The Count of Monte Cristo

Suddenly he felt an arm thrown round his body, and a well-known voice behind him exclaimed, “Father! dear father!”

The old man uttered a cry, and turned round; then, seeing his son, he fell into his arms, pale and trembling.

“What ails you, my dearest father? Are you ill?” inquired the young man, much alarmed.

“No, no, my dear Edmond—my boy—my son!—no; but I did not

expect you; and joy, the surprise of seeing you so suddenly———Ah! I really seem as if I were going to die!”

“Come, come, cheer up, my dear father! ‘Tis I—really I! They say joy never hurts, and so I come to you without any warning. Come now, look cheerfully at me, instead of gazing as you do with your eyes so wide. Here I am back again, and we will now be happy.”

“Yes, yes, my boy, so we will—so we will,” replied the old man, “but how shall we be happy?—Will you never leave me again?—Come, tell me all the good fortune that has befallen you.”

“God forgive me,” said the young man, “for rejoicing at happiness derived from the misery of others; but Heaven knows I did not seek this good fortune: it has happened, and I really cannot affect to lament it. The good Captain Leclere is dead, father, and it is probable that, with the aid of M. Morrel, I shall have his place. Do you understand, father? Only imagine me a captain at twenty, with a hundred louis pay, and a share in the profits! Is this not more than a poor sailor, like me, could have hoped for?”

“Yes, my dear boy,” replied the old man, “and much more than you could have expected.”

“Well, then, with the first money I touch, I mean you to have a small house, with a garden to plant your clematis, your nasturtiums, and your honeysuckles. But what ails you, father? Are not you well?”

“‘Tis nothing, nothing; it will soon pass away;” and as he said so the old man’s strength failed him, and he fell backwards.

“Come, come,” said the young man, “a glass of wine, father, will revive you. Where do you keep your wine?”

“No, no; thank ye. You need not look for it; I do not want it,” said the old man.

“Yes, yes, father, tell me where it is;” and he opened two or three cupboards.

“It is no use,” said the old man; “there is no wine.”

“What! no wine?” said Dantès, turning pale, and looking alternately at the hollow cheeks of the old man and the empty cupboards. “What! no wine? Have you wanted money, father?”

“I want nothing now you are here,” said the old man.

“Yet,” stammered Dantès, wiping the perspiration from his brow—“yet I gave you two hundred francs when I left three months ago.”

“Yes, yes, Edmond, that is true, but you forgot at that time a little debt to our neighbour Caderousse. He reminded me of it, telling me if I did not pay for you, he would be paid by M. Morrel; and so, you see, lest he might do you an injury———”

“Well?”

“Why, I paid him.”

“But,” cried Dantès, “it was a hundred and forty francs I owed Caderousse.”

“Yes,” stammered the old man.

“And you paid him out of the two hundred francs I left you?”

The old man made a sign in the affirmative.

“So that you have lived for three months on sixty francs?” muttered the young man.

“You know how little I require,” said the old man.

“Heaven pardon me,” cried Edmond, falling on his knees before the old man.

“What are you doing?”

“You have wounded my very heart.”

“Never mind it, for I see you once more,” said the old man; “and now all is forgotten—all is well again.”

“Yes, here I am,” said the young man, “with a happy prospect and a little money. Here, father ! here!” he said, “take this—take it, and send for something immediately.”

And he emptied his pockets on the table, whose contents consisted of a dozen pieces of gold, five or six crowns, and some smaller coin.

The countenance of old Dantès brightened.

“Whom does this belong to?” he inquired.

“To me! to you! to us! Take it; buy some provisions; be happy, and tomorrow we shall have more.”

“Gently, gently,” said the old man, with a smile; “and by your leave I will use your purse moderately, for they would say, if they saw me buy too many things at a time, that I had been obliged to await your return, in order to be able to purchase them.”

“Do as you please; but, first of all, pray have a servant, father. I will not have you left alone so long. I have some smuggled coffee, and most capital tobacco, in a small chest in the hold, which you shall have tomorrow. But, hush! here comes somebody.”

“‘Tis Caderousse, who has heard of your arrival, and, no doubt, comes to congratulate you on your fortunate return.”

