The characters, though they each defend an abstract ideal, are as rich and vivid as they ever were, if not more so, and the depth of emotion that Dumas explores is much wider than in the two earlier books. Porthos was modeled on Dumas's own father, and legend has it that the author wept for three days as he was writing the death of that gentle giant. Many readers experience the same, no matter how many times they may have read that passage. Even Aramis, according to Dumas, was moved to shed his first and only tears. Anyone who has ever loved and lost can feel Raoul's pain, and any parent can understand Athos's anguish as he sees his son off to certain death. No longer are characters simply good or simply evil, they are their own entities, sometimes good, sometimes evil. The Duchesse de Chevreuse, once Aramis's close friend and contact at court, the mother of Raoul, now schemes against Aramis, hoping to bring about his downfall. Queen Anne of Austria, once the beautiful, helpless heroine, is now the ailing, sometimes imperial, matriarch of the royal household, tortured by the son she was forced to forsake. In other words, they are human. The refinement of the four principles, as age steals upon them, adds an element that is somehow lacking from the former books. They now hail from different spheres, which lends richness to their portrayal. Aramis is the man of God, with a scheme always in the works. Athos is the dignified, retired nobleman, whose only concerns are debts left unpaid and the launching of his son into the world. Porthos is a great baron, ever ready to help, ever seeking another title, ever seeking the noble airs that were not his birthright, but to which he came upon his wife's death. And D'Artagnan is a hardened soldier, casting a cynical eye everywhere, still loyal, but somewhat embittered, trading in his customary "mordioux!" for the "bah!" more common to old men.

The character of D'Artagnan is, of course, the focus of the Romances. Dumas frequently admitted that D'Artagnan was the man he could never be. In The Vicomte de Bragelonne, the character expands even further. Although his primary symbolic representation is that of the virtue of Loyalty, he is not devoid of other virtues. He has his share of Cunning, Nobility, and Strength, as well as the virtues of the other characters. He's a sort of Everyman, superior in every respect, and the only man that can tame him is Louis, the greatest French monarch of them all. The scene in which D'Artagnan goes to the scene of the duel between De Wardes and De Guiche, and from the forensic evidence manages to piece together the details exactly, predates the classic detective fiction that was becoming popular in the States with Edgar Allen Poe's murders in the Rue Morgue. He has learned to maneuver in royal circles with infinite grace and delicacy, and until the end he boasts that he can always make the king do what he wants. Even outside the D'Artagnan Romances, he has gotten around. He's found his way onto the big screen countless times, most recently in two major films in the 1990s. He's found his way onto the stage, not only in Dumas's own adaptations of the Musketeers saga, but as a walk-on character in Cyrano de Bergerac by Rostand, for example. Many talented authors, in many different ages, have lent their pens to continuations to the saga. Paul Feval and a M. Lassez wrote a series of eight novels based on the adventures of D'Artagnan with a young Cyrano de Bergerac. These are supposedly tales of Grimaud's, Athos's servant, related to Athos, and Aramis even makes an appearance. Roger Nimier's last book was D'Artagnan amoureux, set shortly after The Three Musketeers. He had planned more in the series, but unfortunately died in 1956. The 1993 winner of le Prix Interallie was a novel entitled Le dernier amour d'Aramis by Jean-Pierre Dufreigne, which focuses on Aramis, the most mysterious of the four and the one whose past remains the greatest mystery. Although Dumas's portrayal of the character of D'Artagnan is the most famous, it was not the first. Dumas got much of his initial material from a book written by a soldier, Courtilz de Sandras, who supplemented his income by writing historical fictions. He published his fictional Memoirs of M. d'Artagnan in 1700, and Dumas, after reading the first volume, used much of the material as his basis for the first part of The Three Musketeers. The real D'Artagnan, although he was Captain-Lieutenant of the musketeers, and he did arrest Fouquet and escort him to prison, was far from the dashing hero Dumas made him. As for the other characters, particularly Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, they also appeared in this fictional memoir, and lacking even the scant details about them that subsequent historians have managed to bring to the light of day, Dumas's ever-fertile imagination made them three of the most famous men in history.

As a closing, instead of more of my thoughts on the novels, I instead quote what Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about The Vicomte de Bragelonne: "My acquaintance with the VICOMTE began, somewhat indirectly, in the year of grace 1863, when I had the advantage of studying certain illustrated dessert plates in a hotel at Nice. The name of d'Artagnan in the legends I already saluted like an old friend, for I had met it the year before in a work of Miss Yonge's. My first perusal was in one of those pirated editions that swarmed at that time out of Brussels, and ran to such a troop of neat and dwarfish volumes. I understood but little of the merits of the book; my strongest memory is of the execution of d'Eymeric and Lyodot - a strange testimony to the dulness of a boy, who could enjoy the rough-and-tumble in the Place de Greve, and forget d'Artagnan's visits to the two financiers. My next reading was in winter-time, when I lived alone upon the Pentlands. I would return in the early night from one of my patrols with the shepherd; a friendly face would meet me in the door, a friendly retriever scurry upstairs to fetch my slippers; and I would sit down with the VICOMTE for a long, silent, solitary lamp-light evening by the fire. And yet I know not why I call it silent, when it was enlivened with such a clatter of horse-shoes, and such a rattle of musketry, and such a stir of talk; or why I call those evenings solitary in which I gained so many friends. I would rise from my book and pull the blind aside, and see the snow and the glittering hollies chequer a Scotch garden, and the winter moonlight brighten the white hills. Thence I would turn again to that crowded and sunny field of life in which it was so easy to forget myself, my cares, and my surroundings: a place busy as a city, bright as a theatre, thronged with memorable faces, and sounding with delightful speech. I carried the thread of that epic into my slumbers, I woke with it unbroken, I rejoiced to plunge into the book again at breakfast, it was with a pang that I must lay it down and turn to my own labours; for no part of the world has ever seemed to me so charming as these pages, and not even my friends are quite so real, perhaps quite so dear, as d'Artagnan.

"Since then I have been going to and fro at very brief intervals in my favourite book; and I have now just risen from my last (let me call it my fifth) perusal, having liked it better and admired it more seriously than ever. Perhaps I have a sense of ownership, being so well known in these six volumes. Perhaps I think that d'Artagnan delights to have me read of him, and Louis Quatorze is gratified, and Fouquet throws me a look, and Aramis, although he knows I do not love him, yet plays to me with his best graces, as to an old patron of the show. Perhaps, if I am not careful, something may befall me like what befell George IV. about the battle of Waterloo, and I may come to fancy the VICOMTE one of the first, and Heaven knows the best, of my own works. "

So many readers have thought the same over the last century and a half, and many more will in the times to come. Like Dumas itself, the