The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (186 page)

He handed the five bills to Danglars who, white as a sheet, at first put out his hand, like a vulture reaching out his claw beyond the bars of his cage to pull back the meat that someone was trying to wrench from him. Then, suddenly, he changed his mind, making a violent effort to contain his feelings.

‘In point of fact,’ he said, ‘your receipt is currency.’

‘Of course it is! If you were in Rome, the house of Thomson and
French would not make any more difficulty about paying you against my receipt than you have done yourself.’

‘Forgive me, Monsieur le Comte, forgive me.’

‘So: can I keep this money?’

‘Yes,’ said Danglars, wiping away the sweat that had gathered along his hairline. ‘Keep it, keep it.’

Monte Cristo put the five notes into his pocket with that untranslatable expression on his face that says: ‘Come now, think again: there is still time if you want to change your mind!’

‘No,’ said Danglars, ‘no. Really: keep my bills. You know, there is no one so much a stickler for formality as a moneyman. I meant to give that money to the hospice and I would have thought myself a robber if I didn’t give them those very bills, as if one
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were not worth the same as any other. Forgive me.’ And he burst into a loud, nervous laugh.

‘I forgive you,’ Monte Cristo replied graciously. ‘There!’ And he put the bills into his portfolio.

‘But that leaves one hundred thousand francs,’ said Danglars.

‘Oh, a mere trifle,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘The charges must amount more or less to that amount. Keep it and we’ll be quits.’

‘Count, are you serious?’ said Danglars.

‘I never joke with bankers,’ Monte Cristo said, with a gravity bordering on impertinence. He was just going towards the door when the valet announced: ‘Monsieur de Boville, receiver-general for hospices.’

‘Well, well,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘It seems I came just in time to benefit from your bills: everyone’s after them.’

Danglars went pale again and hurried to take his leave of the count.

Monte Cristo exchanged courteous greetings with Monsieur de Boville, who was standing in the waiting-room; as soon as Monte Cristo had gone, he was shown into Monsieur Danglars’ study. One might have seen the count’s grave features light up with a fleeting smile at the sight of the portfolio that the receiver-general was carrying in his hand.

At the door, he got into his carriage and asked to be driven immediately to the Bank of France.

Meanwhile, repressing his feelings, Danglars came forward to greet the receiver. It goes without saying that the smile on his lips and the courteous manner were purely for show.

‘Good morning, dear creditor,’ he said. ‘For I am prepared to wager that it is the creditor who has come to see me…’

‘Quite so, Baron,’ Monsieur de Boville said. ‘You see before you, in my person, the hospices whose widows and orphans hold out their hands in mine to ask for alms of five million francs.’

‘And they say orphans are to be pitied!’ Danglars said, carrying on the pleasantry. ‘Poor mites!’

‘So I have come in their name. Did you get my letter of yesterday’s date?’

‘I did.’

‘Here is my receipt then.’

‘My dear Monsieur de Boville,’ Danglars said, ‘perhaps your widows and orphans would be good enough to wait for twenty-four hours, since Monsieur de Monte Cristo, whom you have just seen leaving here… you did see him, I suppose?’

‘Yes, I did. What about it?’

‘Well, Monsieur de Monte Cristo was taking away the five million!’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The count has an unlimited credit with me, a credit opened by the House of Thomson and French in Rome. He came to ask me for the sum of five million in a single payment. I gave him a draft on the bank: that is where my funds are deposited and, you understand, I am afraid it might seem rather strange to the governor if I were to draw ten million on him in one day. In two days,’ Danglars added, ‘that’s a different matter.’

‘Come, come!’ Monsieur de Boville exclaimed in tones of utter incredulity. ‘Five million to that gentleman who was just leaving and who greeted me as he went, as though I knew him?’

‘Perhaps he does know you, without you knowing him. The Count of Monte Cristo knows everybody.’

‘Five million!’

‘Here is his receipt. Be like Saint Thomas: see and touch!’

