D'ARTAGNAN AND THE AUTUMN COLOURS

D'Artagnan's Birthplace near Lupiac (Gers)

'J'adore' said Caro waving her arms, 'les couleurs d'automne.'   We were sitting at table in her great and almost medieval hall, restored to great beauty and perfection and which doubles (or triples or quadruples) as kitchen, dining room, living room and study, all in one elegant space.

We had in fact just come in from the west facing balcony beyond which the sun had set far away over the misty hills leaving the sky filled with the same golden autumn colours as the leaves that tumbled all around.  Even the champagne seemed to take on an autumn hue.

Caro was by now stirring the most wonderful soup.  'It's a universal phrase', she said. 'Whenever you are in difficulty, or don't understand something, you can always reply - with suitable gestures - that you simply love the autumn colours.'  As always, I thought,  the phrase seems to lose something in translation.

Well, there we were. We had just arrived that very afternoon from the grey cloudiness of Britain into the warm autumn sunshine of the Cantal - somewhere, incidentally, that is a little larger than Norfolk but with only 149,000 people, despite having its own respectable ski resort at Le Lioran and being only a couple of fast hours driving from the Mediterranean.  Moreover, the Departemental capital, Aurilliac, even has more sun than Toulouse, according to the weather statistics.  Despite this, the Cantal ranks with the Creuse and the Lozère as one of the three most depopulated French Departements. 

And it was once English around six hundred years ago.  That anyway was the point I hesitantly put to Den who is Caro's other half. (The two of them together are a walking encyclopaedia).  In the boom years for the English Raj in France, after Henry V had done the business at Agincourt.

There's a castle just down the road - just a ruin now - that changed hands, amicably, too, according to Den, with one side marching out and the other side marching in.  But whether it was the French who were quitting or the English, Den didn't know.  For certainly it didn't remain English very long and in a few short years during the disastrous reign of the mad Henry VI all English France was lost (apart from Calais).  The hundred years war won, only promptly to be lost and the loss then triggering the Wars of the Roses.

What you learn from Shakespeare and Phillipa Gregory!  Whose latest fiction 'The Lady of the Rivers' is, to my mind, a great read, particularly if you have Wikipedia beside you.  The book is a fictional life of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Mother of Elizabeth Woodville ('The White Queen') and great-grand-mother of Henry VIII. 

For some reason Den and Caro advise me also to enter the realm of historical fiction, cutting my teeth, as it were, by translating Alexandre Dumas' novel, 'The Three Musketeers,'  which was last translated into English, apparently, 150 years ago and therefore needs reworking for our text speak age.   I have always counted this a wild project but something seems to be telling me it isn't.

You see we visited my other sister, during this stay, who also lives down in the Gers in south west France (where it is not so sunny as in the Cantal).  In fact it rained on only the second day we were there.

'I know,' Sarah said brightly. 'Why don't you go off and visit the D'Artagnan Museum, it's only ten minutes away in Lupiac.'  And so we did.

D'Artagnan must be one of the few people in history to be more famous for his fictional exploits than his real ones.  But yes, he was the Captain General of the King's Musketeers and he did arrest and guard the rogue Finance Minister, Nicolas Fouquet - who some think was the man behind, or rather inside, the Iron Mask, and he did die at the siege of Maastricht in course of a rather unnecessary bit of heroics.  And yes, he was born in a little manor house just outside Lupiac, though sadly this is now privately owned.

The Lupiac museum is in a chapel in the town and is full of film posters and book editions.  The audio commentary is a bit hit or miss, switching alarmingly from one subject to the next.  But still worth seeing on a wet afternoon.  I now have background should the translation ever get off the ground.

Nor was this the last time I met him. For it seems the man is ubiquitous. Opening the Spectator on returning home, I see a picture of Milla Jovovich dressed as Milady de Winter.  Yes, yet another remake of The Three Musketeers is out and showing at cinemas nationwide. This time it includes airships.  Deborah Ross' review is scathing: 'All for one, one for all, but, mostly, one to skip.'

I do wonder whether the world really needs a new translation, with or without airships.  'J'adore les couleurs d'automne,' as D"Artagnan might himself have said pensively.