Important Announcement!
This week’s post is the first episode of Shadow of the Bastille, Book Eight of the Musketeers Cycle. The cover art is a work in progress as my ace cover designer, Jennifer Quinlan, went on a much-deserved holiday to Italy.
Meanwhile, I’m packaging up Book Seven, Devil’s Dance, for book-volume publication, and shortly you will be able to order it either as a complete ebook or as a trade paperback in matching format to previous books in the series. As soon as it’s ready to go, I’ll announce it here.
— Lawrence Ellsworth
Shadow of the Bastille
Being the Fourth Part of Le Vicomte de Bragelonne
By Alexandre Dumas
Edited and Translated by Lawrence Ellsworth
Introduction
by Lawrence Ellsworth
Shadow of the Bastille is the fourth volume of five of Alexandre Dumas’s mega-novel Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, the epic conclusion to the lives and adventures of the author’s most beloved characters, the Four Musketeers, as well as their friends, families, allies, and enemies. Between Two Kings, the first volume of Bragelonne, centered on d’Artagnan, telling the tale of his venture to England to restore the exiled King Charles II to the throne. The second volume, Court of Daggers, focused on Raoul de Bragelonne, Athos’s son, as the story widened to include the now-adult King Louis and the key members of his newly established royal court. Devil’s Dance, the third volume, belonged to Raoul’s fiancée, Louise de La Vallière, as she was swept away by her rising love affair with King Louis XIV, against a background of intensifying intrigues between various factions at Court.
At the French Court, romance and politics are two sides of the same coin, and in Shadow of the Bastille the intrigues seething just below the surface finally boil over. This volume is bookended by two duels, both motivated by envy and romantic frustration, and blood is spilled despite the decrees of Louis XIV prohibiting dueling. Though it’s the passions of the royals, the king and Princess Henrietta, that are driving affairs, as ever it’s the lower-ranking members of the Court who risk ruin and death as a result. Now events in the long-simmering love triangle between Raoul de Bragelonne, Louise de La Vallière, and the king are nearing their climax, and repercussions ripple throughout the Court.
The Four Musketeers, somewhat eclipsed in the previous volume, return to the foreground in Shadow of the Bastille, in appearances that succeed in reminding the reader why we fell in love with them in the first place. D’Artagnan, Athos, and Porthos get involved, each in his own distinctive way, in supporting Raoul in his time of need, the first two unexpectedly clashing with their royal master the king. All three are there when the Vicomte de Bragelonne’s romantic dilemma finally reaches its resolution.
They also cross paths with their old companion Aramis, who though uninvolved with the king’s romantic business is nonetheless energetically plotting in the shadows, acting as the engine of intrigue setting up the plots and conspiracies that will culminate in the final volume, The Man in the Iron Mask. In fact, the machinations of Aramis, the Bishop of Vannes, may be more significant than the acts of his three former comrades combined.
What Has Gone Before
At the start of the first volume, Between Two Kings, d’Artagnan was serving the young King Louis XIV as he had served the crown for so many years, as a lieutenant in the King’s Musketeers. When Charles II, exiled heir to the throne of England, appealed to King Louis for aid in regaining his crown, Louis was unable to help, so d’Artagnan decided to take personal action on Charles’s behalf. He resigned his position in the musketeers and sailed to England to enact a bold scheme to help restore the crown to Charles, unknowingly aided by Athos, who was engaged on a parallel plot with the same end. By courage, wit, and luck, both d’Artagnan’s and Athos’s interlocking schemes were successful, and Charles II was restored to England’s throne.
Meanwhile, in France, the prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin, had died; aspirants jockeyed to fill the resulting power vacuum, with Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finance, intending to step into Mazarin’s shoes. But Louis XIV, freed from Mazarin’s grip, wanted to rule on his own behalf rather than through ministers, and allied himself with the conniving but capable Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Mazarin’s financier, who gave him access to the cardinal’s hidden millions. However, to rule, Louis would need a strong right arm as well: learning of d’Artagnan’s role in the Restoration of Charles II, Louis resolved to bring d’Artagnan back to his side and finally take full advantage of his talents.
