he 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.

Milady, being well prepared for the reception of Felton, was able to
erect her batteries for the next day. She knew she had only two days
left; that when once the order was signed by Buckingham--and Buckingham
would sign it the more readily from its bearing a false name, and he
could not, therefore, recognize the woman in question--once this order
was signed, we say, the baron would make her embark immediately, and
she knew very well that women condemned to exile employ arms much less
powerful in their seductions than the pretendedly virtuous woman whose
beauty is lighted by the sun of the world, whose style the voice of
fashion lauds, and whom a halo of aristocracy gilds with enchanting
splendors. To be a woman condemned to a painful and disgraceful
punishment is no impediment to beauty, but it is an obstacle to the
recovery of power. Like all persons of real genius, Milady knew
what suited her nature and her means. Poverty was repugnant to her;
degradation took away two-thirds of her greatness. Milady was only a
queen while among queens. The pleasure of satisfied pride was necessary
to her domination. To command inferior beings was rather a humiliation
than a pleasure for her.

She should certainly return from her exile--she did not doubt that
a single instant; but how long might this exile last? For an active,
ambitious nature, like that of Milady, days not spent in climbing are
inauspicious days. What word, then, can be found to describe the days
which they occupy in descending? To lose a year, two years, three years,
is to talk of an eternity; to return after the death or disgrace of the
cardinal, perhaps; to return when d'Artagnan and his friends, happy and
triumphant, should have received from the queen the reward they had well
acquired by the services they had rendered her--these were devouring
ideas that a woman like Milady could not endure. For the rest, the storm
which raged within her doubled her strength, and she would have burst
the walls of her prison if her body had been able to take for a single
instant the proportions of her mind.

Then that which spurred her on additionally in the midst of all this wa