Alexandre Dumas - Man in the Iron Mask (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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Table of Contents

From the Pages of
The Man in the Iron Mask

Being obliged to conceal myself, I was fortunate enough to meet with M. dArtagnan, who was formerly one of your friends, I believe ?

(page 10)

The old coquette understood the trick that had been played her. She was standing immediately before a large mirror, in which her decrepitude, so carefully concealed, was only made more manifest. And, thereupon, without even saluting Aramis, who bowed with the ease and grace of the musketeer of early days, she hurried away with trembling steps, which her very precipitation only the more impeded. Aramis sprang across the room, like a zephyr, to lead her to the door. Madame de Chevreuse made a sign to her servant, who resumed his musket; and she left the house where such tender friends had not been able to understand each other, only because they had understood each other too well.

(page 22)

I was wounded, attacked by fever; my senses were gone, and I have only a very faint recollection of it all. But there is no reason why we should search very far, when the very man we want is close at hand. Is not dArtagnan your friend?

(page 96)

I, monseigneur, wish you to be a king for the good of humanity.

(page 235)

I shall have made one man happy; and Heaven for that will hold me in better account than if I had made one man powerful; for that is far more difficult.

(page 303)

A friends word is the truth itself.

(page 333)

I would sooner, far sooner, have swallowed at one draught all the poisons that Mithridates drank in twenty years, in order to try to avoid death, than have betrayed my secret to the King.

(page 402)

DArtagnan seized a pistol and cocked it, hoping that the noise of the spring would stop his enemy.

(page 554)

Contrary to what always happens, whether in politics or morals, each kept his promise, and did honour to his engagements.

(page 706)

Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas was born on July 24, 1802, in Villers-Cotterets, a town northeast of Paris. He was the grandson of a French nobleman, the Marquis Davy de la Pailleterie, and Marie-Cessette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean slave. His father, Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, took the name Dumas when he enlisted in the French army. After a period of illustrious service, he rose to the rank of general; but by the end of the eighteenth century, he had fallen into disfavor with Napoleon and was subsequently imprisoned. Thomas-Alexandre Dumas died penniless and broken at age forty-five, leaving his family impoverished. Young Alexandre received only a limited education; however, he was an avid reader, and his elegant penmanship got him a position as clerk to a solicitor. In 1823, he moved to Paris, where, through his fathers connections, he became a copyist for the Duke of Orlans, the future King Louis-Philippe.

Dumas soon turned his attention to literary pursuits. His first major success was the historical drama Henry III and His Court in 1829, followed in 1831 by Antony. By his thirtieth birthday, Dumas was regarded as one of the major figures of the nascent French Romantic theater. His The Tower of Nesle ( 1832) is a classic example of French romantic drama replete with love, treachery, and death. Despite his success as a playwright, Dumas found his true mtier with the birth of the roman feuilleton, or serial novel, in the 1840s. His gripping adventures, with their rambling subplots and moments of suspense, were ideally suited to serialization in newspapers. The Three Musketeers, serialized beginning in 1843 and first published in novel form in 1844, was an overwhelming success that instantly established Dumas as a master of the genre. The Count of Monte Cristo, also published in 1844, was equally popular. In 1845, the first sequel to The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, was published, followed by the final book in the trilogy, The Viscount of Bragelonne; or, Ten Years Later, whose three parts were published between 1848 and 1850. Because of its length, the trilogys final book is often published in three segments: The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Vallire, and The Man in the Iron Mask.

Enormously prolific, Dumas was known for collaborating with others, notably Auguste Maquet, with whom he wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. His practice of using other literary works as sources and working with collaborators, while hardly unique among his contemporaries, was often criticized, making him a controversial figure in French literary circles. Dumass life was filled with adventures. He participated in the July Revolution of 1830 in France as well as in Garibaldis quest for Italian independence in the 1860s; he amassed a fortune through his writing, only to let his lavish lifestyle plunge him into perpetual debt; and he built (and then lost in bankruptcy) an opulent chteau on the outskirts of Paris that he called Monte Cristo. He was also an incorrigible lover whose numerous liaisons produced three children, including a son, Alexandre Dumas (known as Dumas fils to distinguish him from his father), who became an important author in his own right. Alexandre Dumas pre died on December 5, 1870.

The World of Alexandre Dumas andThe Man in the Iron Mask

1622	King Louis XIII of France forms the Musketeers. His personal bodyguards, they number approximately 200 and are armed with the newly developed flintlock, muzzle-loading rifle, or musket.
1642	M. de Trville, the Musketeerss capitaine lieutenant, is involved in an attempt to assassinate the Kings adviser Cardinal Richelieu. The plot fails, and de Trville is dismissed from the court and the Musketeers.
1667	Born in 1623, Charles de Baatz dArtagnan, the real-life dArtagnan, becomes the capitaine lieutenant of one of the two companies of King Louis XIVs Musketeers. He is later appointed governor of Lille.
1673	The real-life dArtagnan dies in the battle of Maestricht, Holland.
1789- 1815	The years surrounding the French Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte produce upheavals in French society. In literature, classicism, featuring universal themes and pure genres such as tragedy and comedy (the former represented by Corneille and Racine, and the latter by Molire), remains the dominant force. However, a new modernism, fueled by the works of Shakespeare, the German Sturm und Drang movement, and such Romantics as Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, arises as a competing trend in which genres are often mixed.
1802	Alexandre Dumas is born on July 24 in Villers-Cotterts, a village in the department of Aisne to the northeast of Paris. Dumass mother is Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Labouret, the daughter of a local innkeeper; his father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, is the Haitian-born son of the Marquis Antoine-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and Marie-Cessette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean slave from the French colony of Santo Domingo.

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