Three Musketeers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Many readers, public libraries, and book publishers today classify The Three Musketeers as “youth fiction” and see the work as a swashbuckling adventure novel appealing primarily to adolescent boys. Dumas, however, wrote for a broader, adult public. During the nineteenth century, and especially after 1836, when new printing techniques and commercial advertising made it possible to produce newspapers more cheaply, short stories, travelogues, chronicles, and even entire novels began to appear in daily or weekly installments in the French press. Newspaper publishers hoped that these serialized texts would boost readership and revenues, and they did. Authors likewise gained from this. Eugène Sue (The Mysteries of Paris), Honoré de Balzac (The Human Comedy), and Dumas, among others, saw the mass production and distribution of their narratives as a way to increase their income and establish a solid relationship with a growing, if diversely sophisticated, reading public. What is more, following its serialization in the press, ^a successful work might profit from its journalistic notoriety and be reprinted in book form.³

Serial publication was not without its constraints, however. There were deadlines to be met and a certain volume of words, lines, or pages to be produced. This frequently led to an emphasis on dialogue, since each speaker’s comments would trigger a new paragraph break and thus a new line, making pages accumulate more quickly and the action seem more fast-paced. Dumas, who was known primarily as a dramatist prior to the publication of The Three Musketeers, was ideally suited to take advantage of such a technique. He knew how to portray characters, reveal conflicts, and describe elements of the decor in dynamic, dramatic exchanges of speech. He understood how to vary pacing, when to present or postpone information, and how to conclude an act or scene so as to promote suspense or heighten emotion. There are numerous examples of the dramatic—if not to say theatrical—nature of serial fiction writing in The Three Musketeers. Take chapters 52—58, which describe the incarceration and eventual escape of the book’s villainess, Milady (de Winter), from a cell in her English brother-in-law’s castle. Replete with references to performance (for example, postures and expressions, lighting, costuming, and setting),⁴ this series of chapters advances by increments that seem to be more like acts in a play than sections of a novel.⁵ What is more, each individual chapter in this sequence begins and ends in a way that leaves the reader eager to discover what follows.⁶ Such a compositional strategy all but insured future newspaper sales and created an avid audience for each episode of the story.

From his historical dramas like Henri III et sa cour (Henri III and His Court, 1829) and Charles VII chez ses grands vassaux (Charles VII at the Home of his Principal Vassals, 1831), Dumas also learned how to create period flavor through a limited number of precise, colorful details about customs, costumes, and locations, and how to mix real characters and actions with invented or artistically embellished ones. In fact, in the preface to Charles VII, Dumas declared history to be nothing more than a nail ( “un clou ”) on which he hung his dramatic canvas. While not as perfectly suited to The Three Musketeers, such a formula is nonetheless suggestive of some of Dumas’s practices in that book as well. For instance, although the novel features actual historical figures—including King Louis XIII of France; his Queen, Anne of Austria; his prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu; and England’s Duke of Buckingham—and recognizes their importance as catalysts of events, those individuals are relegated to the margins of the plot for much of the time. In the foreground are less historically prominent and partially or wholly imagined personages, including D’Artagnan; the Musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis; and the dangerously seductive Milady. It is they who move the action forward and generally become the focus of our attention. Real events are also part of Dumas’s tale, but are frequently modified or enhanced for narrative effect. Thus, while the siege of the city of La Rochelle, a port on France’s Atlantic coast that was then a Protestant stronghold, and John Felton’s assassination of the Duke of Buckingham are historically attested facts, not all of the details or parameters of those events as they are described in The Three Musketeers are authentic. This mixture of fact and fiction is not unique to Dumas’s work, of course, and is a subject to which we shall return again later.

If Dumas’s serialized novel quickly attracted a faithful and fervent audience, it was not only because the author proved to be a master storyteller whose writing was vividly alive with emotions and actions, dialogues and duels, but also because it skillfully combined literary genres then popular with readers. By the time Dumas composed The Three Musketeers, Honoré de Balzac and others had already made the novel of initiation, or Bildungsroman, a familiar and successful form of French real _ist fiction.⁷ The Three Musketeers shares many of the characteristics of that genre. Like most such works, Dumas’s story focuses on an inexperienced youth who travels from the provinces to Paris in search of a broader knowledge of the world and in the hope of earning fame or fortune or both.

In chapter 1 of Dumas’s book, young D‘Artagnan leaves his parents’ home in southwestern France and sets off on the road to Paris, where he hopes to join the corps of the King’s Musketeers. Before D’Artagnan leaves, his father gives him three “gifts”—fifteen crowns; a letter of introduction to Monsieur de Tréville, a fellow Gascon and former comrade-in-arms of D‘Artagnan père and now the captain of the Musketeers; and a horse whose peculiar yellow color and old age significantly detract from the young man’s image as a noble and dashing hero. He also gives the lad his sword. Together with these items, the senior D’Artagnan offers his son three bits of advice: Never sell this horse; do not brook insults or fear duels for, although by law the latter are illegal, “it is by his ... courage alone, that a gentleman can make his way nowadays” (p. 13); and always serve the King and the Cardinal.