In Court of Daggers, d’Artagnan, called back to service by King Louis, was promised the long-desired position of Captain of the King’s Musketeers in return for performing a covert mission to investigate Fouquet’s holdings in Brittany, seeking evidence of treasonous fortification of Belle-Île. D’Artagnan found the island being fortified by Porthos under the secret oversight of Aramis, who had been elevated by Fouquet to the position of bishop of the nearby city of Vannes. D’Artagnan’s discovery of the preparations before they were complete forced Aramis’s hand, and he had to advise Fouquet to present the fortified domain to King Louis under the pretense that that had been their intention all along.
Meanwhile, King Louis continued his consolidation of power, allying with the newly restored Charles II by marrying his younger brother, Monsieur Philippe, to Charles’s younger sister, Madame Henrietta. Philippe’s youthful favorite, the Comte de Guiche, was dispatched with Raoul de Bragelonne to meet the princess at the port of Le Havre, taking with them the villainous Comte de Wardes. De Guiche and the young, second Duke of Buckingham immediately recognized each other as rivals for the heart of Henrietta, and tensions rose until Raoul defused the situation by the force of sheer moral authority.
The princess’s procession arrived safely in Paris and Monsieur and Madame were wed. At the reception Raoul was stunned to see that Louise de La Vallière, his long-time object of adoration, was one of the new maids of honor to Madame. Athos went personally to Paris to request permission from Louis XIV for his son to marry La Vallière, but the king, perceiving that Athos didn’t favor the match, temporized and said that the marriage should wait.
In Devil’s Dance, the king’s refusal to allow Raoul and Louise to marry took on new significance at the midsummer romantic milieu of the Château de Fontainebleau. Louis XIV was initially fascinated by the beauty and wit of Madame Henrietta, who encouraged him, and urged the king, to distract from their nascent affair, to pay attention to the relatively plain Louise de La Vallière as a diversion. But Louise was instantly smitten with the attractions of the young king, and in a series of chance encounters, Louis gradually fell for the young maid’s earnest personality and strong character. However, Madame Henrietta took poorly to being supplanted in the king’s affections by her own maid of honor and plotted revenge.
That wasn’t the only plot at Court: Aramis was scheming to become the new General of the powerful and secretive Jesuit Order, meanwhile entangling the Governor of the Bastille in a web of obligations, a plan that would ripen further in Shadow of the Bastille.
Chapter I
Madame and De Guiche
The Comte de Guiche* hurried out of the queen mother’s Fontainebleau reception hall on the day King Louis XIV* had so gallantly presented Louise de La Vallière* with the bracelets he’d won in Anne of Austria’s* lottery. The count wandered aimlessly outside the château for some time, a thousand suspicions and anxieties devouring his mind. He paused on the terrace long enough to watch for Madame’s* departure, and then roamed at random for another long half hour. The count seemed preoccupied with thoughts that were less than amusing. He drew a notebook from his pocket, hesitated over it a long while, and then wrote the following:
Madame, please grant me a moment to speak with you. Please don’t be alarmed by this request, as there’s nothing in it contrary to my deep respect and humblest, etc.
After signing this singular plea and folding it into a billet-doux, he saw a group of women leaving the Château de Fontainebleau1 followed by some men—almost the entire inner circle of the queen, in fact. He saw La Vallière herself, then Montalais* chatting with Malicorne,* and then the last of the guests who had filled the reception hall.
Madame had not yet left, but she would have to cross the courtyard to return home, so de Guiche hovered on the edge of the terrace. Finally, he saw Madame come out with two pages lighting her way with torches. She walked quickly, and when she reached her door, she stopped and said hurriedly, “Pages, see if you can find Monsieur le Comte de Guiche. There’s a service he can render me; if he’s free, ask him to come see me.”
De Guiche remained silent and hidden in the shadows, but as soon as Madame had gone in, he darted down the steps from the terrace to the courtyard and then walked nonchalantly toward the pages, who were already heading toward his rooms. Madame sends for me! he thought, ecstatic. And he shoved his note, now useless, into a pocket.
“Count,” said one of the pages, “we’re happy to have found you.”
“What is it, Messieurs?”
“A summons from Madame.”
“A summons from Madame?” said de Guiche, feigning surprise.
“Yes, Count, Her Highness calls for you and says you owe her a service. Are you free?”
