The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (183 page)

At that moment the spluttering of the night-light doubled. At the noise, Mme de Villefort shuddered and let the curtain fall. The night-light went out and the room was plunged into terrifying darkness.

The poisoner, fearful at these successive disturbances, groped her way to the door and returned to her own room with her forehead bathed in anxious sweat.

Darkness continued for a further two hours. Then, bit by bit, pallid daylight entered into the room, filtering through the slats of the blinds; and, still bit by bit, it filled out and restored colour and shape to objects and bodies.

It was at this moment that the nurse could be heard coughing on the stairway and the woman came into Valentine’s room, carrying a cup.

To a father or a lover, the first glance would have been enough: Valentine was dead. But to this hired servant, she seemed merely asleep. ‘Good,’ she said, going over to the bedside table. ‘She’s drunk part of her medicine; the glass is two-thirds empty.’ Then she went to the fireplace, relit the fire, settled into her chair and, although she had just got out of bed, took advantage of Valentine’s sleep to catch a few more minutes of slumber herself.

She was woken by the clock striking eight.

It was only now that she felt surprised at the young woman’s persistent sleep, and frightened by the arm hanging out of the bed, which was still in the same position as before. She went over to the bed and noticed the cold lips and icy breast.

She tried to put the arm next to the body, but the arm only responded with a dreadful stiffness that was unmistakable for someone accustomed to caring for the sick. She gave a horrid cry, then ran to the door, shouting: ‘Help! Help!’

‘Help? Why help?’ M. d’Avrigny’s voice replied from the foot of the stairs.

This was the time when the doctor usually arrived.

‘What? Why help?’ Villefort’s voice exclaimed as he hurried out of his study. ‘Doctor, did you hear someone shout “Help”?’

‘Yes, yes. Let’s go up,’ d’Avrigny said. ‘Quickly, to Valentine’s room!’

But before the doctor and the father had entered, the servants (who were on the same floor, in the rooms or the corridors) had rushed into the room and, seeing Valentine pale and motionless on
her bed, threw up their hands and staggered as if overcome by dizziness.

‘Call Madame de Villefort! Wake up Madame de Villefort!’ the crown prosecutor cried at the door of the room, apparently not daring to enter. But the servants, instead of replying, were watching M. d’Avrigny, who had come in, rushed over to Valentine and lifted her in his arms.

‘Now her…’ he muttered, letting her fall back on the bed. ‘Oh God, oh God, when will you tire of this?’

Villefort rushed into the room.

‘What are you saying! My God!’ he cried, raising both hands to heaven. ‘Doctor… doctor… !’

‘I am saying that Valentine is dead,’ d’Avrigny replied in a solemn voice, and one that was dreadful in its solemnity. M. de Villefort went down as though his legs had been broken under him and fell with his head on Valentine’s bed.

At the doctor’s words and the father’s cry, the servants fled in terror, muttering oaths. Down the stairs and along the corridors one could hear their running steps, followed by a commotion in the courtyard, then silence. The noise faded: from the highest to the lowest, they had deserted the accursed home.

At this moment, Mme de Villefort pushed back the door-curtain, her arm half inside her morning robe. For a moment, she remained on the threshold, looking questioningly at those around and summoning a few reluctant tears to her aid.

Suddenly she took a step, or, rather, she leapt forward, her arms extended towards the table. She had just seen d’Avrigny bending curiously over it and picking up the glass which she was sure she had emptied during the night. But the glass was one-third full, just as it had been when she emptied the contents into the fireplace.

The spectre of Valentine herself rising up before her poisoner would have produced a less startling effect on her.

It was indeed a liquid of the same colour as the one she had poured into Valentine’s glass, and which Valentine drank; it was indeed that poison which could not deceive M. d’Avrigny, which M. d’Avrigny was examining attentively. It was undoubtedly a miracle performed by God so that, despite the murderess’s precautions, a trace, a proof should remain to denounce her crime.