“Ah! lips that say one thing, whilst the heart thinks another,” murmured Edmond. “But never mind, he is a neighbour who has done us a service on a time, so he’s welcome.”

As Edmond finished his sentence in a low voice, there appeared at the door the black and shock head of Caderousse. He was a man of twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, and held in his hand a morsel of cloth, which, in his capacity as a tailor, he was about to turn into the lining of a coat.

“What! is it you, Edmond, returned?” said he, with a broad Marseillaise accent, and a grin that displayed his teeth as white as ivory.

“Yes, as you see, neighbour Caderousse; and ready to be agreeable to you in any and every way,” replied Dantès, but ill concealing his feeling under this appearance of civility.

“Thanks—thanks; but, fortunately, I do not want for anything; and it chances that at times there are others who have need of me.” Dantès made a gesture. “I do not allude to you, my boy. No!—no! I lent you money, and you returned it; that’s like good neighbours, and we are quits.”

“We are never quits with those who oblige us,” was Dantès’ reply; “for when we do not owe them money, we owe them gratitude.”

“What’s the use of mentioning that? What is done is done. Let us talk of your happy return, my boy. I had gone on the quay to match a piece of mulberry cloth, when I met friend Danglars.

“‘What! you at Marseilles?’

“‘Yes,’ says he.

“‘I thought you were at Smyrna.’

“‘I was; but am now back again.’

“‘And where is the dear boy, our little Edmond?’

“‘Why, with his father, no doubt,’ replied Danglars. And so I came,” added Caderousse, “as fast as I could to have the pleasure of shaking hands with a friend.”

“Worthy Caderousse!” said the old man, “he is so much attached to us!”

“Yes, to be sure I am. I love and esteem you, because honest folks are so rare. But it seems you have come back rich, my boy,” continued the tailor, looking askance at the handful of gold and silver which Dantès had thrown on the table.

The young man remarked the greedy glance which shone in the dark eyes of his neighbour.

“Eh!” he said negligently, “this money is not mine: I was expressing to my father my fears that he had wanted many things in my absence, and to convince me he emptied his purse on the table. Come, father,” added Dantès, “put this money back in your box—unless neighbour Caderousse wants anything, and in that case it is at his service.”

“No, my boy, no,” said Caderousse. “I am not in any want, thank God! the state nourishes me. Keep your money—keep it, I say;—one never has too much;—but at the same time, my boy, I am as much obliged by your offer as if I took advantage of it.”

“It was offered with goodwill,” said Dantès.

“No doubt, my boy; no doubt. Well, you stand well with M. Morrel, I hear,—you insinuating dog, you!”

“M. Morrel has always been exceedingly kind to me,” replied Dantès.

“Then you were wrong to refuse to dine with him.”

“What! did you refuse to dine with him?” said old Dantès; “and did he invite you to dine?”

“Yes, my dear father,” replied Edmond, smiling at his father’s astonishment at the excessive honour paid to his son.

“And why did you refuse, my son?” inquired the old man.

“That I might the sooner see you again, my dear father,” replied the young man. “I was most anxious to see you.”

“But it must have vexed M. Morrel, good, worthy man,” said Caderousse. “And when you are looking forward to be captain, it was wrong to annoy the owner.”

“But I explained to him the cause of my refusal,” replied Dantès; “and I hope he fully understood it.”

“Yes, but to be captain one must give way a little to one’s patrons.”

“I hope to be captain without that,” said Dantès.

“So much the better—so much the better! Nothing will give greater pleasure to all your old friends; and I know one down there behind the citadel of Saint Nicolas, who will not be sorry to hear it.”

“Mercédès?” said the old man.

“Yes, my dear father, and with your permission, now I have seen you, and know you are well, and have all you require, I will ask your consent to go and pay a visit to the Catalans.”

“Go, my dear boy,” said old Dantès; “and Heaven bless you in your wife, as it has blessed me in my son!”

“His wife!” said Caderousse; “why, how fast you go on, father Dantès; she is not his wife yet, it appears.”

“No, but according to all probability she soon will be,” replied Edmond.

“Yes—yes,” said Caderousse; “but you were right to return as soon as possible, my boy.”

“And why?”

“Because Mercédès is a very fine girl, and fine girls never lack lovers; she, particularly, has them by dozens.”

