Milady's Request for D'Artagnan to Kill de Wardes is the decisive scene in which Milady recruits d'Artagnan as an instrument of revenge while believing that she has regained control over him. Her appeal succeeds because it joins seduction to violence: she awakens his dormant love, presents de Wardes as a mortal enemy, and asks d'Artagnan to kill him. D'Artagnan sees through the design but accepts the role, planning to use Milady's confidence against her. The request thus transforms an intimate conversation into a covert duel whose weapons are desire, performance, and information.

Seduction and the Return of Desire

Milady begins by inviting d'Artagnan to remain, claiming that his agreeable company will divert her. Her manner becomes unusually brilliant and engaging, while the fever that had briefly left her returns to brighten her eyes, color her cheeks, and redden her lips. The physical signs of renewed vitality restore her former enchantment over him. D'Artagnan had believed his love dead, but it proves merely dormant; Milady's smile reawakens it so powerfully that he feels he could damn himself for that smile. The moment briefly produces remorse, showing that his attraction is already in conflict with his knowledge of her danger.

Milady then draws him into a more personal exchange by asking whether he has a mistress. D'Artagnan answers with extravagant declarations that, from the moment he saw her, he had lived only for her. His speech is deliberately theatrical, but it also exposes the vulnerability Milady needs to exploit. She treats his professed love not as a bond of trust but as leverage. The scene's apparent tenderness therefore carries a second current: each lover performs feeling while measuring how that performance may serve a hidden purpose.

The Enemy and the Bargain

After moving her chair closer to his, Milady announces that she has an enemy who has insulted her so cruelly that their conflict is a war to the death. She asks whether she may count on d'Artagnan as an auxiliary. The language of assistance disguises a demand for lethal service. She does not initially name the target; instead, she makes d'Artagnan commit himself before he knows what the promised act will be.

D'Artagnan immediately understands the ground toward which the vindictive Milady is steering him. Even so, he declares that his arm and his life belong to her, together with his love. The pledge is both a feigned surrender and a dangerous verbal commitment. Milady hears it as proof that desire has made him obedient, while d'Artagnan uses the language of devotion to remain inside her confidence. In dramatic terms, the scene shifts the value of their encounter from revived love to threatened life: affection becomes the price of an assassination.

De Wardes Named as the Target

Milady finally identifies the enemy as de Wardes and asks d'Artagnan to avenge her. Her words reveal that the request is not an abstract favor but the continuation of a personal vendetta. She presents herself as the injured party and invites d'Artagnan to become her champion. When she describes de Wardes as one who has wronged her, she turns jealousy and wounded pride into a justification for murder.

D'Artagnan responds inwardly with contempt for the hypocrisy of the arrangement. He intends to let Milady fall voluntarily into his arms after she has abused him, and then to laugh at her with the very man she wants killed. His apparent submission is therefore an impersonation within an impersonation: Milady is manipulating him as a lover and swordsman, while he pretends to be manipulated so that he can manipulate her in return. The event's central irony lies in the fact that both understand deception, but each believes the other has been deceived.

When Milady asks whether he will employ the arm that has already acquired renown, he answers that he will do so instantly. She suspects that lovers do nothing for nothing and asks how she should repay such a service. The exchange makes the transaction explicit. The promised reward is not stated plainly, but Milady's conduct implies that emotional and sexual access will be the compensation for violence. Her strategy depends on keeping the reward just out of reach while making the revenge seem immediate and intimate.

The Promise of the Duel

Milady takes precautions against the consequences of the proposed attack. She needs time to give d'Artagnan advice and to prevent him from confronting the count in circumstances that would expose her role. D'Artagnan, however, intensifies the performance of loyal service by promising that he will avenge her the next day or die. Milady reassures him that he will not die because de Wardes is a coward, adding that the count may be cowardly with women but not with men.

This exchange converts Milady's private grievance into a formal masculine confrontation. She supplies the emotional motive and the tactical caution; d'Artagnan supplies the arm and the public risk. The threat of death gives the conversation its ultimate stake, even though each participant is pursuing a different end. Milady wants de Wardes removed and d'Artagnan disposed of afterward, while d'Artagnan intends to survive, expose her design, and preserve the advantage created by her confidence.

The Secret Appointment and Its Consequences

The interview ends when Milady hears her brother. She orders d'Artagnan out through a small private door and tells him to return at eleven o'clock, when their conversation will be completed; Kitty is to conduct him to Milady's chamber. The arrangement makes the revenge plot inseparable from clandestine intimacy. It also places Kitty in the position of unwilling witness and intermediary, since she nearly faints on hearing the instruction and is nevertheless commanded to show the chevalier out.

The appointment marks a temporary victory for Milady's method. She has rekindled d'Artagnan's love, secured his promise to use his sword against de Wardes, and arranged a later meeting in which she expects to complete her control over him. Yet the scene also plants the conditions of her later defeat. D'Artagnan has recognized her purpose, knows that the request is motivated by vengeance, and plans to exploit the very confidence she believes she has obtained.

The episode belongs to the wider pattern of political and private conflict surrounding Milady. At La Rochelle, the cardinal's campaign against the last major Huguenot stronghold is entangled with English intervention, dynastic rivalry, and the struggle over Anne of Austria; in the private plot, the same logic appears in miniature, as public danger and personal desire continually disguise one another. Milady's request turns d'Artagnan into a possible weapon in a conflict whose consequences extend beyond de Wardes. Later, d'Artagnan's opposition to Milady contributes to the collapse of her power: he deceives her in love, humiliates her pride, frustrates her ambition, deprives her of liberty, and threatens her life. The request is therefore not merely an attempted commission of revenge but an early reversal in the contest between them, where Milady's apparent mastery creates the opening through which d'Artagnan will ultimately defeat her.