The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [262]
“Were you condemned, were you a martyr,” replied Felton, “the more’s the reason to pray, and I myself will help you with my prayers.”
“Oh, you are a just man!” cried Milady, throwing herself at his feet. “Listen, I cannot hold out any longer, for I am afraid to lack strength at the moment when I must sustain the struggle and confess my faith. Listen, then, to the supplication of a woman in despair. You are being deceived, Monsieur, but it is not a question of that. I am asking you for only one favor, and, if you grant it to me, I will bless you in this world and the next.”
“Speak to the master, Madame,” said Felton. “I myself, fortunately, am entrusted neither with pardoning nor with punishing, and it is to one higher than me that God has handed over this responsibility.”
“To you, no, to you alone. Listen to me, rather than contributing to my destruction, rather than contributing to my ignominy.”
“If you have deserved this shame, Madame, if you have incurred this ignominy, you must endure it while offering it up to God.”
“What are you saying? Oh, you do not understand me! When I speak of ignominy, you think I am speaking of some sort of punishment, of prison or death! Please heaven! what are death and prison to me!”
“It is I who no longer understand you, Madame.”
“Or pretend that you no longer understand me, Monsieur,” the prisoner replied with a doubtful smile.
“No, Madame, on my honor as a soldier, on my faith as a Christian!”
“What? You are unaware of Lord de Winter’s designs on me?”
“I am.”
“You, his confidant? Impossible!”
“I never lie, Madame.”
“Oh, he hides himself too little for you not to have guessed it!”
“I do not try to guess anything, Madame. I wait to be told, and apart from what he has said to me before you, Lord de Winter has told me nothing.”
“Why,” cried Milady, with an incredible accent of truthfulness, “then you’re not his accomplice; then you don’t know that he has destined me for a shame that all the punishments on earth could not equal in horror?”
“You are mistaken, Madame,” said Felton, blushing. “Lord de Winter is incapable of such a crime.”
“Good,” Milady said to herself. “Without knowing what it is, he calls it a crime!” Then aloud:
“The friend of the infamous one is capable of anything.”
“Whom do you call the infamous one?” asked Felton.
“Are there two men in England for whom such a name is befitting?”
“You mean George Villiers?” said Felton, and his eyes blazed.
“Whom the pagans, the gentiles, and the infidels call the duke of Buckingham,” picked up Milady. “I wouldn’t have thought there was a single Englishman in all England who would need such a long explanation to recognize the man I meant!”
“The hand of the Lord is stretched over him,” said Felton. “He will not escape the punishment he deserves.”
Felton was only expressing the feeling of execration regarding the duke that all the English had vowed to this man whom the Catholics themselves called the exactor, the extortioner, the profligate, and whom the Puritans quite simply called Satan.
“Oh, my God! my God!” cried Milady, “when I beg you to send this man the punishment that is his due, you know I am not pursuing my own vengeance, but am imploring the deliverance of a whole people.”
“You know him, then?” asked Felton.
“He finally asks me a question,” Milady said to herself, overjoyed at having arrived so quickly at such a great result. “Oh, yes, I know him! Oh, yes, to my misfortune, to my eternal misfortune!”
And Milady twisted her arms as if in a paroxysm of suffering. Felton no doubt sensed that his strength was failing him, and he took several steps towards the door. The prisoner, who never lost sight of him, leaped after him and stopped him.
“Monsieur!” she cried, “be good, be merciful, hear my prayer: that knife which the baron’s fatal prudence took from me, because he knew what use I wanted