D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 175: what you’re looking at

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

164 Rebellion Begets Rebels. but we conversed over treaties of peace, truces, protocols, proposals for a congress of European pacification, a fit- ting field on which to broach a plot to disrupt a sister- kingdom! Ay de mi! a great change has come over the cardinal-minister, whom I saw at the Passage of the Doire, on foot, like the meanest servant-of-the-guns, un- der the hail and freezing rain, whizzing down from the mountains, when the French army, after giving the Ital- ians a drubbing, shouted: h “Long live the bellicose prelate!’ ” “My lord, the Cardinal Duke of Richelieu is a dying tree. He whined to me that France was a-weary of broils, that her captains fought only with wine-pots in hand, that their swords hung in the second-hand iron-dealers’ stalls because they had no pay and‘had to dispose of them | for misthrows of the dice; that he was overcome by the Pope’s chiding him for turbulence, for stirring up of strife. He showed me the Holy Father’s autograph— he pointed with a trembling finger, scarce able to hold up the ring, to a line where he was characterized as a firebrand! He protested that he would have to walk barefoot to Rome in penance if again he lent a troop of horse or a file of musketeers, to say nothing of a trifle of fifty thousand livres to support the most just of rebellions !” The duchess held her great fan to her face to hide her discomfiture—or her merriment. The duke showed only impatience. “But as concerns me!” “Oh, he said, ‘Ah, me! would your Duke of Braganza become a king let him take an old statesman’s warning, _ one who speaks out of that hollow veil, the grave: “Do not set a sail too large for your ship!’”’ ” : “I am indebted to his eminence—for nothing!” re- sponded the ambitious one, with palpable jeering. “There is always some gain in learning an aged politi- cian’s advice—if one runs counter to it! It may chance that the ship can bear more than the critics surmise! It will suffice, by Heaven’s will, if it carry the honor of Braganza into the haven!” “What! does your grace persist in his monstrous in- Comicbooks;c¢om