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
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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