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A character in The Man in the Iron Mask

Athos

The Comte de La Fère, retired to Blois with his son Raoul, who ages ten years in a week when the boy sails for Africa.

What they want

To keep Raoul beside him, and failing that, not to survive him.

The book

The Man in the Iron MaskAlexandre Dumas, 1850

The last of the musketeer novels: Aramis puts a twin on the throne of France, and the four friends pay for it one by one.

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At a glance

In the book
Comte de La Fère; sixty-two
Home
His house at Blois, on the road to La Fère
Servant
Grimaud, who goes to Africa with Raoul and brings back the news

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Athos, the Comte de La Fère, has withdrawn from the court after breaking his sword before the king in the previous volume. He lives at Blois with his son Raoul de Bragelonne, whose fiancée Louise de La Vallière the king has taken. He has one wish, which is to keep Raoul alive, and the book denies it.

He is the moral measure of the four, and Dumas uses him to judge Aramis in one sentence and to insist that a masked prisoner be called monseigneur. His decline after Raoul leaves, in Chapter LVI, is written as a medical fact: a man of sixty-two who became old in a week.

How Athos Is Portrayed

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • A great idea, a great errorIn Chapter XXVI Aramis tells him the plot in a few words, and Athos, sweating as he listens, calls it a great idea but a great error, and a capital crime. He then watches Aramis and Porthos ride off in white cloaks and says he has seen them for the last time.
  • The silver plateIn Chapter XXXI, in the governor's garden on Sainte-Marguerite, a plate thrown from a barred window rolls to Raoul's feet. Athos reads the message scratched on it, drops the plate, and when a musket fires at them from the wall shouts at the cowards to come down.
  • Say monseigneurIn Chapter XXXII, hidden on the stairs during a storm, he watches the masked man cross the gallery. When the governor tells the prisoner to come on, Athos calls out from the dark that he must say monseigneur, and the governor trembles.
  • Until the ship disappearsIn Chapter XXXIII, when d'Artagnan is recalled to the Louvre, Athos refuses to leave Raoul until the day his vessel drops below the horizon. As long as the boy is in France he will not be separated from him.
  • Old in a weekIn Chapter LVI, back at Blois without Raoul or Grimaud, he stays in bed with a book under his pillow that he does not read. He misses meals, walks his shaded path once a day, and sits up at night writing on parchment.
  • One questionIn Chapter LVIII a horse gallops up the drive and Grimaud, white-haired and covered in dust, stands in the doorway. Athos asks whether Raoul is dead, hears yes, and dies that night. D'Artagnan finds him smiling and closes his eyes.

Athos quotes

Lines spoken by or about Athos, each verified verbatim against the text and located in the book.

I have conspired against the king; that conspiracy has failed, and, at this moment, I am doubtless pursued.
— Aramis (dialogue) · Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask (1850), anonymous nineteenth-century translation
Athos—Porthos, farewell till we meet again! Aramis, adieu forever!
— d'Artagnan (dialogue) · Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask (1850), anonymous nineteenth-century translation
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

He dies in Chapter LVIII at Blois on the night Grimaud arrives with the news of Raoul's death at Gigelli, having already seen the death in a vision. D'Artagnan, arriving to tell him of Porthos, finds him dead and then finds two coffins in the hall, because Beaufort has had Raoul's body embalmed and sent home. Louise de La Vallière visits the double grave in Chapter LX.

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