D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 91: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XI. vid WIND AND WAVE WAIT NOT. | M5 “Plainly, captain, you propose a popular uprising,” said the Frenchman. “What after the troubled sea goes down?—a dead level, with only wrecks, and no head above the calm?” “No, let there be a king, as always. But bound in hemp of our twining, not silken fetters, which courtiers contrive.” “This is a business which, like your stock fish, requires a long soaking !” “It’s early and late we have been wishing. We are the grandsons of those who saw Portugal its own master. The time has come for Fate, as the Moslems say, to suffer us to succeed.” “What have you thought out?” “Well, my lord, on the sea we fear nobody, since we are everybody. At any port where any warship touches, I can call half the company to desert. On land whom should we fear? What is a noble now? no longer a man of brawn who lived cased in brass—‘lobsters’ feathers,’ as the boys say! a dancing-master! it is put in the bal- lads that your great minister danced a saraband to amuse your queen! ‘They eat their estates at a lick, and haste to the court for a perpetual bribe, a fat office! They lock free, I grant ye! but the v’ ildest and highest of their flings is a dog’s in a string! Do they even live? They cringe, they flaunt, and they caper—so does an Italian puppet! and they die like a beast, though on velvet—not having done any good!” “Have a care!” “That’s it! we have all the cares!” Agape hs in the south provinces—'the king’s arm is long! x 99 “Longer is the arm of the needy! Before the year be out, there will be a deed done betwixt Cadiz and Oporto Eomichbooks.co