The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (124 page)

‘A little.’

‘Well, consider the paint on my coat of arms: it’s drier than that on Morcerf’s.’

‘How can that be?’

‘Because, even though I am not a baron by birth, I am at least called Danglars.’

‘So?’

‘While he is not called Morcerf.’

‘What! He is not called Morcerf?’

‘Not in the slightest.’

‘Come now!’

‘I was made a baron by someone, so that is what I am; he made himself a count, so that is what he is not.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Listen, my dear Count,’ Danglars went on. ‘Monsieur de
Morcerf has been my friend, or rather my acquaintance, for thirty years. You know that I don’t attach much importance to my coat of arms, since I have not forgotten where I came from.’

‘That is evidence either of great humility or of great pride,’ said Monte Cristo.

‘Well, when I was a clerk, Morcerf was a mere fisherman.’

‘What was his name then?’

‘Fernand.’

‘Just “Fernand”?’

‘Fernand Mondego.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Am I! I ought to know him. He sold me enough fish.’

‘So why are you giving him your daughter?’

‘Because Fernand and Danglars are two upstarts, both ennobled, both enriched and neither better than the other; except for some things that have been said about him and never about me.’

‘What things?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Oh, I understand. What you have just said has refreshed my memory about the name Fernand Mondego. I heard it in Greece.’

‘About the affair of Ali Pasha?’

‘Precisely.’

‘That’s the mystery,’ said Danglars. ‘I confess, I’d give a lot to find out about it.’

‘It wouldn’t be hard if you really want to.’

‘How could it be done?’

‘I suppose you have a correspondent in Greece?’

‘Of course.’

‘In Janina?’

‘I have connections everywhere…’

‘Well, then. Write to your man in Janina and ask him what part was played in the catastrophe of Ali Tebelin by a Frenchman named Fernand.’

‘That’s it!’ Danglars exclaimed, leaping to his feet. ‘I’ll write this very day.’

‘Do that.’

‘I shall.’

‘And if you uncover some scandal…’

‘I’ll let you know.’

‘I should be glad.’

Danglars rushed out of the apartments and, in one bound, was in his carriage.

Let us leave the banker’s horses trotting smartly home with him and follow Mme Danglars on her morning excursion. We said that at half-past twelve she had called for her carriage and gone out.

She set off towards the Faubourg Saint-Germain, went down the Rue Mazarine and called for the driver to halt at the Passage du Pont-Neuf. Here she got down and crossed the street. She was very simply dressed, appropriately for a woman of taste at this time of day. At the Rue Guénégaud, she got into a cab and asked to be driven to the Rue du Harlay.

No sooner was she inside the cab than she took a thick black veil out of her pocket and pinned it on her straw hat. Then she put the hat back on her head and was pleased to see, looking in her little pocket-mirror, that only her white skin and the shining pupils of her eyes were visible.

The cab drove across the Pont Neuf and through the Place Dauphine into the courtyard at Rue du Harlay. Mme Danglars paid the driver as he opened the door and swept towards the stairway, which she lightly mounted, soon reaching the Salle des Pas-Perdus. In the morning there is lots of business and still more busy people in the Palais de Justice. Busy people do not bother much with women, so Mme Danglars crossed the Salle des Pas-Perdus without attracting any more notice than ten other women waiting to see their lawyers.

There was a crowd in M. de Villefort’s antechamber, but Mme Danglars did not even have to mention his name. As soon as she appeared, an usher got up, came across to her and asked whether she were not the person who had an appointment with the crown prosecutor. When she replied that she was, he led her along a private corridor into M. de Villefort’s study.

The magistrate was sitting in his armchair, writing, with his back towards the door. He heard it open and the usher say: ‘This way,
Madame!’, then the door close, all without moving; but as soon as he heard the usher’s footsteps going away along the corridor, he leapt up, went to draw the curtains, lock the doors and inspect every corner of the study. Only when his mind was at rest and he was certain of not being seen or heard, did he say: ‘Madame, thank you for your punctuality,’ and he offered Mme Danglars a seat, which she accepted, because her heart was beating so hard that she felt as though she was suffocating.

