Comte de Rochefort is one of the most memorable secondary characters in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After. But Dumas did not make up the character himself. He got it from an earlier novel written by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras in 1678 (translated into English in 1696). In Dumas' handling, Comte de Rochefort was a cunning antagonist and later a friend to titular character d'Artagnan, as well as a loyal servant to Cardinal Richelieu. Because of my enthusiasm with the 17th century, I was more than eager to read fiction both set in the era and written during it.
