“What do you want with me?” said she.
“Listen,” replied Felton, in a low voice. “I have just sent away the sentinel that I might remain here without anybody knowing it, in order to speak to you without being overheard. The baron has just related a frightful story to me.”
Milady assumed her smile of a resigned victim, and shook her head.
“Either you are a demon,” continued Felton, “or the baron–my benefactor, my father–is a monster. I have known you four days; I have loved him four years. I therefore may hesitate between you. Be not alarmed at what I say; I want to be convinced. Tonight, after twelve, I will come and see you, and you shall convince me.”
“No, Felton, no, my brother,” said she; “the sacrifice is too great, and I feel what it must cost you. No, I am lost; do not be lost with me. My death will be much more eloquent than my life, and the silence of the corpse will convince you much better than the words of the prisoner.”
“Be silent, madame,” cried Felton, “and do not speak to me thus; I came to entreat you to promise me upon your honor, to swear to me by what you hold most sacred, that you will make no attempt upon your life.”
“I will not promise,” said Milady, “for no one has more respect for a promise or an oath than I have; and if I make a promise I must keep it.”
“Well,” said Felton, “only promise till you have seen me again. If, when you have seen me again, you still persist–well, then you shall be free, and I myself will give you the weapon you desire.”
“Well,” said Milady, “for you I will wait.”
“Swear.”
“I swear it, by our God. Are you satisfied?”
“Well,” said Felton, “till tonight.”
And he darted out of the room, shut the door, and waited in the corridor, the soldier’s half-pike in his hand, and as if he had mounted guard in his place.
The soldier returned, and Felton gave him back his weapon.
Then, through the grating to which she had drawn near, Milady saw the young man make a sign with delirious fervor, and depart in an apparent transport of joy.
As for her, she returned to her place with a smile of savage contempt upon her lips, and repeated, blaspheming, that terrible name of God, by whom she had just sworn without ever having learned to know Him.
“My God,” said she, “what a senseless fanatic! My God, it is I– I–and this fellow who will help me to avenge myself.”
56 CAPTIVITY: THE FIFTH DAY
Milady had however achieved a half-triumph, and success doubled her forces.
It was not difficult to conquer, as she had hitherto done, men prompt to let themselves be seduced, and whom the gallant education of a court led quickly into her net. Milady was handsome enough not to find much resistance on the part of the flesh, and she was sufficiently skillful to prevail over all the obstacles of the mind.
But this time she had to contend with an unpolished nature, concentrated and insensible by force of austerity. Religion and its observances had made Felton a man inaccessible to ordinary seductions. There fermented in that sublimated brain plans so vast, projects so tumultuous, that there remained no room for any capricious or material love–that sentiment which is fed by leisure and grows with corruption. Milady had, then, made a breach by her false virtue in the opinion of a man horribly prejudiced against her, and by her beauty in the heart of a man hitherto chaste and pure. In short, she had taken the measure of motives hitherto unknown to herself, through this experiment, made upon the most rebellious subject that nature and religion could submit to her study.
Many a time, nevertheless, during the evening she despaired of fate and of herself. She did not invoke God, we very well know, but she had faith in the genius of evil–that immense sovereignty which reigns in all the details of human life, and by which, as in the Arabian fable, a single pomegranate seed is sufficient to reconstruct a ruined world.