Tragicomic Musketeers

HEART FLIGHTS (191 pp.)--Felicien Marceau--Abelard-Schuman ($3.50).

"Greetings, opium of the people, scum of the old order," said Arthur Rimbaud.

"Greetings," replied Cardinal Mazarin.

"Here you are," Vicomte de Valmont, the roue hero of an 18th century novel, chimed in benignly.

The speakers are three schoolboys of present-day Paris who have "decided to model their lives on those of distinguished men." Bored by both their ordinary selves and their ordinary lives, they dream of rebellion, plots and seductions. Their big day comes when a worried spinster, who lives with an aristocratic family just outside Paris, tells "Valmont" about a plot worthy of Dumas: the haughty old head of the family has locked and bolted his pretty daughter Denise into her bedroom and will not let her out until she swears to break off an affair with a middleaged, married antique dealer. Will nobody rescue Denise and restore her to her beloved?

This is the simple outline of Novelist-Playwright Felicien Marceau's new book, but it is the portraits within, not the frame without, that make it a sparkling display of French tragicomedy. An irresistible pair are stern father de Gau-grand, a half-mad patrician whose "broad back [extends] like the Great Wall of China," and his wife, who wears newspapers (for warmth) throughout the winter and sits down to all meals in hat and overcoat. Daughter Denise, raised in this nutty household, is more than a bit weak in the head, but far from weak in will--as her three fantastic rescuers discover.

The charm of this book lies in Author Marceau's devotion to his extraordinary characters--a devotion that enables him to make them not merely funny but amazingly human as well. Haughty aristocrat, aping student, money-loving businessman, dim-witted girl--by the time Marceau has done with them, all have shed their comical trappings, and walk the world in the shape of broken hearts.

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