Twenty Years After
Page 46
60. DUCHESSE D’ORLÉANS: Marguerite of Lorraine, Duchesse d’Orléans (1615–1672) was the second wife of Prince Gaston, who secretly married her in 1632 against the wishes of his brother Louis XIII, who annulled the marriage when he learned about it from the Duc de Montmorency (on the eve of his execution for rebelling on Gaston’s behalf). On his deathbed in 1643 Louis forgave Gaston and gave his permission for the marriage, and Gaston and Marguerite renewed their vows.
61. MILADY: “Milady” Clarice de Winter, the fictional agent and assassin for Cardinal Richelieu who bedeviled d’Artagnan and company in The Three Musketeers.
62. KING HAS SPILLED STRAFFORD’S BLOOD: To be accurate, King Charles reluctantly agreed to allow parliament to spill the blood of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford (1593–1641), and it had actually happened seven years earlier than Athos implies. After Buckingham’s assassination, Wentworth gradually stepped into his shoes to become Charles’s new chief advisor, eventually being made an earl. His rule as Lord Deputy of Ireland was tyrannical and bloody, and moreover parliament blamed him for advising the king to treat the body in the haughty and cavalier manner that led to open conflict. Parliament made Strafford the scapegoat for the nation’s ills under Charles, and condemned him to death under a bill of attainder. Backed into a corner, Charles agreed to allow the execution to go forward, a decision he bitterly regretted later.
63. BENVENUTO CELLINI: One of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance, the Florentine Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) was a sculptor, goldsmith, musician, artist, and writer, practically defining the term Renaissance Man.
64. THE BATTLE OF MARIGNANO: The first great military victory for King François I took place in 1515, when the French and their German mercenary allies finally defeated the Swiss, who had been kicking the French around Northern Italy for a generation.
65. TASSO OR ARIOSTO: Two Italian authors of chivalric romances: Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) wrote Jerusalem Delivered (1581), an epic poem of knightly exploits, and Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1573) wrote the even more celebrated Orlando Furioso (1516).
66. URBAIN GRANDIER: A French priest burned at the stake for witchcraft in 1634 at Loudun after the nuns of the Ursuline convent there accused him of summoning a demon to force them to have sex with him. Though Grandier was a notorious libertine, his prosecution was mainly political, as he’d written some strongly worded tracts criticizing Richelieu.
67. THE PREDICTION OF A MAN NAMED COYSEL: Coysel, Goisel, or Goiset was an astrologer who predicted that the Duc de Beaufort would escape Vincennes during Pentecost (Whitsunday) in 1848. (Spoiler: he did.)
68. THE CHTEAU DE VINCENNES: This grim 14th-century royal fortress just east of Paris was used by the French monarchy as a refuge in wartime and as a prison for their enemies in times of peace; Henri IV himself, when he was still Prince Henri de Navarre, had been held there during the Wars of Religion in the late 16th century.
69. BARON DE BLOT: Claude de Chauvigny de Blot (1605? 1610?–1655) was a French poet and satirist who was an early supporter of Mazarin. When the cardinal failed to reward his support with a pension, Blot turned his pen against the minister.
70. IGNATIUS LOYOLA: Íñigo López de Loyola (1491–1556), the Spanish priest and later saint who founded the Society of Jesus, aka the Jesuits.
71. A BAYARD OR A TRIVULCE: Legendary knightly warriors: Pierre Terrail, Chevalier de Bayard (1473–1524) was a paragon of French chivalry; Jacques de Trivulce, or Gian Giacomo Trivulzio (1440–1518) was a conquering Lombard knight who joined the French; both served King Louis XII.
72. PUYLAURENS, MARSHAL ORNANO, AND THE YOUNGER VENDÔME: Three opponents of Louis XIII and Richelieu who were imprisoned in Vincennes for their rebellion, and died there of its unhealthy conditions. Marshal Jean-Baptiste d’Ornano (1581–1626) and Antoine de l’Age, Duc de Puylaurens (1602–1635) both conspired on Prince Gaston’s behalf; Alexandre, Chevalier de Vendôme (1598–1629)—the Duc de Beaufort’s uncle—was likewise jailed for his involvement in Gaston’s so-called Chalais Conspiracy.
