The Count of Monte Cristo

“Good news! good news!” shouted forth one of the party stationed in the balcony on the look-out. “Here comes M. Morrel back. No doubt, now, we shall hear that our friend is released!”

Mercédès and the old man rushed to meet the person from whom they hoped so much; but the first glance of the pale, desponding countenance of M. Morrel prepared them for evil tidings.

“What news?” exclaimed a general burst of voices.

“Alas! my friends,” replied M. Morrel, with a mournful shake of his head, “the thing has assumed a more serious aspect than I expected.”

“Oh! indeed—indeed, sir, he is innocent!” sobbed forth Mercédès.

“That I believe!” answered M. Morrel; “but still he is charged———”

“With what?” inquired the elder Dantès.

“With being an agent of the Bonapartist faction!”

Many of my readers may be able to recollect how formidable such an accusation became in the period at which our story is dated.

A despairing cry escaped the pale lips of Mercédès, while the heart-broken father fell listlessly into a chair, kindly placed for him by one of the pitying guests.

“Ah, Danglars!” whispered Caderousse, “you have deceived me—the trick you spoke of last night has been played off, I see; but I cannot suffer a poor old man or an innocent girl to die of grief through your fault. I am determined to tell them all about it.”

“Be silent, you simpleton!” cried Danglars, grasping him by the arm, “or I will not answer even for your own safety. Who can tell whether Dantès be innocent or guilty? The vessel did touch at Elba, where he quitted it, and passed a whole day in the island. Now, should any letters or other documents of a compromising character be found upon him, will it not be taken for granted that all who uphold him are his accomplices?”

With the rapid instinct of selfishness, Caderousse readily perceived the solidity of this mode of reasoning; he gazed doubtfully, wistfully on Danglars, and then insensibly continued to retreat from the dangerous proximity in which he found himself.

“Suppose we wait a while, and see what comes of it!” said he, casting a bewildered look on his companion.

“To be sure!” answered Danglars. “Let us wait, by all means. If he be innocent, of course he will be set at liberty; if guilty, why, it is no use involving ourselves in his conspiracy.”

“Then let us go hence. I cannot stay to endure the sight of that old man’s distress.”

“With all my heart!” replied Danglars, but too pleased to find a partner in his retreat. “Let us take ourselves out of the way, and leave every one else to do the same thing, if they please.”

After their departure, Fernand, who had now again become the only friend and protector poor Mercédès could find in this trying hour, led the weeping girl back to her home, which she had quitted with such different hopes and feelings in the morning, while some friends of Dantès conducted the poor heart-broken parent to his childless and dreary abode.

The rumour of Edmond’s arrest as a Bonapartist agent was not slow in circulating throughout the city.

“Could you ever have credited such a thing, my dear Danglars?” asked M. Morrel, as on his return to the port for the purpose of gleaning fresh tidings of Dantès, he overtook his supercargo and Caderousse. “Could you have believed such a thing possible?”

“Why, you know I told you,” replied Danglars, “that I considered the circumstance of his having anchored in the Isle of Elba as a very suspicious circumstance.”

“And did you mention these suspicions to any person besides myself?”

“Certainly not!” returned Danglars. Then added in a low whisper, “You understand that, on account of your uncle, M. Polican Morrel, who served under the other government, and who does not altogether conceal what he thinks on the subject, you are strongly suspected of regretting the abdication of Napoleon. I should have feared to injure both Edmond and yourself, had I divulged my own apprehensions to a soul. I am too well aware that though a subordinate, like myself, is bound to acquaint the shipowner with everything that occurs, there are many things he ought most carefully to conceal from all else.”

“‘Tis well, Danglars—‘tis well!” replied M. Morrel. “You are a worthy fellow; and I had already thought of your interests in the event of poor Edmond having become captain of the Pharaon.”

“Is it possible you were so kind?”

“Yes, indeed; I had previously inquired of Dantès what was his opinion of you, and if he should have any reluctance to continue you in your post, for somehow I have perceived a sort of coolness between you two that led me to believe that he would rather have another in your place as supercargo.”

“And what was his reply?”