Soon after leaving home, D‘Artagnan’s paternally encouraged susceptibility leads him to quarrel with a gentleman whom he will subsequently refer to as “the man from Meung” (the name of the town where they meet and where he also glimpses a beautiful woman addressed as Milady). The encounter does not end well for young D’Artagnan. Not only will he be wounded in the confrontation with the man from Meung; he will also have his letter of introduction taken from him and his sword split in two.⁸ Later, when he arrives in Paris, D’Artagnan will already be short of funds and will sell his risible and exhausted horse for cash. That sale provides him with the means to procure inexpensive lodgings and to have a new blade made for his sword. This inauspicious beginning is followed by a series of squabbles with three men (the Musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis) he meets shortly after his arrival in the French capital. He agrees to a duel with each and, with the same brash courage that he has already displayed in Meung, schedules those contests back to back.

D‘Artagnan’s impetuous bravado in these early encounters, along with his ignorance of the codes of behavior and the political rivalries at work in Paris and at the royal court, make it clear that the young man will need more than daring and a certain native intelligence if he is to achieve his goals. He will have to find mentors who can help him understand the complicated relationships, hidden truths, and moral subtleties of modern (that is, seventeenth-century) French life. He finds that help in the form of two surrogate father figures: Monsieur de Tréville, the captain of the King’s Musketeers, and Athos, the oldest of the three Musketeers with whom he has recently quarreled. D’Artagnan also meets Constance Bonacieux, the young and beautiful wife of his Parisian landlord and laundress to Queen Anne.

Constance will not only offer the young man an opportunity to prove his mettle, but will also win his heart. She tells D‘Artagnan that the King has ordered the Queen to wear the diamond studs he gave her to an upcoming ball. Unfortunately, Anne no longer has those studs in her possession. She has given them, with her affections, to England’s handsome Duke of Buckingham. Cardinal Richelieu, who is in love with the Queen and has been spurned by her, knows this and hopes to take advantage of the difficulty the situation presents. He sends a ruthlessly seductive agent in his employ—Milady—to England to obtain the diamonds from Buckingham. If she succeeds and is able to bring the studs back before the ball, the Cardinal will be able to prove that the Queen has been unfaithful to Louis and to France.⁹ To save the Queen’s reputation and perhaps even her life, D’Artagnan must also seek out Buckingham and return the studs to Anne instead. He must overcome the obstacles of time and distance and evade the Cardinal’s agents who have been sent out to prevent him from crossing the English Channel. However determined he may be, young D‘Artagnan cannot hope to prevail alone against his cunning and dogged adversaries. He therefore enlists the help of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, who will accompany him on this crucial and dangerous voyage. The journey, the final stages of which the young man completes alone (his friends having been variously rendered hors de combat along the way), lies at the heart of the novel. Success, which he achieves with Buckingham’s help, will earn D’Artagnan the gratitude of the Queen and Constance, but also the animosity of Richelieu and Milady.¹⁰

This chivalrous adventure not only marks the first major stage on D’Artagnan’s path to manhood, it also highlights the historical character of Dumas’s fiction. It is thus not surprising that, in The Three Musketeers, Dumas takes full advantage of the popularity of the historical novel, whose vogue in France had been sparked by translations of Walter Scott’s Waverly cycle. Scott’s novels were widely read and admired in France and prompted numerous dramatic, musical, artistic, and literary adaptations and imitations.¹¹ In fact, as a young man, Dumas himself had succumbed to this fashion. One of his earliest literary creations was a three-act melodrama entitled Ivanhoe, which he wrote around 1822 after reading Scott’s novel by that name in a French translation.¹²

At the same time as Scott’s popularity moved many to attempt various types of historical fictions, men like Augustin Thierry and François Guizot were transforming the science of history. Basing their writings on the study of chronicles, memoirs, and other historical documents, they claimed for their works a greater degree of accuracy than had previously been achieved and seemed to convey a more vivid sense of the drama and dynamics of past eras than their predecessors had. Like these historians, Dumas, too, often turned to earlier records of past events when composing his works. He had, for example, been inspired by passages from Louis-Pierre d‘Anquetil’s L’Esprit de la Ligue (The Spirit of the League, 1767) and Pierre de L‘Estoile’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France (Memoirs Intended to Serve as the Basis for the History of France, 1719), when he wrote his play about a sixteenth-century French monarch, Henri III, in 1829. Dumas also wrote vulgarized histories that made the past more accessible to the general public. One of these, an account of Louis XIV et son siecle (Louis XIV and His Century) was published in Le Siècle from March 9 to November 8, 1844—that is to say, more or less simultaneously with The Three Musketeers.

