Dumas’ reference to this curiously disposed “happy family” calls to mind the anecdote which he recounts in “The Taking of the Bastille,” concerning salamanders:
“The famous trunk, which had now been dignified with the name of desk, had become, thanks to its vastness, and the numerous compartments with which Pitou had decorated its interior, a sort of Noah’s ark, containing a couple of every species of climbing, crawling, or flying reptiles. There were lizards, adders, ant-eaters, beetles, and frogs, which reptiles became so much dearer to Pitou from their being the cause of his being subjected to punishment more or less severe.
“It was in his walks during the week that Pitou made collections for his menagerie. He had wished for salamanders, which were very popular at Villers-Cotterêts, being the crest of François I., and who had them sculptured on every chimneypiece in the château. He had succeeded in obtaining them; only one thing had strongly preoccupied his mind, and he ended by placing this thing among the number of those which were beyond his intelligence; it was, that he had constantly found in the water these reptiles which poets have pretended exist only in fire. This circumstance had given to Pitou, who was a lad of precise mind, a profound contempt for poets.”
Here, at “The Sword of the Brave Chevalier,” first met the “Forty-Five Guardsmen.” In the same street is, or was until recently, a modernized and vulgarized inn of similar name, which was more likely to have been an adaption from the pages of Dumas than a direct descendant of the original, if it ever existed. It is the Hôtel la Trémouille, near the Luxembourg, that figures in the pages of “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” but the hôtel of the Duc de Treville, in the Rue du Vieux-Colombier, has disappeared in a rebuilding or widening of this street, which runs from the Place de St. Sulpice to the Place de la Croix-Rouge.
All these places centre around that famous affaire which took place before the Carmelite establishment on the Rue Vaugirard: that gallant sword-play of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis,—helped by the not unwilling D’Artagnan,—against Richelieu’s minions, headed by Jussac.
Within the immediate neighbourhood, too, is much of the locale of “Les Trois Mousquetaires.” Here the four friends themselves lodged, “just around the corner, within two steps of the Luxembourg,” though Porthos more specifically claimed his residence as in the Rue de Vieux-Colombier. “That is my abode,” said he, as he proudly pointed to its gorgeous doorway.
The Hôtel de Chevreuse of “la Frondeuse duchesse,” famed alike in history and the pages of Dumas, is yet to be seen in somewhat changed form at No. 201 Boulevard St. Germain; its garden cut away by the Boulevard Raspail.
At No. 12 or 14 Rue des Fossoyeurs, beside the Panthéon,—still much as it was of yore,—was D’Artagnan’s own “sort of a garret.” One may not be able to exactly place it, but any of the decrepitly picturesque houses will answer the description.