Not only the duelling ground, but many of the scenes of "The Three Musketeers" are to be looked for in this quarter, near to de Tréville's dwelling; where, too, the four friends, inseparable by day, were not far apart at night, for they lived "just around the corner," one from the other.
The Wall of the Carmelites.
Athos had his rooms, "within two steps of the Luxembourg," in Rue Ferou, still having that name, still much as he saw it. Those few, whom the taciturn Grimaud allowed to enter, found tasteful furnishing, with a few relics of past splendor; notably, a daintily damascened sword of the time of François I., its jewelled hilt alone worth a fortune. The vainglorious Porthos would have given ten years of his life for that sword, but it was never sold nor pledged by Athos.
Porthos, himself, lived in Rue du Vieux-Colombier, he used to say; and he gave grandiloquent descriptions of the superb furniture and rich decorations of his apartment. Whenever he passed with a friend through this street, he would raise his head and point out the house—before which his valet, Mousqueton, was always seen strutting in full fig—and proudly announce, "That is my abode." But he never invited that friend to enter, and he was never to be found at home. So that one is led to suspect that his grand apartment is akin to his gorgeous corselet, having only a showy front and nothing behind! We know that his "fine lady," his "duchess," his "princess"—she was promoted with his swelling mood—was simply a Madame Coquenard, wife of a mean lawyer, living in Rue aux Ours. That dingy street, named from a corruption of the ancient "Rue où l'on cuit des oies," between Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, has been partly cut away by Rue Étienne-Marcel; but its tall, hide-bound, tight-fisted houses, that are left, make vivid to us those scrimped Sunday dinners, at which Porthos was famished even more than the already starved apprentices; and bring home to us his artful working on the lady's credulous infatuation, that he might get his outfit from her husband's strongbox.
The wily Aramis let his real duchess pass, with his friends, for the niece of his doctor, or for a waiting-maid. She was, indeed, a grande dame, beautiful and bold, devoted to political and personal intrigue, the finest flower of the court of that day. Marie de Rohan, Duchesse de Chevreuse, known as "la Frondeuse Duchesse," was the trusted friend of Anne of Austria, and the active adversary of Richelieu and of Mazarin, and exiled from Paris by each in turn. She plays as busy a rôle in history as in Dumas. The daughter of Hercule de Rohan, Duc de Montbazon, and the wife of Charles d'Albert, Duc de Luynes, and, after his death, of Claude de Lorraine, Duc de Chevreuse, this zealous recruit of the Fronde naturally had her "fling" in private as well as in public life. Her Hôtel de Chevreuse et de Luynes was one of the grandest mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, as it originally stood at No. 31 Rue Saint-Dominique. The cutting of Boulevard Saint-Germain, leaving it No. 201 of that boulevard, has shorn off its two wings and its great front court. The main body, which remains, is impressive in the simple, stately dignity stamped on it by Mansart, who gave to it his own roof. Its first-floor salons and chambers, lofty and spacious, glow with the ornate mouldings and decorations of that period, mellowed by the sombre splendors of its tapestries. Much of the garden—once a rural park within city limits—has been cut away by Boulevard Raspail, but from that street one sees, over the new boundary wall, wide-spreading trees that strike a welcome note of green amid surrounding stone. The latest Bottin, with no room for romance within its covers, gives the Comtesse de Chevreuse as tenant of the house, along with other tenants, to whom she lets her upper floors.
Aramis was not a guest at that mansion, his rôle being that of her host at his own apartment; daintily furnished and adorned, in harmony with his taste and that of his frequent visitor. His comrades in the troop had infrequent privilege of admission. His apartment, on the ground floor, easy of entrance, was in Rue de Vaugirard, just east of Rue Cassette, and his windows looked out on the Luxembourg Gardens opposite. There were three small rooms, communicating, and the bedroom behind gave on a tiny garden, all his own, green and shady and well shut in from prying eyes. The whole place forms a most fitting entourage for the youthful priest who, after this episode of arms and of intrigue, was to rise so high in the Church, and who has always been, to all readers, the least congenial of the four musketeers.
To the most sympathetic of them, d'Artagnan, dearer to us than all the others, we are eager to turn. The real d'Artagnan of history, who succeeded de Tréville in command of the Guards, has left his memoirs, possibly written by another hand under his guidance. They are commonplace and coarse, broad as well as long, and leave us with no distinct portrait of the man. Our d'Artagnan, bodied forth from that ineffective sketch by the large brush that never niggled, might serve as an under-study for Henri IV.; equally brave and resourceful, equally buoyant in peril and ready in disaster; with the same guileless and ingenuous candor that covered and carried off the craftiness beneath. The Gascon, no less than the Béarnais, was master of the jaunty artlessness of an astute and artful dodgery, a fausse-bonhomie that is yet delicious and endears them both to us.
Stroll down Rue Servandoni, in its short length from Rue de Vaugirard to Rue Palatine against Saint-Sulpice Church—the architect of whose western towers, Servandoni, gave his name to this street—and you will not fail to find, among the old houses still left, one which might have sheltered d'Artagnan during his early days in de Tréville's troop. This street was then known as Rue des Fossoyeurs, and, still as narrow though not quite so dirty as in d'Artagnan's day, has been mostly rebuilt. His apartment—"a sort of garret," made up of one bedroom and a tiny room in which Planchet slept—was at the top of a house, given as No. 12 and No. 14 in different chapters, owned by the objectionable and intrusive husband of the beloved Constance. For her sake, d'Artagnan remains in these poor rooms, and there his three friends say good-by to Paris and to him, now lieutenant of the famous troop.