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 as 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.
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]
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]
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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:
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.’
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.
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]
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
