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?"

"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 litt