A candle for d'Artagnan
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
485 pages
1989 - États-Unis
SF, Fantasy - Roman
Intérêt: *
On n'en est pas toujours conscient, mais si d'Artagnan n'avait
pas été coupé en deux ou à peu près
par un boulet de canon à la bataille de Maastricht en
1673, il serait toujours vivant aujourd'hui, trois  cents et quelques
années plus tard. Il n'y a pas de quoi être surpris:
chacun sait que les vampires sont immortels, tant que leur corps
n'est pas détruit. Et d'Artagnan, donc, serait...
Eh oui, d'Artagnan était un vampire (ou du moins, le serait
devenu s'il était mort de mort naturelle): c'est la révélation
de ce roman de Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, écrivain américaine
de science-fiction et de fantastique.
Oeuvre bien étrange que ce A candle for d'Artagnan.
Contrairement à ce que les lignes précédentes
pourraient faire croire, il ne s'agit nullement d'un grotesque
roman parodique ou délirant. Les vampires de Mme Yarbro
sont des créatures hautement sophistiquées, et
son roman est en fait aussi ambitieux que littéraire.
Le personnage principal est Olivia Atta Clemens, aristocrate
romaine née sous l'Empire, vampire et donc quasi-immortelle.
Personnage fascinant, Olivia traîne à travers les
siècles son mal de vivre, sa solitude et son besoin d'amour.
Car c'est l'amour sincère de mortels ordinaires qui permet
aux vampires de garder leur vitalité à travers
les siècles.
Dame Clemens ayant été choisie par Mazarin pour
faire partie de sa suite lors de sa venue en France, elles se
trouve à rencontrer d'Artagnan: amour fou et partagé,
qui amène le mousquetaire à accepter en toute connaissance
de cause de se transformer en vampire, conséquence inéluctable
de ses relations sexuelles avec Olivia.
Cette passion entre la vampire immortelle et le héros
n'est cependant que le fil directeur d'un roman foisonnant dont
l'action s'étend sur plusieurs dizaines d'années.
Appuyé sur de nombreuses données historiques, le
livre aborde aussi bien les complots du Vatican que ceux de la
Fronde, les problèmes de gestion des propriétés
terriennes ou la politique de Mazarin. Ce dernier, il faut le
souligner, est présenté sous un jour entièrement
favorable: sincèrement pieux, intelligent, désintéressé.
Tout le contraire de l'image qu'en donne habituellement le littérature
populaire!
La complexité du roman est sans doute son principal défaut.
Malgré une grande qualité d'écriture, le
récit est tellement fragmenté que le lecteur s'y
perd. Des intrigues sont ébauchées, qui ne se concrétisent
pas, et des personnages intéressants apparaissent de manière
fugace avant de se perdre.
Signalons par ailleurs qu'en écrivant ce livre, Chelsea
Quinn Yarbro n'a pas cherché à rendre hommage à
Dumas. Elle renoue en fait avec une tradition assez répandue
à la fin du XIXème siècle et au début
du XXème: celle d'affirmer vouloir rétablir la
vérité historique sur les personnages du romancier.
Sa démarche n'est certes pas aussi grossière que
celle de Lucien Pemjean dans La jeunesse de d'Artagnan,
par exemple, mais l'Américaine explique dans sa préface
que son intérêt pour la France de Louis XIII vient
certes "partiellement" des romans de Dumas, mais que
ces derniers ne brillent pas par leur exactitude historique.
Elle énumère quelques unes des "erreurs"
de Dumas et précise qu'elle "préfère
la vérité".
Elle expose ensuite les recherches historiques auxquelles elle
s'est livrée. En conséquence, annonce-t-elle, elle
redonne aux personnages leurs véritables noms: Isaac de
Portau pour Porthos, Jean-Arnaud de Troisvilles pour Tréville,
etc.. Reste qu'utiliser les personnages de Dumas pour écrire
un nouveau roman constitue bien une forme d'hommage, même
si l'auteur s'en défend...
