If the train from Paris to Tours had not made its first stop at a station called Meung, I would not, perhaps, have noticed the rest of this story.
Tours (don’t sound the S) is in the valley of the River Loire. So this Meung had to be the Meung-sur-Loire where the reader of The Three Musketeers first encounters the young Gascon, D’Artagnan – and his enemies, Rochefort and Milady de Winter. The first Monday in April, 1625, is the precise occasion according to Alexandre Dumas, author of the Musketeers.
I did not go looking for the places Dumas says the Musketeers went. I don’t urge that on anybody.
Paris is crowded with serious people pursuing one itinerary or another, probably the best way to miss the whole point of the ancient city, by missing the accidental discovery around every corner.
Meung rang a bell so small that it reminded me how incomplete my familiarity with Dumas’ novel was. That prompted me to buy a copy of Les Trois Mousquetaires (two volumes, just € 3 from a bouquiniste by the Seine) when I got back to Paris from Tours and the Loire Valley.
Why not? I had been re-learning the language for several months for this holiday; I knew the story broadly: it would be a good way to continue with French after returning home.
Having started to read the book with the attention one pays in a language where one knows only half the words, I realized I had been living among and walking through the locations of much of the action.
One thing the world does not need is another “theme” for seeing Paris, another recommended walk, another guide book. If you spend some time in the 6th arondissement, you won’t need any such thing to relive the adventures of Aramis, Athos, Porthos, D’Artagnan, the King’s musketeers, the Cardinal’s guards, Anne of Austria … and that Bad Girl, Milady. You will be right amongst it.
In 1625, the throne was in the Louvre and Louis XIII was on it. The Musketeers used to get from their headquarters to the Louvre on foot, via the shortest route: the Rue de Seine and across the river by the Pont des Arts.
So did I. So can you. But it takes some energy to get from St Sulpice to the Louvre “in two bounds” as Dumas has D’Artagnan doing. It’s a gentle, but unrelenting, climb to the Place St Germain, whichever street you choose.
Paris changes all the time. There was a revolution in 1789; there was Bonaparte’s Empire, and there have been invasions right up to Hitler’s in the middle of the last century, and political upheaval even after WWII, for example in 1968, in the streets of the Left Bank.
Successive Presidents try to leave the mark of their seven-year term on the city, in the shape of – for example – art galleries (Pompidou); or a National Library (Chirac).
Yet changes barely register in a city so large and complex. Nearly everything in the 6th is still today where it was when Dumas published the book (as a serial) in 1844 – which is to say, where it was two centuries earlier, the period in which the stories are set.
Many readers in English-speaking countries think it’s a book for kids. It’s not.
William Barrow’s translation is a book for kids, kids of 100 years ago.
Barrow misses the great energy and spirit of the Musketeers. Worse, he’s coy about l’amour where Dumas is enthusiastic. The original is full of furious passion, furious actions, and furious speed.
D’Artagnan arrives in town, and finds a cheap flat in the Rue des Fossoyeurs (Ditch-diggers Street), near the Palace of Luxembourg and its wonderful Gardens.
Les Jardins du Luxembourg: something for everybody
On the day he arrives, he fights a duel outside the fence of the Luxembourg Gardens, on the Rue de Vaugirard. The part of the street where D’Artagnan is supposed to have lived has long since been renamed Rue Servandoni, after the Italian architect who revamped the church of Saint Sulpice. It’s still the same street as the original, though.
Dumas says that Athos lived a block east of D’Artagnan, in the rue Férou.
Captain Tréville, commander of the Musketeers, lived on the Vaugirard, at the point where the rue de Tournon and the rue de Conde converge.
Aramis, too, lived on the Vaugirard, allegedly at No. 25.
Porthos lived in apparent magnificence, in an apartment on the rue du Vieux-Colombier, but Dumas never crossed the threshold to show readers what, if anything, went on there. None of his comrades seem to have visited the apartment, either.
The Vaugirard is the longest street in Paris, but the heart of the Musketeers’ city is a small patch near the gates of the Palace of Luxembourg.
They were dashing chaps, and dash implies mobility. Early in the book Dumas tells us that the four lads were “always to be seen seeking each other, from the Luxembourg to the Place de Saint Sulpice, or from the Rue de Vieux-Colombier to the Luxembourg.”