73. MADAME DE MONTBAZON: Beaufort’s mistress was Marie d’Avaugour de Bretagne, Duchesse de Montbazon (1612–1657), second wife of the Duc de Montbazon (and thus stepmother to the Duchesse de Chevreuse, who was twelve years her senior). She was a great beauty, but notoriously avaricious and self-centered.
74. ASTRAEA: A vast novel of pastoral romance by Honoré d’Urfé published in installments from 1607 through 1627, this tale of the endless tribulations of the shepherdess Astrée and her beloved shepherd Celadon was probably the most popular literary product of 17th-century France, spawning countless imitations.
75. THE MUSHROOMS OF VINCENNES FOREST ARE FATAL TO MY FAMILY: The duke’s uncle, Alexandre de Vendôme, was said to have died of eating poisoned mushrooms while imprisoned in Vincennes (see note 72).
76. PONIARDS: A poniard was a long, lightweight dagger, all point and little or no edge, used for thrusting through chainmail or light armor, or for parrying when held in a swordsman’s off hand.
77. CHOKE-PEAR: A poire d’angoisse, or pear of anguish, was a bulbous metal gag and/or torture device that, once inserted in the victim’s mouth, could be gradually expanded by turning a screw.
78. A FOLLY THAT HAD DEPRIVED THE CROWN OF AN HEIR: On March 14, 1622, when the young Queen Anne was pregnant, the Duchesse de Chevreuse persuaded her to run with her along the great hall of the Louvre. The queen fell and suffered a miscarriage, and the duchess was banished from Court, the first of many such exiles.
79. A SERVANT OF HERS, NAMED KITTY: Kitty was introduced in The Three Musketeers, where she was initially the maid of the villainous Milady de Winter. After falling in love with d’Artagnan and helping him intrigue against her mistress, she fled from Milady and was found a new home, by Aramis, with the Duchesse de Chevreuse.
80. 11 OCTOBER 1633: The actual flight of Madame de Chevreuse to Spain while in male guise took place in 1637, but Dumas fudged the date so Raoul could be fifteen in 1648.
81. MONSIEUR ROTROU: Jean Rotrou (1609–50) was one of Cardinal Richelieu’s Five Poets. Rotrou, like Pierre Corneille, was a bourgeois from Normandy who came to Paris to make it as a playwright; both appear in The Red Sphinx.
82. MADEMOISELLE PAULET: Angélique Paulet (1592–1651), “The Lioness,” was a singer, musician, and actress who was a favorite of Parisian high society, and well known at the salons of Madame de Rambouillet.
83. SI VIRGILIO PUER AUT TOLERABILE DESIT HOSPITUM, CADERENT OMNES CRINIBUS HYDRI: From Juvenal’s Satires: “If Virgil hadn’t had a decent place to stay, the Fury would have lost her hair of serpents.”
84. MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDÉRY: Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701) was a celebrated French novelist who wrote under the name “Sappho,” and was best known for The Grand Cyrus (1648–53) and Clélie (1654–61). Her elder brother Georges de Scudéry (1601–1667) was a writer as well, though a lesser light than the brilliant and witty Madeleine, and often collaborated with his sister.
85. MADAME LA PRINCESSE, THE MARÉCHAL D’ALBRET, MONSIEUR DE SCHOMBERG: Respected nobles of high rank: the Princesse de Condé; César Phoebus d’Albret, Comte de Miossens (though not a marshal until 1654); and Charles de Schomberg, a leading Marshal of France in the previous reign.
86. THE DUKE OR PØRE VINCENT?: The Duke of Buckingham or Vincent de Paul—in other words, romance or religion, sin or sanctity.
87. MADEMOISELLE FRANÇOISE D’AUBIGNÉ: Though it seems like Dumas is introducing a potential romantic foil for Raoul here, the author is really just digressing to briefly bring on stage the extraordinary Françoise d’Aubigné (1635–1719), who in 1652 would marry Paul Scarron, and then much later, as the Marquise de Maintenon, become Louis XIV’s final main mistress and secret second wife. Raoul seeing something in Françoise that reminds him of young Louise is Dumas foreshadowing and being ironic, as both would later become mistresses of the Sun King.
88. GRAND CHTELET: A medieval keep in central Paris on the Right Bank a
t the Pont au Change, the Grand Châtelet contained the offices of the Provost of Paris and the city’s civil and criminal courts. The Châtelet’s dungeons, which were below river level, were notorious for their unhealthy dampness.
