D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 223: what you’re looking at

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

210 | To the Rescue. So could Quaqua be interpreted. “You see,” took up the Gascon, triumphantly, “not only does the cardinal’s gold raise men for the cause, but spirits. Time will come when these grateful crea- tures will erect an arch to Armand Duplessis like Aure- lian’s is “I have seen it, at Besancon,” said Porthos, convinced that a great plotter was at the working-springs of this movement ; “but I still regret there is no fight.” “If you want to see fighters and not intriguers, pray go out of the Oporto gate and reconnoitre for the approach of our vanguard.” “Will Pedro be with them? So you think that, though the advent is so peaceful, the adventure will yet turn out stormy ?” “My friend, it is a soft nut of which the flinders do not fly when the shell is cracked. But we want the kernel. Go—take time, and do your business well.” “As the cardinal-duke said that, count on my not dis- tressing myself with haste. Besides, nothing so impairs digestion.”’ Porthos let oultt a buckle-hole or two, finished his cup, wiped his mustache and curled it with a sugary mixture. He turned his bundle round so that it hung like a hus- sar’s jacket, and sang, at odds with his sobriety, as he pushed aside the throng like a porpoise among: little fishes: “Here comes an old soldier with slashes and scars, Who never used drinking in no times of wars!” “It is astonishing,” soliloquized he. “I used to long for that honest fellow’s company—but now it lacks some- thing to round out life which men cannot supply! Oh! that fair Jacinta, most precious of precious jades: “The seed that Love’s hand scattered Sedition now has watered, And in Rebellion now ’twill bloom!” ‘Poor girl! put under the most comprehensive of bans for clinging to her ambitious mistress! "Fore Heaven! no prelate can stay me from being her protector!” Idly he let his eyes, filled with a vision more material than that of Sebastian the Regretted, which had terri- (E() CORNICE OOOKS