The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon - Alexandre Dumas

Written by Alexandre Dumas
Read by Simon Prebble
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

The Sainte-Hermine Cycle #3
Length: 35 hrs and 34 mins
Release date: 10-29-09
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

The discovery of Dumas’s last, incomplete novel, lost and completely unknown to historians for more than a century lost in the archives of the National Library in Paris was a literary bombshell. The Last Cavalier is Dumas’s swan song, a rousing adventure that completes his epic retelling of French history from the Renaissance (La Reine Margot) to his present day (The Count of Monte Cristo) by filling in that one vital, dramatic era that was missing: the Age of Napoleon.

The last cavalier is Count de Sainte-Hermine, Hector, whose elder brothers and father have fought and died for the Royalist cause during the French Revolution. For three years Hector has been languishing in prison when, in 1804, on the eve of Napoleon’s coronation as emperor of France, he learns what is to be his due. Stripped of his title, denied the honor of his family name as well as the hand of the woman he loves, he is freed by Napoleon on the condition that he serve in the imperial forces. So it is in profound despair that Hector embarks on a succession of daring escapades as he courts death fearlessly. Yet again and again he wins glory, against brigands, bandits, the British, boa constrictors, sharks, tigers and crocodiles. At the Battle of Trafalgar, it is Hector’s bullet that fells Nelson. But however far his adventures take him, from Burma’s jungles to the wilds of Ireland, his destiny lies always with his father’s enemy, Napoleon.

It is rousing, big spirited, its action sweeping across oceans and continents, and its hero gloriously indomitable. This newly discovered last, and unfinished, novel of Alexandre Dumas, lost for 125 years in the archives of the National Library in Paris, completes the Dumas oeuvre.

Be warned…Dumas’s introduction is long and involved so you may want to skip it and go directly to the narrative. Simon Prebble as usual gives and excellent read. It seems Napoleon appears on the cover of all the editions of the book rather than our faceless hero..

Like Dickens, Dumas’s books were published in serial form, that is why the narrator says after chapter 118, this is the end of the serial as written.