The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (173 page)

‘Etienne,’ he said. ‘Pray go and enquire why Mademoiselle Eugénie asked me to wait in the drawing-room and discover why she is making me wait so long.’

The baron calmed down a little after blowing off this petulant blast.

Mlle Danglars, after waking up, had indeed sent to ask for an audience with her father, appointing the gilt drawing-room as the venue for this meeting. The banker was not a little surprised by the oddness of the request, particularly by its formal nature, but immediately complied with his daughter’s wishes by being the first to arrive in the room.

Etienne soon returned from his mission. ‘Mademoiselle’s chambermaid,’ he said, ‘informed me that Mademoiselle was completing her toilet and would not be long in coming.’

Danglars nodded to show he was satisfied. In the eyes of the world, and even in those of his servants, Danglars played the indulgent father and good-natured fellow; this was one side of the part he had chosen for himself in the popular comedy he was playing: an appearance he had taken on, which seemed to suit him
as it suited the right profile of one of those masks worn by the fathers of the theatre in Antiquity to have the lips turned upwards and smiling, while on the left side the lips were turned down and sorrowful. We might add that, in his family circle, the smiling, up-turned lips dropped and became down-turned and dismal ones, so that most of the time the good-natured fellow vanished, giving way to a brutal husband and tyrannical father.

‘Why the devil, if the silly goose wants to talk to me, as she claims,’ Danglars muttered, ‘can’t she just come to my study? And why does she want to talk to me?’

He was turning this irksome question around in his head for the twentieth time when the door opened and Eugénie appeared, wearing a dress of black satin embroidered with velvety flowers of the same colour, with her hair put up and her arms encased in gloves, as though she were going to her box in the Théâtre Italien.

‘Now, Eugénie, what’s the matter?’ her father exclaimed. ‘And why do we have to be formal in the drawing-room, when it’s so much more comfortable in my private study?’

‘You are perfectly right, Monsieur,’ said Eugénie, motioning to her father that he could sit down. ‘You have just asked two questions which sum up the whole of the conversation we are about to have. I shall therefore answer both of them and, contrary to custom, the second first, since it is the simpler. I chose the drawing-room, Monsieur, as the venue for our meeting, to escape from the disagreeable impressions and the atmosphere of a banker’s study. Those account registers, however well gilded; those drawers, shut tight like the gates of a fortress; those piles of banknotes that come from heaven-knows-where; those masses of letters from England, Holland, Spain, the Indies, China or Peru… all have a peculiar effect on the mind of a father and make him forget that there is in the world something greater and more sacred than social standing or the opinion of his investors. So I chose this drawing-room, where you can see your portrait, mine and my mother’s, smiling and happy, in their magnificent frames, as well as all sorts of pastoral landscapes and charming scenes of shepherds and shepherdesses. I attach great importance to the effect of external impressions. This may perhaps be a mistake, especially where you are concerned, but what do you expect? I should not be an artist if I did not indulge in a few fancies.’

‘Very well,’ said M. Danglars, who had been listening to this
diatribe with utter imperturbability but not understanding a word of it because, like every man who is full of ulterior motives, he was preoccupied with finding his own train of thought in the speaker’s ideas.

‘So, there we have the second point more or less cleared up,’ said Eugénie, quite undisturbed, expressing as usual an entirely masculine composure in her words and gestures. ‘And you appear to be satisfied with the explanation. Now to return to the first point. You ask me why I wanted this talk. Let me put it very briefly, Monsieur: I do not want to marry Count Andrea Cavalcanti.’

Danglars leapt out of his seat. The shock of his descent back threw his arms in the air and cast his eyes heavenwards.

‘Yes, Monsieur, there you have it,’ said Eugénie, still quite unmoved. ‘I can see you are surprised because, since this whole business started, I have not shown the slightest objection, being sure that, when the moment came, I would always frankly and absolutely express my opposition to people who do not consult me and things which I do not like. This time, however, this calm, this passivity, as philosophers say, originated elsewhere. It came from the fact that, as a submissive and devoted daughter’ (a faint smile appeared on the young woman’s crimson lips) ‘I was trying the path of obedience.’

