The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (171 page)

‘You expect me to hurry things along and awaken grandfather’s memory?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Morrel said. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, be quick. Until the moment when you are mine, Valentine, I shall always be afraid of losing you.’

‘Oh, truly, Maximilien,’ she said, with a convulsive movement, ‘you are too fearful, for an officer, for a soldier who, they say, has never known fear. Ha, ha! Ha, ha!’ And she burst into a strident and painful laugh. Then her arms stiffened and turned, her head fell back in the chair and she remained motionless.

The cry of terror that God brought to Noirtier’s lips blazed out from his eyes. Morrel understood: they must call for assistance. He tugged at the bell, and the chambermaid who was in Valentine’s apartments and the servant who had replaced Barrois hurried in simultaneously.

Valentine was so pale, so cold and so lifeless that, without listening to what they were told, seized by the terror that constantly hovered about that accursed house, they rushed out into the corridors, crying for help.

Mme Danglars and Eugénie were just leaving, but they still had time to discover the cause of all the commotion.

‘Just as I said!’ Mme de Villefort exclaimed. ‘Poor child!’

At the same moment, M. de Villefort’s voice was heard shouting from his study: ‘What’s the matter?’

Morrel exchanged glances with Noirtier, who had recovered his composure and, with a glance, pointed him towards the closet in which he had already concealed himself on a similar previous occasion. He just had time to pick up his hat and jump inside, panting for breath. The crown prosecutor’s footsteps could be heard in the corridor.

Villefort hurried into the room, ran over to Valentine and took her in his arms. ‘A doctor! A doctor!’ he cried. ‘Get Monsieur d’Avrigny! Or, rather, I’ll go myself.’ He hurried out of the apartment.

Morrel hastened out through the other door. He had just been
struck by the most appalling recollection: he remembered the conversation between Villefort and the doctor, which he had overheard on the night when Mme de Saint-Méran died. The symptoms, though in a milder form, were the same as the ones that had preceded the death of Barrois.

At the same time he heard Monte Cristo’s voice in his ear, saying, as he had barely two hours earlier: ‘Whatever you need, Morrel, come to me; I have a great deal of power.’ So, swifter than thought, he hurried from the Faubourg Saint-Honoré to the Rue Matignon, and from the Rue Matignon to the Avenue des Champs-Elysées.

In the meanwhile M. de Villefort had arrived, in his hired cab, at M. d’Avrigny’s door. He rang so violently that the concierge ran to open with a look of terror. Villefort rushed up the stairs without being able to say anything. The concierge knew him and let him go by, merely shouting after him: ‘In his consulting-room, Monsieur, in his consulting-room!’

Villefort was already opening – or, rather, crashing through – the door of the room.

‘Ah, it’s you!’ the doctor said.

‘Yes, doctor,’ Villefort said, closing the door behind him. ‘Now it’s my turn to ask you if we are quite alone. Doctor, my house is accursed!’

‘What!’ the doctor said, disguising the welter of feelings inside him under an appearance of calm. ‘Has someone else been taken ill?’

‘Yes, doctor,’ Villefort cried, plunging his hands with a convulsive movement into his hair. ‘Yes!’

D’Avrigny’s look said: ‘I warned you.’

Then his lips slowly spoke these words: ‘So who is going to die in your house, and what new victim will accuse us of weakness before God?’

Villefort gave a painful sob. He went over to the doctor and clasped his arm. ‘Valentine,’ he said. ‘It’s the turn of Valentine!’

‘Your daughter!’ d’Avrigny exclaimed, overcome with distress and surprise.

‘You see: you were wrong,’ the lawyer muttered. ‘Come and see her, on her bed of pain, ask her forgiveness for suspecting her.’

‘Every time you have called me in, it has been too late,’ said M. d’Avrigny. ‘No matter, I’m on my way. But, Monsieur, we must
hurry. With the enemies who strike at your family, there is no time to be lost.’

‘Ah, this time, doctor, you will not reproach me for my weakness. This time I shall find the murderer and strike.’

