from other authors, he must have yielded to the temptation to appropriate the story of "Ketty," "et de lui donner une forme d'art."1 "Think," exclaimed Hugo, "of the marvellously human dénoûment, far finer than any dénoúment of the utmost realism!" It is not difficult to imagine to what luxuriance these materials might have blossomed under the florid touch of Victor Hugo. Neither the fatal fleur-de-lys on the frail dame's shoulder, nor her trial and execution by the four Mousquetaires, has any place in the veritable story: they owe their existence to Dumas' imagination.

One exceedingly unpleasant characteristic of the times receives no veil in the pages of d'Artagnan. It does not seem to have occurred to him that it required any apology, yet it was one of a nature to taint intolerably the whole fabric of society. Men of birth and good position in the country flocked to Paris to make their fortunes, or at least to repair those incomes which the devastation of their paternal estates by incessant warfare had caused to disappear. The most profitable expedient was to secure some post, civil or military, it mattered not which, under Government, and to farm it to the best advantage. The command of the Bastille was intensely coveted, for by judicious management the allowance made to the governor for the maintenance of each prisoner might well be made to yield a handsome surplus: so was the command of a fortress or regiment, and d'Artagnan was far too good a soldier to speak without intense indignation of the way some officers pilfered their men. He expresses a fine scorn, also, for the avaricious civilians who filched

and levied blackmail with hardly an affectation of secrecy. But, morbidly sensitive as he was to real or fancied affronts to his own honour or dignity ("je n'ai jamais passé pour un homme," he mildly puts it, "qui souffrît qu'on lui marchât impuniment sur le pied"), he felt no scruples in doing what was considered perfectly respectable by men of the sword, namely, winning the affections-or at least the favours of a mistress, and then plundering her purse. Nothing can be more sordid or more cynical than the details of the many liaisons of this nature which d'Artagnan formed during his early years in Paris. Among the charms of the many fair creatures who succumbed to him, he seldom fails to specify how much each of them contributed to his pecuniary needs.

At the same time, his code prescribed that however meanly or dishonestly money might have been come by, it was inconsistent with a gentleman's character to be careful in spending it. Cardinal Richelieu was in office at the beginning of d'Artagnan's life in Paris; and it was soon explained to the young guardsman what vast sums he had appropriated for himself out of the public revenue. But d'Artagnan is never tired of praising the princely liberality with which he spent them. soon as Mazarin succeeded, the chronicler changed his tone. The invincible avarice of the Italian, the astounding expedients to which. he stooped to get money, only equalled by those which he employed to avoid spending it—his profusion of promises and perpetual want of faith in keeping them-form the constant theme of d'Artagnan's complaint. Both peace and war offered special op

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portunities of peculation, though on the whole Mazarin preferred war; because, although in time of peace it was not necessary to spend so much on the army, and thus he was able to save money, war gave him the excuse to impose fresh taxes and so to receive money.

The ugliest part of Richelieu's character was his cruelty. When he died on 4th December 1642, a large number of prisoners, immured by his orders in the Bastille, were released by the king. Some of these the Maréchal de Bassompierre, for instance, and the Comte de Carmain-had languished in that odious prison for more than ten years, simply because in some way or other they had been inconvenient or hostile when at liberty to the dreaded Cardinal; "nor was it probable," says d'Artagnan, "that they would ever have seen daylight again had Richelieu lived."

"For this Cardinal," he adds, "was not a man to release the prey he had once stricken: he delighted to add sarcasm to the force he exerted upon those whom he took in hand to oppress. Madame de Saint-Luc, sister of the Maréchal de Bassompierre, many times entreated the Cardinal to relax the rigour with which he treated her brother. He pretended to listen to her with sympathy, and then, when she explained that her brother was suffering from a disease of which no one understood the cause, he inquired suavely (doucereusement) whether it was not possible that this malady did not arise from ennui. A pleasant question on the subject of a man who had been wasting for ten years within four walls, especially about one who had been so high in the world as the

Maréchal."

Nevertheless, Richelieu was as widely respected as he was deeply feared. For his successor, though d'Artagnan served him faithfully, he never can find strong enough

expressions for his contempt. Mazarin was not cruel-"il n'en voulait à la vie de personne, mais à la bourse de chacun." No sources of income were so paltry as to be neglected. He set up hocca tables in his salon and antechamber; d'Artagnan roundly accuses him of habitually cheating his guests. At all events, it soon became notorious that the only sure way to gain promotion and the

Cardinal's favours - "les faveurs qui ne lui contaient rien, s'entend was to lose money to him at hocca. Every step of promotion, every public appointment

"mêmes celles qui ne s'étaient jamais vendues jusqu'à lui"--were sold to the highest bidder. The supplies for the public service were cut down to the lowest figure, as the following story is told to illustrate.

