"flected, a piece of unexampled equity, coming as it did at a moment when his Majesty had urgent reasons to complain of the prisoner's conduct. One can imagine the irascible, emotional Gascons, the magniloquent King, and the poor lady anxious to catch hold of any comforting symptom in the crisis! When d'Artagnan fell before Maestricht, Mademoiselle, while regretting him for his staunchness to his friends, added again that he was a very brave man. But of his military career we do not get a very definite notion. We snatch glimpses of him in the accounts of Turenne's campaigns, when the Household troops were ordered to the wars, but it is little more than a case of 'mentioned in despatches.' Altogether we may reasonably suppose that he owed his professional prosperity rather to Court favor than to exploits on the Flanders front. Even so, he had to serve for many years as a lieutenantcaptain of the Gray Musqueteers under the elder Maupertuis, until his chief-who was over eighty and neglectful of his duty-allowed him to purchase the captaincy for 150,000 livres. The King made amends for this long wait by creating him a Chevalier of the Order of the Saint-Esprit, the French equivalent for our Garter; and but for his death at Maestricht, he would have become Captain of the Guards.

The campaign, in which d'Artagnan smelled powder for the last time, opened on May 1, 1673, when Louis XIV, commanding in person, left Paris to chastise the Dutch. He marched straight to Maestricht, the principal town in Brabant, and invested the place on June 10. On June 23, the Musqueteers distinguished themselves by seizing a half-moon and holding it in spite of heavy losses, until the pioneers had dug a trench. Next day the Dutch reoccupied it, and d'Artagnan,

with a few men, was ordered to support the counter-attack. For a while it succeeded, but in the end the position was lost. When the Musqueteers retired, their popular captain was missing. A search party, with Saint-Leger at its head, braved the enemy's fire, and found d'Artagnan well to the front, killed by a musket ball. They brought in his body. The Gazette de France recorded his death, and added that the King was sensibly grieved, both because of the Sieur d'Artagnan's valor and the trust his Majesty had in him.

Such was the d'Artagnan of fact; who, by the way, is to be distinguished from a cousin, who became a French marshal, and took the name of Montesquiou. Saint-Simon contrasts the rectitude of our friend with the tortuousness of his relative, who courted Madame de Maintenon and the Duc du Maine by back-stairs means.* How much Courtilz knew about the Captain of Musqueteers it is difficult to say; probably but little. He gives a fairly

correct account of the arrest of Fou

quet, and, while exaggerating the incident, mentions Mme. de Sévigné's successful attempt to get a sight of the prisoner.† But he antedates d'Artagnan's captaincy by a good many years, making it a favor extorted from Mazarin; and appoints him Governor of Lille, a post he cannot have held consistently with his duties in Paris.

Courtilz's general idea seems to have been to take a well-known character, a Hodson of Hodson's Horse, or a General Burnaby, and write a novel in the first person about him. The military adventures are fairly reasonable; thus d'Artagnan penetrates in disguise to a besieged garrison to tell it relief is at hand; caught on his way back, he would certainly have been shot as a spy

* Mémoires, vol. vii, p. 387.

† Courtilz's Mémoires were published in 1702; Mme. de Sévigné's letters to Pompone only appeared in print in 1756.

by Condé, if he had winked an eyelid at the wrong moment. Escapes of the kind were not uncommon in little warfare against fortifications. But Courtilz outrages probability almost as boldly as Dumas himself in the diplomatic missions on which he despatches d'Artagnan. Thus he would have us believe that, after the death of Cromwell, Mazarin sent d'Artagnan to England with the object of arranging a marriage between one of his beautiful nieces and Charles II, or, failing Charles, with Richard Cromwell. 'Queen Dick' had unfortunately, as Mazarin would have known very well, a wife alive at the time in Dorothy, the daughter of Richard Mayor of Hursley.

