“This? Nothing,” said milady, smiling with that melancholy expression which she knew so well how to give to her smile. “Ennui is the mortal enemy of prisoners; I was blue, and I amused myself with twisting a rope.”
Felton turned his eyes toward that part of the wall of the apartment before which he had found milady standing in the chair in which she was now seated, and over her head he perceived a gilt-headed screw, fixed in the wall for the purpose of hanging up clothes or arms.
He started, and the prisoner saw that start; for though her eyes were cast down, nothing escaped her.
“And what were you doing standing on that chair?” asked he.
“What difference does that make to you?” replied milady.
“But,” replied Felton, “I wish to know.”
“Do not question me,” said the prisoner; “you know that we true Christians are forbidden to tell falsehoods.”
“Well, then,” said Felton, “I will tell you what you were doing, or rather what you were going to do: you were going to finish the fatal work you cherish in your mind. Remember, madame, if our God forbids us to tell falsehoods, He much more severely forbids suicide.”
“When God sees one of His creatures unjustly persecuted, placed between suicide and dishonour, believe me, sir,” replied milady, in a tone of deep conviction, “God pardons suicide, for then suicide is martyrdom.”
“You say either too much or too little. Speak, madame; in Heaven’s name, explain yourself.”
“They have eyes,” repeated milady, with an accent of indescribable grief, “but they see not; ears have they, but they hear not.”
“But,” cried the young officer, “speak, speak, then!”
“Confide my shame to you!” cried milady, with the blush of modesty on her face—“for often the crime of one becomes the shame of another —confide my shame to you, a man, and I a woman! Oh,” continued she, placing her hand modestly over her beautiful eyes, “never! never! —I could not.”
Milady had achieved a half-triumph, and the success obtained doubled her strength.
“You promised me something.”
“What? My God!” said the young man, who, in spite of his self- command, felt his knees tremble and the sweat start from his brow.
“You promised to bring a knife, and to leave it with me after our conversation.”
“Say no more of that, madame,” said Felton. “There is no situation, however terrible, that can authorize one of God’s creatures to inflict death upon itself. I have reflected that I could never become guilty of such a sin.”
“Ah, you have reflected!” said the prisoner, sitting down in her armchair with a smile of disdain; “and I also have reflected.”
“About what?”
“That I can have nothing to say to a man who does not keep his word.”
“Oh, my God!” murmured Felton.
“You may retire,” said milady. “I shall not speak.”
“Here is the knife,” said Felton, drawing from his pocket the weapon which, according to his promise, he had brought, but which he hesitated to give to his prisoner.
“Let me see it,” said milady.
“For what purpose?”
“On my honour I will instantly return it to you. You shall place it on that table, and you may remain between it and me.”
Felton handed the weapon to milady, who examined the temper of it attentively, and tried the point on the tip of her finger.
“Well,” said she, returning the knife to the young officer, “this is fine and good steel. You are a faithful friend, Felton.”
Felton took back the weapon and laid it on the table, in accordance with his agreement with his prisoner.
Milady followed him with her eyes, and made a gesture of satisfaction.
“Now,” said she, “listen to me.”
The recommendation was useless. The young officer was standing before her, awaiting her words as if to devour them.
“Felton,” said milady, with a solemnity full of melancholy, “if your sister, your father’s daughter, said to you,
“While still young, unfortunately beautiful, I was dragged into a snare. I resisted. Ambushes, acts of violence, were multiplied around me. I resisted. The religion I serve, the God I adore, were blasphemed because I called to my aid my religion and my God. I resisted. Then outrages were heaped upon me, and when they could not ruin my soul they determined to defile my body for ever. Finally—”
Milady stopped, and a bitter smile passed over her lips.
“Finally,” said Felton—finally, what did they do?”
“Finally, one evening, they resolved to paralyze my unconquerable resistance. One evening a powerful narcotic was mixed with my water. Scarcely had I finished my repast when I felt myself sink by degrees into a strange torpor. Though I was without suspicion, a vague fear seized me, and I tried to struggle against sleep. I arose. I endeavoured to run to the window and call for help, but my legs refused to carry me. It seemed as if the ceiling were sinking down on my head and crushing me under its weight. I stretched out my arms; I tried to speak; I could only utter inarticulate sounds. An irresistible faintness came over me. I supported myself by an armchair, feeling that I was about to fall, but this support was soon insufficient for my weak arms. I fell on one knee, then on both. I tried to pray, but my tongue was frozen. God, doubtless, neither heard nor saw me, and I sank down on the floor, a prey to a sleep which was like death.
