PARIS (AP) — Draped in a blue-velvet cloth inscribed with the Musketeers' motto — "one for all, all for one," the remains of author Alexandre Dumas were transferred Saturday to the Pantheon, the mausoleum where French luminaries are interred.
Thousands of Dumas fans joined the procession to mausoleum, many carrying copies of his books "The Three Musketeers" and "The Man in the Iron Mask."
Flanking the coffin were four men costumed as the Musketeers — Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan.
Parts of his plays — including "Henry III and His Court" and "Antony" — were performed on a stage in front of the Pantheon.
President Jacques Chirac ordered the transfer last spring to acknowledge the author's immense contribution to French literature and society.
"With you, it is our childhood, hours of cherished reading in secret, emotion, passion, adventure and panache that enters the Pantheon," Chirac said.
"With you, we were D'Artagnan, Monte Cristo or Balsamo, riding along the roads of France, touring battlefields, visiting palaces and castles," he said. "With you, we dream."
Dumas' remains will now lie alongside those of fellow authors Victor Hugo and Voltaire, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Marie Curie and World War II Resistance hero Jean Moulin.
Born in 1802, Dumas led a life almost as adventurous as his novels. He was a captain of the national guard in the 1830s, had several children out of wedlock and supported Italy's struggle for independence in the early 1850s.
The grandson of a black Haitian slave, Dumas entered French high society and went on to become a popular novelist and dramatist. He died in 1870.
"It's a literary landmark. It's so rare for a writer to be interred in the Pantheon," said Pierre Thibault, 21, a philosophy student. "It's necessary at a time when we don't read much."
Earlier Saturday, France's Republican Guard escorted the coffin from Dumas' Monte Cristo chateau outside Paris.
Dumas' hometown, Villers-Cotterets, initially opposed the transfer, saying the author made clear in his memoirs that he wanted to be buried in the village.
But the village eventually bowed to the government's decision, and Dumas' body was exhumed from its cemetery on Tuesday and put into a new coffin in preparation for the transfer.