How Aramis got his Soutane

 

I do not enter the church – I re-enter it. It was the church that I deserted for the world; for you are aware that I did violence to my inclinations in taking the uniform of a musketeer.

 

These words, spoken by Aramis in Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, explain with perfect clarity the spiritual calling of the young musketeer, but where did Dumas find the inspiration to endow the character of Aramis with a religious vocation?[1]

Aramis, book illustration

   As with Athos, Porthos and, indeed, d’Artagnan himself, Dumas found Aramis in the Mémoires de M. d’Artagnan, a pseudo memoir written by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras. That is to say, he found Aramis’s name.

   Courtilz introduces Aramis as one of three brothers whom d’Artagnan encounters shortly after his arrival in Paris. The other two are Athos and Porthos, although Courtilz is not forthcoming about which of the brothers is the eldest and which the youngest. All three, however, are Musketeers. Indeed, the only information Courtilz gives his readers about Aramis is that he is a Musketeer.

   In the Mémoires de M. d’Artagnan, Aramis is introduced to d’Artagnan by Porthos, the first of the brothers the young cadet meets. As the story continues, Aramis will second d’Artagnan in various duels. The first of these is fought by the Musketeers and d’Artagnan against Cardinal Richelieu’s guards, and it provided Alexandre Dumas with the background for one of the great set pieces of The Three Musketeers. In another duel, Aramis fights alongside a group of Englishmen, one of whom turns out to be Milady’s brother. The final duel is fought after d’Artagnan is attacked in the street, apparently on Milady’s orders. Cornered by the enemy and in danger of being killed, d’Artagnan is forced to call for help, and his cry is answered by Athos, Porthos and Aramis, who fight off the assailants and, with d’Artagnan, save the day. That is the last view Courtilz gives his readers of Aramis, who plays no further part in the story.

   In Courtilz, Aramis has no connection to the church. Instead, Dumas’s inspiration to give Aramis his religious calling came from another character in Courtilz’s Mémoires, Rotondis. Rotondis is the brother of Jussac, Biscarrat and Cahussaz, all three of whom belong to the cardinal’s guards and are among the main participants in the iconic duel that Dumas would make his own. As Courtilz tells the story, Rotondis sees that his brothers are about to fight a duel with the Musketeers and d’Artagnan and are in need of a third. He offers his services despite his being on the eve of obtaining a benefice. He explains to his brothers that his ‘cassock was fastened by one button, and he would take it off to get them out of their difficulty.’[2] In the end, Rotondis is not required to fight, his brothers having found another to take his place, but compare his words with those spoken by Aramis in Twenty Years After. In this scene, the now ordained Aramis offers his sword in the service of Henriette, the queen of England. He assures her that: ‘My cassock only holds by one button, and I am quite ready to become a musketeer again.’[3]

   Dumas establishes very early in The Three Musketeers Aramis’s status as a priest-turned-Musketeer. In one of the first scenes in which Aramis is featured, M. de Treville, the captain of the Musketeers, is angry after learning that Athos, Porthos and Aramis had stayed beyond closing time at a tavern in the Rue Ferou the previous evening. As he rebukes them, he asks Aramis: ‘why the devil did you ask me for a tunic when you look so well in a cassock?’[4]

   The reasons for Aramis’s entry into the Musketeers differs also. In Courtilz de Sandras, Aramis and two of his brothers had been brought from their native Béarn to Paris by M. de Tréville. This was ‘because they had been concerned in some combats which had given them a great reputation in the province.’[5] Dumas, on the other hand, states that the king, Louis XIII, had greatly loved Aramis’s father, who had been killed at the siege of Arras, and it was for this reason that he had been granted the tunic of a Musketeer.[6]

   Dumas leaves it to Aramis himself to explain to his readers how the young man abandoned his vocation and became a Musketeer.[7] The scene takes place when d’Artagnan, having travelled to England to retrieve Queen Anne’s diamonds, returns to France. He seeks out his companions, all three of whom had been prevented from assisting him in the mission. Aramis had been wounded in the shoulder and is recovering at an inn at Crèvœur. As d’Artagnan enters his chamber, he finds his friend in the company of a curate and a superior of the Jesuits. Aramis has decided to take his vows and is discussing the thesis he plans to write in support of his ordination. Needless to say, d’Artagnan persuades him not to take such a step, but not before Aramis recounts his story.

Book illustration, abbé en soutane

   Aramis explains that he had been studying in the seminary since the age of nine. Three days before his twentieth birthday, he was on the eve of being made an abbé. He went, as was his custom, to the home of a friend who lived in the rue Payenne. Here, he would read the Lives of the Saints to the lady of the house. On this particular evening, he had translated the story of Judith into verse and was reading it out, with the lady innocently leaning her head on his shoulder so she could follow the words. At this point the gentleman of the house, an officer, returned. He saw the two together and misread the situation. The officer kept his silence, but when Aramis left, he followed him and caught up with him in the street.

   ‘Monsieur l’abbé,’ he said, ‘do you like being caned?’

   ‘I cannot say,’ replied Aramis, ‘no one has ever dared to give me one.’

   ‘Well, listen to me, monsieur l’abbé’ said the officer. ‘If you return to this house again, I will dare to cane you myself.’

