In short, at the moment in which she has just obtained from Richelieu a carte blanche by the means of which she is about to take vengeance on her enemy, this precious paper is torn from her hands, and it is d'Artagnan who holds her prisoner and is about to send her to some filthy Botany Bay, some infamous Tyburn of the Indian Ocean.
All this she owes to d'Artagnan, without doubt.

From whom can come so many disgraces heaped upon her head, if not from him?
He alone could have transmitted to Lord de Winter all these frightful secrets which he has discovered, one after another, by a train of fatalities.

He knows her brother-in-law.

He must have written to him.
What hatred she distills! Motionless, with her burning and fixed glances, in her solitary apartment, how well the outbursts of passion which at times escape from the depths of her chest with her respiration, accompany the sound of the surf which rises, growls, roars, and breaks itself like an eternal and powerless despair against the rocks on which is built this dark and lofty castle! How many magnificent projects of vengeance she conceives by the light of the flashes which her tempestuous passion casts over her mind against Mme.Bonacieux, against Buckingham, but above all against d'Artagnan--projects lost in the distance of the future.
Yes; but in order to avenge herself she must be free.

And to be free, a prisoner has to pierce a wall, detach bars, cut through a floor--all undertakings which a patient and strong man may accomplish, but before which the feverish irritations of a woman must give way.