However, while Mme de Villefort had remained motionless like a statue of Terror and Villefort, his head buried in the sheets of the death-bed, saw nothing of what was happening around him, d’Avrigny went across to the window to make a closer ocular examination of the contents of the glass and to taste a drop on the end of his finger.

‘Ah, it’s not brucine any more,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s see what this is!’ He went over to one of the wardrobes in Valentine’s room, which had been converted into a medicine chest, and, taking a phial of nitric acid out of its little silver compartment, he poured a few drops into the opal liquid, which immediately changed into half a glass of crimson blood.

‘Ah!’ said d’Avrigny, with the horror of a judge learning the truth and, at the same time, the joy of the scientist who elucidates a problem.

For a moment Mme de Villefort staggered, her eyes at first darting fire then becoming dull. She reached unsteadily for the door-handle and went out. A moment later, there was the distant sound of a body falling to the ground. But nobody took any notice of it. The nurse was examining the chemical sample, while Villefort was still insensible. Only d’Avrigny had watched Mme de Villefort and noticed her hurried exit.

He raised the curtain in front of the door to Valentine’s room and, looking through that of Edouard, he could see into Mme de Villefort’s apartment. He saw her stretched, motionless, on the floor.

‘Go and see to Madame de Villefort,’ he said to the nurse. ‘She is unwell.’

‘But what about Mademoiselle Valentine?’ she asked.

‘Mademoiselle Valentine has no further need of help,’ d’Avrigny said. ‘Mademoiselle Valentine is dead.’

‘Dead! Dead!’ Villefort exclaimed in a paroxysm of suffering all the more acute for being quite new, unknown and unexpected in this heart of bronze.

‘Dead, you say?’ cried a third voice. ‘Who said that Valentine was dead?’

The two men turned around and, at the door, saw Morrel standing, pale, frightful, devastated with horror.

This is what had happened. Morrel had arrived, at his usual time, through the little door leading to Noirtier’s. Unusually, he found
the door open and, not needing to ring, came in. In the hall, he waited for a moment, calling for a servant who would show him up to old Noirtier’s rooms. But no one replied: as we know, the servants had deserted the house.

That day, Morrel had no particular reason for anxiety. He had Monte Cristo’s promise that Valentine would live, and up to now that promise had been faithfully kept. Every evening the count had given him good news, which was confirmed the next day by Noirtier himself.

However, on this morning the silence seemed odd. He called a second, then a third time, but there was no reply, so he decided to go up.

Noirtier’s door was open, like the rest.

The first thing he saw was the old man in his armchair. His dilated pupils seemed to express an inner terror that was confirmed by the strange pallor that had spread across his face.

‘How are you, Monsieur?’ the young man said, not without some sinking in his heart.

‘Well!’ the old man replied with a wink. ‘Well!’ But the anxiety on his face seemed to increase.

‘You are worried,’ Morrel went on. ‘Do you need something? Shall I call one of your people?’

‘Yes,’ Noirtier went.

Morrel hung on the bell-pull but, even though he tugged it to breaking point, no one came. So he turned back to Noirtier. The pallor and anguish had increased on the old man’s face.

‘My God!’ said Morrel. ‘Why does no one come? Is someone sick in the house?’

Noirtier’s eyes seemed to be bulging out of their sockets.

‘But what is wrong?’ Morrel went on. ‘You are frightening me… Valentine, Valentine!’

‘Yes, yes!’ Noirtier indicated.

Maximilien opened his mouth to speak, but his tongue could not form any sound. He staggered and held on to the panelling to support himself. Then he reached out towards the door.

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ the old man continued.

Maximilien plunged down the little staircase, covering it in two leaps, while Noirtier’s eyes seemed to shout at him: ‘Faster, faster!’

It took the young man only a minute to cross through several
rooms, empty like the rest of the house, and reach Valentine’s apartments. He did not need to push the door to her room, which was already wide open. The first sound that he heard was a sob. As if through a cloud, he saw a black shape kneeling and buried in a confused mass of white linen. Fear, a dreadful fear, kept him frozen at the door.

