The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [191]
“Of course.”
“Then if, by excess of love, I have made myself guilty before you, you will forgive me?”
“Perhaps.”
D’Artagnan tried, with the sweetest smile he could manage, to bring his lips close to Milady’s lips, but she pushed him away.
“This confession,” she said, turning pale, “what is this confession?”
“You gave de Wardes a rendezvous last Thursday, in this same bedroom, did you not?”
“I? No, that’s not so!” said Milady, in so firm a tone of voice and with so impassive a face that if d’Artagnan had not been perfectly certain, he would have doubted.
“Don’t lie, my beautiful angel,” d’Artagnan said, smiling, “there’s no use.”
“What’s that? Speak! You’re killing me!”
“Oh, don’t worry, you’re not guilty before me, and I’ve already forgiven you!”
“Go on! Go on!”
“De Wardes has nothing to boast of.”
“Why? You yourself told me that that ring…”
“That ring, my love, is in my possession. Thursday’s comte de Wardes and today’s d’Artagnan are the same person.”
The imprudent young man was expecting surprise mixed with modesty, a little storm that would resolve itself in tears; but he was strangely mistaken, and his error was not long in appearing.
Pale and terrible, Milady drew herself up and, pushing d’Artagnan away with a violent blow to the chest, sprang out of bed.
It was nearly day.
D’Artagnan held her back by her negligee of fine Indies cotton in order to beg her forgiveness, but she made a strong and resolute movement to escape. Then the batiste tore, baring her shoulders, and on one of those beautifully rounded white shoulders d’Artagnan, with an inexpressible shock, recognized the fleur-de-lis, that indelible mark imprinted by the executioner’s infamatory hand.
“Good God!” cried d’Artagnan, letting go of the negligee.
And he remained mute, immobile, frozen on the bed.
But Milady sensed her denunciation in d’Artagnan’s very horror. No doubt he had seen all. The young man now knew her secret, a terrible secret, which no one in the world knew except him.
She turned, no longer like a furious woman, but like a wounded panther.
“Ah, you scoundrel!” she said. “You have basely betrayed me, and what’s more you know my secret! You shall die!”
And she ran to an inlaid box sitting on her dressing table, opened it with a feverish and trembling hand, took from it a small dagger with a gold hilt and a sharp, slender blade, and with one bound flung herself half naked at d’Artagnan.
Though the young man was brave, as we know, he was frightened of that distorted face, those horribly dilated pupils, and those bleeding lips. He shrank back against the head-board, as he would have done at the approach of a snake slithering towards him. His sweating hand happened upon his sword, and he drew it from the scabbard.
But, not worried by the sword, Milady tried to climb back onto the bed in order to strike him, and did not stop until she felt the sharp point at her throat.
Then she tried to seize the sword with both hands; but d’Artagnan kept moving it out of her grasp, and, pointing it now at her eyes, now at her breast, he managed to slip to the foot of the bed, seeking the door to Kitty’s room in order to make his retreat.
Milady, meanwhile, kept hurling herself at him with horrible paroxysms, roaring in a frightful way.
All this resembled a duel, however, and so d’Artagnan gradually recovered himself.
“Very well, lovely lady, very well,” he said, “but for God’s sake calm yourself, or I’ll draw you a second fleur-de-lis on the other shoulder!”
“Vile wretch!” screamed Milady.
But d’Artagnan, still seeking the door, kept on the defensive.
At the noise they were making—she overturning furniture to get at him, he hiding behind furniture to escape her—Kitty opened the door. D’Artagnan, who had constantly maneuvered so as to get close to that door, was only three steps away from it. With a single bound he leaped from Milady’s room to her maid’s, and, quick as lightning, closed the door, leaning all his weight against it, while