The real value of the Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan, as Dumas perceived, consists in their reflection of the life of the Musqueteers. They bring back the happy-go-lucky existence of the 'cape and sword' period; its tavern-brawls, its duels, its impecuniosity relieved either by a lucky game at cards or sponging on some dame of degree; they are in fact, in Dumas' own words, 'sketches made on barrack doors and the walls of inns.' Courtilz makes a great point of the rivalry between the Musqueteers of Louis XIII and those of Richelieu, and the consequent bloodshed when they met in the streets. The wonderful yellow pony on which d'Artagnan rode up from his native Béarn figures in Courtilz's pages; so does the quarrel with Rochefort, who is called Rosnay in the Mémoires. Thence, too, Dumas extracted the raw material, so to speak, of d'Artagnan's landlady, dear little Mme. Bonacieux, and her curmudgeon of a husband. The fateful game of tennis and its consequences, M. de Tréville's inquiry, the audience with Louis XIII, are all drawn from Courtilz. Above all, Dumas went to the Mémoires for the original of the sinister Milady.

Courtilz's Milady is a maid-of-honor of Henrietta Maria, the fugitive Queen of England. His d'Artagnan has a love affair with her, and outwits a rival much on the lines adopted by Dumas, though in point of ingenuity the Mémoires are not to be compared with Le Trois Mousquetaires. At that point Courtilz drops Milady; but Dumas, with the Mémoires of La Rochefoucauld to help him, develops her into a spy of Richelieu, and, for the time being at any rate, into an historical character. She becomes in fact the Lady Carlisle, who, to serve the Cardinal and avenge herself on Buckingham, cut off from the Duke's dress the diamond pendants, or, as Dumas has it, a pendant, which had been given him by Anne of Austria.

*

Les Trois Mousquetaires sticks pretty close to history in its account of how Buckingham foiled his enemies by having a facsimile of the pendant manufactured and sent to the Queen, while a proclamation closing the ports prevented Lady Carlisle from taking her theft to Richelieu. Only La Rochefoucauld provokingly says nothing about d'Artagnan's part in the complication, nor about the ball at which Anne of Austria confounded the Cardinal by appearing with the diamonds on her. That is pure Dumas. La Rochefoucauld concludes somewhat tamely with,

Thus the Queen escaped the vengeance of this infuriated woman (Lady Carlisle), and the Cardinal lost what seemed a safe means of exposing her and opening the King's eyes as to all his doubts, since the pendants came from him and he had given them to the Queen.

Lady Carlisle was, in some ways, not so complete a she-villain as Milady, the poisoner of Mme. Bonacieux. Still as S. R. Gardiner severely remarks, she followed up the excitement of a youth of pleasure with the excitement of a *Mémoires de La Rochefoucauld (Petitot 51, pp. 342-4).

middle age of treachery, divulging Court secrets to Pym and Essex at one time, at another promoting Royalist risings against the Commonwealth. But with her later baseness Dumas had

no concern.

Dumas took from Courtilz de Santhe dras the names of d'Artagnan's three It companions, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. In the Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan they appear as three Gascon brothers. They are merely friends of the autobiographer, who help him out of his difficulties; no attempt is made to invest them with individuality and they soon fade out of the narrative. Dumas took these shadows of shades and gave them flesh and blood. They are more or less types of the manat-arms, as the novelist understood him.

In the case of Athos, otherwise the Comte de la Fère, we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the 'manuscript in folio, numbered 4772 or 4773,' which Dumas asserts in the preface to Les Trois Mousquetaires that Paulin Pâris, the famous antiquary and editor, discovered for him in the Bibliothèque Royale. The affected vagueness as to the catalogue puts us on our guard at once, and no Memorial of some of the events which were enacted in France toward the end of the reign of King Louis XIII and the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV has ever been discovered by the numerous French critics of Dumas. Athos- the worthy but slightly tedious Athos-whom d'Artagnan only once ventured to tutoyer, is to be found rather in the pages of Brantôme's Hommes Illustres and of the Loyal Serviteur of Bayard. He is to be taken as a survival of a nobler age, and it is in that sense that Dumas puts into his mouth the eloquently turgid address to the Vicomte de Bragelonne when that youth girded on the ancestral sword.

