Three Musketeers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (4 page)

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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.

This scene is almost pure farce.
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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 )
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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: