caravanserai.

This house bears the name of “Hôtel des Mousquetaires,” as if it were really a lineal descendant of the “Hôtel de la Belle Etoile,” of which Dumas writes.

Probably it is not the same, and if it is, there is, likely enough, no significance between its present name and its former glory save that of perspicacity on the part of the present patron.

From the romance one learns how Catherine de Medici sought to obtain that compromising note which was in possession of Orthon, the page. Dumas says of this horror-chamber of the Louvre:

“Catherine now reached a second door, which, revolving on its hinges, admitted to the depths of the oubliette, where—crushed, bleeding, and mutilated, by a fall of more than one hundred feet—lay the still palpitating form of poor Orthon; while, on the other side of the wall forming the barrier of this dreadful spot, the waters of the Seine were heard to ripple by, brought by a species of subterraneous filtration to the foot of the staircase.

“Having reached the damp and unwholesome abyss, which, during her reign, had witnessed numerous similar scenes to that now enacted, Catherine proceeded to search the corpse, eagerly drew forth the desired billet, ascertained by the lantern that it was the one she sought, then, pushing the mangled body from her, she pressed a spring, the bottom of the oubliette sank down, and the corpse, borne by its own weight, disappeared toward the river.

“Closing the door after her, she reascended; and, returning to her closet, read the paper poor Orthon had so valiantly defended. It was conceived in these words:

“‘This evening at ten o’clock, Rue de l’Arbre-Sec, Hôtel de la Belle Etoile. Should you come, no reply is requisite; if otherwise, send word back, No, by the bearer.

“‘De Mouy de Saint-Phale.’

“At eight o’clock Henri of Navarre took two of his gentlemen, went out by the Porte St. Honoré, entered again by the Tour de Bois, crossed the Seine at the ferry of the Nesle, mounted the Rue St. Jacques, and there dismissed them, as if he were going to an amorous rendezvous. At the corner of the Rue des Mathurins he found a man on horseback, wrapped in a large cloak; he approached him.

“‘Mantes!’ said the man.

“‘Pau!’ replied the king.

“The horseman instantly dismounted. Henri wrapped himself in his splashed mantle, sprang on his steed, rode down the Rue de la Harpe, crossed the Pont St. Michel, passed the Rue Barthelemy, crossed the river again on the Pont au Meunier, descended the quais, reached the Rue de l’Arbre-Sec, and knocked at Maître la Hurière’s.”

The route is easily traced to-day, and at the end of it is the Hôtel des Mousquetaires, so it will not take much imagination to revivify the incident which Dumas conceived, though one may not get there that “good wine of Artois” which the innkeeper, La Hurière, served to Henri.

The circumstance is recounted in “Marguerite de Valois,” as follows:

“‘La Hurière, here is a gentleman wants you.’

“La Hurière advanced, and looked at Henri; and, as his large cloak did not inspire him with very great veneration:

“‘Who are you?’ asked he.

“‘Eh, sang Dieu!’ returned Henri, pointing to La Mole. ‘I am, as the gentleman told you, a Gascon gentleman come to court.’

“‘What do you want?’

“‘A room and supper.’

“‘I do not let a room to any one, unless he has a lackey.’

“‘Oh, but I will pay you a rose noble for your room and supper.’

“‘You are very generous, worthy sir,’ said La Hurière, with some distrust.

“‘No; but expecting to sup here, I invited a friend of mine to meet me. Have you any good wine of Artois?’

“‘I have as good as the King of Navarre drinks.’

“‘Ah, good!’”

The Rue de l’Arbre-Sec is of itself historic, though it was baptized as l’Arbre-Sel. Two legends of more than ordinary interest are connected with this once important though unimposing street. The first applies to its early nomenclature, and is to the effect that in the thirteenth century it contained an oak-tree, which, in the snows of winter, always remained free of the white blanket which otherwise covered everything around about. For this reason the tree was said to be so full of salt that the snow that fell upon it melted immediately, and the name was created for the thoroughfare, which then first rose to the dignity of a recognized rue.

