Read Dying by the sword Online
Authors: Sarah d'Almeida
Dying by the sword (40 page)
8
He repeats this trick later on, in the quite different circumstances that Monsieur Dumas related. It must have seemed incredible to Monsieur Dumas, who perhaps lacked the access to these documents, because he found it necessary to explain such a brilliant piece of deductive theft by relating it to the customs of the North American continent.
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.
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.
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