The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (191 page)

‘I shall,’ Mercédès exclaimed. ‘But you will not go, will you, my son?’

‘Mother, I must,’ Albert said, firmly and calmly. ‘You love me too much to keep me beside you in fruitless idleness. In any case, I have signed my name.’

‘You must do what you will, my son. I shall do what God wills.’

‘Not what I will, mother, but what reason and necessity dictate. We are two desperate creatures, aren’t we? What is life for you now? Nothing. What is life for me? Very little indeed without you, mother, believe me. Without you, I swear, my life would have ended on the day when I first doubted my father and renounced his
name. But I shall live, if you promise me that you will continue to hope. If you leave your future happiness in my care, you will double my strength. When I arrive there, I shall go and see the governor of Algeria. He is a fine man and, above all, a true soldier. I will tell him my sad story and beg him to watch me from time to time. If he does so, and sees how I manage, in six months I shall be an officer or dead. If I am an officer, mother, then your future is assured, because I shall have enough money for both of us and a new name of which we can both be proud, since it will be your true name. If I am killed… Well, if I am killed, then, mother dear, you will die, if you please, and our misfortunes will be ended by their own excess.’

‘Very well,’ said Mercédès, with her noble and eloquent look. ‘You are right, my son. Let us prove to certain people who are watching us and waiting to see what we will do to criticize us, and let us at least prove to them that we deserve their sympathy.’

‘But let’s have no funereal thoughts, mother: I swear to you that we are, or at least can be, very happy. You are a woman who is both full of wit and resigned; I have become simple in my tastes and, I hope, without passion. Once I am in the army, I shall be rich; once you are in Monsieur Dantès’ house, you will be at peace. Let’s try, mother, I beg you, let’s try.’

‘Yes, my son, you must live, you must be happy,’ Mercédès replied.

‘So, we each have our shares,’ the young man concluded, giving an appearance of being utterly at ease. ‘We can leave today. Come then, I shall reserve your place, as they say.’

‘And yours?’

‘I must stay here two or three days more. This is a first separation and we must get used to it. I need a few letters of recommendation and some information about Africa; then I shall join you in Marseille.’

‘Very well then, let’s go!’ Mercédès said, wrapping herself in the only shawl she had brought with her, which happened to be a very expensive black cashmere. ‘Let’s go!’

Albert hurriedly collected his papers, rang to pay the thirty francs he owed the owner of the boarding house, and offered his mother his arm to go down the stairs.

Someone was going down in front of them and this someone, hearing the rustling of a silk dress on the banisters, turned around.

‘Debray!’ Albert muttered.

‘You, Morcerf!’ the minister’s secretary answered, stopping on the stair where he was standing.

Curiosity overcame Debray’s wish to remain incognito; in any event, he had been recognized. There was something very intriguing about discovering the young man whose misfortune was the talk of the whole town in this obscure boarding-house.

‘Morcerf!’ Debray repeated. Then, noticing Mme de Morcerf’s still youthful figure in the half-light and her black veil, he added, smiling: ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Albert! I shall leave you.’

Albert understood what he was thinking. ‘Mother,’ he said, turning to Mercédès, ‘this is Monsieur Debray, secretary to the Minister of the Interior, and one of my former friends.’

‘What do you mean, “former”?’ Debray spluttered.

‘I say that, Monsieur Debray,’ Albert went on, ‘because today I have no more friends and must have none. I thank you very much, Monsieur, for being so good as to recognize me.’

Debray ran up the two steps and shook Albert’s hand earnestly. ‘Believe me, my dear Albert,’ he said, with all the feeling of which he was capable, ‘I sympathized deeply in the misfortune that has befallen you and I am at your disposal for anything you should need.’

‘Thank you, Monsieur,’ Albert said, smiling. ‘But, despite our misfortunes, we have remained rich enough not to need to apply to anyone. We are leaving Paris and, after paying for our journey, we shall have five thousand francs left.’

