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, fr

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 melodrama

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 o

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 h

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

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

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

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 prec

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. Mar

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 r

It is difficult to write of La Cité; it is indeed, impossible to write of it with fulness, unless one were to devote a large volume—or many large volumes—to it alone. To the tourists it is mostly recalled as being the berceau of Nôtre Dame or the morgue. The latter, fortunately, is an entirely modern institution, and, though it existed in Dumas’ own time, did not when the scenes of the D’Artagnan or Valois romances were laid. Looking toward Nôtre Dame from the Pont du Carrousel, one feels a veri

L’Université is the quartier which foregathered its components, more or less unconsciously, around the Sorbonne. To-day the name still means what it always did; the Ecole de Médicine, the Ecole de Droit, the Beaux Arts, the Observatoire, and the student ateliers of the Latin Quarter, all go to make it something quite foreign to any other section of Paris. The present structure known as “The Sorbonne” was built by Richelieu in 1629, as a sort of glorified successor to the ancient foundation of Ro

“ Paris renferme beaucoup de palais; mais le vrai palais de Paris, le vrai palais de la France, tout le monde l’a nommé,—c’est le Louvre. ” Upon the first appearance of “Marguerite de Valois,” a critic writing in Blackwood’s Magazine , has chosen to commend Dumas’ directness of plot and purpose in a manner which every lover of Dumas and student of history will not fail to appreciate. He says: “Dumas, according to his custom, introduces a vast array of characters, for the most part historical, al

It seems hardly necessary to more than mention the name of the Palais Royal, in connection with either the life or the writings of Alexandre Dumas, to induce a line of thought which is practically limitless. It was identified with Dumas’ first employment in the capital, and it has been the scene of much of the action of both the D’Artagnan and the Valois romances. More than all else, however, though one is apt to overlook it somewhat, it is so closely identified with Richelieu that it is difficu

The worshipper at the shrines made famous by Dumas—no less than history—will look in vain for the prison of La Roquette, the Bastille, the hôtel of the Duc de Guise, at No. 12 Rue du Chaume, that of Coligny in the Rue de Bethusy, or of the Montmorencies, “near the Louvre.” They existed, of course, in reality, as they did in the Valois romances, but to-day they have disappeared, and not even the “ Commission des Monuments Historiques ” has preserved a pictorial representation of the three latter.

Since the romances of Dumas deal so largely with Paris, it is but natural that much of their action should take place at the near-by country residences of the royalty and nobility who form the casts of these great series of historical tales. To-day Fontainebleau, St. Germain, Versailles, and even Chantilly, Compiègne, and Rambouillet are but mere attractions for the tourist of the butterfly order. The real Parisian never visits them or their precincts, save as he rushes through their tree-lined

Dumas’ acquaintance with the French provinces was very comprehensive, though it is of the region northeast of Paris that he was most fond; of the beloved forest region around Crépy and Villers-Cotterets; the road to Calais, and Picardie and Flanders. Dumas was ever fond of, and familiar with, the road from Paris to Calais. The National Route ran through Crépy, and the byroad through his native Villers-Cotterets. In the “Vicomte de Bragelonne,” he calls the region “The Land of God,” a sentiment w

Dumas frequently wandered afield for his mise-en-scène , and with varying success; from the “Corsican Brothers,” which was remarkably true to its locale , and “La Tulipe Noire,” which was equally so, if we allow for a certain perspective of time, to “Le Capitaine Pamphile,” which in parts, at least, is gross exaggeration or burlesque. Once only, to any great extent, did he go to Germany for his inspirations, and then only to German legend,—where so many others had been before,—and have since. In