D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 258: what you’re looking at

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

His Own Host. 241 Marianda House and venture out in search of the mus- keteer, he heard soft steps. Under orders of the major domo, four or five servants cleared the table and replaced the first meal with a lighter but still more varied banquet. It was the mun- cheon of our forefathers—debased into “luncheon’’—a meal between meals. There was more than enough for three, so that the master and D’Artagnan would not fare badly unless Porthos devoured all. The steward was discreet, or doubted the solitary guest’s lingual powers from what he had heard of them. He courted no conversation, and passed no remark about the other’s absence, The Lord of Du Vallon had not yet succumbed to the climate. Under the Equator he would ‘have eaten as unsparingly as here. When the menials had with- drawn, he gently sauntered up to the board, surveying it with a growing welcome. “They seem to know me here,” he said, chuckling and taking the head. “The appetite grows in eating, I be- lieve. But 1 will wait an hour, as the sun tells it off, and then, to it! at a feast like this, ill fares the hind-— most!” The hour over, punctually ‘he began. “T cannot find a fault except that I must be my own varlet. But I shall not be the gallant who told the King Harry that he was his own servant, and the king answered that he was ill-served! I must have been hungry to think the count’s cook was a slow-coach! Prime! I can see, as D’Artagnan told me, the Portu- guese are heirs to both Roman and Saracen. For here’—he laid the large knifeblade on a chine, pat- ting it so that the unctuous jelly oozed out and glazed its brown, “here we have a bit of boar, baked, worthy of a Roman cardinal’s buffet, and here a mess of boiled rice, each grain a pearl! studded with sun-dried grapes of Almeria, and stuck with cloves a little more thickly than milestones in France or crosses to the victims of robbers in Spain!”’ 'He ate as if he had to look back a week to the last treat. “Halloa!” he exclaimed, replete, leaning back, as a