   Aramis was afraid, so much so that he could find no answer to this insult. The officer laughed at him before turning on his heel and going back into his house. Aramis returned to the seminary. As a ‘gentleman born,’ his pride was naturally hurt, but he said nothing to anyone about the incident. Instead, he spoke to his superiors and told them that he did not feel sufficiently prepared for ordination. At his request, they agreed to postpone the ceremony for one year.

   Aramis used the time well. He sought out the best fencing master in Paris and took a lesson every day for the whole of that year. Then on the anniversary of the day he had been insulted, he hung up his cassock on a peg and assumed the costume of a cavalier. He went to a ball given by one of his friends, where he knew he would meet again the officer who had insulted him. Indeed the officer was there, entertaining a lady with a ballad. Aramis interrupted him.

   ‘Sir, do you still object to my going to a certain house in the rue Payenne, and would you cane me if I took it into my head to disobey you?’

   The officer looked at him in astonishment. He asked Aramis what he wanted, adding that he did not know him.

   Aramis replied that he was the little abbé who read the Lives of the Saints and who had translated Judith into verse.

   At this, the officer remembered. He sneered and asked Aramis what he wanted.

   Aramis answered that he wanted the officer to take a walk with him, at which the officer assured him that he would be happy to do so in the morning. Aramis, however, insisted that they go at that moment.

   The two men left the ball and Aramis took the officer into the rue Payenne. It was the exact spot and the same hour as the insult had taken place a year before. Under the brilliant light of the moon, the two men drew their swords, ‘and at the first pass,’ Aramis told d’Artagnan, ‘I killed him.’

   The affair caused a scandal, so much so that Aramis was obliged to abandon his calling to the priesthood, at least for a while. By this time he had already made the acquaintance of Athos and Porthos, who had taught him, ‘in addition to my fencing lessons, some merry thrusts.’ It was they who influenced his decision to become a Musketeer.

   Although he had seemingly put his vocation behind him, Aramis maintained close links with the church throughout his military career. His intention had always been to take holy orders, an objective he finally realises at the very end of The Three Musketeers.  The last time he and d’Artagnan speak, Aramis tells his friend that he intends to join the Lazarists. Here, Dumas makes one of his famous timeslips. Founded by Saint Vincent de Paul in 1624, the Lazarists were approved in 1633, too late for Aramis to join the order in 1628.

   The last sight the reader has of him, Aramis has taken a journey to Lorraine, after which he is heard of no more. He had even stopped writing to his friends. Later, they learn from Madame de Chevreuse, his former mistress, that he had taken the habit and entered a monastery at Nancy.

   Aramis is perhaps the most complex of the three Musketeers, his journey leading him along two distinct paths: that of the church and that of politics. As has been seen, Dumas found Aramis, or, more precisely, an undeveloped character called Aramis, in the pseudo-memoir written by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras, but how do the fictional versions of Aramis compare with the historical one?

   It is probably superfluous to say, but the real Aramis was not René, chevalier d’Herblay, the abbé d’Herblay, the grand vicaire at Melun, the bishop of Vannes, the general of the Jesuits or the duke of Almeda. However, as shall be seen, Dumas was not too far off the mark when he decided to give his character of Aramis religious connections.

1750 map, Aramits lies in the centre (David Rumsey)

   Henri d’Aramits was a native of Béarn. He took his name from Aramits [or Aramitz], a small village in the verdant Pyrenean valley of Barétous in the sénéchaussée of Oloron. The village still exists and can be visited today, but the château d’Aramits no longer stands.

   Aramits belonged to the old nobility of France and could trace his ancestry at least as far as the fourteenth century. In 1376, the name of Jean, abbé d’Aramits, is listed among the gentlemen commissioned by Menaud du Beguer, comte de Foix and Béarn. Bringing with him a company of one hundred infantry from the Ossau valley, Jean answered the muster to the army of Gaston Phébus in Morlasà. Five years later, on 22 June 1381, Gaston Phébus honoured Jean by raising the status of his domain.[8]

   At this point, the Aramits family was Catholic, but they converted to l’église reformée during the second half of the sixteenth century. This move was probably inspired by the conversion of the queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret. The region in which Aramits lived became a stronghold for the reformed cause. In 1569, during the Wars of Religion, Charles Durand, Baron du Sénégas, one of the lieutenants of Gabriel de Montgomery, comte de Lorge, entrusted the newly-captured Château de Mauléon to Pierre d’Aramits. Unable to hold the château for more than a few days, Pierre was obliged to abandon it to Catholic troops commanded by Charles de Luxe.[9]

   Pierre d’Aramits married Louise de Sauguis, the daughter of the nobleman, Louis de Tardets, écuyer and abbé laïque of Sauguis. A military man, Tardets had also served during the Wars of Religion in the company of Henri II, king of Navarre. He later served the châtelain of Mauléon in a military capacity. Pierre and Louise had three children: Charles, Marie and Phébus. Neither their dates of birth nor the order in which they came into the world is known. What can be said is that only Charles and Marie survived into adulthood.