‘Well?’ said Danglars.

‘Well, Monsieur,’ Eugénie went on, ‘I tried; I tried with all my strength and, now that the moment has come, despite all the efforts I have made over myself, I feel unable to obey.’

‘But, tell me,’ said Danglars, an inferior mind who seemed at first quite bewildered by the weight of this pitiless logic, stated with a coolness that argued so much premeditation and strength of will, ‘what is the reason for this refusal, Eugénie; what is the reason?’

‘The reason?’ the young woman replied. ‘Good Lord, it’s not because the man is uglier, stupider or more disagreeable than any other. No, for those who consider a man from the point of view of his face and figure, Monsieur Andrea Cavalcanti might even pass as quite a fine model. And it’s not because my heart is any less moved by him than by another: that sort of answer would do for a schoolgirl, but I consider it quite beneath me. I love absolutely no one, Monsieur: you know that, don’t you? So I cannot see why, unless forced to do so, I should wish to encumber my life with an
eternal companion. Didn’t the sage say somewhere: “Nothing in excess”; and elsewhere: “Carry everything with you”? I was even taught those two aphorisms in Latin and Greek: one is from Phaedrus, I believe, the other from Bias.
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Well, my dear father, in the shipwreck of life – for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes – I throw all my useless baggage in the sea, that’s all, and remain with my will, prepared to live entirely alone and consequently entirely free.’

‘You wretched creature!’ Danglars muttered, the blood draining from his face, for he knew from long experience the solidity of the obstacle he had suddenly run up against.

‘Wretched?’ Eugénie repeated. ‘Did you say wretched, Monsieur? Not at all, I assure you, and the exclamation seems altogether too theatrical and pretentious. On the contrary, I am anything but wretched: I ask you, what more could I want than I have? People consider me beautiful, which is enough to be favourably received. I like to be received with a smile which is becoming to a face and which makes those around me appear less ugly than usual. I have some wit and a certain relative sensitivity that allows me to extract what I find acceptable from the generality of existence and bring it into my own, like a monkey cracking a green nut to take out what is inside. I am rich because you have one of the finest fortunes in France, I am your only child and you are not obstinate like the fathers in plays at the Porte Saint-Martin or the Gaîté,
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who disinherit their daughters because they refuse to give them grandchildren. In any case, the law in its wisdom has deprived you of the right to disinherit me – at least, entirely – just as it has deprived you of the power to force me to marry some monsieur or other. So, beautiful, witty and blessed with some talent, as they say in the comic operas – and rich! Why! That’s happiness, Monsieur! So how can you call me wretched?’

Danglars, seeing his daughter smiling and proud to the point of insolence, could not suppress a surge of aggression which expressed itself as a sharp cry; but that was all. Before his daughter’s quizzical look, confronted by this fine black eyebrow, raised interrogatively, he turned around cautiously and immediately got his anger under control, repressing it with the iron hand of circumspection.

‘Indeed, my girl,’ he replied, smiling, ‘you are everything that you boast of being, except one thing; I don’t want to tell you too directly what that is. I should prefer to let you guess.’

Eugénie looked at Danglars, very surprised that he could challenge one of the jewels in the crown that she had so arrogantly just placed on her head.

‘My daughter,’ the banker went on, ‘you have explained to me quite clearly the feelings which guide the resolve of a girl such as yourself when she has decided not to get married. Now it is my turn to tell you what are the motives of a father such as myself when he has decided that his daughter will get married.’

Eugénie bent her head, not like an obedient daughter listening to her father, but like an adversary in waiting, ready to answer back.

