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 say 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, by missing the accidental discovery around every corner, the intense variety of the ancient city.
But Meung rang a bell so small that it reminded me how incomplete was my familiarity with Dumas’ novel. 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. 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, 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: via the Rue de Seine and across the river by the Pont des Arts.
So did I. So can you. But it takes a bit of energy to get from St Sulpice to the Louvre “in two bounds” as Dumas has D’Artagnan doing.
Paris changes all the time. There was a revolution in 1789; there was Bonaparrte’s Empire , and there have been invasions right up to Hitler’s in the middle of the last century.
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 such a big and old city never changes completely.
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 where 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. That’s how long it’s been in print in the Everyman series. 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, near the Palace of Luxembourg and its wonderful Gardens.
He fights one of his duels just outside the fence of the Luxembourg, on the Rue de Vaugirard). The bit of the street where D’Artagnan lived has been renamed Rue Servandoni, after the architect who revamped the church of Saint Sulpice.
It’s still the same street as the original, though.
Athos lived a block east of D’Artagnan, in the rue Férou.
Captain Treville, commander of the Musketeers, lived on the Vaugirard, where the rue de Tournon and the rue de Conde converge on it.
Aramis, too, lived on the Vaugirard, allegedly at No. 25.
Porthos lived in an apparently magnificent 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 Musketeer 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 stretch near the Luxembourg Palace.
They were dashing chaps, though, 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, but mostly down around Saint Sulpice, the Carrefour de l’Odéon, and what is now the covered market of St Germain.
Near the Vaugirard – towards the Panthéon – 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. But Andre Gide liked it, 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, and Hemingway a dedicated, sometimes impecunious, newcomer – so Hemingway could afford it.
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) but when you want to get to the Luxembourg. You will be told that the nearest Métro station is Odéon.
That’s true, but the Odéon, where Georges-Jacques Danton made his name as an orator during the Revolution, is at the river end of the arondissement, and the Gardens are at the Vaugirard. Don’t give up: there’s nothing like gardens planted in 1625. But if you take that route you will have passed D’Artagnan’s principal destination, the rue de 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. But I saw a building near the Carrefour de la Croix-Rouge capable of holding the 50 to 60 musketeers Dumas says were there on a working day in 1625; it now houses a detachment of gendarmes.
Dumas’ story describes the route the Musketeers took: it passes by 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.
D’Artagnan didn’t have to negotiate the Boulevard St Germain, about eight lanes of one-way traffic. To emulate D’Artagnan’s two bounds today would take one into heart attack territory.
So leave racing across the road to the kids and just enjoy yourself, waiting for D’Artagnan to cross it once more -- at his customary gallop – in your imagination.
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? Outside the book, the characters never existed.
An outstanding point about fiction, which Dumas understood well, is that it is truer than fact.
The physical Paris, the one 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 Vieux-Colombier (Musketeer HQ) to the Louvre.
He must always be charging around the Place St Sulpice, and the gorgeous Constance Bonacieux must always be running down the Rue Monsieur Le Prince with him. You can probably see her pass the window of the Crèmerie-Restaurant Polidor while you enjoy the house specialty – of all things, a curry.
“Just think!” I would say if I were writing an unnecessary guide book, complete with unnecessary punctuation marks to show excitement. “Just think! Dumas may have eaten here!”
Well, he didn’t, but the 20th century author Andre Gide liked it, and “The Usual Suspects” – Joyce and Hemingway – are alleged to have eaten at the 1840s establishment. Joyce was an established writer, and Hemingway a dedicated, impecunious, newcomer when they lived in Paris, but the Polidor is traditional and cheap, a rare combination in Paris, so Hemingway could afford it.
This is a completely back-to-front guide to Paris, but remember that I noticed the connection between the book and reality only in retrospect.
When you try to find the Luxembourg, you will be told that the nearest metro is Odéon (back with the statue of Danton, and his famous list of requirements for defending the new republic:
“De l’audace; et encore de l’audace; et toujours de l’audace!”
(Boldness, and again boldness, and forever boldness).
Your little difficulty is that the Odéon is at the river end of the 6th, the gardens at the opposite end. If you start at the Odéon, and continue walking to Rue Vaugirard (the longest street in Paris) and the Gardens, you will have passed the headquarters of the Musketeers, on the rue de Vieux-Colombier.
I don’t know which building it was. Neither would I spend my holiday trying to find out. But there is a building, near the Carrefour de la Croix-Rouge capable of housing the 50 to 60 musketeers Dumas says were there on a working day in 1625; it now houses a detachment of gendarmes.