In their research for Louis XIV and The Three Musketeers, Dumas and his collaborator, Auguste Maquet, a history teacher and middling writer, consulted real and apocryphal memoirs from the reign of Louis XIII. Claude Schopp, the foremost specialist on Dumas’s life and works, has suggested that among the many documents the two men read, the Mémoires inédits de Louis-Henri de Loménie, comte de Brienne, secrétaire d‘État sous Louis XIV (Unpublished Memoirs of Louis-Henri de Loménie, Count of Brienne, Secretary of State under Louis XIV) , edited and published by François Barrière in 1828, is deserving of special attention. ¹³ According to Schopp, the Essai sur les mœurs et sur les usages (Essay on Manners and Customs) that prefaces that volume contains a brief account of the Queen’s gift of two diamond studs to Buckingham. Schopp sees this as the primary source of inspiration for the central episode in Dumas’s novel. Another of the novel’s principal sources is the Mémoires de M. d’Artagnan (Memoirs of M. d‘Artagnan), a work of fiction written by Courtilz de Sandras in 1700. Dumas borrowed that book from a library in Marseilles in June 1843 and apparently never returned it. From this work Dumas drew the name of his hero—D’Artagnan, a real person who is remembered today not so much for his own exploits as for those of the fictional character given his name. These pseudo-memoirs were also the source of the names of the Musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The name of Dumas’s villainess, Milady, likewise appears to be derived from a woman named Miledi ^*** in Courtilz’s pseudo-memoirs of D’Artagnan.

From these and other sources, Dumas, aided by Maquet, composed what is nonetheless a uniquely original tale. Their novel is neither a complete and accurate record of historical events¹⁴ nor an archaeological reconstruction of the past filled with detailed descriptions of places, manners, and dress. Instead, in The Three Musketeers, the boundary between fact and fiction is deliberately blurred. Here, for example, is how the narrator of the novel explains the reaction of the men and women of Meung who raced toward the site of a commotion that took place in their town on the first Monday in April 1625:

In those times panics were common, and few days passed without some city or other registering in its archives an event of this kind. There were nobles, who made war against each other; there was the king, who made war against the cardinal; there was Spain, which made war against the king. Then, in addition to these concealed or public, secret or open wars, there were robbers, mendicants, Huguenots, wolves, and scoundrels, who made war upon everybody. The citizens always took up arms readily against thieves, wolves, or scoundrels, often against nobles or Huguenots, sometimes against the king, but never against the cardinal or Spain. It resulted, then, from this habit that ... the citizens, on hearing the clamor, and seeing neither the red-and-yellow standard [that is, the flag of Spain] nor the livery of the [Cardinal-] Duc de Richelieu, rushed toward the hostel of the Jolly Miller (p. 11).

The seemingly objective, reportorial tone that the narrator adopts in this passage—the exact date and place are given in the previous paragraph—lends an air of truth to his invented account of the populace’s response to the mayhem occurring at the Jolly Miller inn. So, too, do the narrator’s allusions to city archives and to the historically genuine threats posed in those times by thieves, wolves, and domestic and foreign political conflicts. Concrete details about the event that has sent the people of Meung dashing toward the inn are not immediately forthcoming, however. Instead, the expected explanation is aborted as soon as it has begun (see the sentence fragment: “A young man—” [p. 11 ]). In place of an explanation, we find a multi-page description of the youth whose existence has just been mentioned and an account of the circumstances that have brought him to this place. The postponement is, of course, part of a deliberate strategy.¹⁵ By the time the narrator returns to the specific event with which his tale began, “facts” and fictions have been so convincingly intertwined that readers, like the citizens of Meung, are carried along by their curiosity and are eager to discover just what is going on.

Among the real conflicts the narrator evokes in the passage cited above are the ongoing tensions between French Protestants (known as Huguenots) and Catholics. A minority of the French population, the Huguenots were often the victims of religious persecution by the Catholic majority during the period in which Dumas’s story takes place. Louis XIII’s father, King Henri IV, had been born into a Protestant family but converted to Catholicism in order to ascend the French throne. The Edict of Nantes Henri promulgated in 1598 sought to provide his former coreligionists freedom of worship and a limited number of (geographical) safe havens but did not always fully afford them the protections it was intended to guarantee. Although doctrinal differences were part of what prompted the tensions between Catholics and Huguenots, issues of royal authority and national sovereignty also came into play. French Protestants could and occasionally did request the intervention of countries like England and Holland when under attack. The siege of La Rochelle, which is described at some length in The Three Musketeers, is one example of a time when English military forces came to the aid of the Huguenots and hence into direct confrontation with Louis XIII and Richelieu. Dumas ties Buckingham’s role in that event not only to English political and religious interests, but also to his amorous rivalry with and feelings of personal animosity for the King and the Cardinal—a subject introduced earlier by means of the diamond-stud incident.¹⁶

Dumas places D’Artagnan and his Musketeer friends at the siege of La Rochelle. Their presence there is entirely plausible given what we know of the history of that battle. However, some of the specific episodes in which they are involved—such as their alfresco breakfast in a battlefield bastion and their discovery of the collusion between Richelieu and Milady—are pure invention. Those incidents acquire verisimilitude both because they are embedded in an account of historically attested events and because they serve as a further illustration of the character and appetites the novel has already established for the book’s protagonists.

