The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (69 page)

This time, Franz could bear it no longer. He flung himself backwards into the room and collapsed on a chair, half senseless.

Albert, with his eyes closed, remained standing, but only because he was clasping the curtains.

The count stood upright and triumphant like an avenging angel.

When Franz recovered his senses, he found Albert drinking a glass of water, which his pale colour showed he needed urgently, and the count already putting on his clown’s costume. He automatically looked into the square. Everything had vanished: scaffold, executioners, victims. Only the people remained, noisy, busy, jovial. The bell on the Monte Citorio, which was rung only for the death of the pope and the beginning of the
mascherata
, was pouring forth its sound.

‘What happened?’ he asked the count.

‘Nothing,’ he replied, ‘nothing at all, as you see. But the carnival has begun, so let’s quickly get dressed.’

‘So: nothing is left of that awful scene but the vestige of a dream.’

‘Because it was nothing more than a dream or a nightmare that you had.’

‘Yes, that’s as may be; but what about the condemned man?’

‘Also a dream, except that he remained asleep, while you woke up. Who can tell which of you is the more fortunate?’

‘And Peppino,’ Franz asked, ‘what became of him?’

‘Peppino is a sensible lad, not at all vain and, unlike most men who are furious when no one is paying attention to them, he was delighted to see that all eyes were turned on his fellow-prisoner. As a result he took advantage of the distraction to slip away into the crowd and disappear, without even thanking the worthy priests who had accompanied him. Man is undoubtedly a most ungrateful and selfish creature… But you must dress: look, Monsieur de Morcerf is setting you a good example.’

Albert was mechanically drawing on his taffeta trousers over his black trousers and polished boots.

‘Well, Albert,’ Franz asked, ‘are you enjoying these departures from custom? Tell me honestly.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘but I am truly pleased now to have seen such a thing and I understand what Monsieur le Comte said, namely that once one has managed to become accustomed to such a spectacle it is the only one that is still able to arouse any emotion in you.’

‘Besides which,’ said the count, ‘it is only at that moment that one can make a study of character. On the first step of the scaffold, death tears away the mask that one has worn all one’s life and the true face appears. It must be admitted that Andrea’s was not a pretty sight… What a horrible scoundrel! Come, gentlemen, let’s get dressed!’

It would have been ridiculous for Franz to start putting on airs and not follow the example given by his two companions; so he in turn put on his costume and his mask, which was certainly no whiter than his face.

When they were dressed, they went down. The carriage was waiting at the door, full of confetti and bouquets of flowers. They joined the queue of traffic.

It is hard to imagine a more complete contrast with what had just taken place. Instead of the gloomy and silent spectacle of death, the Piazza del Popolo was the scene of unbridled and garish merrymaking. A crowd of masked figures cascaded forth, bursting out on all sides, pouring through the doors and clambering through the windows. Carriages were emerging from every side-street, laden
with pierrots, harlequins and dominos, marquesses and plebeians, grotesques, knights and peasants – all yelling, waving their hands, throwing flour-filled eggs, confetti or bunches of flowers, assaulting friend and foe, stranger and acquaintance with words and missiles, without anyone having the right to object, with not a single reaction permitted except laughter.

Franz and Albert were like men who had been conducted to an orgy to help them forget some awful grief and who, the more they drank and the more they became intoxicated, felt a curtain descend between the past and the present. They could still see – or, rather, they continued to feel inside them – the shadow of what they had witnessed. But little by little they were possessed by the intoxication of the crowd; their minds began to feel unsteady and the power of reason seemed to be slipping away; they experienced a strange need to take part in this noise, this movement, this dizziness. A handful of confetti which struck Morcerf, thrown from a nearby carriage, covered him in dust, as it did his two companions, while stinging his neck and wherever on his face was not covered by the mask, as if a gross of pins had been thrown at him; but it had the effect of driving him into the fray in which all the masks they encountered were already engaged. He rose in turn in the carriage, filled his hands from the sacks and hurled eggs and dragées at his neighbours with all the strength and skill he could muster.

Now, battle was joined. The recollection of what they had witnessed half an hour earlier entirely vanished from the minds of the two young men, so much were they distracted by the many-coloured, ever-moving, demented spectacle before their eyes. As for the Count of Monte Cristo, he had not once, as we have already observed, appeared to be impressed for a moment.

If you were to imagine that lovely and magnificent thoroughfare, the Corso, lined from one end to the other on either side with four- or five-storey mansions, each with its balconies spread with hangings and every window decked with draperies; and at the balconies and the windows, three hundred thousand spectators, Romans, Italians or foreigners from the four corners of the earth – every form of aristocracy brought together: aristocracy of birth, aristocracy of money, aristocracy of talent; charming women who, themselves carried away by the spectacle, are bending over the balconies and leaning out of the windows to shower the carriages passing beneath with a hail of confetti, which is repaid in bunches
of flowers – the air thick with falling confetti and rising flowers; and then on the road itself a joyful, unceasing, demented crowd, with crazy costumes: huge cabbages walking along, buffalo-heads roaring on men’s bodies, dogs apparently walking on their hind legs; and in the midst of all this, in the midst of this temptation of Saint Anthony as it might have been dreamed by Callot,
¹
a mask raised for some Astarte to reveal her delicious features, which you want to follow but from which you are kept back by demons such as might haunt a nightmare… then you would have a rough idea of what the carnival is like in Rome.

On the second circuit the count had the carriage stopped and asked his companions’ permission to leave them, with the carriage at their disposal. Franz looked up: they were opposite the Palazzo Rospoli; and at the middle window, outside which there was a sheet of white damask with a red cross, he saw a blue domino costume under which he had no difficulty imagining the lovely Greek from the Teatro Argentina.

