D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 179: what you’re looking at

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

168 First Sword, then Sceptre. friends,” was the evasive reply of the Dominican, folding his lean hands within his flowing sleeves so that now nothing was seen of his upper person but the nose and eyes of the acute physiognomy. “Do you mean that is all? that you were in danger of leaving your skin, as a'foe to Spain?” The thin hands came out like a knot of snakes, but it was to haul up a rosary of fragrant sandal wood, depend- ent at his side, as a trained blackbird pulls up its seed bucket, and they set to running the beads through them. He might be murmuring a prayer of thanks for an escape. “Your highness has enemies who have resolved his death and his friends’.” “There is evidence of it! Yet all men who walk on high have death on the other side to that of the guardian- angel—dukes and rope-dancers! Go on! About my friends? God helping, we shall know how to deal with our enemies the more easily when they are avowed!” Tihe tone was so emphatic that the three passed a but feebly encouraging glance among them. “Friends ?—your highness stands alone.’ “T hear that no help comes out of the north, true! But as a scholar—you know: ‘Non solus He stands not alone whom God stands beside.’ ”’ “You are as wise as your foregoer, El Sabio, but more than wisdom is required to pluck the beard of the lion!” “Though the lion (Leon, the province of Spain) is housed in a triple Castle (Castile) I am going to pluck the beard, and as much flesh as comes with it in my grasp! Be the finish limned with water in dust, or writ- ten with a pen of gold on a silver leaf, the record will stand. If the plow goes, I will hold the handles or drive the reins! Woe to those who fall under driver, horse or plow!” The hearers shivered; but the monk gave one of those irritating cackles, part laugh, part cough, which come from judges tickled with jail fever. “ “My lord, your friends doubt your ability. There, the sharp word is out!” | ‘When men speak ill, one must live so as to belie them. But what friends—the false ones ?” “The Cardinal Banuccio, for one!” EGomichbooks Gom