The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) Page 14

  He got up or, rather, leapt up, like a man resolving some inner struggle, ran across to his writing desk, emptied the gold from one of its drawers into his pockets, paced distractedly around his room for a moment, with his hand on his forehead, muttering incomprehensibly, then at last, feeling the coat which his valet had just put across his shoulders, went out, sprang into his carriage and snapped out the order to stop off at M. de Saint-Méran’s in the Rue du Grand-Cours.

  The sentence on the unhappy Dantès was confirmed.

  As M. de Saint-Méran had promised, Villefort found the marquise and Renée in the study. The young man shuddered on seeing Renée, thinking that she might once more ask him to free Dantès. But, alas, it must be said, to the discredit of self-centred humankind, that the beautiful young woman was concerned with only one thing: Villefort’s departure.

  She loved Villefort, and he was leaving at the very moment when he was about to become her husband. He could not tell her when he would return, and Renée, instead of feeling pity for Dantès, was cursing the man whose crime was the cause of her separation from her lover.

  So there was nothing that Mercédès could say!

  On the corner of the Rue de la Loge, poor Mercédès had met Fernand, who was following her. She had returned to Les Catalans and thrown herself on her bed in an extremity of desperation. Fernand knelt beside the bed and, clasping an icy hand that Mercédès did not think to take from him, covered it with ardent kisses that Mercédès did not even feel.

  So she spent the night. The lamp went out when the oil was exhausted, but she no more noticed the darkness than she had noticed the light. When day returned, she was unaware of that also. Sorrow had covered her eyes with a blindfold that showed her only Edmond.

  ‘Ah, it’s you,’ she said finally, turning towards Fernand.

  ‘I have not left your side since yesterday,’ he replied, with a pitiful sigh.

  M. Morrel would not admit defeat: he had learned that Dantès had been taken to prison, after being questioned, so he hastened to see all his friends and visit anyone in Marseille who might have some influence there. But already the rumour was spreading that the young man had been arrested as a Bonapartist agent. Since at that time even the most daring considered any attempt by Napoleon to recover the throne as an insane fantasy, M. Morrel was greeted everywhere with indifference, fear or rejection, and returned home in despair, admitting that the position was serious and that no one could do anything about it.

  Caderousse, for his part, was deeply disturbed and troubled. Instead of following M. Morrel’s example, going out and attempting to do something for Dantès (which was, in any case, impossible), he shut himself in with two bottles of cassis and tried to drown his anxiety in drunkenness. But such was his state of mind that two bottles were not enough to extinguish his thoughts; so he remained, too drunk to fetch any more wine, not drunk enough to forget, seated in front of his two empty bottles, with his elbows on a rickety table, watching all the spectres that Hoffmann2 scattered across manuscripts moist with punch, dancing like a cloud of fantastic black dust in the shadows thrown by his long-wicked candle.

  Danglars was alone, but neither troubled nor disturbed. Danglars was even happy, because he had taken revenge on an enemy and ensured himself the place on board the Pharaon that he had feared he might lose. Danglars was one of those calculating men who are born with a pen behind their ear and an inkwell instead of a heart. To him, everything in this world was subtraction or multiplication, and a numeral was much dearer than a man, when it was a numeral that would increase the total (while a man might reduce it). So Danglars had gone to bed at his usual hour and slept peacefully.

  Villefort, after receiving the letter from M. de Salvieux, had embraced Renée on both cheeks, kissed the hand of Mme de Saint-Méran and shaken that of the marquis, and was travelling post-haste along the road for Aix.

  Dantès’ father was perishing from grief and anxiety.

  As for Edmond, we know what had become of him…

  X

  THE LITTLE CABINET IN THE TUILERIES

  Let us leave Villefort going hell for leather down the road to Paris, having paid for extra horses at every stage, and precede him through the two or three rooms into the little cabinet at the Tuileries, with its arched window, famous for having been the favourite study of Napoleon and King Louis XVIII, and today for being that of King Louis-Philippe.1

  Here, seated in front of a walnut table that he had brought back from Hartwell (to which, by one of those foibles usual among great men, he was especially partial), King Louis XVIII was listening without particular attention to a man of between fifty and fifty-two years, grey-haired, with aristocratic features and meticulously turned out, while at the same time making marginal notes in a volume of Horace, the Gryphius2 edition (much admired, but often inaccurate) which used to contribute more than a little to His Majesty’s learned observations on philology.

