In 1864 Dumas and the new Italian Government were not on harmonious terms. He left his Liberal newspaper and his meritorious excavations in Pompeii; he returned to Paris accompanied by a lady bearing the pleasing name of Fanny Gordosa. The gordosiousness, if I may use the term, of Fanny far exceeded her capacities as a housekeeper and domestic manager, and the undefeated veteran had to pursue that hunt for the _pièce de cent sous_ whereof we have spoken. _La jeunesse n'a qu'un temps_, but Dumas was determined "to be boy for ever." Stories are told about him which, whether they be true or untrue, are better unrepeated. Senile boyishness, where the sex is concerned, cannot be seemly. Money became more scarce as work ceased to be genuine work. Dumas fell to giving public lectures. A daughter came to attend him, as the Duchess of Albany presided over and more or less reformed the last years of her royal father. In 1869-70 the strength of this Porthos of the pen was broken: _c'est trop lourd!_ In the autumn of 1870, about the time of the disaster of Sedan, the younger Dumas carried his father to a village near Dieppe. They kept from him the sorrows of these days: his mind dwelt with the past and the dead. He died on December 5th, and on the same day, at Dieppe, the Germans reached the sea. His body lies at Villers-Cotterets, beside his father and mother. ANDREW LANG. THE MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS 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. I was born at Villers-Cotterets, a small town in the department of Aisne, situated on the road between Paris and Laon, about two hundred paces from the rue de la Noue, where Demoustier died; two leagues from La Ferté-Milon, where Racine was born; and seven leagues from Château-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine. I was born on the 24th of July 1802, in the rue de Lormet, in the house now belonging to my friend Cartier. He will certainly have to sell it me some day, so that I may die in the same room in which I was born. I will step forward into the darkness of the other world in the place that received me when I stepped into this world from the darkness of the past. I was born July 24th, 1802, at half-past five in the morning; which fact makes me out to be forty-five years and three months old at the date I begin these Memoirs--namely, on Monday, October the 18th, 1847. Most facts concerning my life have been disputed, even my very name of _Davy de la Pailleterie_, which I am not very tenacious about, since I have never borne it. It will only be found after my name of _Dumas_ in official deeds that I have executed before a lawyer, or in civil actions wherein I played either the principal part or was a witness.