Alexandre Dumas, who lived a life as dramatic as any depicted in his more than three hundred volumes of plays, novels, travel books, and memoirs, was born on July 24, 1802, in the town of Villers-Cotter├кts, some fifty miles from Paris. He is best known for the celebrated d'Artagnan trilogyтАФLes trois mousquetaires ( The Three Musketeers, 1844), Vingt ans apr├иs (Twenty Years After, 1845) and Dix ans plus tarde ou le Vicomte de Bragelonne ( Ten Years Later; or The Viscount of Bragelonne, 1848-1850)тАФand the so-called Valois romancesтАФLa Reine Margot (Queen Margot, 1845), La Dame de Monsoreau ( The Lady of Monsoreau, 1846), and Les Quarante-cinc ( The Forty-Five Guardsmen, 1848).