Public-domain ebook
by Dumas, Alexandre; Maquet, Auguste
Language: en1,798 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Adventure·Historical Fiction·Movie Books
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #2609.
The Vicomte de Bragelonne is the third installment of Alexandre Dumas’s D’Artagnan Romances, a sprawling historical adventure that continues the saga of the musketeers amid the court of Louis XIV. The opening places the reader in May 1660, when a small cavalcade returns to Blois and the “Monsieur” – the king’s brother, a princely figure of great rank – rides through the city in a melancholy, almost regal procession. Dumas immediately sketches the atmosphere of ennui that surrounds the prince, describing his idle hunting party, the quiet streets, and the languid routine of court life. The passage also sets up the novel’s intricate structure, noting how the work has been divided in translation into volumes titled Ten Years Later, Louise de la Vallière, and The Man in the Iron Mask, and how this edition presents the first 104 chapters of the larger narrative.
The prose reflects Dumas’s mid‑nineteenth‑century French Romantic style, with elaborate description, a brisk narrative pace, and a flair for dramatizing court intrigue. The voice is both witty and reflective, capturing the contrast between grand historical events and the personal idiosyncrasies of its characters. Readers who enjoy richly detailed period settings, swash‑buckling camaraderie, and the interplay of politics and romance – especially fans of historical fiction set in Louis XIV’s France – will find this opening both inviting and evocative.
The opening · free to read
The Three Musketeers: Etext 1257—First book of the D’Artagnan Romances. Covers the years 1625-1628.
Twenty Years After: Etext 1259—Second book of the D’Artagnan Romances. Covers the years 1648-1649. [Third in the order that we published, but second in time sequence!!!]
Ten Years Later: Etext 1258—First 104 chapters of the third book of the D’Artagnan Romances. Covers the years 1660-1661.
The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Etext 2609 (our new etext)—First 75 chapters of the third book of the D’Artagnan Romances. Covers the year 1660.
Ten Years Later: forthcoming (our next etext)—Chapters 76-140 of that third book of the D’Artagnan Romances. Covers the years 1660-1661. [In this particular editing of it]
Louise de la Vallière: forthcoming (following)—Chapters 141-208 of the third book of the D’Artagnan Romances. Covers the year 1661.
The Man in the Iron Mask: forthcoming (completing)—Chapters 209-269 of the third book of the D’Artagnan Romances. Covers the years 1661-1673.
If we’ve calculated correctly, that fourth text SHOULD correspond to the modern editions of The Man in the Iron Mask, which is still widely circulated, and comprises about the last 1/4 of The Vicomte de Bragelonne.
Many thanks to Dr. David Coward, whose editions of the D’Artagnan Romances have proved an invaluable source of information.
Introduction: In the months of March-July in 1844, in the magazine Le Siecle, the first portion of a story appeared, penned by the celebrated playwright Alexandre Dumas. It was based, he claimed, on some manuscripts he had found a year earlier in the Bibliotheque Nationale while researching a history he planned to write on Louis XIV. They chronicled the adventures of a young man named D’Artagnan who, upon entering Paris, became almost immediately embroiled in court intrigues, international politics, and ill-fated affairs between royal lovers. Over the next six years, readers would enjoy the adventures of this youth and his three famous friends, Porthos, Athos, and Aramis, as their exploits unraveled behind the scenes of some of the most momentous events in French and even English history.
Eventually these serialized adventures were published in novel form, and became the three D’Artagnan Romances known today. Here is a brief summary of the first two novels:
The Three Musketeers (serialized March—July, 1844): The year is 1625. The young D’Artagnan arrives in Paris at the tender age of 18, and almost immediately offends three musketeers, Porthos, Aramis, and Athos. Instead of dueling, the four are attacked by five of the Cardinal’s guards, and the courage of the youth is made apparent during the battle. The four become fast friends, and, when asked by D’Artagnan’s landlord to find his missing wife, embark upon an adventure that takes them across both France and England in order to thwart the plans of the Cardinal Richelieu. Along the way, they encounter a beautiful young spy, named simply Milady, who will stop at nothing to disgrace Queen Anne of Austria before her husband, Louis XIII, and take her revenge upon the four friends.
Twenty Years After (serialized January—August, 1845): The year is now 1648, twenty years since the close of the last story. Louis XIII has died, as has Cardinal Richelieu, and while the crown of France may sit upon the head of Anne of Austria as Regent for the young Louis XIV, the real power resides with the Cardinal Mazarin, her secret husband. D’Artagnan is now a lieutenant of musketeers, and his three friends have retired to private life. Athos turned out to be a nobleman, the Comte de la Fere, and has retired to his home with his son, Raoul de Bragelonne. Aramis, whose real name is D’Herblay, has followed his intention of shedding the musketeer’s cassock for the priest’s robes, and Porthos has married a wealthy woman, who left him her fortune upon her death. But trouble is stirring in both France and England. Cromwell menaces the institution of royalty itself while marching against Charles I, and at home the Fronde is threatening to tear France apart. D’Artagnan brings his friends out of retirement to save the threatened English monarch, but Mordaunt, the son of Milady, who seeks to avenge his mother’s death at the musketeers’ hands, thwarts their valiant efforts. Undaunted, our heroes return to France just in time to help save the young Louis XIV, quiet the Fronde, and tweak the nose of Cardinal Mazarin.
