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her wild. She looked up in my face as if to say, "If you call this sport I don't," and bolted out of the butt. A wilder dog I never saw, and instead of coming back to her old form she got worse. I gave her up as hopeless, but as she was a wonderfully handsome one, and took second prize at the Agricultural Hall, I kept her to breed from. Michie, when he came into my service, was interested in her, but on hearing her history shook his head. Still he offered to do his best, and knowing that his breaking would never degenerate into cruelty, I told him to take her in hand. He began her at the very beginning, but that was not sufficient, and he had to take to the plan of tying her to a tree beside some rabbit-holes, ferreting the rabbits out, and shooting them in front of her, before she could be brought to see the unregenerate state she was in. This is more effectual and more humane than using a spiked collar. The rope should be, say, 12 yards long, and as the dog should never be allowed to get hold of a rabbit during a lesson, the holes should be outside the length of the rope. A wild dog is sure to run in when the rabbit bolts: keep cautioning him, call to him "Come back" when he disobeys, and when he is brought up pretty sharp-which he will be

with a rope of that length-pull him instantly back hand over hand, giving him some sharp cuts with the whip. The severity of the punishment will depend on circumstances; but if such treatment does not cure him, say, in three lessons, take my advice, and let him be relegated to a slip for the full term of his natural life. In this case two lessons were sufficient. The bitch is now a beautiful worker, and almost perfectly steady. Occasionally she will make a bolt forward, but instantly comes back when told, and although I should certainly not guarantee her as a perfectly broken dog, she makes few mistakes.

Her history may serve to show what I have always asserted, that easy as it is to make a dog it is easier to unmake one; that a thoroughly capable man-I wonder how many there are!—can successfully cope with an apparently hopeless case; and that any one who sends a valuable retriever "on trial" to people he knows nothing about, may as well tie the proverbial millstone about the animal's neck and cast him into the sea. I would conclude by asserting most emphatically that he who spareth the rod loveth the dog, and if I can bring the British sportsman to this way of thinking I have not written in vain.

"A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE."

THE REAL MONSIEUR D'ARTAGNAN.

How many of the million readers who have drawn deep draughts of delight from 'Les Trois Mousquetaires' have suspected that d'Artagnan and his inseparable quartette of friends ever had existence except in the fertile brain of the author? They might have known otherwise, indeed, but for the pardonable habit of skipping prefaces to works of fiction, because Alexandre Dumas explained frankly enough in his preface to the first edition of the 'Mousquetaires' how, when he was collecting material in the Bibliothèque royale for his history of Louis XIV., he came across the 'Mémoires de M. d'Artagnan,' printed at Amsterdam by Pierre Rouge, "as was the custom of authors of that epoch who desired to tell the truth without undergoing an experience of the Bastille." Dumas by no means sought to conceal the source of his inspiration; on the contrary, he recommended such of his readers as appreciated contemporary portraiture to get hold of the book for themselves. "They will find therein," said he, "portraits drawn by a master-hand; and, although most of these sketches are traced on barrack doors and tavern walls, it is as easy as in the history of M. Anguetil to recognise the likeness of Louis XIII., Anne of Austria, Richelieu, Mazarin, and most of the courtiers of the period." But the Mémoires' thus unearthed by M. Dumas were practically inaccessible to ordinary readers. The historian of Louis XIV. was allowed to take the book home with him and devour it

VOL. CLXI.--NO. DCCCCLXXX.

at leisure, with results for which lovers of romance of the rapier and rosette school can never be too grateful; but it might be searched for elsewhere in vain. Dumas and his generation had passed away before the happy thought occurred to a firm of publishers in Paris to issue a new edition.

The first thought that arises after perusing this extraordinary narrative is one of gratitude for having been allowed to read first 'Les Trois Mousquetaires' and the continuations, Vingt Ans Après' and 'Le Vicomte de Bragelonne.' So far from being inferior in constant movement and thrill to that series of novels, this wonderful autobiography, if anything, excels them in those respects. D'Artagnan, like Edward Gibbon and most of those who have left memorable memoirs, was turned fifty before he began to write the strange story of his life, and of course one knows not how much allowance must be made for the proverbial luxuriance of a Gascon's imagination. Still, there is a soldierlike simplicity in his style, and a philosophic insight into the value of things, that convince one that the man is neither posing as a hero nor seeking to impose on his readers. Besides, the seventeenth century was prolific in literature of this kind. SaintSimon, Tallemant des Réaux, de Gourville, and others cover a good deal of the same ground as d'Artagnan, who, by the bye, had some curious dealings with Bussy-Rabutin, another writer who may be

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cited to check d'Artagnan's version of passing events.