“Really?” answered Edmond, with a smile which had in it traces of slight uneasiness.

“Ah, yes,” continued Caderousse, “and capital offers too; but you know you will be captain, and who could refuse you then?”

“Meaning to say,” replied Dantès, with a smile which but ill concealed his trouble, “that if I were not a captain———”

“Eh—eh!” said Caderousse, shaking his head.

“Come, come,” said the sailor, “I have a better opinion than you of women in general, and of Mercédès in particular; and I am certain that, captain or not, she will remain ever faithful to me.”

“So much the better—so much the better,” said Caderousse. “When one is going to be married, there is nothing like implicit confidence; but never mind that, my boy,—but go and announce your arrival, and let her know all your hopes and prospects.”

“I will go directly,” was Edmond’s reply; and, embracing his father, and saluting Caderousse, he left the apartment.

Caderousse lingered for a moment, then taking leave of old Dantès, he went downstairs to rejoin Danglars, who awaited him at the corner of the Rue Senac.

“Well,” said Danglars, “did you see him?”

“I have just left him,” answered Caderousse.

“Did he allude to his hope of being captain?”

“He spoke of it as a thing already decided.”

“Patience!” said Danglars, “he is in too much hurry, it appears to me.”

“Why, it seems M. Morrel has promised him the thing.”

“So that he is quite elate about it.”

“That is to say, he is actually insolent on the matter—has already offered me his patronage, as if he were a grand personage, and proffered me a loan of money, as though he were a banker.”

“Which you refused.”

“Most assuredly; although I might easily have accepted, for it was I who put into his hands the first silver he ever earned; but now M. Dantès has no longer any occasion for assistance—he is about to become a captain.”

“Pooh!” said Danglars, “he is not one yet.”

“Ma foi!—and it will be as well he never should be,” answered Caderousse; “for if he should be, there will be really no speaking to him.”

“If we choose,” replied Danglars, “he will remain what he is, and, perhaps, become even less than he is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing—I was speaking to myself. And is he still in love with the Catalane?”

“Over head and ears: but, unless I am much mistaken, there will be a storm in that quarter.”

“Explain yourself.”

“Why should I?”

“It is more important than you think, perhaps. You do not love Dantès?”

“I never like upstarts.”

“Then tell me all you know relative to the Catalane.”

“I know nothing for certain; only I have seen things which induce me to believe, as I told you, that the future captain will find some annoyance in the environs of the Vieilles Infirmeries.”

“What do you know?—come, tell me!”

“Well, every time I have seen Mercédès come into the city, she has been accompanied by a tall, strapping, black-eyed Catalan, with a red complexion, brown skin, and fierce air, whom she calls cousin.”

“Really; and you think this cousin pays her attentions?”

“I only suppose so. What else can a strapping chap of twenty-one mean with a fine wench of seventeen?”

“And you say Dantès has gone to the Catalans?”

“He went before I came down.”

“Let us go the same way; we will stop at La Réserve, and we can drink a glass of La Malgue whilst we wait for news.”

“Come along,” said Caderousse; “but mind you pay the shot.”

“Certainly,” replied Danglars; and going quickly to the spot alluded to, they called for a bottle of wine and two glasses.

Père Pamphile had seen Dantès pass not ten minutes before; and assured that he was at the Catalans, they sat down under the budding foliage of the planes and sycamores, in the branches of which the birds were joyously singing on a lovely day in early spring.

3 The Catalans

ABOUT A HUNDRED paces from the spot where the two friends were, with their looks fixed on the distance, and their ears attentive, whilst they imbibed the sparkling wine of La Malgue, behind a bare, and torn, and weather-worn wall, was the small village of the Catalans.

One day a mysterious colony quitted Spain, and settled on the tongue of land on which it is to this day. It arrived from no one knew where, and spoke an unknown tongue. One of its chiefs, who understood Provençal, begged the commune of Marseilles to give them this bare and barren promontory, on which, like the sailors of the ancient times, they had run their boats ashore. The request was granted, and three months afterwards, around the twelve or fifteen small vessels which had brought these gipsies of the sea, a small village sprung up.

