The Chevalier De Maison Rouge

Published in 1902 and is illustrated with drawings on wood by eminent French and American artists. Dumas, French novelist and playwright, is now primarily recognized for his historical novels, which include the ever popular “Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo”. The novel begins: It was on the evening of the 10th of March, 1793; ten o’clock was striking from Notre Dame, and each stroke sounding, emitted a sad and monotonous vibration. Night had fallen on Paris, not boisterous and stormy, but cold, damp, and foggy. Paris itself at that time was not the Paris of our day; glittering at night with thousands of reflected lights, the Paris of busy promenades, of lively chat, with its riotous suburbs, the scene of audacious quarrels and daring crime, but a fearful, timid, busy city, whose few and scattered inhabitants, even in crossing from one street to another, ran concealing themselves in the darkness of the alleys, and ensconcing themselves behind their porte-cocheres, like wild beasts tracked by the hunters to their lair.