Porthos, on the other hand, with his gros bon sens and his gigantic strength, is a figure of more modern type. Dumas had a model before him in his own father, the mulatto General, whose physical force was great, while he himself in his ebullient youth had been a fine man of his hands. Already in La Reine Margot he had produced a Hercules in Coconnas with his many inches and broad shoulders, and Coconnas has his place a small one in history. But Dumas does not revel over the comrade of the unhappy La Mole, as he does over the associate of Athos and Aramis. In his simplicity-his loyal engagement in enterprises he did not in the least understand - Porthos is the true hero of the Musqueteers series. The lament over his death in Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, in spite of its touch of bombast, comes nearer genuine pathos than anything that Dumas ever wrote. And Porthos is so thoroughly human in his huge appetite, his enjoyment of his wealth and his craving for a dukedom. The detail of the baudrier or cross-belt, so magnificent in front and disguised by a cloak as to its poverty behind, comes from Courtilz. In the general vanity of the man we may get an echo of Marshal de Bassompierre, with whose Mémoires Dumas was well acquainted. Still Porthos as a whole is just himself, and his only begetter is Dumas.

re

Aramis the subtle Aramis veals his own origin in Vingt Ans Après, namely, de Retz, the Coadjutor to the Archbishop of Paris, who afterwards became the famous Cardinal. He says to Athos:

He is a swashbuckler, and so am I; he gads about the streets, and so do I; his cassock sits heavy on him, and I, I think, have had enough of mine. I sometimes imagine that he is Aramis and I am the Coadjutor, so perfect is the analogy between us. This Sosius (Dumas apparently means Socicles or Dromio) bores me and depresses me.' * Vingt Ans Après, vol. ii, ch. xix, p. 124.

In personal appearance there was little in common between the shortsighted, bow-legged little Cardinal and the handsome, effeminate Aramis, who pinched the lobes of his ears to give them a rosy tint. But they were of the same race in their laxity of morals, their contempt for their orders, and the vastness of their ambitions. It is remarkable how Aramis grows under the cunning hand of Dumas. In Les Trois Mousquetaires we are chiefly interested in his amours with Mme. de Longueville and Mme. de Chevreuse. He continues to play a minor part in Vingt Ans Après, except in the audacious scene of his impersonation of Bishop Juxon during the last hours of Charles I. But in Le Vicomte he dominates the book, dragging the unsuspecting Porthos in his wake. And if Aramis trod devious paths to become General of the Jesuits, so did de Retz to win his Cardinal's hat. De Retz aimed besides at even more exalted things; no less than the overthrow of Mazarin and the instalment of himself as Minister. The activities of Aramis continued, however, after Cardinal de Retz had been effectively snuffed out by the wily Italian. Dumas perceived in the machinations of Fouquet, notably in his fortification of Belle-Ile as a place of refuge, a capital atmosphere for his man of close designs and crooked counsels.

[The Outlook]

LONDON SEES THE WILD WEST

BY EDWARD SHANKS

SCENE: The stalls of the Lyric Theatre. Enter together, a trifle late a DRAMATIC CRITIC and his RELUCTANT FRIEND. They buy a programme and sit down.

R. F. (complainingly): I thought you said this play was about cowboys?

D. C.: I'm sorry. I thought it was.... I certainly thought it was.... R. F. (increasing in truculence): These are n't cowboys. They 're wearing mess uniforms and spurs.

D. C. (hoping against hope): Perhaps they're cowboys in disguise.

R. F.: Of course, they're not cowboys. How could they be? Look at the scenery. That's Westminster Abbey in the background. (Peevishly): They'll begin singing in a moment. I believe you've brought me to a revue.

D. C. (his confidence shaken): I don't think so. (He consults the programme.) No, that is n't Westminster Abbey -its Maudsley Towers, Norfolk, England.

THE HERO (the one on the stage, of course): 'Tis better so! (To conceal his emotion he walks pensively into the wings.)

