The second volume chronicles the sanguinary deeds in the south of France,
carried on in the name of religion, but drenching in blood the fair
country round about Avignon, for a long period of years.

The third volume is devoted to the story of Mary Queen of Scots, another
woman who suffered a violent death, and around whose name an endless
controversy has waged. Dumas goes carefully into the dubious episodes of
her stormy career, but does not allow these to blind his sympathy for her
fate. Mary, it should be remembered, was closely allied to France by
education and marriage, and the French never forgave Elizabeth the part
she played in the tragedy.

The fourth volume comprises three widely dissimilar tales. One of the
strangest stories is that of Urbain Grandier, the innocent victim of a
cunning and relentless religious plot. His story was dramatised by
Dumas, in 1850. A famous German crime is that of Karl-Ludwig Sand, whose
murder of Kotzebue, Councillor of the Russian Legation, caused an
international upheaval which was not to subside for many years.

An especially interesting volume is number six, containing, among other
material, the famous "Man in the Iron Mask." This unsolved puzzle of
history was later incorporated by Dumas in one of the D'Artagnan Romances
a section of the Vicomte de Bragelonne, to which it gave its name. But
in this later form, the true story of this singular man doomed to wear an
iron vizor over his features during his entire lifetime could only be
treated episodically. While as a special subject in the Crimes, Dumas
indulges his curiosity, and that of his reader, to the full. Hugo's
unfinished tragedy,'Les Jumeaux', is on the same subject; as also are
others by Fournier, in French, and Zschokke, in German.