M. de Boville took the paper that Danglars gave him and read: ‘Received of Baron Danglars, the sum of five million one hundred thousand francs, to be reimbursed to him on demand by the House of Thomson and French, in Rome.’

‘Good Lord, it’s true!’ he said.

‘Do you know the firm of Thomson and French?’ Danglars asked.

‘Yes,’ said Monsieur de Boville. ‘I did once do business with them
for two hundred thousand francs, but I have not heard anything of them since then.’

‘It’s one of the finest houses in Europe,’ Danglars said, lightly tossing down the receipt that he had just taken from Monsieur de Boville’s hands.

‘And so he had five million, just with you? Well I never! Is he a nabob, this Count of Monte Cristo?’

‘To be honest, I don’t know what he is. But he had three unlimited credits: one with me, one with Rothschild, and one with Laffitte; and,’ Danglars added casually, ‘as you see, he gave me precedence, leaving a hundred thousand francs for bank charges.’

M. de Boville gave every sign of extreme admiration. ‘I must go and call on him,’ he said, ‘and get some pious bequest for us.’

‘You can count on it: his donations to charity alone amount to more than twenty thousand francs a month.’

‘Splendid! And I would offer him the example of Madame de Morcerf and her son.’

‘What example?’

‘They gave all their money to almshouses.’

‘What money?’

‘Their wealth, General de Morcerf’s, the deceased.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they did not want a fortune that had been so dishonourably acquired.’

‘What will they live on?’

‘The mother is to retire to Provence and the son is going to enlist.’

‘Well, well,’ said Danglars. ‘What fine scruples!’

‘I registered the donation yesterday.’

‘How much do they have?’

‘Oh, not much: twelve or thirteen hundred thousand francs. But let’s get back to our millions.’

‘Certainly,’ Danglars said, as naturally as could be imagined. ‘So, are you in a hurry for this money?’

‘Yes, I am. The accountants check our assets tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow! Why didn’t you say so at once? But it’s ages until tomorrow. What time does the check take place?’

‘At two o’clock.’

‘Send someone round at midday,’ Danglars said with a smile. M. de Boville did not answer anything much. He nodded and shuffled his portfolio.

‘Ah, but I’ve just thought of a better idea!’ said Danglars.

‘What should I do?’

‘Monsieur de Monte Cristo’s receipt is worth money. Take it to Rothschild or Laffitte; they will take it from you immediately.’

‘Even though it’s reimbursable in Rome?’

‘Of course. It will just cost you a discount of five or six thousand francs.’

The receiver started back. ‘Oh, no! No, indeed; I’d rather wait until tomorrow. Whatever next!’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Danglars said, with supreme insolence. ‘I thought for a moment that you had a little deficit to make up.’

‘Huh!’ said the receiver.

‘Listen, this kind of thing happens and, in such cases, one must make a small sacrifice.’

‘No, thank you!’ said M. de Boville.

‘Then, until tomorrow, my dear friend?’

‘Yes, until tomorrow – without fail, I hope?’

‘Of course! You’re joking! Send someone at midday, and the bank will have it ready.’

‘I’ll come myself.’

‘Even better, since that will give me the pleasure of seeing you again.’ They shook hands.

‘By the bye,’ said M. de Boville, ‘aren’t you going to the funeral of that poor Mademoiselle de Villefort, which I passed on my way here?’

‘No,’ the baron said. ‘I am still made to feel a little ridiculous since the matter of that Benedetto, so I’m keeping my head down.’

‘Come now, you’re quite wrong. Was any of that your fault?’

‘Well, my dear friend, you know, when one has a name as spotless as mine, one is vulnerable.’

‘Believe me, everyone feels sorry for you and, most of all, for your poor daughter.’

‘Yes, poor Eugénie!’ Danglars said with a deep sigh. ‘Did you know she was taking the veil, Monsieur?’

‘No.’

