The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (65 page)

Because of this custom of dividing up the opera with a ballet, intervals are very short in Italian theatres, as the singers have an opportunity to rest and change their costumes while the dancers are executing their pirouettes and concocting their entrechats. So the overture of the second act began and, at the first touch of the strings, Franz saw the sleeper slowly rise up and come over to the Greek woman, who turned around to speak to him, then returned to her position, leaning against the front of the box. The man’s face was still in shadow and Franz could see none of his features.

The curtain rose and Franz’s attention was inevitably drawn to the actors, so for a moment his eyes left the box, with the beautiful Greek, and turned to the stage. As we know, the act opens with the dream duet: in her sleep, Parisina lets slip the secret of her love for Ugo in front of Azzo. The betrayed husband goes through all the rages of jealousy until, convinced that his wife is being unfaithful to him, he wakes her up to announce his forthcoming revenge.

This duo is one of the most lovely, most expressive and most powerful to have come from Donizetti’s fertile pen. This was the third time that Franz had heard it and, though he had no pretensions to being a fanatical opera-lover, it had a profound effect on him. So he was about to join in with the applause coming from the rest of the theatre when his hands, on the point of meeting, remained frozen opposite one another and the ‘Bravo!’ that was on the point of emerging from his lips died before reaching them.

The man in the box had stood up entirely and, now that his head was in the light, Franz had just once more recognized the mysterious inhabitant of Monte Cristo, the very same whose figure and voice he had so clearly recognized the evening before in the ruins of the Colosseum. There could no longer be any doubt. The strange traveller lived in Rome.

The expression on Franz’s face must have reflected the turmoil that this apparition created in his mind, because the countess looked at him, burst out laughing and asked what was wrong.

‘Madame la Comtesse,’ Franz replied, ‘a moment ago I asked you if you knew that Albanian woman; now I am wondering if you know her husband.’

‘No more than I do her.’

‘You have never noticed him before?’

‘There’s a very French question! You must know that for an Italian woman there is no man in the world except the one that she loves!’

‘Of course,’ said Franz.

‘In any case,’ she remarked, putting Albert’s opera-glasses to her eyes and turning them towards the box, ‘someone must have recently dug him out: he looks like a corpse which has just emerged from the tomb with the gravedigger’s permission, because he is atrociously pale.’

‘He’s always like that,’ said Franz.

‘Do you know him then?’ asked the countess. ‘In that case I should be asking you who he is.’

‘I believe I have seen him before; I think I recognize him.’

‘I can certainly understand,’ she said, with a movement of her lovely shoulders as if she had felt a chill in her veins, ‘that when one had seen such a man once, one would never forget him.’ So the feeling that Franz had experienced was not peculiar to him, since someone else also felt it.

‘Well, then,’ Franz asked the countess, who had decided to take another look at him, ‘what do you think of that man?’

‘He looks to me like Lord Ruthwen
⁴
in flesh and blood.’

Franz was struck by this new association with Byron. If any man could make one believe in vampires, this was he.

‘I must find out who he is,’ Franz said, getting up.

‘No, no!’ cried the countess. ‘Don’t leave me! I must keep you to myself because I’m counting on you to take me home.’

‘What! Are you serious?’ Franz asked, leaning over to whisper in her ear. ‘Are you really afraid?’

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Lord Byron swore to me that he believed in vampires. He even told me that he had seen them and described how they look – and that was it, exactly! The black hair, the large eyes glowing with some strange light, that deathly pallor. Then: observe that he is not with a woman like other women, but with a foreigner – a Greek, a schismatic – and no doubt a magician like himself. I beg you, stay with me. Go and look for him tomorrow if you must, but today I declare that I am keeping you here.’

Franz insisted.

‘Listen,’ she said, getting up, ‘I am going, I cannot stay until the end of the opera because I have guests at home. Will you be so unmannerly as to refuse me your company?’

There was no reply to this, except to take his hat, open the door and offer the countess his arm, which he accordingly did.

The countess was genuinely quite deeply troubled, and Franz himself could not avoid feeling some superstitious terror, all the more natural in that what, with the countess, was the outcome of instinct, with him derived from memory.

He felt her tremble as she got into her carriage. He drove her back home. There were no guests there and no one was expecting her. He reproved her.

‘In truth,’ she said, ‘I am not feeling well and I need to be alone. The sight of that man has quite upset me.’

Franz tried to laugh.

‘Don’t laugh,’ she said. ‘I know that you don’t really want to. But do promise me one thing.’

‘What?’

‘Promise.’

‘Anything you wish, except to give up my search to discover who that man is. I have reasons, which I cannot tell you, for discovering the answer, and where he comes from, and where he is going.’

‘I don’t know where he comes from, but I can tell you where he is going: to hell, for certain.’

‘So what is the promise that you want to demand of me, countess?’

‘It is to go directly back to your hotel and not to try to see that man this evening. There are certain affinities between the people
that one meets and those one has just left: don’t serve as a conductor between that man and me. Go after him tomorrow if you wish, but never introduce him to me, unless you want me to die of fright. And now, good-night; try to sleep. I for my part know one person who will not.’

With these words, she took her farewell of Franz, leaving him uncertain whether she had been enjoying a joke at his expense or if she had really felt as afraid as she claimed.

On returning to the hotel, he found Albert wearing his dressing-gown and pantaloons, contentedly lounging in an armchair and smoking a cigar.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ he said. ‘I swear, I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow.’

