The Three Musketeers

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The Three Musketeers

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1844

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-14

Chapters 15-31

Chapters 32-46

Chapters 47-58

Chapter 59-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “The Three Presents of D’Artagnan the Elder”

In April 1625, in a market town named Meung, citizens gather tensely. It is a time of many wars: battles between lords, kings, cardinals, and nations. However, the source of tension in Meung now is the comical appearance of a young man named d’Artagnan, whose shabby clothing and small pony reminds residents of Don Quixote.

D’Artagnan is embarrassed of his horse, but his family has nothing better. He is riding with a letter of introduction to Monsieur de Treville, who might be able to help d’Artagnan secure what his family sees as his rightful place in society.

As he travels, d’Artagnan resents the jeers on the faces of the passers-by. He sees insults everywhere. When he overhears a conversation between two people in an inn, he assumes they are talking about him and challenges the man to a duel. They draw their swords, but innkeeper puts a stop to the fight and introduces d’Artagnan to a beautiful woman addressed as Milady.

Later, as d’Artagnan goes to pay his bill, his money and his letter of introduction are gone. Certain that the man he was dueling with stole his belongings, d’Artagnan resolves to avenge himself. He sells his pony to pay the bill and walks to Paris.

Chapter 2 Summary: “The Antechamber Monsieur De Treville”

Monsieur de Treville started out like d’Artagnan, not wealthy and very ambitious. Through his intelligence, bravery, and faithfulness, Treville got into King Louis XIII’s good graces; now Treville heads the Musketeers—the king’s elite militia. Cardinal Richelieu, second-in-command in France, disapproves of the Musketeers because he too wants a personal army. Treville is an honest, but cunning man—he is “admired, feared, and loved; and this constitutes the zenith of human fortune” (41).

When d’Artagnan nervously enters the Musketeers’ headquarters, he puts on a friendly face. The other Musketeers train in the great hall, fighting and even wounding each other without malice or resentment. D’Artagnan is shocked to overhear the men openly criticizing the cardinal and his policies, which his father would consider blasphemy. As d’Artagnan waits to meet with Treville, he overhears a conversation between three Musketeers named Aramis, Athos, and Porthos, who are discussing the cardinal’s accusation that a man named Chalais attempted to overthrow the royal family, an accusation that led to Chalais’s execution. Though criticizing the king or the cardinal is fair game, the Musketeers cannot abide any gossip about Queen Anne.

Chapter 3 Summary: “The Audience”

Treville is angry with Aramis, Athos, and Porthos because they were arrested by the Cardinal’s Guards—a smaller, less elite force—at a riot. He brings them into his office while d’Artagnan is there, and lectures them about honor. Athos runs away, pretending to be sick. Porthos and Aramis are angry at Treville for yelling at them, but they know that his lectures come from a place of love. Porthos insists that the riot was a duel between the Musketeers and the Guards, and that the Guards did not fight honorably or fairly. Chastened by the truth from his Musketeers, Treville softens. Athos is still injured from the fight, and a surgeon is called to treat him.

Finally, Treville turns to d’Artagnan, who announces his intention to become a Musketeer. Though Treville has great respect for d’Artagnan’s father, d’Artagnan must prove his worthiness through a series of missions and two years in a lower-ranking unit. Monsieur de Treville offers d’Artagnan free admission into the Royal Academy, where he can learn the skills of a gentleman: horsemanship, swordsmanship, and dancing. D’Artagnan tells Treville about the fight with the man who stole his letter of introduction. Treville figures out that the man is a known enemy to the Musketeers and warns d’Artagnan against fighting him again. However, as Treville writes d’Artagnan’s recommendation letter for the Royal Academy, d’Artagnan looks out the window and sees the man who stole his letter of introduction. Furious, d’Artagnan chases after him.

Chapter 4 Summary: “The Shoulder of Athos, the Baldric of Porthos and the Handkerchief of Aramis”

As d’Artagnan runs out to find the thief, Athos and Porthos attempt to stop him for a chat. Angry at the interruption, d’Artagnan demands to meet them for duels later. However, because of this exchange, he has lost sight of the thief.

D’Artagnan comes upon Aramis talking with a group of friends. Aramis drops a handkerchief, and d’Artagnan picks it up. One of Aramis’s friends asks whether the handkerchief was given to Aramis by the married Madame de Bois-Tracy. Aramis assures them that the handkerchief is not his. When the other men leave, d’Artagnan accuses Aramis of lying—an accusation that leads to another invitation to duel. D’Artagnan has thus scheduled three duels back-to-back.

