Chapter I: Front Matter

MY MEMOIRS

BY

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

TRANSLATED BY

E. M. WALLER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

ANDREW LANG

VOL. I

1802 TO 1821

WITH A FRONTISPIECE

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1907

NOTE

The translator has, in the main, followed the edition published at Brussels in 1852-56, in the Preface to which the publishers state that they have printed from "_le manuscrit autographe_" of the author. They furthermore print a letter from Dumas, dated Brussels, 23rd December 1851, in which Dumas says:

"Je vous offre donc, mon cher Meline, de revoir moi-même les épreuves de votre réimpression, et de faire de votre édition de Bruxelles la seule édition complète qui paraîtra à l'étranger."

The translation has been collated (_a_) with the current edition, and (_b_) with the original edition published in Paris in 1852-55, and certain omitted passages have been restored. Dumas' spelling of proper names has been followed save in a few cases deemed to be misprints.

THESE MEMOIRS ARE DEDICATED TO

THE HONOURABLE

COUNT ALFRED D'ORSAY

MY FELLOW-CRAFTSMAN

AND MY BOSOM FRIEND

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

CONTENTS

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

My birth--My name is disputed--Extracts from the official
registers of Villers-Cotterets--Corbeil Club--My
father's marriage certificate--My mother--My maternal
grandfather--Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, father of
Philippe-Égalité--Madame de Montesson--M. de Noailles and
the Academy--A morganatic marriage

CHAPTER II

My father--His birth--The arms of the family--The serpents
of Jamaica--The alligators of St. Domingo--My grandfather--A
young man's adventure--A first duel--M. le duc de Richelieu
acts as second for my father--My father enlists as a private
soldier--He changes his name--Death of my grandfather--His
death certificate

CHAPTER III

My father rejoins his regiment--His portrait--His
strength--His skill--The Nile serpent--The regiment of
the King and the regiment of the Queen--Early days of
the Revolution--Declaration of Pilnitz--The camp at
Maulde--The thirteen Tyrolean chasseurs--My father's
name is mentioned in the order of the day--France under
Providence--Voluntary enlistments--St.-Georges and Boyer--My
father lieutenant-colonel--The camp of the Madeleine--The
pistols of Lepage--My father General of Brigade in the Army
of the North

CHAPTER IV

My father is sent to join Kléber--He is nominated
General-in-Chief in the Western Pyrenees--Bouchotte's
letters--Instructions of the Convention--The Representatives
of the People who sat at Bayonne--Their proclamation--In
spite of this proclamation my father remains at
Bayonne--Monsieur de l'Humanité

CHAPTER V

My father is appointed General-in-Chief of the Army of the
West--His report on the state of La Vendée--My father is
sent to the Army of the Alps as General-in-Chief--State
of the army--Capture of Mont Valaisan and of the Little
Saint-Bernard--Capture of Mont Cenis--My father is recalled
to render an account of his conduct--What he had done--He is
acquitted

CHAPTER VI

The result of a sword-stroke across the head--St. Georges
and the remounts--The quarrel he sought with my father--My
father is transferred to the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse--He
hands in his resignation and returns to Villers-Cotterets--A
retrospect over what had happened at home and abroad during
the four years that had just elapsed

CHAPTER VII

My father at Villers-Cotterets--He is called to Paris
to carry out the 13th Vendémiaire--Bonaparte takes
his place--He arrives the next day--_Buonaparte's_
attestation--My father is sent into the district of
Bouillon--He goes to the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse and to
the Army of the Rhine, and is appointed Commandant at
Landau--He returns as Divisional General in the Army of
the Alps, of which he had been Commander-in-Chief--English
blood and honour--Bonaparte's plan--Bonaparte appointed
Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy--The campaign of 1796

CHAPTER VIII

My father in the Army of Italy--He is received
at Milan by Bonaparte and Joséphine--Bonaparte's
troubles in Italy--Scurvy--The campaign is
resumed--Discouragement--Battle of Arcole

CHAPTER IX

The despatch is sent to Bonaparte--Dermoncourt's
reception--Berthier's open response--Military movements
in consequence of the despatch--Correspondence between my
father and Serrurier and Dallemagne--Battle of St.-Georges
and La Favorite--Capture of Mantua--My father as a looker-on

CHAPTER X

My father's first breeze with Bonaparte--My father is sent
to Masséna's army corps--He shares Joubert's command in the
Tyrol--Joubert--The campaign in the Tyrol

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

The bridge of Clausen--Dermoncourt's reports--Prisoners on
parole--Lepage's pistols--Three generals-in-chief at the
same table