“That he certainly did think he had given you offence in an affair which he merely referred to without entering into particulars, but that whoever possessed the good opinion and confidence of the ship’s owners would have his preference also.”

“The hypocrite!” murmured Danglars, between his teeth.

“Poor Dantès!” said Caderousse. “No one can deny his being a noble-hearted young fellow!”

“But in the midst of all our trouble,” continued M. Morrel, “we must not forget that the Pharaon has at present no captain.”

“Oh!” replied Danglars, “since we cannot leave this port for the next three months, let us hope that ere the expiration of that period Dantès will be set at liberty.”

“Of that I entertain no doubt; but in the meantime what are we to do?”

“I am entirely at your service, M. Morrel,” answered Danglars. “You know that I am as capable of managing a ship as the most experienced captain in the service; and it will be so far advantageous to you to accept my services, that upon Edmond’s release from prison no further change will be requisite on board the Pharaon than for Dantès and myself each to resume our respective posts.”

“Thanks! thanks! my good friend, for your excellent idea and acceptable proposition—that will smooth all difficulties. I fully authorise you at once to assume the command of the Pharaon, and look carefully to the unloading of her freight. Private misfortunes must never induce us to neglect public affairs.”

“Depend upon my zeal and attention, M. Morrel; but when do you think it likely we may be permitted to visit our poor friend in his prison?”

“I will let you know that directly I have seen M. de Villefort, whom I shall endeavour to interest in Edmond’s favour. I am aware he is a furious royalist; but, spite of that, and of his being the king’s procureur, he is a man like ourselves, and I fancy not a bad sort of one!”

“Perhaps not,” replied Danglars; “but he is universally spoken of as extremely ambitious, and ambition is a sore hardener of the heart!”

“Well, well!” returned M. Morrel, “we shall see! But now hasten on board. I will join you there ere long.” So saying, the worthy shipowner quitted the two allies, and proceeded in the direction of the Palais de Justice.

“You see,” said Danglars, addressing Caderousse, “the turn things have taken. Do you still feel any desire to stand up in his defence?”

“Not the slightest, but yet it seems to me a shocking thing a mere joke should lead to such frightful consequences.”

“But who perpetrated that joke, let me ask? neither you nor myself, but Fernand: you know very well that I threw the paper into a corner of the room,—indeed, I fancied I had destroyed it.”

“Oh, no!” replied Caderousse, “that I can answer for, you did not. I only wish I could see it now as plainly as I saw it lying all crushed and crumpled in a corner of the arbour.”

“Well, then, if you did, depend upon it, Fernand picked it up, and either copied it or caused it to be copied; perhaps, even, he did not take the trouble of recopying it. And now I think of it, by heavens! he has sent the letter itself! Fortunately, for me, the handwriting was disguised.”

“Then you were aware of Dantès being engaged in a conspiracy?”

“Not I. As I before said, I thought the whole thing was a joke, nothing more. It seems, however, that I have unconsciously stumbled upon the truth.”

“Still,” argued Caderousse, “I would give a great deal if nothing of the kind had happened, or, at least, that I had had no hand in it. You will see, Danglars, that it will turn out an unlucky job for both of us.”

“Nonsense! If any harm comes of it, it should fall on the guilty person; and that, you know, is Fernand. How can we be implicated in any way? All we have got to do is, to keep our own counsel, and remain perfectly quiet, not breathing a word to any living soul; and you will see that the storm will pass away without in the least affecting us.”

“Amen!” responded Caderousse, waving his hand in token of adieu to Danglars, and bending his steps towards the Alleés de Meillan, moving his head to and fro, and muttering as he went, after the manner of one whose mind was overcharged with one absorbing idea.

“So far, then,” said Danglars mentally, “all has gone as I would have it! I am temporarily commander of the Pharaon, with the certainty of being permanently so, if that fool of a Caderousse can be persuaded to hold his tongue. My only fear is the chance of Dantès being released. But bah! he is in the hands of justice; and,” added he, with a smile, “she will take her own.”

So saying, he leaped into a boat, desiring to be rowed on board the Pharaon, where M. Morrel had appointed to meet him.

