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

easily imagined.
Nevertheless, D'Artagnan was desirous of examining the appearance of
this impertinent personage who ridiculed him. He fixed his haughty eye upon
the stranger, and perceived a man of from forty to forty-five years of age,
with black and piercing eyes, pale complexion, a strongly marked nose, and
a black and well-shaped mustache. He was dressed in a dou-blet and hose of
a violet color, with aiguillettes of the same color, without any other
orna-ments than the customary slashes, through which the shirt appeared.
This doublet and hose, though new, were creased, like traveling clothes for
a long time packed in a port-manteau. D'Artagnan made all these remarks
with the rapidity of a most minute observer, and doubtless from an
instinctive feeling that this stranger was destined to have a great
influence over his future life.
Now, as at the moment in which D'Artagnan fixed his eyes upon the
gentleman in the violet doublet, the gentleman made one of his most knowing
and profound remarks re-specting the Bearnese pony, his two auditors
laughed even louder than before, and he him-self, though contrary to his
custom, allowed a pale smile (if I may allowed to use such an expression)
to stray over his countenance. This time there could be no doubt;
D'Artagnan was really insulted. Full, then, of this conviction, he pulled
his cap down over his eyes, and endeavoring to copy some of the court airs
he had picked up in Gascony among young traveling nobles, he advanced with
one hand on the hilt of his sword and the other resting on his hip.
Unfortunately, as he advanced, his anger increased at every step; and
instead of the proper and lofty speech he had prepared as a prelude to his
challenge, he found nothing at the tip of his tongue but a gross
personality, which he accompanied with a furi-ous gesture.
"I say, sir, you sir, who are hiding yourself behind that
shutter--yes, you, sir, tell me what you are laughing at, and we will laugh
together!"
The gentleman raised his eyes slowly from the nag to his cavalier, as
if he required some time to ascertain whether it could be to him that such
strange reproaches were addressed; then, when he could not possibly
entertain any doubt of the matter, his eyebrows slightly bent, and with an
accent of irony and insolence impossible to be described, he replied to
D'Artagnan, "I was not speaking to you, sir."
"But I am speaking to you!" replied the young man, additionally
exasperated with this mixture of insolence and good manners, of politeness
and scorn.
The stranger looked at him again with a slight smile, and retiring
from the window, came out of the hostelry with a slow step, and placed
himself before the horse, within two paces of D'Artagnan. His quiet manner
and the ironical expression of his countenance redoubled the mirth of the
persons with whom he had been talking, and who still remained at the
window.
D'Artagnan, seeing him approach, drew his sword a foot out of the
scabbard.
"This horse is decidedly, or rather has been in his youth, a
buttercup," resumed the stranger, continuing the remarks he had begun, and
addressing himself to his auditors at the window, without paying the least