Alexandre Dumas fils was born in Paris in 1824, the illegitimate son of a seamstress and Dumas pere, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte-Cristo. He was unhappy at school and was still an adolescent when his father initiated him into the social and literary life of Paris. He cut a figure as a dandy, ran up debts and, in 1844, began an affair with one of the mos...