The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (18 page)

This time, however, it was a different matter. He had just condemned a man to perpetual incarceration, but an innocent man, poised on the brink of good fortune, depriving him not only of freedom, but also of happiness. He was not a judge this time, but an executioner. And when he thought of that, he felt the muffled blow that we described, something that he had not previously experienced, sounding in the depths of his heart and filling his breast with a vague feeling of apprehension. Thus a wounded man will be put on his guard by a powerful and instinctive prescience of pain and tremble whenever his finger approaches
the site of an open, bleeding wound, for as long as it remains unhealed.

But the wound that Villefort had suffered was one that would not heal; or one that would close, only to re-open, more bloody and painful than before.

If at that moment Renée’s sweet voice had sounded in his ear calling for clemency, or if the lovely Mercédès had come in and said: ‘In the name of the God who sees us and judges us, give me back my betrothed,’ then, surely, that brow, already half prepared to submit to the inevitable, would have bent altogether, and he would no doubt have taken the pen in his numbed fingers and, despite the risk to himself, signed the order to set Dantès free. But no voice spoke in the silence and the door opened only to Villefort’s
valet de chambre
, who had come to tell him that the post-horses were harnessed to his barouche.

He got up or, rather, leapt up, like a man resolving some inner struggle, ran across to his writing desk, emptied the gold from one of its drawers into his pockets, paced distractedly around his room for a moment, with his hand on his forehead, muttering incomprehensibly, then at last, feeling the coat which his valet had just put across his shoulders, went out, sprang into his carriage and snapped out the order to stop off at M. de Saint-Méran’s in the Rue du Grand-Cours.

The sentence on the unhappy Dantès was confirmed.

As M. de Saint-Méran had promised, Villefort found the marquise and Renée in the study. The young man shuddered on seeing Renée, thinking that she might once more ask him to free Dantès. But, alas, it must be said, to the discredit of self-centred humankind, that the beautiful young woman was concerned with only one thing: Villefort’s departure.

She loved Villefort, and he was leaving at the very moment when he was about to become her husband. He could not tell her when he would return, and Renée, instead of feeling pity for Dantès, was cursing the man whose crime was the cause of her separation from her lover.

So there was nothing that Mercédès could say!

On the corner of the Rue de la Loge, poor Mercédès had met Fernand, who was following her. She had returned to Les Catalans and thrown herself on her bed in an extremity of desperation. Fernand knelt beside the bed and, clasping an icy hand that
Mercédès did not think to take from him, covered it with ardent kisses that Mercédès did not even feel.

So she spent the night. The lamp went out when the oil was exhausted, but she no more noticed the darkness than she had noticed the light. When day returned, she was unaware of that also. Sorrow had covered her eyes with a blindfold that showed her only Edmond.

‘Ah, it’s you,’ she said finally, turning towards Fernand.

‘I have not left your side since yesterday,’ he replied, with a pitiful sigh.

M. Morrel would not admit defeat: he had learned that Dantès had been taken to prison, after being questioned, so he hastened to see all his friends and visit anyone in Marseille who might have some influence there. But already the rumour was spreading that the young man had been arrested as a Bonapartist agent. Since at that time even the most daring considered any attempt by Napoleon to recover the throne as an insane fantasy, M. Morrel was greeted everywhere with indifference, fear or rejection, and returned home in despair, admitting that the position was serious and that no one could do anything about it.

Caderousse, for his part, was deeply disturbed and troubled. Instead of following M. Morrel’s example, going out and attempting to do something for Dantès (which was, in any case, impossible), he shut himself in with two bottles of
cassis
and tried to drown his anxiety in drunkenness. But such was his state of mind that two bottles were not enough to extinguish his thoughts; so he remained, too drunk to fetch any more wine, not drunk enough to forget, seated in front of his two empty bottles, with his elbows on a rickety table, watching all the spectres that Hoffmann
²
scattered across manuscripts moist with punch, dancing like a cloud of fantastic black dust in the shadows thrown by his long-wicked candle.

Danglars was alone, but neither troubled nor disturbed. Danglars was even happy, because he had taken revenge on an enemy and ensured himself the place on board the
Pharaon
that he had feared he might lose. Danglars was one of those calculating men who are born with a pen behind their ear and an inkwell instead of a heart. To him, everything in this world was subtraction or multiplication, and a numeral was much dearer than a man, when it was a numeral that would increase the total (while a man might reduce
it). So Danglars had gone to bed at his usual hour and slept peacefully.

Villefort, after receiving the letter from M. de Salvieux, had embraced Renée on both cheeks, kissed the hand of Mme de Saint-Méran and shaken that of the marquis, and was travelling post-haste along the road for Aix.

Dantès’ father was perishing from grief and anxiety.

As for Edmond, we know what had become of him…

Let us leave Villefort going hell for leather down the road to Paris, having paid for extra horses at every stage, and precede him through the two or three rooms into the little cabinet at the Tuileries, with its arched window, famous for having been the favourite study of Napoleon and King Louis XVIII, and today for being that of King Louis-Philippe.
¹

Here, seated in front of a walnut table that he had brought back from Hartwell (to which, by one of those foibles usual among great men, he was especially partial), King Louis XVIII was listening without particular attention to a man of between fifty and fifty-two years, grey-haired, with aristocratic features and meticulously turned out, while at the same time making marginal notes in a volume of Horace, the Gryphius
²
edition (much admired, but often inaccurate) which used to contribute more than a little to His Majesty’s learned observations on philology.

‘You were saying, Monsieur?’ the king asked.

‘That I feel deeply disquieted, Sire.’

‘Really? Have you by any chance dreamt of seven fat and seven lean cows?’

‘No, Sire, for that would presage only seven years of fertility and seven of famine, and, with a king as far-sighted as Your Majesty, we need have no fear of famine.’