“Of all that passed during my sleep, or the time that glided away while it lasted, I have no recollection. The only thing I recollect is, that I woke in bed, in a round chamber, the furniture of which was sumptuous and into which light penetrated only by an opening in the ceiling. Moreover, no door seemed to give entrance to the room. It might have been called a magnificent prison.
“It was long before I could make out where I was, or could take account of the details I describe. My mind seemed to strive in vain to shake off the heavy darkness of the sleep from which I could not rouse myself. I had vague perceptions of a space travelled over, of the rolling of a carriage, of a horrible dream in which my strength was exhausted; but all this was so dark and so indistinct in my mind that these events seemed to belong to another life than mine, and yet mixed with mine by a fantastic duality.
“For some time the state into which I had fallen appeared so strange that I thought I was dreaming. I arose tremblingly. My clothes were near me on a chair. I neither remembered having undressed myself, nor going to bed. Then little by little the reality broke upon me, full of chaste terrors. I was no longer in the house where I had been dwelling. As well as I could judge by the light of the sun, the day was already two-thirds gone. It was the evening before that I had fallen asleep; my sleep, then, must have already lasted nearly twenty-four hours! What had happened during this long sleep?
“I dressed myself as quickly as possible. My slow and stiff motions all attested that the effects of the narcotic were still not entirely dissipated. The chamber was evidently furnished for a woman’s reception; and the most finished coquette could not have formed a wish which, on looking round the apartment, she would not have found gratified.
“Certainly I was not the first captive who had been shut up in this splendid prison. But you understand, Felton, the more superb the prison, the greater was my terror.
“Yes, it was a prison, for I vainly tried to get out of it. I sounded all the walls in the hopes of discovering a door, but everywhere the walls returned a full, dull sound.
“I made the circuit of the room perhaps twenty times, in search of an outlet of some kind; there was none. I sank exhausted with fatigue and terror into an armchair.
“In the meantime night was rapidly coming on, and with night my terrors increased. I did not know but I had best remain where I was seated. I seemed to be surrounded by unknown dangers, into which I was likely to fall at every step. Although I had eaten nothing since the evening before, my fears prevented me from feeling hungry.
“No noise from without by which I could measure the time reached me. I only supposed it might be seven or eight o’clock in the evening, for it was October and quite dark.
“All at once a door, creaking on its hinges, made me start. A globe of fire appeared above the glazed opening of the ceiling, casting a strong light into my chamber, and I perceived with terror that a man was standing within a few paces of me.
“A table, with two covers, bearing a supper ready prepared, stood, as if by magic, in the middle of the apartment.
“That man was he who had pursued me during a whole year, who had vowed my dishonour, and who, by the first words that issued from his mouth, gave me to understand he had accomplished it the preceding night.”
“The scoundrel!” murmured Felton.
“Oh yes, the scoundrel!” cried milady, seeing the interest which the young officer, whose soul seemed to hang on her lips, took in her strange story—“oh yes, the scoundrel! He believed that, by having triumphed over me in my sleep, all was completed. He came, hoping that I should accept my shame, since my shame was consummated. He came to offer his fortune in exchange for my love.
“Alas! my desperate resistance could not last long. I felt my strength fail, and this time it was not my sleep that enabled the scoundrel to prevail, but my swooning.”
Felton listened without making any sound but a kind of suppressed roar. Only the sweat streamed down his marble brow, and his hand, under his coat, tore his breast.
“My first impulse on coming to myself was to feel under my pillow for the knife I had not been able to reach. If it had not come into play for defence, it might at least serve in expiation.
“‘Ah, ha!’ cried he, seizing my arm, and wresting from me the weapon, ‘you want to take my life, do you, my pretty Puritan? But this is more than dislike, this is ingratitude! Come, come, calm yourself, my sweet girl! I thought you were become kinder. I am not one of those tyrants who detain women by force. You don’t love me. With my usual fatuity, I doubted it; now I am convinced. To-morrow you shall be free.’
“I had but one wish, and that was that he should kill me.
“‘Beware!’ said I, ‘for my liberty is your dishonour.’
