The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (98 page)

‘Do you know this man?’ Emmanuel asked.

‘Oh, Monsieur, if you do know him,’ Julie exclaimed, ‘tell me, please; if you cannot bring him to us, show him to us, tell us where he is! If we should ever find him, he would surely have to believe that the heart does not forget, is that not so, Emmanuel? Maximilien?’

Monte Cristo felt two tears gather in his eyes and paced once more up and down the room.

‘I beg you, Monsieur,’ said Maximilien, ‘if you do know anything of this man, please tell us what you know.’

‘Alas!’ Monte Cristo exclaimed, repressing the emotion in his voice. ‘If Lord Wilmore is indeed your benefactor, I am very much afraid that you will never find him. I left him two or three years ago in Palermo and he was about to set off for the most fabled shores; indeed, I gravely doubt if he will ever return.’

‘Oh, Monsieur! It is cruel of you to say so!’ said Julie, horrified, tears springing to her eyes.

‘Madame,’ Monte Cristo said gravely, his gaze fixed on the two liquid pearls running down her cheeks, ‘if Lord Wilmore could witness what I have just seen here, he would still love life, because your tears would reconcile him to the human race.’ And he held out his hand to Julie, who gave him hers, finding herself captivated by the count’s look and the tone of his voice.

‘But,’ she said, clasping at one last straw, ‘this Lord Wilmore: he
must have had a country, a family, relatives – in short, he was known? Could we not… ?’

‘Don’t even try, Madame,’ said the count. ‘Do not build some sweet hope on the foundation of a word that slipped from my lips. No, Lord Wilmore is probably not the man you are looking for. He was my friend, I knew all his secrets and he would have told me that one.’

‘But he said nothing to you?’ Julie asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Not a word that might have suggested… ?’

‘Never a word.’

‘Yet his was the name that immediately sprang to your lips.’

‘Oh, you know: in such cases, one makes a guess…’

‘Sister, dear sister,’ said Maximilien, coming to his aid, ‘the count is right. Remember what our good father so often told us: “It was not an Englishman who did us this great service.” ’

Monte Cristo shuddered. ‘Your father said… what, Monsieur Morrel?’ he asked sharply.

‘My father saw this act as a miracle. He believed that our benefactor was someone who had come back from the dead. Oh, Monsieur, it was a touching superstition and, while I did not believe it myself, I certainly had no wish to destroy the belief in his noble heart! How many times did he mutter the name of a dear, dear friend, a friend whom he had lost; and when he was on the point of death and the prospect of eternity might have given his mind some illumination from beyond the grave, this idea, which until then had been no more than a suspicion, became a certainty, and the last words that he spoke before he died were these: “Maximilien, it was Edmond Dantès.” ’

The colour had been draining from the count’s face as Maximilien spoke and, at these words, his face became awful in its pallor. All the blood had rushed to his heart and he was speechless. He took out his watch as if he had forgotten the time, grasped his hat, brusquely muttered an embarrassed farewell to Mme Herbault and said, clasping the hands of Emmanuel and Maximilien: ‘Madame, allow me to come from time to time to pay my compliments to you. I love your house and I am most grateful to you for your hospitality, because this is the first time for many years that I have been able to forget my troubles.’ And he left, striding out of the house.

‘An odd fellow, this Count of Monte Cristo,’ Emmanuel said.

‘Yes,’ Maximilien replied, ‘but I think he has a good heart and I am sure that he likes us.’

‘So am I!’ Julie exclaimed. ‘His voice touched me deeply and two or three times I thought that this was not the first time I had heard it.’

Two-thirds of the way down the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, behind a magnificent private mansion (remarkable even among the many remarkable residences in this rich district), there is a huge garden surrounded by walls as high as ramparts. From here, in springtime, the tufted chestnuts drop their pink-and-white flowers into two fluted stone vases, placed opposite one another on two quadrangular pilasters, between which is set an iron gateway from the time of Louis XIII.

