The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (206 page)

‘Count,’ Morrel said, in a voice that was at once soft and firm. ‘Count, listen to me, as you would listen to a man pointing towards the earth and with his eyes raised to heaven. I came here to join you so that I might die in the arms of a friend. Admittedly there are those whom I love: I love my sister Julie, I love her husband, Emmanuel. But I need someone to open strong arms to me and smile at my last moments. My sister would burst into tears and faint; I should see her suffer and I have suffered enough. Emmanuel would seize the weapon from my hands and fill the house with his cries. You, Count, have given me your word; you are more than a man: I should call you a god if you were not mortal. You will lead me gently and tenderly, I know, to the gates of death…’

‘My friend,’ said the count, ‘I have one lingering doubt. Will you be so weak as to pride yourself on the exhibition of your grief?’

‘No, no, I am a plain man,’ Morrel said, offering the count his hand. ‘See: my pulse is not beating any faster or slower than usual. No, I feel I am at the end of the road; I shall go no further. You
told me to wait and hope. Do you know what you have done, wise as you are? I have waited a month, which means I have suffered a month. I hoped – man is such a poor and miserable creature – I hoped, for what? I don’t know: something unimaginable, absurd, senseless, a miracle… but what? God alone knows, for it was He who diluted our reason with that madness called hope. Yes, I waited; yes, Count, I hoped; and in the past quarter of an hour, while we have been speaking, you have unwittingly broken and tortured my heart a hundred times, for each of your words proved to me that I have no hope left. Oh, Count! Let me rest in the sweet and voluptuous bosom of death!’

Morrel spoke the last words with an explosion of energy that made the count shudder.

‘My friend,’ he continued, when the count did not reply, ‘you named October the fifth as the end of the reprieve that you asked me to accept… And, my friend, this is the fifth…’

Morrel took out his watch. ‘It is nine o’clock. I have three hours left to live.’

‘Very well,’ Monte Cristo replied. ‘Come with me.’

Morrel followed mechanically, and they were already in the grotto before Morrel had realized it. He found carpets under his feet. A door opened, he was enveloped in perfumes and a bright light dazzled him. He stopped, reluctant to go on. He was wary of being weakened by the delights around him.

Monte Cristo pulled him gently forward. ‘Is it not appropriate,’ he said, ‘for us to spend the three hours we have left like those ancient Romans who, when they were condemned to death by Nero, their emperor and their heir, would sit at a table decked with flowers and breathe in death with the scent of heliotropes and roses?’

Morrel smiled and said: ‘As you wish. Death is still death, that is to say forgetfulness, rest, the absence of life and so the absence of pain.’

He sat down and Monte Cristo took his place in front of him.

They were in the wonderful dining-room that we have already described, where marble statues carried baskets full of fruit and flowers on their heads. Morrel had looked vaguely at all this, and had probably seen nothing of it.

‘Let’s speak man to man,’ he said, staring hard at the count.

‘Go on,’ the latter replied.

‘Count, you are an encyclopedia of all human knowledge, and you strike me as someone who has come down from a more advanced and wiser world than our own.’

‘There is some truth in that, Morrel,’ the count said with a melancholy smile that transfigured his face. ‘I have come from a planet called sorrow.’

‘I believe whatever you tell me, without trying to elucidate its meaning, Count. The proof is that you told me to live, and I have lived. You told me to hope, and I almost hoped. So I shall dare to ask you, as if you had already died once before: Count, does it hurt very much?’

Monte Cristo looked at Morrel with an infinite expression of tenderness. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, no doubt, it does hurt, if you brutally shatter the mortal envelope when it is crying out to live. If you make your flesh scream under the imperceptible teeth of a dagger; if you drive an insensitive bullet, always ready to meander on its way, through your brain – which suffers from the merest jolt; yes, indeed, you will suffer and leave life in the most horrifying way, in a desperate agony that will make you ready to think it better than rest bought at such a price.’

‘I understand,’ said Morrel. ‘Death has its secrets of pain and pleasure, like life; it is just a question of knowing what they are.’