  ‘You were saying, Monsieur?’ the king asked.

  ‘That I feel deeply disquieted, Sire.’

  ‘Really? Have you by any chance dreamt of seven fat and seven lean cows?’

  ‘No, Sire, for that would presage only seven years of fertility and seven of famine, and, with a king as far-sighted as Your Majesty, we need have no fear of famine.’

  ‘So what other scourge might afflict us, my dear Blacas?’

  ‘I have every reason to believe, Sire, that there is a storm brewing from the direction of the South.’

  ‘And I, my dear Duke,’ replied Louis XVIII, ‘think you are very ill-informed, because I know for a fact that, on the contrary, the weather down there is excellent.’

  Despite being a man of some wit, Louis XVIII liked to indulge a facile sense of humour.

  ‘Sire,’ M. de Blacas continued, ‘if only to reassure his faithful servant, might Your Majesty not send some trusty men to Languedoc, to Provence and to the Dauphiné, to give him a report on the feeling of these three provinces?’

  ‘Canimus surdis,’3 the king replied, carrying on with the annotation of his Horace.

  The courtier laughed, to give the impression that he understood the phrase from the poet of Venusia: ‘Your Majesty may well be perfectly correct to trust in the loyalty of the French, but I think I may not be altogether wrong to anticipate some desperate adventure.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By Bonaparte or, at least, those of his faction.’

  ‘My dear Blacas,’ said the king, ‘you are interrupting my work with your horrid tales.’

  ‘And you, Sire, are keeping me from my sleep with fears for your safety.’

  ‘One moment, my good friend, wait one moment; I have here a most perspicacious note on the line Pastor quum trahiret.4 Let me finish it and you can tell me afterwards.’

  There was a brief silence while Louis XVIII, in handwriting that he made as tiny as possible, wrote a new note in the margin of his Horace; then, when the note was written, he looked up with the satisfied air of a man who thinks he has made a discovery when he has commented on someone else’s idea, and said: ‘Carry on, my dear Duke, carry on. I am listening.’

  ‘Sire,’ said Blacas, who had briefly hoped to use Villefort to his own advantage, ‘I have to tell you that this news that troubles me is not some vague whisper, these are no mere unfounded rumours. A right-thinking man who has my entire confidence and was required by me to keep a watch on the South…’ (the duke hesitated as he said this) ‘… has just arrived post-haste to tell me that there is a great danger threatening the king. And so, Sire, I came at once.’

  ‘Mala ducis avi domum,’5 Louis XVIII continued, making another note.

  ‘Is Your Majesty ordering me to say no more on this topic?’

  ‘No, my dear Duke, but stretch out your hand.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Whichever you prefer, over there, on the left.’

  ‘Here, Sire?’

  ‘I tell you the left and you look on the right. I mean my left. There, you
have it. You should find a report from the Minister of Police with yesterday’s date… But here is Monsieur Dandré himself… You did say Monsieur Dandré, didn’t you?’ Louis XVIII remarked, turning to the usher who had indeed just announced the Minister of Police.

  ‘Yes, Sire, Monsieur le Baron Dandré,’ the usher repeated.

  ‘That’s it, Baron,’ Louis XVIII continued, with a faint smile. ‘Come in, Baron, and tell the duke your most recent news about Monsieur de Bonaparte. Conceal nothing from us, however serious the situation may be. Let’s see: is not the island of Elba a volcano, and shall we see war burst from it, bristling and blazing: bella, horrida bella?’6

  M. Dandré leant elegantly against the back of a chair, resting both hands upon it, and said: ‘Was Your Majesty good enough to consult my report of yesterday’s date?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but tell the duke what was in this report, because he is unable to find it. Let him know everything that the usurper is doing on his island.’

