Four times it was unsuccessfully besieged, and came finally, in 1617, to be dismantled.
The great Napoleon purchased it after the Revolution, and finally, through the liberality of Napoleon III.,—one of the few acts which redound to his credit,—it was restored, by Viollet-le-Duc, at a cost of over five million francs.
In “Pauline,” that fragment which Dumas extracted from one of his “Impressions du Voyage,” the author comes down to modern times, and gives us, as he does in his journals of travel, his “Mémoires,” and others of his lighter pieces of fiction, many charming pen-portraits of localities familiar not only to his pen, but to his personal experiences.
He draws in “Pauline” a delightful picture of the old fishing-village of Trouville—before it became a resort of fashion. In his own words he describes it as follows:
“I took the steamer from Havre, and two hours later was at Honfleur; the next morning I was at Trouville.”
To-day the fly-by-day tourist does the whole journey in a couple of hours—if he does not linger over the attractions of “Les Petits Chevaux” or “Trente et Quarante,” at Honfleur’s pretty Casino.
“You know the little town with its population of fisher-folk. It is one of the most picturesque in Normandy. I stayed there a few days, exploring the neighbourhood, and in the evening I used to sit in the chimney-corner with my worthy hostess, Madame Oseraie. There I heard strange tales of adventures which had been enacted in Calvados, Loiret, and La Manche.”
Continuing, the author, evidently having become imbued with the local colour of the vicinity, describes, more or less superficially, perhaps, but still with vividness, if not minuteness, those treasure-chests of history, the towns and villages of Normandy:—Caen, Lisieux, Falaise, the cradle of the Conqueror William, “the fertile plains” around Pont Audemer, Havre, and Alençon.
Normandy, too, was the locale of the early life of Gabriel Lambert, the unappealing leading-man of that dramatic story of a counterfeiter’s life, which bears the same title.
Dumas’ first acquaintance with the character in real life,—if he had any real personality, as one is inclined to think he had,—was at Toulon, where the unfortunate man was imprisoned and made to work in the galleys.