The Countess of Charny

The Countess of Charny is the fourth and final part of the four-volume series of novels Memoirs of a Doctor by the successful French author Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), which also includes Joseph Balsamo , The Queen's Collar and Ange Pitou , the Dumas, starting with Joseph Balsamo , Published between 1846 and 1855 in the feature pages of the Paris newspaper La Presse .

About "The True Meaning of the Little Word END"

Admittedly, it would not have been missing much and La Comtesse de Charny would never have been written, because Dumas, who had not yet said goodbye to his readers, had written the word end under the last chapter of his Ange Pitou . Dumas explains the reason for this hasty conclusion to his loyal readers in the first chapter of the Countess von Charny “The true meaning of the little word end”.

The politicians, he reports, had introduced a new special tax under the pretext that the serial novels promoted moral decline, but in truth "out of envy, so that people no longer talk so much about us literati". This made the publication of the chapters almost unbearably expensive and one fine day Dumas received the following letter from his publisher:

Dear friend, I want 'Ange Pitou' to only get half a volume, not six volumes. Ten chapters and not a hundred! Set it up as you can! Prune if you don't want me to prune!

“And that's why, dear reader,” continues Dumas, “the word end was prematurely put under the last chapter, that's why 'Ange Pitou' should be strangled like Alexander I, although none of the actions that this novel sums up are brought to an end is. Reader, you know from my musketeers , who thought you were dead twice and yet saw you come back, you know that my heroes are not killed as easily as emperors! 'Ange Pitou' is dead, long live 'Ange Pitou'! He's only gone for a moment, but he's coming back, and I ask you not to consider my heroes really dead until you have in your hands an invitation signed by me to attend the funeral! "

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Paris 1789. It has been 20 years since Giuseppe Balsamo said in a cave on Thunder Mountain with his mason brothers what no one thought possible at the time:

“I ask for 20 years to destroy one world and build a new one. 20 years, not to destroy a monarch, but to destroy the whole monarchy. In 20 years, that's 20 seconds of eternity, we'll see each other again. Then judge for yourself. "

It's been 20 years. And now the revolution has truly made its entry into France, in whose confusion, against the fantastic but blood-red horizon of historical reality, the fate of the heroes from the memoirs of a doctor will be completed.

Olivier de Charny : The young naval officer from the Queen's collar has become much calmer and more melancholy in the past 4 years since the collar affair. He is still in the Queen's favor, but now that he has got to know her domineering character better and better, especially towards his wife Andrée, she is much less desirable than before. Over the years his love for his own wife arises and grows, but nothing changes in his reverence for the queen, the king and the monarchy. On October 5th, 1789 , when the Parisian women, accompanied by the lowest servants, storm the Palace of Versailles , his brother Georges is killed while defending Marie Antoinette . Charny tries to approach Andrée in the vague hope that she will not be indifferent to him, but she rejects him because, after the shame of her youth, she does not believe she is worthy of the love of a decent man. Convinced that his wife hates him, Olivier decides to stay away from her and leaves Paris on the king's orders to organize the escape of the royal family. Despite the distance, his love for Andrée grows stronger and he distances himself further from the queen, who still adores him passionately and desperately tries to tell the two spouses apart. On June 22, 1791 , when the king decided to flee, Olivier's younger brother Isidore was killed during a scuffle on a bridge in Varennes. Olivier himself follows the royal family on their way back to Paris. Blind with jealousy and despair, Marie Antoinette orders Gilbert to reveal Charny Andrée's secret, but this only confirms the Count's love for his wife and he falls at her feet and asks for forgiveness. Your happiness is perfect but short-lived. On August 10, 1792 , Olivier dies with Andrée's name on his lips in a last-ditch attempt to save his king and queen. The efforts of the three brothers for the antiquated and decadent royal rule wiped out the entire line of the Charny and although they lost Louis XVI time and again by giving up their lives . and rescued his family, they could not keep them from the guillotine .

