D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 202: what you’re looking at

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

The Royal Proclamation. 189 “The peasants are hardy, honest and laborious. It was they who made the rank and file and the crews which possessed half the world of the East for Portugal. But that was a hundred years ago. The gentry are more cabal-heroes than caballeroes, plotting and counter-plot- ting, but doing nothing—waiting for to-morrow. When it knocks down the ‘sun-eggs,’ as they prettily call apri- cots, they will be agile in the scramble. As for these cits., slow at a coming, fickle at a stand, a score of my friend Pedro’s tars would make the whole city turn itself inside out. I shall have to advise my other friend, Don Juan, to advance—not to wait for a rising here. He should be the ferment to cause the wished-for rising, and may be crowned King here in three days!” Then, studying the action of the wine being dispensed by the perambulating dispensers, he frowned, puzzled it out, and muttered, amusedly: “Why, these are Pedro’s fellows at work! Look at the soldiers made tipsy and given the traveling money under guise of change to desert! Whew! Soleiman’s cash is melting away like snow on the mountain when the dry gorse catches fire, and the defenders of Lisbon are melt- ing therewith!” He was interrupted in his soliloquy unspoken as all sensible persons soliloquize—by a member of the crowd, on its far edge, in an angle of the great blocks of stone at the portico, violently gesticulating. This was nothing in itself, where the people overflowed in pantomime. But on catching the eye he could but conclude that he was the object of the beckoning. She—for it was a woman— seemed offering all she paraded before the public of her wares to'M. D’Artagnan. For the reader will have al- ready guessed who was the stirrer up of dissension among the apathetic Lisbonese. The captain left his side and proceeded deviously, as the strayers were dense, to the point. On a post to which church notices were affixed was hung a well-known object; it was the signboard of the Kueul, “The Black Petrel!” exclaimed the Frenchman with some pleasure; “my little inn! I am haunted by this bird.” GoOmicdoo S (CO)