That’s Barrow’s translation. What Dumas meant was that they ran all over the 6th like boys spoiling for a fight, or competing for feminine favours, mostly around Saint Sulpice and what is now the covered market of St Germain.
D’Artagnan must have led the way: Aramis, Athos and Porthos weren’t that young.
Near the Vaugirard – the side near the Latin quarter – is the rue
Monsieur Le Prince, where one finds the Crèmerie-Restaurant Polidor. It
opened its doors just a year after Les Trois Mousequetaires was
published.
“Just think!” I would say if I were writing an unnecessary guide book, complete with unnecessary punctuation marks to show excitement. “Just think! Dumas might have eaten here!”
Well, he didn’t.
André Gide liked it; the poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine ate there, and The Usual Suspects – James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway – are said to have eaten there. Me, too: it’s traditional and cheap, a rare combination in Paris.
James Joyce was an established writer in the 1920s, and Hemingway a dedicated, impecunious, newcomer. Hemingway could afford the Polidor, though; you probably can, too.
This is completely back-to-front for a guide (which is OK with me because I noticed the connection between these places and names only in retrospect).
Here’s something else back to front: when you want to get to the Jardins du Luxembourg, you will be told that the nearest Metro station is Odéon. That’s true, but the Odéon, where Georges-Jacques Danton made his name as an orator during the Revolution of 1789 with his famous dictum for the protection of the new republic:
De l’audace, et encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace
(Boldness!, And again boldness!, And forever boldness!)
is at the river end of the arondissement, and the Gardens at the opposite end.
Don’t give up: you won’t see gardens every day that were planted in 1625 and still flourish.
But, if you take the direct route from the Odéon, turning down the rue de Tournon – an extension of the Rue de Seine, but so wide is the Boulevard St Germain that the street has different names, one each side of the Boulevard – to the Gardens, you will by-pass D’Artagnan’s principal destination, the rue du Vieux-Colombier, where the Musketeers had their headquarters.
I don’t know which building it was. Neither would I spend my holiday trying to find out.
I have, however, noticed a building near the Carrefour de la Croix-Rouge (a rather crooked intersection) capable of holding the 50 to 60 musketeers Dumas says were required on a working day in 1625.
It houses now a detachment of gendarmes … and that positively invites speculation.
Dumas’ book describes the route the Musketeers took: it passes by what
are now the Café de Flore, the Brasserie Lipp, and the Café Les Deux Magots.
D’Artagnan must have crossed the square onto which they all look, the Place St Germain-des-près, and its austere church, the oldest church site in Paris (about 1,000 years old).
Go inside. When Mass is not being said, every string quartet in Paris queues up to take advantage of the acoustics. And most churches welcome them.
D’Artagnan had to negotiate the Boulevard St Germain, but not today’s multiple lanes of one-way traffic. To emulate D’Artagnan’s “two bounds” today would take one into heart attack territory.
So don't race across the road. Just enjoy yourself, waiting for
D’Artagnan to cross it once more – at his customary gallop – in your
imagination.
From the Brasserie Lipp, looking across the Place St Germain-des-près to the church
It is all imagination, isn’t it? D’Artagnan only ever existed in a book. Is it worth the effort of chasing down this location or that?
Fiction, Dumas understood well, is truer than fact.
The Paris in which real people live may change a bit from century to century, but what occurs in the pages of Dumas’ novel will never alter.
D’Artagnan must continue to pass by the Deux Magots, because Dumas didn’t give him any other route from the Musketeer HQ to the Louvre. He must always be charging around the Place St Sulpice, and the gorgeous Constance Bonacieux must always be running along the Rue Monsieur Le Prince with him towards the Vaugirard and the Luxembourg gardens.
You can probably, on seeing a woman pass the window of the Polidor - while you enjoy the house specialty, of all things, a Madras curry, allow yourself to imagine how Constance Bonacieux looked as she passed the same way in 1625. “Chic” would be my guess.
Constance, according to Dumas, was the closest confidante of the Queen, Anne of Austria. She was also the Queen’s seamstress, so a certain style would have applied. Fashion has been an industry in Paris for a VERY long time.
