Part 42

The fisherman began to laugh in Mr. Agnan’s face.

“Listen here,” resumed the latter with his native foolishness, “at four leagues’ distance one loses sight of the coast, does one not?”

“Why… not always.”

“At any rate… it is far… too far, even; otherwise, I should have asked you to take me aboard and show me what I have never seen.”

“What is that?”

“A living sea fish.”

“Is the gentleman from the provinces?” said one of the fishermen.

“Yes, I am from Paris.”

The Breton shrugged his shoulders; then:

“Have you seen Mr. Fouquet in Paris?” he asked.

“Often,” answered Agnan.

“Often?” said the fishermen, drawing their circle closer around the Parisian. “You know him?”

“A little; he is an intimate friend of my master.”

“Ah!” said the fishermen.

“And,” added d’Artagnan, “I have seen all his castles, those of Saint-Mandé, of Vaux, and his hôtel in Paris.”

“Fine?”

“Superb.”

“It is not as fine as Belle-Île,” said a fisherman.

“Bah!” replied Mr. Agnan, bursting into a rather disdainful laugh, which angered all the bystanders.

“One sees plainly you have not seen Belle-Île,” replied the most curious of the fishermen. “Do you know it is six leagues long, and that it has trees the like of which are not to be seen even on the ramparts at Nantes?”

“Trees! at sea!” cried d’Artagnan. “I should like very much to see that!”

“It is easy; we fish off the island of Hoëdic; come with us. From that spot you will see, like a paradise, the black trees of Belle-Île 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 beautiful. But there are a hundred steeples at Mr. Fouquet’s castle at Vaux, do you know?”

The Breton lifted his head with profound admiration, but was not convinced.

“A hundred steeples!” said he; “all the same, Belle-Île is finer. Would you like to see Belle-Île?”

“Is that possible?” asked Mr. Agnan.

“Yes, with the governor’s permission.”

“But I do not know that governor, I.”

“Since you know Mr. Fouquet, you will give your name.”

“Oh! my friends, I am not a gentleman, I!”

“Everybody enters Belle-Île,” continued the fisherman in his strong and pure dialect, “provided one means no harm to Belle-Île nor to its lord.”

A slight shudder ran through the musketeer’s body.

“That is true,” he thought.

Then, recovering himself:

“If I were sure,” said he, “of not suffering from seasickness…”

“In that?” said the fisherman, pointing with pride to his pretty boat with the round hull.

“Come! you persuade me,” cried Mr. Agnan; “I will go see Belle-Île; but they will not let me in.”

“We get in well enough, we.”

“You! why?”

“Why, bless me!… to sell fish to the corsairs.”

“Eh!… corsairs, what do you say?”

“I say that Mr. Fouquet is having two corsairs built for hunting the Dutch or the English, and that we sell fish to the crews of those little vessels.”

“Well!… well!…” said d’Artagnan, “better and better! a printing press, bastions, and corsairs!… Come, Mr. Fouquet is no mean enemy, as I had supposed. He is worth the trouble of stirring oneself to see him close at hand.”

“We sail at half past five,” added the fisherman gravely.

“I am all yours, I will not leave you.”

Indeed, d’Artagnan saw the fishermen haul their boats with a windlass up to the water’s edge; the sea rose, Mr. Agnan let himself slide down to the shore, not without feigning fright and affording amusement to the little cabin boys who watched him with their intelligent big eyes.

He lay down upon a sail folded in four, let the casting off be done, and the boat, with its great square sail, stood out to sea in the space of two hours.

The fishermen, who plied their trade as they went, did not perceive that their passenger had not turned pale, nor groaned, nor suffered; that, despite the horrible pitching and the brutal rolling of the boat, to which no hand imparted direction, the novice passenger had kept his presence of mind and his appetite.

They fished, and the fishing was rather successful. To the lines baited with shrimps came biting, with vigorous leaps, the soles and the plaice. Two lines had already been broken by congers and cod of enormous weight; three sea eels plowed the hold with their muddy coils and their death throes.

