Another Vast Section of the Panorama
It’s hard to discuss coherently this segment of the “D’Artagnan Romances” because it is just that—one segment of a much vaster work. The middle volume of a trilogy (including The Vicomte de Bragelonne and The Man in the Iron Mask, known collectively as Ten Years After) and the fourth installment of a story that began some 30 years before, Louise de Lavalliere has no denouement, no crescendo, no conclusion. It is, rather, the run-up to the crescendo. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have charms that make for exceedingly enjoyable listening. Once again, Dumas does yeoman’s work as a crafter of characters and sentences. Historical fiction fills the blank spots in the record, giving us word-for-word conversations that were never recorded (or never took place) and inmost thoughts that are beyond all human recall. For those reasons, I usually avoid the genre. But Dumas creates thoughts and conversations that somehow ring true, probably because they are so plausible. Simon Vance does his job at the mic superbly, giving each character a distinctive voice and even, with some, a distinctive speech cadence. The one portrayal that threw me at first was the Duc de Guise; Vance gives him a raspy voice that sounds like an older man when in fact he is one of the young bucks of Louis’ court. However, once that difficulty is gotten over the distinctive voice helps us separate de Guise from the legions of courtiers surrounding the Sun King. Of the D’Artagnan Romances I’ve listened to so far (Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, Vicomte de Bragelonne and Louise de Laviere) this latest installment is by far the least action-packed. The many ornate verbal exchanges, baroque compliments and subtle insults can lead, if you’re not completely awake, to no little rewinding. And one can get the impression that the pursuit of Eros was the leading industry in Louis’ young court (when, one wonders, is state business being done?) Yes, it can get a little tedious. But as mentioned above, it’s all leading up to the crescendo. One French literary critic (I can’t give their name because my source didn’t mention one) believed that the real subject of Twenty Years After and Ten Years After was the emergence of Louis XIV as an absolute monarch—and I’m not saying that critic was wrong. But the real delight for me was seeing the swashbuckling heroes of Louis XIII’s day become middle aged men—old men, really, by the standards of their day—confronting the harsher realities and limitations of life. I’m about D’Artagnan’s age at this point in the story, and I’ve had a lot of the same thoughts and made many of the same observations he does. Then there are the varied adventures both large and small, the kaleidoscope of viewpoints and the radical scene shifts. It all contributes to the overall excellence of the D’Artagnan series—there’s an expansiveness here, a comprehensiveness, a downright near-shapeless bagginess that makes the story seem very much like real life. Indeed, in a typically masterful flourish worthy of Aramis, Dumas acknowledges this ungainliness and explains why we (or at least I) find it so satisfying: “Our readers will have observed in this story, the adventures of the new and of the past generation being detailed, as it were, side by side. He will have noticed in the former, the reflection of the glory of earlier years, the experience of the bitter things of this world; in the former, also, that peace which takes possession of the heart, and that healing of the scars which were formerly deep and painful wounds. In the latter, the conflicts of love and vanity; bitter disappointments, ineffable delights; life instead of memory. If, therefore, any variety has been presented to the reader in the different episodes of this tale, it is to be attributed to the numerous shades of color which are presented on this double tablet, where two pictures are seen side by side, mingling and harmonizing their severe and pleasing tones. The repose of the emotions of one is found in harmonious contrast with the fiery sentiments of the other. After having talked reason with older heads, one loves to talk nonsense with youth. Therefore, if the threads of the story do not seem very intimately to connect the chapter we are now writing with the one we have just written, we do not intend to give ourselves any more thought or trouble about it than Ruysdael took in painting an autumn sky, after having finished a spring-time scene. We accordingly resume Raoul de Bragelonne's story at the very place where our last sketch left him.”