Primarily, the interest in Dumas' romance of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" is as great, if not greater, with respect to the characters as it is with the scenes in which they lived and acted their strenuous parts. In addition, there is the profound satisfaction of knowing that the rollicking and gallant swashbuckler has come down to us from the pages of real life, as Dumas himself recounts in the preface to the Colman Lévy edition of the book. The statement of Dumas is explicit enough; there is no mistaking his words which open the preface: "Dans laquelle Il est établi que, malgré leurs noms en _os_ et en _is_, Les héros de l'histoire Que nous allons avoir l'honneur de raconter à nos lecteurs N'ont rien de mythologique." The contemporary facts which connect the real Comte d'Artagnan with romances are as follows: Charles de Batz de Castlemore, Comte d'Artagnan, received his title from the little village of Artagnan, near the Gascon town of Orthez in the present department of the Hautes-Pyrénées. He was born in 1623. Dumas, with an author's license, made his chief figure a dozen years older, for the real D'Artagnan was but five years old at the time of the siege of La Rochelle of which Dumas makes mention. On the whole, the romance is near enough to reality to form an ample endorsement of the author's verity. [Illustration: D'ARTAGNAN] The real D'Artagnan made his way to Paris, as did he of the romance. Here he met his fellow Béarnais, one M. de Treville, captain of the king's musketeers, and the illustrious individuals, _Armand de Sillegue d'Athos_, a Béarnais nobleman who died in 1645, and whose direct descendant, Colonel de Sillegue, commanded, according to the French army lists of a recent date, a regiment of French cavalry; _Henry d'Aramitz_, lay abbé of Oloron; and _Jean de Portu_, all of them probably neighbours in D'Artagnan's old home. D'Artagnan could not then have been at the siege of La Rochelle, but from the "Mémoires de M. d'Artagnan," of which Dumas writes in his preface, we learn of his feats at arms at Arras, Valenciennes, Douai, and Lille, all places where once and again Dumas placed the action of the novels. The real D'Artagnan died, sword in hand, "in the imminent deadly breach" at Maestricht, in 1673. He served, too, under Prince Rupert in the Civil War, and frequently visited England, where he had an _affaire_ with a certain Milady, which is again reminiscent of the pages of Dumas. This D'Artagnan in the flesh married Charlotte Anne de Chanlecy, and the last of his direct descendants died in Paris in the latter years of the eighteenth century, but collateral branches of the family appear still to exist in Gascony, and there was a certain Baron de Batz, a Béarnais, who made a daring attempt to save Marie Antoinette in 1793.