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

as it is said. Still further, Monsieur de Treville gains ten thousand
crowns a year; he is therefore a great noble. He began as you begin. Go to
him with this letter, and make him your model in order that you may do as
he has done."
Upon which M. D'Artagnan the elder girded his own sword round his son,
kissed him tenderly on both cheeks, and gave him his benediction.
On leaving the paternal chamber, the young man found his mother, who
was waiting for him with the famous recipe of which the counsels we have
just repeated would necessitate frequent employment. The adieux were on
this side longer and more tender than they had been on the other--not that
M. D'Artagnan did not love his son, who was his only offspring, but M.
D'Artagnan was a man, and he would have considered it unworthy of a man to
give way to his feelings; whereas Mme. D'Artagnan was a woman, and still
more, a mother. She wept abundantly; and--let us speak it to the praise of
M. D'Artagnan the younger--notwithstanding the efforts he made to remain
firm, as a future Musketeer ought, nature prevailed, and he shed many
tears, of which he succeeded with great difficulty in conceal-ing the half.
The same day the young man set forward on his journey, furnished with
the three pa-ternal gifts, which consisted, as we have said, of fifteen
crowns, the horse, and the letter for M. de Treville-- the counsels being
thrown into the bargain.
With such a VADE MECUM D'Artagnan was morally and physically an exact
copy of the hero of Cervantes, to whom we so happily compared him when our
duty of an historian placed us under the necessity of sketching his
portrait. Don Quixote took windmills for gi-ants, and sheep for armies;
D'Artagnan took every smile for an insult, and every look as a
provocation--whence it resulted that from Tarbes to Meung his fist was
constantly doubled, or his hand on the hilt of his sword; and yet the fist
did not descend upon any jaw, nor did the sword issue from its scabbard. It
was not that the sight of the wretched pony did not excite numerous smiles
on the countenances of passers-by; but as against the side of this pony
rattled a sword of respectable length, and as over this sword gleamed an
eye rather ferocious than haughty, these passers-by repressed their
hilarity, or if hilarity prevailed over prudence, they endeavored to laugh
only on one side, like the masks of the ancients. D'Artagnan, then,
remained majestic and intact in his susceptibility, till he came to this
unlucky city of Meung.
But there, as he was alighting from his horse at the gate of the Jolly
Miller, without any-one--host, waiter, or hostler--coming to hold his
stirrup or take his horse, D'Artagnan spied, though an open window on the
ground floor, a gentleman, well-made and of good carriage, although of
rather a stern countenance, talking with two persons who appeared to listen
to him with respect. D'Artagnan fancied quite naturally, according to his
custom, that he must be the object of their conversation, and listened.
This time D'Artagnan was only in part mistaken; he himself was not in
question, but his horse was. The gentleman appeared to be enumerating all
his qualities to his auditors; and, as I have said, the auditors seeming to
have great deference for the narrator, they every moment burst into fits of
laughter. Now, as a half-smile was sufficient to awaken the irascibility of
the young man, the effect produced upon him by this vociferous mirth may be