Margaret Bryant

“ Some light is thrown on the romance by the circumstances of the duc de Calabre, to whom it was dedicated. His wife, Marie de Bourbon, was one of the “Belles-Cousines” who contended for the favour of Jacques or Jacquet de Lalaing in the Livre des faits de Jacques Lalaing which forms the chief source of the early exploits of Petit Jehan.
The incongruities of La Sale’s aims appear in his method of construction. The hero is not imaginary. ”

“ Dumas was never an actual candidate for academic honours, but he had more than once taken steps to investigate his chances of success. A statue of him was erected on the Place Malesherbes, Paris, in 1883, and the figure of d’Artagnan finds a place on the pedestal.
Auguste Maquet was Dumas’s chief collaborator. Others were Paul Lacroix (the bibliophile “P. L. Jacob”) , Paul Bocage, J. P. Mallefille and P. A. Fiorentino. The novels of Dumas may be conveniently arranged in a historical sequence. The Valois novels and the musqueteers series brought French history down to 1672. ”

“ Two days after the departure of the Simons the prisoner is said by the Restoration historians to have been put in a dark room which was barricaded like the cage of a wild animal. The story runs that food was passed through the bars to the child, who survived in spite of the accumulated filth of his surroundings. Robespierre [5] visited Marie Thérèse on the 11th of May, but no one, according to the legend, entered the dauphin’s room for six months until Barras visited the prison after the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794) . ”

“ Leuven returned to Paris, and Dumas was sent to the office of a solicitor at Crépy. When in 1823 Dumas contrived to visit his friend in Paris, he was received to his great delight by Talma. He returned home only to break with his employer, and to arrange to seek his fortune in Paris, where he sought help without success from his father’s old friends. An introduction to the deputy of his department, General Foy, procured for him, however, a place as clerk in the service of the duke of Orleans at a salary of 1200 francs. ”

“ Some forty candidates for his honours were forthcoming under the Restoration. The most important of these pretenders were Karl Wilhelm Naundorff and the comte de Richemont. Naundorff’s story rested on a series of complicated intrigues. According to him Barras determined to save the dauphin in order to please Joséphine Beauharnais, the future empress, having conceived the idea of using the dauphin’s existence as a means of dominating the comte de Provence in the event of a restoration. ”

“ The amiable relations which had subsisted between them for eight years were disturbed by the marriage, which is said to have been undertaken in consequence of a strong hint from the duke of Orleans, and Mme Dumas lived in Italy separated from her husband.
As a novelist Dumas began by writing short stories, but his happy collaboration with Auguste Maquet, [2] which began in 1839, led to the admirable series of historical novels in which he proposed to reconstruct the whole course of French history. ”

“ She materially advances his career until Saintré becomes an accomplished knight, the fame of whose prowess spreads throughout Europe. This section of the romance—apparently didactic in intention—fits in with the author’s other works of edification. But in the second part this virtuous lady falls a victim to a vulgar intrigue with Damp Abbé. One of La Sale’s commentators, M. Joseph Nève, ingeniously maintains that the last section is simply to show how the hero, after passing through the other grades of education, learns at last by experience to arm himself against coquetry. ”

“ The three musketeers are as famous in England as in France. Thackeray could read about Athos from sunrise to sunset with the utmost contentment of mind, and R. L. Stevenson and Andrew Lang have paid tribute to the band in Memories and Portraits and Letters to Dead Authors. Before 1844 was out Dumas had completed a second great romance in 12 volumes, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, in which he had help from Fiorentino as well as from Maquet. ”

“ Both Barras and Harmand de la Meuse are said to have given leave for the brother and sister to see each other, but the meeting was never permitted. The argument from the sudden disappearance of persons in a position to know something of the truth is of a less convincing character. It may be noted that the more famous of the persons alleged by partisans of subsequent pretenders to have been hustled out of the world for their connexion with the secret are the empress Joséphine, the duc d’Enghien and the duc de Berri. ”

“ Richemont’s tale that the woman Simon, who was genuinely attached to him, smuggled him out in a basket, is simple and more credible, and does not necessarily invalidate the story of the subsequent operations with the deaf mute and the scrofulous patient, Laurent in that case being deceived from the beginning, but it renders them extremely unlikely. A third pretender, Eleazar Williams, did not affect to know anything of his escape. ”

“ With other gentlemen from Brabant, whose names he has preserved, he took part in the expedition of 1415 against the Moors, organized by John I. of Portugal. In 1420 he accompanied Louis III. on another expedition to Naples, making in that year an excursion from Norcia to the Monte della Sibilla, and the neighbouring Lake of Pilate. ”

“ The more important novels have been frequently translated into English. There is a long list of writings on his life and his works both in English and French. The more important French authorities are: his own memoirs, already cited; C. Glinel, Alexandre Dumas et son œuvre (Reims, 1884) ; H. Parigot, Dumas père (Grands écrivains français series, 1902) , and Le Drame d’Alexandre Dumas (1899) ; H. Blaze de Bury, Alexandre Dumas (1885) ; Philibert Andebrand, Alexandre Dumas à la maison d’or (1888) ; G. Ferry, Dernières Années d’Alexandre Dumas (1883) ; and L. H. Lecomte, Alexandre Dumas (1904) . ”

“ LOUIS XVII. (1785–1795?) , titular king of France, second son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, was born at Versailles on the 27th of March 1785, was christened the same day Louis Charles, and given the title of duke of Normandy. Louis Charles became dauphin on the death of his elder brother on the 4th of June 1789. ”

“ On Laurent’s retirement Étienne Lasne was appointed on the 31st of March 1795 to be the child’s guardian. In May 1795 the prisoner was seriously ill, and a doctor, P. J. Desault, well acquainted with the dauphin, having visited him seven months earlier, was summoned. Desault died suddenly, not without suspicion of poison, on the 1st of June, and it was some days before doctors Pelletan and Dumangin were called. Then it was announced that on the 8th Louis Charles died. ”

“ He lost Napoleon’s favour by plain speaking in the Egyptian campaign, and presently returned to France to spend the rest of his days in retirement at Villers Cotterets, where he had married in 1792 Marie Élisabeth Labouret. ”

“ Plaidoirie de Jules Favre devant la cour d’appel de Paris pour les héritiers de feu Charles-Guillaume Naundorff (1874) ; H. Provins, Le Dernier roi légitime de France (2 vols., the first of which consists of destructive criticism of Beauchesne and his followers, 1889) ; A. Lanne, “Louis XVII. et le secret de la Révolution,” Bulletin mensuel (1893 et seq.) of the Société des études sur la question Louis XVII., also La Légitimité (Bordeaux, Toulouse, 1883–1898) . See further the article “Naundorff” in M. Tourneux, Bibl. de la ville de Paris pendant la Révolution, vol. ”