The ten Pardaillan adventures were written by Michel Zévaco and began with “By Iron and By Love. An Episode of St. Bartholomew” (original: “Par le fer et par l’amour. Episode de la Saint-Barthélémy”) in La Petite République Socialiste (Mar. 20-Dec. 7, 1902). Zévaco (1860-1918) was a professor of literature at Vienna and a dragoon, among other things, but he is best remembered for having been the last writer to achieve fame as an author of romans feuilleton. The Pardaillan novels are Zévaco’s most famous work. They were influenced by the work of Victor Hugo but were themselves influential and sparked a vogue for the “cape and epée” novel, both in France and in countries as varied as Spain and Romania.

The Pardaillan series begins in France in 1533, under the reign of Henry II, and ends in 1614, under the regency of Marie de Médici. The series is about the Chevalier de Pardaillan, an epée-wielding adventurer. His life is filled with misfortune–he loses two wives–but he continually puts himself in the service of the kings of France, frustrating the plans of their enemies and helping the kings lead France to glory. Pardaillan’s most dangerous enemy is Princess Fausta, a descendant of Lucrèce Borgia. Fausta schemes to become the Queen of France, and Pardaillan persistently opposes her and foils her schemes. In The Death of Fausta (original: La Fin de Fausta, 1926) Pardaillan and Fausta disappear in an explosion which possibly kills them both.

The Pardaillan novels are colorful and full of high adventure. Zévaco’s style is utilitarian, although there are some memorable and even impressive passages. But their appeal for readers, beyond the usual swashbuckling fun, is their political stance and the character of Pardaillan itself. Jean-Paul Sartre read the books as a child and remained an admirer of them all his life. He esteemed them because Pardaillan and the other heroic figures of the series “represented the people; they made and unmade Empires, and predicted as early as the fourteenth century the French Revolution.”¹ Zévaco was a political activist and injected his political philosophy into his work, so that Pardaillan becomes a vehicle for Zévaco’s republican and anti-clerical opinions. In Pardaillan Zévaco describes Pardaillan as “a D’Artagnan who would have read Michelet,” a reference to Jules Michelet (1798-1874), a French historian and republican writer whose views Zévaco agreed with. The major political figures of the Pardaillan novels, the kings and ministers and cardinals, are always flawed and are motivated more by their emotions and passions than by any higher ideals. It is only Pardaillan and those like him who stick up for the common man. Pardaillan is in fact an egalitarian. Although he sells his sword to those who need it, he is far more concerned with opposing Fausta and helping the oppressed. He always obeys his personal code of honor and is a knight-errant. Pardaillan is notable for being a human hero, someone who not only gets old, as the series goes by, but who also makes mistakes, gets afraid, and sometimes loses fights.

Print: Michael Zévaco, Michael Zévaco’s The Pardaillan, transl. Eduardo Berdugo, volume 1. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2009.

¹ Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words: The Autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre, transl. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 132.