The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (99 page)

‘It is true,’ Valentine said, slipping the tip of one of her slender fingers between two planks for Maximilien to kiss it. ‘It’s true, you are a trustworthy friend. But, in the end, you only acted out of self-interest, my dear, because you know very well that, on the day when the slave becomes too demanding, he must lose everything. You promised me the friendship of a brother – I who have no friends, I who am ignored by my father, I who am persecuted by my stepmother and who have no other consolation but a motionless, benumbed old man, whose hand cannot press my hand and who can speak to me only with his eyes, though his heart no doubt beats with some trace of warmth for me. What a bitter irony of fate that I should be the enemy and victim of all those who are stronger than I am, having only a corpse as my supporter and friend! Oh,
Maximilien, I say it again, I am truly unfortunate, and you are right to love me for myself and not for you.’

‘Valentine,’ the young man said, deeply moved, ‘I cannot say that you are the only person that I love in the world, because I also love my sister and my brother-in-law; but my love for them is tranquil and calm, quite unlike the feeling that I have for you. When I think of you, my blood churns, my chest swells, my heart flows over; but I shall direct all this strength, all this ardour, all this superhuman power to loving you only as long as you tell me to devote them to your service. They say that Monsieur Franz d’Epinay will be away for another year yet. What good fortune might not befall us in a year, what favourable turn might events not take! So let us hope, because it is so good and so sweet to hope. Meanwhile you, Valentine, you who accuse me of egoism, how have you behaved towards me? Like the beautiful and cold statue of some prudish Venus. In exchange for my devotion, my obedience and my restraint, what have you promised me? Nothing. What have you given me? Very little. You talk to me of Monsieur d’Epinay, your fiancé, and you sigh at the thought that you might one day belong to him. Come, Valentine, is that the only idea on your mind? What! I offer you my life, I give you my soul, I dedicate the slightest beat of my heart to you; and, while I am all yours, while I whisper to myself that I should die if I were to lose you, you, on your side, are not appalled at the very idea of belonging to another man! Oh, Valentine, Valentine! If I was what you are, if I felt myself to be loved as you may be sure that I love you, I should already have put my hand a hundred times through the bars of this gate and grasped poor Maximilien’s, saying: “Yours, yours alone, Maximilien, in this world and in the next.” ’

Valentine made no reply, but the young man heard her sighing and weeping. The effect on him was immediate.

‘Oh, Valentine, Valentine!’ he cried. ‘Forget what I said. Something in my words must have upset you!’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘You are right. But can you not see that I am a poor creature, abandoned virtually in a stranger’s house – because my father is almost a stranger to me – whose will has been broken for ten years, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, by the iron will of the masters who are set over me? No one can see what I suffer and I have told no one except you. In appearance, in the eyes of everyone, all is well with me, all is goodness and affection
– when in reality all is hostility. The outside world says: “Monsieur de Villefort is too serious and strict to be very gentle with his daughter, but at least she has had the good fortune of finding a second mother in Madame de Villefort.” Well, the outside world is wrong. My father abandons me, with indifference, and my stepmother hates me with an unremitting hatred that is all the more frightful for being hidden beneath an eternal smile.’

‘She hates you! You, Valentine! How can anyone hate you?’

‘Alas, my friend,’ Valentine said, ‘I have to admit that her hatred towards me comes from what is almost a natural feeling. She adores her son, my brother Edouard.’

‘So?’

‘So, while it may seem strange to bring money into the question that we are discussing, I do believe, my dear, that her hatred derives from that. Since she has no wealth on her own side, and I am already rich, thanks to my mother, with a fortune that will even be more than doubled by that of Monsieur and Madame de Saint-Méran which is due one day to revert to me, well, I think she is envious. Oh, my God, if I could give half that fortune and feel in Monsieur de Villefort’s house as a daughter should in the house of her father, I would do it in an instant.’

‘Poor Valentine!’

‘Yes, I feel like someone bound, and at the same time so weak that it seems to me that my chains support me and I am afraid to break them. In any case, my father is not the sort of man whose orders can be disregarded with impunity. He is powerful in his opposition to me, he would be powerful against you: he would be the same against the king, protected as he is by an irreproachable past and an almost unassailable position. Oh, Maximilien! I swear it, if I do not struggle, it is because I fear you would be broken as much as I would in the fight.’