Tallemant went out of his way to be scandalous, and was too wary to commit himself to print. He collected all the tittle-tattle of boudoirs and backstairs, and, lest that should not be sufficiently spiced to tickle the taste of his readers of both sexes, thrust in raw junks of sheer brutality, of which indeed there was plenty at hand for anybody who chose to look for it. Then he circulated his manuscript among his eager friends, and he had been dead for two hundred years before it came to light again and was published. The impression it leaves on one reading it at this day is that of a society in which honour, chivalry, public spirit, chastity, or even common decency, might be sought for in vain except as an eccentricity in either man or woman.

But the light reflected from d'Artagnan's pages is not so uniformly lurid. It is true that there are passages in his own career, and in the careers of others, of outrageous immorality; described, too, in terms which leave very little work for the reader's imagination. But at worst, they are only passages; told though they be with unblushing audacity, they only find a place because they actually happened, and they contribute not a little to the realism of the picture. Leave them out, and one would not receive a true impression of society in Paris under Louis XIII. and the Grand Monarque that incongruous blend of piety and profligacy, with hardly an attempt to veil the latter and no shamefacedness about the former. There is an instance of this in the chapter wherein d'Artagnan describes an incident in the siege of Bourbourg. The Spaniards had made a sortie and were driven

back; d'Artagnan, with five of his comrades in the King's Musketeers, followed so hotly in pursuit that they were surrounded by the enemy. All five were shot down, but d'Artagnan escaped with three balls through his clothes and one through his hat. "Which proves," he piously observes, "that he is well protected whom God protects; that one has only to commend himself to God in the morning, and fear nothing during the rest of the day." On the very next page d'Artagnan begins the minute description of "une nouvelle bonne fortune" which fell to his share on his return to Paris. The husband of the lady was not one to suffer blemish to his honour without revenge. Accordingly, d'Artagnan having gone on duty to Amiens, the injured gentleman hired an assassin (there was never any deficiency either in the demand for, or the supply of, that article, which was technically known as un bretteur) to follow him. But d'Artagnan's movements were rapid, for the Cardinal Mazarin employed him on many missions, and it was some weeks before the bretteur overtook him in the trenches before Courtray. D'Artagnan was visiting some friends in these trenches, when word was brought to him that a soldier, severely wounded by a musketshot, desired to speak to him. He found the fellow at the point of death, who, forasmuch as there was no priest at hand to shrive him, desired to make a clean breast of it to his intended victim. For this was none other than the hired bretteur. He had followed d'Artagnan from place to place for weeks, seeking his opportunity, which at last he thought he had found. when he watched him go alone into the trenches. But as he lay in wait for d'Artagnan's

return, "the hand of. God struck him" in the shape of a ball from the city walls. "I pardoned him," says d'Artagnan lightly, "and commended him to God, though I scarcely supposed that God would ever encumber Himself with canaille of that kind." His own offence which had brought him into such peril was the undoubtedly genteel one of adultery, which no gentleman would suppose likely to raise more than a temporary difficulty between himself and his Maker.

D'Artagnan's real name was Charles de Batz-Castelmore, but he took the name of his mother's family. The poverty of his Béarnais home, his departure therefrom to seek his fortunes by the help of M. de Tréville, his father's repeated injunctions never to suffer the slightest affront to pass unavenged, and the events on the journey between Blois and Orléans, are all set forth in his own narrative, just as vividly as in that of Dumas. Even the ardour with which, after his arrival in Paris, he set to work to discover the Unknown who had insulted him about his bidet jaune at Meung, and the violent way he would dash from the room in pursuit of his enemy at the most incongruous moments, are described in terms which show that Dumas, at least, was not guilty of overloading his canvas. M. de Tréville is there also grave, intrepid, loyal, in the midst of a frivolous, intriguing, selfish Court-CaptainLieutenant of the Mousquetaires, the corps in which it is young d'Artagnan's day-dream to be enrolled. But there is one disappointment in store for readers of these memoirs. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis-the immortal trio-appear, it is true, very early in the story: the acquaintance made with them by the raw Gascon lad

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in the ante-room of M. de Tréville ripens into intimate friendship, and many a time in his early experience of Paris has d'Artagnan recourse to the magic cry"À moi, mousquetaires!" But they are altogether subsidiary characters; they disappear altogether after the first few chapters; and they were literal brothers-not friends sticking closer than brothers

which impairs the artistic effect. D'Artagnan has to serve many years in the Gardes of M. des Essarts before he is allowed to don the baudrier of a Mousquetaire ; and when at last he does so, there is no further mention of his three friends.