Extrait de la quatrième partie Charles d'Artagnan,
chapitre 10
This was the third time since Olivia had left France that
Charles had been sent to Roma. He had arrived at Senza Pari early
on a misty October morning, dressed as a Jesuit and carrying
two cases of property and documents to Olivia.
She met him in the small salon that faced on the old garden,
decked out in a very fashionable day-gown of sea-green silk over
two exposed petticoats, one of fine embroidered muslin and the
other of striped taffeta. The corsage had a narrow ruff of standing
pleated lace and she had her hair caught up in ribbons. Her smile
made her face luminous.
"It's been too long," Charles said when he stopped
kissing her. "I would have come sooner, but-"
"But Mazarin has suffered too many changes of fortune to
permit you to come here unless there is business to do,"
she said, trying to keep the wistfulness from her voice. "I
think he would not let me come to Paris again for similar reasons."
"It is five years, Olivia," said Charles, his smile
lopsided as he went on. "You no longer seem an older woman
to me; now we are the same age." He touched her face. "Is
that how it will be with me, too? That I will look no older than
the day I . . . die?"
"Yes," said Olivia seriously, then put her arms around
his waist once more.
"Don't think of it now, my love. If we had days and days
to do nothing more than ask each other silly questions, it would
be different, but-"
"But," she concurred. "Come; Niklos will see that
you have breakfast and a little time to yourself, if that's what
you want, and-"
"If I wanted time to myself, I would remain in Roma at the
Lateran," he said bluntly.
"I am here to be with you.
Let me have an hour or two to sleep with you beside me, and then
we can forget the rest of the day together, and the night as
well."
Olivia could not keep from smiling into his eyes, her face radiant. "How wonderful," she said.
"It is, isn't it?" He bent and kissed her once, lightly.
"The hall to your room is at the top of the stairs, isn't
it? I remember correctly, don't I?" He touched her hair.
"It's still short, isn't it?"
"Not as short as it was," said Olivia. "It will
take another six or seven years before it is as long as it was
in Paris." She reached up and flipped off his priestly hat.
"No grey, that's pleasant," she said. "It has
been more than two years, Charles. I was . . ." It became
hard for her to speak. "I was afraid you had decided I was
not worth the-"
He put his fingers to her lips. "If you say anything more
I will be angry with you, and I do not want to be angry with
you, I want to be drunk with love of you." He slid his hands
to her neck, so that he could turn her face up to his. "I
could never believe you were not worth whatever price was placed
on you." (...)
Olivia felt the breath move in him with the same steadiness
of waves on a beach. She let herself be rocked by it, feeling
how much his breath was himself. Though she did not sleep, she
dozed, and welcomed the waking dreams of the other times they
had spent the days and nights in a world that consisted of little
more than their arms and bodies and kisses and union. It would
be hard, she thought, to have to leave that behind when he came
to her life, but once they both were vampires, they would not
be able to give each other that inescapable need - life. In all
her hundreds of years, Olivia had never been jealous of those
sought by the men of her blood, but she suspected that this time
it might be different, that this time she would begrudge every
partner he had the life they could give him when she could not.
She was both smug and shamed by this realization, and wondered
how Charles would feel in a century's time? Would he still yearn
for her, or would she be his most treasured memory and most enduring
friend?
There was always the chance, she reminded herself, that he would
not change when he died, that the predations of war would destroy
his body so that he would not wake into her life. The idea was
so distressing, so distasteful, that she thrust it away as she
had for so long held off all memories of her years of torturous
marriage to Cornelius Justus Silius. Rather that Charles have
dozens of lovers, each more doting than the last, and that he
adore every one of them, than that he fall, shattered, on the
field of battle.
"What's wrong," asked Charles, his arm pulling her
on top of him.
"No . . . nothing," said Olivia, taken by surprise.
The light in the room had shifted, and she realized that it was
now past mid-day.
"What nothing?" Charles insisted, looking directly
up into her face. "What nothing, Olivia?"
She gave a small, jerky shrug. Unhappy thoughts, that's all.
I suppose any woman who loves a soldier has them from time to
time." |