The crown prosecutor also sat down and turned his chair around to face Mme Danglars. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘it is a long time since I had the pleasure of speaking to you alone, and I deeply regret that we should be meeting to discuss something so disagreeable.’

‘Despite that, Monsieur, you see that I have come as soon as you asked, even though the topic must be still more disagreeable for me than for you.’

Villefort gave a bitter smile and said, in response more to his own thoughts than to Mme Danglars’ words: ‘So it is true that every one of our actions leaves some trace on our past, either dark or bright. So it is true that every step we take is more like a reptile’s progress across the sand, leaving a track behind it. And often, alas, the track is the mark of our tears!’

‘Monsieur,’ said Mme Danglars, ‘you must understand my feelings. I beg you to spare me as much as possible. This room, through which so many guilty men and women have passed, trembling and ashamed… this chair on which I, in my turn, sit trembling and ashamed… It takes all the strength of my reason to persuade me that I am not a guilty woman and you a threatening judge.’

Villefort shook his head and sighed: ‘I tell myself that my place is not on the judge’s bench, but in the dock with the accused.’

‘You?’ Mme Danglars said in astonishment.

‘Yes, I.’

‘I think that, so far as you are concerned, Monsieur,’ said Mme Danglars, her lovely eyes briefly lighting up, ‘you are overscrupulous and exaggerating the situation. The tracks that you mentioned have been made by all hot-blooded youths. Beneath passion and beyond pleasure, there is always a trace of remorse; and that is why the Gospel, that everlasting succour to the unfortunate, has given us poor women as a prop the excellent parable of the sinner and the woman taken in adultery. So, when I consider the follies of
my youth, I sometimes think that God will forgive them, because some compensation for them (though not an excuse) is to be found in my sufferings. But what do you have to fear from all this, you men whom everyone excuses and who are elevated by scandal?’

‘Madame,’ Villefort replied, ‘you know me. I am not a hypocrite – or, at least, I never dissemble without some purpose. My brow may be forbidding, but that is because it is darkened by many misfortunes; my heart may be stone, but it needs must be to withstand the blows that have assailed it. I was not like this in my youth, I was not like this at the betrothal feast in Marseille when we all sat at a table in the Rue du Cours. Since then, much has changed, both around me and within me. My life has been worn away in the pursuit of difficult things and in breaking down those who, voluntarily or otherwise, of their own free will or as a result of chance, stood in my way and raised such obstacles. It is rare to feel an ardent desire for something and not find that it is ardently defended by those from whom one would like to take it or seize it. So, most ill deeds present themselves to their perpetrators in the specious guise of necessity; then, when the deed has been committed – in a moment of passion, fear or delirium – one realizes that it might have been avoided. Blind as you were, you did not see the correct course of action, which now appears plainly and simply before you. You think: how can I have done that, instead of this? You ladies, on the other hand, are rarely tormented by remorse, because the decision rarely comes from you. Your misfortunes are almost always imposed on you and your errors almost always another’s crime.’

‘In any event, Monsieur, you must agree,’ Mme Danglars replied, ‘if I did make a mistake, I was severely punished for it yesterday.’

‘Poor woman!’ said Villefort, pressing her hand. ‘Too severely, since your strength twice nearly gave way; and yet…’

‘Well?’

‘Well, I must tell you… Be brave, Madame, we are not yet at an end.’

‘My God!’ Mme Danglars exclaimed in terror. ‘What is there still to come?’

‘You can only see the past, and it is grim, I confess. But imagine a still grimmer future, a future that is sure to be frightful… and perhaps stained with blood!’

The baroness knew Villefort’s usual restraint and was so horrified
by this lurid outburst that she opened her mouth to scream, but the cry was stifled in her throat.

‘How has this terrible past been resurrected?’ Villefort asked. ‘How has it arisen from its sleep in the depths of the tomb and the depths of our hearts, like a ghost draining the blood from our cheeks and making the pulse beat in our temples?’

‘Alas!’ said Hermine. ‘By chance, no doubt.’