‘Precisely, Maximilien: you have hit the nail on the head. Death, according to the care we take to be on good or bad terms with it, is either a friend which will rock us as gently as a nursing mother or an enemy which will savagely tear apart body and soul. One day, when our world has lived another thousand years, when people have mastered all the destructive forces of nature and harnessed them to the general good of mankind, and when, as you just said, men have learnt the secrets of death, then death will be as sweet and voluptuous as sleep in a lover’s arms.’

‘And you, Count, if you wanted to die, would you know how to die in that way?’

‘I should.’

Morrel reached out his hand. ‘Now I understand,’ he said, ‘why you have brought me here to this desolate island, in the midst of the ocean, to this subterranean palace, a tomb that a Pharaoh would envy. It was because you love me, wasn’t it, Count? You love me enough to give me one of those deaths that you spoke of
just now, a death without agony, a death that will allow me to expire with Valentine’s name on my lips and your hand in mine?’

‘You are right, Morrel,’ the count said, simply. ‘That’s how I see it.’

‘Thank you. The idea that tomorrow I shall no longer suffer is like balm to my heart.’

‘Is there nothing you will miss?’ Monte Cristo asked.

‘No,’ Morrel replied.

‘Not even me?’ the count asked, with deep feeling.

Morrel stopped, his clear eye suddenly clouded, then shone with even greater brilliance. A large tear rolled from it and left a silver trace across his cheek.

‘What!’ the count exclaimed. ‘There is something you will regret leaving on earth, yet you want to die!’

‘Oh, I beg you,’ Morrel cried in a weak voice. ‘Not a word, Count, do not prolong my agony.’

The count feared that Morrel was weakening, and this belief momentarily revived the terrible doubt that had already once struck him in the Château d’If. ‘I am engaged in giving this man back his happiness,’ he thought. ‘I consider that restitution is a weight thrown back into the scales in the opposite tray from the one where I cast evil. Now, suppose I am wrong and this man is not unhappy enough to deserve happiness. Alas, what would happen to me – I, who am unable to atone for evil except by doing good?’

‘Listen to me, Morrel,’ he said. ‘Your grief is immense, I can see that; but you believe in God; perhaps you do not wish to risk the salvation of your soul?’

Morrel smiled sadly: ‘Count,’ he said, ‘you know that I do not exaggerate; but, I swear, my soul is no longer my own.’

‘Listen, Morrel,’ the count said. ‘I have no living relative, as you know. I have grown accustomed to thinking of you as my son. Well, to save my son, I would sacrifice my life and, even more readily, my fortune.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, Morrel, that you want to leave life because you do not know all the pleasures that life gives to the very rich. Morrel, I possess nearly a hundred million; you can have it. With that much money you could achieve anything you desire. Are you ambitious? Every career is open to you. Stir up the world, change it, commit any kind of folly, be a criminal if you must, but live!’

‘Count, I have your word,’ the young man replied coldly. ‘And,’ he added, taking out his watch, ‘it is half-past eleven.’

‘Could you do such a thing, Morrel, in my house, before my eyes?’

‘Then let me leave,’ Maximilien said, his face clouding. ‘Or I shall think you don’t love me for myself, but for you.’ And he got up.

‘Very well, then,’ said Monte Cristo, his face lightening at these words. ‘You want it, Morrel, and you are immovable. Yes, you are profoundly unhappy and, as you said, only a miracle could cure you. Sit down, and wait.’

The young man obeyed. Monte Cristo got up in his turn and went to open a carefully locked cupboard, the key to which he wore on a gold chain. He took out a little silver casket, magnificently sculpted and modelled with four arched figures at the four corners, like pining caryatids, shaped like women, symbols of angels reaching for heaven.

He put the casket down on the table, then opened it, taking out a little gold box, the lid of which was raised by pressure on a hidden spring.

This box contained a half-congealed, oily substance, its colour indefinable because of the shining gold and the sapphires, rubies and emeralds encrusting it. It was like a shimmering mass of blue, purple and gold.

