give a most convincing impression of his courageous and
brilliant youth, fired equally by art and by ambition.

_I.--Memories of Boyhood_

I was born on July 24, 1802, at Villers-Cotterets, a little town of the
Department of Aisne, on the road from Laon to Paris, so that, writing
now in 1847, I am forty-five years old. My father was the republican
general, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie, and I still use
this patronymic in signing official documents. It came from my
grandfather, marquis of that name, who sold his properties in France,
and settled down in 1760 on vast estates in San Domingo. There, in 1762,
my father was born; his mother, Louise-Cessette Dumas, died in 1772; and
in 1780, when my father was eighteen, the West Indian estates were
leased, and the marquis returned to his native country.

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 b