Chapter 5 Summary: “The King’s Musketeers and the Cardinal’s Guards”

At their scheduled duels with d’Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos are surprised to see each other, each with a slightly different conflict to resolve with d’Artagnan. D’Artagnan is determined to prove his honor, so they take their positions for the duels. Just then, the Cardinal’s Guards spot them and attempt to arrest the Musketeers for dueling, which is against the law. The Musketeers are outnumbered; however, d’Artagnan doesn’t hesitate to join their side even though he knows that fighting the Cardinal’s Guards is also against the law. The men fight. One of the Cardinal’s Guards is killed. The Musketeers and d’Artagnan win.

Chapter 6 Summary: “His Majesty King Louis XIII”

The cardinal reports the Musketeers to King Louis XIII, but Monsieur de Treville convinces the king that the Musketeers, along with a young civilian, were fighting in his honor. The king is impressed by the remarkable abilities of the Musketeers and d’Artagnan, so he invites the four men to meet with him.

The morning of the scheduled meeting, d’Artagnan gets into another fight with one of the Cardinal’s Guards, this time a well-known fighter named Bernajoux. D’Artagnan wins, but their fight escalates when other Musketeers and Guards join the fray. As a result, the king cancels his meeting with the Musketeers and d’Artagnan. Treville is worried that the cardinal has persuaded the king that the Musketeers are not honorable after all. Undeterred, Treville makes sure the meeting happens. Though the king admonishes the men for causing so many fights, he admires d’Artagnan’s skill and encourages Treville to train d’Artagnan with the Guards of Monsieur Dessessart. The cardinal is angry that the King has been so generous with the Musketeers.

Chapter 7 Summary: “The Interior of ‘The Musketeers’”

The Musketeers encourage d’Artagnan to hire a servant. As d’Artagnan gets to know his new friends more, he realizes that they are very wealthy and must have been born in noble families. D’Artagnan hires a young man named Planchet to be his servant, but when he is unable to pay him, Planchet becomes surly and d’Artagnan beats him into compliance.

While d’Artagnan has a hard time getting to know Aramis, who wants to become a priest, Porthos and Athos are more forthcoming. Athos was once heartbroken by a betrayal.

D’Artagnan begins his official Musketeer training by joining up with Monsieur Dessessart’s guards.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Concerning a Court Intrigue”

The Musketeers and d’Artagnan run out of money. Because the Musketeers are well-connected in Paris, they get by on invitations to dinners; whenever they can, they bring d’Artagnan along.

D’Artagnan is offered a surreptitious job he can’t refuse: A man named Bonacieux offers to pay d’Artagnan to rescue his abducted wife, a seamstress for Queen Anne. Bonacieux suspects that the cardinal is behind his wife’s abduction and assumes that d’Artagnan would help because, as a hopeful Musketeer, d’Artagnan considers the cardinal an enemy. Bonacieux believes his wife was abducted to intimidate the queen, whom the cardinal keeps a close eye on. Bonacieux’s description of the kidnapper reminds d’Artagnan of the thief he is still after, whom he refers to as the Man from Meung. Bonacieux shows d’Artagnan a letter from his wife’s captor, warning him against trying to find her. D’Artagnan readily accepts the mission: It is an opportunity to be a hero—for money.

Out the window, d’Artagnan again sees the Man from Meung. He chases after him, passing his Musketeer friends.

Chapter 9 Summary: “D’Artagnan Shows Himself”

D’Artagnan is unable to keep up with the Man from Meung; he returns home to find the three Musketeers waiting for him in his apartment. He tells them about the kidnapped seamstress, and they discuss the affair between the queen and the Duke of Buckingham, which may be related. The Musketeers vow to help d’Artagnan, coming up with a slogan for their group: One for all and all for one.

Meanwhile, Bonacieux is arrested by the Cardinal’s Guards.

Chapter 10 Summary: “A Mousetrap in the Seventeenth Century”

D’Artagnan watches Bonacieux’s apartment and notes that anybody who enters it gets arrested. One night, he hears a woman who identifies herself as Bonacieux’s wife scream for help as she is arrested in the apartment. D’Artagnan sends Planchet to call the three Musketeers, charges into the Bonacieux home, and fights off the Cardinal’s Guards.