The third novel, The Vicomte de Bragelonne (serialized October, 1847 to January, 1850), has enjoyed a strange history in its English translation. It has been split into three, four, or five volumes at various points in its history. The five-volume edition generally does not give titles to the smaller portions, but the others do. In the three-volume edition, the novels are entitled The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Vallière, and The Man in the Iron Mask. For the purposes of this etext, I have chosen to split the novel as the four-volume edition does, with these titles: The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise de la Vallière, and The Man in the Iron Mask. In this, the first of the four etexts, the situation is thus:
It is now 1660, and although promised the captaincy of the musketeers at the close of Twenty Years After, D’Artagnan is still trailing his sword in the Louvre as a lowly lieutenant. Louis XIV is well past the age where he should rule, but the ailing Cardinal Mazarin refuses to relinquish the reins of power. Meanwhile, Charles II, a king without a country, travels Europe seeking aid from his fellow monarchs. Athos still resides at La Fere while his son, Raoul de Bragelonne, has entered into the service in the household of M. le Prince. As for Raoul, he has his eyes on an entirely different object than his father—his childhood companion, Louise de la Vallière, with whom he is hopelessly in love. Porthos, now a baron, is off on some mysterious mission along with Aramis, who is now the Bishop of Vannes.
Now begins the first chapter of the last of the D’Artagnan Romances, The Vicomte de Bragelonne. Enjoy!
Towards the middle of the month of May, in the year 1660, at nine o’clock in the morning, when the sun, already high in the heavens, was fast absorbing the dew from the ramparts of the castle of Blois, a little cavalcade, composed of three men and two pages, re-entered the city by the bridge, without producing any other effect upon the passengers of the quay beyond a first movement of the hand to the head, as a salute, and a second movement of the tongue to express, in the purest French then spoken in France: “There is Monsieur returning from hunting.” And that was all.
Whilst, however, the horses were climbing the steep acclivity which leads from the river to the castle, several shop-boys approached the last horse, from whose saddle-bow a number of birds were suspended by the beak.
On seeing this, the inquisitive youths manifested with rustic freedom their contempt for such paltry sport, and, after a dissertation among themselves upon the disadvantages of hawking, they returned to their occupations; one only of the curious party, a stout, stubby, cheerful lad, having demanded how it was that Monsieur, who, from his great revenues, had it in his power to amuse himself so much better, could be satisfied with such mean diversions.
“Do you not know,” one of the standers-by replied, “that Monsieur’s principal amusement is to weary himself?”
The light-hearted boy shrugged his shoulders with a gesture which said as clear as day: “In that case I would rather be plain Jack than a prince.” And all resumed their labors.
In the meanwhile, Monsieur continued his route with an air at once so melancholy and so majestic, that he certainly would have attracted the attention of spectators, if spectators there had been; but the good citizens of Blois could not pardon Monsieur for having chosen their gay city for an abode in which to indulge melancholy at his ease, and as often as they caught a glimpse of the illustrious ennuye, they stole away gaping, or drew back their heads into the interior of their dwellings, to escape the soporific influence of that long pale face, of those watery eyes, and that languid address; so that the worthy prince was almost certain to find the streets deserted whenever he chanced to pass through them.
Now, on the part of the citizens of Blois this was a culpable piece of disrespect, for Monsieur was, after the king—nay, even perhaps, before the king—the greatest noble of the kingdom. In fact, God, who had granted to Louis XIV., then reigning, the honor of being son of Louis XIII., had granted to Monsieur the honor of being son of Henry IV. It was not then, or, at least, it ought not to have been, a trifling source of pride for the city of Blois, that Gaston of Orleans had chosen it as his residence, and held his court in the ancient Castle of the States.
But it was the destiny of this great prince to excite the attention and admiration of the public in a very modified degree wherever he might be. Monsieur had fallen into this situation by habit.
It was not, perhaps, this which gave him that air of listlessness. Monsieur had already been tolerably busy in the course of his life. A man cannot allow the heads of a dozen of his best friends to be cut off without feeling a little excitement; and as, since the accession of Mazarin to power, no heads had been cut off, Monsieur’s occupation was gone, and his morale suffered from it.
The life of the poor prince was then very dull. After his little morning hawking-party on the banks of the Beuvron, or in the woods of Cheverny, Monsieur crossed the Loire, went to breakfast at Chambord, with or without an appetite, and the city of Blois heard no more of its sovereign lord and master till the next hawking-day.
So much for the ennui extra muros; of the ennui of the interior we will give the reader an idea if he will with us follow the cavalcade to the majestic porch of the Castle of the States.
Monsieur rode a little steady-paced horse, equipped with a large saddle of red Flemish velvet, with stirrups in the shape of buskins; the horse was of a bay color; Monsieur’s pourpoint of crimson velvet corresponded with the cloak of the same shade and the horse’s equipment, and it was only by this red appearance of the whole that the prince could be known from his two companions, the one dressed in violet, the other in green. He on the left, in violet, was his equerry; he on the right, in green, was the grand veneur.
One of the pages carried two gerfalcons upon a perch, the other a hunting-horn, which he blew with a careless note at twenty paces from the castle. Every one about this listless prince did what he had to listlessly.
At this signal, eight guards, who were lounging in the sun in the square court, ran to their halberts, and Monsieur made his solemn entry into the castle.
When he had disappeared under the shades of the porch, three or four idlers, who had followed the cavalcade to the castle, after pointing out the suspended birds to each other, dispersed with comments upon what they saw: and, when they were gone, the street, the palace, and the court, all remained deserted alike.
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