There would seem to be no good reason why a book treating of Dumas' Paris might not be composed entirely of quotations from Dumas' own works. For a fact, such a work would be no less valuable as a record than were it evolved by any other process. It would indeed be the best record that could possibly be made, for Dumas' topography was generally truthful if not always precise. There are, however, various contemporary side-lights which are thrown upon any canvas, no matter how small its area, and in this instance they seem to engulf even the personality of Dumas himself, to say nothing of his observations. Dumas was such a part and parcel of the literary life of the times in which he lived that mention can scarce be made of any contemporary event that has not some bearing on his life or work, or he with it, from the time when he first came to the metropolis (in 1822) at the impressionable age of twenty, until the end. It will be difficult, even, to condense the relative incidents which entered into his life within the confines of a single volume, to say nothing of a single chapter. The most that can be done is to present an abridgment which shall follow along the lines of some preconceived chronological arrangement. This is best compiled from Dumas' own words, leaving it to the additional references of other chapters to throw a sort of reflected glory from a more distant view-point. The reputation of Dumas with the merely casual reader rests upon his best-known romances, "Monte Cristo," 1841; "Les Trois Mousquetaires," 1844; "Vingt Ans Après," 1845; "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," 1847; "La Dame de Monsoreau," 1847; and his dramas of "Henri III. et Sa Cour," 1829, "Antony," 1831, and "Kean," 1836. His memoirs, "Mes Mémoires," are practically closed books to the mass of English readers--the word books is used advisedly, for this remarkable work is composed of twenty stout volumes, and they only cover ten years of the author's life. Therein is a mass of fact and fancy which may well be considered as fascinating as are the "romances" themselves, and, though autobiographic, one gets a far more satisfying judgment of the man than from the various warped and distorted accounts which have since been published, either in French or English. Beginning with "Memories of My Childhood" (1802-06), Dumas launches into a few lines anent his first visit to Paris, in company with his father, though the auspicious--perhaps significant--event took place at a very tender age. It seems remarkable that he should have recalled it at all, but he was a remarkable man, and it seems not possible to ignore his words.