The Three Musketeers Chapter Fifty-Two: Captivity: The First Day Summary

  • Milady remains contemplative and angry. She blames D’Artagnan for everything. Finally, she stops meditating and gets up to fix her hair. She looks in the mirror and reminds herself that she is beautiful.
  • She hears footsteps and realizes that her dinner is being served. Quickly, she throws herself down into an armchair with "her head thrown back, her beautiful hair unbound and disheveled, her bosom half bare… one hand on her heart."
  • A table is brought in for her by soldiers. Felton believes her to be asleep, but one of the other soldiers corrects him, saying that Milady has fainted. Felton, not knowing what to do in this situation, orders for Lord de Winter to be brought to the room.
  • He waits stoically with his back to Milady while de Winter is on his way. After ten minutes, Milady pretends to wake up. In her charming voice she bemoans her situation.
  • Lord de Winter comes in with smelling salts in his hand. He sees that Milady has woken up and starts teasing Felton for being taken in by her playacting.
  • Felton replies that he thought it only honorable for him to behave as a gentleman.
  • Lord de Winter asks if Felton is attracted to Milady. Felton replies in the negative, saying it requires more than that to corrupt him.
  • The two men leave to have supper. On their way out, Lord de Winter tells Milady that her dinner looks quite good and she should eat. Milady goes nuts; she grabs a knife off her table and is disappointed to see that the edges are round instead of sharp.
  • On the other side of the door, Lord de Winter laughs at her and tells Felton that Milady would have killed him if the knife were real.
  • Felton apologizes for having advocated giving her a real knife.
  • Milady despairs.
  • She eats and reflects some more. She seizes upon the fact that Felton had spoken in favor of giving her a real knife. She believes he has a "spark of pity in his soul," and that "of that spark [she] will make a flame that shall devour him."
  • She goes to bed happy.