“I am entirely at Her Royal Highness’s command.”
“Then please follow us.”
De Guiche entered the princess’s apartments. Just inside the door stood Montalais, her maid of honor, looking concerned about her mistress’ state of mind. De Guiche went in and found the princess pale and agitated. “Ah! It’s you, Monsieur de Guiche,” said Madame. “Come in, please. Mademoiselle de Montalais, you may go.”
Montalais, though curious and intrigued, bowed and went out, leaving the other two alone. The count had the advantage, as Madame had summoned him—but how could he use that advantage with such a whimsical and changeable person as Her Royal Highness? This problem was immediately brought home when she opened the conversation with, “Well! Don’t you have something to tell me?”
He thought she had read his mind and guessed his thoughts—for that’s how lovers are, as credulous as poets or prophets. If she sent for him, it must be because she knew he wanted to see her, and why. “Yes, Madame,” he said, “though it’s strange that you should know it.”
“It’s about the affair of the bracelets,” she said eagerly, “isn’t it?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“Do you think the king is in love? Tell me.”
De Guiche looked at her for a long moment; she lowered her eyes before that gaze that saw to her heart. “I believe the king may have intended to provoke someone,” he said. “Otherwise, the king would never have been so forward as to risk compromising the reputation of a young lady who has till now been irreproachable.”
“That insolent girl?” said the princess haughtily.
“I can assure Your Royal Highness,” said de Guiche firmly but respectfully, “that Mademoiselle de La Vallière is loved by a gallant and honorable man.”
“Oh! That Bragelonne,* I suppose?”
“My friend. Yes, Madame.”
“He may be your friend, but why would that matter to the king?”
“The king knows that Bragelonne is engaged to Mademoiselle de La Vallière, and, as Raoul has served the king with courage, the king will do him no harm.”
Madame burst into such laughter that it filled de Guiche with chagrin. “I repeat, Madame,” he said, “that I don’t believe the king is in love with La Vallière. I think he intended by his actions to provoke someone, and I ask you, who could His Majesty’s target be? You, who know the whole Court so well, will surely be able to answer that, since, as everyone says, Your Royal Highness is so intimate with the king.”
Madame bit her lip, and having no good answer, changed the subject. “Confess,” she said, fixing him with one of those looks in which the soul can be read through the eyes, “confess that when I summoned you, you were already seeking me.”
De Guiche gravely drew the note he’d written from his pocket and showed it to her.
“Sympathetic harmony,” she said.
“Yes,” said the count tenderly, “sympathy. I’ve explained the reason I was looking for you. You have yet to tell me why you called for me.”
“True,” she said, and then hesitated. “It’s those bracelets,” she said suddenly. “I’m beside myself about them.”
“You expected the king to offer them to you?” asked de Guiche.
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“But ahead of you, his sister-in-law, isn’t there his wife, Queen Marie-Thérèse?”*
“But ahead of La Vallière, isn’t there me?” cried the princess in exasperation. “Isn’t there the whole rest of the Court?”
“I must say, Madame,” said the count respectfully, “that if anyone else heard you talk this way, or saw the tears starting in your eyes, well, God forgive me! They would say Your Royal Highness is jealous.”
“Jealous!” said the princess with hauteur. “Jealous of La Vallière?” She expected de Guiche to back down before her lofty demeanor and regal tone.
“Jealous of La Vallière; yes, Madame,” he repeated staunchly.
“I think, Monsieur,” she hissed, “that you allow yourself to insult me!”
“I think not, Madame,” replied the count, agitated but determined to withstand this fiery fury.
“Get out!” cried the princess, exasperated by the gall of de Guiche’s quiet respect and calm self-possession.
De Guiche took a step back, bowed slowly, and then, as white as his lace cuffs, said in a barely controlled voice, “It was scarcely worth rushing to your summons just to suffer this unjust humiliation.”
And he slowly turned his back on her.
He hadn’t taken five steps before Madame sprang like a tigress after him. She seized him by the sleeve, turned him around and said, “Your pretense of respect is more insulting than an open insult!” Shaking with fury, she continued, “Come, insult me if you must, but at least speak to me.”
