The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (187 page)

Each one was looking at something, but Monte Cristo looked only at the shadow which had hardly been noticed by those around it. Twice he came out of the crowd to see if the man’s hands were feeling for something hidden under his clothes.

When the cortège halted, the shadow could be recognized as Morrel, with his black coat buttoned right up to the neck, his ashen forehead, his hollow cheeks and his hat crumpled in his hands. He was standing with his back to a tree, on a mound above the mausoleum, so that he would lose none of the details of the funeral ceremony that was about to take place.

Everything went off according to custom. A few men – and, as always, the least impressive – made speeches. Some regretted this premature death, others expatiated on her father’s grief. Some had been found who were ingenious enough to have discovered that the young woman had more than once implored M. de Villefort on behalf of guilty men over whose head the sword of justice was suspended. Finally, every flowery metaphor and tortuous syntactical device was exhausted in every type of commentary on the lines written by Malherbe to du Périer.
²

Monte Cristo heard and saw nothing; or, rather, he saw nothing except Morrel, whose calm immobility was a terrifying sight for the only person able to read what was going on in the depths of the young officer’s heart.

‘Look!’ Beauchamp suddenly said to Debray. ‘There’s Morrel! Why the devil has he planted himself over there?’ And they pointed him out to Château-Renaud.

‘How pale he is,’ Château-Renaud said with a shudder.

‘He’s cold,’ said Debray.

‘Not so,’ Château-Renaud said slowly. ‘I think it’s the emotion. Maximilien’s a very impressionable man.’

‘Pah!’ Debray retorted. ‘He hardly knew Mademoiselle de Villefort. You said so yourself.’

‘That’s true, but I remember that at Madame de Morcerf’s ball he did dance with her three times; you know, that ball where you made such an effect.’

‘No, I don’t know,’ Monte Cristo answered, without knowing either to whom or about what he was speaking, so much was he preoccupied with watching Morrel, whose cheeks were moving like those of someone who is gasping or holding his breath.

‘The speeches are over. Farewell, gentlemen,’ the count said
brusquely. And he gave a signal for departure by vanishing, though no one knew where.

The funerary spectacle being over, the audience turned back towards Paris.

Only Château-Renaud for a moment looked around for Morrel; but, while his eyes were following the disappearing figure of the count, Morrel had left his place and Château-Renaud, after looking for him in vain, followed Debray and Beauchamp.

Monte Cristo had slipped into a thicket and, hidden behind a wide tomb, was watching Morrel’s every movement. The young man had gradually gone over towards the mausoleum, from which the onlookers and then the workmen were drifting away. He looked around him slowly and vaguely. But just as his head was turning towards the point on the horizon opposite him, Monte Cristo took advantage of this to come forward another ten yards without being seen.

Morrel was kneeling.

The count, arching his neck, his eyes staring and the pupils dilated, his knees flexed as if to jump at the merest signal, came closer and closer.

Morrel bent his forehead until it touched the stone, grasped the iron railings with both hands and murmured: ‘Oh, Valentine!’

The count’s heart was rent by the shattering effect of these two words. He took another step and said, touching Morrel on the shoulder: ‘It’s you, dear friend! I was looking for you.’

He expected some outburst, reproaches or recriminations, but he was wrong. Morrel turned around and with an appearance of calm said: ‘You see: I was praying.’

The count scrutinized the young man from head to toe and seemed more at ease after this examination. ‘Would you like me to take you back to Paris?’ he asked.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Do you need anything?’

‘Please leave me to pray.’

The count went away without any objection, but only to take up a new station from which he could see everything that Morrel did. The latter finally got up, wiped his knees where they had been whitened by the stones and set off towards Paris without looking around. He was walking slowly down the Rue de la Roquette.

The count, sending on his carriage which had been waiting at
the cemetery, followed a hundred yards behind him. Maximilien crossed the canal and returned to the Rue de Meslay by the boulevards. Five minutes after the door had shut behind him, it re-opened to admit Monte Cristo.

