Taking the Bastile

In the wintry lanes outside Paris, a young man named Gilbert carries a child in his arms and a terrible secret in his heart. He entrusts the infant to the peasant household of Madeline Pitou, paying them to raise the boy as a hardy country child while hinting at a noble origin shadowed by death, duty, and sacrifice. Years later, Gilbert returns to find the boy, Ange Pitou, strong and well, yet still haunted by the memory of his lost mother, Andrea. After Madame Pitou's death and a final letter that may reconnect the child to his hidden past, Dr. Gilbert becomes Ange's guardian and exposes the greed beneath Aunt Angelique's pious façade. Angelique agrees to keep the orphan only for money, then neglects her promise to teach him a trade. Left to fend for himself, Ange traps birds and rabbits with sharp wit, outsmarting both the gamekeeper and his aunt's appetite for profit. She next sends him to school, dreaming of priestly advancement, but bullying, discipline, and expulsion follow. Her fury over Ange's affection for Catherine Billet turns absurdly jealous, and the novel's private struggles soon give way to public upheaval as the storming of the Bastille erupts around them. In the violence and triumph of revolution, Pitou and Billet think first of the prisoners, while Paris surges into a fever of rage, freedom, and irreversible change. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

Né en 1802 à Villers-Cotterêts, et orphelin de son père à quatre ans, Alexandre Dumas doit très tôt gagner sa vie. À vingt ans, il part à Paris et, en autodidacte, il publie très rapidement poèmes et nouvelles. L'immense succès de son drame Henri III et sa cour en 1829 en fait un des chefs de file du mouvement romantique. Ses romans paraissent souvent en feuilletons et connaissent aussi un grand succès populaire. Mais d'énormes investissements théâtraux ou journalistiques disperseront sa fortune. C'est presque dans la misère que meurt Alexandre Dumas, en 1870.