This village, constructed in a singular and picturesque manner, half Moorish, half Spanish, is that which we behold at the present day inhabited by the descendants of those men who speak the language of their fathers. For three or four centuries they remained faithful to this small promontory, on which they had settled like a flight of sea-birds, without mixing with the Marseillaise population, intermarrying, and preserving their original customs and the costume of their mother country, as they have preserved its language.

Our readers will follow us along the only street of this little village, and enter with us into one of the houses, on the outside of which the sun had stamped that beautiful colour of the dead leaf peculiar to the buildings of the country, and within a coat of limewash, of that white tint which forms the only ornament of Spanish posadas.

A young and beautiful girl, with hair as black as jet, her eyes as velvety as the gazelle’s, was leaning with her back against the wainscot, rubbing in her slender fingers, moulded after the antique, a bunch of heath-blossoms, the flowers of which she was picking off, and strewing on the floor; her arms bare to the elbow, embrowned, and resembling those of the Venus at Arles, moved with a kind of restless impatience, and she tapped the earth with her pliant and well-formed foot so as to display the pure and full shape of her well-turned leg, in its red cotton stocking with gray and blue clocks.

At three paces from her, seated in a chair which he balanced on two legs, leaning his elbow on an old worm-eaten table, was a tall young man of twenty or two-and-twenty, who was looking at her with an air in which vexation and uneasiness were mingled. He questioned her with his eyes, but the firm and steady gaze of the young girl controlled his look.

“You see, Mercédès,” said the young man, “here is Easter come round again; tell me, is this the moment for a wedding?”

“I have answered you a hundred times, Fernand, and really you must be your own enemy to ask me again.”

“Well, repeat it,—repeat it, I beg of you, that I may at last believe it! Tell me for the hundredth time that you refuse my love, which had your mother’s sanction. Make me fully comprehend that you are trifling with my happiness, that my life or death are immaterial to you. Ah! to have dreamed for ten years of being your husband, Mercédès, and to lose that hope, which was the only stay of my existence!”

“At least it was not I who ever encouraged you in that hope, Fernand,” replied Mercédès; “you cannot reproach me with the slightest coquetry. I have always said to you, I love you as a brother, but do not ask from me more than sisterly affection, for my heart is another’s. Is not this true, Fernand?”

“Yes, I know it well, Mercédès,” replied the young man. “Yes, you have been cruelly frank with me; but do you forget that it is among the Catalans a sacred law to intermarry?”

“You mistake, Fernand, it is not a law, but merely a custom; and, I pray of you, do not cite this custom in your favour. You are included in the conscription, Fernand, and are only at liberty on sufferance, liable at any moment to be called upon to take up arms. Once a soldier, what would you do with me, a poor orphan, forlorn, without fortune, with nothing but a hut, half in ruins, containing some ragged nets, a miserable inheritance left by my father to my mother, and by my mother to me? She has been dead a year, and you know, Fernand, I have subsisted almost entirely on public charity. Sometimes you pretend I am useful to you, and that is an excuse to share with me the produce of your fishing; and I accept it, Fernand, because you are the son of my father’s brother, because we were brought up together, and still more because it would give you so much pain if I refuse. But I feel very deeply that this fish which I go and sell, and with the produce of which I buy the flax, I spin,—I feel very keenly, Fernand, that this is charity!”

“And if it were, Mercédès, poor and lone as you are, you suit me as well as the daughter of the first shipowner, or the richest banker of Marseilles! What do such as we desire but a good wife and careful housekeeper, and where can I look for these better than in you?”

“Fernand,” answered Mercédès, shaking her head, “a woman becomes a bad manager, and who shall say she will remain an honest woman, when she loves another man better than her husband? Rest content with my friendship, for I repeat to you that is all I can promise, and I will promise no more than I can bestow.”

“I understand,” replied Fernand, “you can endure your own wretchedness patiently, but you are afraid of mine. Well, Mercédès, beloved by you, I would tempt fortune; you would bring me good luck, and I should become rich. I could extend my occupation as a fisherman, might get a place as clerk in a warehouse, and become myself a dealer in time.”

“You could do no such thing, Fernand; you are a soldier, and if you remain at the Catalans it is because there is not a war; so remain a fisherman, and contented with my friendship, as I cannot give you more.”