Constance Bonacieux is beautiful in a noble way, and has a handkerchief exactly like the one Aramis refused to acknowledge was his. She tells d’Artagnan that she snuck away from her captor and managed to make it back home. He brings her to Athos’s apartment to keep her safe, and then goes to Treville’s to have an alibi.

Chapter 11 Summary: “In Which the Plot Thickens”

D’Artagnan can’t stop thinking about Constance’s beauty and her reliance on his heroism. He believes he is in love with her and doesn’t care that she’s married. He walks around the mostly empty Paris streets at night, thinking about his new infatuation.

He stops his reveries when he sees a pretty woman waiting outside Aramis’s house. It’s Constance. She knocks on a window shutter, holding the same handkerchief. Another woman leans out the window, speaks to Constance, and the two exchange handkerchiefs. D’Artagnan assumes that the only reason Constance would put herself in danger again is for love, so he becomes jealous. He follows her and confronts her about the handkerchief—how could she and Aramis have the same one? She insists that she doesn’t know Aramis, and claims that the initials “C.B.” embroidered on the handkerchief stand for Constance Bonacieux, and not, as d’Artagnan believes, for Camille de Bois-Tracy, Aramis’s reputed mistress. Constance convinces d’Artagnan to let her continue her mission, the details of which she can’t yet confide in him. He promises to honor her wishes and leaves her just as she enters another house.

When d’Artagnan gets home, Planchet tells him that Athos has been arrested—Athos was in d’Artagnan’s apartment, so the Cardinal’s Guards assumed he was d’Artagnan. Athos did not reveal his real identity to give d’Artagnan a three-day head start. D’Artagnan goes to tell Treville about Athos’s arrest, but on his way to Treville, he sees Constance and a man who looks like Aramis in the shadowy streets. But when d’Artagnan confronts them, he finds not Aramis, but a man disguised as a Musketeer—the Duke of Buckingham, whom Constance escorts into the Louvre.

Chapter 12 Summary: “George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham”

Constance knows the servant’s tunnels of the Louvre very well, so she hides the duke in an empty hall and finds Queen Anne. The queen secretly meets with the duke, though she wasn’t expecting him. He professes his love, but she has never said she loves him. He worries about the possibility of war between England and France, but Queen Anne encourages him to come to France as an ambassador—avoiding war through diplomacy. She gifts him her cipher so they can exchange coded letters. Constance sneaks the duke back out of the Louvre.

Chapter 13 Summary: “Monsieur Bonacieux”

Monsieur Bonacieux is interrogated and quickly disavows his wife Constance. Accused of high treason, he tells his jailers about his deal with d’Artagnan. The Guards bring in Athos, who has been arrested as d’Artagnan, but Bonacieux explains that Athos is not d’Artagnan. Bonacieux is told that he is destined for Traitor’s Cross—a place of execution—and faints from fright.

Chapter 14 Summary: “The Man of Meung”

Contrary to his fears, Bonacieux is not executed. Instead, he is brought in to meet the second most powerful man in France, Cardinal Richelieu. The cardinal asks Bonacieux about Constance’s associations with the Duke of Buckingham and Madame de Chevreuse. The cardinal also wants to know Constance’s current whereabouts. Bonacieux confirms that his wife has often talked of these people, but that he knows nothing of what she is involved with.

An informant named Rochefort, who is also d’Artagnan’s Man of Meung, tells the cardinal that Constance has been spotted with the Duke of Buckingham at the Louvre. The cardinal frees Monsieur Bonacieux and gives him some money as recompense for the false suspicion that led to his arrest. The cardinal sends a note to Milady, instructing her to attend a ball where the duke will be and to cut two diamond studs off his doublet.

Chapters 1-14 Analysis

The Three Musketeers often explores classicism. The primary protagonist of the story is d’Artagnan, a young Frenchman whose ambition to become a Musketeer, a member of one of the most important security forces in all of France, is at odds with his background: His old and feeble pony reminds passers-by of Don Quixote’s donkey Rosinante. Don Quixote, a 17th-century comic picaresque novel by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, is the story of a middle-aged man whose avid reading of ancient heroic tales inspires him to become a knight, though this fantasy is humorously hopeless. The mocking comparison between d’Artagnan and Don Quixote characterizes d’Artagnan’s dreams of heroic splendor as possibly out of reach. Like Don Quixote, d’Artagnan doesn’t fit the mold of the wealthy and well-connected young men who become Musketeers. But once d’Artagnan befriends three of the best of the Musketeers, his characterization shifts: He is revealed to be adept at sword work and brave, though his courage often shades into brashness.

