Charles-Victor Prévot, vicomte d'Arlincourt

Charles-Victor Prévot, vicomte d'Arlincourt (26 September 1788 — 22 January 1856) was a French novelist, born at the Château de Mérantais, Magny-les-Hameaux, Yvelines.

In the space of several months, the book was reprinted a dozen times; it was translated into ten languages; there were no fewer than seven operas based on its story, and twice as many dramatic adaptations; and it was the subject of innumerable songs, parodies, paintings and lithographs.

His novels, now classified as "gothic", were then labelled frénétique: "containing a mysterious intrigue centred on some illustrious and guilty wretch who traipses through a thousand violent incidents towards a bloody catastrophe."

D'Arlincourt's vanity and egocentricity were the subject of many anecdotes, including a story of his attempts to persuade his portrait-painter, Robert Lefèvre, to make his eyes look larger and larger, until they were "like those of an ox"; the result was still considered unsatisfactory by his wife, who confronted the painter, turning to her husband and telling him to "Do that thing with your eyes."

D'Arlincourt frequently defended himself in print, explaining that it was his goal to "spiritualize all the impressions of existence"; he presented a play he wrote in his youth, Le Siège de Paris, at the Théâtre-Français in 1826, but it was promptly torn to pieces by the critics.

He made two long journeys through Europe, in 1841 and 1844, visiting exiled princes, and on his return presented a new play, La Peste noire, which was received no more favourably than the first.