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The Three Musketeers.
Alexandre Dumas.
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he Three Musketeers.
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About the author
her son with much in the way of education, it nonetheless did not
hinder young Alexandre's love of books and he read everything he
could get his hands on. Growing up, his mother's stories of his father's
brave military deeds during the glory years of Napoleon, spawned
Alexandre's vivid imagination for adventure and heroes. Although
poor, the family still had the father's distinguished reputation and
aristocratic connections and after the restoration of the monarchy, twenty-
year-old Alexandre Dumas moved to Paris where he obtained em-
ployment at the Palais-Royal in the office of the powerful duc
d'Orléans.
Alexandre Dumas, père ( July 24,
1802 - December 5, 1870) was a
French novelist.
Alexandre Dumas was born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie in
Villers-Cotterêts, Aisne, near Paris, France, the grandson of the Mar-
quis Antoine-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie.
While his grandfather served the government of France as Gen-
eral Commissaire in the Artillery in the colony of Santo Domingo,
(today's Dominican Republic but at the time a part of Haiti), he mar-
ried Marie-Céssette Dumas, a black slave. In 1762, she gave birth to
a son, Thomas-Alexandre, and she died soon thereafter.
When the Marquis and his young son returned to Normandy, it
was at a time when slavery still existed, and the boy suffered as a result
of being half black. In 1786, Thomas-Alexandre joined the French
army, but to protect the aristocratic family's reputation, he enlisted
using his mother's maiden name. Following the Revolution in France,
the Marquis lost his estates but his mulatto son, Thomas-Alexandre
Dumas, distinguished himself as a capable and daring soldier in Na-
poleon Bonaparte's army, rising through the ranks to become a Gen-
eral by the age of 31.
General Dumas married Marie-Louise Elizabeth Labouret and
in 1802 she gave birth to their son, Alexandre Dumas, who would
become France's most commercially successful author. General Dumas
died in 1806 when Alexandre was only four, leaving a nearly impover-
ished mother to raise him under difficult conditions. Unable to provide
A
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Contents
4. The shoulder of athos, the baldric of porthos and the
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1
The Three
Musketeers.
Author’s preface.
In which it is proved that, notwithstanding their names’ ending in
OS and IS, the heroes of the story which we are about to have the
honor to relate to our readers have nothing mythological about them.
A short time ago, while making researches in the Royal Library for
my History of Louis XIV, I stumbled by chance upon the Memoirs of
M. d’Artagnan, printed—as were most of the works of that period, in
which authors could not tell the truth without the risk of a residence,
more or less long, in the Bastille—at Amsterdam, by Pierre Rouge.
The title attracted me; I took them home with me, with the permission
of the guardian, and devoured them.
It is not my intention here to enter into an analysis of this curious
work; and I shall satisfy myself with referring such of my readers as
appreciate the pictures of the period to its pages. They will therein find
portraits penciled by the hand of a master; and although these squibs
may be, for the most part, traced upon the doors of barracks and the
walls of cabarets, they will not find the likenesses of Louis XIII, Anne
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3
of Austria, Richelieu, Mazarin, and the courtiers of the period, less
faithful than in the history of M. Anquetil.
But, it is well known, what strikes the capricious mind of the poet is
not always what affects the mass of readers. Now, while admiring, as
others doubtless will admire, the details we have to relate, our main
preoccupation concerned a matter to which no one before ourselves
had given a thought.
D’Artagnan relates that on his first visit to M. de Treville, captain
of the king’s Musketeers, he met in the antechamber three young men,
serving in the illustrious corps into which he was soliciting the honor of
being received, bearing the names of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.
We must confess these three strange names struck us; and it im-
mediately occurred to us that they were but pseudonyms, under which
d’Artagnan had disguised names perhaps illustrious, or else that the
bearers of these borrowed names had themselves chosen them on the
day in which, from caprice, discontent, or want of fortune, they had
donned the simple Musketeer’s uniform.
From the moment we had no rest till we could find some trace in
contemporary works of these extraordinary names which had so strongly
awakened our curiosity.
The catalogue alone of the books we read with this object would fill
a whole chapter, which, although it might be very instructive, would
certainly afford our readers but little amusement. It will suffice, then,
to tell them that at the moment at which, discouraged by so many
fruitless investigations, we were about to abandon our search, we at
length found, guided by the counsels of our illustrious friend Paulin
Paris, a manuscript in folio, endorsed 4772 or 4773, we do not recollect
which, having for title, “Memoirs of the Comte de la Fere, Touching
Some Events Which Passed in France Toward the End of the Reign of
King Louis XIII and the Commencement of the Reign of King Louis
XIV.”
It may be easily imagined how great was our joy when, in turning
over this manuscript, our last hope, we found at the twentieth page the
name of Athos, at the twenty-seventh the name of Porthos, and at the
thirty-first the name of Aramis.
The discovery of a completely unknown manuscript at a period in
which historical science is carried to such a high degree appeared al-
most miraculous. We hastened, therefore, to obtain permission to print
it, with the view of presenting ourselves someday with the pack of
others at the doors of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres,
if we should not succeed—a very probable thing, by the by—in gain-
ing admission to the Academie Francaise with our own proper pack.
This permission, we feel bound to say, was graciously granted; which
compels us here to give a public contradiction to the slanderers who
pretend that we live under a government but moderately indulgent to
men of letters.
Now, this is the first part of this precious manuscript which we offer
to our readers, restoring it to the title which belongs to it, and entering
into an engagement that if (of which we have no doubt) this first part
should obtain the success it merits, we will publish the second immedi-
ately.
In the meanwhile, as the godfather is a second father, we beg the
reader to lay to our account, and not to that of the Comte de la Fere, the
pleasure or the ENNUI he may experience.
This being understood, let us proceed with our history.
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