Debray blushed. He had a million in his portfolio. However little poetry there was in that mathematical soul, he could not escape the reflection that the same house had only a short while before contained two women, one of whom, justly dishonoured, had left poverty-stricken despite the fifteen hundred thousand francs under her cloak; while the other, unjustly struck down, sublime in her misfortune, considered herself rich with a few pence. The comparison deflected his polite platitudes and the force of the example crushed every argument. He muttered a few more or less civil words and hastened to the bottom of the stairs.

That day, the clerks in the ministry who worked for him had to put up with a good deal of irritation. In the evening, however, he purchased a very fine house, situated on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, which brought in 50,000 francs a year.

The following day, at the time when Debray was signing the deeds, that is to say at about five o’clock in the evening, Mme de Morcerf tenderly embraced her son and was tenderly embraced by him, then got into the stagecoach, the door of which shut behind her.

A man was hidden in the courtyard of the Messageries Laffitte, behind one of those arched mezzanine windows above each of the offices. He saw Mercédès get into the coach and saw it drive off. He watched Albert walk away. Then he drew his hand across a brow furrowed with doubt and said: ‘Alas! How can I give those two innocent people back the happiness I have taken away from them? God will help me.’

One sector of La Force,
¹
the one that contains the most dangerous prisoners and those accused of the worst crimes, is called Saint Bernard’s Court. But the prisoners have renamed it – in their expressive slang – ‘The Lions’ Pit’, probably because the captives’ teeth often gnaw the bars and sometimes the warders.

This is a prison within a prison: the walls are twice as thick as elsewhere. Every day a doorkeeper carefully tests the massive railings, and one can see from the Herculean stature and cold, penetrating eyes of the warders here that they have been chosen for their physical and mental ability to inspire fear.

The exercise yard for this section is enclosed in vast walls across which the sun shines obliquely when it deigns to penetrate into this gulf of spiritual and physical ugliness. It is on these stones that, from dawn onwards, careworn, wild-eyed and wan, like ghosts, those men wander whose necks justice has bent beneath the sharpening blade.

They can be seen crouching, hugging whichever wall holds most warmth. There they remain, talking in pairs, but more often alone, constantly glancing towards the door which opens to call one or other inhabitant forth from this grim place, or to fling into the gulf some new piece of detritus thrown out of the melting pot of society.

St Bernard’s Court has its own visiting-room: a long rectangle, divided in two by two parallel grilles set three feet apart, so that the visitor cannot shake hands with the prisoner or pass him anything. The interview room is dark, dank and in every way repellent, especially when one considers the appalling secrets that have passed between the grilles and rusted the iron bars. But this place, ghastly though it is, is a paradise in which men whose days are numbered come to recall a society that they long for and savour: so rare is it for anyone to emerge from the Lions’ Pit to go anywhere except to the Barrière Saint-Jacques,
²
to the penal colony or to the padded cell!

In the courtyard we have just described, dripping with dank humidity, a young man was walking, with his hands in the pockets of his coat – a young man who was looked on by the inhabitants of the pit with a good deal of curiosity.

He would have passed for something of a dandy, thanks to the cut of his clothes, if these clothes had not been in rags. However, they were not worn out: the cloth, fine and silken where it still remained intact, would soon regain its lustre when the prisoner stroked it with his hand, trying to restore his coat.

He applied the same care to holding together a lawn shirt that had considerably faded in colour since he entered the prison, and rubbed his polished boots with the corner of a handkerchief which was embroidered with initials under a heraldic crown.

Some detainees in the Lions’ Pit showed a marked interest in the prisoner’s attention to his dress.

‘Look there: the prince is smartening himself up,’ one of the thieves said.

‘He is naturally very smart-looking,’ another said. ‘If only he had a comb and some pomade, he would outshine all those gentlemen in white gloves.’

‘His coat must have been brand new and his boots have a lovely polish on them. It’s an honour for us to have such respectable colleagues; and the gendarmes are a real bunch of hooligans. What envy! To destroy a set of clothes like that!’

