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 Nôtre Dame has not often appeared in fiction. In history and books of travel, and of artistic and archæological 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 finishing, 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 Château 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.