CHAPTER II

Joubert's loyalty towards my father--"Send me Dumas"--The
Horatius Codes of the Tyrol--My father is appointed Governor
of the Trévisan--The agent of the Directory--My father fêted
at his departure--The treaty of Campo-Formio--The return
to Paris--The flag of the Army of Italy--The charnel-house
of Morat--Charles the Bold--Bonaparte is elected a member
of the Institute--First thoughts of the expedition to
Egypt--Toulon--Bonaparte and Joséphine--What was going to
happen in Egypt

CHAPTER III

The voyage--The landing--The taking of Alexandria--The
_Chant du Départ_ and the Arabian concert--The respited
prisoners--The march on Cairo--Rum and biscuit--My
father's melons--The Scientific Institute--Battle of
the Pyramids--Scene of the victory--My father's letter
establishing the truth

CHAPTER IV

Admissions of General Dupuis and Adjutant-General Boyer--The
malcontents--Final discussion between Bonaparte and my
father--Battle of Aboukir--My father finds treasure--His
letter on this subject

CHAPTER V

Revolt at Cairo--My father enters the Grand Mosque on
horseback--His home-sickness--He leaves Egypt and lands at
Naples--Ferdinand and Caroline of Naples--Emma Lyon and
Nelson--Ferdinand's manifesto--Comments of his minister,
Belmonte-Pignatelli

CHAPTER VI

Report presented to the French Government by
Divisional-General Alexandre Dumas, on his captivity at
Taranto and at Brindisi, ports in the Kingdom of Naples

CHAPTER VII

My father is exchanged for General Mack--Events during
his captivity--He asks in vain for a share in the
distribution of the 500,000 francs indemnity granted to
the prisoners--The arrears of his pay also refused him--He
is placed on the retired list, in spite of his energetic
protests

CHAPTER VIII

Letter from my father to General Brune on my birth--The
postscript--My godfather and godmother--First recollections
of infancy--Topography of the château des Fossés and
sketches of some of its inhabitants--The snake and the
frog--Why I asked Pierre if he could swim--Continuation of
_Jocrisse_

CHAPTER IX

Mocquet's nightmare--His pipe--Mother Durand--Les bêtes
_fausses_ et le _pierge_--M. Collard--My father's
remedy--Radical cure of Mocquet

CHAPTER X

Who was Berlick?--The fête of Villers-Cotterets--Faust
and Polichinelle--The sabots--Journey to
Paris--Dollé--Manette--Madame de Mauclerc's pension--Madame
de Montesson--_Paul and Virginia_--Madame de Saint-Aubin

CHAPTER XI

Brune and Murat--The return to Villers-Cotterets--L'hôtel de
l'Épée--Princess Pauline--The chase--The chief forester's
permission--My father takes to his bed never to rise
again--Delirium--The gold-headed cane--Death

CHAPTER XII

My love for my father--His love for me--I am taken away to
my cousin Marianne's--Plan of the house--The forge--The
apparition--I learn the death of my father--I wish to go
to heaven to kill God--Our situation at the death of my
father--Hatred of Bonaparte

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

My mother and I take refuge with my grandfather--Madame
Darcourt's house--My first books and my first terrors--The
park at Villers-Cotterets--M. Deviolaine and his family--The
swarm of bees--The old cloister

CHAPTER II

The two snakes--M. de Valence and Madame de Montesson--Who
little Hermine was--Garnier the wheelwright and Madame de
Valence--Madame Lafarge--Fantastic apparition of Madame de
Genlis

CHAPTER III

Mademoiselle Pivert--I make her read the _Thousand and One
Nights_, or, rather, one story in that collection--Old
Hiraux, my music-master--The little worries of his life--He
takes his revenge on his persecutors after the fashion of
the Maréchal de Montluc--He is condemned to be flogged,
and nearly loses the sight of his eyes--What happened on
Easter Day in the organ-loft at the monastery--He becomes
a grocer's lad--His vocation leads him to the study of
music--I have little aptitude for the violin

CHAPTER IV

The dog lantern-bearer--Demoustier's epitaph--My first
fencing-master--"The king drinks"--The fourth terror of my
life--The tub of honey

CHAPTER V

My horror of great heights--The Abbé Conseil--My opening at
the Seminary--My mother, much pressed, decides to enter me
there--The horn inkstand--Cécile at the grocer's--My flight

CHAPTER VI

The Abbé Grégoire's College--The reception I got there--The
fountains play to celebrate my arrival--The conspiracy
against me--Bligny challenges me to single combat--I win

