Twenty Years After - Week 6 - thru The Eve of Battle

[Robin P, Moderator]

In this section, we follow Raoul and Olivain, who is not quite the devoted and brave servant we are used to. Raoul, as he says toward the end of the section, has plenty of adventures. He saves a drowning man and makes a friend. He participates in a skirmish with enemy partisans and helps take a prisoner. He tries to fulfill the wish of a dying man and encounters a very creepy monk. He ends this section by at the age of 15 becoming the assistant to the leader of the army (thanks to his old and new connections.)

Some of you may have remembered the names of towns such as Bethune from the previous book. Dumas makes an effort to explain why the army is in this place that happens to be close to the previous scene. We learn the name of the false monk and his relationship to Milady, but not why he is there. When he goes into the woods and changes into other clothes, it made me think of a superhero (super villain).

In The Three Musketeers, the villains generally had some redeeming features. Richelieu and Rochefort were intelligent and had a certain nobility. Milady was beautiful - and superficially charming when she wanted to be. But this new villain has no good qualities, being described as a serpent, murdering a man who was dying anyway, responding to everyone with scorn. Even the naive Raoul can tell there is something off about him.

Do you think there is too much coincidence and/or melodrama in this section? What about the role of Grimaud, who has turned into a bit of an action hero himself, helping Beaufort escape and now rushing off to warn Athos of the new danger?

[Ana]

I think Dumas is asking for too much suspension of disbelief with these chapters. He could have come up with something better. 🤷🏻‍♀️

⚠️ spoilers ahead 👇

What are the odds that Raoul, the executioner of Lile, Milady’s son and Grimauld would all be in the same remote area at the exact same time?! 🤦🏻‍♀️

We are supposed to believe that Milady’s son was casually riding a mule through France, dressed as monk for no apparent reason. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I think it would have been more believable if he disguised himself intentionally, in order to extract a confession from the executioner. As a chance encounter it’s too much of coincidence.

I can see how we need Grimauld to witness the scene so he can later warn Athos, but the part with Raoul was not necessary.

Why is the executioner so remorseful all of a sudden?! He hated Milady with a passion.
Why would Grimauld be so afraid that Milady’s son would find Athos?
The musketeers were so brave before - willing to take on 20 people at once - why would they be worried about 1 young man?
It makes absolutely no sense to me.
Also, why didn’t Lord Winter simply raise his nephew - he was 3 years old when Milady died - how evil could a child possibly be at that age?

[Robin P, Moderator]

I think we will find out answers to some of these questions. Maybe John de Winter was looking for answers in this geographical area? (Yes, I have read this more than once, but I don't remember.) But how would anyone even know where she died? Milady was last seen at the convent with Constance. After that, she disappeared and none of the participants ever revealed what happened. There was the original coincidence of the executioner having his own gripe with Milady.

Also it's kind of odd that guilt came up for the musketeers and for the executioner. They were all clear that what they were doing was necessary and morally right. The musketeers killed many people, not just on the battlefield, but in duels and chance encounters, and never seemed to have any remorse for that. Is it because she was a woman?

I suppose the real reason for all this is that this is a sequel. Just like "Son of Frankenstein" and such, we have "Son of Milady". Maybe if Dumas had known the saga would be so popular, he wouldn't have killed off Milady. Now he has to come up with a new villain.

[Ana]

I agree with you. All the original villains had some redeeming qualities and our new villain is just pure evil. 😈I guess he is somewhat justified in seeking revenge for his mother’s death.
I remember thinking that it was too much of a coincidence that the executioner knew Milady - but I let it slide - maybe it was a small town - I guess it’s not completely unrealistic.
I did find the way Milady was killed a little extreme, but everyone was so sure she deserved it. That’s why I think the guilt seems a bit out of character for everyone. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Hedi]

Sorry for posting so late. I had finished the section before the thread was out and was then so much involved in another book that I did not get back to the thread.

