Part 40

— Well, sir, said Colbert, the royal ordinance reads thus: On sight, I order that the sum of five thousand livres be paid to M. d'Artagnan, forming a quarter of the pension I have granted him.

— It is written, indeed, said d'Artagnan, affecting calm.

— Well! the king owed you but five thousand livres; why was more given you?

— Because more was had, and more was wished to be given me; that concerns no one.

— It is natural, said Colbert with a proud ease, that you should be ignorant of the customs of accounting; but, sir, when you have a thousand livres to pay, what do you do?

— I never have a thousand livres to pay, replied d'Artagnan.

— Again... cried Colbert, irritated, again, if you had a payment to make, would you pay only what you owe?

— That proves but one thing, said d'Artagnan: that you have your particular habits in accounting, while M. Fouquet has his.

— Mine, sir, are the good ones.

— I do not say no.

— And you have received what was not owed you.

D'Artagnan's eye flashed like lightning.

— What was not yet owed me, do you mean to say, M. Colbert; for if I had received what was not owed me at all, I should have committed a theft.

Colbert did not reply upon this subtlety.

— It is therefore fifteen thousand livres that you owe the treasury, said he, carried away by his jealous ardor.

— Then you will give me credit, replied d'Artagnan with his imperceptible irony.

— Not at all, sir.

— Come! how so?... You will take back my three rolls, will you?

— You will restore them to my treasury.

— I? Ah! M. Colbert, do not count on that...

— The king has need of his money, sir.

— And I, sir, have need of the king's money.

— Be it so; but you shall restore.

— Not in the least. I have always heard it said that in matters of accounting, as you say, a good cashier never gives back nor takes back.

— Then, sir, we shall see what the king will say, to whom I shall show this statement, which proves that M. Fouquet not only pays what he does not owe, but even keeps no receipt for what he pays.

— Ah! I understand, cried d'Artagnan, why you took this paper from me, M. Colbert.

Colbert did not understand all there was of menace in his name pronounced in a certain way.

— You will see its usefulness later, replied he, raising the ordinance in his fingers.

— Oh! cried d'Artagnan, catching the paper with a rapid gesture, I understand it perfectly, M. Colbert, and I need not wait for that.

And he thrust into his pocket the paper he had just snatched in mid-air.

— Sir, sir! cried Colbert... this violence...

— Come now! must one pay heed to a soldier's manners? answered the musketeer; receive my respectful greetings, dear M. Colbert!

And he went out laughing in the face of the future minister.

— That man is going to adore me, murmured he; it is a great pity I must give him the slip.

Chapter LXV — Philosophy of the Heart and of the Mind

For a man who had seen more dangerous ones, d'Artagnan's position with respect to Colbert was but comic. D'Artagnan therefore did not deny himself the satisfaction of laughing at the expense of the Intendant, from the rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs to the rue des Lombards.

It is a long way. D'Artagnan therefore laughed a long time. He was still laughing when Planchet appeared to him, also laughing, upon the threshold of his house.

For Planchet, since his master's return, since the coming in of the English guineas, passed the greater part of his life doing what d'Artagnan had just done only from the rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs to the rue des Lombards.

— So you are arriving, my dear master? said Planchet to d'Artagnan.

— No, my friend, replied the musketeer, I am departing as quickly as may be; that is to say, I am going to sup, to bed, to sleep five hours, and at daybreak I shall leap into the saddle... Has my horse been given a ration and a half?

— Eh! my dear master, replied Planchet, you know well your horse is the jewel of the house, that my lads kiss him all day long and make him eat my sugar, my hazelnuts and my biscuits. You ask me if he has had his ration of oats? Ask rather if he has not had enough to burst ten times over.

— Good, Planchet, good. Then, I come to what concerns me. The supper?

— Ready: a steaming roast, white wine, crayfish, fresh cherries. That is something new, my master.

— You are an amiable fellow, Planchet; let us sup, then, and let me to bed.

During supper, d'Artagnan observed that Planchet rubbed his forehead frequently, as if to facilitate the exit of an idea lodged tightly in his brain. He looked with an affectionate air upon this worthy companion of his former wanderings, and clinking glass against glass:

— Come, said he, friend Planchet, come, what is it troubles you so to tell me; morbleu! speak plainly, you will speak quickly.

— Here it is, answered Planchet, you give me the impression of going upon some expedition.

— I do not say no.

— Then you would have had some new idea.

— It is possible, Planchet.

— Then, there would be a new capital to venture? I put fifty thousand livres upon the idea you are going to exploit.

And, saying this, Planchet rubbed his hands one against the other with the rapidity given by great joy.

— Planchet, replied d'Artagnan, there is but one misfortune.

— And which?

— The idea is not mine... I can place nothing upon it.

These words wrung a great sigh from Planchet's heart.

