The three musketeers
With my usual fatuity I doubted it; now I am convinced. Tomorrow you
shall be free.’
“I had but one wish; that was that he should kill me.
“‘Beware!’ said I, ‘for my liberty is your dishonor.’
“‘Explain yourself, my pretty sibyl!’
“‘Yes; for as soon as I leave this place I will tell everything. I will
proclaim the violence you have used toward me. I will describe my
captivity. I will denounce this place of infamy. You are placed on
high, my Lord, but tremble! Above you there is the king; above the king
there is God!’
“However perfect master he was over himself, my persecutor allowed a
movement of anger to escape him. I could not see the expression of his
countenance, but I felt the arm tremble upon which my hand was placed.
“‘Then you shall not leave this place,’ said he.
“‘Very well,’ cried I, ‘then the place of my punishment will be that of
my tomb. I will die here, and you will see if a phantom that accuses is
not more terrible than a living being that threatens!’
“‘You shall have no weapon left in your power.’
“‘There is a weapon which despair has placed within the reach of every
creature who has the courage to use it. I will allow myself to die with
hunger.’
“‘Come,’ said the wretch, ‘is not peace much better than such a war as
that? I will restore you to liberty this moment; I will proclaim you a
piece of immaculate virtue; I will name you the Lucretia of England.’
“‘And I will say that you are the Sextus. I will denounce you before
men, as I have denounced you before God; and if it be necessary that,
like Lucretia, I should sign my accusation with my blood, I will sign
it.’
“‘Ah!’ said my enemy, in a jeering tone, ‘that’s quite another thing.
My faith! everything considered, you are very well off here. You shall
want for nothing, and if you let yourself die of hunger that will be
your own fault.’
“At these words he retired. I heard the door open and shut, and I
remained overwhelmed, less, I confess it, by my grief than by the
mortification of not having avenged myself.
“He kept his word. All the day, all the next night passed away without
my seeing him again. But I also kept my word with him, and I neither
ate nor drank. I was, as I told him, resolved to die of hunger.
“I passed the day and the night in prayer, for I hoped that God would
pardon me my suicide.
“The second night the door opened; I was lying on the floor, for my
strength began to abandon me.
“At the noise I raised myself up on one hand.
“‘Well,’ said a voice which vibrated in too terrible a manner in my ear
not to be recognized, ‘well! Are we softened a little? Will we not pay
for our liberty with a single promise of silence? Come, I am a good
sort of a prince,’ added he, ‘and although I like not Puritans I do
them justice; and it is the same with Puritanesses, when they are
pretty. Come, take a little oath for me on the cross; I won’t ask
anything more of you.’
“‘On the cross,’ cried I, rising, for at that abhorred voice I had
recovered all my strength, ‘on the cross I swear that no promise, no
menace, no force, no torture, shall close my mouth! On the cross I
swear to denounce you everywhere as a murderer, as a thief of honor, as
a base coward! On the cross I swear, if I ever leave this place, to
call down vengeance upon you from the whole human race!’
“‘Beware!’ said the voice, in a threatening accent that I had never yet
heard. ‘I have an extraordinary means which I will not employ but in
the last extremity to close your mouth, or at least to prevent anyone
from believing a word you may utter.’
“I mustered all my strength to reply to him with a burst of laughter.
“He saw that it was a merciless war between us—a war to the death.
“‘Listen!’ said he. ‘I give you the rest of tonight and all day
tomorrow. Reflect: promise to be silent, and riches, consideration,
even honor, shall surround you; threaten to speak, and I will condemn
you to infamy.’
“‘You?’ cried I. ‘You?’
“‘To interminable, ineffaceable infamy!’
“‘You?’ repeated I. Oh, I declare to you, Felton, I thought him mad!
“‘Yes, yes, I!’ replied he.
“‘Oh, leave me!’ said I. ‘Begone, if you do not desire to see me dash
my head against that wall before your eyes!’
“‘Very well, it is your own doing. Till tomorrow evening, then!’
“‘Till tomorrow evening, then!’ replied I, allowing myself to fall, and
biting the carpet with rage.”
Felton leaned for support upon a piece of furniture; and Milady saw,
with the joy of a demon, that his strength would fail him perhaps
before the end of her recital.
Chapter LVII.
MEANS FOR CLASSICAL TRAGEDY
After a moment of silence employed by Milady in observing the young man
who listened to her, Milady continued her recital.
“It was nearly three days since I had eaten or drunk anything. I
suffered frightful torments. At times there passed before me clouds
which pressed my brow, which veiled my eyes; this was delirium.
“When the evening came I was so weak that every time I fainted I
thanked God, for I thought I was about to die.
“In the midst of one of these swoons I heard the door open. Terror
recalled me to myself.
“He entered the apartment followed by a man in a mask. He was masked
likewise; but I knew his step, I knew his voice, I knew him by that
imposing bearing which hell has bestowed upon his person for the curse
of humanity.
“‘Well,’ said he to me, ‘have you made your mind up to take the oath I
requested of you?’
“‘You have said Puritans have but one word. Mine you have heard, and
that is to pursue you—on earth to the tribunal of men, in heaven to the
tribunal of God.’
“‘You persist, then?’
“‘I swear it before the God who hears me. I will take the whole world
as a witness of your crime, and that until I have found an avenger.’