In 1644, the year after the death of Louis XIII., the French army, under the Duc d'Orléans, was besieging Gravelines. The Austrian General Piccolomini was

moving to attack them and raise the siege; d'Orléans ordered the issue of sufficient powder to the troops for a general action. The artillery officer in charge of the powder announced that he had none left, and in his own defence produced a letter from Cardinal Mazarin, which d'Artagnan professes to give at length, in which the said officer was reminded of the way the king was wont to be robbed by the extravagent use of gunpowder by the officers of his armies. "Therefore when you receive requisition for gunpowder, let the orders be repeated at least three or four times. Try every pretext for not obeying promptly. Otherwise you will not only render yourself unworthy of the reward I have promised you, but one will be forced to believe that you have a

share in these robberies." Willingly, no doubt, would both the Duc d'Orléans and M. de la Meilleraye, the Grand Master of the Artillery, have hanged his Eminence, who, as d'Orléans bitterly observed, "cherchait à rogner à tout"; failing that, they shut up the defaulting officer in a solitary chamber, with a big nail, a hammer, and a rope, instructing him to make the right use of them, which the miserable man did by hanging himself.

Notwithstanding his hatred and contempt for Mazarin, d'Artagnan was shrewd enough to perceive that the best, indeed the only, chance of realising his ambition of entering M. de Tréville's Mousquetaires, was to serve the Cardinal faithfully, and turn a deaf ear to all invitations to enter into any of the numerous plots formed to overthrow him. Mazarin, like his predecessor Richelieu, had made himself indispensable as First Minister by his intellectual superiority to all rivals.

But there was one man who, though too loyal to intrigue against the Minister of his infant king, hated him and his corrupt ways, and was perpetually thwarting him by his inflexible integrity and intrepidity. This was M. de Tréville, of all others the character which shines clearest in the murky atmosphere of d'Artagnan's narrative. Mazarin soon would have brushed a mere soldier-even the Captain of the King's Mousquetaires-from his path, but for the trustful affection reposed in him by the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria. She would listen to no detraction towards one who had deserved so Iwell of her and her dead consort. The crafty crafty Italian, however, wearied not in his endeavour to undermine de Tréville. D'Artagnan entered the Mousquetaires

after the campaign of Gravelines in 1644: "Je ne saurais représenter ma joie et mon bonheur; je me croyais quelque chose enfin !" But his exultation was speedily damped. Mazarin, having failed to coax or frighten de Tréville into abandoning his command in favour of his (the Cardinal's) nephew, the young Duc de Nevers, resolved to abolish this famous corps d'élite altogether, and, after much difficulty, persuaded the reluctant queen to consent to this step in the beginning of 1648. So this goodly company was dissolved, precisely at the moment when the monarchy stood most in need of loyal defenders.

For the Cardinal's proceedings had caused him to be universally execrated. The people who had to pay exorbitant taxes were fully aware that they were merely fattening this foreign incubus that had fastened on the Government. Paris threw up her barricades; Broussel, the people's deputy, was arrested, and the Court was besieged in the Palais Royal. D'Artagnan, by the Cardinal's orders, disguised himself as an artisan, and mingled with the mob at the barricades, in order to ascertain the real source of the discontent. If he had any doubts about that, they were soon dissipated. In order to keep up his assumed character, d'Artagnan harangued the populace on the misdeeds of the Minister, "which was some solace to me, I must avow, and rendered my task a trifle less odious." He carried it off so well that he was taken aside and invited to join a conspiracy to make away with Mazarin-for it was against him, and not against the king or the queen-mother, that the rage of the people was raised. D'Artagnan describes at some length what follows, and it is not

bad reading; but the only quotation which need be made here is the unconscious revelation which the writer makes of his simple code of morals. On the details of the plot being laid before him "I pricked my ears," says he. "Certainly I had no reason to be proud of my master; but he was the master I had chosen, whose bread I ate dry bread though it was. I owed him faith and aid so long as I remained in his service; and before enlisting among his enemies, I was bound to resign my office." Therefore, though he assigned as the origin of the existing tumults, of the Prince de Condé's subsequent revolt and the long years of desolating civil war which followed, nothing but the hatred borne by the whole French nation towards Cardinal Mazarin, d'Artagnan continued to the end his unswerving fidelity to his employer.

