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Dumas' masterpieces, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte-Cristo, were pen-written as newspaper serials, and over the period of the same year. At one time, Dumas was writing installments alternately on Count and Musketeers. In his old age, according to Endore, Dumas regretted that he had never found time to read them: everyone else seemed to have done so. Throughout France people clustered to await the mail coaches bringing the latest serial installments—and "Woe to the postman who had forgotten to bring [them]!" said Dumas. Prime Minister Guizot himself subscribed to the Opposition newspaper that ran The Three Musketeers, sending in his subscription with the note: "Please cancel . . . the moment the Dumas serial is concluded." King Louis Philippe was soon to hurl his daily paper to the ground, shouting: "Why, there's more in this paper about Dumas than about me!" Two anecdotes of this period must, however, be regarded as especially dubious, since they come from Dumas himself: 1) that a police rookie, taking the oath to arrest malefactors without fear or favor, was allowed to add the words "except Alexandre Dumas," 2) that Dumas' novels were used as an anesthetic by a famous surgeon: "I wait until the reader is well immersed, and then I operate freely, and never hear a murmur."
At the height of his fame, "the uncrowned King of Paris" was paid more per line than any other writer in France. His love affairs were numerous and scandalous, but his marriage was singularly shocking. His bride, plump, blonde Actress Ida Ferrier, became so fat that her skeleton was described as "the best-kept secret in Paris," so promiscuous that when Husband Dumas decided to make friends with a man he hated by shaking hands with him in a "public place" (the old Roman form of reconciliation), Ida's bed was the chosen site.
Dumas died in 1870 of apoplexy. His last major work was a cookery book of 1,179 pages, eleven of which were devoted to mustard alone. But by then he had outlived his popularity. His son emptied the old man's pockets one day, wept to find only a handful of coins. But the dying Dumas was delighted. "That's precisely the sum with which I [first] landed in Paris," he said. "Imagine: a half century of high living, and it hasn't cost me a cent!"
-Dumas grandpére, the first of the three Alexandre Dumas. Dumas pére added to the confusion by naming his illegitimate son Alexandre (Dumas fits); he became in turn a writer, is best remembered for that durable tearjerker, La Dame aux Camillas (Camilla).