R. F.: That's more like the stuff.

THE HEROINE: Tell me, tell me you are inn-o-cent! (Or words to that effect.) R. F.: I feel better now.

(The curtain falls on the end of the first act.)

R. F. (simultaneously): I want a
D. C. drink.

(When they return the curtain has risen again disclosing the 'Long Horn' Saloon at Maverick, Wyoming, U. S. A. A cowboy is playing poker with two companions and making jokes in what is understood to be the American language.)

D. C.: Can you make out what he is saying?

R. F.: Not a word. I wish they'd provide an interpreter.

D. C.: Anyway, they're all wearing the most dangerous-looking guns. (Hopefully): I should n't be surprised if someone were to get shot before long.

(The cowboys on the stage discuss the likelihood of trouble between Jim Carston's outfit and Cash Hawkins's gang.) A COWBOY (slapping another on the shoulder): My advice to you, sonny, is

It never trouble trouble till trouble httroubles you. (The audience rocks with tr laughter.)

hey R. F.: I seem to have heard that beus fore somewhere.

(JIM CARSTON and CASH HAWKINS se have now appeared, the one with his outrefit, the other with his gang. Alarums and Lo excursions and a good deal of gun-play, ster in which, however, no gun goes off.) :D. C. (excitedly): That's him! Look! t. R. F.: Who?

D. C.: The chap who said, "Tis betlter so!' in the first act. He's shaved his nymoustache off.

ster R. F.: How do you know it's the same man?

he

D. C.: He's still got the waves in his

hair.

(More alarums and excursions. A revolver shot and CASH HAWKINS falls dead. Annoyance of his gang. The he SHERIFF enters and accuses JIM CARSTON of the murder. He clears himself. Annoyance of the SHERIFF.)

R. F. (sapiently): I know who did it. It was that Indian girl, Nat-u-ritch. JIM CARSTON: Who shot Cash Hawkins?

NAT-U-RITCH (shyly): I did. (Applause, in which the RELUCTANT FRIEND joins very heartily. The curtain falls.)

R. F. (simultaneously): I want a
D. C. ( drink.

D. C. (in the bar): This is all very interesting as a study in sociology. People want excitement; they want revolver shots. It's no use being priggish about it. We both do ourselves. But the public's palate must n't be cloyed with too many shots. They enjoy the anticipation even more than the thing itself. So the right course is to show them any number of revolvers and keep them in suspense, wondering who is going to be shot and when. And another interesting point is that this play is simply the theatre getting its own

back from the cinema. It's true that there are no galloping horses, but, on the other hand, there's plenty of noise. R. F.: Finish yours, and then we'll have another.

D. C.: Of course, it's interesting, too, for a student of human nature. It's the conventional gesture that teaches you about humanity. When a man makes a spontaneous gesture, you may learn something about him; but when he says, "Tis better so!' false and unnatural as it is, you learn something about hundreds of people, because they respond to it unanimously.

R. F.: There's time for one more.
(The bell rings and they return.)

D. C.: These Indian scenes are good. It's a first-rate stunt that, making them talk Ute on the stage and having it interpreted.

(The Pipe of Peace is handed round.)

R. F. (shifting uncomfortably in his seat): It's a rotten idea, letting them smoke on the stage, when we may n't smoke in the audience.

(The FAMILY SOLICITOR appears and addresses JIM CARSTON as 'My Lord.' The audience is gratified.)

JIM CARSTON (concealing his own gratification): My name is Carston, Mr. Petrie.

THE HEROINE (turning up suddenly): Who is Nat-u-ritch?

JIM CARSTON (with natural reluctance): She is the mother of my boy. THE HEROINE: Oh dear! (Or words to that effect.)

(The cowboys begin saying good-bye to LITTLE HAL, who is going back to England to be educated for the succession to the peerage which so embarrasses his father. They give him their favorite clasp-knives and watches which belonged to their mothers.)

R. F. (gruffly): Oh, cut out the sobstuff.

D. C.: I'll bet you half-a-crown there's a happy ending.