The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (free biff chip and kipper ebooks .txt) 📕
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
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“Confide my shame to you,” cried Milady, with the blush of modesty upon her countenance, “for often the crime of one becomes the shame of another--confide my shame to you, a man, and I a woman? Oh,” continued she, placing her hand modestly over her beautiful eyes, “never! never!--I could not!”
“To me, to a brother?” said Felton.
Milady looked at him for some time with an expression which the young man took for doubt, but which, however, was nothing but observation, or rather the wish to fascinate.
Felton, in his turn a suppliant, clasped his hands.
“Well, then,” said Milady, “I confide in my brother; I will dare to--”
At this moment the steps of Lord de Winter were heard; but this time the terrible brother-in-law of Milady did not content himself, as on the preceding day, with passing before the door and going away again. He paused, exchanged two words with the sentinel; then the door opened, and he appeared.
During the exchange of these two words Felton drew back quickly, and when Lord de Winter entered, he was several paces from the prisoner.
The baron entered slowly, sending a scrutinizing glance from Milady to the young officer.
“You have been here a very long time, John,” said he. “Has this woman been relating her crimes to you? In that case I can comprehend the length of the conversation.”
Felton started; and Milady felt she was lost if she did not come to the assistance of the disconcerted Puritan.
“Ah, you fear your prisoner should escape!” said she. “Well, ask your worthy jailer what favor I this instant solicited of him.”
“You demanded a favor?” said the baron, suspiciously.
“Yes, my Lord,” replied the young man, confused.
“And what favor, pray?” asked Lord de Winter.
“A knife, which she would return to me through the grating of the door a minute after she had received it,” replied Felton.
“There is someone, then, concealed here whose throat this amiable lady is desirous of cutting,” said de Winter, in an ironical, contemptuous tone.
“There is myself,” replied Milady.
“I have given you the choice between America and Tyburn,” replied Lord de Winter. “Choose Tyburn, madame. Believe me, the cord is more certain than the knife.”
Felton grew pale, and made a step forward, remembering that at the moment he entered Milady had a rope in her hand.
“You are right,” said she, “I have often thought of it.” Then she added in a low voice, “And I will think of it again.”
Felton felt a shudder run to the marrow of his bones; probably Lord de Winter perceived this emotion.
“Mistrust yourself, John,” said he. “I have placed reliance upon you, my friend. Beware! I have warned you! But be of good courage, my lad; in three days we shall be delivered from this creature, and where I shall send her she can harm nobody.”
“You hear him!” cried Milady, with vehemence, so that the baron might believe she was addressing heaven, and that Felton might understand she was addressing him.
Felton lowered his head and reflected.
The baron took the young officer by the arm, and turned his head over his shoulder, so as not to lose sight of Milady till he was gone out.
“Well,” said the prisoner, when the door was shut, “I am not so far advanced as I believed. De Winter has changed his usual stupidity into a strange prudence. It is the desire of vengeance, and how desire molds a man! As to Felton, he hesitates. Ah, he is not a man like that cursed d’Artagnan. A Puritan only adores virgins, and he adores them by clasping his hands. A Musketeer loves women, and he loves them by clasping his arms round them.”
Milady waited, then, with much impatience, for she feared the day would pass away without her seeing Felton again. At last, in an hour after the scene we have just described, she heard someone speaking in a low voice at the door. Presently the door opened, and she perceived Felton.
The young man advanced rapidly into the chamber, leaving the door open behind him, and making a sign to Milady to be silent; his face was much agitated.
“What do you want with me?” said she.
“Listen,” replied Felton, in a low voice. “I have just sent away the sentinel that I might remain here without anybody knowing it, in order to speak to you without being overheard. The baron has just related a frightful story to me.”
Milady assumed her smile of a resigned victim, and shook her head.
“Either you are a demon,” continued Felton, “or the baron--my benefactor, my father--is a monster. I have known you four days; I have loved him four years. I therefore may hesitate between you. Be not alarmed at what I say; I want to be convinced. Tonight, after twelve, I will come and see you, and you shall convince me.”
“No, Felton, no, my brother,” said she; “the sacrifice is too great, and I feel what it must cost you. No, I am lost; do not be lost with me. My death will be much more eloquent than my life, and the silence of the corpse will convince you much better than the words of the prisoner.”
“Be silent, madame,” cried Felton, “and do not speak to me thus; I came to entreat you to promise me upon your honor, to swear to me by what you hold most sacred, that you will make no attempt upon your life.”
“I will not promise,” said Milady, “for no one has more respect for a promise or an oath than I have; and if I make a promise I must keep it.”
