So well did he know it that he became a part and parcel of it.
His literary affairs and relations are dealt with elsewhere, but the various aspects of the social and economic life of Paris at the time Dumas knew its very pulse-beats must be gleaned from various contemporary sources.
The real Paris which Dumas knew--the Paris of the Second Empire--exists no more. The order of things changeth in all but the conduct of the stars, and Paris, more than any other centre of activity, scintillates and fluctuates like the changings of the money-markets.
The life that Dumas lived, so far as it has no bearing on his literary labours or the evolving of his characters, is quite another affair from that of his yearly round of work.
He knew intimately all the gay world of Paris, and fresh echoes of the part he played therein are being continually presented to us.
He knew, also, quite as intimately, certain political and social movements which took place around about him, in which he himself had no part.
It was in the fifties of the nineteenth century that Paris first became what one might call a coherent mass. This was before the days of the application of the adjective "Greater" to the areas of municipalities. Since then we have had, of course, a "Greater Paris" as we have a "Greater London" and a "Greater New York," but at the commencement of the Second Empire (1852) there sprang into being,--"jumped at one's eyes," as the French say,--when viewed from the heights of the towers of Notre Dame, an immense panorama, which showed the results of a prodigious development, radiating far into the distance, from the common centre of the _Ile de la Cité_ and the still more ancient _Lutèce_.
Up to the construction of the present fortifications,--under Louis-Philippe,--Paris had been surrounded, at its outer confines, by a simple _octroi_ barrier of about twenty-five kilometres in circumference, and pierced by fifty-four entrances. Since 1860 this wall has been raised and the limits of what might be called Paris proper have been extended up to the fortified lines.
This fortification wall was thirty-four kilometres in length; was strengthened by ninety-four bastions, and surrounded and supported by thirteen detached forts. Sixty-five openings gave access to the inner city, by which the roadways, waterways, and railways entered. These were further distinguished by classification as follows: _portes_--of which there were fifty; _poternes_--of which there were five; and _passages_--of which there were ten. Nine railways entered the city, and the "_Ceinture_" or girdle railway, which was to bind the various _gares_, was already conceived.