  ‘Monsieur,’ the baron said to the duke, ‘all His Majesty’s servants should applaud the latest news that we have received from Elba. Bonaparte…’

  M. Dandré turned to Louis XVIII, who was busy writing a note and did not even look up.

  ‘Bonaparte,’ the baron continued, ‘is bored to death. He spends whole days watching his miners at work in Porto-Longone.’

  ‘And he scratches himself, as a distraction,’ said the king.

  ‘He scratches himself?’ the duke said. ‘What does Your Majesty mean?’

  ‘Yes indeed, my dear Duke. Have you forgotten that this great man, this hero, this demi-god is driven to distraction by a skin ailment, prurigo?’7

  ‘There is more, Monsieur le Duc,’ said the Minister of Police. ‘We are almost certain that the usurper will shortly be mad.’

  ‘Mad?’

  ‘Utterly: his head is softening; sometimes he weeps bitterly, at others he laughs hysterically. On some occasions, he spends hours sitting on the shore playing at ducks and drakes, and when a pebble makes five or six leaps, he seems as satisfied as though he had won another battle of Marengo or Austerlitz. You must agree that these are signs of folly.’

  ‘Or of wisdom, Monsieur le Baron, or of wisdom,’ said Louis XVIII, with a laugh. ‘The great captains of Antiquity used to replenish their spirits by playing at ducks and drakes; see Plutarch’s Life of Scipio Africanus.’

  M. de Blacas was left speechless between these two forms of unconcern. Villefort, who had not wished to tell him everything, in order to prevent anyone else from taking away all the advantage that he might gain from his secret, had none the less told him enough to make him very anxious.

  ‘Go on, Dandré, go on,’ said Louis XVIII. ‘Blacas is not yet convinced. Tell him about the usurper’s conversion.’

  The Minister of Police bowed.

  ‘The usurper’s conversion!’ muttered the duke, looking from the king to Dandré, who were speaking their parts alternately like two Virgilian shepherds.8 ‘Has the usurper been converted?’

  ‘Absolutely, my dear Duke.’

  ‘To the right principles. Explain it, Baron.’

  ‘Here’s the truth of the matter, Duke,’ the minister said, with the greatest gravity in the world. ‘Napoleon recently reviewed his men and when two or three of his old grognards,9 as he calls them, expressed a wish to return to France, he gave them leave and urged them to serve their good king: those were his own words, Monsieur le Duc, I am assured of it.’

  ‘So, now, Blacas, what do you think?’ the king asked triumphantly, turning his attention for a moment from the scholarly tome that lay open beside him.

  ‘I say, Sire, that either the Minister of Police is mistaken or I am. But since it is impossible for it to be the Minister of Police, who is responsible for preserving Your Majesty’s safety and honour, then I am probably the one who is wrong. However, Sire, in Your Majesty’s place I should wish to question the person about whom I spoke. I would even insist that Your Majesty do him this honour.’

  ‘Certainly, Duke, at your insistence I shall receive whomever you wish, but I should like to do so fully armed. Minister, do you yet have a more recent report than this one: this is dated February the twentieth, and it is now already March the third!’

  ‘No, Sire, but I have been expecting one at any minute. I have been out since early this morning and it may have arrived in my absence.’

  ‘Go to the Prefecture and if there is not one there,’ Louis XVIII continued, laughing, ‘make one. Isn’t that the procedure?’

  ‘Oh, Sire,’ the minister exclaimed, ‘thank heaven, on that score there is no need to invent anything. Each day brings the most circumstantial denunciations pouring into our offices, the work of a host of miserable wretches who are hoping for a little gratitude for services that they do not render – much as they would like to. They wager on chance, in the hope that one day an unexpected event will give some sort of reality to their predictions.’

  ‘Very well, then go, Monsieur,’ Louis XVIII said, ‘and remember that I shall be awaiting your return.’

  ‘I shall not tarry, Sire. I shall return in ten minutes.’

  ‘And I, Sire, shall go to fetch my messenger,’ said Blacas.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ Louis XVIII said. ‘Blacas, I really must change your coat of arms: I shall give you an eagle with wings extended, grasping in its claws a prey that is trying in vain to escape; with this device: Tenax.’

  ‘I am listening, Sire,’ said M. de Blacas, wringing his hands in impatience.