   On 12 October 1597, Marie d’Aramits signed a contract of marriage with Jean de Peyrer, seigneur de Troisvilles, and was married soon afterwards. Their son, Arnaud-Jean de Troisvilles, would provide the inspiration for the celebrated Captain de Tréville of The Three Musketeers.

   Charles, the surviving son of Pierre d’Aramits, became the head of the family upon the death of his father. He married Catherine de Rague, daughter of Jean de Rague, écuyer and abbé laïque of Larins and Catherine de Badie-Casabant, heiress to the house of Espalunge. Although Charles took possession of the domain of Espalunge in right of his wife, he felt no need to add its name to his own, and he remained Charles d’Aramits. He also became abbé laïque of Aramits, having acquired the title from Captain Arnaud de La Salle.[10] At an unknown date, Charles joined the Musketeers, serving as maréchal de logis, a senior NCO, under the command his nephew, Troisvilles.[11]

   The marriage of Charles d’Aramits and Catherine de Rague also produced three children, one son and two daughters: Henri, Marie and Jeanne. Henri, the historical figure upon whom the character of Aramis is tentatively based, was born circa 1620. This makes him some seventeen years younger than his fictional counterpart as written by Dumas, but probably nearer to the age of the character created by Courtilz de Sandras. Of his childhood and education nothing is known. It can be accepted that, as the only son, he would have been brought up in the expectation that he would take over the family possessions in due course and trained accordingly. He would also have received at least some military training, including horsemanship and handling weapons, as well as lessons including reading, writing and maths. He would have spoken the Béarnais dialect, with French being virtually a second language.

   Henri d’Aramits joined the Musketeers at some point after May 1640.[12] In the Mémoires de M. d’Artagnan, Courtilz de Sandras asserts that Henri was brought to Paris by Tréville (Troisvilles). Since Henri and Troisvilles were first cousins, this might be true. However, sine Henri’s father was also a Musketeer at this point, he could equally have joined the company at his suggestion. More likely, his entering the Musketeers would have been inevitable. Henri, as has been seen, came from a long line of noblesse d’epée, or military nobility, so joining the most prestigious company in France was an obvious career move. Indeed, it was one of only two career paths open to him, the other being the church. In Henri’s case, the two overlap somewhat.

   No details of Aramits’s military service or the rank he might have achieved appear to have survived, and only brief glimpses of him are allowed to researchers. A tradition in his native Béarn has it that he served alongside his father for a time. Henri d’Aramits returned to Béarn from time to time. One such occasion was in 1650, when he married Jeanne de Béarn-Bonnasse, a local heiress whose family quality and status very much reflected his own.[13] The couple’s coat of arms featured a flame with two palms, positioned horizontally, one above the other.[14] Aramits is seen again two years later, on 19 June 1652, when he and his wife attended the wedding of his sister, Jeanne d’Aramits, to Armand de Casamayor, pastor of the church of Oloron.[15]

   According to Aramits’s will and testament, drawn up on 22 April 1654, the couple had three children, two sons and one daughter, Armand, Clément and Louise. The eldest, Armand, was designated as heir.[16] Why Aramits wrote his will at this time is not known. It might be speculated that he was ill and thought he might die, or perhaps he was taking care of family business before leaving home. However, at this point, the Musketeers had been temporarily disbanded, and would not be reinstated until January 1657. As such, Aramits might have served in another regiment or, like d’Artagnan, served in a civilian capacity. Given the near coincidence of dates, he could have provided some form of service at the coronation of Louis XIV, which took place at Reims in June 1654. Unfortunately, there is no way to know. Whatever the case, Aramits’s fourth and last child, a daughter named Madeleine, was born a few months after he had drawn up his will.

   The last sighting of Aramits occurs on 10 February 1657, when he and Jeanne witnessed the signing of the marriage contract of Jeanne’s sister, Anne de Béarn-Bonnasse to Arnaud de Juncas d’Oloron, a councillor at the parlement.[17]

The château d'Espalungue (La Rép des Pyrénées)

   From his father, Henri d’Aramits inherited the domains of Aramits and Espalungue, and became abbé laïque of Aramits. It is here, as well as his Huguenot heritage, that his religious connections come to the fore. However, as the name suggests, the abbé laïque, or lay father, was not an ordained minister. Instead, it simply meant that the Abbaye, that is, a convent or monastery, formed part of his domain and entitled him to receive the tithes and revenues. This arrangement was a staple of the feudal tradition of Béarn, and there were two such establishments at Aramits: the Abadie-Susan and the Abadie-Jusan.

   As to Aramits’s religious leanings, nothing is known. It is possible that he remained true to his Huguenot heritage. On the other hand, he could have converted to Catholicism, perhaps to make his life less complicated in the Musketeers, a Catholic regiment. Had he done so, he would perhaps have been inspired by Henri IV, who considered Paris worth a mass.[18]

   Dumas, however, knew about none of this. He found Aramis and his companions in arms in a pseudo-memoir and was intrigued by their names. He, with his collaborator Auguste Maquet, took the blank canvasses that were these characters and gave them personalities, relationships and stories before searching for a suitable backdrop against which to set them.[19] That he chose to associate Aramis with the church is a happy coincidence inspired by another of Courtilz’s characters, Rotondis.