“And you, Madame,” the count said gently, drawing his sword, “thrust this through my heart if you must, but at least don’t kill me slowly.”
From the gaze he fixed on her, a look of love, resolution, and even despair, she recognized that this man, calm though he seemed, would indeed plunge his sword into his chest at another word. She snatched the blade from his hands, and, gripping his arm with a delirium that might pass for tenderness, she said, “Count, spare me. You see that I’m in pain, but you have no mercy.”
The crisis broke and tears choked her voice. De Guiche, seeing her weep, took her in his arms and carried her to her couch.
For long moments she was suffocated by tears. Kneeling at her feet, he whispered to her knees, “Why won’t you confess your sorrows to me? Do you love another? Tell me. It will kill me, but not till after I’ve relieved you, consoled you, served you.”
“You love me that much?” she replied, defeated.
“I love you that much, yes, Madame.”
She gave him both her hands. “I do love someone,” she murmured, so low it was inaudible.
But he heard it. “The king?” he said.
She shook her head gently, and when her smile came, it was the way clouds break after a storm so that it seems you can see through to heaven.
“But,” she added, “there are other passions in a high-born heart. Love is poetry, but the life of this heart is pride. I was born on a throne, Count, and I’m proud and jealous of my rank. Why does the king favor the low and unworthy?”
“Still!” said the count. “Still, you attack this poor young woman who will someday be my friend’s wife.”
“Are you simple enough to believe that?”
“If I didn’t believe it,” he said, very pale, “Bragelonne would hear about it from me tomorrow if I thought that poor little La Vallière had forgotten the vows she’d made to him. Only, wouldn’t it be cowardly to betray a woman’s secret and a crime to disturb a friend’s peace of mind?”
“So you think that ignorance is bliss?” said the princess with a savage burst of laughter.
“So I think,” he replied.
“Prove it! Prove it, then,” she said fervidly.
“Easy enough, Madame: it’s said throughout the Court that the king loves you and you love the king.”
“What of it?” she said, breathing hard.
“Well, if Raoul, my friend, had come to me and said, ‘It’s true, the king loves Madame and Madame loves the king,’ I could very easily have killed him.”
“To say such a thing,” said the princess with the persistence of those who feel invulnerable, “Monsieur de Bragelonne would have to have proof.”
“Nonetheless,” replied de Guiche with a sigh, “as I have not been so warned, I’ve looked no deeper, and perhaps my ignorance has saved someone’s life.”
“Would you be so cold and selfish as to let this young man continue to love La Vallière?” said Madame.
“Until the day that La Vallière is proven guilty, yes, Madame.”
“But the bracelets?”
“Well, Madame, since you expected to receive them from the king, what warning would you have listened to?”
This argument was conclusive, and the princess was stymied. She abandoned the fight, but she had a noble soul and a fiery wit, and she understood de Guiche’s delicate position. She saw that in his heart he suspected that the king loved La Vallière, but he wouldn’t stoop to the vulgar expedient of attacking a rival by ruining a lady’s commitment to a friend.
She guessed that he suspected La Vallière but thought it better to await further developments than to press that suspicion on the princess and risk losing her forever. In fact, she read so much real grandeur and generosity in his heart that she felt her own heart warmed by contact with such a pure flame.
De Guiche, by remaining a man of integrity and devotion despite the fear of displeasing her, displayed the virtues of a hero, while she seemed merely a jealous and petty woman. She loved him so dearly at that moment that she couldn’t help but express it. “Think of how many words we’ve wasted,” she said, taking his hand. “Suspicion, worry, anxiety, pain—we’ve spoken of all these things.”
“Alas! Yes, Madame.”
“Erase them now from your heart as I do from mine. Count, whether this La Vallière loves the king or not, whether the king likes or dislikes La Vallière, from this moment on let’s draw a distinction between the two roles I must perform. Ah, that makes you widen your eyes—do you not yet understand?”
“You’re so impetuous, Madame, that I fear I may displease you.”
“See how he trembles, so handsome and timid!” teased Madame playfully. “Yes, Count, I have two roles to play. I’m the king’s sister, his wife’s sister-in-law. As such, shouldn’t I take an interest in royal household intrigues? What do you think?”
“As little as possible, Madame.”
