A musician!
LIGNIÈRE.
But how strange is his appearance!
RAGUENEAU.
No solemn painter, like Philip de Champaigne, probably, will ever give us a portrait of him. But he is so odd, extravagant, wild and strange, that he could well have served Jacques Callot as a model for the most erratic of his fighting heroes. Three-plumed hat, astounding doublet, cloak whose folds a sword draws up behind, in stateliness, like the saucy tail of a cock.[4] Prouder than the proudest of Gascony's numberless haughty sons, he wears, above his Pulcinella ruff, a nose!.... Ah! mylords, what a nose is that nose! It is impossible, in presence of such a nose-bearer[5] not to think: "This, really, is exaggeration!" Then you will smile, and think: "Of course, he'll take it off." But Monsieur de Bergerac never takes it off.
LE BRET.
Never—but whoever notices that nose he wears is sure to get a swordthrust for the attention.
RAGUENEAU.
His sword is one of the two blades of the fatal sisters' scissors!
FIRST MARQUIS (shrugging his shoulders).