la Fere, the
pleasure or the ENNUI he may experience.

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 woolen
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 t