Dumas Alexandre – The Marquise d’Escoman (second series): Emma d’Escoman and Louis de Fontanieu acknowledge their mutual love. The lovers decide to leave everything to live together. Emma hesitates to live thus “in sin” but before it can realize its resolution the Marquis d’Escoman occurs and surprises the lovers. Judged, Emma gives up her fortune and Louis rents a cottage in the countryside. Soon the money runs out and you have to work. And the love of Louis is exhausted. That’s when his former mistress comes … “The characters are superbly described, their feelings and their behavior do not leave us indifferent: Louis, unstable and whose desire fades once he got what he wanted; Emma whose nobility of heart is such that, so that Louis does not feel inferior to her, she leaves all her fortune to her husband; the governess, who loves Emma as her daughter and would do everything for her happiness, and even things contrary to her convictions; Marguerite and her jealousies, her hatred of a woman bruised in her own love and her desires for revenge in relation to her social position … All these portraits show us once more the great knowledge of the author’s human nature. So we let ourselves be caught in this story, especially since Dumas, as he knows how to do it so well, with little words strewn with the chapters, leads us to sense that it will not happen without pain … “(Nicole Vougny , The Marquise of Escoman, dumaspere.com)