"Dumas, Alexandre - Three Musketeers, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dumas Alexandre)

This being understood, let us proceed with our history.



1 THE THREE PRESENTS OF D'ARTAGNAN THE ELDER

On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town
of Meung, in which the author of ROMANCE OF THE ROSE was born,
appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the
Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it. Many
citizens, seeing the women flying toward the High Street, leaving
their children crying at the open doors, hastened to don the
cuirass, and supporting their somewhat uncertain courage with a
musket or a partisan, directed their steps toward the hostelry of
the Jolly Miller, before which was gathered, increasing every
minute, a compact group, vociferous and full of curiosity.

In those times panics were common, and few days passed without
some city or other registering in its archives an event of this
kind. There were nobles, who made war against each other; there
was the king, who made war against the cardinal; there was Spain,
which made war against the king. Then, in addition to these
concealed or public, secret or open wars, there were robbers,
mendicants, Huguenots, wolves, and scoundrels, who made war upon
everybody. The citizens always took up arms readily against
thieves, wolves or scoundrels, often against nobles or Huguenots,
sometimes against the king, but never against cardinal or Spain.
It resulted, then, from this habit that on the said first Monday
of April, 1625, the citizens, on hearing the clamor, and seeing
neither the red-and-yellow standard nor the livery of the Duc de
Richelieu, rushed toward the hostel of the Jolly Miller. When
arrived there, the cause of the hubbub was apparent to all.

A young man--we can sketch his portrait at a dash. Imagine to
yourself a Don Quixote of eighteen; a Don Quixote without his
corselet, without his coat of mail, without his cuisses; a Don
Quixote clothed in a wooden doublet, the blue color of which had
faded into a nameless shade between lees of wine and a heavenly
azure; face long and brown; high cheek bones, a sign of sagacity;
the maxillary muscles enormously developed, an infallible sign by
which a Gascon may always be detected, even without his cap--and
our young man wore a cap set off with a sort of feather; the eye
open and intelligent; the nose hooked, but finely chiseled. Too
big for a youth, too small for a grown man, an experienced eye
might have taken him for a farmer's son upon a journey had it not
been for the long sword which, dangling from a leather baldric,
hit against the calves of its owner as he walked, and against the
rough side of his steed when he was on horseback.