In the midst of the battlefield breakfast, for example, we are not surprised to see D’Artagnan and his friends display the kind of skill, determination, and panache needed to defeat an enemy who greatly outnumbers them. They have found themselves in similar circumstances on other occasions (see the duel against the Cardinal’s Guards in chapter 5), and have triumphed often enough for us to believe in their aplomb, courage, clever stratagems, and “glorious” retreat here. Neither do we find it astonishing that the four men, accompanied by their valets, are again sharing food and wine. Such communal meals are frequent in the novel (though usually taken at inns) and testify to the men’s friendship and their (realistic) need for sustenance and for opportunities to plan future undertakings. ¹⁷ The scene also allows Dumas to indulge, through his fiction, in his passion for cuisine. Both a gourmet and a gourmand, Dumas often entertained friends at his home and frequently included recipes for exotic foods, such as bear steak, in his travel narratives. Later, he would even write a Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine, which was published posthumously in 1873.¹⁸

History confirms Cardinal Richelieu’s critical role at the siege of La Rochelle and paintings from the time record his presence there dressed in battle armor. We know, too, that his hatred of Buckingham was real. It is therefore plausible that the Cardinal would plot to have the Duke assassinated. What is less plausible historically, though narratively convincing given Buckingham’s apparent penchant for women and the vengeful character the novel attributes to Milady, is that she would become the instrument of such an act. Even less likely is the discovery of the Cardinal’s plot by Athos, who overhears the prelate’s conversation with Milady thanks to a stovepipe that sends the sound of their voices into the very room where he, Porthos, and Aramis have been told to wait (chapter 44). In the course of that overheard conversation, Athos, whose anti-English sentiments might otherwise leave him indifferent to Buckingham’s fate, learns two things that move him to act. First, he recognizes the voice of Milady as that of his wife—a malicious woman whom he long believed to be dead but now discovers to be alive. Then, he learns of Milady’s intention to wreak vengeance on Madame Bonacieux and D’Artagnan and of the Cardinal’s willingness to draft a letter providing her immunity from prosecution should she succeed. This eavesdropping scene is later followed by a direct confrontation between Athos and his wife that leaves him in possession of the document granting her carte blanche to act as she sees fit “for the good of the state.” That text will play a vital, if unanticipated, role at the end of the novel.

In addition to the Bildungsroman and the historical novel, there is yet another literary genre, the Gothic novel, whose popularity Dumas exploited in composing The Three Musketeers. The Gothic novel first appeared in England, where Horace Walpole (Castle of Otranto, 1764), Ann Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794), Matthew Gregory “Monk” Lewis (The Monk, 1796), and Charles Robert Maturin (Melmoth the Wanderer, 1821), helped to shape its form and content. Their works, which were immediately translated into French, were widely read and served as models for similar texts composed by French authors. Gothic tales are typically sensationalist in nature and often involve the persecution of a young woman whose virtue, if not her very life, is put in grave danger. Such stories are frequently set in isolated castles notable for their subterranean or elevated spaces (prisons, dungeons, or cells) and are populated by cruel and/or lubricious men. Dumas was quite familiar with the conventions of this genre and could use them to good effect, as one of his early novels, Pauline (1838), clearly shows.¹⁹ When incorporated into The Three Musketeers, however, instead of functioning in a straightforward manner, Gothic codes are deployed as clichés and subverted by parody.

In The Three Musketeers, the fact that the story of Milady’s imprisonment and escape (chapters 49 and 50 and 52—58) is set in England seems at first to be unproblematic. In retrospect, however, this nod in the direction of the birthplace of Gothic fiction can be read as a sign of the parodic nature of the account of Milady’s arrest and detention by her brother-in-law, Lord de Winter. Abducted from a ship, carried off in a closed carriage, then locked in a well-guarded cell in an isolated castle, Milady is immediately positioned on what the (sophisticated) reader will easily recognize as a standard Gothic narrative trajectory.²⁰ What is more, the better to seduce her prison guard, John Felton, Milady will soon spin out a stereotypical tale of sexual and religious victimization by Buckingham in which she portrays herself as the virginal heroine/martyr. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Still, her mastery of the Gothic genre makes Milady’s story so convincing that, as she had hoped, Felton obligingly casts himself in the role of rescuer and redresseur de torts (righter of wrongs). Like Felton, naive readers may accept at face value this interpolated tale and the (historically incorrect) explanation it offers for Felton’s assassination of the Duke of Buckingham. More experienced readers will enjoy the way this episode ironically lays bare the commonplaces of Gothic fictions.

