From A Bibliography of Alexandre Dumas père by Frank Wild Reed: This piece of personal reminiscence, in a vein tinged with a real sadness unusual with Dumas, should be read in conjunction with Chapters CIV., CV., CXXXVII. and CCLXI. of "Mes Mémoires." Rousseau was the third collaborator in Dumas' first play to be performed : "La Chasse et l'Amour."
One feels how keenly Dumas was experiencing the successive losses of friends, carried off by death, when one reads this article, and perhaps more particularly in that we find it impulsively inserted in the very middle of one of his lightest and most amusing stories. The news came, and it seems to have carried him out of himself; the feeling of the moment is clearly reflected by his pen, and we feel how warm and sympathetic a heart the great author possessed.
After appearing in "Le Constitutionnel" it was published, still in the middle of "Le Père Olifus," of which it is made to fill Chapters XIII. and XIV. (see page 242), by Méline Cans et Cie., Brussels, 3849, in Vol. IV. of the collected "Mille et un Fantômes." (Note that in this original edition the two chapters are combined to form one.)
First Paris edition : Cadot, 5 vols. (of "Les Mariages du Père Olifus," with the intercalated "James Rousseau" as Chapters XIII. and XIV., and also including "Le Testament de M. de Chauvelin").
It still occupies the same position in the standard edition of "Les Mariages du Père Olifus" issued by Calmann-Lévy; and in the collected "Mille et un Fantômes" in Le Vasseur's "Alexandre Dumas Illustré," Vol. XVII.
References :—
See under "Les Mille et un Fantômes," on page 239.
Dumas: "Mes Mémoires," Chapters CIV., CV., CXXXVII. and CCLXI.
English Translation :—
"James Rousseau," included in "Tales of the Supernatural," the first part of the collected "Mille et un Fantômes;" London, Methuen, 1907, sewed. It is here rendered as a distinct article, quite detached from "The Marriages of Père Olifus."
