9
Some will note that in Monsieur Dumas’
Three Musketeers
the whole “affaire milady” was rather more complex and drawn out, and while the scene at the end of it was roughly similar, it involved the complicity of a little maid named Kitty. I trust I don’t need to explain to the readers who have been faithfully following these chronicles how unlikely it would be that young, romantic D’Artagnan would be involved not only with one woman but with three. Indeed, it would be somewhat wrenching to think of him betraying Constance—whom even in Monsieur Dumas’s embellished chronicle, he mourned lifelong—with the seductive but brittle milady, who might be experienced but cannot help but appear non-genuine.
We’ll leave Monsieur Dumas’s account, enjoyable and well crafted as it is, in the realm of a pleasant fiction concocted to accord to the morals and manners of his time and the idea that a brave and strong man must, of course, also be promiscuous.