6 The Deputy Procureur

IN ONE OF the large aristocratical mansions, situated in the Rue du Grand Cours, opposite the fountain of Medusa, a second marriage-feast was being celebrated, almost at the same hour with the ill-fated nuptial repast given by Dantès.

In this case, however, although the occasion of the entertainment was similar, the company assembled formed a striking difference. Instead of a rude mixture of sailors, soldiers, and those belonging to the humblest grade of life, the present assembly was composed of the very flower of Marseilles society. Magistrates who had resigned their office during the usurper’s reign; officers who, scorning to fight under his banners, had offered their services to foreign powers, with younger members of the family, brought up to hate and execrate the man whom five years of exile would have converted into a martyr, and fifteen of restoration elevated to the rank of a demigod.

The guests were still at table, and the heated and energetic conversation that prevailed betrayed the violent and vindictive passions that then agitated each dweller of the south, where, unhappily, religious strife had long given increased bitterness to the violence of party feeling.

The emperor, now king of the petty Isle of Elba, after having held sovereign sway over one half of the world, counting us, his subjects, a small population of twenty millions, after having been accustomed to hear the “Vive Napoleons” of, at least, six times that number of human beings, uttered in nearly every language of the globe,—was looked upon among the haute société of Marseilles as a ruined man, separated for ever from any fresh connection with France or claim to her throne.

The magistrates freely discussed their political views; the military part of the company talked unreservedly of Moscow and Leipsic, while the females indulged in open comment upon the divorce of the Empress Josephine.

All seemed to evince that in this focus of royalism it was not over the downfall of one man they rejoiced, but in the bright and cheering prospect of a revivified political existence for themselves.

An old man, decorated with the cross of Saint Louis, now rose and proposed the health of King Louis XVIII. This aged individual was the Marquis de Saint-Méran.

This toast, recalling at once the patient exile of Hartwell, and the peace-loving king of France, excited universal enthusiasm; glasses were elevated in the air à l’Anglais; and the ladies, snatching their bouquets from their fair bosoms, strewed the table with their floral treasures. In a word, an almost poetical fervour prevailed.

“Ah!” said the Marquise de Saint-Méran, a woman with a stern, forbidding eye, though still noble and elegant-looking, despite her having reached her fiftieth year—“Ah! these revolutionists, who have driven us from those very possessions they afterwards purchased for a mere trifle during the Reign of Terror, would be compelled to own, were they here, that all true devotion was on our side, since we were content to follow the fortunes of a falling monarch, while they, on the contrary, made their fortune by worshipping the rising sun;—yes, yes, they could not help admitting that the king, for whom we sacrificed rank, wealth, and station, was truly our ‘Louis the Well-beloved!’ while their wretched usurper has been, and ever will be, to them their evil genius, their ‘Napoleon the Accursed!’ Am I not right, Villefort?”

“I beg your pardon, madame! I really must pray you to excuse me—but—in truth—I was not attending to the conversation.”

“Marquise!—marquise!” interposed the same elderly personage who had proposed the toast, “let the young people alone; let me tell you, on one’s wedding day there are more agreeable subjects of conversation than dry politics!”

“Never mind, dearest mother,” said a young and lovely girl, with a profusion of light brown hair, and eyes that seemed to float in liquid crystal; “ ‘tis all my fault for seizing upon M. de Villefort, so as to prevent his listening to what you said. But there—now take him—he is all your own, for as long as you like. M. Villefort, I beg to remind you my mother speaks to you.”

“If Madame la Marquise will deign to repeat the words I but imperfectly caught, I shall be delighted to answer,” said M. de Villefort.

“Never mind, Renée,” replied the marquise, with such a look of tenderness, as all were astonished to see her harsh dry features capable of expressing; for, however all other feelings may be withered in a woman’s nature, there is always one bright smiling spot in the maternal breast, and that is where a dearly-beloved child is concerned, “I forgive you. What I was saying, Villefort, was, that the Bonapartists had neither our sincerity, enthusiasm, nor devotion.”

