According to the "Mémoires," a favourite rendezvous of Dumas in Paris, at this period, was Grisier's fencing-room. There it was that the _maître d'armes_ handed him the manuscript entitled "Eighteen Months at St. Petersburg,"--that remarkable account of a Russian exile,--and it is there that Dumas would have his readers to believe that he collected the materials for "Pauline" and "Murat." The great attraction of "The Corsican Brothers" lies not so much with Corsica, the home of the _vendetta_, the land of Napoleon, and latterly known politically as the 86me Departement de France, as with the events which so closely and strenuously encircled the lives of the brothers De Franchi in Paris itself. Corsican life and topography is limned, however, with a fidelity which has too often been lacking in Dumas' description of foreign parts. Perhaps, as has been said before, he extracted this information from others; but more likely--it seems to the writer--it came from his own intimate acquaintance with that island, as it is known that he was a visitor there in 1834. If this surmise be correct, the tale was a long time in taking shape,--an unusually long time for Dumas,--as the book did not appear until 1845, the same year as the appearance of "Monte Cristo" in book form. It was dedicated to Prosper Merimée, whose "Colomba" ranks as its equal as a thrilling tale of Corsican life. It has been remarked that, curiously enough, in spite of the fact that the story has been so often dramatized and adapted for the stage,--and acted by persons of all shades and grades of ability,--Dumas never thought well enough of it to have given it that turn himself. Dumas' acquaintance with Naples never produced any more lucid paragraphs descriptive of character, and the local colour and scenic effect besides, than in the few short pages of "Les Pêcheurs du Filet." It comes, of course, as a result of Dumas' rather extended sojourn in Italy. When Dumas actually did write scenic descriptions, they were exceedingly graphic,--though not verbose,--and exceedingly picturesque,--though not sentimental,--as witness the following lines which open the tale--though he does make use a little farther on of the now trite tag, "See Naples and die." "Every morning on awakening I was in the habit of resting my elbows on the window-sill and gazing far out over the limpid and sparkling mirror of the Tyrrhenian Sea.... At night the bay is so intensely blue that, under more favourable conditions, it resembles those leaden-hued lakes, such as Avernus, the Fucine Lake, or Lake Agnano,--all in the neighbourhood of Naples, which cover the craters of extinct volcanoes." The story gives further a wonderful pen-portrait of Ladislas I. of Hungary, of Jerusalem, and of Sicily, and of the barbaric torture of "The Question," which was performed upon the aspiring lover of Joanna of Naples.