113. HIS CONFIDANT SAINT-SIMON: Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755), ornament of the late-reign Court of Louis XIV and son of that Saint-Simon who was a favorite of Louis XIII (and who appears in The Red Sphinx) was a mediocre diplomat and soldier whose fame rests primarily on his voluminous memoirs, a primary source for anyone who studies the French Court in the early 18th century.
114. CANCER THAT WAS EVEN THEN GNAWING AT HER BREAST: Six years after this scene Queen Anne would die from breast cancer, though it’s not clear that it would already have been afflicting her in 1660.
115. FROM VAUX TO THE LOUVRE: A distance of almost forty miles, or sixty-some kilometers.
116. UNDER THE GOLDEN SUN OF THIS ROYAL LUXURY GROWS THE LUXURY OF INDIVIDUALS, THE SOURCE OF WEALTH FOR THE PEOPLE: What we now call the “trickle-down” theory of economics is an old idea and has a long history among the apologists of both monarchy and capitalism.
117. THE SAME TONE WHICH MARIE ANTOINETTE MUCH LATER SAID, “YOU TELL ME THAT MUCH?”: “Vous m’en direz tant!” An exclamation from Queen Marie Antoinette (1755–1793) in a similar situation, as attributed in the memoirs of Lucien Bonaparte.
118. VINCENNES: The Château de Vincennes, a grim 14th-century royal fortress just east of Paris, was used by the French monarchy as a refuge in wartime and as a prison for their enemies in times of peace.
119. THAT SUBLIME JEST FOR WHICH THE SAD GRUMBLER BOILEAU DARED TO CRITICIZE MOLIÈRE: Scapin is the roguish lackey of his reprobate master Don Juan in Molière’s 1665 play of that name; at the end of the play, once his master has been dragged down to Hell, Scapin complains that he never even got paid, a remark the critic Boileau considered vulgar.
120. FLORA BY TITIAN: A masterpiece of feminine beauty by the great Renaissance painter dating from around 1515. In the 17th century it was mainly passed around between various royal Hapsburg collectors, so putting it in Mazarin’s possession in 1660 is rather doubtful. Today it’s in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
121. THE HUNDRED SWISS: The Cent-Suisses, a company of mercenary soldiers from Switzerland, had served the French Crown as a ceremonial palace guard since established by Louis XI in 1471.
122. A TEN-GUN FLUTE: The flute (Dutch: fluyt) was a medium-sized and relatively nimble merchant ship of the 16th through 18th centuries; as Colbert alludes, they were often mounted with guns to fend off pirates and privateers.
123. SOMEONE SCRATCHED AT THE DOOR: At the French Court in the 17th century, it was considered proper etiquette for inferiors to scratch at the door to request admittance rather than knock.
124. BELLE-ÎLE-EN-MER: Belle-Île is a medium-sized island in the Atlantic about ten miles off the south coast of Brittany, renowned for its mild summer clime and the dramatic cliffs along its Côte sauvage.
BETWEEN TWO KINGS
Pegasus Books, Ltd.
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Between Two Kings, by Alexandre Dumas, Translated by Lawrence Ellsworth
Translation and Original Material Copyright 2021 © by Lawrence Schick
First Pegasus Books cloth edition July 2021
Interior design by Sabrina Plomitallo-González, Pegasus Books
Series design by Michael Fusco-Straub | mpluse.net
Front cover image: The Arrival of d’Artagnan by Alex de Andreis
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Between Two Kings Page 42