The second legend in a similar way accounts for the change of name to arbre-sec. At a certain rainy period, when the pavements and the walls of the houses were “ruisselants d’eau,” the same tree remained absolutely dry. It is curious, too, to note that the Rue de l’Arbre-Sec is identified with a certain personage who lived in Mazarin’s time, by the name of Mathieu Mollé, whose fame as the first president of the Parlement is preserved in the neighbouring Rue Mathieu Mollé. It was in the hotel of “La Belle Etoile” that Dumas ensconced his character De la Mole—showing once again that Dumas dealt with very real characters.

Opposite the colonnade of the Louvre is the Église St. Germain l’Auxerrois. From this church—founded by Childebert in 606—rang out the tocsin which was the signal for that infamous massacre of the Protestants in the time of Charles IX. In “Marguerite de Valois” Dumas has vividly described the event; not, perhaps, without certain embroidered embellishment, but, nevertheless, with a graphicness which the dry-as-dust historian of fact could hardly hope to equal.

This cruel inspiration of Catherine de Medici’s is recorded by Dumas thus:

“‘Hush!’ said La Hurière.

“‘What is it?’ inquired Coconnas and Maurevel together.

“They heard the first stroke of the bell of St. Germain de l’Auxerrois vibrate.

“‘The signal!’ exclaimed Maurevel. ‘The time is put ahead, for it was agreed for midnight. So much the better. When it is the interest of God and the king, it is better that the clock should be put forward than backward.’ And the sinister sound of the church-bell was distinctly heard. Then a shot was fired, and, in an instant, the light of several flambeaux blazed up like flashes of lightning in the Rue de l’Arbre-Sec.”

There is much more of moment that happened before and afterward “on this bloody ground;” all of which is fully recounted by the historians.

At No. 7 Rue du Helder, just off the Boulevard des Italiens, in a region so well known to Dumas and his associates, lived De Franchi, the hero of the “Corsican Brothers.” The locale and the action of that rapid review of emotions to which Dumas gave the name of the “Corsican Brothers” (“Les Frères du Corse”), was not of the mean or sordid order, but rather of the well-to-do, a sort of semi-luxuriousness of the middle-class life of the time.

The scene of the novelette bears the date of 1841, and Paris, especially in many of what are known as the newer parts, has changed but little since. A new shop-front here and there, the addition of a huge gilt sign, of which the proprietors of Parisian establishments are so fond, somewhat changes the outside aspect of things, but, on the whole, the locale often remains much as it was before, and, in this case, with but scarce three-quarters of a century past, the view down the Rue du Helder from its junction with Rue Taitbout differs little.

“Hôtel Picardie,” in the Rue Tiquetonne,—still to be seen,—may or may not be the “La Chevrette” of “Twenty Years After,” to which D’Artagnan repaired in the later years of his life. D’Artagnan’s residence in the Rue Tiquetonne has, in the minds of many, made the street famous. It was famous, though, even before it was popularized by Dumas, and now that we are not able even to place the inn where D’Artagnan lived after he had retired from active service—it is still famous.

At No. 12 and 16 are two grand habitations of former times. The former served as a residence to Henri de Talleyrand, who died in 1626, and later to the Marquis de Mauge, then to Daubonne, a tapissier, much in the favour of Louis XIII.

The other is known as the “Hôtel d’Artagnan,” but it is difficult to trace its evolution from the comfortable inn of which Dumas wrote.

D’ARTAGNAN’S LODGINGS, RUE TIQUETONNE

At No. 23 is about the only relique left which bespeaks the gallant days of D’Artagnan and his fellows. It is a square tower of five étages, and, from the character of its architecture, we know it to be of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. It is known as the “Tour de Jean-sans-Peur.” Jean-sans-Peur was the grandfather of Charles-le-Téméraire. Monstrelet has said that it was built to contain a strong chamber, in which its owner might sleep safely at night. It formed originally a part of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, but to-day, though but partially disengaged from the neighbouring houses, it is evidently the only member of the original establishment which remains.

Not far from the precincts of the Louvre was the Rue de la Martellerie, where lived Marie Touchet.

The portraiture of Dumas forms a wonderfully complete list of the royalties and nobilities of France. Both the D’Artagnan gallery and the Valois series literally reek with the names of celebrated personages, and this, too, in the mere romances, for it must be remembered that, in spite of his reputation as a romancist, Dumas’ historical sketches and travels were both numerous and of great extent.

One significant portrait, though it is not one of noble birth, is that of Marie Touchet, extracted from “Marguerite de Valois,” and reprinted here.

