Dumas' Paris Part 31

With Brittany, Dumas is quite as familiar. In "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne,"

he gives minute, though not wearisome, details of Belle Ile and the Breton coast around about. Aramis, it seems, had acquired Belle Ile, and had risen to high ecclesiastical rank, making his home thereon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NoTRE DAME DE CHARTRES]

Dumas' love and knowledge of gastronomy comes to the fore again here. When D'Artagnan undertook his famous journey to Belle Ile, on the coast of Brittany, as messenger of Louis XIV., whom he called his sun, after he had bought that snuff-coloured _bidet_ which would have disgraced a corporal, and after he had shortened his name to Agnan,--to complete his disguise,--he put in one night at La Roche-Bernard, "a tolerably important city at the mouth of the Vilaine, and prepared to sup at a hotel." And he did sup; "off a teal and a _torteau_, and in order to wash down these two distinctive Breton dishes, ordered some cider, which, the moment it touched his lips, he perceived to be more Breton still."

On the route from Paris to the mouth of the Loire, where D'Artagnan departed for Belle Ile, is Chartres. Its Cathedral de Notre Dame has not often appeared in fiction. In history and books of travel, and of artistic and archaeological interest, its past has been vigorously played.

Dumas, in "La Dame de Monsoreau," has revived the miraculous legend which tradition has preserved.

It recounts a ceremony which many will consider ludicrous, and yet others sacrilegious. Dumas describes it thus:

"The month of April had arrived. The great cathedral of Chartres was hung with white, and the king was standing barefooted in the nave. The religious ceremonies, which were for the purpose of praying for an heir to the throne of France, were just finis.h.i.+ng, when Henri, in the midst of the general silence, heard what seemed to him a stifled laugh. He turned around to see if Chicot were there, for he thought no one else would have dared to laugh at such a time. It was not, however, Chicot who had laughed at the sight of the two chemises of the Holy Virgin, which were said to have such a prolific power, and which were just being drawn from their golden box; but it was a cavalier who had just stopped at the door of the church, and who was making his way with his muddy boots through the crowd of courtiers in their penitents' robes and sacks. Seeing the king turn, he stopped for a moment, and Henri, irritated at seeing him arrive thus, threw an angry glance at him. The newcomer, however, continued to advance until he reached the velvet chair of M. le Duc d'Anjou, by which he knelt down."

But a step from Chartres, on the Loire,--though Orleans, the "City of the Maid," comes between,--is Blois.

In "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," the last of the D'Artagnan series, the action comes down to later times, to that of the young king Louis XIV.

In its opening lines its scene is laid in that wonderfully ornate and impressive Chateau of Blois, which so many have used as a background for all manner of writing.

Dumas, with his usual directness, wasting no words on mere description, and only considering it as an accessory to his romance, refers briefly to this magnificent building--the combined product of the houses whose arms bore the hedgehog and the salamander.

"Toward the middle of the month of May, 1660, when the sun was fast absorbing the dew from the _ravenelles_ of the Chateau of Blois, a little cavalcade entered the city by the bridge, without producing any effect upon the pa.s.sengers of the quai-side, except a movement of the tongue to express, in the purest French then spoken in France (Touraine has ever spoken the purest tongue, as all know), 'There is Monsieur returning from the hunt.'... It should have been a trifling source of pride to the city of Blois that Gaston of Orleans had chosen it as his residence, and held his court in the ancient chateau of its states."

It was in the Castle of the States of Blois that Louis XIV. received that unexpected visit from "His Majesty Charles II., King of England, Scotland, and Ireland," of which Dumas writes in the second of the D'Artagnan series.

"'How strange it is you are here,' said Louis. 'I only knew of your embarkation at Brighthelmstone, and your landing in Normandy.'...

"Blois was peaceful that morning of the royal arrival, at which announcement it was suddenly filled with all the tumult and the buzzing of a swarm of bees. In the lower city, scarce a hundred paces from the castle, is a sufficiently handsome street called the Rue Vieille, and an old and venerable edifice which, tradition says, was habited by a councillor of state, to whom Queen Catherine came, some say to visit and others to strangle."

Not alone is Blois reminiscent of "Les Mousquetaires," but the numberless references in the series to Langeais, Chambord,--the chateaux and their domains,--bring to mind more forcibly than by innuendo merely that Dumas himself must have had some great fondness for what has come to be the touring-ground of France _par excellence_.

From "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," one quotes these few lines which, significantly, suggest much: "Do you not remember, Montalais, the woods of Chaverney, and of Chambord, and the numberless poplars of Blois?" This describes the country concisely, but explicitly.

Beyond Blois, beyond even Tours, which is Blois' next neighbour, pa.s.sing down the Loire, is Angers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CASTLE OF ANGERS--CHaTEAU OF BLOIS]

In "La Dame de Monsoreau," more commonly known in English translations as "Chicot the Jester," much of the scene is laid in Anjou.