Julie was at the entrance to the garden, where she was entirely absorbed in watching Maître Penelon: with the utmost seriousness concerning his profession as a gardener, he was taking cuttings from some Bengal roses.

‘Ah, Monsieur le Comte de Monte Cristo!’ she exclaimed with the joy that every member of the family usually displayed when the count visited the Rue Meslay.

‘Maximilien has just come home, I believe, Madame?’ the count said.

‘I think I saw him go past, yes…’ the young woman said. ‘But, please, call Emmanuel.’

‘No, Madame, you must excuse me: I have to go up immediately to Maximilien’s,’ Monte Cristo replied. ‘I have something of the utmost importance to tell him.’

‘Then go,’ she said, following him with her delightful smile until he had vanished up the stairs.

Monte Cristo soon went up the two floors between the ground and Maximilien’s room. On the landing he stopped to listen. Not a sound could be heard. As in most old houses inhabited by a single master, the landing was closed off only by a glazed door. However, there was no key on the outside. Maximilien had shut himself inside, but it was impossible to see through the glass, because there was a red silk curtain across the door.

The count’s anxiety showed itself in a reddening of the face, a quite unusual sign of emotion in this impassive man. ‘What should I do?’ he muttered, and thought for a moment.

‘Should I ring? No, no! The sound of a bell, that is to say of a visitor, often precipitates the resolve of those in Maximilien’s situation, and then another sound follows that of the bell.’

He shuddered from head to toe; then, since he was a man whose decisions are made with the swiftness of lightning, he struck one of the panes of glass in the door with his elbow. It shattered and he lifted the curtain to see Morrel in front of his desk, a quill in his hand, having just leapt up at the sound of the breaking glass.

‘Nothing!’ the count said. ‘A thousand apologies, my dear friend. I slipped, and my elbow went through your glass door. But now,
since it is broken, I shall take advantage of that to come in. Please don’t disturb yourself, I beg you.’ And, putting his hand through the broken pane, he opened the door.

Morrel got up, evidently irritated, and came across to Monte Cristo, less to greet him than to bar his way.

‘I do declare, it’s your servants’ fault,’ Monte Cristo said, rubbing his elbow. ‘The floors here shine like mirrors.’

‘Have you hurt yourself, Monsieur?’ Morrel asked coldly.

‘I don’t know. What were you doing there? Writing?’

‘What was I doing?’

‘Your fingers are all ink-stained.’

‘That’s true,’ Morrel replied. ‘I was writing. It does happen sometimes, even though I’m a soldier.’

Monte Cristo took a few steps into the apartment. Maximilien was obliged to let him pass, but he followed behind.

‘You were writing, then?’ Monte Cristo said, with a daunting stare.

‘I’ve already had the honour to answer yes,’ said Morrel.

The count took another look around him. ‘And your pistols are beside the writing table!’ he said, pointing to the weapons on Morrel’s desk.

‘I am leaving on a journey,’ Maximilien answered.

‘My dear fellow!’ Monte Cristo said, with infinite tenderness.

‘Monsieur!’

‘My friend, my dear Maximilien, I beg you, do nothing irrevocable.’

‘Irrevocable?’ Morrel said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘How can a voyage be irrevocable, I wonder?’

‘Maximilien,’ Monte Cristo said, ‘let’s both drop the masks we are wearing. You no more deceive me with that appearance of calm than I do you with my light-hearted concern. You realize, don’t you, that to do what I have just done, to have broken your door and violated the privacy of a friend’s room, you realize, I say, that to do such a thing, I must be harbouring some serious anxiety, or rather a dreadful certainty. Morrel, you want to kill yourself!’

‘Well, now,’ Morrel said, shaking. ‘Where did you get that idea, Monsieur le Comte?’

‘I say that you want to kill yourself,’ the count went on in the same tone of voice. ‘And here is the proof!’ Going over to the desk,
he picked up the white sheet of paper that the young man had thrown over the letter he had been writing, and took the letter.

