Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/241

 sassination: how can both catastrophes be averted? (5) Milady is a prisoner in England: how can she escape and murder Buckingham? (6) How can the brothers' avenge their wrongs on Milady, and avoid the punishment of the Cardinal, whose agent she is?"

207 But it is obviously wrong to treat a book of adventure as if it were an ordinary novel. We do not expect a central plot in "Don Quixote," "Robinson Crusoe," or "Gil Blas."

Every lover of the "Mousquetaires" has his own particular hero, in one of the famous four. Thackeray, for instance, writes:

"Of your heroic heroes, I think our friend Monseigneur Athos, Count de la Fère, is my favourite. I have read about him from sunrise to sunset with the utmost contentment of mind. He has passed through how many volumes? Forty? Fifty? I wish, for my part, there were a hundred more, and would never tire of him rescuing prisoners, punishing ruffians, and running scoundrels through the midriff with his most graceful rapier. Ah! Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, you are a magnificent trio."

Stevenson had a weakness for Porthos. "If," he wrote to a friend, "by any sacrifice of my own literary baggage I could clear the 'Vicomte de Bragelonne' of Porthos, Jekyll might go, and the