‘Let us try to save the victim before we think about revenge,’ said d’Avrigny. ‘Come on!’ And the cab that had brought Villefort took him and d’Avrigny back at full speed, at the very moment when Morrel, for his part, was knocking at Monte Cristo’s door.

The count was in his study. Bertuccio had just sent him a note and he was reading it with some anxiety. When the valet announced Morrel, who had left him barely two hours earlier, the count looked up.

Clearly a good deal had happened to him, as it had to the count, in those two hours, because the young man, who had left with a smile on his lips, was returning in a state of visible disarray. The count got up and hurried to meet him.

‘What is wrong, Maximilien?’ he asked. ‘You are quite pale and your forehead is bathed in sweat.’

Morrel fell rather than sat down in a chair. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have been hurrying. I needed to speak to you urgently.’

‘Is everyone well in your family?’ the count asked with an unmistakably sincere note of affectionate goodwill.

‘Yes, thank you, Count, thank you,’ the young man replied, clearly at a loss to know how to open the conversation. ‘Yes, in my family everyone is well.’

‘Good. But you have something to tell me?’ the count asked, more and more anxious.

‘Yes, and it’s true I have just hurried to see you from a house which has been touched by the arrival of death.’

‘Have you been to Monsieur de Morcerf’s, then?’ Monte Cristo asked.

‘No,’ Morrel said. ‘Has someone died at Monsieur de Morcerf’s?’

‘The general has just blown his brains out.’

‘Oh, what a terrible thing!’ Maximilien exclaimed.

‘Not for the countess or for Albert,’ Monte Cristo said. ‘Better a husband and father dead than a husband and father dishonoured. The blood will wash away the shame.’

‘Poor countess! She is the one I pity most: such a noble woman!’

‘Pity Albert as well, Maximilien. Believe me, he is a worthy son of his mother. But let’s return to you. You have hurried round to
see me, you say. Might I have the happiness of being able to help you?’

‘Yes, I need you; that is to say, like a madman, I believed that you could help me in a case where in fact only God can do so.’

‘Tell me, even so,’ said Monte Cristo.

‘I don’t know if I am entitled to reveal such a secret to human ears,’ said Morrel. ‘But fate drives me to it and necessity obliges me, Count…’ He hesitated.

‘Do you believe in my affection for you?’ Monte Cristo said, clasping the young man’s hand in his.

‘Oh, you are encouraging me. And something here’ (Morrel put his hand on his heart) ‘tells me that I should have no secrets from you.’

‘You are right, Morrel, God speaks to your heart and your heart to you. Tell me what your heart is telling you.’

‘Count, will you let me send Baptistin to ask, on your behalf, for news of someone you know?’

‘I have put myself at your disposal, so my servants are all the more yours to command.’

‘I shall not live until I am certain that she is recovering.’

‘Shall I ring for Baptistin?’

‘No, let me talk to him myself.’ Morrel went out, called Baptistin and whispered a few words to him. The valet left at the double.

‘Well, is that done, then?’ Monte Cristo asked when he returned.

‘Yes, and I can breathe a little easier.’

‘You know I am waiting,’ Monte Cristo said with a smile.

‘Yes, and I will tell you. Listen: one evening I was in a garden, hidden by a clump of trees so that no one guessed I was there. Two people walked close to me – please allow me not to tell you their names for the time being. They were talking very quietly together, but I was so interested to hear what they were saying that I did not miss a word.’

‘This is not going to be a happy tale, to judge by the colour of your cheeks and the shudder you gave.’

‘No, it is a dismal one, my friend. Someone had just died in the house of the man who owned the garden where I was hiding. The owner was one of the two people whose conversation I heard, the other was the doctor. The former was telling the latter about his anxieties and his fears, because this was the second time in a month that death had struck, speedily and unexpectedly, in this family.
You might think it had been singled out by an exterminating angel to suffer the wrath of God.’

‘Ah, ha!’ said Monte Cristo, staring at the young man and imperceptibly turning his chair so that he was in shadow, while the light shone full on Maximilien’s face.

