D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 260: what you’re looking at

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

His Own Host. 243 this,’ mumbled he, “with an alchemist’s furnace at the tail, and a bubbling like a watchpot! Yet the Orientals know a thing or two about the table—since they have tables, though low ones—but they are a people who squat on their heels—yet they can fight like gladiators. Natheless, this Indian weed has cheered many a poor wet, chilled mortal in the trenches; many a poor com- ere ao by the heels in the guardhouse, to my knowl- edge! Several times, the mouthpiece had eluded him as if the head of a serpent in fact, but, inhaling from it, he finally dozed off. They might have rung the changes on the chimes of the cathedral and he would still have slumbered—our good Porthos, who never did things by halves. In the middle of the afternoon the attendants came in like a sultan’s mutes, and noiselessly removed the things. They listened to the deep breathing without a smile, contemplated the devastation due to one man, and departed without any heed farther than for one to linger. He looked to see that the hookah was in good order and that the mouthpiece was handy to the smoker, so that he could put it in his lips when awaking. Dark came on quickly, and the snoring diminished like a passing thunderstorm. The town showed no lichts, distressed by reports that the rebel scouts had been seen in the vicinity, and that the Spanish, who had marched outside, had made common cause with them instead of defending the road to Madrid. All of a sudden, a scene on the wall (a Jordaens, “Skaters on the Great Canal, Saardam’’) opened on hinges like a panel painting, and after a little hesitation, a black woman, low in stature, peered in. She could not see any one, since Porthos was in the recess, cur- - tained over. The panel opened at the foot along the floor line. She stepped forward with a lightness not to be suspected of her build, and made the circuit of the room as if she saw in the dark. It was like an African warrior who had entered an Arab marque, and judged everything by touch. “They have gone, lady,” said she. CORNICE OOOlKS aC