“They had, however, what supplied the place of those fine qualities,” replied the young man, “and that was fanaticism. Napoleon is the Mahomet of the West, and is worshipped by his commonplace but ambitious followers, not only as a leader and law-giver, but also as the personification of equality.”

“He!” cried the marquise,—“Napoleon the type of equality!—for mercy’s sake, then, what would you call Robespierre?—Come, come, do not strip the latter of his just rights to bestow them on one who has usurped enough, methinks.”

“Nay, madame! I would place each of these heroes on his right pedestal—that of Robespierre to be built where his scaffold was erected; that of Napoleon on the column of the Place Vendôme. The only difference consists in the opposite character of the equality supported by these two men; the one advocates the equality that elevates, the other professes the equality that depresses;—the one brings a king within reach of the guillotine, the other elevates the people to a level with the throne. Observe,” said Villefort, smiling, “I do not mean to deny, that both the individuals we have been referring to were revolutionary scoundrels, and that the 9th Thermidor and 4th of April were lucky days for France, worthy of being gratefully remembered by every friend to monarchy and civil order; and that explains how it comes to pass, that, fallen as I trust he is for ever, Napoleon has still preserved a train of parasitical satellites. Still, marquise, it has been so with other usurpers; Cromwell, for instance, who was not half so bad as Napoleon, had his partisans and advocates.”

“Do you know, Villefort, that you are talking in a most dreadfully revolutionary strain?—but I excuse it—it is impossible to expect the son of a Girondin to be free from a small spice of the old leaven.”

A deep crimson suffused the countenance of Villefort. “‘Tis true, madame,” answered he, “that my father was a Girondin, but he was not among the number of those who voted for the king’s death; he was an equal sufferer with yourself during the Reign of Terror, and had well-nigh lost his head on the same scaffold as your own father.”

“True!” replied the marquise, without wincing in the slightest degree at the tragical remembrance thus called up; “but bear in mind, if you please, that our respective parents underwent persecution and proscription from diametrically opposite principles; in proof of which I may remark, that while my family remained among the stanchest adherents of the exiled princes, your father lost no time in joining the new government; and that after the Citizen Noirtier had become a Girondin, the Count Noirtier appeared as a senator and statesman.”

“Dear mother!” interposed Renée, “you know very well it was agreed that all these disagreeable reminiscences should for ever be laid aside.”

“Suffer me, also, madame, to add my earnest request that you will kindly allow the veil of oblivion to cover and conceal the past. What avails retrospection and recrimination touching circumstances wholly past recall? for my own part, I have laid aside even the name of my father, and altogether disown his political principles. He was—nay, probably may still be—a Bonapartist, and is called Noirtier; I, on the contrary, am a stanch royalist, and style myself de Villefort. Let what may remain of revolutionary sap exhaust itself and die away with the old trunk, and condescend only to regard the young shoot which has started up at a distance from the parent tree, without having the power, any more than the wish, to separate entirely from the stock from which it sprung.”

“Bravo, Villefort!” cried the marquis; “excellently well said! Come, now, I have hopes of obtaining what I have been for years endeavouring to persuade the marquise to promise—namely, a perfect amnesty and forgetfulness of the past.”

“With all my heart,” replied the marquise; “let the past be for ever forgotten! I promise you it affords me as little pleasure to revive it as it does you. All I ask, is, that Villefort will be firm and inflexible for the future in marking his political principles. Remember also, Villefort, that we have pledged ourselves to his majesty for your fealty and strict loyalty, and that at our recommendation, the king consented to forget the past, as I do” (and here she extended to him her hand), “as I now do at your entreaty. But bear in mind, that should there fall in your way any one guilty of conspiring against the government, you will be so much the more bound to visit the offence with rigorous punishment, as it is known you belong to a suspected family.”

“Alas! madame,” returned Villefort, “my profession, as well as the times in which we live, compel me to be severe. I have already successfully conducted several public prosecutions, and brought the offenders to merited punishment. But we have not done with the thing yet.”

“Do you, indeed, think so?” inquired the marquise.