   When it comes to the death of Henri d’Aramits’s, once again, the researcher is met with silence. Courtilz de Sandras offers no hint that might be followed up. He had quickly dropped his version of Aramis and his ‘brothers’ from his narrative, so no description of his death appears in Mémoires de M. d’Artagnan. In Alexandre Dumas, Aramis, along with his colleagues, survives into the last volume of the Musketeers cycle. However, while Athos, Porthos and d’Artagnan meet their various ends, Aramis alone remains alive at story’s end. The year and circumstances of the historical Aramits’s death must, therefore, remain a mystery. All that can be said is that it took place prior to 1681, which is when his

The gateway to the Abbaye, Aramits (Google Earth)

second son, Clément, inherited the family property. By this time, the eldest son and heir, Armand, had died without issue. The Abbaye d’Aramits, which had been held by the family since at least the fourteenth century, passed into new hands when Aramits’s daughter, Louise, pledged it to her brother-in-law, Antoine de Laure in February 1702.[20] Of the abbey buildings, only the gateway and part of the wall survive. The arch is decorated with the plumed hat of the Musketeer, and two plaques describe the history of the man whose life was lifted out of the ordinary by a master storyteller and transformed into the stuff of legend.

 

Notes

1, Aramis utters these words in chapter 26.

2, Courtilz de Sandras, vol 1, p.19.

3, Dumas, Vingt ans Après, chapter XLV; some English translations place it in chapter XLIV

4, Dumas, Les Trois Mousquetaires, chapter 3.

5, Courtilz de Sandras, p.13.

6, Dumas, Les Trois Mousquetaires, chapter 26.

7, Aramis tells his story in Les Trois Mousquetaires, chapter 26.

8, Jaurgain, pp.218-219.

9, Jaurgain, p.219.

10, Jaurgain, pp.219-220.

11, Jaurgain, p.221.

12, Jaurgain, p.221.

13, Jaurgain, p.226.

14, Jaurgain, p.230.

15, Jaurgain, p.227.

16, Jaurgain, pp.227-228.

17, Jaurgain, p.228.

18, Horne, p.76.

19, Dumas’s method of working and his collaboration with Maquet requires an article of its own.

20, Jaurgain, pp.228-230.

 

Bibliography

Bell, A Craig, Alexandre Dumas, A Biography and Study (London: Cassell, 1950)

Courtilz de Sandras, Gatien de, Mémoires de M. d'Artagnan: capitaine-lieutenant de la 1ère compagnie des mousquetaires du roi, volume I (Paris: Montgredien et C^ie, 1896)

Courtilz de Sandras, Memoirs de Monsieur d’Artagnan, Captain-Lieutenant of the First Company of the King’s Musketeers, translated by Ralph Nevill, volume I (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1903)

Dumas, Alexandre, Les Trois Mousquetaires et Vingt Ans Après, edited by Claude Schopp (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1991)

Dumas, Alexandre, The Three Musketeers, edited and introduced by David Coward (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1991)

Dumas, Alexandre, The Three Musketeers, translated and edited by Lord Sudley (London: Penguin Books, 1952)

Hall, Geoffrey F. and Joan Sanders, D’Artagnan, the Ultimate Musketeer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1964)

Horne, Alistair, Seven Ages of Paris (New York: Vintage Books, 2004)

Jaurgain, Jean de, Troisvilles, d’Artagnan et les Trois Mousquetaires (Paris: Librairie Ancienne, 1910)

Le Brun, Dominique, Richard Noury, Sure les Traces de d’Artagnan (Toulouse: Éditions Privat, 2006

Maund, Keri and Phil Nanson, The Four Musketeers, (Stroud: Tempus, 2005)

Schopp, Claude, Alexandre Dumas: Genius of Life, translated by A.J. Koch (New York: Franklin Watts, 1988)

‘The Supernatural and the Ethereal in the Character of Milady de Winter’ by Josephine Wilkinson

It was a dark and stormy night

 

Alexandre Dumas uses this now clichéd phrase, which he borrowed from Edward Bulwer-Lytton, to open Chapter 65 of his novel, The Three Musketeers. It comes almost s a shock to the unsuspecting reader because it seems oddly uninspired, jarring as it does with the originality and wit of Dumas’s usually carefully thought-out prose. Yet, by this point in the novel, the reader has been following an unaccustomed path for quite some time. Gradually, perhaps imperceptibly, The Three Musketeers had long taken on an unexpected quality.

   The Three Musketeers is arguably the most famous and cape-and-sword novels ever written. In d’Artagnan, it gave the world one of the greatest and best-loved literary heroes. The novel has been translated into many languages and appeared in countless editions since it was first published in Le Siècle as a roman feuilleton in 1844. It is usually, and quite rightly, described as a historical romance, an adventure; yet, as the novel progresses, it takes on an increasingly Gothic character spiced perhaps with a dash of Romanticism.

   Traditionally, the elements of the Gothic novel include the macabre, the fantastic and the supernatural. The action usually takes place against the setting of ‘haunted castles, graveyards, ruins and wild picturesque landscapes.’[1] While, at first glance, The Three Musketeers does not appear to fulfil these criteria, closer scrutiny reveals that at least some of them are present. For example, the Musketeers and d’Artagnan meet over breakfast at the Bastion Saint-Gervaise, a coastal fortress that had been breached and abandoned by all but the dead. Constance takes refuge with the convent at Bethune. Milady is held captive in Lord de Winter’s gloomy castle outside Portsmouth. Her judgement and execution take place against the backdrop of the afore-mentioned dark and stormy night.

