THE THREE MUSKETEERS.
CHAPTER I.
THE THREE GIFTS OF M. D'ARTAGNAN THE ELDER.
On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the small town of Meung, the birthplace of the author “Romance of the Rose,” appeared to be in as complete a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had come to make a second siege of La Rochelle. Many of the townsmen, seeing the women flying along the chief street, and leaving the children squalling at their thresholds, hastened to don their armour, and, fortifying their somewhat doubtful courage with a musket or partisan, they proceeded toward the hostelry of the Jolly Miller, in front of a which a noisy and accumulating crowd was buzzing with intense curiosity.
At that period alarms were frequent, and few days passed without some town or other registering in its archives an event of this description. There were the nobles, who made war on each other; there was the kind, who made war on the cardinal; there was the Spaniard who made war on the king. Then besides these conflicts, secret or open, there were, moreover, robbers, beggars, Huguenots, wolves, and lackeys, who made war on the world. The townsmen always armed themselves against the robbers, the wolves and the lackeys; fre-