“Fine, but it’s a question of the dignity of the house; after all, I’m the wife of Monsieur.”*
De Guiche sighed.
“And on that basis,” she said tenderly, “I must earnestly require you always to speak to me with the utmost respect.”
He fell at her feet, which he kissed as if they belonged to a goddess.
“But truly,” she whispered, “I believe I have another role to play as well. I almost forgot it.”
“What is that?”
“I am a woman,” she said even lower. “And I love.”
He stood. She opened her arms to him, and their lips met.
A footstep sounded from beyond the tapestry door. Montalais knocked.
“What is it, Mademoiselle?” said Madame.
“Monsieur de Guiche is called for,” replied Montalais, entering. And she had plenty of time to observe the tableau of the players in their drama, for de Guiche always acted his role heroically.
Historical Characters
ANNE OF AUSTRIA: Anne of Austria, “Anne d’Autriche,” Queen of France (1601–66). Eldest daughter of King Philip III of Spain and sister to King Philip IV, Anne was wed to King Louis XIII of France in a political marriage at the age of fourteen. A Spaniard among the French, unloved by the king, proud but intimidated, and vulnerable to manipulation by her friends, she wielded very little influence at Court until she finally gave birth to a royal heir, the future Louis XIV, in 1638. After Louis XIII died in 1643, with his heir still a child, Anne was declared Queen Regent and thereafter came into her own, holding France together against threats both internal and external until Louis XIV was old enough to rule. Anne was intelligent and strong-willed but not a skilled politician; in that she was aided by her close association with her prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin. They ruled in a partnership until Mazarin died in 1661, after which the young Louis XIV asserted his right to rule and Anne was once again sidelined.
BRAGELONNE: Raoul, Vicomte de Bragelonne. The young viscount, son of the musketeer Athos, is almost entirely Dumas’s invention, based solely on a single reference in Madame de La Fayette’s memoir of Henriette d’Angleterre, which mentions that in Louise de La Vallière’s youth in Blois she had once loved a young man named Bragelonne. Raoul embodies all of Athos’s noble virtues, even those unsuited to Louis XIV’s less chivalrous age. His relationship with Louise de La Vallière—and her relationship with King Louis—are central to the final volumes of the Musketeers Cycle.
DE GUICHE: Guy Armand de Gramont or Grammont, Comte de Guiche (1637-1673). Armand de Guiche, son of the Duc de Gramont, was one of the leading playboys of the Court of Louis XIV and a frequent favorite of both the king and his brother Monsieur. Dumas portrays him as a romantic cavalier with a touch of melancholy and makes him Raoul de Bragelonne’s closest friend. A lover of both men and women, the historical de Guiche was one of Monsieur’s leading bedmates before he was supplanted by the Chevalier de Lorraine, after which he took up with Monsieur’s wife Madame. (This Comte de Guiche, by the way, is the same historical personage who serves as the villain in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac.)
LA VALLIÈRE: Françoise-Louise de la Baume Le Blanc de La Vallière (1644-1710). Louise de La Vallière was raised in Blois at the court of Prince Gaston, and after coming to Versailles in 1661 became the first long-term mistress of King Louis XIV. Louise was introduced in Twenty Years After as a girl of age seven and returned in Between Two Kings as a young woman of seventeen; in the preceding volume, Devil’s Dance, she finally came into her own as a major character. As the love of Raoul’s life, her story continues in The Man in the Iron Mask.
LOUIS XIV: Louis de Bourbon, King of France (1638-1715): The only Frenchman of his century more important than Cardinal Richelieu, the Sun King consolidated all power in France under royal control, thus ending centuries of civil strife, but creating a political structure so rigid it made the French Revolution almost inevitable. Dumas and his assistants did considerable research into the life of Louis XIV, and his depiction of the king’s character and personality is mostly spot on. Devil’s Dance, Shadow of the Bastille, and The Man in the Iron Mask chart Louis’s rise to maturity and power through the eyes of the Four Musketeers, Dumas’s most enduring characters.
