Twenty Years After, by Alexandre Dumas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Two posts ago I described Dumas’ The Three Musketeers as a romp. The sequel, which began its serialized appearance in 1845 -- the year following its precursor’s publication -- starts out much more somberly. Taking up, as its title suggests, two decades after the first volume, this tale opens with our heroes having gone their separate ways. D’Artagnan, the witty, apparently irrepressible youthful leader of the earlier band, has turned bitter, his witticisms now cynical asides. At the end of The Three Musketeers, Cardinal Richelieu had appointed D’Artagnan a lieutenant of the Musketeers. Twenty years later, the once-merry Gascon is still a lieutenant, his accomplishments for the crown forgotten, his dreams for advancement turned to dirt.
Athos, Porthos, and Aramis have dropped their assumed names and found fortune since the end of the first book that recounted their adventures. Athos has assumed his fortune as le Comte de la Fere and is guardian to a young man named Raoul (who, unknown to the young man, is Athos’ son); Porthos married a rich widow -- now deceased—and lives unhappily as the Lord du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds (unhappily, for his landed and snooty neighbors know Porthos has married into wealth and is not a baron by royal decree); and Aramis has finally taken religious orders and serves as the Abbe d’Herblay (although, in secret, he still has a way with the ladies). Cardinal Richelieu, the puppet master who served as the musketeers’ enemy during The Three Musketeers, is dead, and in his place is Cardinal Mazarin, a scheming Italian who -- since the death of the King -- possesses the keys to the queen’s boudoir. This queen is the same Anne of Austria for whom d’Artagnan and his friends risked their lives two decades earlier to save her reputation in the face of her secret romance with the English Duke of Buckingham.
It’s notable that Richelieu -- the plotting master of events in The Three Musketeers -- is rehabilitated by Dumas in this novel. Early in the first chapter, the author suggests that the sinister character of the Cardinal portrayed in the first volume doesn’t truly represent this important, powerful figure:
Any one who happened at that moment to contemplate that red simar -- the gorgeous robe of office -- and the rich lace, or who gazed on that pale brow, bent in anxious meditation, might, in the solitude of that apartment, combined with the silence of the ante-chambers and the measured paces of the guards upon the landing-place, have fancied that the shade of Cardinal Richelieu lingered still in his accustomed haunt.
It was, alas! the ghost of former greatness. France enfeebled, the authority of her sovereign contemned, her nobles returning to their former turbulence and insolence, her enemies within her frontiers -- all proved the great Richelieu no longer in existence.
Even Mazarin admits -- although Mazarin is shown to dissemble as necessary on occasion -- that he cannot fill the former Cardinal’s shoes:
"With regard to myself, Monsieur de Rochefort," replied Mazarin, "I am not, like Monsieur de Richelieu, all-powerful. . . .”
And:
"The cardinal," interrupted Mazarin, "was a great politician and therein shone his vast superiority over me. I am a straightforward, simple man; that's my great disadvantage. I am of a frankness of character quite French."
Rochefort bit his lips in order to prevent a smile.
"Now to the point. I want friends; I want faithful servants. When I say I want, I mean the queen wants them. I do nothing without her commands -- pray understand that; not like Monsieur de Richelieu, who went on just as he pleased. So I shall never be a great man, as he was, but to compensate for that, I shall be a good man, Monsieur de Rochefort, and I hope to prove it to you."
Even Aramis points out to d’Artagnan -- in Chapter Nine -- that the old Cardinal was a worthy leader for France:
“For whatever may be thought of him, it must be allowed that Richelieu was great."
Later, in Chapter Twenty-two, Athos echoes his companion’s words:
“If Richelieu made the king, by comparison, seem small, he made royalty great. The Palace of the Louvre contains two things -- the king, who must die, and royalty, which never dies. The minister, so feared, so hated by his master, has descended into the tomb, drawing after him the king, whom he would not leave alone on earth, lest his work should be destroyed. So blind were his contemporaries that they regarded the cardinal's death as a deliverance; and I, even I, opposed the designs of the great man who held the destinies of France within the hollow of his hand.”
The action starts rather slowly in Twenty Years After, with the focus on court intrigues and political disruptions. Part of the plot focuses on The First Frond, a general revolt by the populace against Mazarin and the Queen. Readers who haven’t boned up on their French history may need a scorecard to keep the many historical figures straight as Dumas relates the ups and downs of the court’s convoluted political upheavals.
A second plot focus -- and the thread that pulls together the musketeers in a semblance of their youthful enthusiasm -- is Cromwell’s revolt, with the capture and execution of England’s King Charles I. As in The Three Musketeers, d’Artagnan and his companions travel to British soil and become embroiled in English politics as a sideplot to events occurring in France; so, around page 500, the swashbuckling character of the tale is revitalized, and the action sharpens. At this point, a character with ties to the first novel enters the storyline: the son of Milady. His evil is palpable, but he never reaches quite the level of despicableness that his mother exemplified. But his presence helps to unite the musketeers and rekindle a spark that time had seemingly snuffed out. When d’Artagnan’s sharp wit and ingenuity return in full force in his efforts to save King Charles, and the musketeers begin to consider each next meal with gallant concern (a running joke and a symbol of true fraternity in the first book is the friends’ focus on food), Dumas signals that all is right with the characters’ world.
By the novel’s end, the musketeers’ friendship has been heartily reaffirmed, the threats to France dealt with (for the moment), and d’Artagnan promoted to captain of the Royal Musketeers. But as the Gascon says at the last, “One never knows what may happen,” and Dumas has shown the truth of the statement throughout this sequel. It is a solid follow up to The Three Musketeers, and although it has heart, it doesn’t have all the vitality of its precursor. Still, there is great strength, humor, and excitement in its characters, and fully deserves a place on the shelf beside the earlier volume.
Posted by ds at September 5, 2009 10:57 AM
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