‘Yes,’ the latter went on. ‘Death had struck this family twice within a month.’

‘And what was the doctor’s reply?’ Monte Cristo asked.

‘He replied… he replied that the death was not natural… that it was attributable to…’

‘To what?’

‘To poison!’

‘Really!’ said Monte Cristo, with a little cough that, at times when he was profoundly moved by something, allowed him to disguise a blush, a loss of colour, or even the attention with which he was listening. ‘Really, Maximilien. Did you hear that?’

‘Yes, my dear Count, I did hear it; and the doctor added that, if such a thing should occur again, he would feel himself obliged to call in the law.’

Monte Cristo listened (or appeared to do so) with the greatest calm.

‘Then,’ said Maximilien, ‘death struck a third time, and neither the master of the house nor the doctor said anything. Death may strike a fourth time, perhaps. Count, what obligation do you think knowing this secret imposes on me?’

‘My dear friend,’ Monte Cristo answered, ‘you seem to be telling a story that each of us knows by heart. I know the house where you overheard that conversation, or at least one very similar: a house with a garden, a father and a doctor, a house in which there have been three peculiar and unexpected deaths. Well, consider me. I have not overheard any confidences, yet I know all of this as well as you do; do I have any scruples of conscience? No, it doesn’t concern me. You say that an exterminating angel seems to have designated this family for the wrath of God; well, who tells you that what seems to be is not the case? You should not see things that those who have good reason to see them fail to see. If it is justice and not God’s wrath that hovers about that house, Maximilien, turn away and let divine justice proceed.’

Morrel shuddered. There was something at once dismal, solemn and fearsome in the count’s voice.

‘In any case,’ he said, with such a sudden change in his tone that one would not have thought the words came from the same man’s lips, ‘who tells you that it will occur again?’

‘It has, Count!’ Morrel cried. ‘That is why I have come to see you.’

‘Well, what can I do, Morrel? Do you by any chance want me to inform the crown prosecutor?’ These last words were spoken with such clarity and emphasis that Morrel leapt to his feet and exclaimed: ‘Count! You know whom I mean, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do, my dear friend, and I will prove it to you by dotting the
i
’s and giving names to the people. You were walking one evening in Monsieur de Villefort’s garden. According to your account, I suppose it must have been on the evening when Madame de Saint-Méran died. You heard Monsieur de Villefort speaking to Monsieur d’Avrigny about Monsieur de Saint-Méran’s death and the no less unexpected death of the marquise. Monsieur d’Avrigny said that he believed one, or even both of them, had been poisoned; and you, the most law-abiding of men, have been wondering ever since, searching your heart and sounding your conscience to decide whether you should reveal the secret or not. We are no longer in the Middle Ages, my dear fellow, and there is no longer any holy Vehme or
francs-juges
.
¹
What the devil are you going to ask those people? “Conscience, what do you want of me?” as Sterne says. No, my friend, let them sleep if they are sleeping, let them go grey with insomnia, and you, for the love of God, sleep, since you have no pangs of conscience to keep you awake.’

A look of unspeakable anguish appeared on Morrel’s face. He grasped Monte Cristo’s hand. ‘But it has started again, I tell you!’

‘So?’ said the count, astonished at this insistence, which he could not understand, and looking closely at Maximilien. ‘Let it start again. It’s a family of Atreides.
²
God has condemned them and they will suffer their fate. They will disappear like the houses of cards that children set up, which fall one by one when their builders blow on them – and would do so even if there were two hundred of them. Three months ago it was Monsieur de Saint-Méran; two months ago, Madame de Saint-Méran; the other day it was Barrois, and today it will be old Noirtier or young Valentine.’

‘You knew?’ Morrel cried in such a paroxysm of terror that even Monte Cristo, who would have watched the sky fall without blanching, shuddered. ‘You knew and said nothing!’

‘Why? What does it matter to me?’ the count said, shrugging his
shoulders. ‘Do I know those people? Must I destroy one to save another? Good Lord no, because between the guilty party and the victim I have absolutely no preference.’