CHAPTER VII

The Abbé Fortier--The jealous husband and the viaticum--A
pleasant visit--Victor Letellier--The pocket-pistol--I
terrify the population--Tournemolle is requisitioned--He
disarms me

CHAPTER VIII

A political chronology--Trouble follows trouble--The fire at
the farm at None--Death of Stanislas Picot--The hiding-place
for the louis d'or--The Cossacks--The haricot mutton

CHAPTER IX

The quarry--Frenchmen eat the haricot cooked for the
Cossacks--The Duc de Treviso--He allows himself to be
surprised--Ducoudray the hosier--Terrors

CHAPTER X

The return to Villers-Cotterets, and what we met on
the way--The box with the thirty louis in it--The
leather-bag--The mole--Our departure--The journey--The
arrival at Mensal and our sojourn their--King Joseph--The
King of Rome--We leave Mensal--Our visit to Crispy in
Valois--The dead and wounded--The surrender of Paris--The
isle of Elba

CHAPTER XI

Am I to be called Davy de La Pailleterie or Alexandre
Dumas?--_Deus dedit, Deus dabit_--The tobacco-shop--The
cause of the Emperor Napoleon's fall, as it appeared to my
writing-master--My first communion--How I prepared for it

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I

Auguste Lafarge--Bird-snaring on a large scale--A wonderful
catch--An epigram--I wish to write French verses--My method
of translating Virgil and Tacitus--Montanan--My political
opinions

CHAPTER II

The single-barrelled gun--_Quiot Biche_--Biche and Boudoux
compared--I become a poacher--It is proposed to issue a
writ against me--Madame Darcourt as plenipotentiary--How it
happened that Cretan's writ caused me no bother

CHAPTER III

Bonaparte's landing at the Gulf of Juan--Proclamations and
Ordonnances--Louis XVIII. and M. de Vitrolles--Cornu the
hatter--Newspaper information

CHAPTER IV

General Exelmans--His trial--The two brothers
Lallemand--Their conspiracy--They are arrested and led
through Villers-Cotterets--The affronts to which they were
subjected

CHAPTER V

My mother and I conspire--The secret--M. Richard--_La
pistole_ and the pistols--The offer made to the brothers
Lallemand in order to save them--They refuse--I meet one of
them, twenty-eight years later, at the house of M. le duc de
Cazes

CHAPTER VI

Napoleon and the Allies--The French army and the Emperor
pass through Villers-Cotterets--Bearers of ill tidings

CHAPTER VII

Waterloo--The Élysée--La Malmaison

CHAPTER VIII

Cæsar--Charlemagne--Napoleon

CHAPTER IX

The rout--The haricot mutton reappears--M. Picot the
lawyer--By diplomatic means, he persuades my mother to let
me go shooting with him--I despise sleep, food and drink

CHAPTER X

Trapping larks--I wax strong in the matter of my
compositions--The wounded partridge--I take the consequences
whatever they are--The farm at Brassoire--M. Deviolaine's
sally at the accouchement of his wife

CHAPTER XI

M. Moquet de Brassoire--The ambuscade--Three hares
charge me--What prevents me from being the king of the
battue--Because I did not take the bull by the horns, I just
escape being disembowelled by it--Sabine and her puppies

BOOK V

CHAPTER I

The second period of my youth--Forest-keepers and
sailors--Choron, Moinat, Mildet, Berthelin--La Maison-Neuve

CHAPTER II

Choron and the mad dog--Niquet, otherwise called
_Bobino_--His mistress--The boar-hunt--The kill--Bobino's
triumph--He is decorated--The boar which he had killed rises
again

CHAPTER III

Boars and keepers--The bullet of Robin-des-Bois--The
pork-butcher

CHAPTER IV

A wolf-hunt--Small towns--Choron's tragic death

CHAPTER V

My mother realises that I am fifteen years old, and that
_la marette_ and _la pipée_ will not lead to a brilliant
future for me--I enter the office of Me. Mennesson, notary,
as errand-boy, otherwise guttersnipe--Me. Mennesson and his
clerks--La Fontaine-Eau-Claire

CHAPTER VI

Who the assassin was and who the assassinated--Auguste
Picot--Equality before the law--Last exploits of Marot--His
execution

CHAPTER VII

Spring at Villers-Cotterets--Whitsuntide--The Abbé Grégoire
invites me to dance with his niece--Red books--The Chevalier
de Faublas--Laurence and Vittoria--A dandy of 1818