“Well,” said Felton, “only promise till you have seen me again. If, when you have seen me again, you still persist--well, then you shall be free, and I myself will give you the weapon you desire.”
“Well,” said Milady, “for you I will wait.”
“Swear.”
“I swear it, by our God. Are you satisfied?”
“Well,” said Felton, “till tonight.”
And he darted out of the room, shut the door, and waited in the corridor, the soldier’s half-pike in his hand, and as if he had mounted guard in his place.
The soldier returned, and Felton gave him back his weapon.
Then, through the grating to which she had drawn near, Milady saw the young man make a sign with delirious fervor, and depart in an apparent transport of joy.
As for her, she returned to her place with a smile of savage contempt upon her lips, and repeated, blaspheming, that terrible name of God, by whom she had just sworn without ever having learned to know Him.
“My God,” said she, “what a senseless fanatic! My God, it is I--I--and this fellow who will help me to avenge myself.”
Milady had however achieved a half-triumph, and success doubled her forces.
It was not difficult to conquer, as she had hitherto done, men prompt to let themselves be seduced, and whom the gallant education of a court led quickly into her net. Milady was handsome enough not to find much resistance on the part of the flesh, and she was sufficiently skillful to prevail over all the obstacles of the mind.
But this time she had to contend with an unpolished nature, concentrated and insensible by force of austerity. Religion and its observances had made Felton a man inaccessible to ordinary seductions. There fermented in that sublimated brain plans so vast, projects so tumultuous, that there remained no room for any capricious or material love--that sentiment which is fed by leisure and grows with corruption. Milady had, then, made a breach by her false virtue in the opinion of a man horribly prejudiced against her, and by her beauty in the heart of a man hitherto chaste and pure. In short, she had taken the measure of motives hitherto unknown to herself, through this experiment, made upon the most rebellious subject that nature and religion could submit to her study.
Many a time, nevertheless, during the evening she despaired of fate and of herself. She did not invoke God, we very well know, but she had faith in the genius of evil--that immense sovereignty which reigns in all the details of human life, and by which, as in the Arabian fable, a single pomegranate seed is sufficient to reconstruct a ruined world.
Milady, being well prepared for the reception of Felton, was able to erect her batteries for the next day. She knew she had only two days left; that when once the order was signed by Buckingham--and Buckingham would sign it the more readily from its bearing a false name, and he could not, therefore, recognize the woman in question--once this order was signed, we say, the baron would make her embark immediately, and she knew very well that women condemned to exile employ arms much less powerful in their seductions than the pretendedly virtuous woman whose beauty is lighted by the sun of the world, whose style the voice of fashion lauds, and whom a halo of aristocracy gilds with enchanting splendors. To be a woman condemned to a painful and disgraceful punishment is no impediment to beauty, but it is an obstacle to the recovery of power. Like all persons of real genius, Milady knew what suited her nature and her means. Poverty was repugnant to her; degradation took away two-thirds of her greatness. Milady was only a queen while among queens. The pleasure of satisfied pride was necessary to her domination. To command inferior beings was rather a humiliation than a pleasure for her.
She should certainly return from her exile--she did not doubt that a single instant; but how long might this exile last? For an active, ambitious nature, like that of Milady, days not spent in climbing are inauspicious days. What word, then, can be found to describe the days which they occupy in descending? To lose a year, two years, three years, is to talk of an eternity; to return after the death or disgrace of the cardinal, perhaps; to return when d’Artagnan and his friends, happy and triumphant, should have received from the queen the reward they had well acquired by the services they had rendered her--these were devouring ideas that a woman like Milady could not endure. For the rest, the storm which raged within her doubled her strength, and she would have burst the walls of her prison if her body had been able to take for a single instant the proportions of her mind.
Then that which spurred her on additionally in the midst of all this was the remembrance of the cardinal. What must the mistrustful, restless, suspicious cardinal think of her silence--the cardinal, not merely her only support, her only prop, her only protector at present, but still further, the principal instrument of her future fortune and vengeance? She knew him; she knew that at her return from a fruitless journey it would be in vain to tell him of her imprisonment, in vain to enlarge upon the sufferings she had undergone. The cardinal would reply, with the sarcastic calmness of the skeptic, strong at once by power and genius, “You should not have allowed yourself to be taken.”
Then Milady collected all her energies, murmuring in the depths of her soul the name of Felton--the only beam of light that penetrated to her in the hell into which she had fallen; and like a serpent which folds and unfolds its rings to ascertain its strength, she enveloped Felton beforehand in the thousand meshes of her inventive imagination.
Time, however, passed away; the hours, one after another, seemed to awaken the clock as they passed, and every blow of the brass hammer resounded upon the heart of the prisoner.
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