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I have also kept Dumas’s occasional lapses of memory, which are faithfully reproduced in all French editions. For instance: the name of Aramis’s correspondent in Tours changes at one point from Marie to Aglaé; the date on Richelieu’s blank permit changes from December 3 to December 5 and then to December 7; Mme Bonacieux’s convent is first located in Stenay, then in Béthune, and she is abducted first from Saint-Cloud, then from Saint-Germain. Chronology sometimes gets blurred: at one point, in a space of only eight days, the action jumps from December 1627 to August 1628. Dumas also allows Englishmen in England to address each other as Monsieur and even Monseigneur (which is more noticeable in an English translation than in the original). Needless to say, these and other inconsistencies do no harm to the novel.

—R. P.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

Preface

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

About a year ago, while doing research in the Royal Library for my history of Louis XIV,1 I chanced upon the Memoirs of Monsieur d’Artagnan, printed—like most works of that period, when authors were anxious to tell the truth without going for a more or less long turn in the Bastille—in Amsterdam, by Pierre Rouge.2 The title appealed to me: I took the book home, with the librarian’s permission, of course, and devoured it.

I have no intention of making an analysis of this curious work here, and will content myself with recommending it to those of my readers who appreciate period pieces. They will find portraits in it penciled with a masterly hand, and though these sketches are most often drawn on barracks doors and the walls of taverns, they will nonetheless recognize the images of Louis XIII, Anne d’Autriche, Richelieu, Mazarin, and most of the courtiers of the time, of as good a likeness as in M. Anquetil’s history.3

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,5 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,6 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,7 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