Part 1 (1/2)

THE VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE

by Alexandre Dumas, Pere

Chapter I The Letter

Towards the middle of the , when the sun, already high in the heavens, was fast absorbing the dew from the ramparts of the castle of Blois, a little cavalcade, coes, re-entered the city by the bridge, without producing any other effect upon the passengers of the quay beyond a first movement of the hand to the head, as a salute, and a second ue to express, in the purest French then spoken in France: ”There is Monsieur returning fro” And that was all

Whilst, however, the horses were cli the steep acclivity which leads from the river to the castle, several shop-boys approached the last horse, from whose saddle-bow a nu this, the inquisitive youths manifested with rustic freedom their conte the, they returned to their occupations; one only of the curious party, a stout, stubby, cheerful lad, having dereat revenues, had it in his power to amuse himself so much better, could be satisfied with such mean diversions

”Do you not know,” one of the standers-by replied, ”that Monsieur's principal aht-hearted boy shrugged his shoulders with a gesture which said as clear as day: ”In that case I would rather be plain Jack than a prince” And all resumed their labors

In the meanwhile, Monsieur continued his route with an air at once so melancholy and so majestic, that he certainly would have attracted the attention of spectators, if spectators there had been; but the good citizens of Blois could not pardon Monsieur for having chosen their gay city for an abode in which to indulge li, or drew back their heads into the interior of their dwellings, to escape the soporific influence of that long pale face, of those watery eyes, and that languid address; so that the worthy prince was almost certain to find the streets deserted whenever he chanced to pass through them

Now, on the part of the citizens of Blois this was a culpable piece of disrespect, for Monsieur was, after the king--nay, even perhaps, before the king--the greatest noble of the kingdoning, the honor of being son of Louis XIII, had granted to Monsieur the honor of being son of Henry IV It was not then, or, at least, it ought not to have been, a trifling source of pride for the city of Blois, that Gaston of Orleans had chosen it as his residence, and held his court in the ancient Castle of the States

But it was the destiny of this great prince to excite the attention and adree wherever he ht be

Monsieur had fallen into this situation by habit

It was not, perhaps, this which gave him that air of listlessness

Monsieur had already been tolerably busy in the course of his life A man cannot allow the heads of a dozen of his best friends to be cut off without feeling a little excitement; and as, since the accession of Mazarin to power, no heads had been cut off, Monsieur's occupation was gone, and his morale suffered from it

The life of the poor prince was then very dull After his little -party on the banks of the Beuvron, or in the woods of Cheverny, Monsieur crossed the Loire, went to breakfast at Chambord, with or without an appetite, and the city of Blois heard no -day

So much for the ennui extra ive the reader an idea if he ith us follow the cavalcade to the majestic porch of the Castle of the States

Monsieur rode a little steady-paced horse, equipped with a large saddle of red Flemish velvet, with stirrups in the shape of buskins; the horse was of a bay color; Monsieur's pourpoint of crimson velvet corresponded with the cloak of the same shade and the horse's equipment, and it was only by this red appearance of the whole that the prince could be known from his two coreen

He on the left, in violet, was his equerry; he on the right, in green, was the grand veneur

One of the pages carried two gerfalcons upon a perch, the other a hunting-horn, which he bleith a careless note at twenty paces from the castle Every one about this listless prince did what he had to listlessly

At this signal, eight guards, ere lounging in the sun in the square court, ran to their halberts, and Monsieur made his solemn entry into the castle

When he had disappeared under the shades of the porch, three or four idlers, who had followed the cavalcade to the castle, after pointing out the suspended birds to each other, dispersed with coone, the street, the palace, and the court, all remained deserted alike

Monsieur disht to his aparted his dress, and as Mada breakfast, Monsieur stretched hiue, and was soon as fast asleep as if it had been eleven o'clock at night

The eight guards, who concluded their service for the day was over, laid themselves down very corooms disappeared with their horses into the stables, and, with the exception of a few joyous birds, startling each other with their sharp chirping in the tufted shrubberies, it ht that the whole castle was as soundly asleep as Monsieur was

All at once, in the ing laugh, which caused several of the halberdiers in the enjoyment of their siesta to open at least one eye