D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 197: what you’re looking at

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

184 The Royal Proclamation. nificance or their insignificance would similarly make friends with the invaders. After all, with a change of crown comes no change in the taxes; the citzens have to pay the bugler in war, as the piper in peace. But curiosity brought many out into the streets, spite of the dull housefronts, and, the day being fine for the first month, the ways became as crowded as on a feast day. Most of the faces were wrinkled and down-drawn. It was easily to be seen that body and purse were at stake, the anvil and hammer between which the poor soul very often comes out flat. The Church of Carmel (disappeared in the 1754 earth- quake) then occupied a space, with its plaza, denoting its importance. In early times it had been an earthen fort, where citizens stood a siege of the Spaniards. Many glanced now at its massive stone walls with calculations how they might jump up to the windows and enter by them in spite of having to obliterate the stained-glass saints. The substantial doors were not to be forced with- out a battering-ram, and the small door in the large one was fastened within. For once, the Psalm, ““The Lord is my strong castle,” was interpreted literally by the quaking priests within, who had retired to the belfry to watch for the coming of the enemy. The publicans, knowing that a wine vault is a sore temptation to the soldiers who capture a town, had sold all they could and shut up their cellars; all these places were barricaded within. It was not the warm season, but the dust made the promenaders thirsty, and many an eye looked disappointedly at the signs dangling tantaliz- ingly overhead, for these signs bore tokens, such as Silenus on his ass, Bacchus with a ponderous bunch of grapes, nymphs at fountains, and the like, poignant in mockery. To respond to the demand for refreshment, those vol- unteer wividndieres, whose irrepressible spirit causes them to set up stalls with dubious drinks and as mys- terious eatables wherever there is a popular gathering, as on the edge of battlefields, the brink of craters, the margin of overflowed rivers, and the verge of a burnt-out city, they abounded. GComicbooks;com