MADAME: Princess Henrietta-Maria Stuart, Henrietta of England, “Madame” (1644-1670), the youngest child of King Charles I and Queen Henriette-Marie, was born during the English Civil War and raised in exile in France, where she and her mother lived for many years in poverty. Though bright and observant, she was disregarded as a child, one royal orphan too many, and it wasn’t until after the Restoration of her brother Charles II that she was suddenly recognized as someone who mattered. In 1661 she was wed in a political marriage to Philippe de Bourbon, younger brother of Louis XIV, and became one of the leading ornaments of the French Court. Vivacious and beautiful, Henrietta was loved, or at least desired, by both Buckingham and de Guiche, but she set her own romantic sights at a higher target. Madame and the Chevalier de Lorraine were perennial rivals for control of Monsieur’s household, and at her death, probably from peritonitis, she was said to have been poisoned by the chevalier.
MALICORNE: Germain Texier, Comte d’Hautefeuille, Baron de Malicorne (1626-1694), a wily and ambitious courtier and the lover of Mademoiselle de Montalais, was introduced in Between Two Kings and came to the fore in Devil’s Dance. Though the historical Malicorne was a petty nobleman, Dumas made him a bourgeois, an aspiring lawyer, to add the drama of class difference to his romance with Montalais.
MARIE-THÉRÈSE: Marie-Thérèse of Austria, Infanta of Spain and Portugal, Queen of France (1638-1683), was wed to her cousin King Louis XIV in 1660 in a marriage that signified the end of the long war between France and Spain. Raised in the rigid and insular Spanish Court, timid and retiring, she had little worldly experience before her marriage and would have been lost and alone in Paris if her mother-in-law, Queen Anne—herself a Spanish princess married young to a French king—hadn’t taken her under her wing. She adored her new husband Louis and was happy while he was faithful to her, a period of almost a year.
MONSIEUR: Prince Philippe de Bourbon, Duc d’Orléans, “Monsieur” (1640-1701), was the younger brother of Louis XIV, but to keep him from assuming the fractious role his uncle Prince Gaston had taken under his brother Louis XIII, Philippe was never trained to rule or consider himself entitled to assume the throne. He was openly homosexual but did his duty to the dynasty and married twice, producing six children. Though he was a capable military commander, his first concern was always luxury and ease, which he pursued without stint.
MONTALAIS: Aure (actually Nicole-Anne Constance) de Montalais (c. 1641-?). Mademoiselle de Montalais was a maid of honor at the court of Prince Gaston in Blois and later dame d’honneur to Princess Henrietta in Paris, where she helped arrange an affair between the princess and the Comte de Guiche. Though she is said to have had a taste for intrigue, little else is known about her, and her personality is largely an invention of Dumas.
Notes on the Text of Shadow of the Bastille
1. CHÂTEAU DE FONTAINEBLEAU: Originally a royal hunting lodge in the middle of the forest southeast of Paris, the Château de Fontainebleau was expanded by many French monarchs over the centuries until by the time of Louis XIV the palace, gardens, and grounds were extensive and extravagant. It was grand and imposing, which Louis loved, and he spent more time there than any other king.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS’ MUSKETEERS CYCLE
Shadow of the Bastille is part of a series. Everyone has heard of The Three Musketeers and its heroes d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, but what’s less well known nowadays is that Dumas followed up his greatest novel with a series of sequels that are just as great. Your Cheerful Editor Lawrence Ellsworth has been compiling all-new contemporary translations of these novels, and the entire series, when complete, will fill nine volumes:
- The Three Musketeers, Book One
- The Red Sphinx, Book Two
- Twenty Years After, Book Three
- Blood Royal, Book Four
- Between Two Kings, Book Five
- Court of Daggers, Book Six
- Devil’s Dance, Book Seven
- Shadow of the Bastille, Book Eight
- The Man in the Iron Mask, Book Nine
Volumes one through seven are already in print, the first five from Pegasus Books, while Books Six, Court of Daggers, and Seven, Devil’s Dance, are available as independent publications. Each week now brings a new episode in the serialization of Book Eight, Shadow of the Bastille.
If you’re interested in my work, you can learn more about it at swashbucklingadventure.net. Also, be sure to check out my parallel Substack, cinemaofswords.substack.com.
Welcome, fellow cavaliers, and enjoy the ride!
—Lawrence Ellsworth
Copyright © 2023 Lawrence Schick. All rights reserved.