The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [262]
With the quick intelligence that characterized her, she protested:
“I a papist?” The contempt in her voice matched his. “I, say a Romish mass? Heavens, sir, Lord Winter, that corrupt Catholic, knows very well that I am not of his superstition. This is a trap he is setting for me!”
“And to what faith do you belong, Madame?” Felton asked with an astonishment he could not wholly conceal.
With feigned exaltation:
“I shall tell you,” Milady cried, “when I have accomplished the full suffering I must undergo for the sake of my beliefs.”
Felton’s look disclosed to Milady the extent of the progress she had made thanks to these few words. Nevertheless the young officer stood silent and motionless; only his glance had betrayed him.
“I am in the hands of mine enemies!” she continued with all the fervor she knew that Puritans affected. “So, let my God preserve me or let me perish for His sake! I beg you to convey this to Lord Winter.” She pointed toward the missal but forbore to touch it, as if to do so must inevitably contaminate her. “Take this back,” she commanded, “and make use of it yourself, for I am sure you are doubly the tool of Lord Winter—an accomplice in his persecutions and an accomplice in his heresies.”
Still silent, Felton picked up the book with the same repugnance he had shown in delivering it, and retired, wrapped in thought.
At about five o’clock that evening, Lord Winter appeared. Milady had found time aplenty to trace her plan of action; she received him with the air of a woman who has already recovered all her advantages. His Lordship sat down in an armchair facing hers and, stretching his legs nonchalantly on the hearth:
“Apparently we have decided to go in for a bit of apostasy?” he jeered.
“I do not know what Your Lordship means.”
“I mean since we last met you have changed your religion. Have you by any chance married again—this time a Protestant!”
“I beg you to explain,” the prisoner countered regally. “I vow I can hear what you say but it all makes no sense.”
“It amounts to this, Madame: you have no religion whatever. It is best so.”
“Atheism would seem more in keeping with your principles.”
“I confess it is all one to me what you believe in.”
“Why bother to profess your godlessness, My Lord? Your debauchery and crimes speak for themselves.”
“What! you dare speak of debauchery, you, Messalina, you, Lady Macbeth! Either I misunderstand you or else you are confoundedly impudent!”
“You talk so because we are being overheard, sir,” Milady replied frigidly; “you seek to prejudice your jailers and your hangmen against me.”
“My jailers, my hangmen! Ha, Madame, you speak very poetically. Yesterday’s comedy is turning to tragedy, eh? Ah, well, within a week you will be where you belong and good riddance, too. My task will then be over.”
“A task of infamy,” Milady retorted with the exaltation of a victim provoking a judge. “An impious horror!”
“God save us, I vow the hussy is going quite mad! Come, come, be calm, Madame Puritan or I shall consign you to a cell. By Heaven, it must be my Spanish wine that has gone to your head. Never mind, that type of drunkenness is innocuous and without consequence.”
With which Lord Winter withdrew, swearing as lustily as ever gentleman swore in that age of profanity and invective. And Felton, stationed behind the door, just as Milady had supposed, missed no word of the scene.
“Yes, go, go,” Milady adjured her brother. “But remember: the consequences of your iniquity are upon you, while you, weak fool, will wake up to them too late!”
Silence fell once again over her prison. Two hours passed by. When the orderly brought in Milady’s supper, she was lost in her devotions. Prayers she had heard from the lips of an