Around the corner from the Vieux-Colombier is St Sulpice, second in size among Paris churches only to Notre Dame. It has two significant paintings by Eugène Delacroix, whose works are more commonly sought at the Louvre.
And, yes, Dan Brown mentions it prominently in a book that prompted hordes of people to do precisely what I would not recommend, go ticking things off their list: the gnomon, the rose line, the big S and the big P in the stained glass, and one heck of an altar.
In 1625, the throne ws 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 Seine and across the Pont des Arts.
So did I. So can you. But it takes a bit of energy to get from St Sulpice to the Louvre “in two bounds” as Dumas has D’Artagnan doing.
He didn’t have to negotiate the Boulevard St Germain itself, about eight lanes of one-way traffic – I say “about” because Parisian traffic is undisciplined – that just didn’t exist in 1625. To emulate D’Artagnan’s “two bounds” would take you into heart attack territory.
Dumas’ story describes the route the Musketeers took.
It passes by Café de Flore, Brasserie Lipp (opposite the Flore), and the Café Les Deux Magots; D’Artagnan must have crossed the square onto which they all look today, the Place St Germain-des-pres, and its austere church, the oldest church presence in the city.
So leave racing across the road to the kids, the cyclists, the bikies and the skateboarders, and just enjoy yourself waiting for D’Artagnan to cross it once more – at his customary gallop – in your imagination.
It’s all imagination, isn’t it? D’Artagnan and the three musketeers only ever existed in a book.
Is it worth the effort of chasing down this location or that? Outside the book, the characters never existed.
An outstanding point of fiction is that it is truer than fact. The physical Paris may change, a bit, 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-Colmbier to the Louvre.
His destiny is always to charge around the Place St Sulpice, and the gorgeous Constance Bonacieux must always be running down the rue Monsieur Le Prince with him.
You can probably see her pass the window of the Polidor while you enjoy the house specialty – of all things, a curry.
Central to the Musketeers are the schemes hatched by Cardinal Armand du Plessis de Richelieu – in reality a diplomatic genius but, in Dumas, a villain – and his accomplices, Rochefort and Milady de Winter, who were both at Meung that first Monday in April, 1625.
This is hardly surprising, D’Artagnan was traveling to Paris from Tarbes, Milady from Tours. The easy way to travel in the 17th century was to follow the river valleys, because they are flat. Meung was an intersection of such paths, and still is.
While most tourists regard Tours as the place to catch a minibus and visit the fantastic chateaux of the Loire Valley – it’s well worth it, too – its old town is largely intact, charming, and invigorated by the 30,000 students of the Francois Rabelais University on the banks of the Loire.
It is yet another place you can imagine yourself seeing Dumas’ characters. Any of the nearby chateaux can create a magical atmosphere: Chenonceaux, Chambord and - if you insist on pursuing Dan Brown’s characters - Amboise, where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last three years on earth.
For me, though, the outstanding feature of France is the energy concentrated in in that narrow band of the 6th arondissement, from the Louvre to the statue of Georges-Jacques Danton – the dominant speaker of the Revolution, outside the Odéon metro, and on to the Luxembourg Gardens.
Back in reality, they were indeed being completed in 1625, and remain magnificent. There’s even a playground for children, the Poussin Vert: the only place I have visited where adults are charged half-price, and kids the full measure.
Back in reality, the gardens were indeed being completed in 1625, and remain magnificent. There’s even a playground for children – the Poussin Vert - the only place I have visited where adults are charged half-price, and kids the full measure.
And because this is Dumas’ creation, everyone runs, save the King and the Cardinal.
Everyone indulges in intrigue, political or amorous.
Everyone has a plot, or a mission, a green-lit project, every day.
Don’t bother chasing them.
Take your time, enjoy the Polidor, Café de Flore and the Brasserie Lipp, which disappointed me: I wanted my family to experience infamously rude Parisian waiters but the staff at the Lipp treated my pre-teen daughters like movie stars – specifically the Olsen twins who, indeed, were in the Café de Flore when I arrived with the key to the apartment we had rented on the other side of the Boulevard.
Enjoy the Luxembourg, the churches, the shopping on the Boulevard St Germain, the Rue de Rennes, the Rue du Four, and especially at Gerard Mulot’s patisserie and (in spring and autumn) chocolaterie on the Rue de Seine.
Take it easy.
If you sit in a café or brasserie in St Germain, and absorb what is around you, you can fill in the literary gaps as I did ...: later.
