Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers: Chapters 65, 66, and 67
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
August 10
Chapters 65, 66, and 67
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, by the French painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856), today at the National Gallery in London, created quite a stir when it was first displayed in 1833 - and was still debated when Dumas was composing The Three Musketeers ten years later… The fate of beheaded women was a part of both French and English historical narratives during Dumas’ lifetime - and during the times of his characters…
Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554) was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England and was placed on the throne after the death of his son Edward VI - thus superseding the other children of Henry VIII, his daughters from his first and second marriages, the future Mary I and Elizabeth I. Henry VIII (1491-1547) gained notoriety for the beheading of two of his wives, Anne Boleyn (1507-1536), who, just like Milady, was beheaded with a sword, a more merciful device than the blunt axe, and Catherine Howard (1523-1542), who was beheaded with an axe…
Lady Jane was Queen of England for nine days, between 10 and 19 of July, 1553. She was beheaded, along with her husband, Lord Guilford Dudley, and her father, after a trial for treason. She was 17 years old…
A similar fate befell Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587), who was the Queen of Scotland till her death and Queen of France for one year after her marriage to King Francis II of France - who died shortly after his coronation (see my preliminary notes)… Elizabeth I (1533-1603), whose mother was beheaded by a skilled swordsman, kept Mary a prisoner for 18 years, finally signing her death warrant and condemning her to the merciless execution by axe - which went horribly wrong - please consider looking up the gruesome details on your own… Today, the two queens are buried side by side at Westminster Abbey… All of these 16th century beheadings of women took place in the decades preceding the action of The Three Musketeers…
And of course Alexandre Dumas was writing in the aftermath of the beheading by guillotine of Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) just 50 years prior to the novel’s publication. This singular event has had such a lasting impact on French psyche that even the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony featured a display of multiplied Marie Antoinettes holding their own severed heads projected onto the windows of the Conciergerie, the prison where Marie Antoinette spent her final months…
The macabre scene of retribution and self-administered judgement darkening the final pages of The Three Musketeers recalls the meticulously plotted and cynically administered revenge that constitutes the core of Dumas’ most famous novel, The Count of Monte Cristo…
We are confronted with the complete list of Milady’s crimes - and still her final moments come as a complete shock… The novel’s final pages are devoid of the conclusiveness we were hoping to reach - because Dumas was already writing the sequel as he was finishing The Three Musketeers - a sequel that revolves around the theme of revenge for the death of Milady… A plot that we shall untangle in the summer of 2025…
Crucial passages of the final chapters - presented without commentary…
Chapter 65
“It was a dark and stormy night. Big clouds raced across the sky, veiling the brightness of the stars. The moon would not rise before midnight.
Sometimes, by a flash of lightning that gleamed on the horizon, the road could be seen stretching away white and solitary; then, when the lightning died out, everything fell back into darkness.”
“Besides, the storm was building up, flashes of lightning came in rapid succession, thunder began to rumble, and the wind, precursor of the tempest, whistled across the plain, ruffling the horsemen's plumes.
The cavalcade went into a fast trot. Cloaks were unfurled.
There were still three leagues to go: they made them under torrents of rain.
D'Artagnan had taken off his hat and had not put on his cloak; he found pleasure in letting the water stream down his burning brow and over his body, shaken with a feverish trembling.”
“Milady had fallen into her chair with her arms stretched out, as if to ward off this terrible apparition. On glimpsing her brother-in-law, she uttered a terrible cry.
"What do you want?" exclaimed Milady.”
“Lord de Winter went to stand beside d'Artagnan, leaving his place open for another accuser.
Milady buried her face in her hands and tried to collect her wits, caught up in a deadly whirl.
"It is my turn," said Athos, trembling as a lion trembles at the sight of a snake, "it is my turn. I married this woman when she was a young girl; I married her in spite of all my family; I gave her my property, I gave her my name; and one day I discovered that this woman was branded: this woman was marked with a fleur-de-lis on her left shoulder."
“With ever increasing terror, Milady gazed for a long time at that pale face framed by black hair and side-whiskers, whose only expression was an icy impassivity. All at once she said, "Oh, no, no!" —getting up and backing towards the wall.
