The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (178 page)

As an additional precaution, Andrea had not closed his shutters, so that the light would wake him. Otherwise he had merely bolted the door and left open on his bedside table a certain very sharp knife which he knew to be of excellent quality and which never left him.

At about seven o’clock, Andrea was woken by a bright, warm ray of sunshine which settled on his face.

In every well-organized mind the dominant idea – and there always is a dominant idea – is the one which, being the last to go to sleep, is also the first to shine among the newly awakened thoughts.

Andrea had not fully opened his eyes before the dominant idea
seized him, telling him that he had overslept. He leapt out of bed and ran over to the window.

A gendarme was crossing the yard.

A gendarme is one of the most striking objects there is, even in the eyes of a man whose conscience is untroubled; but for a timid soul or one which has some reason for anxiety, the yellow, blue and white of a gendarme’s uniform take on a terrifying hue.

‘Why this gendarme?’ Andrea wondered. Then he answered his own question with the logic that the reader will already have noticed in him: ‘There is nothing surprising about a gendarme in an inn; but let’s get dressed, even so.’ And he dressed with a speed that the possession of a valet had not diminished in the few months of fashionable life he had led in Paris.

‘Good,’ Andrea said, as he dressed. ‘I shall wait for him to leave and, when he does so, I shall sneak out.’ As he said these words, freshly booted and cravated, Andrea quietly went across to the window and once more lifted the net curtain.

Not only had the first gendarme not left, but the young man saw a second blue, yellow and white uniform at the foot of the staircase – the only one down which he could go – and a third, on horseback, with a carbine in his hand, was doing sentry duty at the main door, the only one through which he could reach the road. This third gendarme was highly significant, because behind him stood a semicircle of onlookers blocking the door.

‘They’re after me!’ was Andrea’s first thought. ‘Damnation!’ The colour drained from his face and he looked around anxiously.

His room, like all those on that floor, only gave on to the external gallery, which was open to all eyes.

‘I am lost!’ was Andrea’s second thought.

In reality, for a man in Andrea’s situation, arrest meant the assizes, sentencing and death – death without mercy and without delay. For a moment he crushed his head convulsively between his hands; and in that moment he nearly went mad with fear.

Soon, however, from the host of thoughts milling around in his head, one hope emerged. A pale smile appeared on his wan lips and his taut cheeks.

He looked around. The things he was looking for were on the marble top of a bureau: a pen, paper and ink.

He dipped the pen in the ink and wrote, in a hand which he forced to remain firm, the following lines, on the first leaf of the
pad: ‘I have no money to pay you, but I am not a dishonest man. As security I am leaving this pin which must be worth ten times my bill. Please forgive me for leaving at daybreak: I was ashamed!’

He took out his tiepin and put it on the sheet of paper.

Having done this, instead of leaving the room locked, he drew back the bolts and even left the door ajar, as if he had gone out of the room and forgotten to shut it behind him. Then, like a man who was used to this kind of exercise, he slipped into the chimney, pulling to behind him the paper screen representing Achilles with Deidamia,
²
rubbing out with his feet even the traces of his footprints in the ashes, and began to climb up the arching tube that offered him the only means of escape in which he could still trust.

At that very moment, the first gendarme whose appearance had struck Andrea was climbing the staircase, preceded by the commissioner of police and covered by the second gendarme who was guarding the bottom of the stairs and could himself call for reinforcements from the one at the door.

Here are the circumstances to which Andrea owed this visit – and the considerable efforts he was making to receive his guests.

At first light the telegraphs had come into operation in all directions. In every locality, almost immediately informed, the relevant authorities had been woken up and the forces of law and order launched in pursuit of Caderousse’s murderer.

Compiègne, as a royal residence, a hunting town and a garrison town, has an abundance of officials, gendarmes and police commissioners. Consequently, as soon as the telegraph order arrived, the searches began; the Bell and Bottle Inn is the main hotel in town, so naturally that is where they started.

Moreover, reports from the sentries who that night were on guard outside the town hall – which is adjacent to the inn – stated that several travellers had arrived during the night at the hostelry.

The sentry who had been relieved at six in the morning even recalled, the moment after he had taken up his post, that is to say at a few minutes past four, having seen a young man riding a white horse with a little peasant boy behind him, the said young man dismounting in the main square and sending away the boy and his horse, then going and knocking at the door of the Bell and Bottle, which opened, then shut behind him. This young man, who was up at that late hour, was the object of suspicion; and this young man was none other than Andrea.

On the basis of this information, the commissioner of police and the gendarme, who was a brigadier, were proceeding towards Andrea’s door. They found it ajar.

‘Oh, ho!’ said the brigadier, a wily old fox skilled in the tricks of his trade. ‘Bad sign, an open door. I’d rather see it triple-locked.’

Indeed, the little note and the pin which Andrea had left on the table confirmed the sad fact – or at least tended to so do: Andrea had gone. I say ‘tended’, because the brigadier was not a man to close a case on one piece of evidence.

He looked around him, under the bed, behind the curtains, in the cupboards, and finally stopped at the chimney. Thanks to Andrea’s precautions, there was no sign of his footsteps in the ashes. However, this was still a way out, and in the present circumstances every exit had to be seriously investigated. So the brigadier called for some wood and some straw, stuffed it into the chimney as he might a mortar, and lit it.

The fire made the brick walls crack, and a thick column of smoke rose through the passages and towards the sky like a dark plume from a volcano; but it did not bring down the prisoner as the brigadier expected.

The reason was that Andrea, having been at war with society all his life, was at least a match for a gendarme, even one who had risen to the respectable rank of brigadier. Anticipating the fire, he had climbed out on to the roof and was hiding behind the chimney stack.

