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Books
The Three Musketeers
Twenty Years Later
The Vicomte De Bragelonne
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Twenty Years Later 139 at Prostate Health
was
ignorant a year ago."
"And how does it concern me what you have learned?" said De
Winter.
"Oh, it concerns you very closely, my uncle, I am sure, and
you will soon be of my opinion," added he, with a smile
which sent a shudder through the veins of him he thus
addressed. "When I presented myself before you for the first
time in London, it was to ask you what had become of my
fortune; the second time it was to demand who had sullied my
name; and this time I come before you to ask a question far
more terrible than any other, to say to you as God said to
the first murderer: `Cain, what hast thou done to thy
brother Abel? My lord, what have you done with your sister
-- your sister, who was my mother?"
De Winter shrank back from the fire of those scorching eyes.
"Your mother?" he said.
"Yes, my lord, my mother," replied the young man, advancing
into the room until he was face to face with Lord de Winter,
and crossing his arms. "I have asked the headsman of
Bethune," he said, his voice hoarse and his face livid with
passion and grief. "And the headsman of Bethune gave me a
reply."
De Winter fell back in a chair as though struck by a
thunderbolt and in vain attempted a reply.
"Yes," continued the young man; "all is now explained; with
this key I open the abyss. My mother inherited an estate
from her husband, you have assassinated her; my name would
have secured me the paternal estate, you have deprived me of
it; you have despoiled me of my fortune. I am no longer
astonished that you knew me not. I am not surprised that you
refused to recognize me. When a man is a robber it is hard
to call him nephew whom he has impoverished; when one is a
murderer, to recognize the man whom one has made an orphan."
These words produced a contrary effect to that which
Mordaunt had anticipated. De Winter remembered the monster
that Milady had been; he rose, dignified and calm,
restraining by the severity of his look the wild glance of
the young man.
"You desire to fathom this horrible secret?" said De Winter;
"well, then, so be it. Know, then, what manner of woman it
was for whom to-day you call me to account. That woman had,
in all probability, poisoned my brother, and in order to
inherit from me she was about to assassinate me in my turn.
I have proof of it. What say you to that?"
"I say that she was my mother."
"She caused the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham to be stabbed
by a man who was, ere that, honest, good and pure. What say
you to that crime, of which I have the proof?"
"She was my mother."
"On our return to France she had a young woman who was
attached to one of her opponents poisoned in the convent of
the Augustines at Bethune. Will this crime persuade you of
the justice of her punishment -- for of all this I have the
proofs?"
"She was my mother!" cried the young man, who uttered these
three successive exclamations with constantly increasing
force.
"At last, charged with murders, with debauchery, hated by
every one and yet threatening still, like a panther
thirsting for blood, she fell under the blows of men whom
she had rendered desperate, though they had never done her
the least injury; she met with judges whom her hideous
crimes had evoked; and that executioner you saw -- that
executioner who you say told you everything -- that
executioner, if he told you everything, told you that he
leaped with joy in avenging on her his brothers shame and
suicide. Depraved as a girl, adulterous as a wife, an
unnatural sister, homicide, poisoner, execrated by all who
knew her, by every nation that had been visited by her, she
died accursed by Heaven and earth."
A sob which Mordaunt could not repress burst from his throat
and his livid face became suffused with blood; he clenched
his fists, sweat covered his face, his hair, like Hamlets,
stood on end, and racked with fury he cried out:
"Silence, sir! she was my mother! Her crimes, I know them
not; her disorders, I know them not; her vices, I know them
not. But this I know, that I had a mother, that five men
leagued against one woman, murdered her clandestinely by
night -- silently -- like cowards. I know that you were one
of them, my uncle, and that you cried louder
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