cbr17bingo Citizen
How many times has The Three Musketeers been filmed? Dumas knew how to tell a tale, even though he could be fairly verbose, at times. But hey. when you get paid by volume, that makes sense.
The Knight of Maison Rouge, the character named in the title, is a champion of Marie Antoinette, in that murky period in French history between the execution of her husband, Louis XVI, and her own. The government consisted of various battling contingents of “citizens” each trying to outdo the others in renouncing the late king and his nobles. And then there was this amazing new killing machine, the guillotine, that everyone was just itching to test out. And boy, did they ever. (Did any other country ever use this?)
But our two main characters are Maurice Lindey, part of the National Guard, and a loyal citizen of the new regime. His buddy, Maximilian Lorin, is a different sort of fellow – not politically minded at all, but an arty type and prone to spouting poetical couplets of the top of his head at the least provocation. And to round out the trio, there is the mysterious Geneviêve, the much younger wife of a shadowy figure who is somehow connected with the revolutionary guard. Eventually, in their own way, three musketeers of a sort.
I must mention the excellent translation that brings this story alive. Here is our hero hanging out in a disreputable café waiting for someone he has been following to show up. He went back to his fish without the mistress of the house noticing that he threw half of it to a poor skinny dog that had been staring at him with his tongue hanging out and the other half to a cat who aimed a delicate but deadly paw at the dog. Hee!
Not a fast read, but a solid one.