As this example of generic subversion clearly shows, wit is an important feature of The Three Musketeers. Whether subtle, as it is here, or overt, as it is on other occasions, humor contributes to our reading pleasure as well as to our understanding of certain characters and events in the novel.²¹ There are times, for example, when the narrator’s comic barbs are directed at D‘Artagnan. We have already quoted (in note 8 below) the mock-heroic scene at the Jolly Miller inn where an irate D’Artagnan attempts to skewer the host of that hostelry, only to discover that he has nothing more than the stub of a sword in his hand. The scene is, of course, laughable, but also carries with it the suggestion of emasculation—the sword being a well-known phallic symbol. The “joke” is further emphasized by the fact that the host has previously taken the other, larger part of the lengthy blade to use as a larding needle. Such a use plays upon the double linguistic register (cooking and sword fighting) in which the verb embrocher, “to skewer,” can be employed and transforms the sword into something less than a noble instrument of valor and power. As a result, the reader is afforded an opportunity to laugh at D’Artagnan’s youthful (and therefore impotent) rage and to verify the pertinence of the narrator’s earlier comparison of the book’s hero to Cervantes’s Don Quixote.

This scene is followed by a similar event much later in the novel. In chapter 35, D‘Artagnan, assuming the identity of the Comte de Wardes, spends several hours alone with Milady in a darkened room late at night. The next day, Athos—who believes he recognizes the sapphire ring “De Wardes” received as a token of affection from Milady—warns D’Artagnan to stay away from this woman who could prove to be a dangerous enemy. Writing as De Wardes, D‘Artagnan decides to send Milady an insulting letter. Incensed by its contents, Milady soon summons D’Artagnan (as himself) to her home and, feigning love for him, asks him to punish De Wardes for her. She also invites D‘Artagnan to an assignation later that night. D’Artagnan thinks about not returning but changes his mind, believing that, now aware of Milady’s duplicitous character, he will not be deceived by her wiles. However, once under Milady’s sexual spell, the young man loses his head and imprudently confesses that he had earlier taken De Wardes’s place. Milady is outraged and in the struggle that ensues, her nightdress is torn and the fleur de lis branded on her shoulder is revealed. The discovery of this mark of her past crimes, which she had heretofore managed to keep secret, further infuriates Milady and, to avoid being stabbed by her, D‘Artagnan “almost unconsciously [draws his sword] from [its] scabbard” (p. 417). Maneuvering his way out of her bedroom and into her maid’s chamber next door, D’Artagnan barely manages to escape Milady’s wrath.

There is much that is psychologically insightful in this scene, which at once shows Milady’s transformation from siren to fury and D‘Artagnan’s evolution from wary lover to incautious naif and then dazed quarry. What follows, though, is comical. While Milady repeatedly thrusts her dagger at the bolted door behind which D’Artagnan has managed to barricade himself, the young man appeals to her maid.

“Quick, Kitty, quick!” said D’Artagnan, in a low voice.... “let me get out of the hotel; for if we leave her time to turn round, she will have me killed by the servants.”

“But you can’t go out so,” said Kitty; “you are naked.”

“That’s true,” said D’Artagnan ... “that’s true. But dress me as well as you are able, only make haste; think, my dear girl, it’s life and death!”

Kitty was but too well aware of that. In a turn of the hand she muffled him up in a flowered robe, a large hood, and a cloak.

She gave him some slippers, in which he placed his naked feet, and then conducted him down the stairs. It was time (p. 418).

Fleeing Milady’s residence in a disguise that leaves him “unmanned” (he wears neither pants nor boots), D’Artagnan is first briefly pursued by a police patrol and then hooted at by passersby on their way to work (it is almost dawn) . He does not stop in his mad dash across Paris until he arrives at Athos’s door. When a sleepy Grimaud, Athos’s usually silent valet, comes to see who is pounding at the door, he is stunned into speech.

“Holloa, there!” cried he; “what do you want, you strumpet? What’s your business here, you hussy?”

D’Artagnan threw off his hood, and disengaged his hands from the folds of the cloak. At sight of the mustaches and the naked sword, the poor devil perceived he had to deal with a man. He concluded it must be an assassin.

“Help! murder! help!” cried he. “Hold your tongue, you stupid fellow!” said the young man; “I am D’Artagnan; don’t you know me?...”

“You, Monsieur d’Artagnan!” cried Grimaud, “impossible” (p.419).

