D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 281: what you’re looking at

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

264 Tapping the Volcano. Jorge looked over his shoulder. The long cloaks were cast back; their wearers plainly shouldered firearms, which, if of obsolete patterns, might riddle his column at close range; they formed a battalion more numerous than his and followed step for step, as if their curiosity about the invested Corregidor’s was passed. Indeed, the firing of musketry at the palace was ani- mated and attracting. The palace had been engirt since morning. ‘Thousands had come from curiosity, but they were unable to wriggle out when other thousands arrived, impelled by a stronger sentiment. All classes were confounded in this seething pot; the plaza of the royal palace: nobles, traders, merchants, shore toilers, workmen, priests and women, who were agitatedly holding their companions’ hands until the mo- ment when they would put the weapons in them. Well into the day, the front wore its usual aspect. The gentlemen in attendance, officers and courtiers, in- habiting the residence, pretended not to believe danger menaced them and carried on the ceremony of the vice- queen’s morning reception. The guards’ officers on sery- ice chatted and laughed over-loudly in the central court- yard. The mock Moorish minstrels who had played while the vice-queen took her chocolate, in semi-public state, had chosen the lightest and liveliest airs—and Spanish ones, too. But the confluence toward this spot became so appalling that even the most stolid were enfevered, and the pru- dent slipped away on one errand and another. Some young officers spoke of pointing cannon on the gazers who came too near the gateway, but found no echoes. Such action would be rash, and rashness is folly, when a people are in ebullition. In fact, all Lisbon and all Portugal (only the country loved the cause more fondly and openly) was honey- combed with mutiny. D’Artagnan could have told the chief all about that. For the most part, the older of- ficials, accustomed all their life to merely discontent, had become fossils; they appeared to drink that Rio Tinto water which is fabled to petrify. Suddenly the square, filled to the edges, flashed over its sombre surface with white points and rays. At least Eomichooks.co