The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [188]
“Well, then, try to deserve this supposed happiness.”
“I am at your orders,” said d’Artagnan.
“Is that so?” asked Milady, with a final doubt.
“Name for me the infamous one who could make your lovely eyes weep.”
“Who told you I wept?” she asked.
“It seemed to me…”
“Women like me never weep,” said Milady.
“So much the better! Come, tell me his name.”
“Realize that his name is the whole of my secret.”
“I still must know what it is.”
“Yes, you must. See how I trust you!”
“You fill me with joy. What is his name?”
“You know it.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not one of my friends?” d’Artagnan picked up, feigning hesitation to make her believe in his ignorance.
“So you’d hesitate if it was one of your friends?” cried Milady. And a threatening gleam flashed in her eye.
“No, not even if it was my brother!” cried d’Artagnan, as if carried away by enthusiasm.
Our Gascon advanced without risk, because he knew where he was going.
“I love your devotion,” said Milady.
“Alas! is that all you love in me?” asked d’Artagnan.
“I love you, too, you yourself,” she said, taking his hand.
And the ardent pressure made d’Artagnan shudder, as if by that touch the fever that burned in Milady passed over to him.
“You? You love me?” he cried. “Oh, if it were so, it would make me lose my reason!”
And he threw his arms around her. Her lips did not try to avoid his kiss, though she did not return it.
Her lips were cold. It seemed to d’Artagnan that he had just kissed a statue.
But he was nonetheless drunk with joy, electrified with love. He almost believed in Milady’s tenderness; he almost believed in de Wardes’s crime. If de Wardes had been in his hands at that moment, he would have killed him.
Milady seized the occasion.
“His name is…” she said in her turn.
“De Wardes, I know it!” cried d’Artagnan.
“And how do you know it?” asked Milady, seizing him by both hands and trying to read the depths of his soul through his eyes.
D’Artagnan realized that he had gotten carried away and had made a blunder.
“Tell me, tell me, tell me!” Milady repeated. “How do you know it?”
“How do I know it?” said d’Artagnan.
“Yes.”
“I know it because yesterday, in a salon where I happened to be, de Wardes displayed a ring which he said he had from you.”
“The scoundrel!” cried Milady.
The epithet, as we can well understand, echoed to the bottom of d’Artagnan’s heart.
“Well?” she went on.
“Well, I will avenge you on that scoundrel,” d’Artagnan picked up, giving himself the airs of Don Japhet of Armenia.141
“Thank you, my brave friend!” cried Milady. “And when will I be avenged?”
“Tomorrow, at once, whenever you like.”
Milady was about to cry “At once,” but she reflected that such haste would not be very becoming for d’Artagnan.
Besides, she had a thousand precautions to take, a thousand counsels to give her defender, so that he would avoid explanations with the count in front of witnesses. All of this was settled by a word from d’Artagnan.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “you will be avenged, or I will be dead.”
“No!” she said. “You will avenge me, and you will not die. He’s a coward.”
“With women, perhaps, but not with men. I know something about it.”
“But it seems to me that in your fight with him, you had no reason to complain to fortune.”
“Fortune is a courtesan: favorable yesterday, she may betray me tomorrow.”
“Which means you’re hesitant now.”
“No, I’m not hesitant, God forbid! But would it be fair to let me go to a possible death without having given me at least a little more than mere hope?”
Milady replied with a glance that meant: “Is that all? Speak up, then.” And accompanying the glance with explanatory words, she said tenderly:
“You’re quite right.”
“Oh, you’re an angel!” said the young man.
“So it’s all agreed?” she said.
“Except what I’m asking of you, my dear soul!”
“But since I’ve told you that you can trust