Among these suzerains of chateaux and belfries, the most powerful, the richest, the most popular, was M.Fouquet, seigneur of Belle-Isle.

Even in the country, even within sight of that mysterious isle, legends and traditions consecrate its wonders.

Every one might not penetrate it: the isle, of an extent of six leagues in length, and six in breadth, was a seignorial property, which the people had for a long time respected, covered as it was with the name of Retz, so redoubtable in the country.
Shortly after the erection of this seignory into a marquistate, Belle-Isle passed to M.Fouquet.The celebrity of the isle did not date from yesterday; its name, or rather its qualification, is traced back to the remotest antiquity.

The ancients called it Kalonese, from two Greek words, signifying beautiful isle.

Thus, at a distance of eighteen hundred years, it had borne, in another idiom, the same name it still bears.