CHAPTER 66
The Journey
It was perhaps the fiftieth time since the day on which we
open this history, that this man. with a heart of bronze and
muscles of steel, had left house and friends, everything, in
short, to go in search of fortune and death. The one -- that
is to say. death -- had constantly retreated before him, as
if afraid of him; the other -- that is to say, fortune --
for a month past only had really made an alliance with him.
Although he was not a great philosopher, after the fashion
of either Epicurus or Socrates, he was a powerful spirit,
having knowledge of life, and endowed with thought. No one
is as brave, as adventurous, or as skillful as D'Artagnan,
without being at the same time inclined to be a dreamer. He
had picked up, here and there, some scraps of M. de la
Rochefoucauld, worthy of being translated into Latin by MM.
de Port Royal, and he had made a collection, en passant, in
the society of Athos and Aramis, of many morsels of Seneca
and Cicero, translated by them, and applied to the uses of
common life. That contempt of riches which our Gascon had
observed as an article of faith during the thirty-five first
years of his life, had for a long time been considered by
him as the first article of the code of bravery. "Article
first," said he, "A man is brave because he has nothing. A
man has nothing because he despises riches." Therefore, with
these principles, which, as we have said had regulated the
thirty-five first years of his life, D'Artagnan was no
sooner possessed of riches, than he felt it necessary to ask
himself if, in spite of his riches, he were still brave. To
this, for any other but D'Artagnan, the events of the Place
de Greve might have served as a reply. Many consciences
would have been satisfied with them, but D'Artagnan was
brave enough to ask himself sincerely and conscientiously if
he were brave. Therefore to this: --
"But it appears to me that I drew promptly enough and cut
and thrust pretty freely on the Place de Greve to be
satisfied of my bravery," D'Artagnan had himself replied.
"Gently, captain, that is not an answer. I was brave that
day, because they were burning my house, and there are a
hundred, and even a thousand, to speak against one, that if
those gentlemen of the riots had not formed that unlucky
idea, their plan of attack would have succeeded, or, at
least, it would not have been I who would have opposed
myself to it. Now, what will be brought against me? I have
no house to be burnt in Bretagne; I have no treasure there
that can be taken from me. -- No; but I have my skin; that
precious skin of M. d'Artagnan, which to him is worth more
than all the houses and all the treasures of the world. That
skin to which I cling above everything, because it is,
everything considered, the binding of a body which encloses
a heart very warm and ready to fight, and, consequently, to
live. Then, I do desire to live; and, in reality, I live
much better, more completely, since I have become rich. Who
the devil ever said that money spoiled life! Upon my soul,
it is no such thing; on the contrary, it seems as if I
absorbed a double quantity of air and sun. Mordioux! what
will it be then, if I double that fortune, and if, instead
of the switch I now hold in my hand, I should ever carry the
baton of a marechal? Then I really don't know if there will
be, from that moment enough of air and sun for me. In fact,
this is not a dream, who the devil would oppose it, if the
king made me a marechal, as his father, King Louis XIII.,
made a duke and constable of Albert de Luynes? Am I not as
brave, and much more intelligent, than that imbecile De
Vitry? Ah! that's exactly what will prevent my advancement:
I have too much wit. Luckily, if there is any justice in
this world, fortune owes me many compensations. She owes me
certainly a recompense for all I did for Anne of Austria,
and an indemnification for all she has not done for me.
Then, at the present, I am very well with a king, and with a
king who has the appearance of determining to reign. May God
keep him in that illustrious road! For, if he is resolved to
reign he will want me; and if he wants me, he will give me
what he has promised me -- warmth and light; so that I
march, comparatively, now, as I marched formerly, -- from
nothing to everything. Only the nothing of to-day is the all
of former days; there has only this little change taken
place in my life. And now let us see! let us take the part
of the heart, as I just now was speaking of it. But in
truth, I only spoke of it from memory." And the Gascon
applied his hand to his breast, as if he were actually
seeking the place where his heart was.
"Ah! wretch!" murmured he, smiling with bitterness. "Ah!
poor mortal species! You hoped, for an instant, that you had
not a heart, and now you find you have one -- bad courtier
as thou art, -- and even one of the most seditious. You have
a heart which speaks to you in favor of M. Fouquet. And what
is M. Fouquet, when the king is in question? -- A
conspirator, a real conspirator, who did not even give
himself the trouble to conceal his being a conspirator;
therefore, what a weapon would you not have against him, if
his good grace and his intelligence had not made a scabbard
for that weapon. An armed revolt! -- for, in fact, M.
Fouquet has been guilty of an armed revolt. Thus, while the
king vaguely suspects M. Fouquet of rebellion, I know it --
I could prove that M. Fouquet had caused the shedding of the
blood of his majesty's subjects. Now, then, let us see?
Knowing all that, and holding my tongue, what further would
this heart wish in return for a kind action of M. Fouquet's,
for an advance of fifteen thousand livres, for a diamond
worth a thousand pistoles, for a smile in which there was as
much bitterness as kindness? -- I save his life."
"Now, then, I hope," continued the musketeer, "that this
imbecile of a heart is going to preserve silence, and so be
fairly quits with M. Fouquet. Now, then, the king becomes my
sun, and as my heart is quits with M. Fouquet, let him
beware who places himself between me and my sun! Forward,
for his majesty Louis XIV.! -- Forward!"
