James Baquet

Let’s look at Alexandre Dumas’ swashbuckling novel, “The Three Musketeers.”

In 1625, a bumpkin named d’Artagnan is going to Paris with a letter to join the famed musketeers. When an older man insults his horse, d’Artagnan wants to duel, but the man’s companions beat him and take his letter.

D’Artagnan cannot join the musketeers without the letter, but out of the commander’s window, he sees the older man from before, who is in fact Rochefort, an agent of Cardinal Richelieu.

In rushing to confront him, d’Artagnan offends three musketeers, each of whom challenges him to a duel that afternoon. As he is about to fight the first one, the cardinal’s men attempt to arrest them for dueling, and the four fight off the five officers. D’Artagnan becomes friends with Athos, Porthos, and Aramis: the three musketeers.

Many adventures and political intrigues follow. Meanwhile, d’Artagnan falls in love with his landlord’s (kidnapped) wife Constance, who works for Anne, the French queen.

Now, King Louis XIII has given his wife Anne some diamond studs, who in turn gives them to her lover, the English Duke of Buckingham. Attempting to start a war between England and France by revealing her affair, Richelieu insists to the king that Anne wear the now-absent jewels to a fancy party. Constance tells d’Artagnan; he and his friends journey to England, attacked by Richelieu’s henchmen repeatedly along the way.

Another of Richelieu’s operatives, Milady de Winter, has stolen two of the studs, but Buckingham has them duplicated, and Anne wears them to the ball.

When Constance is again kidnapped, the queen rescues her, but she ends up living in a convent with Milady de Winter, who fatally poisons her.

D’Artagnan, now a musketeer, arrests Milady, and with the three others puts her on trial, She is officially executed. Secretly pleased to be rid of her, Richelieu gives d’Artagnan a commission as lieutenant of the musketeers. He in turn offers it to each of his friends, but each refuses it: Athos thinks it’s beneath him, Porthos is retiring to get married, and Aramis is becoming a priest. D’Artagnan takes the promotion, but with a heavy heart.

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. an unsophisticated person

2. secret plots and plans

3. copied

4. fight (usually to the death) between two people

5. a representative

6. causing death

7. sadly

8. involving swordfights and such

9. speaks rudely about

10. formerly, soldiers who fought with guns