D’Artagnan brought them luck; they told him so. The soldier found the work so merry that he lent a hand, that is to say, to the lines, and uttered roars of joy and oaths to astonish his own musketeers, each time a jerk imparted to the line by a captured prey came to tear the muscles of his arm, and call for the use of his strength and skill. The pleasure party had made him forget the diplomatic mission. He was struggling against a frightful conger, clinging to the gunwale with one hand to draw the gaping jaws of his antagonist toward him, when the patron said to him:

“Take care lest you be seen from Belle-Île!”

These words produced on d’Artagnan the effect of the first cannonball that whistles on a day of battle: he let go the line and the conger, which, each pulling the other, returned to the water.

D’Artagnan had just caught sight, at half a league at most, of the bluish and sharply outlined silhouette of the rocks of Belle-Île, dominated by the white and majestic line of the castle. In the distance, the land, with forests and green plains; in the meadows, cattle.

This was what first attracted the musketeer’s attention.

The sun, having reached the quarter of the sky, cast golden rays upon the sea and made a resplendent dust flutter around that enchanted island. One saw, thanks to that dazzling light, only the leveled surfaces; every shadow cut harshly and striped with a band of darkness the luminous drapery of the prairie or the walls.

“Eh! eh!” said d’Artagnan at the sight of those masses of black rock, “here, it seems to me, are fortifications that need no engineer to discourage a landing. By what devil can one descend upon this land that God has so obligingly defended?”

“This way,” replied the patron of the boat, shifting the sail and imparting to the rudder a jerk that sent the skiff in the direction of a pretty little port, neat, round, and freshly crenellated.

“What the devil do I see there?” said d’Artagnan.

“You see Locmaria,” replied the fisherman.

“But yonder?”

“That is Bangos.”

“And farther?”

“Saujeu… Then Le Palais.”

“’Sdeath! it is a world. Ah! there are soldiers.”

“There are seventeen hundred men at Belle-Île, sir,” replied the fisherman with pride. “Do you know that the smallest garrison is twenty-two companies of infantry?”

“’Sdeath!” cried d’Artagnan, stamping his foot, “His Majesty may well be right.”

Chapter LXIX — Wherein the reader will no doubt be as astonished as d’Artagnan was to find an old acquaintance

There is always, in a landing, were it that of the smallest skiff on the sea, a confusion and disorder which leave the mind without the freedom it would need to study at a glance the new place offered to it.

The movable bridge, the agitated sailor, the noise of water on the shingle, the cries and eagerness of those who wait on the shore, are the multiple details of that sensation, which sums up in a single result, hesitation.

It was therefore only after having landed and stood a few minutes on the shore that d’Artagnan saw upon the port, and above all in the interior of the island, a world of workers astir. At his feet, d’Artagnan recognized the five barges laden with rough stone that he had seen depart from the port of Piriac. The stones were transported to the shore by means of a chain formed by twenty-five or thirty peasants.

The large stones were loaded upon carts which conveyed them in the same direction as the rough stone, that is to say, toward works whose value and extent d’Artagnan could not yet appreciate.

Everywhere reigned an activity equal to that which Telemachus remarked on landing at Salente. D’Artagnan was strongly tempted to penetrate farther; but he could not, on pain of suspicion, allow himself to be suspected of curiosity. He therefore advanced only little by little, scarce passing the line that the fishermen formed upon the beach, observing all, saying nothing, and forestalling all the suppositions that might have been made from a silly question or a polite salute.

Meanwhile, while his companions carried on their trade, selling or praising their fish to the workmen or the townsfolk, d’Artagnan had gradually gained ground, and, reassured by the little attention paid him, he began to cast an intelligent and assured glance upon the men and things that appeared to his eyes.

Moreover, the first looks of d’Artagnan encountered movements of the ground with which a soldier’s eye could not be deceived.