89. THE OLD BASILICA: By the time the Basilica of Saint-Denis was built in the 12th century, the site had already been the burying place of French kings for two hundred years, and it would continue to fulfill that function well into the 18th century. It was a popular pilgrimage destination.
90. THE LAST KING: That is, Louis XIII, whom Athos doesn’t name, just as he doesn’t name Richelieu, in order to elevate his fable of the monarchy above the mundane reality of individuals.
91. IF YOUR HAND IS NOT YET STRONG ENOUGH TO WIELD IT: Athos’s father’s weapon is probably a 16th-century broadsword, heavier than the nimble rapiers Raoul would have trained with, but arguably a better weapon for battlefield purposes.
92. AS HANDSOME AS ANTINOUS: Antinous (c. 111–130) was a Greek youth revered by the Emperor Hadrian for his perfect beauty. After his untimely death in Egypt, Hadrian deified him and founded a cult to worship his new god.
93. DROPPED, LANDING HARMLESSLY ON HIS FEET: The escape of the Duc de Beaufort from Vincennes occurred very much as Dumas describes it here, with the exception of the invention of the fabulous pie and the involvement of his fictional characters.
94. THE NOVEL DON QUIXOTE WAS THEN IN VOGUE: Cervantes’s great classic was published in Spain in 1605, and first appeared in French in 1614 (Part I) and 1618 (Part II). The novel was immediately popular in France and proved extremely influential.
95. MONSIEUR LE DUC DE LONGUEVILLE: Henri II d’Orléans, Duc de Longueville (1595–1563) was a lower-ranking Prince of the Blood of the Orléans branch of the royal Bourbon family. After his first wife died in 1637, in 1642 he wed the much younger Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, sister of the Grand Condé and one of the great conspirators of the Fronde. A diplomat who had served Queen Anne and Mazarin in the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years’ War, the duke probably would have stayed out of the Fronde were it not for the influence of his brilliant and fiery young wife.
96. THE PLACE ROYALE: This handsome and perfectly square plaza was built from 1605 to 1612 during the modernization of Paris by King Henri IV, a program that also included laying out the Place Dauphine and completing the Pont Neuf. All the matching townhouses lining the square were built to the same plan, a first for Early Modern Europe, and it was a fashionable address throughout the 17th century. Surrounded by covered arcades and planted with trees, it was a popular place for nobles to promenade and show off their finery. It was also the notorious site of a number of deadly duels. Cardinal Richelieu had a house there from 1615 to 1627, and in The Three Musketeers it was also the home of Milady de Winter.
97. LA GRANDE MADEMOISELLE: Just as the king’s younger heir was always called “Monsieur” at Court, his daughter was always called “Mademoiselle.” Anne Marie d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier (1627–1693), the daughter of Prince Gaston, was known as “La Grande Mademoiselle” for the swath she cut at Court in a long life of romantic and political intrigue. Having been raised at Court with Madame de Longueville, when Anne-Geneviève threw herself into the chaos of the Fronde, Anne Marie followed, and as she was the wealthiest heiress in France, her considerable financial resources helped prop up the Fronde while the Condés were briefly imprisoned.
98. NON BIS IN IDEM: “Not twice the same,” the legal doctrine that says a defendant can’t be tried twice for the same crime (“double jeopardy”).
99. HIS FATHER, HENRI DE BOURBON: Henri II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, born in 1588, had died in 1646, elevating his son the Duc d’Enghien to become the new Prince de Condé.
100. AGL’ OCCHI GRIFANI: The exact quote from Dante’s Inferno is “Cesare armato cogli occhi grifagni,” or “Caesar, fully armed, with clear and falcon eyes.”
101. COUNT FUENSALDAGNA, GENERAL BECK, AND THE ARCHDUKE: The high commanders of the Spanish army in the Netherlands, Captain-General Fuensaldagna, General Jean de Beck, and the archduke himself, Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, who was Governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1647 to 1656, and the younger brother of Emperor Ferdinand III of the Holy Roman Empire.
102. BALIZARDE: In Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516, revised 1532), the hero Orlando (Roland) had an invincible sword named “Balisardo”—or “Balizarde” in the popular French translations.
