SOURCE: "Some Additional Sources of Dumas's Les trois mousquetaires," in Modern Philology, Vol. XLII, No. 1, August, 1944, pp. 34-40.

In the following essay, Parker discusses a number of works that influenced Les trois mousquetaires, most notably the memoirs of the Comte de Brienne.

From the time of the publication of Les trois mousquetaires in 1844, when the author in his preface tried to throw his readers off the trail by his reference to the nonexistent folio manuscript No. 4772 or 4773 (he was uncertain which!), there has been a merry chase in tracking down the sources of Dumas's masterpiece. With the feigned naïveté of the ingenious literary plunderer that he was, he slyly admits having used the Mémoires de M. d'Artagnan.¹ And, indeed, out of the first volume of this work, the only one of the three that he seems to have consulted, Dumas² derived the account of D'Artagnan's departure...