D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 63: what you’re looking at

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

54 The Petrel. menting one, which contact farther aroused him from his brooding, she went into the doorway. She whistled like a man, through a filed tooth, and slapped the notice appended by Captain D’Artagnan to the jamb. Surmising that this was an authoritative order emanat- ing from the despoilers of Las Salinas, the Jew rose also and stood before it. He must have been learned, as he understood at a flash, reading the Spanish lines: ““The Caballera de Gannarta expects’ me on the last day of February, eh? Oh, the emissary from my lord the duke, eh? There is no further delay, then; that long-laid-up money will be wanted, and I may not play shilly-shally with Louis XIII.’s first minister as this burned-out innkeeper ‘does with me. What does he de- mand the cash for? and money so dear now! Is another war in sight? Oh, these great jugglers, for the Riche- lieu is a great one! ‘They play pitch and toss with the balls on the sceptre as they do with cannon balls! “Ts it with England this time again? ‘They say that its king is in a desperate plight. It would not be the first time on record that a monarch went to war abroad in order to gain a peace at home with the less daring commercial spirits, whose bulwarks are the counter and whose weapons are the pepperbox and the yardstick! Would the land of grain and that of the grape join to crush this land of orange groves—vine stake and ‘hop pole clash? But the hog should not look up while they are threshing the fruit down! Woe is me! I am so upset by this calamity that I liken myself to the hog now; mur- rain breed! Misfortunes come in pairs, like doves; this loss on the salt marsh and of the inn, and the great duke demanding his money!” Staring at the writing on the wall, he continued: “Coming back on the twenty-ninth, eh! Easy-going, this cavalier! Methinks that, for a million or more, he might have stayed here until I arrived; is not the rule: ‘The first come about money, waits for the other!’ Per- haps the lonesomeness disgusted him! It is the barren- ness of Gomorrah! Where am [| to find decent quar- ters while awaiting the duke’s envoy? San Sebastian? My brethren never had a good word for its Jewry. It Eomichbookssco im