Complete and unabridged, with 6 full-page plates by Nicolas Poussin, Sébastien Bourdon and René-Antoine Houasse. A young Gascon arrives in Paris with a letter of introduction, a comic yellow nag and a talent for being challenged to duels, and by nightfall he has three of them arranged. Dumas — grandson of an enslaved woman, son of one of Napoleon's generals — ran a fiction factory with collaborators and outsold everyone in France; the swagger of this book has never dated. Behind the swordplay sits a queen's diamond studs and a cardinal's patience. Its 231 original illustrations have been carefully restored and coloured for this edition.