Andrée de Taverney, Countess of Charny : Andrée, who has been in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the Versailles festivities for two decades and, despite Marie Antoinette's favor, was always alone and unhappy, finds three in this last part of the doctor's memoir dedicated to her Things she was looking for all her life:

Their prodigal son Sébastien , who grew up as the milk brother of Ange Pitous in Villers-Cotterêts and was then sent by his father Gilbert to a college in Paris, where he hallucinates more and more of a white figure in which he is finally the mother, to whom he meets by chance in the Louvre , realizes.

The affection and love of Charny, who, while his passion for the jealous Marie Antoinette cools, discovers his true love in the wife, with whom he had until then nothing more than a ring and a forced promise before God and man. Andrée has a lover for the first time in her life, and a confidante for the first time since Philip's departure.

during the September murders ( September 2 to 6, 1792), the death more sought than ever since Olivier's death. Gilbert, whose love over class barriers previously predetermined and be their undoing away 20 years kept her body in front of the mutilation, after having tried in vain to save her life.

Nicole (Mademoiselle Olivia) and Beausire : The two comical figures of the doctor's memoir in the repertoire of the tragic have sunk into the deepest abysses. And at this point, too, Cagliostro promises them to get them and their little - completely failed - son out of the gutter, if they would do him some service. Through Beausire's intervention, Favras finds death. But even now the two cannot hold the money together. Beausire is caught on August 10th trying to steal jewelry from the royal apartments and is supposed to be flogged and branded for it. Through his cry, whispered by Cagliostro: “Long live the King! Long live the Prussians! Down with the Republic! ”In a public square, before the execution of the sentence, the September murders are triggered. The two disappear into the oblivion of history in order not to reappear.
the historical personalities : Marie Antoinette and her husband, the Princess of Lamballe , Jean-Paul Marat , Mirabeau , Lafayette and all the other actors and followers of the French Revolution have accompanied the reader within more or less volumes. He says goodbye to the truly pitiful monarch on the Place de la Concorde , to the desperate Marie Antoinette in the Temple , after having previously witnessed the cruel end of the princess during the September atrocities. The fate of the humanized and brought to life portraits of the famous people in this novel is historically correct.
Gilbert, Balsamo and Billot : After the king's trial and execution, Giuseppe Balsamo, alias Cagliostro, sees that the revolution has taken on a life of its own, that he is no longer able to master the spirits he has called. He realizes that she is beginning to slide into a radical terror regime, begins to eat her own children, as Danton later put it. Gilbert and Billot, the latter seriously wounded during the massacre on the Marsfeld in 1791 and only recovered through the medical help of the former, as members of the National Convention voted very differently on the fate of Ludwig. Balsamo reveals his concerns to both of them and predicts that it will be a long time before France will successfully establish a republic. The three decide to leave France for America. Sébastien also accompanies his father to the New World.

Katherine mourns her mother
Ange Pitou and Catherine : Ange Pitou is there when Olivier de Charny dies. He tells Catherine about the death of her Isidore. The young woman is desperate. Her father is far away in Paris, her old mother blesses the temporal, she clearly feels that she is expecting a child, albeit without a father. To make matters worse, the castle and the Charny estates and also the Billot'sche Hof are for sale. The only one left for her is the good-natured Ange, who gives her consolation, but also doesn't know how to help her. As always - he reminds a little of Eichendorff's good-for- nothing - chance comes to his aid: his old aunt dies. It seems that she starved to death, which no one, least of all Pitou, can explain, because she always earned enough money renting church chairs and cushions. Back from the funeral, he invites Catherine to his aunt's house. It's cold, there is no wood. Ange feels compelled to throw the old woman's old armchair into the fire. Lo and behold, he discovers that the lining of the chair is full of flashing louis d' or: louis d'or, gold coins, the only currency that is still worth something, even very much , after the assignats were devalued in France. Ange then bought her father's farm for Catherine and Charny Castle for her son, little Isidore. The two marry of course and if they haven't died ...