The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (184 page)

Finally, Villefort, the most self-possessed of all, after having as it were ceded his place for some time to Maximilien, began to speak.

‘Monsieur,’ he told Maximilien, ‘you loved Valentine, you say. You were her fiancé. I must admit I was unaware of this love and of the engagement. Yet, as her father, I forgive you for it, since I can see that your grief is great, true and real.

‘Moreover my own grief is too great to leave room in my heart for anger.

‘But, as you see, the angel for whom you longed has left this earth. She no longer needs the adoration of men – she, who, at this moment, is adoring the Lord. So say your farewells, Monsieur, to these sad remains that she has left behind among us. Once more take the hand that you were expecting to take in other circumstances and part from her for ever. Valentine no longer has need of anyone except the priest who will bless her.’

‘You are wrong, Monsieur,’ Morrel exclaimed, rising on one knee, his heart smitten by a pain sharper than any he had yet felt. ‘You are wrong. Valentine, having died as she has, needs not only a priest but an avenger. You send for the priest, Monsieur de Villefort; I shall be her avenger.’

‘What do you mean, Monsieur?’ Villefort murmured, quaking at this new product of Morrel’s delirium.

‘What I mean,’ Morrel continued, ‘is that there are two men in you, Monsieur. The father has wept enough; let the crown prosecutor resume his duties.’

Noirtier’s eyes shone, and d’Avrigny came over to them.

‘Monsieur,’ the young man went on, his eyes picking up every feeling that was expressed on the faces of those around him, ‘I know what I am saying and you all know as well as I do what I mean. Valentine was murdered!’

Villefort bent his head. D’Avrigny took another step. Noirtier moved his eyes.

‘So, Monsieur,’ Morrel continued, ‘nowadays when a creature, even one less young, even one less beautiful, even one less adorable than Valentine… such a creature does not disappear violently from the earth without someone asking for a reason. Come, Monsieur,’ Morrel added, with growing vehemence, ‘no pity – Prosecutor! I am reporting the crime to you, find the murderer!’

And his implacable eyes were fixed on Villefort, while he, for his part, looked from Noirtier to d’Avrigny and back.

‘Yes,’ went the old man.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said d’Avrigny.

‘Monsieur,’ Villefort replied, trying to struggle against these three wills and against his own feelings, ‘you are wrong. No crimes are committed in my house. Fate has struck, God is trying me, which is horrible to believe; but no one is being murdered!’

Noirtier’s eyes flashed and d’Avrigny opened his mouth to speak. But Morrel lifted his hand to order silence.

‘I tell you that people are being murdered here!’ he cried, his voice lowered without losing any of its dreadful power. ‘I tell you that this is the fourth victim struck down in four months. I tell you that four days ago someone already tried to poison Valentine and that the attempt only failed because of the precautions taken by Monsieur Noirtier…

‘I tell you that the dose was doubled, or that the type of poison was changed. And this time the attempt succeeded!

‘And, finally, I tell you that you know all this as well as I do, because this gentleman warned you, as a doctor and as a friend.’

‘Oh, you are delirious!’ Villefort cried, vainly trying to escape from the trap that he felt closing in on him.

‘I am delirious?’ Morrel cried. ‘Well, then, I appeal to Monsieur d’Avrigny himself. Ask him, Monsieur, if he still remembers the words he spoke in your garden, the garden of this very house, on the evening when Madame de Saint-Méran died and when the two of you, thinking yourselves alone, were discussing that tragic death – in
which the fate you mentioned, and God, whom you unjustly accuse, could only have played one part, that is, in creating Valentine’s murderer.’

Villefort and d’Avrigny looked at one another.

‘Yes, yes, remember,’ said Morrel. ‘Those words, which you thought you entrusted to silence and solitude, reached my ears. Certainly, that very evening, seeing Monsieur de Villefort’s culpable leniency towards his own family, I should have revealed everything to the authorities. I should not then be an accomplice in your death, Valentine! My beloved Valentine! But the accomplice will become the avenger. This fourth murder is flagrant and visible to all; and, Valentine, even if your father abandons you, I swear that I shall pursue your murderer.’