At the two extremities of the port, so that the fires might cross upon the great axis of the ellipse formed by the basin, there had first been raised two batteries evidently destined to receive coast guns, for d’Artagnan saw the workmen finishing the platforms and disposing the half-circumference of wood upon which the wheel of the pieces must turn to take all directions above the parapet. Beside each of these batteries, other workers faced with gabions filled with earth the revetment of another battery. This one had embrasures, and a conductor of works successively called the men who, with withes, bound fascines, and those who cut the lozenges and rectangles of turf destined to hold the reeds of the embrasures.

From the activity displayed upon these already advanced works, one might regard them as finished; they were not furnished with their cannon, but the platforms had their beds and their planks all set up; the earth, carefully beaten, had consolidated them, and, supposing the artillery in the island, in less than two or three days the port might be completely armed.

What astonished d’Artagnan, when he turned his eyes from the coast batteries to the fortifications of the town, was to see that Belle-Île was defended by a quite new system, of which he had heard more than once spoken of by the Count de La Fère as a great progress, but whose application he had not yet seen.

These fortifications no longer belonged either to the Dutch method of Marollois or to the French method of the Chevalier Antoine de Ville, but to the system of Manesson Mallet, a skilled engineer who, some six or eight years before, had left the service of Portugal to enter that of France.

These works were remarkable in that, instead of rising out of the ground, as did the old ramparts destined to defend the town from scaling ladders, they sank into it on the contrary; and what made the height of the walls was the depth of the ditches. It took d’Artagnan no long time to recognize all the superiority of such a system, which gives no hold to cannon.

Besides, as the ditches were below the level of the sea, they could be flooded by subterranean sluices. Moreover, the works were almost completed, and a group of workers, receiving orders from a man who appeared to be the conductor of the works, was occupied in laying the last stones. A plank bridge thrown over the ditch, for the greater convenience of the laborers conducting the wheelbarrows, connected the interior with the exterior.

D’Artagnan asked with naive curiosity whether he was permitted to cross the bridge, and was answered that no order forbade it.

In consequence, d’Artagnan crossed the bridge and advanced toward the group. This group was dominated by that man already remarked by d’Artagnan, and who appeared to be the chief engineer. A plan was spread upon a large stone serving as a table, and a few paces from this man a crane was at work.

This engineer, who, by reason of his importance, must first attract d’Artagnan’s attention, wore a doublet which, by its sumptuousness, was hardly in harmony with the work he was doing, which would rather have required the costume of a master mason than that of a lord.

He was, besides, a man of tall stature, with broad and square shoulders, and wearing a hat quite covered with plumes. He gesticulated in a most majestic manner, and appeared, for he was seen only from behind, to scold the workers for their inertia or their weakness.

D’Artagnan kept approaching.

At this moment, the man with the plumes had ceased to gesticulate, and, his hands upon his knees, half bent over himself, he followed the efforts of six workmen who tried to raise a cut stone to the height of a piece of wood destined to support that stone, so that the rope of the crane might be passed beneath it. The six men, gathered upon a single face of the stone, collected all their efforts to lift it eight or ten inches from the ground, sweating and blowing, while a seventh made ready, as soon as there should be space enough, to slip the roller that was to support it. But already twice the stone had escaped their hands before reaching a sufficient height for the roller to be introduced.

It goes without saying that each time the stone had escaped them, they had made a bound backward to avoid the falling stone crushing their feet.

Each time this stone, abandoned by them, had sunk deeper into the greasy earth, which rendered more and more difficult the operation upon which the workers were at that moment engaged. A third effort made remained without better success, but with progressive discouragement.

And yet, when the six men had bent over the stone, the man with the plumes had himself, in a powerful voice, articulated the command of “Heave!” which presides over all maneuvers of force.

Then he straightened up.

“Ho! ho!” said he, “what is this? Have I then to deal with men of straw?… Ox horn! stand aside, and you shall see how that is done.”

“Plague!” said d’Artagnan, “would he pretend to lift that rock? That would be curious, indeed.”

The workmen, addressed by the engineer, stood aside with lowered ears and shaking heads, except him who held the plank and who made ready to fulfill his office.

