In these chapters, we have an ambiguous view of the cardinal. His request to the three musketeers, his acknowledgment that they are loyal and brave men, and his affirmation of the trust he has in them indicate that he is a man who recognizes good qualities in others. However, when the cardinal learns from Milady that d'Artagnan has been in collusion with Buckingham, he is determined to make sure that d'Artagnan is punished.
In Chapter 44, the device of having the three musketeers overhear the conversation between the cardinal and Milady is an easy, often used fictional gimmick that good writers rarely use. In the romantic fiction of the nineteenth century, however, it was a favorite device. Sometimes a person hid behind a screen in the same room, or behind a shrub outside, or listened through a broken stovepipe, as we see here. (Actually, this "stovepipe device" is an anachronism on Dumas's part because the time period for the novel is the 1620s, and the stovepipe was not invented until the 1760s, by Benjamin Franklin in America. Dumas's novel was written in 1843-44, when the stovepipe was an established feature of many households.)
