At long last, Agi and I are reading out loud to one together. It's one of my all time favorites and a close second to The Count of Monte Cristo for full-throttled Dumas fun and mayhem. There are half a dozen duels, several melees and countless intrigues in the first 50 pages alone.

The Three Musketeers is breezier, funnier and less brooding than The Count of Monte Cristo. I love the whole gallant, devil-may-care picture that Dumas paints, set out with the lines, "Loose, half-drunk, imposing, the king's Musketeers, or rather M. de Treville's, spread themselves about in the cabarets, in the public walks, and the public sports, shouting, twisting their mustaches, clanking their swords, and taking great pleasure in annoying the Guards of the cardinal whenever they could fall in with them; then drawing in the open streets, as if it were the best of all possible sports; sometimes killed, but sure in that case to be both wept and avenged; often killing others, but then certain of not rotting in prison, M. de Treville being there to claim them. Thus M. de Treville was praised to the highest note by these men, who adored him, and who, ruffians as they were, trembled before him like scholars before their master, obedient to his least word, and ready to sacrifice themselves to wash out the smallest insult."

I think I trace my love of Paris and London to the fact that, on my first trip to both, pretty much everything I knew about the cities came from this book.