The man with the plumes approached the stone, bent down, slipped his hands under the face resting on the ground, stiffened his herculean muscles, and, without jerk, with a slow movement like that of a machine, he raised the rock a foot from the ground.

The workman who held the plank profited by the play thus given him and slipped the roller under the stone.

“There!” said the giant, not letting the rock fall, but resting it upon its support.

“’Sdeath!” cried d’Artagnan, “I know but one man capable of such a feat of strength.”

“Eh?” said the colossus, turning round.

“Porthos!” murmured d’Artagnan, seized with stupor, “Porthos at Belle-Île!”

For his part, the man with the plumes fixed his eyes upon the false steward, and, despite his disguise, recognized him.

“D’Artagnan!” he cried.

And the red mounted to his face.

“Hush!” he made to d’Artagnan.

“Hush!” made the musketeer to him.

Indeed, if Porthos had just been discovered by d’Artagnan, d’Artagnan had just been discovered by Porthos.

The interest of their particular secret carried each of them away at first.

Nevertheless, the first movement of the two men was to throw themselves into each other’s arms.

What they wished to hide from the bystanders was not their friendship, but their names.

But after the embrace came reflection.

“Why the deuce is Porthos at Belle-Île and lifting stones?” said d’Artagnan to himself.

Only d’Artagnan asked himself this question very low. Less strong in diplomacy than his friend, Porthos thought aloud.

“Why the devil are you at Belle-Île?” he asked d’Artagnan; “and what do you come to do here?”

He must answer without hesitation.

To hesitate in answering Porthos would have been a defeat from which d’Artagnan’s self-love could never have recovered.

“Pardieu! my friend, I am at Belle-Île because you are here.”

“Ah bah!” said Porthos, visibly bewildered by the argument and seeking to account for it with that lucidity of deduction we know in him.

“Doubtless,” continued d’Artagnan, who did not wish to give his friend time to recognize him; “I went to Pierrefonds to see you.”

“Truly?”

“Yes.”

“And you did not find me there?”

“No, but I found Mouston.”

“Is he well?”

“Plague!”

“But after all, Mouston did not tell you I was here.”

“Why should he not have told me? Have I by chance forfeited the confidence of Mouston?”

“No; but he did not know it.”

“Oh! there is a reason that is in no way offensive to my self-love at least.”

“But how did you manage to rejoin me?”

“Eh! my dear fellow, a great lord like you always leaves a trace of his passage, and I should esteem myself but little if I did not know how to follow the traces of my friends.”

This explanation, flattering though it was, did not wholly satisfy Porthos.

“But I could leave no traces, having come disguised,” said Porthos.

“Ah! you came disguised?” said d’Artagnan.

“Yes.”

“And how was that?”

“As a miller.”

“Can a great lord like you, Porthos, affect common manners to the point of deceiving people?”

“Why, I swear to you, my friend, that everybody was deceived, so well did I play my part.”

“At last, not so well that I did not rejoin and discover you.”

“Exactly. How did you rejoin and discover me?”

“Wait. I was about to tell you the thing. Imagine that Mouston…”

“Ah! it is that rogue Mouston,” said Porthos, wrinkling the two arcs of triumph that served him for eyebrows.

“But wait, wait. It is not Mouston’s fault, since he himself ignored where you were.”

“No doubt. That is why I am in such haste to understand.”

“Oh! how impatient you are, Porthos!”

“When I do not understand, I am terrible.”

“You shall understand. Aramis wrote to you at Pierrefonds, did he not?”

“Yes.”

“He wrote you to arrive before the equinox?”

“That is true.”

“Well! there it is,” said d’Artagnan, hoping this reason would suffice for Porthos.

Porthos appeared to give himself up to a violent mental labor.

“Oh! yes,” said he, “I understand. As Aramis told me to arrive before the equinox, you understood it was to rejoin him. You inquired where Aramis was, saying to yourself: ‘where Aramis is, there will Porthos be.’ You learned that Aramis was in Brittany, and you said to yourself: ‘Porthos is in Brittany.’”