"Help me! help me!" she cried in a hoarse voice, turning to the wall, as if she could open a way through it with her hands.
"But who are you, then?" cried all the witnesses to this scene.
"Ask this woman," said the man in the red cloak, "for you can see very well that she has recognized me."
"The executioner of Lille, the executioner of Lille!"
"This young woman was once a young girl, just as beautiful as she is today. She was a nun in the Benedictine convent of Templemar. A young priest of a simple and believing heart served in the church of this convent. She set about to seduce him, and she succeeded-she could have seduced a saint.
"The vows they had both taken were sacred, irrevocable; their liaison could not last long without ruining them both.
She got him to agree that they should leave that part of the country. But to leave there, to run off together, to go to another part of France, where they could live peacefully because they would not be known, required money. Neither of them had any. The priest stole the sacred vessels and sold them; but as they were getting ready to leave together, they were both arrested.
"Eight days later, she had seduced the jailer's son and escaped. The young priest was sentenced to branding and ten years in irons. I was the executioner of the town of Lille, as this woman said. I was obliged to brand the guilty man, and the guilty man, gentlemen, was my own brother!”
"The lord of the land on which the curate's church was located saw this supposed sister and fell in love with her, so much in love that he proposed marriage to her. Then she left the man she had ruined for the one she would ruin, and became the comtesse de La Fère ..."
"Then," the latter went on, "mad, desperate, resolved to rid himself of an existence from which she had taken all honor and happiness, my poor brother returned to Lille, and learning of the decree that had condemned me in his place, gave himself up and hanged himself that same night from the bars of his prison window.”
Chapter 66
“It was approaching midnight. The moon, cut away by its waning and bloodied by the last traces of the storm, rose behind the little village of Armentières, which stood out against its pale light with the dark silhouette of its houses and the skeleton of its tall openwork belfry. Opposite, the Lys rolled its waters like a river of molten peter, while on the far bank one could see the black mass of trees profiled against a stormy sky invaded by dense, coppery clouds that made a sort of twilight in the middle of the night.”
"Because I don't want to die!" Milady cried, struggling.
"Because I'm too young to die!"
"The woman you poisoned in Bethune was even younger than you, Madame, and yet she is dead," said d'Artagnan.
"I'll enter a convent, I'll become a nun," said Milady.
"You were in a convent," said the executioner, "and you left it to ruin my brother."
Milady uttered a terror-stricken cry and fell to her knees.
The executioner picked her up in his arms and was about to carry her to the boat.
"Oh, my God!" she cried, "my God! are you going to drown me?"
There was something so heartrending in these cries that d'Artagnan, who at first had been the most relentless in his pursuit of Milady, sank down on a stump and hung his head, stopping his ears with the palms of his hands. And yet, despite that, he still heard her threatening and crying out.
D'Artagnan was the youngest of all these men, and his heart failed him.”
"Here," he said, "this is the price of the execution. Let it be plainly seen that we are acting as judges."
"Very well," said the executioner. "And now let this woman know, in her turn, that I am not carrying out my profession, but my duty."
And he threw the money into the river.”
“But the ground was wet; on reaching the top of the embankment, she slipped and fell to her knees.
A superstitious idea must have struck her. She understood that heaven was refusing her its aid, and she remained in the attitude in which she found herself, her head bowed and her hands joined.”
Chapter 67
“The queen, though warned that the man she had loved so was in danger, refused to believe it when his death was announced to her. She even went so far as to cry out imprudently:
"It's not true! He has just written to me!"
But the next day she was forced to believe this fatal news.
La Porte, detained in England like everyone else by the orders of King Charles I, arrived bearing the last doleful present that Buckingham had sent to the queen.
The king's joy was very keen. He did not bother to disguise it, and even showed it blatantly before the queen. Louis XIII, like all weak hearts, lacked generosity.”
“But the king soon became gloomy and ill-humored again: his brow was not the sort that clears for long. He felt that in returning to the camp he was going back into slavery, and yet he returned.
