"Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers." - читать интересную книгу автора

reader to lay to our account, and not to that of the Comte de la Fere, the
pleasure or the ENNUI he may expe-rience.
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 revolu-tion 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, has-tened 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 name-less 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,
dan-gling 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.
For our young man had a steed which was the observed of all observers.
It was a Bearn pony, from twelve to fourteen years old, yellow in his hide,
without a hair in his tail, but not without windgalls on his legs, which,
though going with his head lower than his knees, ren-dering a martingale
quite unnecessary, contrived nevertheless to perform his eight leagues a
day. Unfortunately, the qualities of this horse were so well concealed
under his strange-colored hide and his unaccountable gait, that at a time
when everybody was a connoisseur in horseflesh, the appearance of the