The fact is that these three types the noble, haughty, unselfish Athos, the swaggering, roistering, fearless Porthos, the refined, scheming, insincere Aramis

-are creations of the novelist. He has invested them with the qualities and made them the heroes of adventures assigned by d'Artagnan to a number of other real characters. Many of these qualities and adventures must have seemed outrageously exaggerated to readers of the 'Trois Mousquetaires'; but the exaggeration only consists in crowding them into the personality of three individuals. All of them are described in connection with various persons in the professedly veracious biography under consideration. Take, for example, the prodigious and wellnigh incredible drinking powers ascribed by Dumas to Athos: hardly more credible are those of the Comte de Rantzau as expatiated on by the real d'Artagnan. This count-"un bon homme de guerre "-would not have had his equal, but for his intolerance of spells of inactivity. At such times he would sit down, like Athos, to a deliberate drinking bout. It took ten or twelve bottles

of champagne to make the least effect upon him; half of that quantity was as harmless to him as 66 une goutte d'eau dans le mer." Rantzau's weakness was very nearly the ruin of him once. Louis XII. and Richelieu had invested Arras, and Rantzau was in command of a most important part of the lines, where he had constructed a fort. The Cardinal Ferdinand d'Espagne was hovering outside, waiting for a favourable moment to strike at the besieging army. Rantzau, as was his wont when on the alert, kept a severe check on himself, and was constantly in the saddle, riding round his defences. But there came a time when the Spanish Cardinal seemed to have abandoned the idea of raising the siege. Vigilance slackened in the French camp, and Rantzau, thinking he might safely indulge in a booze, invited the chief officers of the regiments in his brigade to his quarters for that purpose. But the Cardinal's spies were alert: no sooner was the company seated at table, than word was carried to him of what was going to happen. Four hours I did the Cardinal allow this bon homme de guerre to fuddle himself; "il compta que le nombre de bouteilles vidées troublerait infailliblement les idées de homme;" but it was not enough. Rantzau staggered to his horse, made a stout resistance till reinforced by Châtillon; and the attack was repulsed with much slaughter on both sides. Rantzau, who had already lost an eye at the siege of Dôle, lost further a leg and part of one hand in this camisade.

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Extravagant as the degree to which the cut-and-thrust business seems to be carried in the romance, it is not one whit more so than it appears in the matter-of-fact pages of M. d'Artagnan himself. Duel

ling, though strictly prohibited by the pious Louis XIII. under pain of a visit of indefinite length to the Bastille, was in full vogue, and was all the more sanguinary because of the prevalent custom which imposed upon seconds the duty of fighting beside their principals. The mortal rivalry between the King's Mousquetaires and Richelieu's Gardes, incredible as it may seem in the first capital of Europe, existed just as Dumas has described it; and the famous encounter in the Pré-aux-Clercs between d'Artagnan and the three Mousquetaires on one side, and Jussac and three of the Cardinal's men on the other, actually took place.

But the most remarkable feature in Dumas' treatment of his materials is that he has carefully expunged from the original narrative all, except one, of those chatouilleux incidents which one would have expected a French novelist to dilate on and expand. "Mon péché mignon," explains d'Artagnan frankly enough, "était de chérir les dames ;" and he is more than sufficiently explicit about his numerous excursions into that field. Dumas has disdained to place the interest of his romance on that level. If one episode in the whole of his series were torn out-the chapters about " Ketty and "milady"-all three novels might be put in the hands of any English girl. It is told that Dumas in after-life expressed bitter regret that the said episode had not been omitted with the rest of like nature; and there is evidence given by M. E. de Goncourt of how greatly Dumas differed in taste on these matters from less scrupulous French writers. M. de Goncourt tells us that he once heard Victor Hugo declare that, had he not been above filching

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