“Eh! exactly. Truly, Porthos, I know not how you did not make yourself a diviner. Then, you understand: on arriving at La Roche-Bernard, I learned the fine fortification works that were being done at Belle-Île. The account given me piqued my curiosity. I embarked on a fishing vessel, without the least in the world knowing you were here. I came. I saw a fellow who was moving a stone that Ajax could not have stirred. I cried: ‘None but the Baron de Bracieux is capable of such a feat of strength.’ You heard me, you turned round, you recognized me, we embraced, and, faith, if you will, dear friend, we shall embrace again.”

“That is how all is explained, indeed,” said Porthos.

And he embraced d’Artagnan with such great friendship that the musketeer lost his breath for five minutes.

“Come, come, stronger than ever,” said d’Artagnan, “and always in the arms, fortunately.”

Porthos saluted d’Artagnan with a gracious smile.

During the five minutes in which d’Artagnan had recovered his breath, he had reflected that he had a very difficult role to play. It was a matter of always questioning without ever answering. When breath returned to him, his plan of campaign was made.

Chapter LXX — Wherein d’Artagnan’s ideas, at first much troubled, begin to clear up a little

D’Artagnan immediately took the offensive.

“Now that I have told you all, dear friend, or rather that you have guessed all, tell me what you do here, covered with dust and mud?”

Porthos wiped his brow, and looking around him with pride:

“But it seems to me,” said he, “that you can see what I do here!”

“Doubtless, doubtless; you lift stones.”

“Oh! to show the lazy fellows what a man is!” said Porthos with contempt. “But you understand…”

“Yes, you do not make your profession of lifting stones, though there are many who make it their profession and do not lift them as you do. That is therefore what made me ask you just now: ‘What do you do here, baron?’”

“I study topography, chevalier.”

“You study topography?”

“Yes; but you yourself, what do you do under that bourgeois habit?”

D’Artagnan recognized that he had made a mistake in giving way to his astonishment. Porthos had profited by it to riposte with a question.

Happily d’Artagnan expected this question.

“But,” said he, “you know that I am bourgeois, indeed; the habit is therefore nothing astonishing, since it accords with the condition.”

“Come now, you, a musketeer!”

“You are behind the times, my good friend; I have resigned.”

“Bah!”

“Ah! my God, yes!”

“And you have abandoned the service?”

“I have left it.”

“You have abandoned the king?”

“Flatly.”

Porthos raised his arms to heaven like a man who learns an unheard-of piece of news.

“Oh! that, indeed, confounds me,” said he.

“It is yet thus.”

“And who could have determined you to that?”

“The king displeased me; Mazarin had disgusted me for a long time, as you know; I threw my coat to the nettles.”

“But Mazarin is dead.”

“I know it plague well; only, at the time of his death, the resignation had been given and accepted for two months. It was then that, finding myself free, I ran to Pierrefonds to see my dear Porthos. I had heard spoken of the happy division you had made of your time, and I wished for a fortnight to divide mine upon yours.”

“My friend, you know that it is not for fifteen days that the house is open to you: it is for a year, it is for ten years, it is for life.”

“Thanks, Porthos.”

“Ah! you have no need of money?” said Porthos, making chink a fifty of louis that his purse contained. In which case, you know…”

“No, I need nothing; I have placed my savings with Planchet, who pays me the income.”

“Your savings?”

“Doubtless,” said d’Artagnan; “why would you have me not have made my savings like another, Porthos?”

“I! I would not have that; on the contrary, I have always suspected you… that is to say, Aramis has always suspected you of having savings. I, you see, I do not meddle with household affairs; only, what I presume is that a musketeer’s savings are light.”

“Doubtless, relatively to you, Porthos, who are a millionaire; but after all I am going to let you be the judge of it. I had on one side twenty-five thousand livres.”

“That is nice,” said Porthos with an affable air.

“And,” continued d’Artagnan, “I added thereto, on the 25th of last month, two hundred thousand livres more.”}

“Stories of the world, in your language.”