The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [271]
Milady followed him with her eyes and made a gesture of satisfaction.
“Now,” she said, “listen to me.”
The injunction was unnecessary: the young officer was standing before her, waiting to devour her words.
“Felton,” said Milady, with a solemnity filled with melancholy, “Felton, if your sister, your father’s daughter, said to you: While still young, and unfortunately rather beautiful, I was lured into a trap, but I resisted. Ambushes and assaults were multiplied around me, but I resisted. Blasphemies were uttered against the religion I serve and the God I worship, because I called that God and that religion to my aid. Then outrages were heaped on me, and as they could not destroy my soul, they wanted to taint my body forever. Finally…”
Milady paused, and a bitter smile passed over her lips.
“Finally,” said Felton, “what did they finally do?”
“Finally, one evening, they decided to paralyze that resistance which they could not conquer. One evening they mixed a strong narcotic in my water. I had barely finished my meal when I felt myself falling gradually into a strange torpor. Though I was unsuspecting, a vague fear seized me, and I tried to struggle against sleep. I got up, I wanted to run to the window, to call for help, but my legs would not support me. It seemed to me that the ceiling was coming down on my head and crushing me under its weight. I stretched out my arms, I tried to speak, I could only produce inarticulate sounds; an irresistible numbness came over me, I held on to a chair, feeling I was about to fall, but soon this support was insufficient for my weakened arms; I fell on one knee, then on both; I wanted to cry out, but my tongue was frozen; doubtless God did not see or hear me, and I slipped to the floor, prey to a deathlike sleep.
“Of all that happened during that sleep, and of how much time passed while it lasted, I have no memory. The only thing I recall is that I woke up lying in a round room, which was sumptuously furnished, and into which daylight penetrated only through an opening in the ceiling. Moreover, there seemed to be no door to it: one would have thought it a magnificent prison.
“It was a long time before I was able to become aware of the place I was in and of all the details I am reporting; my mind seemed to be struggling helplessly to shake off the heavy darkness of that sleep from which I could not tear myself. I had vague images of some distance traveled, of the rolling of a carriage, of a horrible dream in which my strength was exhausted; but it was all so dark and indistinct in my thought that these events seemed to belong to another life than mine, and yet were mixed with mine in a fantastic duality.
“For some time, the state I found myself in seemed so strange to me that I thought I was having a dream. I staggered to my feet. My clothes were near me on a chair. I did not remember either getting undressed or going to bed. Then reality gradually presented itself to me, filled with shameful horrors: I was no longer in the house I lived in; as far as I could tell by the light of the sun, the day was already two-thirds over! It was on the previous evening that I had fallen asleep; my sleep had thus lasted almost twenty-four hours. What had happened during that long sleep?
“I got dressed as quickly as I could. All my numb and sluggish movements testified to the influence of the narcotic, which had still not entirely worn off. Moreover, the room had been furnished to receive a woman, and the most complete coquette could not have formed a desire which, in looking around the room, she did not find already satisfied.
“I was certainly not the first captive to be locked up in that splendid prison; but you understand, Felton, the more beautiful the prison, the more it frightened me.
“Yes, it was a prison, for I tried in vain to get out. I tapped on all the walls to find a door, but everywhere the walls gave back a thick, dead sound.
“I made the rounds of that room maybe twenty times, seeking for