7.13 Les Trois Mousquetaires — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the famous first quarrel of Les Trois Mousquetaires : young d'Artagnan, newly arrived from Gascony, picks a fight with a stranger who laughs at his horse. Follow a nineteenth-century novel: long descriptive sentences in the literary past and the imperfect, and quick exchanges of dialogue. Recognise Dumas's irony, and the comic contrast between the hot-headed young man and the cool, insolent stranger. Read dialogue introduced by a dash, the French convention, with inverted verbs of saying: s'écria-t-il , reprit l'inconnu . Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English d’Artagnan avisa à une fenêtre entrouverte du rez-de-chaussée un gentilhomme de belle taille et de haute mine d'Artagnan noticed, at a half-open ground-floor window, a gentleman of fine stature and lofty bearing D’Artagnan, le voyant à sa portée, tira son épée d’un pied hors du fourreau. D'Artagnan, seeing him within reach, drew his sword a foot out of its scabbard. Il tira son épée entièrement du fourreau et se mit à sa poursuite He drew his sword completely from its scabbard and went after him un homme qui avait eu l’insolence de se moquer de lui a man who had had the insolence to make fun of him en regardant le jeune homme avec autant d’étonnement que de mépris looking at the young man with as much astonishment as contempt Me frapper, moi ! dit l’autre en pivotant sur ses talons Strike me? said the other, spinning round on his heels Prerequisites : 7.12 — this reading follows 7.12 Reading . You need the literary past of 3.15 Conjugation and the imperfect subjunctive met in 7.9 Reading . About this text Note: this text contains a duel challenge and a brawl. Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) wrote Les Trois Mousquetaires , The Three Musketeers , with his collaborator Auguste Maquet, and published it as a newspaper serial in 1844. It is set in the 1620s, under Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, and follows d'Artagnan, a poor young nobleman from Gascony in the south-west, who comes to Paris to join the king's musketeers and befriends three of them, Athos, Porthos and Aramis. It is one of the most read and most adapted French novels. The excerpt comes from the first chapter, Les trois présents de M. d'Artagnan père . D'Artagnan's father has given his son three presents for the journey: fifteen crowns, an old yellow horse that everyone laughs at, and a letter of recommendation to M. de Tréville , the captain of the musketeers. The young man rides into the town of Meung, in the Loire valley, and stops at the inn of the Franc-Meunier . There, a gentleman at a window is describing his horse to two listeners, who laugh. The passage, about 1,160 words, runs from his arrival at the inn to the moment when the stranger's companions fall on him with sticks and shovels. The stranger, whose name we learn only later, will be d'Artagnan's enemy for the rest of the novel. The text is that of an illustrated edition published in Paris in 1849, as transcribed in French Wikisource. It keeps some old spellings, such as privilége for modern privilège and rengaînait , whose circumflex modern spelling drops. Reading Dumas The long sentence and the short reply. The narrative paragraphs are long, with clauses piled on clauses: the very first sentence is more than fifty words long. The dialogue that follows is short and sharp. Read the long sentences for their main verb, and enjoy the dialogue. The literary past and the imperfect. The events are in the literary past: d'Artagnan avisa , il fixa son regard , ses deux auditeurs éclatèrent de rire , il tira son épée . The descriptions and the background are in the imperfect: un gentilhomme … causait avec deux personnes , il était vêtu d'un pourpoint . The dash for dialogue. French novels mark each new speaker with a dash, — , often without quotation marks. The verb of saying is inverted and placed in the middle or at the end: — Je ne ris pas souvent, monsieur, reprit l'inconnu . Verbs of saying are varied on purpose: s'écria , reprit , continua , murmura . The pluperfect subjunctive. Dumas uses it naturally after past verbs, as Perrault did in 7.9 Reading : sans que personne … fût venu lui tenir l'étrier , comme s'il lui eût fallu un certain temps . Both are pluperfect subjunctives, built on the imperfect subjunctive of être and avoir , fût and eût . In s'il n'eût fait vivement un bond en arrière, il est probable qu'il eût plaisanté pour la dernière fois , the pluperfect subjunctive replaces both the pluperfect and the past conditional of a third-kind condition from 4.16 Grammar : if he had not jumped back, he would have joked for the last time . Reading it a second time, paragraph by paragraph Paragraphs 1 to 3: the insult. D'Artagnan arrives, sees the gentleman at the window, believes, selon son habitude , that he is being talked about, and is half right: the subject is his horse. Dumas's irony is in every phrase: the gentleman delivers une de ses plus savantes et de ses plus profondes démonstrations about a yellow pony. D'Artagnan prepares a dignified speech and, blinded by anger, produces only a rude remark. Paragraphs 4 to 9: the first exchange. Dites-moi donc un peu de quoi vous riez, et nous rirons ensemble. The stranger's answer is a masterpiece of insolence in six words: Je ne vous parle pas, monsieur ! D'Artagnan half draws his sword. Paragraphs 10 to 15: the duel of words. The stranger continues to talk about the horse to his listeners, ignoring its rider, and the dialogue turns on rire : je tiens cependant à conserver le privilége de rire quand il me plaît — je ne veux pas qu'on rie quand il me déplaît . Note the subjunctive qu'on rie after vouloir que , from 4.18 Grammar . Paragraphs 16 to 21: the attack. D'Artagnan lunges; the stranger draws; his two companions and the innkeeper beat d'Artagnan with sticks, shovels and tongs. The stranger becomes a spectator and comments: ces Gascons sont incorrigibles