   Yet, it is the supernatural qualities within The Three Musketeers that lend the novel its unexpected Gothic character. While some novels of the genre include ghosts, Dumas gave his readers death and resurrection. This is seen with both d’Artagnan and Athos. In d’Artagnan’s case, upon discovering the murdered Constance, he ‘uttered a cry and fell beside his mistress, ‘as pale and icy as she.’[2] It is as though he fell dead beside Constance, but he did not, of course, he had merely fainted. Athos rushes to him and embraces him tenderly, as d’Artagnan gently weeps. ‘My friend, be a man!’ he urges. ‘Women weep for the dead – men avenge them!’ To this, d’Artagnan, who has undergone a resurrection of sorts, replies: ‘Oh, yes, yes...if it be to avenge her, I am ready to follow you.’

   Dumas makes d’Artagnan and Athos avenging angels, for Athos, too, has tasted death. Seriously wounded during a duel, Athos ‘had rallied all his powers to bear up against his pain…finally defeated by it, [he] fell onto the floor as if he were dead.’[3]

      It is difficult to argue with David Coward’s assessment of The Three Musketeers as an ‘unashamedly masculine book.’[4] It is dominated by men: d’Artagnan, the Musketeers, Tréville, Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu, the duke of Buckingham, to name the most important ones. Naturally, there are female characters, but they tend to be depicted as little more than stereotypes. D’Artagnan’s mother is an obvious mother type, weeping for her son as he departs the family home to make his way in the world with her home-made balsam tucked into his saddlebag. Constance is a helpless heroine, who has to be rescued and looked after. She is also angelic, having been ‘an angel upon earth, before she became a saint in heaven.’ Anne of Austria, as a queen, fulfils a classic fairy-tale trope. She is an authority figure, certainly, but she is also a lover, and this makes her vulnerable. Like Constance, she must be watched over by men: the Musketeers; but she must also be protected from men: her husband and Cardinal Richelieu. Then there is Milady de Winter.

   It is with Milady that The Three Musketeers is at its most sinister. There is a darkness to Milady. She is an unsettling enigma, whose character transcends the role that Dumas had originally created for her. Initially, Rochefort was to be villain the piece. He and d’Artagnan became enemies from the moment d’Artagnan arrived at Meung. However, Dumas changed his mind and promoted Milady into the role of chief antagonist.

   Milady’s connections are spiritual. She works for Richelieu, a cardinal. She has associations with convents and churches, for example, the Benedictine convent at Templemars, where she lived as a young woman. She retreats to the convent of the Carmelites at Bethune following her escape from England. Milady also attends church, where she is discovered by d’Artagnan, who sees her at the church of Saint-Leun. Curiously, Milady singles out Aramis as the one who should be allowed to live. This is because he is the secret lover of Mme de Chevreuse, a fact that could perhaps be used to blackmail him: ‘he may be made useful,’ she says. More importantly, for most of the novel, Aramis experiences an inner conflict with his calling to the priesthood.

   Milady personifies several character stereotypes, all of which are negative: she is a harlot, a femme fatale who leads men astray. This is evinced by her beguiling qualities, which attract the then vicomte de La Fére to her. The vicomte, whom the reader will come to know as Athos, will fall deeply in love with Milady, marry her and make her the first lady of his province. Later, she uses her seductive powers to persuade the gullible Felton into killing the duke of Buckingham on her behalf. She is, therefore, an irresistible Eve figure tempting men towards their doom - in the case of Athos, to his descent into drunkenness and melancholy; for Felton, the consequences are more dire still, for he will be executed for his crime.

   An assassin, Milady makes several attempts to kill d’Artagnan: by having him shot during the siege of La Rochelle; by a poisoned bottle of Anjou wine; by asking for his head in exchange for that of Buckingham. Her brother-in-law, Lord de Winter, notes her ‘habit of assassinating people.’[5]

   Several times throughout the novel, Dumas makes various characters speak of the ‘weakness’ of women, but for Milady, weakness is easily overcome, or, more likely, it is feigned. It is clear that Milady is a character unlike any other. Most of the Gothic elements within the novel focus on her. She personifies the fantastic, the supernatural.

   From the beginning, Milady does not appear to be real. She possesses an almost fairy-like quality, which is reflected in her appearance: ‘She was pale and fair, with long curls falling on her shoulders, large blue languishing eyes, rosy lips, and hands of alabaster.’[6] When d’Artagnan catches his first sight of her at Meung, her beauty is all the more striking to him because it is ‘completely different from that of the southern country which he inhabited.’ Already we see Milady and d’Artagnan as opposites, with one appearing as the reverse of the other. Milady’s ‘head appeared through the window of the carriage, like a picture in a frame.’[7] Rather than a flesh and blood woman, Milady appears like a portrait, a beautiful imitation of a woman. She is ethereal, surreal, unreal. Yet, if Milady is not a real woman, what is she?

