Summary
D'Artagnan cannot catch up to the man from Meung, but he does learn that Aramis was recently confronted by the man from Meung after being mistaken for the Duke of Buckingham. Bonancieux is arrested by some guards who serve the Cardinal. D'Artagnan feigns respect for the Cardinal so that the guards do not become suspicious, but among themselves, the musketeers vow loyalty to each other, and declare themselves enemies of the Cardinal.
After Bonancieux's arrest, the Cardinal's guards stake out his apartment and question anyone who goes there, asking them if Madame Bonancieux has entrusted them with a package. Hiding in his own lodgings, D'Artagnan observes all of this. He has also been trying to find out information with the help of the musketeers and Treville, but has not uncovered anything. While eavesdropping, D'Artagnan hears the sounds of the Cardinal's guards struggling with a woman. After sending his servant to get his friends, D'Artagnan bursts into the apartment and chases off the guards.
The woman turns out to be the beautiful Madame Bonancieux, who has managed to escape from her kidnappers. D'Artagnan explains to her that her husband has been arrested and that the Cardinal is looking for her. It is not safe for them to stay at the apartment, so D'Artagnan takes her to Athos' apartment (Athos is not at home). Madame Bonancieux explains that her godfather is Monsieur Laporte, and she trusts him to tell her what is really going on at court. D'Artagnan goes and finds Laporte, who hurries to meet with his goddaughter. After a brief stop to see Treville, D'Artagnan starts to make his way home and is surprised by the sight of a woman bundled up in a cloak walking just ahead of him. He follows her to the home of Aramis, where he sees her knock on the window and exchange handkerchiefs with someone inside. More surprisingly, D'Artagnan catches sight of the woman's face and realizes it is Madame Bonancieux.
When he catches up to her, Madame refuses to tell D'Artagnan what she's up to, and he's too smitten to argue. D'Artagnan returns home to learn from Planchet that Athos has been arrested. He hurries off to Treville but finds instead Madame Bonancieux walking with a man whom D'Artagnan at first jealously thinks is Aramis. However, D'Artagnan realizes that Madame's companion is the Duke of Buckingham. D'Artagnan, eager to help Madame, accompanies the couple to the Louvre. He then meets up with Porthos and Aramis, without telling them what has transpired.
The narrative continues to follow Buckingham and Madame. She leaves him alone in a room, where he is quickly joined by Queen Anne. She tries to explain all the reasons their love is doomed, but the Duke refuses to listen. The couple realize they have both been having the same dream, in which the Duke lies bleeding from stab wounds. Before he will leave, the Duke insists on a token of her love, so Queen Anne gives him a golden casket. Madame Bonancieux returns and escorts him out discreetly.
Analysis
A common enemy can be one of the most powerful unifying forces. Although D'Artagnan got off to a bumpy start with the musketeers, the increasing threat of the Cardinal works to draw the four men together. By this point, D'Artagnan has also proved his courage and skill as a fighter. Since the three musketeers are themselves impulsive, once their feelings have shifted, they fully embrace D'Artagnan as one of their brotherhood. The deep and explicit bond between the friends reveals a system of values in which courage and loyalty are highly prized. Especially at this point in history, these values served a useful social function. Shifts in power and political volatility meant that individuals could quickly fall in and out of favor, or be called into dangerous missions on a moment's notice. The promise of a secure and steadfast bond with individuals who will be loyal no matter what was a way of ensuring security and stability. However, this commitment rests on an assessment of one's character. Being embraced by the musketeers shows that D'Artagnan is on the road to achieving his goals. He showed up in Paris as a nobody, but has been able to prove his worth and integrity.
The devotion among the musketeers is particularly important because they live in a world where everyone seems to be entangled in secrets, schemes, and plots. At this point, it is not clear what the connection is between the Cardinal, the man from Meung, and the Bonancieuxs. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Duke of Buckingham and the Queen herself are also somehow implicated, which raises the stakes. The more powerful these individuals are, the more dangerous the game. Hints about the Cardinal's reputation also create a foreboding sense that D'Artagnan is becoming entangled with a dangerous enemy. The awareness that everyone seems to be hiding something, and that it's almost impossible to know who is trustworthy, also starts to change D'Artagnan's character. At the beginning of the story, he was impulsive, but also transparent. He readily showed his own feelings and assumed others were being honest about theirs. Now, he is gaining the skills of a tactician, and learning how to watch, wait, and use the information he gathers for his own purposes.
Alongside this transformation, readers also see D'Artagnan fall in love for the first time. He behaves just as impulsively in his romantic life as he does in picking fights. Although Madame Bonancieux is a married woman, D'Artagnan makes no effort to curb his attraction to her. Dumas is careful to ensure a large age discrepancy between Madame Bonancieux and her husband, and to depict Bonancieux as unattractive. Readers are therefore more likely to feel sympathetic to why she is unsatisfied in her marriage, and attractive to the young and dashing D'Artagnan. At this time, when couples rarely married for love, it was also often the extramarital relationships where passion was expected to truly reside. The choice of a spouse was often a pragmatic one, but the choice of a mistress could be dictated by one's heart. As D'Artagnan starts to implicitly absorb more of the cultural norms of the world he is living in, he also starts to mirror these patterns of relationships.
As this section of the novel first hints, and then fully reveals, the frequency of extramarital affairs extends even to the Queen herself. Queen Anne shares some parallels with Madame Bonancieux: she is young, beautiful, isolated, and mistreated by her husband. Dumas is careful to maximize reasons why a reader would feel sympathetic to Queen Anne so that there is a greater attachment to her relationship with Buckingham. Buckingham is also presented as an idealized vision of the romantic hero. Not unlike the musketeers, he is handsome, brave, skillful, and charismatic. The Queen takes her fidelity and virtue seriously, but Buckingham is presented as irresistible. He is also a dreamer who ignores the Queen's more pragmatic concerns. Buckingham will follow his heart, and remain true to his beloved, even though the fate of two kingdoms could rest on what happens within their relationship. His emotional recklessness and disregard for the potential consequences of his action mirrors the havoc wreaked by the musketeers in their fights and duels, and furthers a vision of enticing but dangerous masculine values.