To Angers, with its wonderful fairylike castle, with its seventeen black-banded towers (recalling, also, that this is the "Black Angers" of Shakespeare's "King John"), repaired the Duc d'Anjou, the brother of Charles IX. and Henri III., who then reigned at Paris.

To this "secret residence" the duc came. Dumas puts it thus:

"'Gentlemen!' cried the duke, 'I have come to throw myself into my good city of Angers. At Paris the most terrible dangers have menaced my life.'... The people then cried out, 'Long live our seigneur!'"

Bussy, who had made the way clear for the duc, lived, says Dumas, "in a tumble-down old house near the ramparts." The ducal palace was actually outside the castle walls, but the frowning battlement was relied upon to shelter royalty when occasion required, the suite quartering themselves in the Gothic chateau, which is still to be seen in the debris-cluttered lumber-yard, to which the interior of the fortress has to-day descended.

In other respects than the shocking care, or, rather, the lack of care, which is given to its interior, the Castle of Angers, with its battalion of _tours_, now without their turrets, its deep, machicolated walls, and its now dry _fosse_, presents in every way an awe-inspiring stronghold.

Beyond Angers, toward the sea, is Nantes, famous for the Edict, and, in "The Regent's Daughter" of Dumas, the ma.s.sacre of the four Breton conspirators.

Gaston, the hero of the tale, had ridden posthaste from Paris to save his fellows. He was preceded, by two hours, by the order for their execution, and the reprieve which he held would be valueless did he arrive too late.

"On reaching the gates of Nantes his horse stumbled, but Gaston did not lose his stirrups, pulled him up sharply, and, driving the spurs into his sides, he made him recover himself.

"The night was dark, no one appeared upon the ramparts, the very sentinels were hidden in the gloom; it seemed like a deserted city.

"But as he pa.s.sed the gate a sentinel said something which Gaston did not even hear.

"He held on his way.

"At the Rue du Chateau his horse stumbled and fell, this time to rise no more.

"What mattered it to Gaston now?--he had arrived....

"He pa.s.sed right through the castle, when he perceived the esplanade, a scaffold, and a crowd. He tried to cry, but no one heard him; to wave his handkerchief, but no one saw him.... Another mounts the scaffold, and, uttering a cry, Gaston threw himself down below.... Four men died who might have been saved had Gaston but arrived five minutes before, and, by a remarkable contretemps, Gaston himself shared the same fate."

In "The Regent's Daughter," Dumas describes the journey to Nantes with great preciseness, though with no excess of detail. The third chapter opens thus:

"Three nights after that on which we have seen the regent, first at Ch.e.l.les, and then at Meudon, a scene pa.s.sed in the environs of Nantes which cannot be omitted in this history; we will therefore exercise our privilege of transporting the reader to that place.

"On the road to Clisson, two or three miles from Nantes,--near the convent known as the residence of Abelard,--was a large dark house, surrounded by thick, stunted trees; hedges everywhere surrounded the enclosure outside the walls, hedges impervious to the sight, and only interrupted by a wicket gate.

"This gate led into a garden, at the end of which was a wall, having a small, ma.s.sive, and closed door. From a distance this grave and dismal residence appeared like a prison; it was, however, a convent, full of young Augustines, subject to a rule lenient as compared with provincial customs, but rigid as compared with those of Paris.

"The house was inaccessible on three sides, but the fourth, which did not face the road, ab.u.t.ted on a large sheet of water; and ten feet above its surface were the windows of the refectory.

"This little lake was carefully guarded, and was surrounded by high wooden palisades. A single iron gate opened into it, and at the same time gave a pa.s.sage to the waters of a small rivulet which fed the lake, and the water had egress at the opposite end."

From this point on, the action of "The Regent's Daughter" runs riotously rapid, until it finally culminates, so far as Nantes is concerned, in the quintuple execution before the chateau, brought about by the five minutes'

delay of Gaston with the reprieve.

Dumas' knowledge of and love of the Mediterranean was great, and he knew its western sh.o.r.es intimately.

In 1830 he resolved to visit all the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean in a yacht, which he had had specially built for the purpose, called the _Emma_.

He arrived in Sicily, however, at the moment of the Garibaldian struggle against the King of Italy, with the result that the heroic elements of that event so appealed to him, that he forewent the other more tranquil pleasure of continuing his voyage, and went over to the mainland.

In "The Count of Monte Cristo" is given one of Dumas' best bits of descriptive writing. At any rate, it describes one of the aspects of the brilliantly blue Mediterranean, which is only comparable to one's personal contemplation of its charms. It is apropos of the voyage to the island of Monte Cristo--which lies between Elba and Corsica, and has become fabled in the minds of present-day readers solely by Dumas' efforts--that he wrote the following: