Of “Les Trois Mousquetaires” alone, the scheme of adventure and incident is as orderly and sagacious as though it had been laid down by the wily cardinal himself; and therein is Dumas’ success as the romancist par excellence of his time. A romancist who was at least enough of a realist to be natural, if unconventional.
Dumas is supposed to have fallen from the heights scaled by means of “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” when he wrote “Vingt Ans Après.” As a piece of literary workmanship, this perhaps is so; as a chronicle of great interest to the reader, who would trace the movement of its plot by existing stones and shrines, it is hardly the case.
One can get up a wonderful enthusiasm for the old Luxembourg quarter, which the Gascon Don Quixote entered by one of the southern gates, astride his Rosinante. The whole neighbourhood abounds with reminiscences of the characters of the tale: D’Artagnan, with the Rue des Fossoyeurs, now the Rue Servandoni; Athos with the Rue Ferou; Aramis, with the Rue de la Harpe, and so on.
There is, however, a certain tangible sentimentality connected with the adventures of Athos, Aramis, D’Artagnan, and Porthos in “Twenty Years After,” that is not equalled by the earlier book, the reputed scenes of which have, to some extent, to be taken on faith.
In “Vingt Ans Après,” the scene shifts rapidly and constantly: from the Rue Tiquetonne, in Paris, to the more luxurious precincts of the Palais Royal; countrywards to Compiègne, to Pierrefonds—which ultimately came into the possession of Porthos; to England, even; and southward as far as Blois in Touraine, near to which was the country estate of Athos.
At the corner of the Rue Vaugirard, which passes the front of the Luxembourg Palace, and the Rue Cassette, is the wall of the Carmelite Friary, where D’Artagnan repaired to fulfil his duelling engagements with the three musketeers of the company of De Treville, after the incidents of the shoulder of Athos, the baldric of Porthos, and the handkerchief of Aramis.
CARMELITE FRIARY, RUE VAUGIRARD
Both sides of the river, and, indeed, the Cité itself, are alive with the association of the King’s Musketeers and the Cardinal’s Guards; so much so that one, with even a most superficial knowledge of Paris and the D’Artagnan romances, cannot fail to follow the shifting of the scenes from the neighbourhood of the Palais du Luxembourg, in “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” to the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, in “Vingt Ans Après” and the “Vicomte de Bragelonne.”
In “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne,” the fraternal mousquetaires take somewhat varying paths from those which they pursued in the first two volumes of the series. Porthos and Athos had arrived at distinction and wealth, and surrounded themselves accordingly; though, when they came to Paris, they were doubtless frequenters—at times—of their old haunts, but they had perforce to live up to their exalted stations.