“‘Explain yourself, my pretty sibyl.’
“‘Yes; for no sooner shall I have left this place than I will tell everything. I will proclaim the violence you have used toward me. I will describe my captivity. I will denounce this palace of infamy. You are placed very high, my lord, but tremble! Above you there is the king. Above the king there is God.’
“Perfect master as he seemed over himself, my persecutor allowed a movement of anger to escape him. I could not see the expression of his face, but I felt the arm on which my hand was placed tremble.
“‘Then you shall not go from here,’ said he.
“At these words he retired. I heard the door open and shut, and I remained overwhelmed, yet less, I confess, by my grief than by the shame of not having avenged myself.”
Chapter 48 - A Device of Classical Tragedy
After a moment’s silence, employed by milady in observing the young man who was listening to her, milady continued her recital.
“When evening came I was so weak that almost every instant I fainted, and every time that I fainted I thanked God, for I thought I was going to die.
“In the midst of one of these fainting fits I heard the door open. Terror recalled me to myself.
“He entered the apartment, followed by a man in a mask. He himself was masked, but I knew his step, I knew his voice. I knew him by that imposing carriage which hell bestowed on his person for the curse of humanity.
“‘Well,’ said he to me, ‘have you made up your mind?’
“‘You have said Puritans have but one word. Mine you have heard, and that is to pursue you on earth before the tribunal of men, in heaven before the tribunal of God.’
“‘You persist, then?’
“‘I swear it before the God who hears me. I will take the whole world as a witness of your crime, and that until I have found an avenger.’
“‘Executioner,’ said he, ‘do your duty.”’
“Oh, his name, his name!” cried Felton; “tell it me!”
“Then in spite of my cries, in spite of my resistance—for I began to realize that for me there was a question of something worse than death—the executioner seized me, threw me on the floor, bruised me with his rough grasp. Suffocated by sobs, almost without consciousness, invoking God, who did not listen to me, I suddenly uttered a frightful cry of pain and shame. A burning fire, a red-hot iron, the iron of the executioner, was imprinted on my shoulder.”
Felton uttered a groan.
“Here,” said milady, rising with the majesty of a queen—“here, Felton, behold the new martyrdom invented for a young girl, pure, and yet the victim of a scoundrel’s brutality. Learn to know the hearts of men, and henceforth make yourself less easily the instrument of their unjust revenges.”
Milady, with a swift gesture, opened her dress, tore the cambric that covered her bosom, and, red with feigned anger and simulated modesty, showed the young man the ineffaceable impression which dishonoured her beautiful shoulder.
“But,” cried Felton, “it is a fleur-de-lis which I see there.”
“And therein consisted the infamy,” replied milady. “The brand of England!—it would have been necessary to prove what tribunal had imposed it on me, and I could have made a public appeal to all the tribunals of the kingdom; but the brand of France!—oh, by that, by that I was branded indeed!”
This was too much for Felton.
Pale, motionless, overwhelmed by this frightful revelation, dazzled by the superhuman beauty of this woman, who unveiled herself before him with a shamelessness which appeared to him sublime, he ended by falling on his knees.
“Pardon! pardon!” cried Felton; “oh, pardon!”
Milady read in his eyes, “Love! love!”
“Pardon for what?” asked she.
“Pardon me for having joined your persecutors.”
Milady held out her hand to him.
“So beautiful! so young!” cried Felton, covering that hand with his kisses.
Milady cast on him one of those looks which make a slave into a king.
Felton was a Puritan. He dropped this woman’s hand to kiss her feet.
He more than loved her; he adored her.
When this crisis was past; when milady seemed to have recovered her self-control, which she had not lost even for an instant; when Felton had seen her cover again with the veil of chastity those treasures of love which were concealed from him only to make him desire them the more ardently,
“Ah, now!” said he, “I have only one thing to ask of you—that is, the name of your true executioner. For in my eyes there is but one. The other was the instrument, that was all.”
“What, brother!” cried milady; “must I name him? Have you not yet divined who he is?”
“What!” cried Felton; “he!—he again!—he always! What!—the real culprit!”
“The real culprit,” said milady, “is the ravager of England, the persecutor of true believers, the cowardly ravisher of the honour of so many women—he who, to satisfy a caprice of his corrupt heart, is about to make England shed so much blood, who protects the Protestants to-day and will betray them to-morrow—”