‘Chance!’ said Villefort. ‘No, no, Madame, there is no chance.’

‘Of course there is. Was it not chance, admittedly a fatal one, but chance none the less that was behind all this? Was it not chance that the Count of Monte Cristo bought that house? That he had the earth dug? And, finally, that the unhappy child was dug up from under the trees? That poor innocent creature, flesh of my flesh, to whom I never gave a kiss, but only tears. Oh, my heart fluttered when I heard the count speak of those cherished remains that were found among the flowers.’

‘And yet it is not so, Madame. This is the frightful thing that I must tell you,’ Villefort replied, in a stifled voice. ‘There were no remains discovered among the flowers, no child unearthed. No! You should not be weeping, you should not moan! You should be trembling with fear!’

‘What can you mean?’ Mme Danglars exclaimed with a shudder.

‘I mean that Monsieur Monte Cristo, had he dug under those trees, would not have found either a child’s skeleton or the iron of a box, because neither was there to be found.’

‘Neither was there!’ Mme Danglars repeated, looking at the prosecutor with eyes of sheer terror, their pupils horribly dilated. Then, like someone trying, in the sound of the words or the voice, to grasp an idea that is about to elude them, she repeated: ‘Neither was there!’

‘No,’ said Villefort, burying his face in his hands. ‘A hundred times no!’

‘But was it not there that you put the poor child, Monsieur? Why deceive me? Tell me, why should you want to do such a thing?’

‘It was there. But listen to me, Madame; hear me out and you will sympathize with me, I who have borne for twenty years the burden of sorrow that I am about to tell you, without shuffling the smallest part of it off on to you.’

‘My God! You terrify me! No matter, I am listening.’

‘You know the events of that unhappy night when you lay gasping on your bed in that room with the red damask, while I waited for you to be delivered, almost as exhausted as you. The child came and was handed to me, motionless, not breathing or crying. We thought it was dead.’

Mme Danglars made a sudden movement, as though to leap from the chair, but Villefort stopped her, clasping his hands as though begging her to listen.

‘We thought he was dead,’ he repeated. ‘I put him in a box that would serve as a coffin and went down to the garden, where I dug a grave and hastily buried it. I had just finished covering it with earth when the Corsican struck me. I saw a shape rise up and the flash of a blade. I felt a stab of pain and tried to cry out, but an icy shudder ran through my body and stifled the cry in my throat. I fell, dying; I thought I was dead. I shall never forget your sublime courage when, regaining my senses, I dragged myself with one final effort to the foot of the staircase where you, though you were yourself on the brink of death, came over to me. We had to hush up this awful catastrophe. You bravely returned home, supported by your nurse, while I used a duel as an excuse for my wound. Astonishingly, we both managed to keep the secret. I was carried to Versailles and, for three months, fought against death. Finally, when I seemed to be over the worst, I was prescribed the sun and air of the south. Four men carried me from Paris to Chalon, at a rate of six leagues a day. Madame de Villefort followed the stretcher in her carriage. In Chalon, I was put on the Saône, then on the Rhône and, carried by the current, I went down to Arles, where I once more took to my stretcher and continued to Marseille. My convalescence lasted six months. I heard nothing of you and did not dare ask after you. When I returned to Paris, I learned that Monsieur de Nargonne had died and you had married Monsieur Danglars.

‘What had been constantly on my mind from the moment I regained consciousness? Always the same thing: the child’s body which, every night in my dreams, rose up out of the earth and hovered over the grave, threatening me with its look and gesture. So, no sooner had I returned to Paris than I asked about the house. It had not been inhabited since we left, but it had just been leased for nine years. I went to find the tenant and pretended that I was most anxious that this house, which belonged to my wife’s parents,
should not fall into the hands of strangers. I offered them compensation in exchange for the lease. They asked for six thousand francs; I would have given ten thousand or twenty thousand. I had the money on me and, there and then, got them to sign the papers. As soon as the lease was in my hands, I set off at a gallop for Auteuil. Since I had last been there, no one had entered the house.