Avarice is an ardent counsellor; she carries off her man as Satan did Jesus upon the mountain, and once she has shown a wretched mortal all the kingdoms of the earth, she may rest, knowing well she has left her companion, envy, to bite the heart.

Planchet had tasted of easy wealth; he was never again to halt in his desires; but, as he was a good heart despite his greed, as he adored d'Artagnan, he could not forbear making him a thousand recommendations more affectionate one than the other. He would not have been displeased either to catch a small scrap of the secret his master hid so well: ruses, mines, counsels and traps were useless; d'Artagnan let slip nothing confidential. The evening passed thus. After supper, the portmanteau occupied d'Artagnan; he took a turn in the stable, caressed his horse while examining his shoes and legs; then, having recounted his money, he got into bed, where, sleeping as at twenty years, because he had neither unease nor remorse, he closed his eyelid five minutes after blowing out the lamp. Many events might yet have kept him awake. Thought bubbled in his brain, conjectures abounded, and d'Artagnan was a great drawer of horoscopes; but, with that imperturbable phlegm which does more than genius for the fortune and happiness of men of action, he put off reflection till the morrow, for fear, said he, of not being fresh at the moment.

Day came. The rue des Lombards had its share of the caresses of the rose-fingered dawn, and d'Artagnan rose like the dawn. He woke no one, put his portmanteau under his arm, descended the stair without making a step creak, without troubling a single one of the sonorous snorings ranged from garret to cellar; then, having saddled his horse, shut the stable and the shop, he set out at a walk for his expedition into Brittany.

He had been quite right in not thinking on the eve of all the political and diplomatic affairs that solicited his mind, for in the morning, in the freshness and the soft twilight, he felt his ideas develop pure and fruitful. And first, he passed before Fouquet's house, and threw into a wide box gaping at the door of the Superintendent the blessed statement which, the eve before, he had had such trouble to withdraw from the crooked fingers of the Intendant.

Put under cover addressed to Fouquet, the statement had not even been divined by Planchet, who, in matters of divination, was worth Calchas or Apollo Pythius.

D'Artagnan therefore sent back the receipt to Fouquet, without compromising himself and without henceforth having reproaches to address to himself. When he had made this convenient restitution:

— Now, said he to himself, let us inhale much morning air, much carelessness and health, let us let the horse Zephyr breathe, who swells his flanks as if it were a question of aspiring an hemisphere, and let us be very ingenious in our small combinations.

"It is time," pursued d'Artagnan, "to make a plan of campaign, and, according to the method of M. de Turenne, who has a very big head full of all sorts of good advice, before the plan of campaign, it behooves one to draw a likeness of the enemy generals with whom we have to deal.

"First presents itself M. Fouquet. What is M. Fouquet?

"M. Fouquet," d'Artagnan answered himself, "is a handsome man much loved by women; a gallant man much loved by poets; a man of wit much execrated by knaves.

"I am neither woman, nor poet, nor knave; I therefore neither love nor hate M. the Superintendent, I therefore find myself absolutely in the position where M. de Turenne found himself when it was a question of winning the battle of the Dunes: he did not hate the Spaniards, but he beat them flat.

"Not so; there is a better example, morbleu: I am in the position where the same M. de Turenne found himself when he had before him the Prince de Condé at Jargeau, at Gien and at the faubourg Saint-Antoine. He did not abhor M. the Prince, true, but he obeyed the king. M. the Prince is a charming man, but the king is the king; Turenne gave a great sigh, called Condé 'my cousin,' and swept away his army.

"Now, what does the king want? That is no concern of mine.

"Now, what does M. Colbert want? Oh! that is another thing. M. Colbert wants all that M. Fouquet does not want.

"What then does M. Fouquet want? Oh! oh! this is grave. M. Fouquet wants precisely all that the king wants."

This monologue ended, d'Artagnan fell to laughing again, making his switch whistle. He was already on the open high road, frightening the birds in the hedges, listening to the louis that danced at every jolt in his leather pocket, and, let us confess it, each time d'Artagnan found himself in such conditions, tenderness was not his dominating vice.

— Come, said he, the expedition is not very dangerous, and it will be with my voyage as with that play M. Monck took me to see in London, and which is called, I believe: Much Ado About Nothing.

Chapter LXVI — Voyage

It was perhaps the fiftieth time, since the day we opened this history, that this man of bronze heart and steel muscles had quitted house and friends, all finally, to go seek fortune and death. The one, that is to say death, had constantly receded before him as if afraid of him; the other, that is to say fortune, only for a month had truly made alliance with him. Though he was not a great philosopher, according to Epicurus or according to Socrates, he was a powerful mind, having the practice of life and of thought. One is not brave, one is not adventurous, one is not adroit as d'Artagnan was, without being at the same time a bit of a dreamer. He had therefore retained here and there a few fragments of M. de La Rochefoucauld, worthy to be put into Latin by the gentlemen of Port-Royal, and he had made a collection in passing, in the society of Athos and Aramis, of many pieces of Seneca and Cicero, translated by them and applied to the use of common life.