‘My dear,’ said Danglars, ‘when a father asks his daughter to take a husband, he always has some reason for wishing to see her married. Some fathers suffer from the folly you just mentioned, that of wanting to live again through their grandchildren. I’ll tell you straight away, I do not have that weakness and I am more or less indifferent to the joys of family life. This I can confess to a daughter whom I know to be detached enough herself to understand my feeling and not to reproach me with it.’

‘Good!’ said Eugénie. ‘Very good. Let’s be frank. I like that.’

‘Oh, as you see, without as a general rule sharing your partiality for frankness, I do resort to it when I think the circumstances require it. So, let me continue. I offered you a husband, not for your sake, because I honestly was not thinking about you at all at the time. You like frankness: I hope that is frank enough for you. The reason was that I needed you to marry that husband as soon as possible, for the sake of some commercial transactions that I am currently engaged in.’

Eugénie started.

‘That’s how it is, my girl, and you must not mind, because you are obliging me to speak in this way. You understand: I regret having to go into these questions of arithmetic with an artist such as yourself, who is afraid to go into a banker’s study in case she encounters some unpleasant and anti-poetic feelings.

‘However, you should know that there are lots of things to be learnt, even to the advantage of young women who do not wish to get married, inside that banker’s study – where, incidentally, you were willing enough to risk setting foot yesterday, to ask me for the thousand francs which I give you every month to amuse yourself. For example – it is out of consideration for your nervous susceptibilities
that I say this here, in the drawing-room – one may learn that a banker’s credit is his whole life, physical and moral: credit sustains the man as breath sustains a body; and Monsieur de Monte Cristo made a pretty little speech to me on the subject one day and I have never forgotten it. One may learn that, when credit is withdrawn, the body becomes a corpse and that this can happen very quickly to a banker who has the honour to be the father of a girl with such an excellent command of logic.’

Eugénie, instead of bowing under the blow, rose to meet it. ‘Ruined!’ she said.

‘You have hit on the very word, my dear girl, the right word,’ said Danglars, rummaging around his chest with his hands, while his coarse features kept the smile of a man who might be deficient in heart but not in wit. ‘Ruined! Precisely.’

‘Ah!’ said Eugénie.

‘Yes, ruined! Well, now the dreadful secret’s out, as the tragic poets say. So listen here, my dear girl, while I tell you how the disaster can be reduced, not for me, but for you.’

‘Oh, you know very little about the human face, Monsieur,’ Eugénie exclaimed, ‘if you imagine that I deplore the catastrophe you are describing for my own sake.

‘What does it matter if I am ruined? Haven’t I still got my talent? Why should I, like Pasta, Malibran or Grisi,
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not make for myself what you could never have given me, however great your fortune: an income of one hundred or one hundred and fifty thousand
livres
that I owe to myself alone and which, instead of reaching me like the miserable twelve thousand francs that you used to give me, with sour looks and reproachful reflections on my prodigality, will come with clapping, cheers and flowers? And even if I do not have this talent – your smile suggests you doubt that I do – shall I not still have that passionate love of independence which will always be more important to me than any treasure and which with me even takes precedence over the instinct of self-preservation?

‘No, I am not sorry for myself, because I shall always manage to get by: I shall still have my books, my pencils and my piano, things which are not expensive and which I shall always be able to obtain. And if you think I am sorry for Madame Danglars, then there too you can think again. Either I am very mistaken, or my mother has taken every necessary precaution to ensure that the catastrophe threatening you will pass her by. I hope she has managed to protect
herself; she was certainly not distracted in her fortune-hunting by her concern for me because, thank heaven, she left me all my independence on the excuse that I liked my freedom.

‘Oh, no, Monsieur, since my childhood I have seen too many things going on around me, and understood them too well, for misfortune to make any more impression on me than it ought. Ever since I can remember, no one has loved me – too bad! And this has naturally led me to love nobody – so much the better! There you have my credo.’

‘In that case,’ Danglars said, pale with an anger which did not originate in injured paternal love, ‘Mademoiselle… In that case, do you persist in wishing to bring about my ruin?’