   D’Artagnan saw in Milady’s soul ‘abysses whose depths were dark and unknown.’ She: 

exercised an inconceivable power over him – he hated and adored her at the same time. Never had he believed that two sentiments so inconsistent could exist together in the same heart, creating, by commingling, a strange and, in some respects, a diabolical love.[8]

    At a point in the story where Athos does not yet realise Milady’s true identity, he urges d’Artagnan to renounce her: ‘a kind of intuition tells me that she is a lost creature, and that there is something fatal in her,’ he warns.[9] D’Artagnan admits that this woman, who is like ‘a dark cloud on the horizon,’ frightens him. Athos expresses the hope that Milady’s presence in d’Artagnan’s life would leave no ‘fatal trace.’

   In The Three Musketeers, Milady is likened to a supernatural being on several occasions. More than a mysterious figure, she has magical powers, she is an associate of Satan; Medusa; a phantom who haunts the dreams of those who see her. Most often, she is simply a demon. Milady does evil simply ‘for the infinite and supreme enjoyment of doing so.’[10] Anything she touches becomes polluted, such as the ring she gives to d’Artagnan.[11]

   Milady’s apparent magical power becomes evident when she is facing execution. She tries to bribe two of the Musketeers’ valets, Grimaud and Mousqueton, and frighten them into helping her: ‘A thousand pistoles for each of you, if you will help me to escape,’ she tells them; ‘but if you give me up to your masters, I have avengers near, who will make you pay dearly for my death.’ Athos overhears this and orders the two valets to withdraw: ‘she has spoken to them, and they are no longer safe,’ he explains.

   As an associate of the devil, Rochefort asks Milady to give his compliments to Satan.[12] Her singing voice has ‘all the charm, all the power, all the seduction, with which Satan had endowed it.’[13] Milady possesses the powers of Medusa: upon discovering the fleur de lys branded onto her shoulder, d’Artagnan is stricken with horror, and ‘he remained silent, motionless and frozen on the bed.’[14] As a phantom who haunts men in the night, Milady ‘having once appeared to anyone, would never more allow him to sleep in tranquillity.’[15]

   More commonly, however, Milady is seen as demonic. D’Artagnan, Porthos and the valet, Bazin, recognise her as such.[16] The Puritan Felton, another victim to Milady’s Medusa-like qualities, also has his doubts:

 ‘Who are you? What are you?’ exclaimed he, clasping his hands, ‘are you an angel or a demon? Are you Eloas or Astarte?’[17]

    However, the one who is most aware of this characteristic of Milady is her husband, Athos. At one point in the narrative, Aramis warns d’Artagnan that ‘woman was created for our ruin, and it is from her that all our miseries come.’[18] Athos, as he listened to Aramis’ Pauline-inspired assessment of women, ‘frowned and bit his lips.’ He remains silent, but he is disturbed by Aramis’ words. He knows something that Aramis does not, but he will open his heart only to one man, d’Artagnan.

   Athos tells d’Artagnan a love story during which the reader finds out that Milady was not always evil.[19] She was ‘as beautiful as Psyche,’ the goddess of the soul, a beautiful woman whom people, including priests, compared to Aphrodite. Despite her youth, she was only sixteen when Athos noticed her, she possessed ‘the soul less of a woman than a poet.’ More than merely pleasing, she ‘intoxicated the heart.’ Athos married her and took her to live in his castle. He made her the ‘first lady of the province.’ In this, she ‘maintained her station admirably.’

   While the young couple were out hunting together, Milady fell from her horse and fainted. It was at this point that Athos saw with horror the fleur-de-lys that had been branded onto her shoulder. ‘The angel was a demon,’ he tells d’Artagnan. ‘The miserable young girl was a thief.’

   Athos now exercised his powers as grand seigneur. Without hesitation, he stripped her of her clothes, tied her hands behind her back and hanged her from a tree. D’Artagnan was shocked: ‘a murder,’ he cried. ‘Yes,’ replied Athos, ‘a murder, nothing more.’ Athos fell silent. He had now become as pale as death.

   Athos had believed Milady to be dead, but he was wrong, Milady was not dead – but had she somehow managed to escape from the noose, or had she returned from the grave? If the latter, she was not the only one.

   Athos’ first face-to-face meeting with Milady since that incident, occurs in a scene following her interview with Richelieu.[20] During the interview, she has secured permission to assassinate d’Artagnan, who has thwarted her plans and ‘cruelly insulted’ her. Appearing before Milady, a figure of hatred and accusation, Athos has taken on a spectral quality. He tells the terrified woman that he has returned from ‘the other world’ specifically for the pleasure of seeing her. Ironically, Milady, upon realising that Athos is aware of what has passed between her and Richelieu, an interview she believed had taken place in secret, tells him: ‘You must indeed be Satan.’ Athos is indifferent to this slur, even accepting of it: ‘Perhaps so,’ he replies nonchalantly.

   ‘You are a demon let loose upon the earth,’ Athos tells Milady. ‘Your power is great, I know; but you know also, that with God’s assistance men have often overcome the most terrible demons. You have already crossed my path. I thought I had crushed you, madame, but I either deceived myself or hell has resurrected you.’ He continues: 

hell has resurrected you…hell has made you rich, hell has given you another name, hell has almost endowed you with another face; but it has not erased either the stain upon your soul or the brand upon your body. 

