The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (202 page)

At the same moment, the man who had left the group of onlookers at the hotel also went in. The Frenchman rang at the window in the front office and came through into the first room. His shadow did likewise.

‘Messrs Thomson and French?’ the foreigner asked.

A sort of lackey got up at a sign from a confidential clerk, the solemn guardian of the first office.

‘Whom should I announce?’ asked the lackey, preparing to precede the foreigner.

‘Baron Danglars,’ the traveller replied.

‘Follow me,’ said the lackey.

A door opened. The lackey and the baron vanished through it. The man who had come in behind Danglars sat down on a bench to wait.

The clerk went on writing for roughly five minutes. During this time the seated man remained absolutely still and silent.

Then the clerk’s quill stopped scratching across the paper. He looked up, searched carefully all around him and, after reassuring himself that they were alone, said: ‘Ah! So there you are, Peppino.’

‘Yes,’ the man replied laconically.

‘Did you see the chance of anything good from that fat man?’

‘There’s not much to be had out of him: we’ve been informed.’

‘So you know what he’s here for, snooper?’

‘Why, he’s come to make a withdrawal; the only thing is, we don’t know how much.’

‘You’ll find out soon enough, my friend.’

‘Good, but don’t do as you did the other day and give me misinformation.’

‘What do you mean? What are you thinking of? Is it the Englishman who went away with three thousand
écus
a few days ago?’

‘No, he really did have three thousand
écus
and we found them. I’m talking about that Russian prince.’

‘What of him?’

‘Well, you told us thirty thousand
livres
and we only found twenty-two.’

‘You probably didn’t look hard enough.’

‘Luigi Vampa did the search in person.’

‘In that case, either he had paid his debts…’

‘A Russian?’

‘Or spent the money.’

‘I suppose that’s possible.’

‘It’s definite. But let me go to my post, or the Frenchman will have done his business before I can discover the precise amount.’

Peppino nodded and, taking a rosary out of his pocket, began to
mutter some prayer or other, while the clerk vanished through the same door that had opened for the lackey and the baron.

Ten minutes later, he reappeared, with a broad smile.

‘Well?’ Peppino asked.

‘Stand by! It’s a princely sum.’

‘Five or six millions, I believe?’

‘Yes. How do you know the figure?’

‘Against a bill signed by His Excellency, the Count of Monte Cristo?’

‘You know the count?’

‘Credited on Rome, Venice and Vienna.’

‘Just so!’ the clerk exclaimed. ‘How are you so well informed?’

‘I told you that we had advance information.’

‘So why did you come to me?’

‘To be sure that this is really our man.’

‘It’s him all right. Five million… A fine sum, eh, Peppino?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ll never have as much for ourselves.’

‘At least we’ll get some crumbs of it,’ Peppino said philosophically.

‘Hush! Here he comes.’

The clerk took up his pen and Peppino his rosary. When the door opened, the one was writing and the other praying. Danglars appeared, in fine spirits, together with the banker, who accompanied him to the door.

As agreed, the carriage that was to meet Danglars was waiting in front of the House of Thomson and French. The guide held the door open: a cicerone is a very accommodating creature, who can be put to all sorts of uses.

Danglars leapt into the carriage with the spring of a twenty-year-old. The guide shut the door and got up beside the driver. Peppino climbed on to the rear box.

‘Would Your Excellency like to see Saint Peter’s?’ the guide asked.

‘What for?’ the baron replied.

‘Why, just to see it!’

‘I didn’t come to Rome to see anything,’ Danglars said aloud; then, with an avaricious smile, he said under his breath: ‘I came to touch.’ And he meaningfully touched his portfolio, in which he had just enclosed a letter.

‘So, Your Excellency is going…’

‘To the hotel.’

‘Casa Pastrini,’ the guide said to the coachman, and the carriage set off as briskly as a racing gig.

Ten minutes later, the baron had returned to his rooms and Peppino had taken up his place on the bench running along the front of the hotel, after whispering a few words to one of those descendants of Marius and the Gracchi whom we noted at the start of this chapter, the boy in question setting off down the road for the Capitol as fast as his legs could carry him.

Danglars was weary, satisfied and sleepy. He went to bed, put his pocket-book under the bolster and fell asleep.

Peppino had plenty of time, however. He played
morra
³
with some porters, lost three
écus
and in consolation drank a flagon of Orvieto.

The next day, Danglars woke late, even though he had gone to bed early. For the previous five or six nights he had slept badly, if at all. He had an ample breakfast and not being, as he had said, much inclined to enjoy the beauty of the Eternal City, he asked for his post-horses to be brought at noon.

However, Danglars had not counted on the formalities of the police and the idleness of the postmaster. The horses arrived only at two o’clock and the guide did not bring back the passport, with its visa, until three.

All these preparations had drawn a fair crowd of onlookers to the door of Signor Pastrini’s, and there was no lack of descendants of the Gracchi and Marius among them. The baron walked in triumph through these groups of idlers who called him ‘Excellency’, to get a
baiocco
.

Danglars, who was a very democratic fellow as we know, had up to then been content to be addressed as ‘Baron’, and had not yet been called ‘Excellency’; he found the title flattering and threw a few
pauls
to the mob, which was quite ready, for a further dozen or so of the same, to nominate him ‘Your Royal Highness’.

‘What road?’ the postilion asked in Italian.

‘To Ancona,’ the baron replied.

Signor Pastrini translated the request and the reply, and the carriage set off at a gallop.

Danglars intended to go to Venice and draw out part of his fortune, then from Venice to Vienna, where he would withdraw
the rest. Then his idea was to settle in the latter city which, he had been assured, was one offering many pleasures.

Hardly had they done three leagues through the Roman campagna than night began to fall. Danglars had not realized that they were leaving so late; otherwise he would have stayed in Rome. He asked the postilion how long it would be before they arrived in the next town.

‘Non capisco,’
the man replied.

Danglars nodded, to indicate ‘Very good’, and the carriage drove on.

‘I can stop at the first post,’ Danglars thought.

He still felt some traces of that well-being which he had experienced on the previous day and which had given him such a good night’s sleep. He was comfortably installed in a solid English coach with double springs. He felt himself being pulled forward at a gallop by two strong horses, and he knew that the relay was seven leagues on. What is one to do when one is a banker and one has successfully gone bankrupt?

For ten minutes he thought of his wife, who was still in Paris; and for another ten minutes he considered his daughter, who was running round the globe with Mlle d’Armilly. He devoted a further ten minutes to his creditors and how he would spend their money. Then, having nothing left to think about, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

From time to time, however, shaken by a jolt which was harder than the rest, Danglars would momentarily re-open his eyes and feel himself carried along at the same speed through the same Roman campagna, among a scattering of broken aqueducts which looked like granite giants petrified as they ran. But the night was cold, dark and rainy, and it was far better for a man who was half asleep to stay at the back of the coach, with his eyes closed, than to put his head out of the door and ask where he was – from a postilion whose only answer would be:
‘Non capisco.’
So Danglars went on sleeping, thinking that it would be time enough to wake up when they arrived at the relay.

The carriage stopped. Danglars thought he had at last reached his much-desired goal.

He opened his eyes and looked through the glass, expecting to find himself in the middle of some town, or at least of some village. But he could see nothing except a kind of isolated hovel, with three or four men coming and going like shadows.

He waited for a moment, expecting the postilion who had finished his relay to come and ask him for his pay. He thought he could take advantage of the opportunity to ask for some information from his new driver. But the horses were unharnessed and replaced without anyone coming to ask the traveller for money. Astonished, Danglars opened the door, but a firm hand immediately slammed it shut, and the carriage set off again.

The baron woke up completely at this, and in some astonishment.

‘Hey!’ he called to the postilion. ‘Hey,
mio caro
!’

This was more bel canto Italian that he had learnt when his daughter used to sing duos with Prince Cavalcanti. But
mio caro
did not reply. So Danglars opened the window.

‘I say, my good friend! Where are we going?’ he said, putting his head out.

‘Dentro la testa!’
cried a serious and commanding voice, accompanied by a threatening gesture.

Danglars understood
dentro la testa
: ‘put your head in!’ As we can see, he was making rapid progress in Italian. He obeyed, but with some misgivings. And, since his anxiety was increasing minute by minute, after a few moments his mind, instead of the void that it had contained on setting out, which had brought sleep… his mind, as we say, filled with a large quantity of thoughts, each more likely than the previous one to keep a traveller on his toes, especially one finding himself in Danglars’ situation.

In the darkness his eyes took on that degree of acuity that strong emotions tend to give them at first, only for the effect to be reversed later through overuse. Before one is afraid, one sees clearly; while one is afraid, one sees double; and after being afraid, one sees dimly.

Danglars saw a man wrapped in a cloak galloping beside the right-hand door.

‘Some gendarme,’ he said. ‘Have I been denounced to the pontifical authorities by the French telegraph?’

He decided to resolve his uncertainties. ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked.

‘Dentro la testa!’
the same voice repeated, in the same threatening tone.

Danglars looked over at the left-hand door. Another man on horseback was galloping alongside it.

‘Definitely,’ said Danglars. ‘I have definitely been arrested.’ And he slumped back into the seat, this time not to sleep but to think.

A moment later the moon rose.

From the back of the carriage he looked out at the countryside and saw the huge aqueducts, stone phantoms which he had noticed in passing; but now, instead of being on his right, they were on the left.

He realized that the carriage had turned round and that he was being taken back to Rome.

‘Oh, wretch that I am,’ he muttered. ‘They must have obtained an order for my extradition.’

The carriage continued to dash forward at a terrifying speed. A dreadful hour went by, because every new indication that appeared proved beyond doubt that the fugitive was being taken back the way he had come. Finally, he saw a dark mass against which it seemed that the carriage was about to crash; but it turned aside and continued parallel to the dark shape, which was nothing other than the ring of ramparts encircling Rome.

‘Oh, oh!’ Danglars muttered. ‘We’re not going into the city, so I am not being arrested after all. Good heavens, I’ve just thought: could it be…’

His hair stood on end, because he recalled those interesting stories of Roman bandits which were taken with such a large pinch of salt in Paris. Albert de Morcerf had told some of them to Mme Danglars and Eugénie when it had been a matter of the young viscount becoming the son-in-law of the first and the husband of the latter.

‘Perhaps they are thieves!’ he thought.

Suddenly the carriage was running over something harder than a sanded roadway. Danglars ventured to look out on both sides of the road and saw oddly shaped monuments. Thinking about Morcerf’s story, which was now coming back to him in every detail, he thought that he must be on the Appian Way.

On the left of the carriage, in a sort of dip, could be seen a circular excavation. It was the Circus of Caracalla.
⁴

At a word from the man who was galloping by the right-hand door the carriage stopped. At the same time the left-hand door opened and a voice ordered:
‘Scendi!’