The cardinal was the fascinating serpent for him, and he was the bird that flits from branch to branch without being able to escape him.
And so the return to La Rochelle was profoundly sad. Our four friends especially aroused the astonishment of their com-rades. They traveled together, side by side, their eyes grim and their heads bowed. Athos alone raised his broad brow from time to time; his eyes flashed, a bitter smile passed over his lips; then, like his comrades, he let himself lapse again into his ruminations.”
"She is dead."
"Dead?" repeated the cardinal, who could not believe his ears. "Dead? Did you say she was dead?"
"Three times she tried to kill me, and I forgave her. But she killed the woman I loved. Then my friends and I caught her, tried her, and condemned her."
And D'Artagnan recounted the poisoning of Mme Bona-cieux in the convent of the Carmelites in Béthune, the trial in the isolated house, the execution on the banks of the Lys.
A shudder ran through the cardinal's body, though he did not shudder easily.
But all at once, as if under the influence of some mute thought, the cardinal's physiognomy, sombre up to then, began to brighten little by little until it reached the most perfect serenity.”
"Your pardon?" Richelieu asked in surprise.
"Yes, Monseigneur," said d'Artagnan.
"And signed by whom? By the king?"
And the cardinal uttered these words with a singular expression of contempt.
"No, by Your Eminence."
"By me? Are you mad, Monsieur?"
"Monseigneur will undoubtedly recognize his own hand-writing."
And d'Artagnan presented to the cardinal the precious paper that Athos had wrested from Milady, and which he had given to d'Artagnan to serve him as a safeguard.
His Eminence took the paper and read in a slow voice, stressing each syllable:
It is by my orders and for the good of the State that the bearer of this present has done what he has done.
In the camp before La Rochelle, this 5 August 1628.
Richelieu
After reading these two lines, the cardinal fell to pondering deeply, but he did not give the paper back to d'Artagnan.”
“Richelieu went on thinking, rolling and unrolling the paper in his hands. Finally he raised his head, fixed his eagle eye on that loyal, open, intelligent physiognomy, read on that tear-furrowed face all the sufferings he had endured over the past month, and reflected for the third or fourth time on how much future this boy of twenty-one had before him, and what resources his activ-ity, courage, and spirit could offer to a good master.
On the other hand, the crimes, the power, the infernal genius of Milady had appalled him more than once. He felt a sort of secret joy at being rid forever of this dangerous accomplice.”
"Here, Monsieur," the cardinal said to the young man, "I gave you one blank permit, and I am giving you another. The name is missing on this brevet: you will fill it in yourself." D'Artagnan hesitantly took the paper and ran his eyes over it.
It was a lieutenancy in the musketeers.”
"Here, my dear Athos, this belongs quite naturally to you." Athos smiled his gentle and charming smile.
"My friend," he said, "for Athos it is too much; for the comte de La Fère it is too little. Keep the brevet; it's yours.
Alas, you've paid quite dearly for it!"
"Yes," he said, "that would be quite flattering for me, but I wouldn't have long enough to enjoy the favor. During our expedition to Béthune, my duchess's husband died, my dear, so that, with the deceased's coffer holding its arms out to me, I'm marrying the widow. You see, I'm trying on my wedding outfit. Keep the lieutenancy, my dear, keep it."
"Alas, dear friend!" said Aramis, "our latest adventures have disgusted me entirely with the life of a man of the sword.
This time my choice is made irrevocably: after the siege, I am entering the Lazarists. Keep this brevet, d'Artagnan, the profession of arms suits you; you will be a brave and adventurous captain."
Athos “took a pen, wrote d'Artagnan's name on the brevet, and handed it back to him.
"So I'll have no more friends," said the young man. "Alas! nothing but bitter memories ..."
And he let his head drop into his hands, while two tears rolled down his cheeks.
"You are young," replied Athos, "and your bitter memories have time to turn into sweet ones."
The end…
The wine enthusiasts may add Malaga wine to your list…
Brief note on the Epilogue tomorrow…
I like that there's a little straw placed at the foot of the chopping block. May as well be tidy.