This scene is almost pure farce.²² At first, Grimaud brashly scolds the visitor whom, judging by “her” dress, he sees as a woman of loose morals. He then trembles at the sight of “his” mustaches and naked sword (a symbolic display of genitalia), which cause the valet to fear for his life. In any event, Grimaud cannot—or will not—recognize the (confusingly gendered) individual at the door.

Awakened by all this noise, Athos soon appears. His reaction is rather different from his valet’s, but in its own way is just as atypical as Grimaud’s unusual loquacity was of him.

After Athos has bolted the door to his rooms and D‘Artagnan has shed his “female garments” for a man’s dressing gown—the change of clothes restores his equanimity and stiffens his masculine resolve—the young man tells the Musketeer of his “terrible adventure” (p. 420). Framed between a pair of securely fastened doors (at Milady’s and at Athos’s), this account of D’Artagnan’s flight gives the reader another opportunity to laugh at the novel’s hero, although the clash with Milady will later prove to have serious and far-ranging consequences. Appearing as it does near the middle of the book, the episode suggests both how far D’Artagnan has come since his adventure in Meung—this time he at least has a real sword—and how far he still has to go before he can lay claim to the wisdom that is usually a sign of maturity and experience.

Other characters in the novel are similarly subject to the narrator’s comic barbs. There are, for instance, numerous examples of Porthos’s vainglory and gargantuan appetite, which his purse is never full enough to satisfy. One might not always expect this to be funny, and yet there is something undeniably humorous in the discomfiture Porthos feels when his expectations of gustatory pleasure and satiety come face to face with the reality of the dinner he is served at the procurator’s home (chapter 32 )²³ or when he is offered D’Artagnan’s old yellow horse instead of the noble steed he had expected to receive (chapter 34) .

There are times, too, when Aramis’s religious vocation, casuistic language, and expressions of Christian meekness and piety are set at odds with his aggressive behavior as a Musketeer. This brings a delicious touch of comic dissonance to the text. Consider, for example, the following scene in which Aramis explains to Cardinal Richelieu the role he played in a quarrel that has just taken place at the Red Dovecot inn:

Monseigneur [he says, addressing Richelieu], being of a very mild disposition, and being, likewise, of which Monseigneur perhaps is not aware, about to enter into [holy] orders, I endeavored to appease my comrades, when one of these wretches gave me a wound with a sword, treacherously, across my left arm. Then I admit my patience failed me; I drew my sword in my turn, and as he came back to the charge, I fancied I felt that in throwing himself upon me, he let it pass through his body. I only know for a certainty that he fell; and it seemed to me that he was borne away with his two companions (p. 473).

The contrition Aramis expresses here and his seeming denial of active responsibility for the injury of his opponent appear to be designed to elicit absolution for an act that is both illegal (dueling) and immoral (killing) ²⁴ The reader may well smile at this, but the Cardinal—who is both the author of a ban on dueling and a prelate—will in fact pardon Aramis. He does so, however, not because of the efficacy of the Musketeer’s language, but because he discovers that Aramis and his friends fought to protect a woman who, unbeknownst to them, is none other than Milady—the very person the Cardinal has come to meet at the inn.

Comic scenes like this and the others described above seem to me to be more than just occasions for laughter. They play a role in the development of character psychology—something critics have at times insisted is lacking in Dumas’s novel. In fact, these comic episodes show that, even when characters evolve little over the course of the story, their foibles do not go unexamined and readers are afforded some insight into the workings of their minds. What is more, although D’Artagnan’s transformation from an impetuous youth to a thoughtful, resolute adult is often slow and uneven, he does travel the road from innocence to experience, from naivete to knowledge.

In this way, despite the swashbuckling nature of his adventures, Dumas’s seventeenth-century protagonist is very much like Eugène de Rastignac, the nineteenth-century hero of Balzac’s Le Père Goriot (Old Goriot, 1834—1835), whose journey, while seemingly more urbane and of a more modern nature, follows a very similar path. Both novels begin with a naive young man’s arrival in Paris, where he is forced, for lack of funds, to take modest lodgings. Both show him making mistakes and being guided by mentors. Both novels end with a somber, sobering death that, overt differences aside, similarly marks the definitive end of the protagonist’s youth and the beginning of his more knowing manhood. This quick comparison with Balzac’s novel, a work rarely faulted for its lack of character psychology or viewed as appealing primarily to adolescent boys, leaves one wondering why the two books have long occupied such very different positions in the literary canon. Perhaps it is the liberal, joyful inclusion of humor, the immoderate feasting, and the clashing of swords that diminishes the prestige of Dumas’s work in the minds of some.

