D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

40 To Portugal. leaned on his partisan. Then, returning with a noise- less step, he leaned over the table so that young head and old one almost touched, to say: “One thing, Eminence! In event of my examination showing that with good changes the people may lift the standard of insurrection against the Lion and tthe Castles, who is to lead them?” “There is a ballad which goes about the streets,” re- plied the minister, as if he were expecting the query. “But you do not keep record of all these effusions, as my scretaries do.’ He sang with his quavering voice, | so unlike that which had in-its day charmed Anne of Austria: “Tf Fortune exhibit a crown, He'd be but the stupidest clown Who'd lift it to quick put it down—Oh, gay! Oh, gay!” “Certes!’’ cried the musketeer, drawing himself erect. “T have ambition. I am not above the flatteries of my star; but it is as a soldier. Great acts encourage greater! But I am not conceited enough to seat me on the throne of Manuel, the Lucky!” Richelieu smiled. The world was a workshop, where he knew the place of all his tools and drew them out only as wanted. “They would not tolerate a foreigner!” said he. ‘Not even Louis the First, of Artagnan. Let us rely on Providence,’ continued he with that spice of hypocrisy inseparable from the cardinal-minister. “If Providence determines that there shall be a revolt and that revolt is to become a revolution, it will also provide a head for the vacated crown.” D’Artagnan left the room with a nimble step and a loaded heart, but a lighter one than he had entered with. . The old premier took down one of his splendidly- bound books, an old tragedy, of which he loved the sonorous, but. not very enlightening lines, saying be- fore he plunged into the pages, like one who had no concern in one quarter at least: “A good youth! Ah, I have my flaws; but never should Sixty advance by throwing down Thirty!” GComicbooks (C0) im