Dumas dates and figures
6 November 2025 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI note that in Chapter 83 of "Vingt Ans Après", Athos and Aramis find a drawing left by d'Artagnan at Peronne with the sinister message "We are being followed" and, understandably disquieted even though the trail they are following is already cold, proceed to gallop frantically for three or four hours until they encounter the giant boulder moved by Porthos, under which the next message lies. We don't know what time they arrived at Peronne, but since they don't appear to have spent the night there and only discovered d'Artagnan's drawing as they were leaving after a failed search of the town, it can scarcely have been before mid-morning at the earliest, especially since the date is early March and they will not have started travelling until winter daybreak.
After galloping all the way from Peronne, they are obliged to allow their horses three hours' rest, and it takes them a further six hours of riding to reach Compiègne, where they learn that d'Artagnan and Porthos were overtaken and captured. This adds up to a minimum of twelve hours' travel, at the end of which we are told that they dined hastily in order to be able to set out again immediately that night (since Blaisois and Grimaud are left behind with instructions to take the spent horses back to Paris "tomorrow") on hired horses. Even if we assume that they set out at dawn from some nearby hostelry and reached Peronne at 8am or thereabouts, it must have been well and truly dark by this point!
We are told that the reason why they made a hasty meal at Compiègnes before setting off for Louvres was in order to be able to continue along the trail if they found any further information at Louvres, and indeed they do so, and acquire fresh horses before leaving for Rueil; however Dumas does not positively say that they did not thereafter sleep anywhere along the way, or do so before or during their extensive investigations among the gathered assembly at Rueil. We can, however, say that the times he does rashly specify as forming part of a non-stop journey considerably exceed the available daylight available to the travellers...
More figures: it is mentioned in Chapter 86 that Grimaud had been in the service of Athos for twenty-two years at the time of his master's arrest. Since the action of "The Three Musketeers" is specified to take place over a period of a couple of years (opening at the start of April 1625, and concluding with the fall of La Rochelle at the end of October 1628), this would imply that Athos had only just acquired Grimaud as servant at the time when d'Artagnan first met him...
And Madame de Longueville, who is suddenly mentioned as being on the verge of giving birth at the date when Athos and Aramis arrive in Paris, must therefore presumably have been six months or so pregnant already at the time when she was making use of the gardener's ladder to climb up to the window of Aramis, her lover, on the night that d'Artagnan sees them together :-p
After galloping all the way from Peronne, they are obliged to allow their horses three hours' rest, and it takes them a further six hours of riding to reach Compiègne, where they learn that d'Artagnan and Porthos were overtaken and captured. This adds up to a minimum of twelve hours' travel, at the end of which we are told that they dined hastily in order to be able to set out again immediately that night (since Blaisois and Grimaud are left behind with instructions to take the spent horses back to Paris "tomorrow") on hired horses. Even if we assume that they set out at dawn from some nearby hostelry and reached Peronne at 8am or thereabouts, it must have been well and truly dark by this point!
We are told that the reason why they made a hasty meal at Compiègnes before setting off for Louvres was in order to be able to continue along the trail if they found any further information at Louvres, and indeed they do so, and acquire fresh horses before leaving for Rueil; however Dumas does not positively say that they did not thereafter sleep anywhere along the way, or do so before or during their extensive investigations among the gathered assembly at Rueil. We can, however, say that the times he does rashly specify as forming part of a non-stop journey considerably exceed the available daylight available to the travellers...
More figures: it is mentioned in Chapter 86 that Grimaud had been in the service of Athos for twenty-two years at the time of his master's arrest. Since the action of "The Three Musketeers" is specified to take place over a period of a couple of years (opening at the start of April 1625, and concluding with the fall of La Rochelle at the end of October 1628), this would imply that Athos had only just acquired Grimaud as servant at the time when d'Artagnan first met him...
And Madame de Longueville, who is suddenly mentioned as being on the verge of giving birth at the date when Athos and Aramis arrive in Paris, must therefore presumably have been six months or so pregnant already at the time when she was making use of the gardener's ladder to climb up to the window of Aramis, her lover, on the night that d'Artagnan sees them together :-p