‘Alas, yes, it’s only too true. The very next day after all that, she decided to set off with one of her friends, who is a nun. She’s gone to look for a convent of some very strict order in Italy or in Spain.’

‘But that’s dreadful!’ And M. de Boville bowed himself out with a flood of condolences to the father.

No sooner was he outside, however, than Danglars, with an emphatic energy that will be understood only by those who have seen a performance of Robert Macaire by Frédérick,
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exclaimed: ‘Imbecile!’ And, slipping Monte Cristo’s receipt into a little portfolio, he added: ‘Come at midday – I’ll be a long way off!’

Then he double-locked his door, emptied all the drawers of his cash desk, amassed some fifty thousand francs in banknotes, burned various papers, put others where they could clearly be seen, and began to write a letter which he eventually sealed, marking it on the outside: ‘To Madame the Baroness Danglars’.

‘This evening,’ he muttered, ‘I shall leave it myself on her dressing-table.’

Then he took a passport out of the drawer. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘It is still valid for another two months.’

M. Boville had indeed crossed the route of the funeral procession leading Valentine to her final resting-place.

The weather was dark and cloudy. A wind, still warm but fatal to the yellowed leaves, was whipping them off the branches, which were gradually stripped clean, and making them flutter above the heads of the vast crowd filling the boulevards.

M. de Villefort, a pure Parisian, considered the Père-Lachaise cemetery the only one worthy of receiving the mortal remains of a Parisian family. The others appeared to him like country cemeteries, death’s lodging-houses. Only in the Père-Lachaise could the respectable departed be accommodated at home.

There, as we have seen, he had bought a perpetual lease on the plot above which rose the monument which was being so swiftly occupied by all the members of his family. The pediment of the mausoleum bore the inscription:
FAMILIES OF SAINT-MÉRAN AND VILLEFORT
, such having been the last wish of poor Renée, Valentine’s mother.

So it was towards the Père-Lachaise that the magnificent cortège wended its way from the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. They crossed
all Paris, following the Faubourg du Temple and then the outer boulevards as far as the cemetery. More than fifty private carriages followed behind twenty funerary coaches and, behind these, more than five hundred more people were following on foot.

Almost all were young men who had been forcibly struck by Valentine’s death and who, despite the cold mists of the century and the prosaic spirit of the age, felt the elegiac poetry of this beautiful, chaste, adorable young woman, struck down in her prime.

As they were leaving Paris, they saw a speedy team of four horses drawing a coach which suddenly halted as they stiffened their hocks, which were as nervous as steel springs. It was Monte Cristo.

The count got down from his barouche and joined the crowd following the hearse on foot. Château-Renaud noticed him. He at once got out of his coupé and came over to his side. Beauchamp also left the hired cab in which he had been riding.

The count was searching carefully through every gap in the crowd. Obviously he was looking for someone. Eventually he could contain himself no longer. ‘Where is Morrel?’ he asked. ‘Does any one of you gentlemen know where he is?’

‘We were already wondering that at the house,’ said Château-Renaud. ‘No one has seen him.’

The count said nothing, but continued to search around him.

Finally they reached the cemetery.

Suddenly Monte Cristo’s sharp eyes penetrated the clumps of yews and pinetrees and soon he lost all anxiety: a shape had glided under the dark walkways and Monte Cristo had doubtless seen what he was looking for.

Everyone knows what a burial is like in this magnificent necropolis: dark groups scattered around the white walkways, the silence of sky and earth broken by the sound of some snapping branches or a hedge trampled around a tomb. Then the melancholy chanting of the priests, mingled here and there with a sob rising from beneath a cluster of flowers, behind which one can see a woman, overcome, her hands clasped…

The shadow that Monte Cristo had noticed was quickly moving through the quincunx of trees behind the tomb of Héloïse and Abélard
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as he stood with the undertakers at the head of the horses drawing the hearse, and a moment later was at the place chosen for the sepulchre.