  ‘I should like to consult you about this text: Molli fugiens anhelitu.10 You know: it concerns the stag fleeing the wolf. You are a great huntsman, I believe, and an expert on wolves. In both those capacities, what do you think of this molli anhelitu?’

  ‘Admirable, Sire; but my messenger is like the stag that you mention, for he has just covered two hundred leagues by road, in barely three days.’

  ‘He has expended a lot of energy and a lot of trouble, my dear Duke, when we have the telegraph that only takes three or four hours, and does so without making one in the slightest bit out of breath.’

  ‘Sire! This is meagre reward for a poor young man who has come so far and with such ardour to give Your Majesty some important news. If only for the sake of Monsieur de Salvieux, who has recommended him to me, I beg you to receive him well.’

  ‘Monsieur de Salvieux, my brother’s chamberlain?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘But he is in Marseille.’

  ‘He writes to me from there.’

  ‘Does he too speak to you of this conspiracy?’

  ‘No, but he recommends Monsieur de Villefort to me and instructs me to bring him into Your Majesty’s presence.’

  ‘Monsieur de Villefort?’ cried the king. ‘Is this messenger called Monsieur de Villefort?’

  ‘Yes, Sire.’

  ‘And he is the one who has come from Marseille?’

  ‘In person.’

  ‘Why did you not tell me his name at once?’ the king asked, a faint shadow of anxiety appearing on his face.

  ‘Sire, I thought that Your Majesty would not know the name.’

  ‘Not so, Blacas, not so. He is a serious young man, well-bred and above all ambitious. And, heavens – you do know his father’s name?’

  ‘His father?’

  ‘Yes, Noirtier.’

  ‘Noirtier, the Girondin? Noirtier the Senator?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And Your Majesty has given employment to the son of such a man?’

  ‘Blacas, my friend, you understand nothing. I told you that Villefort was ambitious: to make his way, Villefort will sacrifice everything, even his father.’

  ‘So, should I let him enter, Sire?’

  ‘This very moment, Duke. Where is he?’

  ‘He must be waiting for me below in my carriage.’

  ‘Go and fetch him.’

  ‘Immediately.’

  The duke left with the vivacity of
a young man, the warmth of his sincere royalism taking twenty years off his age. Left alone, Louis XVIII turned back to his half-open Horace and murmured: ‘Justum et tenacem propositi virum.’11

  M. de Blacas came back up the stairs as fast as he had gone down them, but in the antechamber he was obliged to appeal to the king’s authority. Villefort’s dusty coat and his general appearance, bearing no relation to the dress of the court, had offended the sensibilities of M. de Brézé, who was astonished that any young man should have the audacity to appear in such clothing before the king. But the duke brushed aside his objections with a single phrase: His Majesty’s orders; and, though the master of ceremonies continued to mutter his objections, for form’s sake, Villefort was ushered into the royal presence. The king was sitting exactly where the duke had left him. On opening the door, Villefort found himself directly opposite him, and the young lawyer’s first impulse was to stop dead.

  ‘Come in, Monsieur de Villefort,’ the king said. ‘Come in.’ Villefort bowed and took a few steps forward, waiting for the king to question him.

  ‘Monsieur de Villefort,’ the king went on, ‘the Duc de Blacas claims that you have something important to tell us.’

  ‘Sire, the duke is right and I hope that Your Majesty will acknowledge the same.’

  ‘Firstly, before anything else, Monsieur, is the problem as serious, in your opinion, as I have been led to believe?’

  ‘Sire, I believe that it is urgent, but I hope that, thanks to my efforts, it will not be irreparable.’

  ‘Take as long as you wish, Monsieur,’ said the king, who was starting to succumb to the feelings that he had seen on M. de Blacas’ face and which he heard in the strained tones of Villefort’s voice. ‘Speak and, above all, begin at the beginning. I like order in all things.’

  ‘Sire,’ said Villefort, ‘I shall give Your Majesty a faithful account, but I beg you to excuse me if, in my eagerness, I am unable to give as clear an account as I should wish.’

  A rapid glance at the king after this ingratiating preface reassured Villefort of the benevolence of his august listener and he continued: