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 | The Three Musketeers Ebook | |
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 | |  | | E-book Category: Action, Adventure, Classic
E-book Title: The Three Musketeers
Author: Alexandre Dumas
Book Description: 1 THE THREE PRESENTS OF D'ARTAGNAN THE ELDER
On the 1st Mon of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of ROMANCE OF THE ROSE was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had simply ready-made a second La Rochelle of it. Galore citizens, seeing the women flying toward the High Street, departure their children crying at the open doors, hastened to don the cuirass, and supporting their somewhat uncertain courageousness with a muzzle loader
or a partisan, directed their steps toward the hostel of the Jolly Miller, before which was gathered, increasing every minute, a compact group, blatant and full of curiosity.
In those times panics were common, and few days passed without several city or another registering in its archives an event of this kind. There were nobles, who ready-made war against each other; there was the king, who ready-made war against the cardinal; there was Spain, which ready-made war against the king. Then, in addition to these concealed or public, private secret or open wars, there were robbers, mendicants, Huguenots, wolves, and scoundrels, who ready-made war upon everybody. The citizens always took up arms promptly against thieves, wolves or scoundrels, often against nobles or Huguenots, sometimes against the king, but ne'er
against cardinal or Spain. It resulted, then, from this habit that on the aforesaid 1st Mon of April, 1625, the citizens, on hearing the clamor, and seeing neither the red-and-yellow standard nor the livery of the Duc de Richelieu, rush toward the hostel of the Jolly Miller. Once
arrived there, the cause of the uproar was apparent to all.
A young man--we can sketch his portrait at a dash. Imagine to yourself a Don Quixote of eighteen; a Don Quixote without his corselet, without his coat of mail, without his cuisses; a Don Quixote clothed in a wooden doublet, the blue color of which had faded into a unidentified shade between lees of wine and a heavenly azure; face long and brown; high cheek bones, a sign of sagacity; the jaw
muscles tremendously developed, an foolproof sign by which a Gascon may always be detected, even as without his cap--and our young man wore a cap set off with a sort of feather; the eye open and intelligent; the nose hooked, but finely chiseled. Too big for a youth, too small for a full-grown man, an full-fledged eye mightiness have taken him for a farmer's son upon a journey had it not been for the long blade which, suspension from a animal skin
baldric, hit against the calves of its owner as he walked, and against the rough side of his warhorse
once
he was on horseback.
For our young man had a warhorse
which was the ascertained of all observers. It was a Bearn pony, from twelve to fourteen years old, yellow in his hide, without a hair in his tail, but not without windgalls on his legs, which, although going with his head lower than his knees, rendering a martingale quite unnecessary, contrived however to perform his eight leagues a day. Unfortunately, the qualities of this horse were so well concealed under his strange-colored hide and his unaccountable gait, that at a time once
everybody was a cognoscenti in horseflesh, the appearance of the aforementioned pony at Meung--which place he had entered simply about a quarter of an hour before, by the gate of Beaugency--produced an unfavorable feeling, which extended to his rider.
And this feeling had been much painfully perceived by young d'Artagnan--for so was the Don Quixote of this second Rosinante named--from his not being able to conceal from himself the ridiculous appearance that such a warhorse
gave him, nice horseman as he was. He had sighed deeply, therefore, once
acceptive
the gift of the pony from M. d'Artagnan the elder. He was not ignorant that such a beast was worth at least twenty livres; and the words which had attended
the present were above all price.More... | |
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