The Three Musketeers [antikvár]

A Troubled Start On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the small town of Meung appeared to be in a state of revolution. Many of the townsmen were proceeding towards the inn of the Jolly Miller, to which a vast and increasing mob was hastening with intense curiosity. At that period in France alarms were frequent. The nobles made war on each other; there was the king, who made war on the cardinal; there was the Spaniard who made war on the king. Having reached the inn everyone could see and understand the cause of this alarm—a young man clothed in a woollen doublet, whose blue colour was faded to an indistinguishable shade between the lees of wine and a cerulean blue; the face long and brown; the cheekbones high, denoting acuteness; the muscles of the jaw enormously developed—an infallible mark by which a Gascon may be recognized, even without the cap, and our youth wore a cap, adorned with a sort of feather; the eye full and intelligent; the nose hooked but finely formed; the whole figure too large for a youth, yet too small for an adult. Our youth had a steed, and this steed was at the same time so remarkable as to attract observation. It was a B6arnese sheltie, of about twelve or fourteen years of age, yellow as an orange, without any hair on its tail, but abundance of galls on its legs. The young man's name was d'Artagnan. His father had given him the horse when he had set out for Paris from his home at Tarbes in Gascony and had also handed him a letter of intro-