The Three Musketeers

For our young man had a steed which was the observed of all observers. It was a Béarn pony, from twelve to fourteen years old, yellow in his hide, without a hair in his tail, but not without windgalls on his legs, which, though going with his head lower than his knees, rendering a martingale quite unnecessary, contrived nevertheless to perform his eight leagues a day.

D'Artagnan's rise + diamond-studs mission + Milady vendetta + La Rochelle siege braid two strong engines (court intrigue + personal revenge), so plot scores 87.

"Milady," faltered D'Artagnan, and fainted a second time. "Ah, it's all one," said the host; "I have lost two customers, but this one remains, of whom I am pretty certain for some days to come."

Four sharply differentiated leads plus Milady—one of fiction's great villainesses—and Richelieu/Tréville form a benchmark ensemble, so cast scores 92.

At length when they found they were likely to be really in want, they got together, as a last effort, eight or ten pistoles, with which Porthos went to the gaming table. Unfortunately he was in a bad vein; he lost all, together with twenty-five pistoles for which he had given his word.

Brisk episodic momentum with duels and reversals; La Rochelle war and Milady manhunt slow slightly but feuilleton drive rarely flags, so pace scores 85.

On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of Romance of the Rose was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it.

Witty, dialogue-forward, propulsive translation with crisp comic timing and clean action staging, so prose scores 83.

There were nobles, who made war against each other; there was the king, who made war against the cardinal; there was Spain, which made war against the king. Then, in addition to these concealed or public, secret or open wars, there were robbers, mendicants, Huguenots, wolves, and scoundrels, who made war upon everybody.

1620s France under Louis XIII/Richelieu—Paris streets, Tréville's antechamber, English crossings, La Rochelle siege—historical texture worn lightly but consistently, so world scores 86.

A young man—we can sketch his portrait at a dash. Imagine to yourself a Don Quixote of eighteen; a Don Quixote without his corselet, without his coat of mail, without his cuisses; a Don Quixote clothed in a woolen doublet, the blue color of which had faded into a nameless shade between lees of wine and a heavenly azure.

The Gascon on a ridiculous yellow horse arriving to conquer Paris, immediately quarrelling into three duels, is an irresistible comic-heroic opening, so hook scores 87.

D'Artagnan relates that on his first visit to M. de Tréville, captain of the king's Musketeers, he met in the antechamber three young men, serving in the illustrious corps into which he was soliciting the honor of being received, bearing the names of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.

Defined the swashbuckler and the 'band of brothers' adventure template; Milady elevates the villain from obstacle to psychological force, so innov scores 84.

M. Bonacieux, having left his house at seven o'clock in the evening to go to the Louvre, never appeared again in the Rue des Fossoyeurs; the opinion of those who seemed to be best informed was that he was fed and lodged in some royal castle, at the expense of his generous Eminence.

Milady executed, studs affair resolved, and a wry epilogue parceling out each character's fate—satisfying if elegiac and slightly deflating rather than triumphant, so ending scores 82.