Dumas exhumed to join Panthéon of French greats

Alexandre Dumas, the French romantic novelist whose life was almost as swashbuckling as his books, embarked on a final, colourful adventure yesterday, 130 years after his death.

The remains of Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, were removed from a tomb in a small town in northern France. He will be taken on Friday to lie in state at the Château de Monte Cristo, the fake castle he built west of Paris. On Saturday, his coffin will be paraded through Paris, accompanied by the soldiers of the Republican Guard and four horsemen, dressed in full 17th-century musketeer's uniform, complete with giant boots and feathered hats. (Although the title of his most famous book specifies three musketeers, the story is mostly about a fourth, the trainee D'Artagnan).

A live television broadcast on Saturday evening will show the writer's body being welcomed by President Jacques Chirac to the Panthéon, the domed building on the left bank of the Seine that is the last resting place for the official heroes of the nation. The inclusion of the remains of the popular novelist and playwright among such distinguished company as Rousseau, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola and Pierre and Marie Curie has caused some controversy. Why should Dumas be so honoured, the critics say, when greater writers, such as Flaubert or Stendhal or Proust, are excluded?

Mr Chirac took the decision to place Dumas in the Panthéon for the 200th anniversary of his birth, after representations from his official fan club, the Société des Amis d'Alexandre Dumas (which includes a number of celebrated literary and academic figures). He may not be the greatest prose stylist, they argued, but his stories, translated into 100 languages and 200 films, have done more than anyone else's to popularise French history and culture all over the world.

Dumas was the grandson of a Haitian slave and a French aristocrat. He overcame poverty and racial abuse to become the most successful writer of his day. He made and lost several fortunes, took part in three revolutions and fought numerous duels.

Although he regarded himself mostly as a playwright, he invented a new literary genre, the historical novel, loosely based on real events with a mixture of authentic and invented characters. He "wrote" so many books (his other famous ones include The Man in the Iron Mask and The Black Tulip), that he sub-contracted the more tedious parts to collaborators. He admitted to using historians and ghost-writers to sketch the background or to write chapters.

The public celebration of his elevation to the Panthéon on Saturday will include street theatre and readings from his work, choreographed by a company that specialises in organising open-air festivals. Dumas might have approved of the sentiment behind the company's title, although perhaps not the language used. The company is called, in English, Shortcut Events.

Literary purists are not the only ones to regret the sanctification of Dumas. The townspeople of Villers-Cotterêts, in the Aisne, where Dumas was born and where he was buried until yesterday, are unhappy at losing their most famous son and only tourist attraction.

After signing the official permission for the exhumation, the mayor, Renaud Bellière, said: "It may seem strange ... but I feel as if I'm in mourning."