These were definitely very eventful chapters.
Olivain and M.D’Arminges seem to have the roles of guards/ babysitters for these young soldiers to be. And maybe Athos partially chose him for Raoul to make sure he will not get in any trouble on the way. However, the young ones are strong-minded and quite determined. Olivain sees Raoul in these scenes like someone who wants to put himself into the foreground and is not lacking of self-confidence. He calls Raoul a braggadocio. I interpreted this as someone who likes to brag, who is very boastful.

Raoul meeting Comte de Guiche the way he did might be the start of a lifetime friendship, similar to D’Artagnan when he set appointments with the three Musketeers to duel them in the beginning. Raoul is in these chapters very similar to d’Artagnan when he went to Paris. He was also overly confident of himself, and to me in a more irritating way than Raoul. ( though it might also been due to my translation - I might be more biased by that than I really know).
Raoul wants to save a life, he - on his way to battle - comes across the enemy, who additionally is killing civilians, so he wants to help out with that...
I think this is a little more honorable then dueling 3 Musketeers almost at the same time for hardly anything.

With regards to Milady’s son (and again I am blaming my translation of The Three Musketeers), I cannot really remember his being mentioned except maybe for her death scene. Do we know where he was brought up? I thought maybe he was put into a convent at that time due to Milady’s actions. Or was it mentioned anywhere that he was with his uncle?

I agree with Robin that we will probably learn more about his past later on. We do not know either how much he actually knew. Maybe his mother left him a long letter somewhere which he may have received only some months or weeks before explaining her situation, her adversaries and so on and the risk of that was maybe the reason for Grimaud wanting to warn Athos. In addition, Grimaud knows how charming Milady’could be, so despite of being able to fight 20 people in battle with a sword at the same time, Athos might be in real danger as the greatest dangers come from within, from the charming serpents that earn your trust in order to overwhelm you afterwards.

[Hedi]

...
I do agree though that there are often a lot of coincidences in novels, especially in 19th century novels, but it is also a means to get the story rolling. You can see this in today’s movies, TV series, novels, etc. as well.
This is one of the few things I always criticized in at least some of Dickens’s novels.

Let’s see how Dumas will explain all this.

[Robin P, Moderator]

You will learn more about the past of this evil figure in the following week. For Dickens, "coincidence" was sort of the point, making sure characters turned up again and fitting them all into one scheme. A bit trickier for Dumas because he had to also make them work with mostly accurate historical events. But Dumas and Dickens were both popular entertainment writers, who wanted to keep the audience engaged. So strong emotions and unlikely melodrama were ok. The "romantic" era also had a bent toward Fate, rather than the more realistic works later in the century from Zola, for example, that dwelt on day-to-day issues of money, work, and family.

[Robin P, Moderator]

Hedi wrote: "Sorry for posting so late. I had finished the section before the thread was out and was then so much involved in another book that I did not get back to the thread.

These were definitely very even..."

You are not late at all, great comments! Anyone is welcome to read and/or post on their own schedule.

[Daniela]

I finished reading this part only yesterday, so I am a little behind, too. I rather liked this part with Raoul, even if at the beginning I was a little disappointed that the narration abandoned the three old friends.
I read the part of the monk "superhero" transformation after having read Robin's comment so I noticed it and I found it really funny!
I too was surprised by the coincidence of Milady's son being there in that moment and I hope that there will be an explanation.
I must say that reading about Raoul feats I had quite forgotten his age, it was only when the Prince mentioned it that I remembered that he is only 15 (and so he is so much younger than the Comte and the Prince). We compared him to D'Artagnan at the beginning of The Three Musketeers but he was twenty. He is really very mature for his age, and he knows Spanish, German and also Italian!
I particularly liked a part in chapter 29: "The aspect of external objects is often a mysterious guide communicating with the fibres of memory, which in spite of us will arouse them at times; this thread, like that of Ariadne, when once unraveled will conduct one through a labyrinth of thought, in which one loses one's self in endeavoring to follow that phantom of the past which is called recollection ".
About which, the narrative about the evening before the battle made me think of the same narrative in The Red Badge of Courage that I recently read.