    Confronted by Athos, Milady, who is described as a ‘creature,’ who has ‘nothing of a woman in her nature,’ is ‘as pale as a corpse.’ As Athos raises his pistol towards her, she utters ‘a hoarse sound which had no resemblance to the human voice but seemed rather the growl of some savage beast.’ Pressed against the wall with its ‘gloomy tapestry, with her hair dishevelled, she looked like the appalling image of Terror.’

   Disarmed of the letter given to her by Richelieu, in which she was given carte blanche to act according to her will, she goes to England to continue her plan to assassinate the duke of Buckingham. As her ship arrives at Portsmouth,

the fog thickened the darkness still more and formed around the beacons and lanterns of the jetties a circle like that which surrounds the moon when the weather threatens rain. The air was melancholy, damp and cold.[21]

Here, Dumas muddles his chronology. The assassination of Buckingham occurred in August. Dumas sets the scene in December. The weather reflects Dumas’s view of rainy England, but he also uses the gloomy conditions as a metaphor for the ethereal Milady now reaching her destination. The wild picturesque landscapes so necessary to Gothic literature allow the elements to provide the perfect backdrop for what is to come. This motif will be seen again as the novel progresses.

   Milady is met at the harbour and driven to Lord de Winter’s castle somewhere outside Portsmouth. At one point, 

surprised at the length of the journey, she looks out of the window to see where they were taking her. She could no longer see houses, but trees emerging from the darkness, like vast black phantoms chasing one another.

 Arrived at last at her destination, Milady is met with ‘an iron gate at the entrance of a narrow road leading to a forbidding castle, massive and isolated.’ As she alights from her carriage, the scene plays out against the sound of waves crashing on the rocky coast. Milady will be imprisoned in the castle. Imprisonment is a theme of Romanticism, while Milady is, for A. Craig Bell, ‘a typical Romanticists creation of villainy, without shades.’[22]

   The theme of isolation is continued when Milady returns to France, with the house in which the headsman of Bethune lives. It is a small house, ‘isolated, lonely and melancholy.[23] That it is painted in a reddish colour adds to the unsettling atmosphere of the place and the sense of foreboding it inspires. Within, the trappings of the headman’s interests are seen. He has a laboratory, on the table of which lies a skeleton. He is in the process of reassembling it, and it is complete apart from the head, which still lies on the table. It is a macabre preview of Milady’s ultimate fate.

   It is fitting, also, that having discovered the dead Constance, murdered by Milady, Athos traces the route his wife had taken to escape the convent by means of spots of blood she has left behind. As night descends, d’Artagnan and the Musketeers, with their valets, make their way to where they know Miladyis hiding. They present a melancholy tableau, ‘bleak as despair, gloomy as revenge.’

   It is now that Dumas makes use of the ‘dark and stormy night’ as the setting for what is to come. With this chapter, the story of Milady moves inevitably towards its conclusion: 

It was a dark and stormy night. Large clouds swept across the sky, veiling the brightness of the stars; the moon would not rise until midnight.

   Sometimes, by the flash of lightning that lit up the horizon, the road could be seen, stretching out white and solitary before them; then, the flash extinguished, all was dark once again.[24]

 Yet again, the elements obligingly provide both a backdrop and a metaphor for the horror to come: the judgement of Milady and her subsequent execution.

   Entering Milady’s house, Athos appears as a ‘spectre of vengeance.’ He has ‘the solemn voice and powerful gesture of a judge sent by the Lord himself.’ It is imperative that Milady is judged and is not assassinated, for that would be a crime and the Musketeers, d’Artagnan, Lord de Winter and the headsman are not murderers. They have all experienced the wickedness of Milady at one time or another, in one form or another, and her death must be just.

   Athos once again refers to Milady’s demonic nature: ‘You are not a woman’ he tells her, ‘you do not belong to the human race; you are a demon escaped from hell, and to hell we shall send you back.’

   The headman binds Milady’s wrists. She ‘sent forth two or three wild screams, which had a startling, melancholy effect, as they were borne on the night and lost themselves in the depths of the woods.’ The night colludes with the ten men presiding over the death of Milady, whose cries vanish into the darkness of the night.

   In a final, desperate attempt to save her life, Milady offers to enter a convent. This is a return to the spiritual life she had led before she had met Athos: ‘I will become a nun,’ she cries, but it is too late. For Milady, no convent can offer sanctuary. ‘You were in a convent,’ the headsman reminds her, ‘and you left it to destroy my brother.’ The headsman of Bethune is the brother of the young priest, Milady’s lover, with whom she ran away from the convent of Templemars before she married Athos.

   Milady is then executed. The method selected is beheading. Claude Schopp points out that her death ‘is that of a vampire.’[25] Following her execution, her remains are thrown into the Lys. The name of the river reflects the fleur de lys that is burned onto Milady’s shoulder, offering a sense of symmetry to her fate and closing the circle of her criminal life.