Despite the splendid geraniums growing in the two vases which tossed their marbled leaves and purple flowers in the wind, this grandiose entrance had been condemned since the time – and it was some time earlier – when the owners of the mansion confined themselves to possession of the house itself, the tree-lined courtyard opening into the Faubourg and the garden behind the gateway we have mentioned, which formerly gave access to a magnificent vegetable garden, an acre in size, adjoining the property. But the demon of speculation drew a line, in the form of a street, along the side of the vegetable garden; the street, before it even existed except as a line, received a name, thanks to a polished-iron plaque; and someone had the idea that the vegetable garden could be sold for buildings along the street, to compete with the major Parisian thoroughfare called the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

However, where speculation is concerned, man proposes and money disposes. The street was baptized and died in its cradle. The purchaser of the vegetable garden, having paid the full amount for it, could not resell at the price he wanted; so, while waiting for a rise in prices that was bound, sooner or later, to more than compensate
him for past losses and the capital which he had tied up, he made do with renting the plot to some market gardeners for the sum of five hundred francs a year. This was money invested at half a per cent, which is not much nowadays when so many people invest it at fifty and still complain that the returns are poor.

However, as we said, the garden gate, which used at one time to look over the vegetable garden, has been condemned and rust is eating into its hinges. Worse still: so that the low-born market gardeners shall not sully the interior of the aristocratic property with their vulgar gaze, a wall of planks has been affixed to the bars of the gate up to a height of six feet. Admittedly these planks are not so tightly juxtaposed as to prevent a furtive glance slipping between them; but the house is a forbidding house and not afraid of indiscreet eyes.

In the vegetable garden, instead of cabbages, carrots, radish, peas and melons, the only growing things to show that this otherwise abandoned site is still sometimes tended are tall alfalfa plants. A low door, opening on the proposed line of the street, allows entry to the place, which is surrounded by walls. The tenants have, in the past week, abandoned it because of its barrenness, and now, instead of the previous half a percent, it is bringing in no per cent at all.

On the side nearest to the mansion, the chestnut-trees which we mentioned crown the wall, though this does not prevent other luxuriantly flowering rivals from insinuating their branches between them in search of air. At a corner where the growth is so thick that the light can hardly penetrate, a wide stone bench and some garden seats mark a meeting place or favourite retreat of an inhabitant of the large house, which can hardly be seen through the protective wall of greenery around this spot, even though it is only a hundred yards away. Apart from that, the position of this mysterious shelter could have been dictated by: the absence of sun, giving a permanent chill to the air, on even the hottest summer days; the singing of the birds; and the distance from the house and from the street, that is to say from bustle and noise.

On the evening of one of the warmest days that Paris had so far enjoyed that spring, the stone bench carried a book, a sunshade, a work basket and a lawn handkerchief, partly embroidered. Not far from the bench, beside the gate, looking through a gap in the planks, was a young woman whose attention was directed towards the deserted vegetable garden which we have just described.

Almost at the same moment as she was looking out across it, the little doorway into the site closed silently and a young man came through it, tall, energetic, wearing an undyed cotton smock and corduroy cap – though his well-tended moustache, beard and black hair did not harmonize with this lower-class attire. He looked quickly around to ensure that he was not being watched, came through the door, closed it behind him and strode rapidly towards the iron gate.

Seeing the man she was expecting, if not necessarily in that dress, the young woman was taken aback and started. But the man, with a sharpness of perception that belongs only to a lover, had already seen, through the gaps in the planks, the fluttering of her white dress and long blue belt. He ran across to the gate and, pressing his lips against the opening, said: ‘Don’t worry, Valentine. It’s me!’

The girl came back.

‘Oh, Monsieur,’ she said, ‘why are you so late today? Do you realize that it will soon be dinner and that I needed a great deal of diplomacy and a great deal of rapid thinking to get rid of my stepmother who watches me, my chambermaid who spies on me, and my brother who teases me, before I could manage to come down here and work on this embroidery which, I fear, will not be finished for a long while yet? Then, when you have explained and asked forgiveness for your lateness, you can tell me what is this new style of dress that you have decided to adopt, which almost prevented me from recognizing you.’