For a moment he hoped he might be saved, because he heard the brigadier calling the two gendarmes and shouting to them: ‘He’s gone!’ But, craning his neck, he saw that the men, instead of going away, which would be the normal thing as soon as they heard this, in fact, on the contrary, doubled in vigilance.

He in turn looked around him. On his right, like a dark rampart, was the town hall, a huge sixteenth-century building, and from the windows and openings of this pile you could see every nook and cranny on the roof, just as you can see into a valley from a mountain. Andrea realized that at any moment he would see the head of the brigadier of the gendarmerie appear at one of those openings.

If he was seen, he was lost. He had no hope of escaping in a rooftop chase.

He therefore resolved to get down, not through the chimney by
which he had come up, but by some similar path. He looked for a chimney from which no smoke was rising, crawled across the roof to it and vanished down it without anyone seeing him.

At the same moment, a little window in the town hall opened and the brigadier of gendarmerie poked his head out of it. For a short while the head remained motionless like one of the stone gargoyles decorating the building. Then, with a long sigh of disappointment, it vanished.

The brigadier, impassive and upright as the law he represented, walked through the crowd that had gathered on the square without replying to any of the thousand questions flung at him, and went back into the inn.

‘Well?’ the two gendarmes asked in turn.

‘Well, lads,’ the brigadier replied, ‘the bandit must have got well away early this morning; but we shall send out along the roads to Villers-Cotterêts and Noyon, and scour the forest, and that is where, incontrovertibly…’

The worthy officer had just given birth to this high-sounding adverb, with the intonation peculiar to those of his kind, when a long cry of terror, accompanied by the frantic ringing of a bell, shook the courtyard of the inn.

‘Huh!’ the brigadier cried. ‘What’s that?’

‘There’s a guest who seems in a great deal of a hurry,’ said the innkeeper. ‘What number is ringing?’

‘Number three.’

‘So go there, boy!’

At that moment the cries and the sound of the bell increased in intensity. The boy started to run.

‘No, stop!’ said the brigadier, halting him. ‘It sounds to me as if the person ringing needs more than a waiter. We’ll serve him a gendarme. Who’s staying in number three?’

‘The little young man who arrived with his sister last night in a post-chaise and asked for a room with two beds.’

The bell rang again, with an anguished tone.

‘Here, follow me!’ the brigadier called to the commissioner. ‘Follow me and hurry.’

‘One moment,’ said the innkeeper. ‘There are two staircases to room number three: internal and external.’

‘Very well,’ the brigadier said, ‘I’ll take the inside: internal affairs are my department. Are the carbines loaded?’

‘Yes, brigadier.’

‘Well, keep watch outside, the rest of you, and if he tries to escape, shoot. He’s a master criminal, the telegraph says.’

The brigadier, followed by the commissioner, at once disappeared up the inside staircase, leaving a hum of excitement that his revelations about Andrea had awakened in the crowd.

Here is what had happened:

Andrea had very nimbly descended two-thirds of the way down the chimney, but when he got to that point he lost his footing and, though he pressed with his hands, he came down faster and, in particular, more noisily, than he would have wished. This would not have mattered if the room had been empty but, as ill-luck would have it, it was occupied.

Two women were sleeping in one bed and the noise woke them up. They looked in the direction from which it had come and saw a man appear in the fireplace. One of the women, the blonde, gave the dreadful cry that echoed through the whole house, while the other, who was a brunette, grasped the bell-cord and gave the alarm by tugging it as hard as she could.

Andrea, as one can see, was dogged by misfortune.

‘For pity’s sake!’ he cried, pale and distraught, without seeing whom he was addressing. ‘For pity’s sake, don’t call anyone. Save me! I don’t mean you any harm.’

‘Andrea the murderer!’ one of the young women exclaimed.

‘Eugénie! Mademoiselle Danglars!’ Cavalcanti muttered, going from terror to amazement.

‘Help! Help!’ cried Mlle d’Armilly, seizing the bell-pull from Eugénie’s lifeless hand and ringing even more energetically than her companion.

‘Save me, they’re after me!’ Andrea said, clasping his hands. ‘For pity’s sake, spare me, don’t turn me in.’

‘Too late. They’re coming up,’ said Eugénie.

‘Then hide me somewhere. Say that you were afraid for no reason. You can allay suspicion and you will save my life.’

The two women, clasped in each other’s arms, their blankets wrapped around them, remained deaf to this pleading voice. Every kind of apprehension, every sort of repugnance, struggled in their minds.

‘All right then,’ said Eugénie. ‘Go back the way you came, wretch. Leave, and we shall say nothing.’

‘There he is! There he is!’ cried a voice on the landing. ‘There he is: I can see him!’

The brigadier had put his eye to the keyhole and had seen Andrea standing and begging. A heavy blow from the butt of a rifle broke the lock, two more loosed the bolts, and the door fell inwards.

Andrea ran to the opposite door, which overlooked the gallery above the courtyard, and opened it, ready to jump. The two gendarmes were there with their carbines levelled at him.

He stopped dead. Standing, his face pale, his body bent slightly backwards, he clasped his useless knife tightly in his hand.

‘Run!’ said Mlle d’Armilly, pity filling her heart as fear drained from it. ‘Oh, run, do!’

‘Or kill yourself!’ said Eugénie, adopting the voice and posture of one of those vestals who, in the circus, would motion with their thumbs to order the victorious gladiator to finish off his stricken adversary. Andrea shuddered and looked at the young woman with a smile of contempt, proving that his corrupt nature did not understand this sublime ferocity of honour. ‘Kill myself?’ he said, throwing down his knife. ‘What is the point of that?’

‘But you said it yourself!’ said Mlle Danglars. ‘You’ll be condemned to death and executed like a common criminal.’

‘Huh!’ Cavalcanti replied, folding his arms. ‘One has friends.’