This time, as though nature had finally taken pity on this strong constitution about to be crushed by its own strength, Morrel’s last words were stifled in his throat, his chest heaved with sobs, and tears, which had for so long refused to come, poured from his eyes. He could no longer support himself but fell on his knees, weeping, beside Valentine’s bed.

Now it was the turn of d’Avrigny. ‘I, too, add my voice to that of Monsieur Morrel to demand justice for this crime,’ he said emphatically. ‘My heart rebels at the idea that my cowardly indulgence encouraged the murderer.’

‘Oh, my God!’ Villefort muttered, overwhelmed.

Morrel raised his head and, looking at the old man, whose eyes were blazing with a superhuman light, he said: ‘Monsieur Noirtier has something to say.’

‘Yes,’ Noirtier went, with an expression all the more dreadful in that all the poor man’s faculties were concentrated in that look.

‘Do you know the murderer?’ Morrel asked.

‘Yes,’ Noirtier replied.

‘And you will direct us to him?’ the young man exclaimed. ‘Listen! Monsieur d’Avrigny, listen!’

Noirtier gave the unhappy Morrel a melancholy smile, one of those sweet smiles in his eyes that had so often made Valentine happy, then he concentrated his attention. Having so to speak fastened the other man’s eyes on his, he then turned them towards the door.

‘Do you wish me to go out, Monsieur?’ Morrel asked, in a pitiful tone of voice.

‘Yes,’ Noirtier said.

‘Alas, Monsieur, have pity on me!’

But the old man’s eyes remained implacably fixed on the door.

‘May I at least return?’ asked Morrel.

‘Yes.’

‘Must I go out by myself?’

‘No.’

‘Whom should I take with me? The crown prosecutor?’

‘No.’

‘The doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘You wish to remain alone with Monsieur de Villefort?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will he be able to understand you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Villefort said, almost happy now that the investigation was to take place between the two of them. ‘Have no fear, I can understand my father very well.’ But even though he said this with an expression of relief, the crown prosecutor’s teeth were chattering violently.

D’Avrigny took Morrel’s arm and led the young man into the next room. Then the house lapsed into a silence deeper than the silence of death.

Finally, after a quarter of an hour, an unsteady step could be heard and Villefort appeared on the threshold of the drawing-room in which d’Avrigny and Morrel were waiting, one absorbed in his thoughts, the other sunk in grief.

‘Come in,’ Villefort said; and he led them back to where Noirtier was sitting.

Morrel examined Villefort closely. The crown prosecutor’s face was livid. Huge patches of reddish colour had appeared on his forehead while, between his fingers, a quill was falling to pieces after being bent and twisted in a hundred different ways.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said to Morrel and d’Avrigny in a strangled voice, ‘your word of honour that this dreadful secret will remain buried among us!’

The two men started.

‘I beg you!’ said Villefort.

‘But the guilty person,’ said Morrel. ‘The murderer! The assassin!’

‘Have no fear, Monsieur, justice shall be done,’ said Villefort.
‘My father has told me the name of the guilty person; he is as thirsty as you are for revenge; yet, like me, he implores you to keep the secret – don’t you, father?’

‘Yes,’ Noirtier went, firmly.

Villefort continued: ‘He knows me, and I have given him my word. Rest assured, gentlemen. Three days: I ask you for three days, which is less than the law would demand, and in three days the revenge that I shall have exacted from the murderer of my child will make the most impassive of men shudder to the depths of his heart. Am I not right, father?’

As he spoke, he ground his teeth and shook the old man’s numbed hand.

‘Will all these promises be kept, Monsieur Noirtier?’ Morrel asked, while d’Avrigny put the same question with a look.

‘Yes,’ Noirtier answered, with a sinister joy in his eyes.

‘So, gentlemen, swear,’ Villefort said, joining d’Avrigny and Morrel’s hands. ‘Swear that you will take pity on the honour of my family and leave me to avenge it?’

