The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (169 page)

His eyes, burning with gladness, were eagerly fixed on those of Haydée, when suddenly the door opened. The count frowned.

‘Monsieur de Morcerf!’ said Baptistin, as if the name itself were enough to excuse the interruption. And the count’s face did, indeed, lighten. ‘Which one?’ he asked. ‘Viscount or Count?’

‘The count.’

‘My God!’ Haydée exclaimed. ‘Is it not over yet?’

‘I do not know if it is finished, my dearest child,’ Monte Cristo said, taking the young woman’s hands. ‘What I do know is that you have nothing to fear.’

‘But this is the wretch…’

‘The man is powerless against me, Haydée,’ Monte Cristo said. ‘The time to fear was when I had to deal with his son.’

‘You will never know, master, how I suffered,’ she said.

He smiled and put a hand on her head. ‘I swear on my father’s grave,’ he said, ‘that if anyone is to suffer, it will not be me!’

‘I believe you, my Lord, as if God were speaking to me,’ she said, offering him her forehead. Monte Cristo gave her pure and beautiful brow a kiss that made two hearts beat together, one urgently, the other in silence.

‘Oh, God!’ the count murmured. ‘Will you then let me love again…’ He took the young Greek woman towards a concealed staircase and said to Baptistin: ‘Show the Comte de Morcerf into the drawing-room.’

A word of explanation may be needed: this visit, though Monte Cristo had expected it, will no doubt come as a surprise to our readers.

While Mercédès, as we mentioned, was in her apartments making the same sort of inventory as Albert had done in his house, sorting through her jewels, closing her drawers and collecting her keys, so as to leave everything in perfect order, she did not notice a sinister bloodless face appear in the glass window of a door designed to let light enter the corridor; from that point, one could hear as well as see. So it seems more than likely that the person who was watching there, without himself being seen or heard, saw and heard all that went on in Mme de Morcerf’s.

From the glass door the pale-faced man went into the Comte de Morcerf’s bedroom and, once there, restively lifted the curtain on a window overlooking the courtyard. He stayed there for ten minutes, motionless, silent, listening to the beating of his own heart. It was a long time for him, ten minutes.

It was at this point that Albert, returning from his appointment, saw his father watching for him to return behind the curtain, and turned his head.

The count’s eyes opened wide. He knew that Albert’s insult to Monte Cristo had been fearful and that, in every country in the
world, such an insult would be followed by a duel to the death. So, if Albert was returning safe and sound, then he was avenged.

An unspeakable ray of joy lit his dreary face, like a last ray of sunshine from the sun disappearing into clouds which seem less like its bed than its tomb. But, as we said, he waited in vain for the young man to come up to his apartments to proclaim his triumph to his father. It was understandable that his son, before going out to fight, had not wanted to see the father whose honour he was to avenge; but, once that had been done, why did the son not come and throw himself into his arms?

At this point, since he could not see Albert, the count sent for his servant. As we know, Albert told the servant to hide nothing from him.

Ten minutes later, General de Morcerf appeared on the front steps wearing a black coat, with a military collar, black trousers and black gloves. It appears that he had already given orders because he had hardly put his foot on the last step when his carriage appeared, fully harnessed, out of the coachhouse and drew up in front of him. His valet then arrived with a military cloak, stiffened by the two swords wrapped inside it, which he threw into the carriage; then he closed the door and sat down beside the coachman.

The latter bent over the side of the barouche to take his orders. ‘To the Champs-Elysées!’ the general said. ‘To the Count of Monte Cristo’s. Hurry!’

The horses leapt forward under the whip and, five minutes later, pulled up in front of the count’s house.

M. de Morcerf opened the door himself and, while the carriage was still moving, jumped down like a young man on to the path, rang, then vanished with his servant through the open door. A second later, Baptistin was announcing him to Monte Cristo and the latter, after showing Haydée out, gave the order to let M. de Morcerf into the drawing-room. The general had paced three times the full length of the room when he turned around and saw Monte Cristo standing on the threshold.

