The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [266]
“But, I repeat to you,” replied the shaken Felton, “no danger threatens you, and I will answer for Lord de Winter as for myself.”
“Madman!” cried Milady. “Poor madman, who dare answer for another man, when the wisest, when the greatest in the eyes of God, hesitate to answer for themselves, and who side with the party of the strongest and most fortunate to crush the weakest and most unfortunate!”
“Impossible, Madame, impossible,” murmured Felton, who at the bottom of his heart felt the justice of this argument. “A prisoner, you will not regain your freedom through me; alive, you will not lose your life through me.”
“Yes,” cried Milady, “but I will lose what is far dearer to me than my life, I will lose my honor, Felton. And it is you, you, whom I will hold responsible before God and men for my shame and my infamy.”
This time Felton, impassive as he was, or as he pretended to be, could not resist the secret influence that had already laid hold of him: to see this woman, so beautiful, fair as the most candid vision, to see her tearful and menacing by turns, to undergo the double ascendency of suffering and beauty, was too much for a visionary, too much for a brain sapped by the ardent dreams of ecstatic faith, too much for a heart corroded by a burning love of heaven and a devouring hatred of men.
Milady saw the confusion, she sensed intuitively the flame of the contrary passions that burned with the blood in the young fanatic’s veins; and, like a skillful general who, seeing the enemy ready to retreat, marches upon him letting out a cry of victory, she stood up, beautiful as an ancient priestess, inspired as a Christian virgin, and, her arm extended, her neck exposed, her hair disheveled, one hand modestly holding her gown to her breast, her gaze lit up by that fire which brought disorder to the young Puritan’s senses, she stepped towards him, crying out to a vehement tune, in her sweet voice, to which, for the occasion, she gave a terrible intonation:
To Baal his victim surrender,
To lions the martyr’s limbs:
God will make you repentent…
From the depths I cry to Him!
Felton stopped as if petrified under this strange apostrophe.
“Who are you, who are you?” he cried, clasping his hands. “Are you an envoy from God, are you a minister of hell, are you an angel or a demon, are you called Eloas or Astarte?”185
“Don’t you recognize me, Felton? I am neither an angel nor a demon, I am a daughter of the earth, I am a sister of your belief, that is all.”
“Yes! yes!” said Felton, “I still doubted, but now I believe.”
“You believe, and yet you are the accomplice of that son of Belial186 who is called Lord de Winter! You believe, and yet you leave me in the hands of my enemies, of the enemy of England, of the enemy of God? You believe, and yet you hand me over to him who has filled and filthied the world with his heresies and debauches, to that infamous Sardanapalus187 whom the blind call the duke of Buckingham and whom the believers call the Antichrist?”
“I, hand you over to Buckingham? I? What are you saying?”
“They have eyes,” said Milady, “but see not; they have ears, but hear not.”
“Yes, yes,” said Felton, passing his hands over his sweat-bathed forehead, as if to tear away his last doubt. “Yes, I recognize the voice that speaks to me in my dreams; yes, I recognize the features of the angel who appears to me each night, crying out to my sleepless soul: ‘Strike, save England, save yourself, for you shall die without appeasing God!’ Speak, speak!” cried Felton. “I can understand you now.”
A flash of terrible joy, quick as thought, sprang up in Milady’s eyes.
Fleeting as this homicidal glimmer was, Felton saw it and shuddered, as if it had lit up the abysses of this woman’s heart.
All at once Felton recalled Lord de Winter’s warnings, Milady’s seductions, her first attempts on her arrival. He drew back a step and lowered his head, but without ceasing to look at her, as if, fascinated by this strange creature, his eyes could not