This article was written by Patti Lecron
"Ah! Monte-Cristo is one of the most delicious follies ever made. It is the most royal bonbonniere that exists!" wrote Honore Balzac, describing the dazzling chateau his flamboyant literary rival Alexandre Dumas had just built. "One could become madly in love with this monument, like one loves the moon when one is young," journalist and novelist Leon Gozlan wrote.
Dumas, who had already swept the public off its feet with his theatrical successes, had become immensely popular with his novels published in the newspapers in serial form. Never before had an author earned as much money from literary works. Enriched with the fortune he made from the swirling adventures of d’ Artagnan and his friends in The Three Musketeers, and the somber intrigues of The Count of Monte-Cristo, Dumas built an opulent chateau and park that would become, for a time, his heaven on earth.
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One day in 1844 while walking through the quiet hamlet of Port-Marly, Dumas fell in love with a wooded hill overlooking the Seine River valley between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He bought up the parcels of land and sent for a brilliant architect, Hippolyte Durand. At the site Durand would learn that the legendary extravagance of this literary lion had no bounds:
Monsieur Durand, here you are going to design an English garden, in the middle of which I want a Renaissance chateau, facing a Gothic pavillon surrounded by water. . .there are natural springs, use them to make cascades.
But Monsieur Dumas, the bottom soil is clay. Your buildings will slide!
Monsieur Durand, you will dig to the bedrock and build two levels of basements and arcades.
But that will cost several hundred thousand francs!
I certainly hope so ! Dumas exclaimed, brushing off the architect’s objections.
The result was elegant. Built over the course of two years, the irresistable and intimate white-stone chateau stands today like a precious jewel box that one hesitates at first to open, then does. And opened it once was, again and again, to a steady stream of guests that Dumas, who was generous to a fault, lavishly received.
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