To be sure, Balzac’s novel is considerably shorter than Dumas’s and is devoid of the lengthy interpolations (for example, the story of Milady’s imprisonment) that temporarily divert attention away from the hero’s growing understanding of the complex codes and relationships that are key to his future success. Modern critics, who tend to prefer brevity and who may fail to note the pertinence of these episodes to the overall design of Dumas’s novel, may grow impatient with such elements of the text, finding them either old-fashioned or superfluous. While such a view is mistaken, it might account for some of the scholarly disdain to which Dumas’s work is still occasionally subject despite its enduring popularity with readers.

Then, too, the myth that has grown up around Balzac—a myth most notably embodied in Rodin’s statue of the man—often paints him as a solitary genius who spent long nights in monk-like garb writing and revising his texts. Such an image coincides perfectly with our modern conception of the artist as an intensely focused, singularly original creator. The truth is more complex, however, for Balzac, like Dumas, lived a full and varied life and accumulated massive debts in the process. Dumas, though, worked with a collaborator—Auguste Maquet—a face he openly acknowledged, even though his signature alone appeared on the text. Much has been made of this collaboration, which has been used to dismiss Dumas’s genius and to deny him literary paternity of his works. Some of this criticism no doubt reflects our modern bias in favor of individual (versus collaborative) composition. Some of it reflects a misappraisal of Dumas’s talents and Maquet’s contributions, and some seems to have been motivated by racism—Dumas’s father was born on a plantation in Haiti, the son of a black slave and her white master, a minor French nobleman.²⁵ The work of serious contemporary scholars like Claude Schopp, who have examined the extant portions of Maquet’s drafts for The Three Musketeers, make it clear, however, that the text that has enthralled generations of readers is most definitely Dumas’s.

Although it is Dumas’s adventuresome heroes who generally garner most readers’ attention, the infamous Milady—a.k.a. Anne de Breuil, Milady de Winter, Charlotte Backson, and Lady Clarick—is just as important a figure. Beautiful, ruthless, intelligent, and determined, she is D‘Artagnan’s principal antagonist in The Three Musketeers and one of Cardinal Richelieu’s secret agents. Variously described as a tigress, a lioness, a panther, and a serpent, she uses every means at her disposal to gain her ends and attack her enemies. Actress and seductress, she has an uncanny ability to see into the hearts and minds of her victims. A bigamist as well (she has married both Athos and Lord de Winter’s brother), she has led her husbands and other men astray and destroyed their lives. Some critics have taken the character of Milady as proof of the misogynistic nature of Dumas’s novel, though such a view is hard to credit given Dumas’s personal affection for women. To be sure, like Marguerite de Bourgogne in Dumas’s 1832 drama, La Tour de Nesle (The Tower of Nesle), Milady conforms to the nineteenth-century stereotype that portrayed some women as diabolical and treacherous creatures.²⁶ Promiscuous, powerful, and/or profligate, such women were seen as a threat to (patriarchal) society, to the family, and even to the nation. In The Three Musketeers, Milady very clearly represents a danger to these fundamentally male-centered institutions and relationships, and so it comes as no real surprise that, in the end, she must die. The fact that Milady is also responsible for the death of Constance Bonacieux—the woman D’Artagnan loves—is, of course, a further and more romantic rationale for her execution. (Constance herself embodies another stereotype, that of women as angels and/or innocent victims.)

Dumas’s deployment of this stereotypical vision of the diabolical woman is, I believe, no different from his use of the conventions of the Bildungsroman, the historical novel, or Gothic fiction. By adopting the gender stereotypes of his day, Dumas is not so much expressing a hatred of women as he is conforming to the expectations of his audience. The cliché he sets out here helps his readers to make sense of and situate his novel within the parameters of their prior literary and cultural experiences. Consider, for instance, Milady’s reaction to the insulting letter she receives from “De Wardes.” Although she grinds her teeth, turns “the color of ashes,” and collapses into an armchair after reading that missive, Milady quickly rebuffs the ministrations of her maid.

This passage first bows to and then plays against the fainting scene that novelists so often assign to a woman who has been affronted or abandoned by her lover.²⁷ It immediately dismisses the notion that Milady is, after all, a typically weak female and insists instead on “her iron will” (p. 413).²⁸ It also prepares and makes plausible her aggressive reaction, in chapter 37, to D‘Artagnan’s discovery of the fleur de lis branded on her shoulder. On that occasion, the narrator tells us, “She turned upon him, no longer like a furious woman, but like a wounded panther” and, taking in hand “a small poniard ... threw herself with a bound upon D’Artagnan” (p. 417).²⁹ Of course, the comparison of a violent woman to a wild beast is yet another cliché, but one that is perfectly logical and appropriate here given Milady’s well-established sense of self-preservation and her fierce determination to seek revenge against those who would dominate or insult her.³⁰

