Quadroon servants: Alexandre Dumas and his “negroes”

This contribution arises from a preliminary finding: the choice made by Dumas, himself a quadroon, of colored servant people who, as opposed to the common servants who are usually reduced to being only first names, are full-fledged characters. This article aims to analyze chapters that stage the two black valets Alexis, so-called Caramel in Histoire de mes bêtes, and Paul, so-called Water from Benzoin, in De Paris à Cadix and Le Véloce. It focuses therefore, by avoiding the traps of ideology, on defining the way Dumas looks at those he calls his "race brothers and colored friends".