The count took a small quantity of the substance on an enamelled spoon and offered it to Morrel, fixing his eyes on him. Only now could it be seen that the substance was green in colour.

‘This is what you asked me for,’ he said. ‘This is what I promised you.’

‘While I still have life,’ the young man said, taking the spoon from Monte Cristo’s hands, ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

The count took a second spoon and dipped once more into the gold box.

‘What are you doing, my dear friend?’ Morrel asked, grasping his hand.

‘Why, Morrel,’ the other said, with a smile. ‘God forgive me, but I think that I am as weary of life as you are, and while the opportunity presents itself…’

‘Stop!’ the young man cried. ‘Oh, you who love and are loved,
you who can trust in hope, oh, don’t you do what I am about to do. For you, it would be a crime. Farewell, my noble and generous friend. I shall tell Valentine all that you have done for me.’ And slowly, without any more hesitation than a pressure on the left hand which he was holding out to the count, Morrel swallowed – or, rather, savoured – the mysterious substance that Monte Cristo had offered him.

Then both men fell silent. Ali, noiseless and attentive, brought tobacco and pipes, served coffee and then vanished.

Little by little the lamps paled in the hands of the marble statues holding them and the perfume from the censers seemed less pervasive to Morrel. Opposite him, Monte Cristo was watching him through the dark, and he could see nothing except the burning of the count’s eyes.

The young man was overwhelmed with an immense pain. He felt the hookah fall from his hands and the objects around him gradually lost their shape and colour. His clouded eyes seemed to see doors and curtains opening in the walls.

‘My friend,’ he said, ‘I feel I am dying. Thank you.’

He made one last effort to hold out his hand, but it fell, powerless, beside him.

And now it seemed to him that Monte Cristo was smiling, no longer with that strange and terrifying smile that had several times allowed him to glimpse the mysteries of that profound soul, but with the tender compassion of a father towards the follies of his child.

At the same time the count was growing before his eyes. His figure almost doubled in size, outlined against the red hangings; he had thrown back his black hair and stood proudly like one of those avenging angels with which the wicked are threatened on Judgement Day.

Morrel, beaten, overwhelmed, slumped back in his chair. A silky torpor filled his every vein. His mind was refurnished, as it were, by a change of thoughts, just like a new pattern appearing in a kaleidoscope. Lying back, panting, excited, he felt nothing more living in him apart from this dream. He seemed to be plunging directly into the vague delirium that precedes that other unknown, called death.

Once again he tried to reach out to take the count’s hand, but this time his own would not even budge. He tried to utter a last
goodbye, but his tongue turned heavily in his mouth, like a stone blocking the entrance to a sepulchre. Hard as he tried, he could not keep his languid eyes open; yet behind their lids there was an image that he recognized despite the darkness which he felt had enveloped him. It was the count, who had just opened the door.

At once, an immense burst of light flooded from an adjoining room – or, rather, a wonderful palace – into the room where Morrel was abandoning himself to his gentle death-throes. And then, on the threshold of that other chamber, between the two rooms, he saw a woman of miraculous beauty. Pale and sweetly smiling, she seemed like an angel of mercy casting out the angel of vengeance.

‘Is heaven already opening its gate to me?’ thought the dying man. ‘This angel is like the one I lost.’

Monte Cristo pointed the young woman to the sofa where Morrel was lying, and she stepped forward with her hands clasped and smiling lips. ‘Valentine! Valentine!’ Morrel cried, in the depths of his soul. But his throat did not utter a sound and, as though all his strength had been concentrated on that inner feeling, he gave a sigh and closed his eyes.

Valentine dashed forward. Morrel’s lips moved again.

‘He is calling you,’ said the count. ‘He is calling you from the depth of his sleep, the man to whom you have entrusted your fate and from whom death tried to separate you; but fortunately I was there and I overcame death. Valentine, from now on you must never be separated on this earth because, to rejoin you, he would leap into his grave. Without me, you would both have died. I give you back to one another; may God credit me with these two lives that I have saved!’