It was then that he heard a voice say: ‘Valentine is dead!’ and a second voice, like an echo, reply: ‘Dead! Dead!’

Villefort got up, almost ashamed at being discovered in this extremity of grief. The awful profession he had exercised for the past twenty-five years had made him more, or less, than a man.

His eyes, after wandering for a moment, settled on Morrel.

‘Who are you, Monsieur?’ he asked. ‘Have you forgotten that one does not enter a house that is occupied by death? Begone, Monsieur! Begone!’

But Morrel remained motionless, unable to take his eyes off the frightful spectacle of the rumpled bed with the figure lying on top of it.

‘Go, do you hear!’ Villefort cried, while d’Avrigny came forward to oblige Morrel to leave.

Morrel looked in distraction at the body, the two men, the whole room… He seemed to hesitate for a moment and opened his mouth. Then, finding no word to say, despite the vast swarm of deadly thoughts swirling in his brain, he retreated, plunging his fingers through his hair, so that Villefort and d’Avrigny, momentarily distracted from the matter uppermost in their minds, looked after him with an expression that meant: ‘He is mad!’

However, in less than five minutes they heard the staircase creak beneath some considerable weight and saw Morrel who, with superhuman strength, was lifting Noirtier’s chair in his arms, bringing the old man up to the first floor of the house.

When he got to the top of the stairs, Morrel put the chair down and pushed it quickly into Valentine’s room. The whole of this
operation was carried out with a strength increased ten times by the young man’s frenzied hysteria. But the most terrifying thing was Noirtier’s face as it advanced towards Valentine’s bed, pushed by Morrel: Noirtier’s face in which the intellect exerted every means within its power and the eyes concentrated all their strength to compensate for the loss of the other faculties. This pale face with its blazing look was a terrifying apparition to Villefort.

Each time that he found himself in contact with his father, something dreadful happened.

‘See what they have done!’ Morrel cried, one hand still resting on the back of the chair which he had just pushed up to the bed, and the other outstretched towards Valentine. ‘Look, father, look!’

Villefort shrank back a step and stared with amazement at this young man, who was almost unknown to him, yet who called Noirtier his father.

At that moment the old man’s whole soul seemed to rise into his eyes, which were shot with blood. Then the veins on his neck swelled and a bluish tint, like that which suffuses the skin of an epileptic, spread across his neck, his cheeks and his temples. The only thing that was missing from this internal explosion of the whole being was a cry.

But that cry seemed to emerge as it were from every pore, terrifying in its dumbness, heart-rending in its silence.

D’Avrigny rushed over to the old man and made him sniff a powerful revulsive.

‘Monsieur,’ Morrel exclaimed, grasping the paralysed man’s inert hand. ‘They ask me what I am and what right I have to be here. You know the answer. Tell them! Tell them…’ And his voice was drowned in sobs.

As for the old man, his chest heaved as he gasped for breath. One might have imagined that he was prey to the convulsions that precede the death agony. Finally, tears poured from his eyes: he was more fortunate than the young man, who could only sob without weeping. His head could not bow, so he closed his eyes.

‘Tell them,’ he said, in a strangled voice. ‘Tell them I was her fiancé. Tell them that she was my noble friend, my only love on this earth! Tell them… Tell them that this body belongs to me!’

The young man, presenting the awful spectacle of some great
force breaking, fell heavily to his knees beside the bed while his fingers clasped it convulsively.

His grief was so touching that d’Avrigny turned away to hide his emotion and Villefort, asking for no further explanation, drawn by the magnetism that drives us towards those who have loved those for whom we grieve, offered the young man his hand.

But Morrel could see nothing. He had grasped Valentine’s ice-cold hand and, unable to weep, was groaning and biting the bedclothes.

For some time nothing could be heard in the room other than this conflict of sobs, oaths and prayers. Yet one noise rose above all, and that was the harsh, harrowing sound of breathing which, at each gulp of air, seemed to break one of the springs of life in Noirtier’s chest.