D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

The Petrel. 55 might not be safe for me, if it were known that I and the Soleimans shouldered the men who shouldered the bags of salt! Oh, the lot of Israel is a hard one!” He shivered at renewed contemplation of this scurvy retreat, which had been made ‘bearable to the musketeer. But then, the musketeer had not lost money here; in- deed, he expected to receive money. They were at op- posite ends of the telescope. “Well, I shall stay here, and make the best of it. I do not suppose that black priestess of Satan would hesi- tate to poison me in some diabolical mess! I must pre- pare my own food. ‘iI shall have to keep close, too, since I had not the means to scatter a handful of cinq- reis among those brats, and colored scarves to bestow on their dams. That virago will set the village about my ears! ‘But whom have we here as the Caballero de Gan- narta? I do not know the name, but the astute duke would not send a nonenity to draw a million! It ts mask for an active spirit of the French court, which never wanted yet such to cozen a Spaniard, a Levantine; but not, this time, a Jew!’ He smiled with pride, and the firelight showed him less rigid and pinched of fea- ture. “Some nom de guerre! A lieutenant who is go- ing to be employed in the state engineer’s plot to blow up or build up—what? “Who does he mean to place on high, or bring low? Whom replace; whom displace, and in whose favor? But for these intriguers, and the fighting men whom they_control and gull with pledges of glory, the world would be heaven; no iwars, no enmities; nothing but trade! ‘These swaggering caballeroes would become sheriffs, and their bravoes just servers of writs and en- forcers of judgments, if in such a millenium any one was delinquent!” A thought seized him. “Oh, the Pope! This Urban hangs on to the chair like a lamprey! A successor might be lenient to us, and no more should we shudder at the Holy Brother- hood, with its torches extinguished and its cross-handled sword snapped! Richelieu, the next Pope! “My father, the only Soleiman in France, in trade CORMICLOIOOKS.E@) im