The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [257]
“You’re right, Milord,” said Felton, with an accent of profound disgust that echoed to the very bottom of Milady’s heart, “you’re right, and I was wrong.”
And the two left again.
But this time, Milady lent a more attentive ear than the first time, and she heard their footsteps going away and dying out at the end of the corridor.
“I’m lost,” she murmured. “Here I am in the power of people on whom I have no more hold than on statues of bronze or granite. They know me by heart and are armored against all my weapons. Yet it’s impossible that this business will end the way they’ve decided.”
Indeed, as this last reflection, this instinctive return to hope, indicated, fear and weak sentiments did not float for long on the surface of this deep soul. Milady sat at the table, ate several dishes, drank a bit of Spanish wine, and felt all her determination come back.
Before going to bed, she had already commented upon, analyzed, turned over on all sides, examined from every angle the words, steps, gestures, signs, and even the silence of her jailers, and from this profound, skillful, and learned study it resulted that Felton was, all things considered, the more vulnerable of her two persecutors.
One phrase, above all, came back to the prisoner’s mind:
“If I had listened to you,” Lord de Winter had said to Felton.
So Felton had spoken in her favor, since Lord de Winter had refused to listen to him.
“Weak or strong, then,” repeated Milady, “this man has a glimmer of pity in his soul. Of that glimmer I will make a fire that will devour him. As for the other one, he knows me, he fears me, and he knows what to expect of me if I ever escape from his hands. It’s therefore useless to try anything on him. But Felton is something else. He’s a naive, pure, and seemingly virtuous young man; him there are ways to destroy.”
And Milady lay down and slept with a smile on her lips. Someone seeing her asleep would have thought her a young girl dreaming of the garland of flowers she was to put round her forehead on the next feast day.
LIII
SECOND DAY OF CAPTIVITY
Milady was dreaming that she finally got her hands on d’Artagnan, that she was witnessing his execution, and it was the sight of his odious blood streaming from under the heads-man’s axe that traced that charming smile on her lips.
She slept like a prisoner lulled by his first hope.
When they came into her room the next day, she was still in bed. Felton was in the corridor. He brought the woman he had mentioned the evening before, who had just arrived. This woman came in and went to Milady’s bed, offering her services.
Milady was habitually pale. Her color could thus fool someone who was seeing her for the first time.
“I have a fever,” she said. “I didn’t sleep a single moment all this long night. I am suffering horribly. Will you be more humane than they were with me yesterday? All I ask, besides, is permission to remain in bed.”
“Do you want them to call a doctor?” asked the woman.
Felton listened to this dialogue without saying a word.
Milady reflected that the more people there were around her, the more people she would have to move to pity, and the more Lord de Winter would increase his surveillance. Besides, the doctor might declare that the illness was feigned, and Milady, having lost the first hand, did not want to lose the second.
“Why go looking for a doctor?” she asked. “These gentlemen declared yesterday that my illness was a comedy. It will no doubt be the same today, for since yesterday evening they’ve had enough time to inform the doctor.”
“In that case,” said Felton, losing patience, “say yourself, Madame, what treatment you would like to follow.”
“Ah, how do I know? My God! I feel I’m suffering, that’s all. They can give me whatever they like, it matters little to me.”
“Send for Lord de Winter,” said Felton, weary of these eternal complaints.
“Oh, no, no!” cried Milady. “No, Monsieur, don’t call him, I entreat you, I’m well, I don’t need anything, don’t call him!”
She put such a prodigious vehemence, such a stirring eloquence