‘Dear Valentine,’ said the young man, ‘you are too far above my love for me to dare speak of it to you, yet every time that I see you I need to tell you that I adore you, so that the echo of my own words will gently caress my heart when I am no longer with you. Now, let me thank you for your scolding; it charms me, because it proves that… I dare not say that you were waiting for me, but at least that you thought of me. You wish to know the reason for my late arrival and for my disguise. I shall tell you and I hope you will forgive them. I have chosen a trade…’

‘A trade! What do you mean, Maximilien? Are we fortunate enough for you to jest about what matters so much to us?’

‘Heaven forbid that I should jest when my life depends on it,’ said the young man. ‘But I have grown tired of being a runner through fields and a climber of walls; and I was seriously worried by the idea you suggested to me the other evening, that your father
might one day have me hauled up as a thief, which would be a blow to the honour of the entire French army. Apart from which, I feared people might find it odd for a captain in the spahis to be constantly hovering around this plot of land, where there is not a single fortress to attack or blockhouse to defend; so I have become a market gardener and put on the clothing of my profession.’

‘What idiocy is this!’

‘None at all but, I think, the most sensible thing I have done in my life, because it gives us complete security.’

‘Explain what you mean.’

‘Well, I went to find the owner of this plot of land and, since the lease with the old tenants had run out, I took it over from him myself. All this alfalfa that you see is mine, Valentine. Nothing prevents me from building a cabin in the stubble and from henceforth living twenty yards away from you. Oh, happiness and joy – I can hardly contain myself. Do you think that those two things can be bought, Valentine? Impossible, isn’t it? Well, all this happiness and joy, for which I would have given ten years of my life, are costing me… guess how much? Five hundred francs a year, in quarterly instalments. You see, from now on we have nothing to fear. I am at home here. I can put a ladder against my wall and look over it. I am entitled to tell you that I love you, without fearing that the night watch will disturb me, provided your pride is not wounded at hearing this word on the lips of a poor day-labourer dressed in a smock and wearing a cap.’

Valentine gave a little cry of joyful surprise; then, as if a jealous cloud had suddenly come between her and the ray of sunshine that had lit up her heart, she remarked sadly: ‘Alas, Maximilien, now we shall be too free and our happiness will tempt fate. We shall misuse our freedom and a false sense of security will destroy us.’

‘Can you say that to me, my dearest; to the man who, since he has known you, has proved every day that he subordinates his own thoughts and his own life to yours? Was it not my happiness that gave you confidence in me? When you told me that some vague instinct had convinced you that you were running a great danger, I devoted myself to serving you, and asked for no reward save the happiness of being able to do so. Since that time, have I given any indication that would make you repent of having chosen me from among all those who would have been happy to die for you? Poor
child, you told me that you were engaged to Monsieur d’Epinay, that your father had decided that this match would take place and that, consequently, it was certain to do so, since everything that Monsieur de Villefort wants is bound to happen. Well, I stayed in the background, not expecting anything from my own will or yours, but everything from events and from Providence; and yet you love me, you took pity on me, Valentine, and you told me so. Thank you for those sweet words: all I ask is that you should repeat them from time to time, and I shall forget everything else.’

‘This is why you have become so bold, Maximilien; this is why my life is at once very sweet and very unhappy, to the point where I often ask myself which is better for me: the sorrow that I once endured because of my stepmother and her blind preference for her own child, or all the perils of the happiness that I feel when I see you.’

‘Perils!’ Maximilien exclaimed. ‘How can you say such a hard and unjust word? Have you ever seen a more submissive slave than I? Valentine, you permitted me occasionally to speak to you, but forbade me to follow you. I obeyed. Since I discovered the means to break into this plot of land and speak to you through this door – in short, to be so close to you without seeing you – have I ever asked to touch even the hem of your dress through the gate? Tell me. Have I ever taken a step towards climbing over the wall, a trivial obstacle to one as young and as strong as I am? Not a single rebuke for your harshness towards me, not a single desire spoken aloud. I have kept my word as scrupulously as a knight of old. At least admit that, so that I may not think you unjust.’