“‘You are a prostitute,’ said he, in a voice of thunder, ‘and you shall
undergo the punishment of prostitutes! Branded in the eyes of the world
you invoke, try to prove to that world that you are neither guilty nor
mad!’
“Then, addressing the man who accompanied him, ‘Executioner,’ said he,
‘do your duty.’”
“Oh, his name, his name!” cried Felton. “His name, tell it me!”
“Then in spite of my cries, in spite of my resistance—for I began to
comprehend that there was a question of something worse than death—the
executioner seized me, threw me on the floor, fastened me with his
bonds, and suffocated by sobs, almost without sense, invoking God, who
did not listen to me, I uttered all at once a frightful cry of pain and
shame. A burning fire, a red-hot iron, the iron of the executioner, was
imprinted on my shoulder.”
Felton uttered a groan.
“Here,” said Milady, rising with the majesty of a queen, “here, Felton,
behold the new martyrdom invented for a pure young girl, the victim of
the brutality of a villain. Learn to know the heart of men, and
henceforth make yourself less easily the instrument of their unjust
vengeance.”
Milady, with a rapid gesture, opened her robe, tore the cambric that
covered her bosom, and red with feigned anger and simulated shame,
showed the young man the ineffaceable impression which dishonored that
beautiful shoulder.
“But,” cried Felton, “that is a _fleur-de-lis_ which I see there.”
“And therein consisted the infamy,” replied Milady. “The brand of
England!—it would be necessary to prove what tribunal had imposed it on
me, and I could have made a public appeal to all the tribunals of the
kingdom; but the brand of France!—oh, by that, by _that_ I was branded
indeed!”
This was too much for Felton.
Pale, motionless, overwhelmed by this frightful revelation, dazzled by
the superhuman beauty of this woman who unveiled herself before him
with an immodesty which appeared to him sublime, he ended by falling on
his knees before her as the early Christians did before those pure and
holy martyrs whom the persecution of the emperors gave up in the circus
to the sanguinary sensuality of the populace. The brand disappeared;
the beauty alone remained.
“Pardon! Pardon!” cried Felton, “oh, pardon!”
Milady read in his eyes _love! love!_
“Pardon for what?” asked she.
“Pardon me for having joined with your persecutors.”
Milady held out her hand to him.
“So beautiful! so young!” cried Felton, covering that hand with his
kisses.
Milady let one of those looks fall upon him which make a slave of a
king.
Felton was a Puritan; he abandoned the hand of this woman to kiss her
feet.
He no longer loved her; he adored her.
When this crisis was past, when Milady appeared to have resumed her
self-possession, which she had never lost; when Felton had seen her
recover with the veil of chastity those treasures of love which were
only concealed from him to make him desire them the more ardently, he
said, “Ah, now! I have only one thing to ask of you; that is, the name
of your true executioner. For to me there is but one; the other was an
instrument, that was all.”
“What, brother!” cried Milady, “must I name him again? Have you not yet
divined who he is?”
“What?” cried Felton, “he—again he—always he? What—the truly guilty?”
“The truly guilty,” said Milady, “is the ravager of England, the
persecutor of true believers, the base ravisher of the honor of so many
women—he who, to satisfy a caprice of his corrupt heart, is about to
make England shed so much blood, who protects the Protestants today and
will betray them tomorrow—”
“Buckingham! It is, then, Buckingham!” cried Felton, in a high state of
excitement.
Milady concealed her face in her hands, as if she could not endure the
shame which this name recalled to her.
“Buckingham, the executioner of this angelic creature!” cried Felton.
“And thou hast not hurled thy thunder at him, my God! And thou hast
left him noble, honored, powerful, for the ruin of us all!”
“God abandons him who abandons himself,” said Milady.
“But he will draw upon his head the punishment reserved for the
damned!” said Felton, with increasing exultation. “He wills that human
vengeance should precede celestial justice.”
“Men fear him and spare him.”
“I,” said Felton, “I do not fear him, nor will I spare him.”
The soul of Milady was bathed in an infernal joy.
“But how can Lord de Winter, my protector, my father,” asked Felton,
“possibly be mixed up with all this?”
“Listen, Felton,” resumed Milady, “for by the side of base and
contemptible men there are often found great and generous natures. I
had an affianced husband, a man whom I loved, and who loved me—a heart
like yours, Felton, a man like you. I went to him and told him all; he
knew me, that man did, and did not doubt an instant. He was a nobleman,
a man equal to Buckingham in every respect. He said nothing; he only
girded on his sword, wrapped himself in his cloak, and went straight to
Buckingham Palace.
“Yes, yes,” said Felton; “I understand how he would act. But with such
men it is not the sword that should be employed; it is the poniard.”
“Buckingham had left England the day before, sent as ambassador to
Spain, to demand the hand of the Infanta for King Charles I., who was
then only Prince of Wales. My affianced husband returned.
“‘Hear me,’ said he; ‘this man has gone, and for the moment has
consequently escaped my vengeance; but let us be united, as we were to
have been, and then leave it to Lord de Winter to maintain his own
honor and that of his wife.’”
“Lord de Winter!” cried Felton.
“Yes,” said Milady, “Lord de Winter; and now you can understand it all,
can you not? Buckingham remained nearly a year absent. A week before
his return Lord de Winter died, leaving me his sole heir. Whence came
the blow? God who knows all, knows without doubt; but as for me, I
accuse nobody.”
“Oh, what an abyss; what an abyss!” cried Felton.