‘They do say he’s a celebrity,’ another added. ‘He’s done the lot, and in style. And he’s come in so young. Oh, it’s marvellous!’

The object of this frightful admiration seemed to be savouring the praise – or the whiff of praise, because he could not hear the words.

His toilet complete, he went over to the window of the canteen against which a warder was leaning. ‘Come, Monsieur,’ he said. ‘Lend me twenty francs. I’ll return them very soon: you need not worry about me. Just think: some of my relatives have more millions than you have farthings. So, a matter of twenty francs, if you please, so that I can get a pistol and buy a dressing-gown. I can’t bear always being in a coat and boots. And what a coat! Monsieur! For Prince Cavalcanti!’

The warder turned his back on him and shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t even laugh at these words, which would have brought a smile to anyone’s lips, because he had heard many variations on the theme; or, rather, the same thing over and over.

‘Very well,’ Andrea said. ‘You are a man without feeling and I shall get you sacked.’

The last remark made the warder turn around, and this time he did respond, with a huge burst of laughter. At that, the other prisoners gathered around.

‘I am telling you,’ Andrea said, ‘that with this paltry sum I could buy myself a coat and dressing-gown, so that I shall be able to receive the illustrious visitor I am expecting, any day now, in an appropriate manner.’

‘He’s right! He’s right!’ the prisoners cried. ‘Damnation! You can see he’s a proper gentleman.’

‘Well, then, you lend him the twenty francs,’ said the warder, shifting his weight to his other, enormous shoulder. ‘Don’t you owe that to a comrade?’

‘I am not the comrade of these people,’ the young man said proudly. ‘Don’t insult me. You have no right to do that.’

The thieves looked at one another, muttering under their breath; and a storm, raised by the warder’s provocation even more than by Andrea’s words, began to rumble around the aristocratic prisoner.

The warder, sure of doing a
quos ego
³
when the waves began to rise too high, let the storm brew a little to play a trick on the man who had been importuning him and to give himself a little light relief in a tedious day’s work.

The thieves had already come close to Andrea, and some were shouting: ‘The slipper! The slipper!’

This is a cruel game which consists in attacking a colleague who has fallen foul of these gentlemen, not with a slipper, but with a hobnailed boot.

Others suggested the eel: this is a different type of entertainment, consisting in filling a twisted handkerchief with sand, pebbles or coins (when they have any), and beating the victim around the head and shoulders with it.

‘Let’s whip the fine fellow,’ some said. ‘The real gent!’

But Andrea, turning around towards them, winked, put his tongue in his cheek and gave a clicking of the lips that meant a host of things to these bandits, who fell silent. These were masonic signs that Caderousse had shown him, and the hooligans recognized one of their own.

The handkerchiefs dropped at once and the hobnailed slipper went back on the head executioner’s foot. Some voices muttered that the gentleman was right, that he could be honest in his own way and that the prisoners ought to set an example of freedom of thought.

The riot receded. The warder was so amazed that he immediately took Andrea’s hands and began to search him, attributing this sudden change in the inhabitants of the Lions’ Pit to something other than mere hypnotism. Andrea let him, but not without protest.

Suddenly there was a shout from the gates. ‘Benedetto!’ an inspector called. The warder gave up his prey.

‘Someone wants me?’ said Andrea.

‘In the visitors’ room,’ said the voice.

‘You see, someone to visit me. Oh, my dear friend, you’ll soon see if a Cavalcanti is to be treated like an ordinary man!’

Hurrying across the courtyard like a black shadow, Andrea swept through the half-open door, leaving his fellow-prisoners and even the warder looking after him admiringly.

He had indeed been called in to the visitors’ room, and one should not be any less surprised at this than Andrea himself, because the clever young man, since he had first been put in La Force, instead of following the custom of ordinary prisoners and taking advantage of the opportunity to write to have visitors come and see him, had kept the most stoical silence.