   The river forms part of the border between France and Belgium, or the Spanish Netherlands as the Musketeers would have known it. While Dumas does not explain why Milady should not be killed on French soil, the material point is the river itself. A river is running, or living, water, over which supernatural beings are unable to cross. This should mark the end of Milady in this world and the next – it should, but it will not, for Milady will return to haunt d’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers in the form of her son, Mordaunt.[26]

   Having discovered Mémoires de M. d’Artagnan by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras, Dumas was particularly intrigued by the names of the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis. He was struck by the episode concerning d’Artagnan’s dalliance with Milady. In Courtilz’s work, he discerned the foundations of an exciting historical romance.

   Inspired, Dumas set down a rough draft of a narrative and sent it to his collaborator, Auguste Maquet, with a copy of Courtilz’s book for his opinion. If Maquet felt equally inspired, he failed to show it. Instead, he merely paraphrased the first few chapters of Courtilz and returned it to Dumas with a view to discussing how the plot and the characters should progress. In this, they disagreed. For Maquet, the novel should be written as a study of seventeenth-century manners, the book peopled by long-forgotten figures of the period. Their stories, he suggested, would be a more developed and dramatic version of Courtilz’s pseudo-memoir.

   For Dumas, on the other hand, Mémoires de M. d’Artagnan provided the starting point for a story that would allow him to do what he did best – to take great figures from the past and set them within whatever narrative framework best suited them. He took the somewhat one-dimensional characters he had found in Courtilz and transformed them so that they were both believable and relatable. The stilted and pedestrian dialogue of Courtilz became charming, amusing, meaningful and flowing. The action now took place against settings that were familiar with readers, painted as they were in the vibrant colours of the Parisian streets, battlegrounds, inns, palaces and musketeers’ lodgings.

   Dumas’s ‘unashamedly masculine’ novel is a masterclass of the swashbuckling escapade, a story of friendship and heroism – the historical romance that its author had envisaged. However, as the story progresses, The Three Musketeers increasingly becomes a battle of apocalyptic proportions. The spirts of good (d’Artagnan and the Musketeers) face the all-powerful spirit of evil (Milady), playing out what Schopp calls a ‘mime of catholic eschatology.’ In this context, the judgement of Milady reflects the general judgement of the last days.

   For Simone Bertière,

Milady’s character takes on an increasingly disturbing profile over the pages, and, once her identity is discovered, she reveals herself to be satanic. The struggle which pits her against our heroes then becomes a battle of Good against Evil.[27] 

   David Coward reminds readers that Dumas’s fiction is primarily ‘based on the principle of conflict.’ From the beginning of The Three Musketeers, he sought to ‘seed’ the novel ‘with evil as a counterweight to d’Artagnan’s nobility of heart.’[28] Coward agrees with Bertière’s interpretation, noting that the narrative is ‘dominated by d’Artagnan’s battle to the death with Milady, which acquired an epic dimension because it is also an allegorical battle between Good and Evil.’ At the same time, Milady’s branding is ‘a deliciously melodramatic touch, adding a frisson of horror.’[29]

   Milady ultimately serves as a force of evil to counterbalance the good of d’Artagnan and the Musketeers. As the novel continues, she becomes increasingly important to the plot - to the point that several chapters in the second half of the novel fail to mention d’Artagnan or the Musketeers at all. The focus instead is entirely upon Milady and the situation in which she then finds herself.

   The Three Musketeers, therefore, can be read on several levels: a historical romance, an adventure, a celebration of male friendship and heroism. It is also undoubtedly, and unexpectedly, an allegory of eschatology, in which good overcomes evil. However the novel is approached, the ghost of Milady de Winter will be seen running through the pages, haunting the reader, as she has haunted d’Artagnan and the Musketeers, long after they have read the closing lines.

 

Notes

 

1, Drabble (ed), p.405.

2, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 63,

3, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 3.

4, Dumas, Coward (ed), p.xviii.

5, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 50.

6, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 1.

7, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 1.

8, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 35.

9, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 35.

10, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 50.

11, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 38.

12, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 62.

13, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 53.

14, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 37.

15, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 48.

16, The Three Musketeers, Chapters 47, 48.

17, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 55.

18, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 9.

19, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 27.

20, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 45.

21, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 49.

22, Bell, p.196.

23, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 64.

24, The Three Musketeers, Chapter 65.

25, Dumas (Schopp), LXXV.

26, Mordaunt appears in Twenty Years After, the immediate sequel to The Three Musketeers.

27, Bertière, p.187.

28, Dumas (Coward), p.xvi.

29, Dumas (Coward), p.xvii.

 

Bibliography

 

·       Bell, A. Craig, Alexandre Dumas: A Biography and Study (London: Cassell & Company Limited, 1950)

·       Bertière, Simone, Dumas et les Mousquetaires: histoire d'un chef-d’œuvre (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2010

·       Coward, David (ed) see Dumas

·       Drabble, Margaret, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, fifth edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985)

·       Dumas, Alexandre, The Three Musketeers edited by David Coward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991-92)

·       Dumas, Alexandre, Les mousquetaires. I, Les trois mousquetaires. Vingt ans après, Alexandre Dumas; éd. établie par Claude Schopp (Paris: le Grand livre du mois, 1997)

·       Schopp, Claude (ed) see Dumas