“I am, at least, fearful of it. Napoleon, in the island of Elba, is too near France, and his proximity keeps up the hopes of his partisans. Marseilles is filled with half-pay officers, who are daily, under one frivolous pretext or other, getting up quarrels with the royalists; from hence arise continual and fatal duels among the higher classes of persons, and assassinations in the lower.”

“You have heard, perhaps,” said the Comte de Salvieux, one of M. de Saint-Méran’s oldest friends, and chamberlain to the Count d’Artois, “that the Holy Alliance purpose removing him from thence?”

“Ah! they were talking about it when we left Paris,” said M. de Saint-Méran; “and where is it decided to transfer him?”

“To Saint Helena!”

“For Heaven’s sake, where is that?” asked the marquise.

“An island situated on the other side of the equator, at least two thousand leagues from hence,” replied the count.

“So much the better! As Villefort observes, it is a great act of folly to have left such a man between Corsica, where he was born, Naples, of which his brother-in-law is king, and Italy, the sovereignty of which he coveted for his son.”

“Well,” said the marquise, “it seems probable, that by the aid of the Holy Alliance, we shall be rid of Napoleon; and we must trust to the vigilance of M. de Villefort to purify Marseilles of his partisans. The king is either a king or no king; if he be acknowledged as sovereign of France, he should be upheld in peace and tranquillity, and this can best be effected by employing the most inflexible agents to put down every attempt at conspiracy—‘tis the best and surest means of preventing mischief.”

“Unfortunately, madame,” answered Villefort, “the strong arm of the law is not called upon to interfere until the evil has taken place.”

“Then all he has got to do is to endeavour to repair it.”

“Nay, madame, the law is frequently powerless to effect this; all it can do is to avenge the wrong done.”

“Oh! M. de Villefort,” cried a beautiful young creature, daughter to Comte de Salvieux, and the cherished friend of Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran,—“do try and get up some famous trial while we are at Marseilles. I never was in a law court; I am told it is so very amusing!”

“Amusing, certainly!” replied the young man, “inasmuch as, instead of shedding tears as at the fictitious tale of woe produced at a theatre, you behold in a law court a case of real and genuine distress—a drama of life. The prisoner whom you there see pale, agitated, and alarmed, instead of—as is the case when the curtain falls on a tragedy—going home to sup peacefully with his family, and then retiring to rest, that he may recommence his mimic woes on the morrow, is removed from your sight merely to be reconducted to his prison and delivered up to the executioner. I leave you to judge how far your nerves are calculated to bear you through such a scene. Of this, however, be assured, that should any favourable opportunity present itself, I will not fail to offer you the choice of being present at it.”

“For shame, M. de Villefort!” said Renée, becoming quite pale; “don’t you see how you are frightening us?—and yet you laugh.”

“Why, I stand almost in the light of one engaged in a duel. I have already recorded sentence of death, five or six times, against the movers of political conspiracies, and who can say how many daggers may be ready sharpened, and only waiting a favourable opportunity to be buried in my heart?”

“Gracious heavens! M. de Villefort,” said Renée, becoming more and more terrified; “you surely are not in earnest.”

“Indeed, I am,” replied the young magistrate, with a smile; “and in the interesting trial that young lady is anxious to witness, the case would only be still more aggravated. Suppose, for instance, the prisoner, as is more than probable, to have served under Napoleon—well, can you expect for an instant, that one accustomed, at the word of his commander, to rush fearlessly on the very bayonets of his foe, will scruple more to drive a stiletto into the heart of one he knows to be his personal enemy, than to slaughter his fellow-creatures, merely because bidden to do so by one he is bound to obey? Besides, one requires the excitement of being hateful in the eyes of the accused, in order to lash oneself into a state of sufficient vehemence and power. I would not choose to see the man against whom I pleaded smile, as though in mockery of my words. No! my pride is to see the accused pale, agitated, and as though beaten out of all composure by the fire of my eloquence.”

“Bravo!” cried one of the guests, “that is what I call talking to some purpose.”

“Just the person we require at a time like the present,” said a second.

“What a splendid business that last cause of yours was, my dear Villefort!” remarked a third. “I mean the trial of the man for murdering his father. Upon my word you killed him ere the executioner had laid his hand upon him.”