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.