Morrel rushed forward to snatch it from his hands. However, Monte Cristo had anticipated the gesture and grasped Maximilien by the wrist, halting him like a steel chain halts an unfolding spring.

‘You see,’ said the count. ‘You do want to kill yourself: here it is in black and white!’

‘Very well,’ Morrel exclaimed, instantaneously switching from an appearance of calm to one of extreme violence. ‘Very well, suppose that is so, suppose I have decided to turn the barrel of this pistol against myself, who will stop me? Who will have the courage to stop me? Suppose I should say: all my hopes are dashed, my heart is broken, my life is extinguished, there is nothing about me except mourning and horror, the earth has turned to ashes and every human voice is tearing me apart… Suppose I should say: it is only humane to let me die because, if you do not, I shall lose my reason, I shall become mad… Tell, me, Monsieur, if I should say that, and when it is seen that it is voiced with the anguish and the tears of my heart, will anyone answer me: “You are wrong”? Will anyone prevent me from being the most unhappy of creatures? Tell me, Count, would you have the courage to do so?’

‘Yes, Morrel,’ Monte Cristo said, in a voice so calm that it contrasted strangely with the young man’s excited tones. ‘Yes, I am the one.’

‘You!’ Morrel cried, with a growing expression of anger and reproach. ‘You, who deceived me with absurd hopes; you, who restrained me, lulled me, deadened me with vain promises when, by some dramatic stroke or extreme resolve, I might have been able to save her, or at least to see her die in my arms; you, who pretend to have all the resources of intelligence and the powers of matter; you, who play – or appear to play – the role of Providence and don’t even have the power to give an antidote to a young girl who has been poisoned… ! Oh, Monsieur, I swear it, you would inspire pity in me if you did not inspire horror!’

‘Morrel…’

‘Yes, you told me to lay down the mask. Well, you may have your wish: I shall lay it down.

‘Yes, when you followed me to the cemetery, I still answered you, out of the goodness of my heart; when you came in here, I allowed you to do so… But now that you are taking advantage of
my goodness, and challenging me even here in this room, to which I had retired as if to my tomb; since you are inflicting a new torment on me, when I thought I had exhausted every form of torment… Count of Monte Cristo, my supposed benefactor, Count of Monte Cristo, universal saviour, then be satisfied! You will witness the death of your friend!’ And, with a mad laugh on his lips, Morrel threw himself once more towards the pistols.

Monte Cristo, pale as a ghost but with his eyes flashing, reached out for the weapons and said to the frenzied man: ‘I repeat that you will not kill yourself!’

‘Just try to stop me!’ Morrel said, making a final grasp which, like the previous one, exhausted itself against the count’s steely arm.

‘I will prevent you!’

‘But who are you, then, after all, to dare claim this tyranny over free, intelligent creatures!’

‘Who am I?’ Monte Cristo repeated. ‘Let me tell you…’ And he continued: ‘I am the only man in the world who has the right to say to you: Morrel, I do not want your father’s son to die this day!’

Monte Cristo, majestic, transfigured, sublime, advanced with arms folded towards the trembling young man who, overcome despite himself by the near divinity of the man, shrank back a step.

‘Why do you mention my father?’ he stammered. ‘Why involve the memory of my father in what is happening to me now?’

‘Because I am the man who has already saved your father’s life, one day when he wanted to kill himself as you do today; because I am the man who sent the purse to your young sister and the
Pharaon
to old Morrel; because I am Edmond Dantès, who dandled you on his knees when you were a child!’

Morrel shrank back again, staggering, panting, speechless, overwhelmed. Then all his sense failed him and he fell prostrate at Monte Cristo’s feet. But then, at once, just as suddenly and completely, there was a surge of regeneration in that admirable constitution. He got up, leapt out of the room and dashed to the top of the stairs, crying at the top of his voice: ‘Julie, Julie! Emmanuel, Emmanuel!’

Monte Cristo also tried to follow, but Maximilien would have died rather than release the hinges of the door which he thrust back against the count.