Remains of French author Alexandre Dumas moved to site of honor in Paris

Jet, Dec 23, 2002

The remains of Alexandre Dumas, the noted Black French author who made the phrase "all for one and one for all famous in his classic novel The Three Musketeers, were recently transferred to the Pantheon, the domed Paris mausoleum where more than 60 French dignitaries of the arts, politics and science are buried.

Dumas' remains now lie alongside fellow author Victor Hugo and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Marie Curie.

Last spring French President Jacques Chirac ordered the transfer of Dumas' remains from a cemetery in the town of Villers-Cotterets, north of Paris where he was born in 1802, to acknowledge the author's contribution to French literature and society.

President Chirac called Dumas one of France's "most turbulent children, one of its most talented and one of its most creative geniuses."

Dumas, self-educated and the grandson of a Haitian slave, became a captain of the national guard in the 1830s and excited readers worldwide with Over 250 plays and novels.

He is best known for The Three Musketeers, which tells the adventures of four male heroes living during the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. His other works include The Man in the Iron Mash, The Count of Monte Cristo and the play Henry III and His Court.

Dumas died in 1870 in Normandy and was buried there because the Franco-Prussian War prevented his burial in Villers-Cotterets. Two years later, Dumas' son moved his body to his hometown after the war ended.