‘Oh! It’s Monsieur de Morcerf,’ Monte Cristo said, calmly. ‘I thought I had misheard.’

‘Yes, it is I,’ the count said with a frightful contraction of the mouth that prevented him from pronouncing the words clearly.

‘Now all I need to know,’ Monte Cristo said, ‘is what brings me
the pleasure of seeing the Comte de Morcerf at such an early hour.’

‘Did you have a meeting with my son this morning, sir?’ the general asked.

‘So you know about that?’ the count replied.

‘I also know that my son had good reason for wishing to fight you and doing his best to kill you.’

‘Indeed, Monsieur, he had very good reason. But you see that, even so, he did not kill me, or even fight me.’

‘Yet he considered you to be the cause of his father’s dishonour and of the frightful catastrophe that is at the moment afflicting my house.’

‘That is so, Monsieur,’ said Monte Cristo with dreadful imperturbability. ‘A secondary cause, perhaps, and not the main one.’

‘So you must have made some excuse to him or given some explanation?’

‘I gave him no explanation and he was the one to make his excuses.’

‘How do you explain that behaviour?’

‘Probably by his conviction that there was a more guilty man in all this than I.’

‘Who was that man?’

‘His father.’

‘Yes,’ said the count, blanching. ‘But you know that the guilty man does not like to hear himself convicted of his crime?’

‘I do… So I was expecting what has happened.’

‘You were expecting my son to prove himself a coward!’ the count exclaimed.

‘Monsieur Albert de Morcerf is not a coward,’ said Monte Cristo.

‘A man who has a sword in his hand and, within reach of that sword, his mortal enemy… If such a man does not fight, he is a coward! If only he were here for me to tell him so!’

‘Monsieur,’ the Count of Monte Cristo replied coldly, ‘I assume that you did not come to see me to inform me of these trifling family matters. Go and tell Monsieur Albert; he will know how to answer you.’

‘Oh, no,’ the general said, with a smile that vanished as soon as it had appeared. ‘No, you are right, I did not come here for that! I came to tell you that I too regard you as my enemy. I came to tell you that I hate you instinctively, that it seems to me that I have always known you, and always hated you! And finally, since the
young people of today do not fight, then we shall have to. Do you agree, Monsieur?’

‘Absolutely. So when I said that I was expecting what has happened, I was referring to the honour of your visit.’

‘So much the better, then. Your preparations are made?’

‘They always are, Monsieur.’

‘You know that we shall fight until one of us is dead?’ the general said, his teeth clenched with rage.

‘Until one of us is dead,’ the Count of Monte Cristo repeated, gently nodding his head.

‘Come on, then. We need no witnesses.’

‘Indeed, no,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘We know one another so well!’

‘On the contrary,’ said the count. ‘We don’t know one another at all.’

‘Come now,’ Monte Cristo replied, with the same infuriating lack of emotion. ‘Aren’t you the soldier Fernand who deserted on the eve of the battle of Waterloo? Aren’t you the Lieutenant Fernand who served as a guide and spy for the French army in Spain? Aren’t you the Colonel Fernand who betrayed, sold and murdered his benefactor, Ali? And all these Fernands, did they not finally amount to: Lieutenant-General, Comte de Morcerf, peer of France?’

‘Ah!’ the general cried, the words striking him like a hot iron. ‘You wretch! Do you reproach me with my shame at the moment when you may be about to kill me? No, I did not say that I was unknown to you. I know very well, demon, that you have penetrated the darkness of the past and read every page of my life – though I cannot tell by the light of what torch! But perhaps there is still more honour in me, in my disgrace, than in you, for all your arrogant exterior. No, no, I admit that I am known to you, but I do not know you, you adventurer, smothered in gold and precious stones! In Paris you call yourself the Count of Monte Cristo. In Italy, Sinbad the Sailor. In Malta – who knows what? I have forgotten. What I ask from you is your real name. I want to know your true name, in the midst of these hundred false names, so that I can say it on the field of combat as I plunge my sword in your heart.’