“Well, you are right, Mercédès. I will be a sailor; instead of the costume of our fathers, which you despise, I will wear a varnished hat, a striped shirt, and a blue jacket with an anchor on the buttons. Would not that dress please you?”

“What do you mean?” asked Mercédès, darting at him an angry glance,—“what do you mean? I do not understand you.”

“I mean, Mercédès, that you are thus harsh and cruel with me, because you are expecting some one who is thus attired; but, perhaps, he you await is inconstant, or, if he is not, the sea is so to him.”

“Fernand!” cried Mercédès, “I believed you were good hearted, and I was mistaken! Fernand, you are wicked to call to your aid jealousy and the anger of God! Yes, I will not deny it, I do await, and I do love him to whom you allude; and, if he does not return, instead of accusing him of the inconstancy which you insinuate, I will tell you that he died loving me and me only.”

The young Catalan made a gesture of rage.

“I understand you, Fernand; you would be revenged on him because I do not love you; you would cross your Catalan knife with his dirk. What end would that answer? To lose you my friendship if he were conquered, and see that friendship changed into hate if you were conqueror. Believe me, to seek a quarrel with a man is a bad method of pleasing the woman who loves that man. No, Fernand, you will not thus give way to evil thoughts. Unable to have me for your wife, you will content yourself with having me for your friend and sister; and besides,” she added, her eyes troubled and moistened with tears, “wait, wait, Fernand, you said just now that the sea was treacherous, and he has been gone four months, and during these four months we have had some terrible storms.”

Fernand made no reply, nor did he attempt to check the tears which flowed down the cheeks of Mercédès, although for each of these tears he would have shed his heart’s blood; but these tears flowed for another. He arose, paced awhile up and down the hut, and then, suddenly stopping before Mercédès, with his eyes glowing and his hands clenched:

“Say, Mercédès,” he said, “once for all, is this your final determination?”

“I love Edmond Dantès,” the young girl calmly replied, “and none but Edmond shall ever be my husband.”

“And you will always love him?”

“As long as I live.”

Fernand let fall his head like a defeated man, heaved a sigh which resembled a groan, and then, suddenly looking her full in the face, with clenched teeth and expanded nostrils, said:

“But if he is dead———”

“If he is dead, I shall die too.”

“If he has forgotten you———”

“Mercédès!” cried a voice joyously, outside the house,—“Mercédès!”

“Ah!” exclaimed the young girl, blushing with delight, and springing up with love, “you see he has not forgotten me, for here he is!” And rushing towards the door, she opened it, saying, “Here, Edmond, here I am!”

Fernand, pale and trembling, receded like a traveller at the sight of a serpent, and fell into a chair beside him.

Edmond and Mercédès were clasped in each other’s arms. The burning sun of Marseilles, which penetrated the room by the open door, covered them with a flood of light. At first they saw nothing around them. Their intense happiness isolated them from all the rest of the world, and they only spoke in broken words, which are the tokens of a joy so extreme that they seem rather the expression of sorrow.

Suddenly Edmond saw the gloomy countenance of Fernand, as it was defined in the shadow, pale and threatening. By a movement, for which he could scarcely account to himself, the young Catalan placed his hands on the knife at his belt.

“Ah! your pardon,” said Dantès, frowning in his turn. “I did not perceive that there were three of us.” Then, turning to Mercédès, he inquired, “Who is this gentleman?”

“One who will be your best friend, Dantès, for he is my friend, my cousin, my brother,—it is Fernand—the man whom, after you, Edmond, I love the most in the world. Do you not remember him?”

“Yes,” said Edmond, and without relinquishing Mercédès’ hand clasped in one of his own, he extended the other to the Catalan with a cordial air.

But Fernand, instead of responding to this amicable gesture, remained mute and trembling.

Edmond then cast his eyes scrutinisingly at Mercédès, agitated and embarrassed, and then again on Fernand, gloomy and menacing.

“I did not know, when I came with such haste to you, that I was to meet an enemy here.”

“An enemy!” cried Mercédès, with an angry look at her cousin. “An enemy in my house, do you say, Edmond! If I believed that, I would place my arm under yours and go with you to Marseilles, leaving the house to return to it no more.”