The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [286]
Watch out for your life, which is threatened, and which will be dear to me the moment I am no longer obliged to look upon you as an enemy.
Your affectionate
Anne
Buckingham summoned up all the life that remained in him to listen to this reading. When it was finished, he asked, as if he had found the letter bitterly disappointing:
“Have you nothing else to tell me by word of mouth, La Porte?”
“I have, Monseigneur. The queen told me to tell you to watch out for yourself, for she had been warned that they wanted to assassinate you.”
“And is that all, is that all?” Buckingham went on impatiently.
“She also told me to tell you that she always loved you.”
“Ah!” said Buckingham, “God be praised! My death will not, then, be the death of a stranger for her!”
La Porte burst into tears.
“Patrick,” said the duke, “bring me the box where the diamond pendants were.”
Patrick brought the object he asked for, which La Porte recognized as having belonged to the queen.
“Now the white satin bag with her monogram embroidered on it in pearls.”
Patrick obeyed again.
“Here, La Porte,” said Buckingham, “these are the only tokens I had from her, this silver box and these two letters. Give them back to Her Majesty. And as a last souvenir…” (he looked around him for some precious object) “…add this…”
He went on looking, but his gaze, darkened by death, met only with the knife that had fallen from Felton’s hand, still steaming with the crimson blood smeared on its blade.
“And add this knife,” said the duke, pressing La Porte’s hand.
He was still able to put the bag into the bottom of the silver box and drop the knife in, making a sign to La Porte that he could no longer speak. Then, with a last convulsion, which this time he had no more strength to combat, he slid from the sofa onto the floor.
Patrick uttered a great cry.
Buckingham wanted to smile a last time, but death arrested his thought, which remained graven on his forehead like a last kiss of love.
At that moment the duke’s doctor arrived in a great flurry. He had been aboard the admiral’s ship already; they had been obliged to go and fetch him there.
He went up to the duke, took his hand, held it for a moment in his own, and let it fall again.
“There’s no use,” he said, “he’s dead.”
“Dead! Dead!” cried Patrick.
At that cry, a whole throng came into the room, and everywhere there was only dismay and disorder.
As soon as Lord de Winter saw Buckingham expired, he ran to Felton, whom the soldiers were still guarding on the palace terrace.
“Wretch!” he said to the young man, who, since Buckingham’s death, had recovered that calm and coolheadedness that would not abandon him again. “Wretch! What have you done?”
“I have taken my revenge,” he said.
“You?” said the baron. “Say rather that you served as an instrument of that cursed woman. But, I swear to you, this crime will be her last.”
“I do not know what you mean to say,” Felton replied calmly. “I killed M. de Buckingham because he twice refused your own request to make me a captain. I have punished him for his injustice, that is all.”
De Winter, stupefied, watched the people who were binding Felton, and did not know what to think of such insensibility.
One thing, however, clouded Felton’s pure brow. At each sound he heard, the naive Puritan thought he recognized the footsteps and voice of Milady, coming to throw herself into his arms, to accuse herself and perish with him.
All at once he gave a start. His gaze was fixed on a certain point on the sea, which lay wholly open to view from the terrace where he stood. With the eagle eye of a sailor, he had recognized, where anyone else would