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 taken him for a farmer's son upon a journey had it not
been for the long sword which, dangling from a leather baldric,
hit against the calves of its owner as he walked, and against the
rough side of his steed when he was on horseback.

For our young man had a steed which was the observed 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, though going with his head
lower than his knees, rendering a martingale quite unnecessary,
contrived nevertheless to perform his eight leagues a day.
Unfortunately, the qualities of this horse were so well concealed
under his strange-colored hide and his unaccountable gait, that
at a time when everybody was a connoisseur in horseflesh, the
appearance of the aforesaid pony at Meung--which place he had
entered about a quarter of an hour before, by the gate of