D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 216: what you’re looking at

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

A Waive. 203 make Donna Jacinta de Floriador, her Abigail, queen over Artagnan ?”’ “Feel right, and you will never judge wrong! ‘Ah, Friend Porthos, we have seen court balls in our time; but, confess; never have you seen the like of this breeder of pleasant pangs—one who eclipses even Anna of Austria, that glory of her kind!” “Why, the young donna is well-looking, for a Portu- guese,” rejoined the referee, with that calmness in one who is heart-free. “You are an enemysto beauty!” cried the younger man, indignantly, “a foe to nature not to be thawed out by a glance from Donna Jacinta! To her, Diana, up above, is a burnt-out coal! Look at her eyes, diamonds dyed jet to cast the stronger lustre! kisses dangle on her lips, so that the lower one pouts like an overladen fruit tree bough! in silken sails, that nymph skims the ground like Venus from the surge skimming the waves! she is my general, Porthos, and where love commands, angels are all the army!” “Dream aloud like that, Louis, and she, coming along, will reward your mouthings as the princess did Clement Marot!” “Do you chide me?” “Not I! no herb will cure love!’ “T want to die unhealed!” “Oh, sympathy will cure you—her hand will appease the pain. And since the lady’s tresses are interwoven with the Gordian knot of this imbroglio of the thrones, I do not fear that your weakness will make you less use- ful to the crown-seeker. She rises and falls with the royal mercury, just as the column does in that weather meter invented in Italy.” ‘““Assuredly, she is wedded to the fortunes of her mis- tress “The ‘man’ of the Braganzas “So I make my court by making theirs!” “Better than that,” said the other seriously. If we fail, they will shut the duchess up in a nunnery and strike her husband’s head off so far that it will never find a crown; but the camerista will not even have a dark cam- era to languish in i COPNICLOOOKS.E@) im