Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers: Chapter 28
100 Days of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers June 1 - August 31, 2024
100 Days of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers
June 1 - August 31, 2024
All for One and One for All: "The Three Musketeers" at 180
July 10
Chapter 28
“As for me, I have a sad drunkenness, and once I'm tipsy, my mania is to tell all sorts of lugubrious stories that my fool of a nurse stuffed into my brain. I have that failing—a capital failing, I agree— but apart from that, I'm an excellent drinker."
Was this a nightmare? A drunken terror? A delusion? And how to get out of this stupefying inebriation?!?!?! MORE drinking - AND gambling!!!
"Ah, pardieu!"
To summarise today’s chapter - the musketeers drink and gamble, gamble and drink, drink and drink, gamble and gamble - and by the end of the chapter we are left with four spectacular harnesses - because none of the musketeers seem to like English horses and are reassuring d’Artagnan that horses too are sadly only mortal…
“Devil take it, horses are mortal!”
And the queen’s diamond?! Safe for now - but just barely… What is the solution for this catastrophically self-destructive behaviour?! Military campaign, of course…
“On reaching Paris, d'Artagnan found a letter from M. de Tréville informing him that, at his request, the king had just granted him the favor of joining the musketeers.”
Yay!!! AND:
“M. de Tréville had just informed them that, it being His Majesty's firm intention to open the campaign on the first of May, they must prepare their outfits at once.”
But they cost so much money - which the soldiers must procure on their own… But how?!?!?! Gamble?!?!?!
If you would like to read THE BEST book on the pathology of gambling mania - it’s The Gambler by Dostoevsky - who was the most compulsive gambler of all the writers pretty much ever!!! Yes, there is an opera based on it - by the very young Prokofiev!!! It was his first opera (1918)!!! War and Peace came MUCH later (1946)!!!
Etude of Horse (c. 1619 - c.1620), by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).