‘My dear Albert,’ Franz replied, ‘I am pleased to have this opportunity to tell you once and for all that you have the most erroneous notions about Italian women – though I should have thought that your disappointments in love would have made you relinquish them by now.’

‘What do you expect! It’s impossible to understand the confounded creatures! They give you their hand, they press yours, they whisper to you, they allow you to accompany them home… With only a quarter of all this, a Parisian woman’s reputation would be in tatters.’

‘Precisely! It’s because they have nothing to hide and because they live their lives under the midday sun that women are so easygoing in the lovely land that rings to the sound of
si
, as Dante put it. In any case, you could see that the countess was really afraid.’

‘Afraid of what? Of that respectable gentleman sitting opposite us with the pretty Greek woman? I wanted to put my mind at rest when they left, so I crossed them in the corridor. He’s a handsome young man, well turned out, who looks as if he dresses in France at Blin’s or Humann’s; a little pale, admittedly, but of course pallor is a mark of distinction.’

Franz smiled. Albert had pretensions to looking pale.

‘I am convinced,’ Franz said, ‘that there is no sense in the countess’s ideas about him. Did he say anything in your hearing?’

‘He did speak, but in Romaic. I recognized the language from some corrupted words of Greek. I must tell you, my dear fellow, that I was very good at Greek when I was at school.’

‘So he spoke Romaic?’

‘Probably.’

‘There’s no doubt; it’s him.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. So what were you doing here?’

‘Preparing a surprise for you!’

‘What surprise?’

‘You know it’s impossible to get a carriage?’

‘Good Lord! We’ve done everything humanly possible, but in vain.’

‘Well, I’ve had a wonderful idea.’

Franz gave Albert the look of someone who did not have much confidence in his ideas.

‘My good fellow,’ said Albert, ‘you have just favoured me with a look which will oblige me to demand satisfaction.’

‘I am ready to give it to you, my dear friend, if your idea is as ingenious as you claim.’

‘Listen.’

‘I am listening.’

‘There is no means of obtaining a carriage, is there?’

‘None.’

‘Or horses?’

‘Or horses.’

‘But we could get a cart?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘And a pair of oxen?’

‘Probably.’

‘Well, then! That’s what we need. I will have the cart decorated, we can dress up as Neapolitan farmworkers and we will be a living representation of the splendid painting by Léopold Robert. If, for the sake of still greater authenticity, the countess wishes to put on the costume of a woman of Puzzoli or Sorrento, this will complete the tableau; and she is beautiful enough to represent the original of the Woman With Child.’

‘Why!’ Franz exclaimed. ‘This time you’re right, Monsieur Albert: this is a really inspired idea.’

‘And altogether French, coming direct from the Do-Nothing Kings,
⁵
precisely that! Ah, you Romans! Did you think we would run around your streets on foot like
lazzaroni
, just because you have a shortage of horses and carriages? Not a bit of it! We’ll think something up!’

‘Have you told anyone of this brilliant scheme yet?’

‘Our host. When I got back I called him up and told him what we would need. He assured me that nothing could be simpler. I wanted to have gold leaf put on the horns of the oxen, but he said it would take three days, so we’ll have to do without that detail.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Who?’

‘Our host.’

‘Looking for the cart. Tomorrow may be too late.’

‘So you are expecting his reply this evening?’

‘At any moment.’

On this, the door opened and Signor Pastrini put his head round.

‘Permesso?’
he said.

‘Most certainly it’s permitted,’ said Franz.

‘Tell me then,’ said Albert. ‘Have you found us the oxen we asked for and the cart that we need?’

‘I have found better than that,’ came the self-satisfied reply.

‘Beware, my dear Signor Pastrini!’ said Albert. ‘The better is the enemy of the good.’

‘Let Your Excellencies trust in me,’ said Signor Pastrini, speaking with the voice of competence.

‘So what do you have?’ asked Franz.

‘You know that the Count of Monte Cristo is staying on the same floor as you?’

‘We most certainly do know it,’ said Albert. ‘It’s thanks to him that we are housed like two students in the Rue Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet.’

‘Very well. But he knows of your difficulty and has required me to offer you two places in his carriage and two places at his windows in the Palazzo Rospoli.’

Albert and Franz looked at one another. Albert said: ‘Should we accept this offer from a stranger, someone we don’t know?’

‘What kind of man is this Count of Monte Cristo?’ Franz asked the innkeeper.

‘A very important Sicilian or Maltese gentleman, I am not quite sure which, but as aristocratic as a Borghese and as rich as a goldmine.’

‘It strikes me,’ Franz said, ‘that if this man was as well-mannered as our host says, he would have found some other way to deliver his invitation, in writing, or…’

At that moment there was a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ said Franz.

A servant, dressed in perfectly elegant livery, appeared at the door of the room.

‘From the Count of Monte Cristo, to Monsieur Franz d’Epinay and Monsieur le Vicomte Albert de Morcerf,’ he said; and handed two cards to the innkeeper which the latter passed on to the two men.

‘As their neighbour, Monsieur le Comte de Monte Cristo,’ the servant continued, ‘asks permission of these gentlemen to visit them tomorrow morning. He begs the gentlemen to be so good as to tell him at what hour they will be able to receive him.’

‘The deuce!’ Albert exclaimed to Franz. ‘There’s nothing more to be said.’

‘Please inform the count,’ Franz replied, ‘that it is we who shall have the honour to visit him.’

The servant went out.

‘This is what you might call overwhelming us with courtesies,’ said Albert. ‘You are quite clearly right, Signor Pastrini: this Count of Monte Cristo of yours is a perfect gentleman.’

‘So you will accept his offer?’