clouds upon the azure only say that the sea will be smooth
and peaceful. D’Artagnan found the sky blue, the breeze
embalmed with saline perfumes, and he said: “I will embark
with the first tide, if it be but in a nutshell.”
At Croisic as at Pirial, he had remarked enormous heaps of
stone lying along the shore. These gigantic walls,
diminished every tide by the barges for Belle-Isle were, in
the eyes of the musketeer, the consequence and the proof of
what he had well divined at Pirial. Was it a wall that M.
Fouquet was constructing? Was it a fortification that he was
erecting? To ascertain that he must make fuller
observations. D’Artagnan put Furet into a stable; supped,
went to bed, and on the morrow took a walk upon the port or
rather upon the shingle. Le Croisic has a port of fifty
feet, it has a look-out which resembles an enormous brioche
(a kind of cake) elevated on a dish. The flat strand is the
dish. Hundreds of barrowsful of earth amalgamated with
pebbles, and rounded into cones, with sinuous. passages
between, are look-outs and brioches at the same time.
It is so now, and it was so two hundred years ago, only the
brioche was not so large, and probably there were to be seen
no trellises of lath around the brioche, which constitute an
ornament, planted like gardes-fous along the passages that
wind towards the little terrace. Upon the shingle lounged
three or four fishermen talking about sardines and shrimps.
D’Artagnan, with his eyes animated by rough gayety, and a
smile upon his lips, approached these fishermen.
“Any fishing going on to-day?” said he.
“Yes, monsieur,” replied one of them, “we are only waiting
for the tide.”
“Where do you fish, my friends?”
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Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
“Upon the coasts, monsieur.”
“Which are the best coasts?”
“Ah, that is all according. The tour of the isles, for
example?”
“Yes, but they are a long way off, those isles, are they
not?”
“Not very; four leagues.”
“Four leagues! That is a voyage.”
The fisherman laughed in M. Agnan’s face.
“Hear me, then,” said the latter with an air of simple
stupidity; four leagues off you lose sight of land, do you
not?”
“Why, not always.”
“Ah, it is a long way — too long, or else I would have
asked you to take me aboard, and to show me what I have
never seen.”
“What is that?”
“A live sea-fish.”
“Monsieur comes from the province?” said a fisherman.
“Yes, I come from Paris.”
The Breton shrugged his shoulders; then:
“Have you ever seen M. Fouquet in Paris?” asked he.
“Often,” replied D’Artagnan.
“Often!” repeated the fishermen, closing their circle round
the Parisian. “Do you know him?”
“A little, he is the intimate friend of my master.”
“Ah!” said the fisherman, in astonishment.
“And,” said D’Artagnan, “I have seen all his chateaux of
Saint-Mande, of Vaux, and his hotel in Paris.”
“Is that a fine place?”
“Superb.”
“It is not so fine a place as Belle-Isle,” said the
fisherman.
“Bah!” cried M. d’Artagnan, breaking into a laugh so loud
that he angered all his auditors.
“It is very plain that you have never seen Belle-Isle,” said
the most curious of the fishermen. “Do you know that there
are six leagues of it, and that there are such trees on it
as cannot be equaled even at Nantes-sur-le-Fosse?”
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Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
“Trees in the sea!” cried D’Artagnan; “well, I should like
to see them.”
“That can be easily done; we are fishing at the Isle de
Hoedic — come with us. From that place you will see, as a
Paradise, the black trees of Belle-Isle against the sky; you
will see the white line of the castle, which cuts the
horizon of the sea like a blade.”
“Oh,” said D’Artagnan, “that must be very beautiful. But do
you know there are a hundred belfries at M. Fouquet’s
chateau of Vaux?”
The Breton raised his head in profound admiration, but he
was not convinced. “A hundred belfries! Ah that may be, but
Belle-Isle is finer than that. Should you like to see