D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 191: what you’re looking at

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

180 The Grip of Porthos. that was only at random, as if she were blinded and groping. Jacinta, at the door, was engrossed in contemplating the cordial greeting of D’Artagnan and Pedro. “T ama dead man!” thought the prince, with the fleet- ness of the mind at its point of extinction. “Jesus! Maria! have mercy!” ‘On the threshold of so much! He wanted to resist, to throw out his hands—anything to repel this descending death—but he was paralyzed. Not by the fear of doom, but because he saw what seemed the hand of Heaven which he was praying for. Over- head, indeed, the canvas ceiling was rent, and a large hand and muscular arm, not at all aerial, darted down- ward. This immense hand closed on the monk’s head’ like an ape’s on a cocoanut. Not only was the skull crushed, but the neck was twisted. The dagger was released from the grasp and rang at the duke’s foot, but not long before the dying man writhed his last beside it. When the duchess looked, it was a dead man, and the duke, blanched but re-nerved, was picking up the dagger. It was meant to inflict a sure and agonizing death, for, with a subtle Florentine’s ingenuity, its blade was one that, after the stroke, divided in two, and, opening, must have made an incurable wound, to say nothing of the im- possibility of withdrawing it. ‘Horror!’ breathed she. The duke examined it with more than horror. It was very plain; one forging of iron, a cross, of which the long arm became the piercing instrument; usually, such had this point merely to stick in the ground for a hermit’s orisons ; but this cunning doubling of the blade betrayed its fitness for other ends. “The Inquisition!” exclaimed Braganza. ‘He spoke truly. But whom have I to thank for this miraculous interposition? Holy to me, but to how many will it be pronounced sacrilegious ?” “To whom, indeed?” said the duchess, leaning on Jacinta’s arm. The stepladder in the angle creaked, and a huge form sedately descended. ‘They saw this over the top of the Gomichookssco