The service was of a nature to suit the most ravenous appetite for adventure, for Mazarin, once convinced of a man's capacity, was not wont to hesitate about exposing him to the utmost hazard. D'Artagnan had already visited England in the suite of the Comte d'Harcourt, and, with the other gentlemen attending on that envoy, had charged under Prince Rupert at Newbury. He was chosen by Mazarin in 1648 to go on a secret mission to Oliver Cromwell. Already Queen Henrietta Maria had been for some years a refugee at the French Court; but hitherto Mazarin, whose policy it had been to support the Parliamentarians in their resistance to Charles I., had succeeded in steeling the heart of Anne of Austria against the English queen's entreaties for succour. Now, however, when the fate of Charles was closely impending, Mazarin consented to

send d'Artagnan to intercede with the Protector for the unhappy king. Simultaneously, the Spanish Government despatched a secret emissary to warn Cromwell not to listen to the dangerous counsels of the French Minister. This messenger, who, as d'Artagnan observes, was no more a spy than himself, had the bad luck to be captured in passing through France, and his papers fell into the hands of Mazarin. Accordingly, when d'Artagnan, having failed in getting any satisfaction out of Cromwell (whom he estimates as un des plus habiles hommes de son siècle"), lands at Boulogne, he was met by some of the Cardinal's archers, having the Spaniard in custody. A letter was handed to d'Artagnan, containing a commission which, he callously observes, 66 was not difficult to fulfil." It was simply to convey the Spaniard out to sea and have him quietly drowned. "The Cardinal asked no more than that I should be an eye-witness, and, as I was in no way concerned in the execution of his decree, I did not think I could refuse to be present." He obeyed his instructions to the letter, though it was an incident little calculated to enhance for him the attractions of the diplomatic service: the wretched prisoner confessed himself to a priest they had on board for the purpose, and died with exemplary fortitude.

D'Artagnan's next mission was far more perilous, and brought him into such an extraordinary series of adventures that it is surprising Dumas resisted the temptation to weave them into his story. The civil war with the Prince de Condé was raging at the time, while the Spaniards were busily using the opportunity to recapture, one by one, the towns which the French had taken from them in the Netherlands. Condé's brother, the

Prince de Conti, was with the insurgents, besieged by the king's forces in Bordeaux: Mazarin had conceived the project of detaching him from the rebels by offering him one of his nieces, the Mancini, in marriage, with an immense dowry. But it was necessary first to detach Conti from the influence of a mistress with whom he was living in Bordeaux, and d'Artagnan was no unfitting instrument for a delicate game of that kind; for, as he remarks in telling the story, "I have always been of a temperament which renders me exceedingly susceptible to this kind of amusettes."

First of all, he spent some weeks in growing a long beard; then, disguised as a hermit, he made his way into the besieged city. It was an enterprise of frightful hazard, for, had he been discovered, he would infallibly have been hung as a spy. All went well with him, however; and the ex-musketeer soon struck up a friendship with Las Florides, the bandit captain of a troop known as the Ormistes most sanguinary and unscrupulous of all the insurgents. Obtaining access by a ruse to the house of Conti's mistress, he speedily found means to get into the best of her good graces. Still more remarkable, he managed to enlist her sympathy in the scheme of the proposed marriage. Conti, though a hunchback, was insatiable in love-affairs; the lady was sagacious enough to be well aware that her reign as chief favourite could not endure much longer, and that it would be to her substantial interest to anticipate the moment when her lover should discard her, by forwarding his legitimate alliance with the Mancini. D'Artagnan had brought with him a portrait très appetisant of the Cardinal's niece: this was arranged

in a conspicuous place in the chamber of Conti's fair one: the attention of the volatile prince was easily attracted to it, his curiosity excited, and, to make a long story short, the mission was completely successful; Conti fell in with the Cardinal's scheme, and d'Artagnan, after innumerable exciting and perilous adventures, returned to Paris to claim from his employer the promised reward of a captaincy in the Gardes. Unluckily, the rumour of d'Artagnan's intrigue with the fair one of Bordeaux had got abroad: to his intense disgust the Cardinal, instead of praising him for performing a difficult service skilfully, reproached him for his immorality.

"You will always be the same, sir," he said; "the first petticoat.

and serious matters fly out of your head. You were sent to Bordeaux on the king's servicenot to make love."

D'Artagnan, thoroughly disgusted with such a rapacious master, resolved to serve him no longer, sold his commission in the Gardes, and prepared to retire to the privacy and poverty of Béarn. But the Cardinal had no intention of parting with such a useful and dauntless officer: at the last moment he appointed d'Artagnan to a captaincy, coupled, however, with the demand for 20,000 francs as purchase - money. This was a sum which it was clearly impossible for the needy Gascon to furnish; nevertheless it shows how valuable he was known to be to the Cardinal that several persons thought it worth while to ingratiate themselves with him by offering to advance the amount. In the end, a certain M. de Lyonne, who, owing to his holding some official position, had his hand in the public purse, handed him the money