Towards the end of his ebullient and prolific career, Alexandre Dumas took pen in hand not to dash off one more spell-binding drama or history-filled epic, but to complain to the Emperor of rough handling by the official censor. Over the years many of Dumas's plays had been banned after limited performances; when his The Mohicans of Paris was stopped in pre-production, he had had enough. But in writing to the Emperor, Dumas also summed up his own worth. As reported in Herbert Gorman's The Incredible Marquis: Alexandre Dumas, Dumas explained that there were three men at the head of French literature: Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, and himself. Dumas then went on to note that though he was not exiled as Hugo had been, he was being financially ruined by the censor just as Lamartine had. "I do not know what malevolence animates the censor against me...