The Count of Monte Cristo went terribly pale; his wild eyes burned with angry fire. He rushed out into the study adjoining his bedroom and, in less than a second, tearing off his cravat, his coat and his waistcoat, he put on a small sailor’s jacket and a sailor’s hat, only partly covering his long black hair.

Dressed in this way, he returned, fearful, implacable, walking in front of the general with his arms crossed. The other had understood nothing of his disappearance, but was waiting for him and, feeling his teeth chatter and his legs give way under him, took a step back and stopped only when he reached a table which provided some support for his clenched hands.

‘Fernand!’ Monte Cristo cried. ‘Of my hundred names, I shall need to tell you only one to strike you down. But you can already guess that name, can’t you? Or, rather, you can recall it. For in spite of all my woes, in spite of all my tortures, I can now show you a face rejuvenated by the joy of revenge, a face that you must have seen often in your dreams since your marriage… your marriage to my fiancée, Mercédès!’

The general, his head thrown back, his hands held out, his eyes staring, watched this dreadful spectacle in silence. Then, reaching out for the wall and leaning on it, he slid slowly along it to the door, out of which he retreated backwards, giving this one, single, lugubrious, lamentable, heart-rending cry: ‘Edmond Dantès!’

Then, with sighs in which there was nothing human, he dragged himself to the front porch of the house, crossed the courtyard like a drunken man and fell into the arms of his valet, simply muttering in an unintelligible voice: ‘Home, home!’

On the way, the fresh air and the shame he felt at the stares of his servants restored him to a state in which he could gather his thoughts, but the journey was short and, the nearer he got to his home, the more the count felt all his agony returning.

At a short distance from the house he told them to stop the carriage and let him out. The door to the house was wide open; a cab, astonished at being called to this magnificent mansion, was standing in the middle of the courtyard. The count looked anxiously at this cab, but did not dare ask anyone about it and ran up to his apartments.

Two people were coming down the stairs. He just had time to slip into a small room to avoid them. It was Mercédès, leaning on her son’s arm; both were leaving the house. They passed a few inches away from the unfortunate man who, hiding behind a damask curtain, was practically brushed by the hem of Mercédès’ silk dress and felt on his face the warm breath of these words which his son spoke: ‘Have strength, mother. Come, come, we are no longer at home here!’

The words died, the footsteps faded.

The general drew himself up by his hands clasping the damask curtain. He was repressing the most frightful sob that ever rose from the breast of a father, abandoned at one and the same time by his wife and by his son.

Soon he heard the iron door of the cab slam shut, then the voice of the driver, then the clattering of the heavy vehicle which rattled the windows. At that he flung himself into his bedroom to see once more everything that he had loved in this world. But the cab left without Mercédès’ head, or Albert’s, appearing at the window to give one last glance at the solitary house, at the abandoned father and husband… one last glance of farewell and regret, that is to say, of forgiveness.

So, at the very moment when the wheels of the cab were clattering over the cobbles under the archway, a shot rang out and a whiff of dark smoke curled out through one of those bedroom windows, shattered by the force of the detonation.

The reader will have guessed where Morrel’s business was and whom he was due to meet. On leaving Monte Cristo, he made his way slowly towards the Villefort house. If he went slowly, it is because he had more than half an hour to cover a distance of five hundred yards; but he had still hastened to take his leave of Monte Cristo, even though the time was more than enough, because he wanted to be alone with his thoughts.

He knew the time – the time when Valentine, after seeing Noirtier have lunch, was sure that she would not be disturbed in this pious duty. Noirtier and Valentine had allowed him two visits a week and he was going to take advantage of his right.

Valentine was waiting for him when he arrived. Anxious, almost distracted, she grasped his hand and led him in to her grandfather’s.