I had high hopes for this young musketeer wanna-be. I thought for sure, under the tutelage of his more experienced friends, d'Artagnan would become a first class hero. Not so much. Instead, what I've gotten the last three hundred pages or so is a Machiavellian character who is only growing in manipulative power and ability. After his mistress disappears with a suggestion of violence, he moves into the bed of a chambermaid to a powerful lady. Even as he professes his new love for Kitty, he is plotting his move into her employer's bed, ignoring the fact that Milady (as she's called) is a duplicitous servant of Cardinal Richelieu bent on using d'Artagnan for her own purposes. When Milady tries to kill him, he turns around and puts Kitty in danger by making her help him escape. All of these romantic machinations aside, d'Artagnan has also managed to gather secrets about each of the three musketeers which no one else knows. While he hasn't put them to any malicious use yet, he seems content to bide his time and use the information to his advantage when it suits him best. Forgetting expectations for a moment, none of this makes me particularly fond of Dumas' main character and I am fervently hoping this young Gascon prat gets his just deserts, or at least learns something virtuous from all this scheming.

As of this writing, I am sitting at chapter 40, with a third of the book to go. D'Artagnan is walking into what is surely a Cardinal trap and the four friends are set to go to war on the following day. There is certainly enough leg room for Dumas to redeem his characters' many moral failings, but it would seem like a drastic departure for him to do so. Throughout, he has persisted in excusing their behavior as part of their times, noting that it is different from his own. This smacks of a cop-out and doesn't hold much water for me as a reader. Nevertheless, I am committed to the book and it has, if nothing else, held my attention. Perhaps, with the beginning of war, the nobler virtues in these men will rise to the top and save us all, but I'm not going to expect too much.