D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 267: what you’re looking at

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

250 A Fair Exchange. “So am I still, about what is going on. What is the town doing? I could not question the servants, and I believe they are the tongueless ones of the Grand Mogul!” “Why, the town is a cave of the winds, and cross- ing ones, too,” said the musketeer, undoing his belt and rubbing his compressed sides. “From opposite parts came cries of ‘Long live’ some one or other. ‘Death’ to this or that—the loudest shouters being indoors. Half the houses on the Palace Place are illuminated, the other in mourning. The boys are making bonfires and burning effigies—the stock of effigies running short, they are burning tradesmen’s signs and saints in wood from the corner shrines. The citizens who carry water on both shoulders hang out banners with Philip on one side and Juan on the other!” “Poor crown!” said Porthos, pretending interest in this worn topic. “Yes, a bone for which the foolish dogs tear one another; then a third cur, perhaps, rushes in and runs off with it!” “If it is Pedro, he would make a good king!” said the giant guardsman, without prejudice. “Porthos, those are not empty bottles under the ta- ble, but trunks ‘ ‘“Trunks—we had no traveling trunks.” “Very baggy trunks; large as a bombard! true ‘can- non’ breeches!” Porthos looked along the floor—it was strewn with his new garments. ‘Who the plague carpeted the floor with my suit?” he growled, cross as his friend when he was kept at the door. “It seems to me that, in spite of Marianda House being guarded by janissaries, more or less mute, they are probably more or less deaf and blind, since they have let cloak-snatchers run all over you while you slept!” “Well, I grant that I must have winked. But, thieves—how could there be thieves when the door was barred and bolted?” “That is the puzzle!” Gomichbooks.. co m