“When Charles IX. and Henri of Navarre visited the Rue de la Martellerie, it was to see the celebrated Marie, who, though ‘only a poor, simple girl,’ as she referred to herself, was the Eve of Charles’ paradise. ‘Your Eden, Sire,’ said the gallant Henri.

“‘Dearest Marie,’ said Charles, ‘I have brought you another king happier than myself, for he has no crown; more unhappy than me, for he has no Marie Touchet.’

“‘Sire, it is, then, the King of Navarre?’

“‘It is, love.’

“Henri went toward her, and Charles took his right hand.

“‘Look at this hand, Marie,’ said he; ‘it is the hand of a good brother and a loyal friend; and but for this hand—’

“‘Well, Sire!’

“‘But for this hand, this day, Marie, our boy had been fatherless.’

“Marie uttered a cry, seized Henri’s hand, and kissed it.

“The king went to the bed where the child was still asleep.

“‘Eh!’ said he, ‘if this stout boy slept in the Louvre, instead of sleeping in this small house, he would change the aspect of things at present, and perhaps for the future.’

“‘Sire,’ said Marie, ‘without offence to your Majesty, I prefer his sleeping here; he sleeps better.’”

This illustrates only one phase of Dumas’ power of portraiture, based on historical fact, of course, and casting no new light on matters which are otherwise well known, but still a very fresh and vivifying method of projecting the features of those famous in the history of France, and a method, perhaps, which will serve to impress them upon the reader in a more nearly indelible fashion than any other.

“It was this child of Marie Touchet and Charles IX. who afterward was the famous Duke d’Angoulême, who died in 1650; and, had he been legitimate, would have taken precedence of Henri III., Henri IV., Louis XIII., Louis XIV., etc., and altered the whole line of the royal succession of France.”

It was a pleasurable visit for all three, that of which Dumas writes.

Charles, Henri, and Marie supped together, and the accomplished Prince of Béarn made the famous anagram from the letters of the lady’s name, “Je charme tout,” which Charles declared he would present to her worked in diamonds, and that it should be her motto.

History does not state that he did so, but no doubt that was a detail which the chroniclers have overlooked, or, of course, it may have been an interpolation of Dumas’.

Dumas’ pen-pictures of the great Napoleon—whom he referred to as “The Ogre of Corsica”—will hardly please the great Corsican’s admirers, though it is in no manner contemptuous. The following is from “The Count of Monte Cristo”:

“‘Monsieur,’ said the baron to the count, ‘all the servants of his Majesty must approve of the latest intelligence which we have from the island of Elba. Bonaparte—’ M. Dandré looked at Louis XVIII., who, employed in writing a note, did not even raise his head. ‘Bonaparte,’ continued the baron, ‘is mortally wearied, and passes whole days in watching his miners at work at Porto-Longone.’

“‘And scratches himself for amusement,’ added the king.

“‘Scratches himself?’ inquired the count. ‘What does your Majesty mean?’

“‘Yes, indeed, my dear count. Did you forget that this great man, this hero, this demigod, is attacked with a malady of the skin which worries him to death, prurigo?’

“‘And, moreover, M. le Comte,’ continued the minister of police, ‘we are almost assured that, in a very short time, the usurper will be insane.’

“‘Insane?’

“‘Insane to a degree; his head becomes weaker. Sometimes he weeps bitterly, sometimes laughs boisterously; at other times he passes hours on the seashore, flinging stones in the water, and when the flint makes “ducks and drakes” five or six times, he appears as delighted as if he had gained another Marengo or Austerlitz. Now, you must agree these are indubitable symptoms of weakness?’

“‘Or of wisdom, M. le Baron—or of wisdom,’ said Louis XVIII., laughing; ‘the greatest captains of antiquity recreated themselves with casting pebbles into the ocean—see Plutarch’s life of Scipio Africanus.’”

Again, from the same work, the following estimate of Napoleon’s position at Elba was, if not original, at least opinionated:

“The emperor, now king of the petty isle of Elba, after having held sovereign sway over one-half of the world, counting us, his subjects, a small population of twenty millions,—after having been accustomed to hear the ‘Vive Napoléons’ of at least six times that number of human beings, uttered in nearly every language of the globe,—was looked upon among the haute société of Marseilles as a ruined man, separated for ever from any fresh connection with France or claim to her throne.”

