Re-read for Great Books – I had last read the whole thing in 2010. I enjoyed it again, but wow it’s long, and the plot is often very drawn out. I read it in French. Most of the group used the Robin Buss translation and liked it; the few stuck with the Chapman and Hall did not. I attempted my own versions of the quotes in English, and then refined them in collaboration with Jonathan, whose skills in writing, editing, and French helped tremendously.
I perked up when the Count offers Franz and Albert an infallible insomnia remedy, but it’s a ball of opium mixed with hashish… I was hoping for a mental exercise!
Such an adolescent fantasy, even libertarian: “mais je ne m’occupe jamais de mon prochain, mais je n’essaye jamais de protéger la société qui ne me protège pas, et, je dirai même plus, qui généralement ne s’occupe de moi que pour me nuire” and “tout ce qui m’entoure est libre de me quitter, et en me quittant n’aura plus besoin de moi ni de personne; voilà peut-être pourquoi on ne me quitte pas.” [“But I never worry about my neighbor; and I never try to protect society, which doesn’t protect me, and in fact generally takes notice of me only to cause me harm” and “everyone around me is free to leave me, and upon leaving me will have no further need for me or anyone else; perhaps that is why no one leaves me.”]
In this book I learned
I’m on the fence about which words I looked up to record… maybe not food (“clovisse” for example), but more general ones. The Shmoop list of references is pretty good.
- séides – henchmen
- ais – board
- alguazil – officer of the law
- “on eu maille à partir” – disagreement, a bone to pick
- carnifex – a kind of raptor
- optical telegraph – before getting to the chapter which explains the method, I wondered why it was said that a telegraph message would take “only three or four hours”
- Quote I had difficulty tracing: Borgia “comparait l’Italie à un artichaut et qui la mangeait feuille à feullie” (Borgia “compared Italy to an artichoke and would eat it leaf by leaf”). I found attributions to Metternich (unsourced), to “a duke of the House of Savoy” or “Victor Amadeus” in an 1895 history of Italy, and King Charles Emmanuel (also of Savoy). Nothing on quoteinvestigator so maybe I’ll write in!
- Le Petit Manteau Bleu – Edme Champion, a French philanthropist; mentioned alongside “M. Appert“
- Finally looked up Lord “Ruthwen” (sic in CdMC), and added “The Vampyre” to my TBR
- pantalon a pied – apparently might be like leggings that go under the foot, or like footsie pajamas!
- Edme Castaing
- Karl Moor – character from The Robbers
- Charles Odry who played Marécot in L’Ours et le Pacha
- Karrick – what is it? “du macaroni à Naples, de la polenta à Milan, de l’olla podrida à Valence, du pilau à Constantinople, du karrick dans l’Inde, et des nids d’hirondelle dans la Chine.” Must be curry or karri?
- Reference to “les fameux massacres du Midi” – when I look up the names cited, I find Dumas’ own book
- aqua-tofana (poison)
- Desrues
- gouttes d’Hoffmann – tincture of gold
- agio – premium on currency exchange
- agiotage – manipulating stock prices
- Five feet six inches is considered tall for an officer!
- vetu d’elbeuf – broadcloth, specifically for soldiers’ uniforms?
- mon Pactole – the Pactolus river, where King Midas bathed
- coup de Jarnac – a sneak attack (French reference)
- Brunehaut et Frédégonde – warring queens
- crier haro – vociforously calling out(?)
- cauteleux – sly?
- Sainte-Vehme – tribunals in the late middle ages
- Pixérécourt – playwright of melodramas
- morra – an ancient game
- paul – pontifical coin
- tertre – hillock
- plat canaille – rustic comfort food?