It is, I think, no accident that Dumas gives Milady a “manlike soul in that frail and delicate body” (p. 558) or that, having killed off his villainess at the end of The Three Musketeers, he replaces her, in Twenty Years After, with a masculine double—her son, Mordaunt.³¹ If we are to believe in D‘Artagnan’s heroism, his intelligence, and his courage, the young man must have a worthy opponent against whom to test himself and in contrast to whom he can display his noble qualities.³² In The Three Musketeers, the contest between D’Artagnan and Milady is not about sex or social positioning. It is about politics, honor, and power. The conflict between these two characters begins, as we have seen, with their parallel efforts to recover the diamond studs Queen Anne gave to Buckingham. That event establishes once and for all the rivalry and the antithetical equivalence between the valorous, if inexperienced, youth and the perfidious, perceptive, and cunning woman. It also leads, with an inexorable sureness born of Dumas’s narrative skill, to their final confrontation on the banks of the River Lys and to D‘Artagnan’s charitable tears.³³ I would argue, in fact, that it is because we are as fully persuaded of Milady’s villainy and egotism as we are of D’Artagnan’s decency and courage that we continue to read, believe in, and be moved by this remarkable novel.

The Three Musketeers is not without its flaws and inconsistencies—D’ Artagnan is twice made a Musketeer, as if Dumas has forgotten having done this a first time, and the chronology is at times fuzzy. The book does, however, offer readers a wonderful tale of spirit and adventure, of character, honor, and humor. It is also an unforgettable paean to friendship. “All for one and one for all” is more than just a slogan; it is a pledge of support and mutual assistance, of caring and sharing the burdens and the joys of life. Born of conflict—D‘Artagnan is set to duel each of the three Musketeers—the relationship the young D’Artagnan forges with Athos, Porthos, and Aramis is vital to the success of his efforts to recover the diamond studs and to all his other undertakings. His three friends teach him lessons about life, love, dignity, integrity, sacrifice, commitment, and courage, but also about respect, indulgence, compassion, vanity, hypocrisy, and suffering. Their generosity is legendary and is both practical and selfless.34 When one has money, all share it if there is a need. When all have funds, each uses his purse as he sees fit. Personal skills, servants, and other relationships are likewise employed for the individual or the common good, as circumstances demand.

As closely tied as they are, however, each of these four men has his own personality, qualities, ambitions, and cares. Chapter 67 makes this clear one last time. Arrested at the behest of the Cardinal, D‘Artagnan is accompanied to Richelieu’s quarters by the same true friends who had escorted him on his journey to England. But, just as the final stages of that earlier trip were made alone, D’Artagnan must now confront the Cardinal on his own. The young man, harrowed by the death of his beloved Constance and by the execution of Milady, is convinced that he will be condemned to die, but he goes bravely forward. He hands Richelieu the carte blanche Athos had taken from Milady—it reads: “It is by my order and for the good of the state that the bearer of this has done what he has done. RICHELIEU” (p. 695)—but he does not expect to be spared punishment.

After a time, however, the Cardinal offers him, in exchange for that document, a lieutenant’s commission in the Musketeers with the name of the holder of that rank left blank. Later, D‘Artagnan offers the commission to each of his friends in turn. They all refuse it. Porthos will instead be married to his rich benefactress, who is now widowed; Aramis will enter holy orders; Athos will continue to drink and, for a time, to fight. It is Athos who finally writes D’Artagnan’s name on the commission. The promotion, which once would have brought D’Artagnan great joy, leaves him despondent.

Time may not heal all wounds, but neither time nor distance will diminish the friendship of these four men or the affection that readers feel for them all. D’Artagnan and Dumas have thrilled and enthralled people across generations and around the globe. There is a generosity of spirit and a wealth of human understanding in this book that will never go out of fashion. It therefore seems appropriate that, in 2002, on the two-hundredth anniversary of his birth, Dumas was reburied in the Pantheon, the monument to and final resting place of some of the foremost contributors to France’s history and cultural glory. New, wide-ranging studies of Dumas’s works have recently begun to appear and publication of his complete correspondence is planned for the near future.³⁵ These, together with editions of his novels, plays, and other writings that are once more in print, should lead to a fuller and more richly nuanced understanding of and appreciation for the life and the genius of this multi-talented literary titan.

Barbara T. Cooper is Professor of French at the University of New Hampshire. She is a member of the editorial boards of Nineteenth-Century French Studies and the Cahiers Alexandre Dumas. She specializes in nineteenth-century French drama and in works by Dumas. Cooper was the editor of a volume on French dramatists from 1789 to 1914 that is part of the Dictionary of Literary Biography series and wrote the essay on Dumas in that volume. She has also coedited two volumes of essays on nineteenth-century French literature and culture, and is the author of more than fifty scholarly articles on works of nineteenth-century French literature, many of which focus on texts by Dumas. In 2002 she participated in several colloquia marking the bicentennial of Dumas’s birth. Cooper, who holds her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was named a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government in 1994 for her contributions to the promotion and propagation of French culture.