Lessons from The Three Musketeers

D'Artagnan wants a musketeer's cassock, so he treats every smile as a step toward it. The three men who can give him that life are already paying for it: Athos with a branded wife he will only name drunk, Porthos with a baldric that is not gold, Aramis with a second cassock and a letter written as if by a cousin. Tréville, once as poor as his visitor, scolds those men in public so he can defend them in private. Opposite them, Richelieu fights through other people's bodies, and the queen has already given diamond studs to Buckingham. Constance Bonacieux carries the messages that follow, and will pay for that work. Milady wears a fleur-de-lis on her shoulder and does not forgive a witness. The pressure among them is not one duel. It is whom you stand with when the king, the cardinal, and your own ambition each want a different answer.

The three Musketeers book him for noon over a wounded shoulder, a false baldric, and a dropped handkerchief. Cardinal's guards arrive before the first pass, so the men who meant to kill him keep him instead. Once they are a company, the queen's diamonds become their problem: the stones must be on her dress before a ball the cardinal designed as a count. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis fall on the road to Calais so one of them can still reach London. Buckingham cuts two new studs overnight, and the dance holds. At La Rochelle the same four take the Bastion Saint-Gervais because they cannot talk in camp. From that breakfast they write a family letter to Lord de Winter and give Planchet sixteen days. He is late enough that Felton, not the letter, reaches Buckingham. The friends then ride for Constance and arrive after a drop of water at Béthune. What they can still do, they do at night on the Lys, without a public court.

Dumas built the book from Gatien de Courtilz's Mémoires and from Richelieu's France, then refused to leave friendship as a toast. The four share a purse and a bastion. They also share a riverbank where a woman they have used and hunted is condemned in the dark. He lets the boy refuse the cardinal's commission at La Rochelle, then take a lieutenancy on a blank his Eminence once signed. He lets the friends scatter. The king gets a siege. The cardinal gets England delayed. The reader gets the bill for serving two masters and still calling the work loyalty. Entertainment is the method. The cost is the argument.

He learns Choosing Your Company in the yard, when the first fight is not the one his father planned, and again at noon, when three strangers keep him. After that every smile is Reading a Political Room: Tréville's antechamber, a keeper hunting a bell, a stovepipe that hands Athos a war. The company they form spends itself as Loyalty When It Costs on the road to Calais, at a bastion breakfast, on Planchet's sixteen days, and on the ride that reaches Béthune after the water. Richelieu then slides a commission across a table at La Rochelle, and Serving Two Masters is the rank the boy will not take while his friends still sit with him. Honour vs. Necessity is older: the fleur-de-lis Athos once hanged a wife for, then the same mark they use on the Lys at night. What is left is Ambition Without a Name: the cassock he asked for, and the lieutenancy the king signs after the household has already closed.

He entered Paris on foot after selling a yellow horse for three crowns. He leaves the last page a lieutenant, with Athos in retirement, Porthos marrying money, Aramis toward a monastery, and Rochefort still fed by his Eminence. Wide Reads holds summaries, quotes, and audio on all 68 chapters, from the Jolly Miller yard to the signed blank that buys a rank.