103. THE CARMELITE CONVENT ON THE RUE SAINT-JACQUES: Not to be confused with the humble Carmelite convent in the Faubourg Saint-Germain where the duel between the King’s Musketeers and Cardinal’s Guards took place in The Three Musketeers, this Left Bank edifice was the grand headquarters of the Carmelites in Paris.
104. NASEBY: Dumas’s chronology of the English Civil War is far less dependable than his account of the Fronde: King Charles’s defeat at the battle of Naseby took place in 1645, not 1648.
105. HIS HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES: Prince Charles, who would become King Charles II (1630–1685) at the Restoration of the Monarchy.
106. WE REPRODUCE IT HERE VERBATIM: Dumas’s assurances to the contrary, all the diplomatic correspondence in Twenty Years After was invented by the author.
107. AT BOULOGNE-SUR-MER: That is, at Boulogne on the French coast of the English Channel, an important port dating back to Roman times. In the early 17th century it was known as a haven for smugglers.
108. GYGES’S RING: In Plato’s Republic, the magical ring than grants invisibility to its wearer, enabling Plato’s hypothetical tests of morality.
109. LIKE THE STATUE OF DON JUAN’S COMMANDER: In most of the tales of the lover and rogue Don Juan, the Commander is a Spanish noble slain by Juan, a crime that eventually comes out. Molière’s Dom Juan (1665) began a tradition of the Commander being represented by an ominous statue.
110. a veritable galaor: One of the heroes of Amadis the Gaul, a Spanish chivalric romance of the late medieval period that was told and retold in many versions, rather like the English tales of King Arthur. Translated into French, the stories were nearly as popular in France as in Spain. In The Red Sphinx, the Comte de Moret’s young sidekick is named Galaor.
111. TREMBLING LIKE SOSIA: In classical tales, Sosia was the fearful servant of Amphitryon—though Dumas is doubtless referring to the character in Molière’s play Amphitryon rather than the classical stories.
112. A NEW BOOK BY MONSIEUR CHAPELAIN: Jean Chapelain (1595–1674) was an author, critic, and one of the founding members of the Académie Française. Since his poetry was not yet widely published in 1648, Raoul would have to have been reading one of Chapelain’s works of literary criticism—not a likely choice for a fifteen-year-old lad, no matter how romantically inclined.
113. THE DUKE OF YORK AND PRINCESS ELIZABETH: James, the Duke of York and eventual King James II (1633–1701) and his sister Elizabeth (1635–1650), whom Dumas had mistakenly called Charlotte.
Acknowledgments
The cover painting, usually titled “The Game of Cards,” is by the great 19th-century genre painter Adolphe Alexandre Lesrel. The interior illustrations are by Louis Marckl and Frank T. Merrill; many thanks to good friend Mathew Weathers for digitizing and formatting the old engravings.
Thanks also to Philip Turner, my ever-wise literary agent, for all his help in guiding this series to publication.
And many thanks, as ever, to the redoubtable Claiborne Hancock and his loyal musketeers at Pegasus Books, especially Sabrina Plomitallo-González, whose clean and modern designs nonetheless evoke the classic look and feel of the books of a century ago.
For your benefit, reader, I want to acknowledge and welcome you to my website, Swashbucklingadventure.net, where you’ll find news and information about this book and others, plus additional related matters of interest. Check it out!
OTHER TITLES OF INTEREST
FROM PEGASUS BOOKS
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
by Alexandre Dumas
THE RED SPHINX
by Alexandre Dumas
(Book Two of the Musketeers Cycle, translated by Lawrence Ellsworth)
THE LAST CAVALIER
by Alexandre Dumas
THE BIG BOOK OF SWASHBUCKLING ADVENTURE
Selected and Introduced by Lawrence Ellsworth
TWENTY YEARS AFTER
Pegasus Books Ltd.
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Twenty Years After, by Alexandre Dumas, Translated by Lawrence Ellsworth
Translation and Original Material Copyright 2019 © by Lawrence Schick
Front cover art: Adolphe Alexandre Lesrel
Interior design by Sabrina Plomitallo-González, Pegasus Books
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN: 978-1-64313-202-0
ISBN: 978-1-64313-279-2 (ebook)
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Table of Contents
Title
Contents
Introduction
I Richelieu’s Ghost
II A Night Patrol
III Two Old Enemies
IV Anne of Austria at Age Forty-Six
V Gascon and Italian
VI D’Artagnan at Age Forty