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Twenty Years After - Week 4 - through "One of the Forty Ways"
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One of Marie Michon’s Adventures This is my favorite 🤩 chapter in the whole book 📖& Madame de Chevreuse is my favorite female character.
When I listened to the audio book last year I had forgotten much of the plot and I couldn’t remember who Raoul’s mother was.
I will admit I did not expect this little twist. The way Dumas presents it is brilliant.
It’s nice to see a different (more seductive) side of Athos - the entire conversation with the duchess is so fun and flirtatious. She has a great sense of humor.
I actually prefer the older translations for the dialogue in this chapter - Ellsworth makes it a bit too modern and it loses some of the charm.
Since Aramis is so close to Athos now, I can’t help but wonder - does he know? Did he feel betrayed by his best friend and his former mistress? Did he become a Jesuit priest as a result of it?
He definitely knew about Marie Michon’s ‘affair with the priest’ because he mentioned it to D’Artagnan.
Either way - he’s being cool about the whole thing.
Mod
But now that Aramis observes how Mme de Chevreuse looks at Raoul and at Athos, he can probably figure everything out. He has the right kind of mind for that.
I don't remember if Raoul ever finds out who his parents are. He is remarkably incurious. Though it wasn't as unusual then for people to take in someone else's child for various reasons.
Robin P wrote: "now that Aramis observes how Mme de Chevreuse looks at Raoul and at Athos, he can probably figure everything out. He has the right kind of mind for that.I don't remember if Raoul ever finds out who his parents are. He is remarkably incurious.."
You're right - he really is remarkably incurious.
I find Raoul so boring. The only interesting thing about him is the story of how his parents met ;)
Mod
I liked the scenes with Beaufort in these chapters again.He is a very manipulative character, even if I must admit in a rather positive and witty way.
He makes La Ramée come up with the ideas of playing tennis and having a gourmet dinner together. I am a little astonished that La Ramée does not realize this. It was also very daring to tell about the process of escaping at the instance of escaping. La Ramée seems very naive about that until the dagger is pointing on his chest.
It was mentioned before that Beaufort was playing tennis “badly” that particular day with all the balls flying over the wall. So when mentioning the exchange of messages via tennis balls should have put La Ramée directly in alert mode, esp. with all the prophecies around an escape by Whitsunday in mind.
However, it seems at least that he sympathizes a little with his prisoner and vice versa.
I could imagine the vivid scene of society coming to Scarron‘s house, gossiping, plotting, debating social and political affairs. Athos and Aramis are involved in the Fronde movement and the escape of Beaufort. And then there is that whole love twist around Madame de Chevreuse. One night with such effects. However, I cannot remember that I had read about that in my version of the Three Musketeers - I have to check that.
I find it quite amusing that in most French literature of the 19th century love affairs outside of wedlock are so openly named without any hesitation or fuzz and in a lot of the English literature it is often kept a secret or handled with a lot of caution, often focusing also on the consequences for the “fallen” women. I might not have read enough to make a real essay about that, but it is definitely an impression of my reading experience.
What do you think of the story told by Athos to Mme de Chevreuse? I was happy to know that Athos is a man of flesh and blood and with a sense of humor. I guess he felt it was more honorable to hide Raoul's birth, especially because he wouldn't have divulged the mother's name. You might remember that when d'Artagnan visited Aramis, Aramis reminisced about how good Mme de Chevreuse/Marie Michon looked in men's garb. The whole adventure is quite charming. But I think it was omitted in the "classics" version I read in high school (along with d'Artagnan's nighttime dalliances being left out of The 3 Musketeers).
Raoul still seems very sappy, but he does have a few youthful traits, of eagerness to go on campaign and interest in a young lady (besides the little girl at home.) The chapter with the salon is full of name dropping of famous figures of the time. Abbe Scarron and Francoise d"Aubignee were real people, who later married. She also became mistress and secret wife to Louis XIV. (There is a very good historical novel about her, L'Allée du Roi, but it doesn't look like it has ever been translated from the French.)
This kind of salon, where wit was the most admired quality, was popular throughout the era. In this case, it's also a place for conspirators to meet. We get confirmation of why both Aramis and Athos turned down d'Artagnan's ofer.
Athos gives his son several pieces of advice and also a lecture on royalty. I am always a bit confused about how Dumas, not a monarchist himself, makes such a big thing of royalty, and nobility, even while separating the king as a person from the overall grandeur of the title. Athos also gives belated compliments to Mazarin, continuing the sort of respectful rivalry from the previous book.
The real Duc de Beaufort did escape in a similar manner to that detailed here, although probably not with a pie. Probably bribes worked better in real life than in this novel. The scene where the duke describes his plan while acting it out would work great on a stage.