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The Three Musketeers: Dumas

As for Rochefort, d'Artagnan fought him many times, but at last they decided that they were both too good to die, and they became friends. DUMAS OF the romantic heroes of all time, the d'Artagnan of Dumas may be rightfully ranked as king. He stands best the test of rereading. Other figures, even the most glowing, pale a little from their first glory when you read about them a second time; many are but ghosts on a third reading. But the gallant d'Artagnan grows clearer and brighter as you read and reread the three matchless romances wherein his memory is enshrined.

Dumas found his material in a book called "Les Memoiries d'Artagnan," by Courtils de Sandras. Here were not only the hero, but the grave Athos, the subtle Aramis, and the burly Porthos, Milady and many others familiar to all who love the romances. Thackeray liked this d'Artagnan of the memoirs better than the d'Artagnan of Dumas, but it was a partiality that few others have shared.

Who that has once read the romances will forget his first thrill as the Gascon rode into Meung? It might have been a rainy day without, but it was bright indoors. And then the plunge into stirring fighting and d'Artagnan's introduction to the three musketeers who were thereafter to be four. The loyal comradeship, the glow of adventure and romance--these thrill the world to-day as they did seventy-five years ago when "The Three Musketeers" was first published.

And then, eighteen years after the murder of Buckingham, the curtain rises again and the musketeers are seen in England. And again the curtain falls and rises and we are with them once more in France. You have no feeling of relief when you come to the end. You echo Stevenson's words, "Adieu--rather than au revoir! Yet a sixth time, dearest d'Artagnan, we shall kidnap Monk and take horse together for Belle Isle."