These reflections were the only impediments which were able
to retard the progress of D'Artagnan. These reflections once
made, he increased the speed of his horse. But, however
perfect his horse Zephyr might be, it could not hold out at
such a pace forever. The day after his departure from Paris,
he was left at Chartres, at the house of an old friend
D'Artagnan had met with in an hotelier of that city. From
that moment the musketeer travelled on post-horses. Thanks
to this mode of locomotion, he traversed the space
separating Chartres from Chateaubriand. In the last of these
two cities, far enough from the coast to prevent any one
guessing that D'Artagnan wished to reach the sea -- far
enough from Paris to prevent all suspicion of his being a
messenger from Louis XIV., whom D'Artagnan had called his
sun, without suspecting that he who was only at present a
rather poor star in the heaven of royalty, would, one day,
make that star his emblem; the messenger of Louis XIV., we
say, quitted the post and purchased a bidet of the meanest
appearance, -- one of those animals which an officer of
cavalry would never choose, for fear of being disgraced.
Excepting the color, this new acquisition recalled to the
mind of D'Artagnan the famous orange-colored horse, with
which, or rather upon which, he had made his first
appearance in the world. Truth to say, from the moment he
crossed this new steed, it was no longer D'Artagnan who was
travelling, -- it was a good man clothed in an iron-gray
justaucorps, brown haut-de-chausses, holding the medium
between a priest and a layman; that which brought him
nearest to the churchman was, that D'Artagnan had placed on
his head a calotte of threadbare velvet, and over the
calotte, a large black hat; no more sword, a stick, hung by
a cord to his wrist, but to which, he promised himself, as
an unexpected auxiliary, to join, upon occasion, a good
dagger, ten inches long, concealed under his cloak. The
bidet purchased at Chateaubriand completed the
metamorphosis; it was called, or rather D'Artagnan called
it, Furet (ferret).
"If I have changed Zephyr into Furet," said D'Artagnan, "I
must make some diminutive or other of my own name. So,
instead of D'Artagnan, I will be Agnan, short; that is a
concession which I naturally owe to my gray coat, my round
hat, and my rusty calotte."
Monsieur D'Artagnan traveled, then, pretty easily upon
Furet, who ambled like a true butter-woman's pad, and who,
with his amble, managed cheerfully about twelve leagues a
day, upon four spindle-shanks, of which the practiced eye of
D'Artagnan had appreciated the strength and safety beneath
the thick mass of hair which covered them. Jogging along,
the traveler took notes, studied the country, which he
traversed reserved and silent, ever seeking the most
plausible pretext for reaching Belle-Isle-en-Mer, and for
seeing everything without arousing suspicion. In this
manner, he was enabled to convince himself of the importance
the event assumed in proportion as he drew near to it. In
this remote country, in this ancient duchy of Bretagne,
which was not France at that period, and is not so even now,
the people knew nothing of the king of France. They not only
did not know him, but were unwilling to know him. One face
-- a single one -- floated visibly for them upon the
political current. Their ancient dukes no longer ruled them;
government was a void -- nothing more. In place of the
sovereign duke, the seigneurs of parishes reigned without
control; and, above these seigneurs, God, who has never been
forgotten in Bretagne. Among these suzerains of chateaux and
belfries, the most powerful, the richest, and the most
popular, was M. Fouquet, seigneur of Belle-Isle. Even in the
country, even within sight of that mysterious isle, legends
and traditions consecrate its wonders. Every one might not
penetrate it: the isle, of an extent of six leagues in
length, and six in breadth, was a seignorial property, which
the people had for a long time respected, covered as it was
with the name of Retz, so redoubtable in the country.
Shortly after the erection of this seignory into a
marquisate, Belle-Isle passed to M. Fouquet. The celebrity
of the isle did not date from yesterday; its name, or rather
its qualification, is traced back to the remotest antiquity.
The ancients called it Kalonese, from two Greek words,
signifying beautiful isle. Thus at a distance of eighteen
hundred years, it had borne, in another idiom, the same name
it still bears. There was, then, something in itself in this
property of M. Fouquet's, besides its position of six
leagues off the coast of France; a position which makes it a
sovereign in its maritime solitude, like a majestic ship
which disdains roads, and proudly casts anchor in mid-ocean.
D'Artagnan learnt all this without appearing the least in
the world astonished. He also learnt that the best way to
get intelligence was to go to La Roche-Bernard, a tolerably
important city at the mouth of the Vilaine. Perhaps there he
could embark; if not, crossing the salt marshes, he would
repair to Guerande-en-Croisic, to wait for an opportunity to
cross over to Belle-Isle. He had discovered, besides, since
his departure from Chateaubriand, that nothing would be
impossible for Furet under the impulsion of M. Agnan, and
nothing to M. Agnan through the initiative of Furet. He
prepared, then, to sup off a teal and a tourteau, in a hotel
of La Roche-Bernard, and ordered to be brought from the
cellar, to wash down these two Breton dishes, some cider,
which, the moment it touched his lips, he perceived to be
more Breton still.