‘So what other scourge might afflict us, my dear Blacas?’

‘I have every reason to believe, Sire, that there is a storm brewing from the direction of the South.’

‘And I, my dear Duke,’ replied Louis XVIII, ‘think you are very ill-informed, because I know for a fact that, on the contrary, the weather down there is excellent.’

Despite being a man of some wit, Louis XVIII liked to indulge a facile sense of humour.

‘Sire,’ M. de Blacas continued, ‘if only to reassure his faithful servant, might Your Majesty not send some trusty men to Languedoc, to Provence and to the Dauphiné, to give him a report on the feeling of these three provinces?’

‘
Canimus surdis
,’
³
the king replied, carrying on with the annotation of his Horace.

The courtier laughed, to give the impression that he understood the phrase from the poet of Venusia: ‘Your Majesty may well be perfectly correct to trust in the loyalty of the French, but I think I may not be altogether wrong to anticipate some desperate adventure.’

‘By whom?’

‘By Bonaparte or, at least, those of his faction.’

‘My dear Blacas,’ said the king, ‘you are interrupting my work with your horrid tales.’

‘And you, Sire, are keeping me from my sleep with fears for your safety.’

‘One moment, my good friend, wait one moment; I have here a most perspicacious note on the line
Pastor quum trahiret
.
⁴
Let me finish it and you can tell me afterwards.’

There was a brief silence while Louis XVIII, in handwriting that he made as tiny as possible, wrote a new note in the margin of his Horace; then, when the note was written, he looked up with the satisfied air of a man who thinks he has made a discovery when he has commented on someone else’s idea, and said: ‘Carry on, my dear Duke, carry on. I am listening.’

‘Sire,’ said Blacas, who had briefly hoped to use Villefort to his own advantage, ‘I have to tell you that this news that troubles me is not some vague whisper, these are no mere unfounded rumours. A right-thinking man who has my entire confidence and was required by me to keep a watch on the South…’ (the duke hesitated as he said this) ‘… has just arrived post-haste to tell me that there is a great danger threatening the king. And so, Sire, I came at once.’

‘
Mala ducis avi domum
,’
⁵
Louis XVIII continued, making another note.

‘Is Your Majesty ordering me to say no more on this topic?’

‘No, my dear Duke, but stretch out your hand.’

‘Which one?’

‘Whichever you prefer, over there, on the left.’

‘Here, Sire?’

‘I tell you the left and you look on the right. I mean my left. There, you have it. You should find a report from the Minister of Police with yesterday’s date… But here is Monsieur Dandré himself… You did say Monsieur Dandré, didn’t you?’ Louis XVIII remarked, turning to the usher who had indeed just announced the Minister of Police.

‘Yes, Sire, Monsieur le Baron Dandré,’ the usher repeated.

‘That’s it, Baron,’ Louis XVIII continued, with a faint smile. ‘Come in, Baron, and tell the duke your most recent news about Monsieur de Bonaparte. Conceal nothing from us, however serious the situation may be. Let’s see: is not the island of Elba a volcano, and shall we see war burst from it, bristling and blazing:
bella, horrida bella
?’
⁶

M. Dandré leant elegantly against the back of a chair, resting both hands upon it, and said: ‘Was Your Majesty good enough to consult my report of yesterday’s date?’

‘Yes, of course, but tell the duke what was in this report, because he is unable to find it. Let him know everything that the usurper is doing on his island.’

‘Monsieur,’ the baron said to the duke, ‘all His Majesty’s servants should applaud the latest news that we have received from Elba. Bonaparte…’

M. Dandré turned to Louis XVIII, who was busy writing a note and did not even look up.

‘Bonaparte,’ the baron continued, ‘is bored to death. He spends whole days watching his miners at work in Porto-Longone.’

‘And he scratches himself, as a distraction,’ said the king.

‘He scratches himself?’ the duke said. ‘What does Your Majesty mean?’

‘Yes indeed, my dear Duke. Have you forgotten that this great man, this hero, this demi-god is driven to distraction by a skin ailment,
prurigo
?’
⁷

‘There is more, Monsieur le Duc,’ said the Minister of Police. ‘We are almost certain that the usurper will shortly be mad.’

‘Mad?’

‘Utterly: his head is softening; sometimes he weeps bitterly, at others he laughs hysterically. On some occasions, he spends hours sitting on the shore playing at ducks and drakes, and when a pebble makes five or six leaps, he seems as satisfied as though he had won another battle of Marengo or Austerlitz. You must agree that these are signs of folly.’

‘Or of wisdom, Monsieur le Baron, or of wisdom,’ said Louis XVIII, with a laugh. ‘The great captains of Antiquity used to replenish their spirits by playing at ducks and drakes; see Plutarch’s
Life of Scipio Africanus
.’

M. de Blacas was left speechless between these two forms of unconcern. Villefort, who had not wished to tell him everything, in order to prevent anyone else from taking away all the advantage that he might gain from his secret, had none the less told him enough to make him very anxious.

‘Go on, Dandré, go on,’ said Louis XVIII. ‘Blacas is not yet convinced. Tell him about the usurper’s conversion.’

The Minister of Police bowed.

‘The usurper’s conversion!’ muttered the duke, looking from the king to Dandré, who were speaking their parts alternately like two Virgilian shepherds.
⁸
‘Has the usurper been converted?’

‘Absolutely, my dear Duke.’

‘To the right principles. Explain it, Baron.’

‘Here’s the truth of the matter, Duke,’ the minister said, with the greatest gravity in the world. ‘Napoleon recently reviewed his men and when two or three of his old
grognards
,
⁹
as he calls them, expressed a wish to return to France, he gave them leave and urged them to serve their good king: those were his own words, Monsieur le Duc, I am assured of it.’