This contempt for riches, which our Gascon had observed as an article of faith during the first thirty-five years of his life, had long been regarded by him as the first article of the code of bravery.

— Article the first, said he:

"One is brave because one has nothing;

"One has nothing because one despises riches."

Also, with these principles, which, as we have said, had governed the first thirty-five years of his life, d'Artagnan was no sooner rich than he must ask himself if, despite his wealth, he was still brave.

To this, for any other than d'Artagnan, the event of the Place de Grève might have served as answer. Many a conscience would have been content therewith; but d'Artagnan was brave enough to ask himself sincerely and conscientiously if he were brave.

Also to this:

— But it seems to me I drew quickly enough and thrust cleanly enough upon the Place de Grève to be reassured as to my bravery.

D'Artagnan had answered himself.

— Softly, captain! this is no answer. I was brave that day because they were burning my house, and there are a hundred and even a thousand to one that, had these gentlemen of the riot not had that unfortunate idea, their plan of attack would have succeeded, or at least it would not have been I who opposed it.

"Now, what is to be attempted against me? I have no house to burn in Brittany; I have no treasure that can be taken from me.

"No! but I have my skin; this precious skin of M. d'Artagnan, which is worth all the houses and all the treasures of the world; this skin to which I cling above all because it is, all told, the binding of a body which encloses a heart very warm and very satisfied to beat, and consequently to live.

"Therefore, I desire to live, and in reality I live much better, much more completely, since I am rich. Who the devil said that money spoils life? Nothing of the sort, upon my soul! it seems, on the contrary, that now I absorb a double quantity of air and sun. Morbleu! what will it be then if I double this fortune again, and if, instead of this switch I hold in my hand, I ever bear the marshal's baton?

"Then I know not if there will be, from that moment on, enough air and sun for me.

"In fact, it is no dream; who the devil would oppose the king making me duke and marshal, as his father, King Louis XIII, made duke and constable Albert de Luynes? Am I not as brave and far more intelligent than that imbecile Vitry?

"Ah! there precisely is what will oppose my advancement; I have too much wit.

"Happily, if there is a justice in this world, fortune is with me in compensations. She owes me certainly a reward for all I have done for Anne of Austria and an indemnity for all she did not do for me.

"Therefore, at this hour, here I am well with a king, and with a king who seems to wish to reign.

"God keep him in this illustrious path! For if he wishes to reign, he has need of me, and if he has need of me, he must needs give me what he has promised. Heat and light. Therefore, I march, comparatively, today, as I marched formerly, from nothing to all.

"Only, the nothing today is the all of former times; there is but this small change in my life.

"And now, let us see! let us do the heart's part, since I spoke of it but now.

"But, in truth, I spoke of it but for memory."

And the Gascon laid his hand upon his breast, as if he had there effectively sought the place of the heart.

— Ah! wretch! murmured he, smiling with bitterness. Ah! poor creature! you had hoped for an instant to have no heart, and behold you have one, failed courtier that you are, and even one of the most seditious.

"You have a heart that speaks to you in favor of M. Fouquet.

"What is M. Fouquet, however, when it is a question of the king? A conspirator, a true conspirator, who has not even taken the trouble to hide from you that he conspired; also, what weapon would you not have against him, if his good grace and his wit had not made a sheath for that weapon.

"Revolt with arms in hand!... for after all, M. Fouquet has made revolt with arms in hand.

"Thus, when the king vaguely suspects M. Fouquet of sullen rebellion, I, I know, I, I can prove that M. Fouquet has made the blood of the king's subjects flow.

"Let us see now: knowing all that and holding his peace, what more does this heart so pitiful want for a good turn from M. Fouquet, for an advance of fifteen thousand livres, for a diamond of a thousand pistoles, for a smile wherein there was as much bitterness as benevolence? I save his life.

"Now I hope," continued the musketeer, "that this imbecile of a heart is going to keep silence and that it is fairly and fully quit with M. Fouquet.

"Therefore, now the king is my sun, and as here is my heart quit with M. Fouquet, woe to him who shall place himself before my sun! Forward for His Majesty Louis XIV, forward!"

These reflections were the only hindrances that could retard d'Artagnan's pace. Now, these reflections once made, he pressed the step of his mount.