Firstly the Faubourg St. Denis is associated with Dumas’ early life in Paris. He lived at No. 53 of the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis in 1824.

When one walks past the Porte St. Denis and looks up at that seventeenth-century arch of triumph, built to commemorate the German victories of Louis Quatorze, one just misses the historical significance and architectural fitness of the arch. It is not merely an incident in the boulevard. It belongs not so much to the newer boulevard, as to the ancient Rue St. Denis, and it is only by proceeding some distance up this street, the ancient route of the pilgrims to the tomb of the saint, that the meaning of the Porte St. Denis can truly be appreciated. The arch may be heavy,—it has been described as hideous, and it truly is,—but seen in the Rue St. Denis, whose roadway passes under it, it forms a typical view even to-day of Old Paris, and of the Paris which entered so largely into Dumas’ romances of the Louis.

The more ancient Porte St. Denis, the gateway which lay between the faubourg, the plain, and the ville, performed a function quite different from that of the Renaissance gateway which exists to-day; in just what manner will be readily inferred when it is recalled that, with the Porte St. Antoine, the Porte St. Denis was the scene of much riot and bloodshed in the early history of Paris.

109 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. DENIS (DÉSCAMPS’ STUDIO)

There are no tram-cars or omnibuses passing through its arch, as through the Place du Carrousel, or the courtyards of the Louvre, to take away the sentiment of romance; though the traffic which swirls and eddies around its sturdy piers and walls is of a manifest up-to-date, twentieth-century variety.

Through its great arch runs the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, where, at No. 109, was the studio of Gabriel Déscamps, celebrated in “Capitaine Pamphile.”

In “Marguerite de Valois” we have a graphic reference—though rather more sentimental than was the author’s wont—to the Cimetière des Innocents:

“On the day which succeeded that terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew’s night, in 1572, a hawthorn-tree,” said Dumas, and it is also recognized history, as well, “which had blossomed in the spring, and which, according to custom, had lost its odorous flower in the month of June, had strangely reblossomed during the night, and the Catholics, who saw in this even a miracle, and who by rendering this miracle popular made the Deity their accomplice, went in procession, cross and banner at their head, to the Cemetery of the Innocents, where this hawthorn was blooming.”

Amidst the cries of “Vive le roi!” “Vive la messe!” “Mort aux Huguenots,” the accomplished Marguerite herself went to witness the phenomenon.

“When they reached the top of the Rue des Prouvelles, they met some men who were dragging a carcass without any head. It was that of ‘the admiral’ (Coligny).... The men were going to hang it by the feet at Montfaucon....”

“They entered the Cemetery of St. Innocents, and the clergy, forewarned of the visit of the king and the queen mother, awaited their Majesties to harangue them.”

The cemetery—or signs of it—have now disappeared, though the mortal victims of the massacre, and countless other souls besides, rest beneath the flagstones adjacent to Les Halles, the great market-house of Paris.

The Fontaine des Innocents formerly marked the site, but now it is removed to the other side of Les Halles.

This graceful Renaissance fountain was first erected in 1550, from designs of Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon. It stood formerly before the Église des Innocents, which was demolished in 1783.

The Fontaine des Innocents, in spite of its migrations, is a charming oasis of green trees and running water, in the midst of the rather encumbered market-square of Les Halles. Not that the region around about is at all unsavoury; far from it. There is débris of green vegetables and ripe fruits everywhere about, but it has not yet reached the unsavoury stage; before it does all will be swept away, and on the morrow the clamour and traffic will start fresh anew.

The Place Royale, now called the Place des Vosges, is so largely identified with “La Comtesse de Charny” that no special mention can well be made of any action which here took place.

At No. 21, now of course long since departed, lived “a gentleman entirely devoted to your Majesty,” said Dumas, and the adventuress, Lady de Winter, whom D’Artagnan was wont to visit, was given domicile by Dumas at No. 6. Likely enough it was her true residence, though there is no opportunity of tracing it to-day, and one perforce must be satisfied with locating the houses of Madame de Sévigné and Victor Hugo, each of which bear tablets to that effect.

