Préface en forme de causerie, ou causerie en forme d'une préface
divers/miscellaneous, pub:1847
From A Bibliography of Alexandre Dumas père by Frank Wild Reed: During' this year Grisier the Fencing-master published his "Armes et le Duel," and approached some of his friends with a request for introductory matter. Of these, Dumas, who was asked for a preface, after making some witty demur, good-naturedly, as always, though liking to tease a little, supplied this piece. With his usual, and perhaps natural enough, dislike to waste the products of his pen, he also supplied it to both the "Revue de Paris" for the year 1846 (according to a MS. note on this article cut from the journal, and now in the Reed Dumas Collection), and to "La Presse" for the 1st and 2nd of August, 1846.
This is apparently one of the earliest of our author's amusing' and sparkling "Causeries," and it may well be considered as a particularly fine and typical example thereof. He first treats of conversation in itself, and refers to the number of his feuilletons running concurrently at the time ; then arrives Grisier, and the talk turns to Dumas' efforts to avoid guard duty, and to the writing of the libretto for "Piquillo;" finally they speak of duels, and of that in which the old Marquis de la Pailleterie, Dumas' grandfather, served as second to the famous Duc de Richelieu, and how, nearly a lifetime later, the compliment was returned by the old Duc himself serving as second to Dumas' father, not yet General Alexandre Dumas.