‘Gentlemen,’ said the count, ‘when you are tired of being actors and would like to become spectators again, you know that there are places for you in my windows. Meanwhile, please make use of my carriage, my coachman and my servants.’

We forgot to mention that the count’s coachman was dressed soberly in a black bear’s skin exactly like the one worn by Odry in
The Bear and the Pasha
;
²
and that the two lackeys standing behind the barouche had green monkey costumes, which fitted them perfectly, and masks on springs with which they were making faces at the passers-by.

Franz thanked the count for his kind offer. As for Albert, he was engaged in flirting with a whole carriage full of Roman peasants which, like the count’s, had stopped to take a rest, as vehicles are accustomed to do in traffic; he was showering it with bouquets.

Unfortunately for him, the traffic started to move again and he found himself turning back towards the Piazza del Popolo, while the carriage which had attracted his attention was going up towards the Palazzo di Venezia.

‘Oh! I say!’ he said to Franz. ‘Didn’t you see?’

‘What?’ Franz asked.

‘There: that barouche which is going off, full of Roman peasants.’

‘No.’

‘Well, I’m sure they are charming ladies.’

‘What a pity you are masked, my dear Albert,’ said Franz. ‘This was an opportunity to make up for your disappointment in love.’

‘Oh, I hope that the carnival will not end without bringing me some kind of consolation!’ he replied, half laughing and half serious.

Despite these hopes, the whole day passed without any other adventure except two or three further meetings with the carriage bearing the Roman peasant women. On one of these occasions, either by accident or by design, Albert’s mask fell off. At this, he took the rest of the bouquet of flowers and threw it into the other barouche.

One of the charming women whom Albert perceived under the fetching costume of a peasant from the Romagna must have been touched by this gallantry because, when the two friends’ carriage next passed by, she in turn threw them a bouquet of violets.

Albert seized the flowers. As Franz had no reason to think that they were intended for him, he let Albert take them. Albert victoriously fixed the sprig of violets in his buttonhole and the carriage continued its triumphal progress.

‘There you are!’ said Franz. ‘That could be the start of an adventure!’

‘Laugh as loud as you wish,’ he replied, ‘but I really think so. I am not going to let go of this bouquet.’

‘Don’t dream of it!’ said Franz, laughing. ‘It will serve as a mark of recognition.’

The joke was soon close to reality because, when Franz and Albert, still carried along by the line of traffic, next passed the carriage with the
contadine
, the one who had thrown the sprig of violets to Albert clapped her hands when she saw it in his buttonhole.

‘Bravo, my dear friend! Bravo!’ said Franz. ‘This is developing splendidly. Shall I go? Would you rather be alone?’

‘No, no, let’s not rush things. I don’t want to be fooled by what is just a first step, a meeting under the clock as we say at the Bal de l’Opéra. If the lovely peasant has any wish to go further, then we’ll meet up with her again tomorrow – or, rather, she will meet up with us. Then she can give me some sign of life and I’ll see what is to be done.’

‘There’s no denying it, my dear Albert,’ said Franz, ‘you are as wise as Nestor and as prudent as Ulysses. And if your Circe is to
change you into some beast or other, she will have to be either very clever or very powerful.’

Albert was right. The beautiful stranger had no doubt decided not to carry the intrigue any further that day because, although the two young men made several more circuits, they did not find the carriage they were looking for: it had no doubt disappeared down one of the neighbouring side-streets. So they went back to the Palazzo Rospoli, but the count too had vanished, with the blue domino. The two windows hung with yellow damask continued to be occupied by people who were no doubt his guests.

At that moment the same bell that had announced the opening of the
mascherata
sounded its end. At once the procession of traffic up and down the Corso dissolved and all the carriages quickly vanished into the adjoining streets. Franz and Albert were next to the Via delle Maratte: the coachman turned into it without a word and, travelling past the Palazzo Poli to the Piazza di Spagna, he pulled up next to the hotel.

Signor Pastrini came to the door to welcome his guests.

Franz’s first consideration was to find out about the count and express his regret at not having returned to pick him up in time, but Signor Pastrini reassured him by letting him know that the Count of Monte Cristo had ordered a second carriage for himself, which had gone to the Palazzo Rospoli for him at four o’clock. Moreover he had been requested on the count’s behalf to offer the two friends the key to his box in the theatre.

Franz asked Albert what he intended to do, but Albert had some important plans to carry out before he could think about going to the theatre; so, instead of replying, he asked if Signor Pastrini could find him a tailor.

‘A tailor?’ said the hotelier. ‘For what?’

‘To make us some Roman peasant costumes by tomorrow, as elegant as possible.’

Signor Pastrini shook his head. ‘Two costumes by tomorrow!’ he said. ‘I beg Your Excellencies’ pardon, but that is a very French request. Two costumes! You will certainly not find a tailor in Rome during the next week who will agree to sew six buttons on a waistcoat for you, even if you were to pay him an
écu
apiece for them!’

‘So we must give up our idea of getting these costumes?’

‘Not at all, because we have them ready-made. Let me look after
it, and tomorrow when you wake up you will find a collection of hats, jackets and breeches which will meet your requirements.’

‘Leave it up to our host,’ Franz said. ‘He has already shown us that he is a man of resource. So why don’t we have a quiet dinner, then go and see
L’Italiana in Algeri
?’
³

‘Very well, let it be
L’Italiana in Algeri
,’ said Albert. ‘But consider, Signor Pastrini, that this gentleman and I’ (indicating Franz) ‘attach the highest importance to having the costumes that we asked for tomorrow morning.’

The innkeeper once more reassured his guests that they had nothing to worry about and that their needs would be fully met, so Franz and Albert went upstairs to take off their clowns’ costumes. As he was getting out of his, Albert was very careful to put away his sprig of violets, which would serve as a sign of recognition for the next day.