Brand names and cultural references
- Breuget watch
- Wine: Monte-Pulciano, lachryma christi
- Painters: Léopold Robert, Schnetz, Dupré, Delacroix, Boulanger, Diaz (?), Decamps, Giraud, Muller (?), Dauzats, Fattore, l’Albane, Hobbema, Paul Potter, Mieris, Gerard Dow, Raphael, Van Dyck, Zurbaran, Murillo
- Tailors: Blin, Humann, Véronique
- Martial arts instructors: Grisier, Cooks et Charles Leboucher
- Carriage maker Keller, horse seller Drake
- French archetypal villain Robert Macaire
- “le goddam de Figaro” – representing English speech
A long paragraph on paintings
Ce salon était tapissé des œuvres des peintres modernes; il y avait des paysages de Dupré, aux longs roseaux, aux arbres élancés, aux vaches beuglantes et aux ciels merveilleux; il y avait des cavaliers arabes de Delacroix, aux longs burnous blancs, aux ceintures brillantes, aux armes damasquinées, dont les chevaux se mordaient avec rage, tandis que les hommes se déchiraient avec des masses de fer, des aquarelles de Boulanger, représentant tout Notre-Dame de Paris avec cette vigueur qui fait du peintre l’émule du poète; il y avait des toiles de Diaz, qui fait les fleurs plus belles que les fleurs, le soleil plus brillant que le soleil; des dessins de Decamps, aussi colorés que ceux de Salvator Rosa, mais plus poétiques; des pastels de Giraud et de Muller, représentant des enfants aux têtes d’ange, des femmes aux traits de vierge; des croquis arrachés à l’album du voyage d’Orient de Dauzats, qui avaient été crayonnés en quelques secondes sur la selle d’un chameau ou sous le dôme d’une mosquée…
[This salon was covered in works by modern painters: there were landscapes by Dupré, with long reeds, tall slender trees, lowing cows, and marvelous skies; there were Arab riders by Delacroix, with long white burnouses, shiny belts, and damascened weapons, whose horses gnashed their teeth in rage while the men tore at each other with iron implements; watercolors by Boulanger, depicting all of Notre-Dame de Paris with the vigor of a painter emulating a poet; there were canvases by Diaz, who makes flowers more beautiful than flowers, the sun more brilliant than the sun; drawings by Decamps, as colorful as Salvator Rosa’s, but more poetic; pastels by Girard and by Muller, showing children with the heads of angels, women with the features of virgins; sketches, ripped from Dauzat’s album of Oriental voyages, that had been scrawled in a few seconds from the saddle of a camel or under the dome of a mosque…]
Short quotes
- Caderousse: “J’ai toujours eu plus peur d’une plume, d’une bouteille d’encre et d’une feuille de papier que d’une épée ou d’un pistolet.” [I’ve always been more frightened of a quill, a bottle of ink, and a piece of paper than a sword or a pistol.]
- “l’air satisfait d’un homme qui croit avoir eu une idée lorsqu’il a commenté l’idée d’un autre” [the satisfied air of a man who thinks he’s had an idea when he’s commented on someone else’s]. (The Gutenberg edition I was using had “commencé” which I was confused by but rolled with. When Jonathan was reviewing these translations with me, we puzzled over it and he had the brainwave that it was a one-letter typo. Confirmed with a different French edition!)
- “‘En effet,’ dit l’inspecteur avec la naïveté de la corruption, ‘s’il eût été réellement riche, il ne serait pas en prison.'” [“Indeed,” said the inspector with the naiveté of the corrupt, “if he had really been rich, he wouldn’t be in prison.”]
- “ce coin de sa prison où l’ange de la mort pouvait poser son pied silencieux” [the corner of his prison where the angel of death might silently step]
- “Les plaintes qu’on met en commun sont presque des prières; des prières qu’on fait à deux sont presque des actions de grâces.” [Shared plaints are almost prayers; prayers made with another are almost thanksgivings.]
- “ce métier patient et sublime du prisonnier, qui de rien sait faire quelque chose” [the patient and magnificent work of the prisoner, who knows how to make something from nothing] Like “making a way out of no way”!
- The last chapter of the first volume ends with a great sentence that has always stuck with me: “La mer est le cimetière du château d’If.” [The sea is the cemetery of the Château d’If.]
