The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [294]
“Oh, my God, what’s the matter with you?” asked the poor woman. “Have I said something that has offended you?”
“No, but the name struck me, because I also knew this gentleman, and it seemed strange to me to find someone who knows him well.”
“Oh, yes, very well, very well! Not only him, but also his friends MM. Porthos and Aramis!”
“Indeed, I know them, too!” cried Milady, who felt a chill penetrating her heart.
“Well, then, if you know them, you must know that they are good and openhearted companions. Why don’t you turn to them, if you need support?”
“That is to say,” stammered Milady, “I have no real ties to any of them. I know them from having heard them much spoken of by one of their friends, M. d’Artagnan.”
“You know M. d’Artagnan?” the novice cried in her turn, seizing Milady’s hand and devouring her with her eyes.
Then, noticing the strange expression on Milady’s face, she said: “Excuse me, Madame, but in what sense do you know him?”
“Why,” Milady picked up, embarrassed, “as a friend.”
“You are deceiving me, Madame,” said the novice. “You were his mistress.”
“It is you who were, Madame,” Milady cried in her turn.
“I?” said the novice.
“Yes, you. I know you now: you are Mme Bonacieux.”
The young woman drew back, filled with surprise and terror.
“Oh, don’t deny it! Answer!” said Milady.
“Well, then—yes, Madame, I love him!” said the novice. “Are we rivals?”
Milady’s face lit up with such a savage fire that, in any other circumstances, Mme Bonacieux would have fled in fright; but she was entirely in the grip of her jealousy.
“Come, tell me, Madame,” said Mme Bonacieux, with an energy one would have believed her incapable of, “were you or are you his mistress?”
“Oh, no!” cried Milady, with an accent that admitted no doubt of its truthfulness. “Never! never!”
“I believe you,” said Mme Bonacieux. “But why, then, did you cry out like that?”
“What, you don’t understand?” said Milady, who had gotten over her confusion and recovered all her presence of mind.
“How do you expect me to understand? I don’t know anything.”
“You don’t understand that, being my friend, M. d’Artagnan should take me as a confidante?”
“Really?”
“You don’t understand that I know everything, your abduction from the little house in Saint-Germain,199 his and his friends’ despair, their useless searching since that moment? And how do you not want me to be astonished when, without suspecting it, I find myself face to face with you, with you about whom we have spoken so often together, with you whom he loves with all the strength of his soul, with you whom he has made me love before I ever saw you? Ah, dear Constance, so I’ve found you, I’ve found you at last!”
And Milady held out her arms to Mme Bonacieux, who, convinced by what she had just said, no longer saw in this woman, whom a moment before she had thought her rival, anything but a sincere and devoted friend.
“Oh, forgive me, forgive me!” she cried, letting herself fall on Milady’s shoulder. “I love him so much!”
The two women embraced each other for a moment. To be sure, if Milady’s strength had been equal to her hatred, Mme Bonacieux would never have left that embrace alive. But, not being able to smother her, she smiled at her.
“Oh, my dear, beautiful little thing!” said Milady, “how happy I am to see you! Let me look at you.” And, as she said these words, she actually devoured her with her gaze. “Yes, it’s really you. Ah, I recognize you now from what he told me, I recognize you perfectly.”
The poor woman could in no way suspect the dreadful cruelty that was going on behind the rampart of that pure brow, behind those shining eyes in which she read only concern and compassion.
“Then you know what I’ve suffered,” said Mme Bonacieux, “since he has told you what he suffered. But to suffer for him is happiness.”
Milady replied mechanically: “Yes, it is happiness.”
She was thinking of something else.
“And then,” Mme Bonacieux went on, “my torment is reaching its end. Tomorrow, or tonight perhaps, I will see him again, and then the past will no longer exist.”
“This