The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [276]
LVII
A MEANS FROM CLASSICAL TRAGEDY
After a moment’s silence, employed by Milady in observing the young man who was listening to her, she went on with her story:
“It was nearly three days since I had drunk or eaten anything. I suffered atrocious tortures. Sometimes it seemed to me as though clouds were encircling my forehead, veiling my eyes. It was delirium.
“Evening came. I was so weak that I kept fainting, and each time I fainted, I thanked God, for I thought I was going to die.
“In the midst of one of these fainting spells, I heard the door open. Terror brought me back to myself.
“My persecutor came in, followed by a masked man. He was also masked himself, but I recognized his footstep, I recognized that imposing air hell had given to his person for the misfortune of mankind.
“‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘have you decided to make me the oath I asked of you?’
“‘As you said, the Puritans have only one word: you have heard mine, which is to pursue you on earth before the tribunals of men, and in heaven before the tribunal of God!’
“‘So you persist?’
“‘I swear it before God who hears me: I will take the whole world as witness against your crime, and that until I have found my avenger.’
“‘You are a prostitute,’ he said in a thundering voice, ‘and you will endure the punishment of prostitutes! Branded in the eyes of the world you would call upon, try proving to that world that you are neither guilty nor mad!’
“Then, addressing the man who accompanied him, he said:
“‘Executioner, do your duty.’”
“Oh, his name! his name!” cried Felton. “Tell me his name!”
“Then, despite my cries, despite my resistance, for I was beginning to understand that it was a question of something worse than death for me, the executioner seized me, threw me to the floor, bruised me with his grip, and, choking with sobs, almost unconscious, calling upon God, who did not hear me, I suddenly let out a frightful scream of pain and shame: a burning iron, a red-hot iron, the executioner’s iron, had stamped its mark on my shoulder.”
Felton let out a roar.
“Here,” said Milady, rising with queenly majesty, “here, Felton, see how a new martyrdom was invented for the young girl who was pure and yet was the victim of a villain’s brutality. Learn to know the hearts of men, and henceforth do not so easily make yourself the instrument of their unjust vengeance.”
With a quick gesture, Milady opened her dress, tore the batiste that covered her breast, and, blushing with feigned anger and mock shame, showed the young man the ineffaceable mark that dishonored so beautiful a shoulder.
“But,” cried Felton, “it is a fleur-de-lis I see there!”
“And that is just where the infamy lies,” replied Milady. “The brand of England!…It would have to be proved which court had imposed it on me, and I could have made public appeal to all the courts in the realm; but the brand of France…oh! with that I was really and truly branded!”
This was too much for Felton.
Pale, motionless, crushed by this dreadful revelation, dazzled by the superhuman beauty of this woman, who unveiled herself to him with a shamelessness he found sublime, he ended by falling on his knees before her, as the first Christians did before those pure and holy martyrs whom the persecution of the emperors handed over to the bloody lewdness of the populace in the circus. The brand disappeared, the beauty alone remained.
“Forgive me, forgive me!” cried Felton, “oh, forgive me!”
Milady looked into his eyes and read: “Love, love.”
“Forgive you for what?” she asked.
“Forgive me for having joined your persecutors.”
Milady held out her hand to him.
“So beautiful, so young!” cried Felton, covering that hand with kisses.
Milady let fall on him one of those looks that turn a slave into a king.
Felton was a Puritan: he let go of the woman’s hand in order to kiss her feet.
He no longer simply loved her, he worshipped her.
When this crisis was over, when Milady seemed to have recovered