This Europe: French village surrenders ashes against Dumas's dying wish

The ashes of Alexandre Dumas, author of classics such as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, will be transferred to the majestic Panthéon in Paris – against his dying wish.

The town council in his native village of Villers-Cotterets, north-east of Paris, where the novelist's remains have laid for 130 years, has decided to drop its legal effort to stop the transfer to the Panthéon, the mausoleum where many of France's luminaries are buried.

In March, President Jacques Chirac signed a decree ordering the move. "By this gesture," he said, "the Republic will give all its respect to one its most turbulent children, one of its most talented and one of its greatest creative geniuses." Renaud Bellière, mayor of Villers-Cotterets, had wanted to respect Dumas' wish to be buried in his village, expressed in his 1847 book My Memoirs. But Mr Bellière said the town council decided to withdraw its appeal to France's highest administrative body because it was bound to be defeated.

"From a judicial point of view, a village cannot defend an individual. We were sure to lose," said Mr Bellière. "In Villers-Cotterets it's a bit of a funeral."

Many of the 80 novels of Dumas have been turned into films, such as the 1998 version of The Man in the Iron Mask, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Mr Bellière said Dumas' remains were to be moved to the Panthéon on 3 October, where they will lie near those of his fellow author Victor Hugo, the double Nobel-prizewinning scientist Marie Curie and the Resistance hero Jean Moulin.

The mayor said that in return, he had obtained government funds to replace a statue of the author in a village square destroyed during the Nazi occupation of France.