Mâitre Adam is one Alexandre Dumas' finest comic novels, unaccountably
forgotten. Written in 1840, before Dumas achieved fame as a novelist, it
borrows on Dumas' dramatic talents to produce a sparkling series of
increasingly comic scenes. Set in the Calabrian hamlet of Nicotera, in the
tip of the toe of the Italian boot, in 1817, Dumas pokes some good-natured
fun at the peculiar combination of intense religiousity, credulity, and
shrewd bargaining that characterizes the denizens of the Italian
countryside.
Mâitre Adam is an itinerant painter of religious scenes and statuary, paid
though a share in the pious donations inspired by his work. Mâitre Adam
(inevitably) has a marriagable daughter. His pleasant life is disrupted
when when a Madonna he has painted begins to speak. The Madonna offers the
villagers a proposition: if the villagers will chase away Neapolitan police
searching for the notorious bandit Marco Brandi, Brandi will no longer
operate in their neighborhood.
The Neapolitan Government, suspecting (correctly) that this "miracle" was
contrived, prevent Mâitre Adam from following his profession. The
impoverished painter's life is further complicated when a wounded Marco
Brandi appears at his door. Mâitre Adam hides Marco from the police, and
Marco is nursed back to health by that marriagable daughter. Mâitre Adam
adopts a series of increasingly clever (and funny) expedients to earn a
living for his family, one of which backfires when Mâitre Adam is arrested
as a bandit chief and sentenced to death. Will Marco turn himself in to
save Mâitre Adam? But, if Marco turns himself in, who will save that
marriagable daughter from a lifetime of sorrow?
In an afterword, Dumas writes that, in 1835, he encountered one of Mâitre
Adam's paintings (which Dumas admired) in the Calabrian town of Mugnano,
and his guide told him Mâitre Adam's story.
