The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

My father spent the next years among the youth of the great families of that period. His handsome features--all the more striking for the dark complexion of a mulatto--his prodigious physical strength, his elegant creole figure, with hands and feet as small as a woman's, his unrivalled skill in bodily exercises, and especially in fencing and horsemanship, all marked him out as one born for adventures. The spirit of adventure was there, too. Assuming the name of Dumas because his father objected to the family name being dragged through the ranks, he enlisted as a private in a regiment of dragoons in 1786, at the age of twenty-four. Quartered at Villers-Cotterets in 1790, he met my mother, Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Labouret, whom he married two years later. Their children were one daughter, and then myself. The marquis had died in 1786.

My memory goes back to 1805, when I was three, and to the little country house, Les Fosses, we lived in. I remember a journey to Paris in the same year, and the death of my father in 1806. Then my mother, sister, and I, left in poverty, went to live with grandfather and grandmother Labouret. Here, in gardens full of shady trees and gorgeous blossoms, I spent those happy days when hope extends hardly further than to-morrow, and memory hardly further than yesterday; storing my mind with classical mythology and Bible stories, the "Arabian Nights," the natural history of Buffon, and the geography of "Robinson Crusoe."

Then came my tenth year and the age for school. It was decided that I should go to the seminary and be educated for a priest; but I settled that matter by running away and living for three days in the hut of a friendly bird-catcher in the woods. So I passed instead into our little school of the Abbé Grégoire--a just and good man, of whom I learned little but to love him; and from another parish priest, an uncle of mine, a few miles away, I gained a passion for shooting the hares and partridges with which our country swarmed.

But while I was living in twelve-year-old joys and sorrows, the enemy was marching on French soil, and all confidence in Napoleon's star had vanished. God had forsaken him. A retreating wave of our army swept over the countryside, followed by alien forces. We lived in the midst of fighting and alarms, and my mother and her friends worked like sisters of charity. There followed Bonaparte's exile in Elba, and then the astonishing report that he had landed near Cannes, and was marching on Paris. He reached the Tuileries on March 20, 1815; in May, his troops were marching through our town on their way to Waterloo, glory, and the grave. I saw him passing in his carriage, his face, pale and sickly, leaning forward, chin on breast. He raised his head, and glanced around.

"Where are we?"

"At Villers-Cotterets, sire."

"Forward! Faster!" he cried, and fell back into his lethargy. Whips cracked, and the gigantic vision had passed. That was June 11--Waterloo was the 18th. On the 20th, three or four hours after the first doubtful rumour had reached us, a carriage drew up to change horses. There was the same inert figure, and the same question and answer. The team broke into a gallop, and the fallen Napoleon was gone. Soon all went on in the ordinary way, and in our little town, isolated in the midst of its forest, one might have thought no changes had taken place; people had had an evil dream--that was all.

My memories of this period are chiefly memories of the woods--shooting parties, now and then a wolf or boar hunt, often a poaching adventure with a friend. But at fifteen years of age I was placed in a notary's office; at sixteen I learned to love, and shortly afterwards I saw "Hamlet" played by a touring company. It made a profound impression on me, awakening vast, aimless desires, strange gleams of mystery. A friend of mine, Adolphe de Leuven, himself an ardent versifier, guided me to a first sense of my vocation, and together we set to work as playwrights.