igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
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I have just noticed another passage added(?) by the English translator into his version of "Twenty Years After", apparently in order to clarify d'Artagnan's line of thought (unless it comes from a different source edition...)

The French reads simply: "nous devons, en fait d’aventures, jamais n’avoir d’échec ni prêter à rire de nous. Mais écoutez-moi, Porthos : quoique M. Mordaunt ne fût pas à mépriser, M. Mazarin me paraît bien autrement fort que M. Mordaunt, et nous ne le noierons pas aussi facilement".

But this has been translated with an extra explanatory interpolation:
“We ought, in our adventures, never to be defeated or give any one a chance to laugh at us. In England, lately, we failed, we were beaten, and that is a blemish on our reputation.”

“By whom, then, were we beaten?” asked Porthos.

“By Mordaunt.”

“Yes, but we have drowned Monsieur Mordaunt.”

“That is true, and that will redeem us a little in the eyes of posterity, if posterity ever looks at us. But listen, Porthos: though Monsieur Mordaunt was a man not to be despised, Mazarin is not less strong than he, and we shall not easily succeed in drowning him.


(I note also that Les petits yeux de d’Artagnan (shades of Boyarsky :-p) are translated as the much more romantic "D’Artagnan’s penetrating gray eyes" :-P)


Edit: yes, it is clearly a case of different editions!
The scan used by Wikisource ("1846"): https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dumas_-_Vingt_ans_apr%C3%A8s,_1846.djvu/626
The version online from Atramenta (no date given): https://www.atramenta.net/lire/vingt-ans-apres/3089/88#oeuvre_page
[...]nous devons, en fait d’aventures, jamais n’avoir d’échec ni prêter à rire de nous. En Angleterre dernièrement nous avons échoué, nous avons été battus, et c’est une tache à notre réputation.

– Par qui donc avons-nous été battus ? demanda Porthos.

– Par Mordaunt.

– Oui, mais nous avons noyé M. Mordaunt.

– Je le sais bien, et cela nous réhabilitera un peu dans l’esprit de la postérité, si toutefois la postérité s’occupe de nous. Mais écoutez-moi, Porthos ; quoique M. Mordaunt ne fût pas à mépriser, M. Mazarin me paraît bien autrement fort que M. Mordaunt, et nous ne le noierons pas aussi facilement.


However, on a quick check, the other 'interpolations' that I had noticed

do *not* seem to reflect changes between these two French editions... (though I note considerable changes to the punctuation in the case of the former!)

The 'missing' text in Athos' self-abnegation in Chapter 91 in Wikisource, however -- which removes so much of the import as to make it a puzzling statement -- looks to me very much like a typesetting error where somebody simply omitted an entire line :-p
– Monseigneur, dit Athos, je n’ai rien à demander pour moi et j’aurais trop à demander pour la France. Je me récuse donc et passe la parole à M. le chevalier d’Herblay.

(I should probably switch over to reading that version *sigh*
It's harder to navigate and involves scrolling text in a tiny frame, but it is easier to read due to the added paragraphing -- and apparently contains material missing from the other edition!)
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