When living at Toulon in the spring of 1835, as he himself tells us, he first came into possession of the facts which led to the construction of “Gabriel Lambert.”
There was doubtless much of truth in the tale, which appears not to be generally known to English readers, and it is more than probable that much of the incident was originally related to Dumas by the “governor of the port.”
Dumas was living at the time in a “small suburban house,” within a stone’s throw of Fort Lamalge, the prison, hard at work on his play of “Captain Paul”—though, as he says, he was greatly abstracted from work by the “contemplation of the blue Mediterranean spangled with gold, the mountains that blind in their awful nakedness, and of the sky impressive in its depth and clearness.”
The result of it all was that, instead of working at “Captain Paul” (Paul Jones), he left off working at all, in the daytime,—no infrequent occurrence among authors,—and, through his acquaintance with the governor, evolved the story of the life-history of “Gabriel Lambert.”
“Murat” was the single-worded title given by Dumas to what is perhaps the most subtle of the “Crimes Célèbres.” He drew his figures, of course, from history, and from a comparatively near view-point, considering that but twenty-five years had elapsed since the death of his subject.
Marseilles, Provence, Hyères, Toulon, and others of those charming towns and cities of the Mediterranean shore, including also Corsica, form the rapid itinerary of the first pages.
For the action itself, it resembles nothing which has gone before, or which is so very horrible. It simply recounts the adventures and incidents in the life of the Marshal of France which befel his later years, and which culminated in his decapitated head being brought before the King of Naples as the only assurance which would satisfy him that Murat was not an adventurer and intriguer.
There is a pleasant little town in the Midi of France by the name of Cahors. It is a historic town as well; in fact, it was part of the dowry which Henri de Navarre was to receive when he married Marguerite.
The circumstance is recounted by Dumas in “The Forty-Five Guardsmen,” and extends to some length in the most marvellously descriptive dialogue.