Rue aux Ours

Rue aux Ours is a street in the old mercantile quarter of Paris, most notably the residence of the procurator's wife, Madame Coquenard. In the novel, the street serves as the primary setting for Porthos's calculated romantic and financial campaign to secure his military equipment for the coming campaign, revealing the intersection of love, avarice, and social ambition among the bourgeoisie.

Location and Character

Rue aux Ours is situated in a less fashionable district of Paris, far from the aristocratic quarters of the Place Royale or the Luxembourg. The street is home to the household of Monsieur Coquenard, a procurator (attorney), and his wife. The approach to their house is described as uninviting: an ill-smelling, dark passage and a staircase half-lighted by bars, leading to a low door studded with enormous nails. This setting immediately establishes the Coquenards as wealthy but miserly, their domestic space reflecting a combination of legal profession and parsimony.

Porthos's Courtship and Financial Negotiations

Porthos, a Musketeer in need of funds for his campaign outfit, cultivates a relationship with Madame Coquenard, whom he believes to be a wealthy duchess. He visits her home on Rue aux Ours, where he is received as a cousin. During one such visit, the procurator's wife reveals her true identity and her limited financial resources. Porthos, having learned of her actual status, nevertheless continues his suit, leveraging her guilt over a previous failed promise of a horse and mule. He pressures her into providing money and equipment, culminating in a negotiation where she agrees to give him eight hundred livres in cash, a horse, and a mule. The street thus becomes the stage for a transactional relationship where Porthos's affections are bartered for material support.

The Procurator's Household and Its Significance

The Coquenard household on Rue aux Ours is a study in bourgeois stinginess. The dinner Porthos endures there is famously meager, consisting of a thin soup, an old fowl, and haricot beans, served with watered-down wine. This experience underscores the gap between Porthos's expectations of a wealthy patroness and the reality of a procurator's wife who must manage a tight household budget. The street, therefore, symbolizes the mundane, calculating world of the Parisian bourgeoisie, in contrast to the heroic and aristocratic world of the Musketeers. It is a place where love is a commodity and where a gentleman must stoop to financial haggling to fulfill his martial duties.

Narrative Significance

Rue aux Ours functions as a key location for Porthos's character development, exposing his vanity, his pragmatism, and his willingness to compromise his pride for material gain. The street's association with the Coquenard household provides a satirical counterpoint to the more romantic and dangerous adventures of the other Musketeers. It grounds the novel's high-flown ideals of honor and chivalry in the gritty realities of financial necessity, showing how even a Musketeer must navigate the world of commerce and domestic economy to maintain his place in the king's service.