D’Avrigny turned away and muttered a barely audible ‘Yes’, but Morrel tore his hand away from the judge, dashed over to the bed, pressed his lips to the icy lips of Valentine, and fled with the long-drawn-out groan of a soul plunged in despair.

We have already mentioned that all the servants had left. As a result, Monsieur de Villefort was obliged to ask d’Avrigny to take care of the proceedings, so delicate and so many, which must follow a death in one of our large towns, especially when it takes place in suspicious circumstances.

As for Noirtier, his motionless grief, his frozen despair and his noiseless tears were something terrible to behold.

Villefort returned to his study. D’Avrigny went to fetch from the town hall the doctor who fulfils the office of coroner and is quite unambiguously designated ‘doctor of the dead’.

Noirtier did not want to leave his granddaughter.

After half an hour d’Avrigny returned with his colleague. The street door had been closed and, since the concierge had left with the rest of the staff, Villefort himself came to open it. But he stopped on the landing; he no longer had the courage to go into the death chamber, so the two doctors went in alone.

Noirtier was close to the bed, as pale as the corpse, as motionless and as silent.

The coroner approached the body with the indifference of a man who spends half his life in the presence of corpses, lifted the sheet covering the young woman and partly opened her lips.

‘Don’t worry, she’s quite dead,’ said d’Avrigny. ‘Poor girl.’

‘Yes,’ the doctor replied laconically, letting the sheet fall back on to Valentine’s face. Noirtier gave a dull croak.

D’Avrigny turned around: the old man’s eyes were shining. The good doctor understood that Noirtier was asking to see his child. He brought him closer to the bed and, while the coroner was dipping the fingers that had touched the dead woman’s lips into some chlorinated water, he uncovered the calm, pale face which looked like that of a sleeping angel. A tear once more appearing in Noirtier’s eye expressed his gratitude to the doctor. The ‘doctor of the dead’ wrote his report on the corner of a table in Valentine’s room and, when this last formality was completed, d’Avrigny showed him out.

Villefort heard them descend and came to the door of his study. He briefly thanked the doctor and said, turning to d’Avrigny: ‘And now, the priest?’

‘Do you have a clergyman whom you would particularly like to have pray beside Valentine?’ D’Avrigny asked.

‘No,’ Villefort said. ‘Fetch the nearest one.’

‘The nearest one,’ the doctor said, ‘is a good Italian abbé who has come to live in the house next to yours. Shall I go and see him on my way?’

‘D’Avrigny,’ Villefort said, ‘please would you go with this gentleman? Here is a key so that you can come and go as you wish. Bring back the priest and take charge of settling him in my poor child’s room.’

‘Would you like to speak to him, my friend?’

‘I want to be alone. Please forgive me. A priest must understand every kind of sorrow, including a father’s.’ And M. de Villefort, giving d’Avrigny a master key, once more took leave of the unknown doctor and returned to his study, where he began to work.

For some constitutions work is the cure for all ills.

Just as the doctors were going out into the street, they noticed a man, dressed in a soutane, standing on the threshold of the house next door. ‘There is the person I mentioned,’ the coroner told d’Avrigny. D’Avrigny went over to the priest.

‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘would you be willing to do a great service for an unfortunate father who has just lost his daughter, the crown prosecutor, Villefort?’

‘Yes, Monsieur, I know,’ the priest answered, in a pronounced Italian accent. ‘I know that death is in his house.’

‘Then I do not need to tell you what he would like you to do for him.’

‘I was going to volunteer my services, Monsieur,’ the priest said. ‘It is our mission to exceed our duties.’

‘It is a young woman.’

‘I know. I learned that from the servants whom I saw fleeing the house. I learned, too, that she was called Valentine, and I have already prayed for her.’

‘Thank you, Monsieur, thank you,’ said d’Avrigny. ‘And since you have already started to perform your holy office, please be good enough to continue. Come and sit with the dead woman, and the whole family will be grateful to you in its grief.’