It's true that Odéon is the nearest Metro. But Odéon is near the river end of the arondissement; the Luxembourg Gardens – which, in real life, were indeed completed in 1625, funded by the Medici family - are at the opposite end.
Among their many uses, they house the French Senate.
At another point, they provide a children’s playground, the Poussin Vert, the only place I have visited where adults pay half-price and children the full tariff.
Walk down the rue Monsieur Le Prince – roughly a border between the 6th and the Latin Quarter – and you will get to the gate of the Gardens on rue Vaugirard quickly.
“Quickly” is what Parisians always desire, but it’s not what your immersion in Paris is about.
Anyway, that route will steer the visitor away from the Musketeers’ headquarters near the crossroads called the Carrefour de la Croix-Rouge.
Around the corner from the Vieux-Colombier is St Sulpice, second in size among Parisian churches only to Notre Dame. And, yes, Dan Brown mentions it prominently in a book that prompted hordes of people to do precisely what I would not recommend - go around Paris ticking things off a list.
In 1625, the throne was in the Louvre and Louis XIII was on it. The Musketeers used to get from their headquarters to the Louvre on foot, via the Rue de Tournon, the Rue de Seine, and across the Pont des Arts.
So did I. So can you.
The Musketeers' route crosses the Place St-Germain-des-près which includes today the Café de Flore, Brasserie Lipp, and Les Deux Magots.
D’Artagnan must have crossed the square onto which they all look, the Place St Germain-des-près and its austere church - the most ancient church presence in a strongly Catholic city, the patrons of which are St Denis and Ste Genevieve, as every Parisian knows.
Dumas, in the book, gives D’Artagnan no other way to get to the Louvre:in 1625 the Royal Palace; today perhaps the world’s most famous museum.
Leave racing across the road to the kids, the cyclists, the bikies, and the skateboarders. They are protected species in Paris ... presumably because they are not competing for the last two parking spaces in the city.
Just enjoy yourself waiting for D’Artagnan to cross the square once more, at his customary gallop, in your imagination.
It’s all imagination, isn’t it? D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers existed only in the imagination of Alexandre Dumas and, later, in a book.
Dumas understood that fiction is more powerful than fact. The physical Paris may change, a little, from century to century, but what occurs in the pages of Dumas’ novel will never change.
D’Artagnan must continue to pass by the Deux Magots because Dumas didn’t give him any other route from the Vieux-Colombier to the Louvre.
His destiny is always to charge around the Place St Sulpice, the Vieux-Colombier, the Vaugirard … and the gorgeous Constance Bonacieux must always be running down the rue Monsieur Le Prince with him.
You will see women walk by on that narrow street - the first in Paris to have a gutter! - and you must try to imagine how Constance looked when she passed that way in 1625: as I mentioned earlier, chic.
One should probably not spend time taking photos of cafe regulars. You may host some terrific slide nights, and the folks back home in Elk City or Huddersfield, Kamloops or Corpus Christi, will go “ooh” and “ahh” – but you won’t be in the picture. It will be filled by other people.
Start living la vie parisienne by just sitting outside a café. This, many visitors say, shows how the French know how to enjoy life.
But are they French? You, from wherever you have come, or I, who am Australian, could be in a photo destined for “ooh-ing” and “ahh-ing” among people we have never met, in Bangalore or Zanzibar, Shanghai or Honolulu.
We can all enjoy la vie parisienne simply by relaxing outside a café; by taking the time to appreciate the sunshine, and the coffee, to taste a rich tablet of French chocolate, to bite into a superb macaron, or to tackle a whole box of beautifully presented patisseries.
Then you will be a central figure in someone else’s pictures, headed for Miami or Rio, where people who have never met you will be looking at an image of you, and describing you to their friends as a typically relaxed, free-living, Parisian.
Having sat outside the Deux Magots, the Brasserie Lipp, the Flore, you will always remember that, however briefly - or however many times, if you are lucky - you have been a part of la vie parisienne.
That is just one of the gifts Paris offers those willing to slow down and drink deeply of the richness of the complex and ancient city.
And, while you will always remember Paris, the Paris we know today has been created by millions who have lived there over centuries, and millions who visit every year ...
Once you have been part of it, Paris will still have room to remember you, too.
