Seduction and Romance Theme Analysis

Unfortunately, Porthos knew no more about Athos’s life than what hearsay told him. It was said that he had suffered great afflictions in his love affairs and that a monstrous betrayal had poisoned his life forever. What that betrayal had been, no one knew.

He was thinking about Madame Bonacieux. For an apprentice musketeer, she was almost an amorous ideal: besides being young, pretty, and mysterious, she knew nearly all the secrets of the court, which gave her face a charming look of gravity, and she was suspected of not being insensitive to masculine attentions, which is an irresistible attraction for young men with little experience in love. Furthermore, d’Artagnan had rescued her from the demons who wanted to search her and mistreat her, and this had given her one of those feelings of gratitude that can easily develop into something more tender.

Yes, but you know why I’m seeing you, Duke: I’m seeing you out of pity; I’m seeing you because you’ve stubbornly insisted on remaining in a city where you’re risking your life and making me risk my honor; I’m seeing you to tell you that everything separates us: the depths of the sea, the enmity of kingdoms, the sanctity of vows. It’s sacrilegious to struggle against all those things. And finally, I’m seeing you to tell you that we must never see each other again.

But now he suddenly realized the advantages he could gain from the love that Kitty had candidly confessed to him: he would be able to intercept letters addressed to Count de Wardes, get useful information from Kitty, and have access at any time to her bedroom, which adjoined Milady’s. The treacherous young man was already planning to sacrifice Kitty in order to make Milady give in to him, willingly or unwillingly.

The cardinal, as is well known, had been in love with the queen. We cannot say whether his love had a simple political goal or whether it was one of the deep passions that Anne of Austria aroused in those around her, but in any case we know that the duke of Buckingham had won out over him before the beginning of this story and that in later circumstances […] the duke had outwitted him.

“Look at this woman,” said de Winter. “She’s young and beautiful, and she has every kind of charm imaginable; yet she’s a monster who, at the age of twenty-five, has already committed as many crimes as you’ll find in the records of our law courts for a year. Her body speaks in her favor, her beauty lures her victims, and I must say in all fairness that her body pays what she’s promised. She’ll try to seduce you, she may even try to kill you.”