But, perfect as the horse Zephyr was, he could not go always. The day after departing Paris, he was left at Chartres with an old friend d'Artagnan had made of an innkeeper of the city. Then, from that moment, the musketeer travelled upon post horses. Thanks to this mode of locomotion, he therefore crossed the space that separates Chartres from Châteaubriant. In this last town, still far enough from the coasts that none might divine d'Artagnan was going to reach the sea, far enough from Paris that none might suspect he came from it, the messenger of His Majesty Louis XIV, whom d'Artagnan had called his sun without suspecting that he who was yet but a rather poor star in the sky of royalty would one day make this astre his emblem, the messenger of King Louis XIV, let us say, quit the post and bought a nag of the poorest appearance, one of those mounts that no cavalry officer would permit himself to choose, for fear of dishonor. Save the coat, this new acquisition much recalled to d'Artagnan that famous orange horse with which or rather upon which he had made his entry into the world.

It is true to say that, from the moment he had bestridden this new mount, it was no longer d'Artagnan who travelled, it was a goodman clad in an iron-gray jerkin, in maroon breeches, holding the middle between priest and layman; what, above all, brought him near the man of the church was that d'Artagnan had put upon his skull a cap of worn velvet, and over the cap a great black hat; no more sword: a staff hung by a cord from his forearm, but to which he promised himself, as an unexpected auxiliary, to join on occasion a good dagger of ten inches hidden under his cloak. The nag bought at Châteaubriant completed the difference. He was called, or rather d'Artagnan had called him Ferret.

— If of Zephyr I have made Ferret, said d'Artagnan, I must make of my name some diminutive or other.

"Therefore, instead of d'Artagnan, I shall be Agnan plain; it is a concession I naturally owe to my gray habit, my round hat and my worn cap."

M. Agnan therefore travelled without exaggerated jolting upon Ferret, who ambled like a true mettlesome horse, and who, while ambling, gaily made his twelve leagues a day, thanks to four legs dry as spindles, whose practiced art d'Artagnan had appreciated the steadiness and sureness under the thick fur that hid them.

By the way, the traveller took notes, studied the severe and cold country he crossed, while seeking the most plausible pretext to go to Belle-Île-en-Mer and to see all without awakening suspicion. In this fashion, he could convince himself of the importance the event took as he drew near it.

In this remote country, in this ancient duchy of Brittany which was not French at that epoch, and which is scarce yet today, the people knew not the King of France. Not only did they not know him, but even would not know him. One fact, one only, survived visible for them upon the current of politics. Their ancient dukes no longer governed, but it was a void: nothing more. In place of the sovereign duke, the lords of the parish reigned without limit.

And above these lords, God, who has never been forgotten in Brittany.

Among these suzerains of castles and bell-towers, the most powerful, the richest and above all the most popular, was M. Fouquet, lord of Belle-Île.

Even in the country, even in sight of this mysterious isle, legends and traditions consecrated its marvels.

Every one did not penetrate there; the island, of an extent of six leagues long by six wide, was a seigneurial property which long the people had respected, covered as it was with the name of Retz, so much dreaded in the region.

Shortly after the erection of this seignory into a marquisate by Charles IX, Belle-Île had passed to M. Fouquet.

The celebrity of the isle dated not from yesterday: its name, or rather its qualification, went back to the highest Antiquity; the ancients called it Kalonèse, from two Greek words signifying beautiful island. Thus, at eighteen hundred years' distance, it had, in another tongue, borne the same name it still bore.

It was therefore something in itself, this property of M. the Superintendent, besides its position six leagues from the coasts of France, a position which makes it sovereign in its maritime solitude, like a majestic vessel that would disdain roads and proudly cast its anchors in the midst of the ocean.

D'Artagnan learned all this without seeming in the least astonished: he learned also that the best means of making acquaintance was to pass at La Roche-Bernard, a fairly important town upon the mouth of the Vilaine.

Perhaps there he might embark. If not, crossing the salt marshes, he would betake himself to Guérande or to Le Croisic to await occasion to pass to Belle-Île. He had perceived, besides, since his departure from Châteaubriant, that nothing would be impossible to Ferret under the impulse of M. Agnan, and nothing to M. Agnan upon the initiative of Ferret.

He prepared therefore to sup upon a teal and a crab in an inn at La Roche-Bernard, and had drawn from the cellar, to wash down these two Breton dishes, a cider which at the mere touch of the lip's tip he recognized as being infinitely more Breton still.

Chapter LXVII — How d'Artagnan Made the Acquaintance of a Poet Who Had Made Himself a Printer That His Verses Might Be Printed

Before sitting down to table, d'Artagnan took, as usual, his information; but it is an axiom of curiosity that every man who would question well and fruitfully must first offer himself to questions.

D'Artagnan therefore sought with his ordinary skill a useful questioner in the hostelry of La Roche-Bernard.

Justly there was in this house, on the first floor, two travellers also occupied with the preparations of their supper or with their supper itself.

D'Artagnan had seen their mounts in the stable, and in the room their equipage.

One travelled with a lackey, as a sort of personage; two Perche mares, beautiful round beasts, served them as mounts.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”