The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas père

It is money-not love or adventure or bravery-that makes this world go round.Īnd yet there are adventures and bravery here, and a little love too. The musketeers-all in their late forties or fifties-have grown cautious as well: Count Athos strives to create a career for his son Raoul (the Vicomte of the title), Baron Porthos wishes to further his position in society, Bishop Aramis engages in deeper, more inscrutable politics than before, and even Captain D’Artagnan wearies of being a musketeer, discouraged by years of thankless service, disappointed in his callow young king, and-most important of all-worried about his lack of money for a comfortable retirement.

The cowardly and miserly Mazarin, who replaced the Musketeer’s fierce enemy the fearless and generous Richelieu, has become more cowardly and miserly than before, and is soon replaced by the two rival ministers Fouquet and Colbert who are concerned not with statecraft but with finance (n addition, of course to gaining ascendancy over one another.) The nature of the world is most clearly shown by the characters of its royal ministers. Twenty Years After created a world more cynical, and heroes less intrepid and less unified, than that youthful romp The Three Musketeers, and now, Ten Years Later-as one of the volumes of this two-thousand-word serial continuation is sometimes called-the world revealed is even darker, and the cautious heroes more self-involved, than before. Although it first attracts attention by its intricately carved detail, it is even more remarkable for the way it ages, for it reveals a rich range of colors as it progresses, each darker and more interesting than the one before.

The sprawling three-thousand-page saga of the Four Musketeers is the meerschaum pipe of adventure literature.

The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas père