The Vicomte de Bragelonne | Page 5

The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de
la Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask. For the purposes of this
etext, I have chosen to split the novel as the four-volume edition does,
with these titles: The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise
de la Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask. In this, the first of the
four etexts, the situation is thus:
It is now 1660, and although promised the captaincy of the musketeers
at the close of Twenty Years After, D'Artagnan is still trailing his
sword in the Louvre as a lowly lieutenant. Louis XIV is well past the
age where he should rule, but the ailing Cardinal Mazarin refuses to
relinquish the reins of power. Meanwhile, Charles II, a king without a

country, travels Europe seeking aid from his fellow monarchs. Athos
still resides at La Fere while his son, Raoul de Bragelonne, has entered
into the service in the household of M. le Prince. As for Raoul, he has
his eyes on an entirely different object than his father – his childhood
companion, Louise de la Valliere, with whom he is hopelessly in love.
Porthos, now a baron, is off on some mysterious mission along with
Aramis, who is now the Bishop of Vannes.
Now begins the first chapter of the last of the D'Artagnan Romances,
The Vicomte de Bragelonne. Enjoy!
John Bursey [email protected] May, 2000
The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas


Chapter I
: The Letter.
Towards the middle of the month of May, in the year 1660, at nine
o'clock in the morning, when the sun, already high in the heavens, was
fast absorbing the dew from the ramparts of the castle of Blois, a little
cavalcade, composed of three men and two pages, re-entered the city by
the bridge, without producing any other effect upon the passengers of
the quay beyond a first movement of the hand to the head, as a salute,
and a second movement of the tongue to express, in the purest French
then spoken in France: "There is Monsieur returning from hunting."
And that was all.
Whilst, however, the horses were climbing the steep acclivity which
leads from the river to the castle, several shop-boys approached the last
horse, from whose saddle-bow a number of birds were suspended by
the beak.
On seeing this, the inquisitive youths manifested with rustic freedom
their contempt for such paltry sport, and, after a dissertation among
themselves upon the disadvantages of hawking, they returned to their
occupations; one only of the curious party, a stout, stubby, cheerful lad,
having demanded how it was that Monsieur, who, from his great
revenues, had it in his power to amuse himself so much better, could be
satisfied with such mean diversions.
"Do you not know," one of the standers-by replied, "that Monsieur's

principal amusement is to weary himself?"
The light-hearted boy shrugged his shoulders with a gesture which said
as clear as day: "In that case I would rather be plain Jack than a prince."
And all resumed their labors.
In the meanwhile, Monsieur continued his route with an air at once so
melancholy and so majestic, that he certainly would have attracted the
attention of spectators, if spectators there had been; but the good
citizens of Blois could not pardon Monsieur for having chosen their
gay city for an abode in which to indulge melancholy at his ease, and as
often as they caught a glimpse of the illustrious ennuye, they stole away
gaping, or drew back their heads into the interior of their dwellings, to
escape the soporific influence of that long pale face, of those watery
eyes, and that languid address; so that the worthy prince was almost
certain to find the streets deserted whenever he chanced to pass through
them.
Now, on the part of the citizens of Blois this was a culpable piece of
disrespect, for Monsieur was, after the king - nay, even perhaps, before
the king - the greatest noble of the kingdom. In fact, God, who had
granted to Louis XIV., then reigning, the honor of being son of Louis
XIII., had granted to Monsieur the honor of being son of Henry IV. It
was not then, or, at least, it ought not to have been, a trifling source of
pride for the city of Blois, that Gaston of Orleans had chosen it as his
residence, and held his court in the ancient Castle of the States.
But it was the destiny of this great prince to excite the attention and
admiration of the public in a very modified degree wherever he might
be. Monsieur had fallen into this situation by habit.
It was not, perhaps, this which gave him that air of listlessness.
Monsieur had already been tolerably busy in the course of