D’Artagnan’s ability to fight and to ingratiate himself with the Musketeers is surprising because this elite corps doesn’t typically recruit from the poor rural towns that d’Artagnan represents. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are noblemen and descended from wealth—their status as knights of the king’s militia is assured by their socio-economic rank within a hierarchy that was believed to have been set up by God, with the king and the cardinal at the top, and the nobility naturally endowed with valor and good moral standing. D’Artagnan, meanwhile, is not of noble birth. His outsider role helps Dumas reject the idea that heroism is necessarily tied to nobility. Instead, d’Artagnan proves himself through skill.

The novel’s noble characters transcend the judgments to which most people would be subject. For instance, the Musketeers’ drunken debauchery and their breaking of the dueling law are seen as charming because of their high status and intimate connections with royalty. Dumas plays with the comic implications of this when he describes d’Artagnan trying to perform the same kind of rakish masculinity. Because he hasn’t been brought up knowing how to be aggressive correctly, d’Artagnan overdoes it: He constantly picks fights over nonsensical perceived slights, demands to be dueled, and abuses his servant Planchet for no reason.

The historical context of this novel is important in understanding its dynamics. In the 17th century, religious tension fueled conflict between Catholic France and Protestant England. French Huguenots, a Protestants faction, became an avenue through which England could infiltrate France in times of war. In the novel, the need to contain the Huguenots will summon the Musketeers to war. Historically, within France, internecine struggles further complicated matters, since Cardinal Richelieu’s vast power—which flowed ostensibly from his role as God’s servant on earth—challenged that of King Louis XIII, a monarch whose reign was also putatively divinely sanctioned. This meant that although the king was the ultimate ruler, often the cardinal was able to pass legislation independently. In the novel, the question of who is truly in charge is important; characters’ loyalties lie with separate entities, and this unresolved power sharing leads to street fighting between the Musketeers and the Cardinal’s Guards. The novel also posits that because Cardinal Richelieu has worked his way into the role, he must be more cunning and intelligent than the king who simply inherited the throne: King Louis XIII is depicted as a moody and easily persuadable cuckold who sports around and enjoys his privileges, while the cardinal is always at work.

Though d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are fictional characters, the Musketeers were a real organization, developed by King Louis XIII in 1622. The Musketeers are so-called because they, unlike other soldiers at the time, carried musket guns. They were seen as an elite troop always ready to fight and dedicated to the preservation of the king’s honor—in many ways, they were primarily a symbolic show of force, symbolizing the king’s grandeur and power.

The Musketeers are part of an honor culture. Porthos, Athos, and Aramis are intelligent, informed, and like to debate; however, more importantly, they are at all times willing to sacrifice themselves for ally and country—one of the novel’s takes on the theme of Friendship. They quickly come to accept d’Artagnan because he also values honor above his own life. The solution to every disagreement is a duel: Musketeers fight over even the perception of an insult or a slight. For example, when d’Artagnan picks up Aramis’s handkerchief, Aramis escalates the conflict—the handkerchief belongs to a married woman, so Aramis must defend her honor via physical combat. In this case, Aramis and d’Artagnan resolve the matter, but both are willing to battle to the death—a reaction that Dumas often treats as comedic. All situations are treated as extreme because that is part of the ethos of the Musketeer’s honor code.

Women are a necessary part of the Musketeers’ chivalric cultural code, though the novel’s characters vacillate between seeing them as inviolable and idealized beings (akin to the objects of chivalric love in medieval romances) and as objects of desire. On the one hand, the Musketeers hold Queen Anne above human judgment. Even her liaison with the English Duke of Buckingham earns little moral opprobrium, despite the fact that the relationship complicates politics between England and France—with the two counties poised on the brink of war, the affair could compromise France. The Musketeers are interested in protecting their beloved queen no matter what, which makes the cardinal, who puts no woman on a pedestal, into the enemy. At the same time, there are d’Artagnan’s and the other Musketeers’ numerous dalliances with all kinds of women. Aramis and Porthos are involved with married women, while d’Artagnan fancies himself in love whenever he sees a pretty face. Constance is attractive because she is a beautiful young woman in need of help—a “sexy” “damsel in distress” who gives him the opportunity to be a hero; d’Artagnan never acknowledges that Constance is obviously also brave, adventurous, and capable (she does, after all, free herself from captivity and sneaks the duke into the Louvre).