Alexandre Dumas - The Knight of Maison-Rouge: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (Modern Library Classics)

2003 Modern Library Edition

Biographical note copyright 1996 by Random House, Inc.
Introduction copyright 2003 by Lorenzo Carcaterra
Translation copyright 2003 by Random House, Inc.
Notes and glossary copyright 2003 by Random House, Inc.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Dumas, Alexandre, 18021870.
[Chevalier de Maison-Rouge. English]
The knight of Maison-Rouge: a novel of Marie Antoinette /
Alexandre Dumas; a new translation by Julie Rose.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-335-0
1. FranceHistoryRevolution, 17891799Fiction. 2. Girondists
Fiction. 3. Marie Antoinette, Queen, consort of Louis XVI, King of
France, 17551793Fiction. I. Rose, Julie. II. Title.
PQ2225.C713 2003
843.7dc21

2003044577

Modern Library website address: www.modernlibrary.com

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Alexandre Dumas, who lived a life as dramatic as any depicted in his more than three hundred volumes of plays, novels, travel books, and memoirs, was born on July 24, 1802, in the town of Villers-Cotterts, some fifty miles from Paris. He was the third child of Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie (who took the name of Dumas), a nobleman who distinguished himself as one of Napoleons most brilliant generals, and Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Labouret. Following General Dumass death in 1806 the family faced precarious financial circumstances, yet Mme. Dumas scrimped to pay for her sons private schooling. Unfortunately he proved an indifferent student who excelled in but one subject: penmanship. In 1816, at the age of fourteen, Dumas found employment as a clerk with a local notary to help support the family. A growing interest in theater brought him to Paris in 1822, where he met Franois-Joseph Talma, the great French tragedian, and resolved to become a playwright. Meanwhile the passionate Dumas fell in love with Catherine Labay, a seamstress by whom he had a son. (Though he had numerous mistresses in his lifetime Dumas married only once, but the union did not last.) While working as a scribe for the duc dOrlans (later King Louis-Philippe) Dumas collaborated on a one-act vaudeville, La Chasse et lamour (The Chase and Love, 1825). But it was not until

1827, after attending a British performance of Hamlet, that Dumas discovered a direction for his dramas. For the first time in the theater I was seeing true passions motivating men and women of flesh and blood, he recalled. From this time on, but only then, did I have an idea of what the theater could be.

Dumas achieved instant fame on February 11, 1829, with the triumphant opening of Henri III et sa cour (Henry III and His Court). An innovative and influential play generally regarded as the first French drama of the Romantic movement, it broke with the staid precepts of Neoclassicism that had been imposed on the Paris stage for more than a century. Briefly involved as a republican partisan in the July Revolution of 1830, Dumas soon resumed playwriting and over the next decade turned out a number of historical melodramas that electrified audiences. Two of these worksAntony (1831) and La Tour de Nesle (The Tower of Nesle, 1832)stand out as milestones in the history of nineteenth-century French theater. In disfavor with the new monarch, Louis-Philippe, because of his republican sympathies, Dumas left France for a time. In 1832 he set out on a tour of Switzerland, chronicling his adventures in Impressions de voyage: En Suisse (Travels in Switzerland,18341837); over the years he produced many travelogues about subsequent journeys through France, Italy, Russia, and other countries.

Around 1840 Dumas embarked upon a series of historical romances inspired by both his love of French history and the novels of Sir Walter Scott. In collaboration with Auguste Maquet, he serialized Le Chevalier dHarmental in the newspaper Le Sicle in 1842. Part history, intrigue, adventure, and romance, it is widely regarded as the first of Dumass 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 dArtagnan trilogyLes trois mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers, 1844), Vingt ans aprs (Twenty Years After, 1845), and Dix ans plus tard ou le Vicomte de Bragelonne (Ten Years Later; or, The Viscount of Bragelonne, 18481850)and the so-called Valois romancesLa 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 dbats from 1844 to 1845. Le Chevalier du Maison-Rouge (The Knight of Maison-Rouge, 18451846) was also a collaborative effort. A final tetralogy marked the end of their partnership: Mmoires dun mdecin: Joseph Balsamo (Memoirs of a Physician, 18461848), Le Collier de la reine (The Queens Necklace, 18491850), Ange Pitou (Taking the Bastille, 1853), and La Comtesse de Charny (The Countess de Charny, 18521855).

In 1847, at the height of his fame, Dumas assumed the role of impresario. Hoping to reap huge profits, he inaugurated the new Thtre 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 Chteau de Monte Cristo, it was home to a menagerie of exotic pets and a parade of freeloaders until 1850, when Dumass 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 Mmoires (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 Dumass 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 LIndpendant/LIndipendente, 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). Dumass final play, Les Blancs et les Bleus (