The Place des Vosges is a charming square, reminiscent, in a way, of the courtyard of the Palais Royal, though lacking its splendour. The iron gateway to the central garden was a gift of Louis XIV., in 1685, when the square was known as the Place Royale. Richelieu caused to be set up here a magnificent equestrian statue of Louis XIII., which, however, was overturned in the Revolution, though it has since been replaced by another statue. The horse was the work of Ricciarelli de Volterre, a pupil of Michelangelo, and the figure was by Biard.

The first great historical event held here was the carrousel given in 1612, two years after the tragic death of Henri IV. at the hands of the assassin Ravaillac. It was a function of Marie de Medici’s to celebrate the alliance of France and Spain.

Under Richelieu, the place became a celebrated duelling-ground, the most famous duel being that between the Duc de Guise and Coligny fils, the son of the admiral.

The Place Royale soon became the most fashionable quartier, the houses around about being greatly in demand of the noblesse.

Among its illustrious inhabitants have been the Rohans, the D’Alégres, Corneille, Condé, St. Vincent de Paul, Molière, Turenne, Madame de Longueville, Cinq-Mars, and Richelieu.

By un arrêté of the 17th Ventose, year VII., it was declared that the name of the department which should pay the largest part of its contributions by the 20th Germinal would be given to that of the principal place or square of Paris. The Department of the Vosges was the first to pay up, and the Place Royale became the Place des Vosges.

A great deal of the action of the D’Artagnan romances took place in the Place Royale, and in the neighbouring quartiers of St. Antoine and La Bastille, the place being the scene of the notable reunion of the four gallants in “Vingt Ans Après.”

La Roquette, the prison, has disappeared, like the Bastille itself, but they are both perpetuated to-day, the former in the Rue Roquette, and the latter in the Place de la Bastille.

Dumas does not project their horrors unduly, though the Bastille crops up in many of the chapters of the Valois romances, and one entire volume is devoted to “The Taking of the Bastille.”

D’Artagnan himself was doomed, by an order of arrest issued by Richelieu, to be incarcerated therein; but the gallant mousquetaire, by a subtle scheme, got hold of the warrant and made a present of it to the intriguing cardinal himself.

The sombre and sinister guillotine, since become so famous, is made by Dumas subject of a weirdly fascinating chapter in “La Comtesse de Charny.” Dumas’ description is as follows:

“When Guilbert got out of the carriage he saw that he was in the court of a prison, and at once recognized it as the Bicêtre. A fine misty rain fell diagonally and stained the gray walls. In the middle of the court five or six carpenters, under the direction of a master workman, and a little man clad in black, who seemed to direct everybody, put a machine of a hitherto strange and unknown form. Guilbert shuddered; he recognized Doctor Guillotin, and the machine itself was the one of which he had seen a model in the cellar of the editor of ‘l’ami du peuple.’... The very workmen were as yet ignorant of the secret of this novel machine. ‘There,’ said Doctor Guillotin, ... ‘it is now only necessary to put the knife in the groove.’... This was the form of the machine: a platform fifteen feet square, reached by a simple staircase, on each side of this platform two grooved uprights, ten or twelve feet high. In the grooves slid a kind of crescent-shaped knife. A little opening was made between two beams, through which a man’s head could be passed.... ‘Gentlemen,’ said Guillotin, ‘all being here, we will begin.’”

Then follows the same vivid record of executing and blood-spurting that has attracted many other writers perhaps as gifted as Dumas, but none have told it more graphically, simply, or truthfully.

Every one knows the Mount of Martyrs, its history, and its modern aspect, which has sadly degenerated of late.

To-day it is simply a hilltop of cheap gaiety, whose patrons are catered for by the Moulin Rouge, the Moulin de la Galette, and a score of “eccentric cafés,” though its past is burdened with Christian tragedy. Up its slope St. Denis is fabulously supposed to have carried his head after his martyrdom, and the quiet, almost forlorn Rue St. Eleuthère still perpetuates the name of his companion in misery. Long afterward, in the chapel erected on this spot, Ignatius Loyola and his companions solemnly vowed themselves to their great work. So here on sinful Montmartre, above Paris, was born the Society of Jesus. The Revolution saw another band of martyrs, when the nuns of the Abbaye de Montmartre, old and young, chanted their progress to the guillotine, and little more than thirty years ago the Commune precipitated its terrible struggle in Montmartre. It was in the Rue des Rosiers, on the 18th of March, 1871, that the blood of Generals Lecomte and Clément-Thomas was shed.