Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers - Tous pour un, un pour tous!!!

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

June 10

Locations post 12 of 12

Tous pour un, un pour tous!!!

Richard Pevear note - not quite a spoiler - I would call it a historical reference:

"M. de Tréville: Arnaud-Jean du Peyrer (1598-1672), first comte de Troisvilles, or Tréville in his native Béarnais dialect, was born in Oloron in the Pyrenees. He was in fact a sublieutenant of the musketeers in 1625, when the novel begins; he became captain-lieutenant only in 1634. Dumas's portrait of Tréville-his loyalty to the king, his opposition to Richelieu, and his protection of musketeers from the Béarn-is generally accurate. The real prototypes of Dumas's three musketeers were all from the Béarn region: Armand de Sillègue d'Athos d'Auteville from the village of Athos, near Oloron; Isaac de Portau from Pau; Henry d'Aramitz from a place of the same name, also not far from Oloron. They bear virtually no resemblance to Dumas's heroes and play only an insignificant part in Courtilz's Mémoires."

From the Alexandre Dumas Preface - Continued:

IN WHICH IT IS ESTABLISHED THAT, DESPITE THEIR NAMES ENDING IN -OS AND - IS, THE HEROES OF THE STORY WE SHALL HAVE THE HONOR OF TELLING OUR READERS ARE IN NO WAY MYTHOLOGICAL

"But, as we know, what strikes the capricious mind of the poet is not always what impresses the mass of readers. Now, while we admire, as others no doubt will, the details we have pointed out, the thing that concerned us most was something to which quite certainly no one before us has paid the least attention.

D'Artagnan tells us that at his first visit to M. de Tréville, 4 the captain of the king's musketeers, he met in his antechamber three young men serving in the illustrious corps into which he was requesting the honor of being received, and who were named Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.

We admit that these three strange names struck us, and it immediately occurred to us that they were merely pseudonyms by means of which d'Artagnan had disguised possibly illustrious names, if the bearers of these borrowed names had not chosen them for themselves on the day when, out of caprice, discontent, or lack of fortune, they had donned the simple tabard of a musketeer.

From then on we could not rest until we had found, in works of that time, some trace of these extraordinary names which had so strongly aroused our curiosity.

The mere catalogue of the books we read through in order to reach that simple goal would fill a whole installment, which might well be highly instructive, but would surely not be very amusing for our readers. We will content ourselves, therefore, with telling them that at the moment when, discouraged by so many fruitless investigations, we were about to abandon our research, we finally found, with the guidance of our illustrious and learned friend Paulin Paris, a folio manuscript, shelf-marked number 4772 or 4773, we no longer remember very well, with the title:

Memoirs of M. le comte de La Fère, concerning some events that transpired in France towards the end of the reign of King Louis XIII and the beginning of the reign of King Louis XIV.

One may imagine how great our joy was when, in leafing through this manuscript, our last hope, we found on the twentieth page the name of Athos, on the twenty-seventh page the name of Porthos, and on the thirty-first the name of Aramis.

The discovery of a completely unknown manuscript, in a period when historical science has been raised to such a high level, seemed almost miraculous to us. Thus we hastened to request permission to have it printed, with the aim of presenting ourselves to the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres with other men's baggage, if we should not succeed, as is highly likely, in entering the French Academy with our own.

This permission, we must say, was graciously granted; which fact we record here in order to give a public refutation to those malicious persons who claim that we are living under a government which is not especially well disposed towards men of letters.

Today we offer our readers the first part of this precious manuscript, giving it a more suitable title, with the commitment that if, as we have no doubt, this first part obtains the success it merits, we will shortly publish the second.

In the meantime, as a godfather is a second father, we invite the reader to lay the blame on us, and not on the comte de La Fère, for his pleasure or his boredom.

That said, let us go on to our story."

Chapter 1 commentary tomorrow!!! En Garde!!!

I will be your guide through The Three Musketeers for the rest of the summer - commenting on one chapter a day - portrayed with my Yorkie Watson - AND the Zurab Tsereteli statue of the Four Musketeers in Condom, France, the heart of Gascony!!!