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of French history and the novels of Sir Walter Scott. In collaboration with Auguste Maquet, he serialized Le Chevalier d’Harmental in the newspaper Le Siècle in 1842. Part history, intrigue, adventure, and romance, it is widely regarded as the first of Dumas’s great novels. The two subsequently worked together on a steady stream of books, most of which were published serially in Parisian tabloids and eagerly read by the public. He is best known for the celebrated d’Artagnan trilogy—Les trois mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers, 1844), Vingt ans après (Twenty Years After, 1845), and Dix ans plus tard ou le Vicomte de Bragelonne (Ten Years Later; or, The Viscount of Bragelonne, 1848–1850)—and the so-called Valois romances—La Reine Margot (Queen Margot, 1845), La Dame de Monsoreau (The Lady of Monsoreau, 1846), and Les Quarante-cinq (The Forty-Five Guardsmen, 1848).

Yet perhaps his greatest success was Le Comte de Monte Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo), which appeared in installments in Le Journal des débats from 1844 to 1845. Le Chevalier du Maison-Rouge (The Knight of Maison-Rouge, 1845–1846) was also a collaborative effort. A final tetralogy marked the end of their partnership: Mémoires d’un médecin: Joseph Balsamo (Memoirs of a Physician, 1846–1848), Le Collier de la reine (The Queen’s Necklace, 1849–1850), Ange Pitou (Taking the Bastille, 1853), and La Comtesse de Charny (The Countess de Charny, 1852–1855).

In 1847, at the height of his fame, Dumas assumed the role of impresario. Hoping to reap huge profits, he inaugurated the new Théâtre Historique as a vehicle for staging dramatizations of his historical novels. The same year he completed construction of a lavish residence in the quiet hamlet of Marly-le-Roi. Called Le Château de Monte Cristo, it was home to a menagerie of exotic pets and a parade of freeloaders until 1850, when Dumas’s theater failed and he faced bankruptcy. Fleeing temporarily to Belgium in order to avoid creditors, Dumas returned to Paris in 1853, shortly after the appearance of the initial volumes of Mes Mémoires (My Memoirs, 1852). Over the next years he founded the newspaper Le Mousquetaire, for which he wrote much of the copy, as well as the literary weekly Le Monte Cristo, but his finances never recovered. In 1858 he traveled to Russia, eventually publishing two new episodes of Impressions de voyage: Le Caucase (Adventures in the Caucasus, 1859) and En Russie (Travels in Russia, 1865).

The final decade of Dumas’s life began with customary high adventure. In 1860 he met Garibaldi and was swept up into the cause of Italian independence. After four years in Naples publishing the bilingual paper L’Indépendant/L’Indipendente, Dumas returned to Paris in 1864. In 1867 he began a flamboyant liaison with Ada Menken, a young American actress who dubbed him “the king of romance.” The same year marked the appearance of a last novel, La Terreur Prussiene (The Prussian Terror). Dumas’s final play, Les Blancs et les Bleus (The Whites and the Blues), opened in Paris in 1869.

Alexandre Dumas died penniless but cheerful on December 5, 1870, saying of death: “I shall tell her a story, and she will be kind to me.” One hundred years later his biographer André Maurois paid him this tribute: “Dumas was a hero out of Dumas. As strong as Porthos, as adroit as d’Artagnan, as generous as Edmond Dantès, this superb giant strode across the nineteenth century breaking down doors with his shoulder, sweeping women away in his arms, and earning fortunes only to squander them promptly in dissipation. For forty years he filled the newspapers with his prose, the stage with his dramas, the world with his clamor. Never did he know a moment of doubt or an instant of despair. He turned his own existence into the finest of his novels.”

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

INTRODUCTION by Lorenzo Carcaterra

THE KNIGHT OF MAISON-ROUGE

1. THE RECRUITS

2. THE STRANGER

3. RUE DES FOSSÉS-SAINT-VICTOR

4. THE CUSTOMS OF THE DAY

5. WHAT SORT OF MAN MAURICE LINDEY WAS

6. THE TEMPLE

7. A GAMBLER’S OATH