Probably there is no better example of the novel of adventure than “The Three Guardsmen,” by Alexandre Dumas. The author claims in his preface a historical origin for his novel. However that may be, the plot seems plausible in spite of its extravagances, and never was there a book in which men conspired and slaughtered each other more merrily, nor in which the mere strenuous life without moral accessories has found a more perfect embodiment.
The book in its way is a masterpiece. The style is simple and luminous to such a degree as would hardly be possible in any other language than that in which it was written. No work in the world is more easy to read, to understand, or to translate. The old French dictum that no words should be used in literature which can not be understood upon the market-place here attains its highest realization.
As for the characters, they are of the simplest type. The dashing devil-may-care soldier and adventurer, the deep drinker, the heavy player, the man who with equal gayety defies the bullets of the enemy and the commonest precepts of morality, has here his apotheosis. Perhaps thehero of the book even more than D’Artagnan himself is Athos, the chief of the three musketeers, who, having made an unfortunate marriage in his youth, has forsaken his name and station and embarked upon a life of mere adventure. We love him and admire him, and yet it is hard to tell why upon any logical or ethical principles we should do either. Yet when he gets very drunk, or when he hangs his wife because he finds that she bears upon her shoulder the mark of a criminal conviction, we feel that he has done in each case exactly the right thing. Generally a novelist seeks by contrasting his hero with more commonplace characters to set him off in relief, but in this novel almost everybody is a hero, and all are equally and superlatively great and admirable, except perhaps the poor woman who has been hanged and comes to life again and engages in divers diabolical plots against the rest of the world.