In drawing the characters of Foquet and Colbert, Dumas has perhaps, as Mr. Stevenson says, shown an inclination to enlist his reader’s sympathies for the former against his own judgment of the equities of the case.
“Historic justice,” says the essayist, “should be all upon the side of Colbert, of official honesty and fiscal competence. And Dumas knows it well; three times at least he shows his knowledge—once it is but flashed upon us and received with laughter of Foquet himself, in the jesting controversy in the gardens of Saint-Mandé; once it is touched on by Aramis in the forest of Sénart; in the end it is set before us clearly in one dignified speech of the triumphant Colbert. But in Foquet—the master, the lover of good cheer and wit and art, the swift transactor of much business, l’homme de bruit, l’homme de plaisir, l’homme qui n’est que parceque les autres sont—Dumas saw something of himself, and drew the figure the more tenderly; it is to me even touching to see how he insists on Foquet’s honor.”
The grand fête at Vaux was the last straw which made the superintendent’s downfall absolutely certain. “If his disgrace had not already been determined upon in the king’s mind, it would have been at Vaux … As there was but one sun in heaven, there could be but one king in France.”
It is interesting to read that the execution of the order for Foquet’s arrest was entrusted to one d’Artagnan, Captain of Musketeers, “a man of action, entirely unconnected with all the cabals, and who, during his thirty-three years’ experience in the Musketeers, had never known anything outside of his orders.”
Foquet lived nearly twenty years in prison, and died in 1680. He has been connected in various with the “Man in the Iron Mask,” some investigators having maintained that he was identical with the individual, and therefore could not have died in 1680; while others have claimed that the Iron Mask was imprisoned at the Château of Pignerol while Foquet was there. The legend of the unfortunate prisoner has given rise to much investigation and to many conjectures. Voltaire bent his energies to solve the mystery, and in our own day M. Marius Topin has gone into the subject most exhaustively, but without reaching a satisfactory conclusion as to the identity of the sufferer. The somewhat audacious use made of the legend by Dumas is based upon what was at one time a favorite solution; namely, that the unknown was a brother of Louis XIV, said by some to have been a twin, and by others to have been some years older and of doubtful paternity.
It would be an endless task to cite all the portions of these volumes in which historical facts are related with substantial accuracy; in them fact and fiction are so blended that each enhanced the charm of the other—the element of authenticity adding zest and interest to the romantic portions, while the element of romance gives life and color to the narration of facts.
Our old friends of the earlier tales bear us company nearly to the end; but for the first time, political interests are allowed to interfere with the perfect confidence that has existed between them. Aramis, as General of the Jesuits, is true to the reputation of the order, and hesitates at no dissimulation to gain his ambitious ends. Porthos, still blindly faithful to that one of his friends who claims his allegiance, falls at last a victim to his childlike trust in the scheming prelate. The magnificent outburst of righteous anger which the Comte de la Fère visits upon the king is the last expiring gleam of the spirit of the Athos of the Musketeers. Wrapped up in his love for the heartbroken Bragelonne, he lives only in his life and “dies in his death.”
And d’Artagnan? His praises and his requiem have been most fittingly and lovingly sounded by the same graceful writer who has already been quoted, and in the same essay, entitled “Gossip Upon a Novel of Dumas”—
It is in the character of d’Artagnan that we must look for that spirit of morality which is one of the chief merits of the book, makes one of the main joys of its perusal, and sets it high above more popular rovals. … He has mellowed into a man so witty, rough, kind, and upright that he takes the heart by storm. There is nothing of the copybook about his virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine natural civility; he will sail near the wind; he is no district visitor, no Wesley or Robespierre; his conscience is void of all refinement, whether for good or evil; but the whole man rings true like a good sovereign. … Here and throughout, if I am to choose virtues for myself or my friends, let me choose the virtues of d’Artagnan. I do not say that there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare; I do say there is none that I love so wholly. … No part of the world has ever seemed to me so charming as these pages; and not even my friends are quite so real, perhaps so dear, as d’Artagnan.
Dramatis Personae
Period, 1660–1671
-
Louis XIV, King of France.
-
Maria Theresa, his queen and Infante of Spain.
-
Anne of Austria, the Queen Mother.
-
Gaston, Duke of Orléans, uncle of the King.
-
Duchesse d’Orléans, his wife.
-
Philippe, Duc d’Anjoy, brother of the king, afterwards Duc d’Orléans, called
