D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 171: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XXII. REBELLION BEGETS REBELS, The Lord of Ortalegra was of medium stature, heav- ily built; it would seem that an ancestor had brought home from Flanders a wife of another type than his own. He had folds in ‘this jowl and neck; his eyes were blue, with the edge of the iris defined in darker shade; they were good; his nose was not noble; his hair and trim beard were flaxen, a remarkable thing, perhaps, but some of the Portuguese show tokens of the Gothic and Vandal invasions. His horseman’s cloak covered a suit of yellow; this was Spanish livery, no doubt, but, on the other hand, it is Apollo’s color; and Ortalegra was a poetaster—but by no means an aster of poesy. “T expected you, Rodrigo! I knew you would come on the Winged Steed, if possible, so tractable to you singers! ‘This is the duchess, of whom you have sweetly sung, and before whom you can discourse, I hope, as sweetly !” “For such an audience, my lord and my lady, I should have been more fleet—if I had good tidings!’ He looked round, but he must ‘have had a hint that the re- ception-rooms were not in a palace; he made no allu- sion to the duke’s escape from the licensed sea bravos, but yet he might not have met the news, certainly not published by herald’s mouth to cry of trumpet. “What, nothing to be had out of the cold north?” “Cold comfort! Charles J. is at daggers-drawn with his perverse subjects: soldiers unpaid, merchants who will not pay up, courtiers snarling because coin falls into the churchwarden’s bag and not on the basset-board, faithless emigrants carrying trade secrets into that New England rf ‘No prospect of a few ships and able seamen? for England abounds in both, good, sound, ready!” Gomichook