- “le mistral, l’un des trois fléaux de la Provence; les deux autres, comme on sait ou comme on ne sait pas, étant la Durance et le Parlement.” [the mistral wind, one of the three scourges of Provence; the other two, as you may or may not know, are the Durance [river] and the Parlement [court].]
- “cette impertinence particulière aux cochers de fiacre retenus et aux aubergistes au complet” [the distinctive impertinence of coachmen whose cabs are spoken for and innkeepers whose rooms are full]
- “Dans tous les pays où l’indépendance est substituée à la liberté, le premier besoin qu’éprouve tout cœur fort, toute organisation puissante, est celui d’une arme qui assure en même temps l’attaque et la défense, et qui faisant celui qui la porte terrible, le fait souvent redouté.” [In all countries where independence is substituted for freedom, the primary need of any brave soul or powerful organization is for a weapon that can serve for both attack and defense, and which by making its owner redoubtable, can often make them dreaded.]
- “la cuisine italienne, c’est-à-dire l’une des plus mauvaises cuisines du monde” [Italian cuisine, that is to say one of the worst in the world] – WTF?
- “Les houppes de votre palais ne sont pas encore faites à la sublimité de la substance qu’elles dégustent. Dites-moi: est-ce que dès la première fois vous avez aimé les huîtres, le thé, le porter, les truffes, toutes choses que vous avez adorées par la suite?” [Your tastebuds are not yet adjusted to the sublimity of the substance they savor. Tell me: did you initially love oysters, tea, porter, truffles, all of which you subsequently adored?]
- To Danglars: “tout en conservant l’habitude de vous faire appeler baron, vous avez perdu celle d’appeler les autres, comte” [though you’ve kept the habit of being called Baron, you’ve lost that of calling others Count]
- “Je n’ai que deux adversaires; je ne dirai pas deux vainqueurs, car avec la persistance je les soumets: c’est la distance et le temps.” [I have only two adversaries; I will not say two conquerors, because with persistence I subdue them: they are distance and time.]
- “[les domestiques] du Théâtre-Français, qui justement parce qu’ils n’ont qu’un mot à dire, viennent toujours le dire sur la rampe.” [The servants in the Théâtre-Français, who precisely because they have only a single word to say, always come downstage to say it.]
- “mon père avait cela de terrible en lui, qu’il n’a jamais combattu pour les utopies irréalisables, mais pour les choses possibles, et qu’il a appliqué à la réussite de ces choses possibles ces terribles théories de la Montagne, qui ne reculaient devant aucun moyen” [my father has a dreadful trait, in that he has never fought for unrealizable utopias, but only for things that are possible, and to bring them about he has used The Mountain‘s dreadful theories, which stop at nothing]
- “j’en suis arrivé à n’appeler malheur que les choses irréparables” [I have come to describe as misfortune only that which cannot be altered]
- Laurence Sterne: “Conscience, que me veux-tu?” [Conscience, what would you have me do?]
- “la douleur est comme la vie … il y a toujours quelque chose d’inconnu au-delà” [suffering is like life… there is always something unknown beyond it]
- “le vieux patricien … semblait un seigneur parfait toutes les fois qu’il ne parlait point et ne faisait point d’arithmétique” [the old patrician seemed like a perfect nobleman whenever he refrained from speaking and did no arithmetic]
Longer quote
J’ai obtenu avec un banquier, mon confrère, la concession d’un chemin de fer, seule industrie qui de nos jours présente ces chances fabuleuses de succès immédiat qu’autrefois Law appliqua pour les bons Parisiens, ces éternels badauds de la spéculation, à un Mississippi fantastique. Par mon calcul on doit posséder un millionième de rail comme on possédait autrefois un arpent de terre en friche sur les bords de l’Ohio.
[I’ve obtained, with a fellow banker, the rights to a railroad, the only industry that currently has the fabulous possibility for immediate success that Law, speaking to the good Parisians – always an enthusiastic audience for an investment frenzy – once ascribed to a fantastical Mississippi. By my calculations one should own a thousandth of a railroad in the same way one used to own an acre of fallow land on the shores of the Ohio.]