‘But Valentine, why despair, why always paint the future in such sombre hues?’ Maximilien asked.

‘Because, my friend, I judge it by the past.’

‘Come now: while I may not be an outstanding match from the aristocratic point of view, I still belong, in many ways, to the same world as the one in which you live. The time when there were two nations in France has passed. The leading families of the monarchy have melted into the families of the empire and the aristocracy of the lance has married the nobility of the cannon.
¹
Well, I belong to
the latter: I have a fine future in the army, I possess a small but independent fortune and, finally, the memory of my father is venerated in our part of the country as that of one of the most honest merchants who ever lived. I say, our part of the country, Valentine, because you almost come from Marseille.’

‘Don’t mention Marseille to me, Maximilien. The name alone recalls my dear mother, that angel, mourned by everyone, who watched over her daughter during her brief sojourn on earth and, I hope, still watches over her during her eternal sojourn in heaven. Oh, if my poor mother were alive, Maximilien, I should have nothing to fear. I should tell her that I love you and she would protect us.’

‘Alas, Valentine,’ Maximilien said, ‘if she was alive I should certainly not know you; for, as you said, you would be happy if she were alive – and a happy Valentine would have looked down on me in contempt.’

‘Oh, my dear friend, now you are being unfair in your turn,’ Valentine exclaimed. ‘But tell me…’

‘What do you want me to tell you?’ Maximilien asked, seeing that Valentine was hesitating.

‘Tell me: was there ever, at one time, in Marseille, some matter of dispute between your father and mine?’

‘No, not as far as I know,’ Maximilien replied, ‘except that your father was an utterly devoted supporter of the Bourbons and mine was devoted to the emperor. I assume that that was the only bone they ever had to pick between them. Why do you ask?’

‘I shall tell you, because you ought to know everything. It was on the day when your nomination as officer of the Legion of Honour was published in the newspaper. We were all visiting my grandfather, Monsieur Noirtier, and Monsieur Danglars was there: you know, the banker whose horses nearly killed my mother and my brother two days ago? I was reading aloud from the newspaper to my grandfather while these gentlemen were talking about Mademoiselle Danglars’ marriage. When I got to the paragraph concerning you, which I had already read, because you had told me the good news on the previous day, I was very happy, but also very uneasy at having to speak your name aloud. I should certainly have left it out, were it not that I feared that my silence might be misinterpreted. So, I plucked up all my courage and read.’

‘Dearest Valentine!’

‘Well, as soon as I spoke your name, my father turned around. I was so certain – you see what a silly goose I am! – that everyone would be struck by your name as if by a bolt of lightning, that I thought I saw my father, and even Monsieur Danglars, shudder at the sound of it; but in his case I am sure it was an illusion.

‘ “Morrel,” my father said. “Wait!” And he raised an eyebrow. “Would that be one of those Morrels of Marseille, one of those Bonapartist fanatics who gave us so much trouble in 1815?”

‘ “Yes,” Danglars replied. “I even think it may be the son of the former shipowner.” ’

‘Indeed!’ said Maximilien. ‘What did your father say?’

‘Something dreadful that I dare not repeat.’

‘Repeat it anyway,’ Maximilien said with a smile.

‘ “Their emperor,” he said contemptuously, “knew how to put all those fanatics in their place: he called them cannon-fodder, and that was the only name they deserved. I am delighted to see that the new government has restored this salutary principle. I should congratulate it on keeping Algeria, if only for that reason, even though the cost is a little excessive.” ’

‘Admittedly, that is rather brutal, as a policy,’ Maximilien said. ‘But, my darling, you have no need to blush at what Monsieur de Villefort said, because my good father was a match for yours in this respect: he said repeatedly: “Why does the emperor, who has done so many fine things, not enrol a regiment of judges and lawyers, and put them in the forefront of the battle?” So you see, my dear, that the two deserve one another, both in kindness of thought and sweetness of expression. But what did Monsieur Danglars say to this remark by the king’s prosecutor?’

‘Oh, he started to laugh with that peculiar sly laugh that he has, which I find savage. Then, a moment later, they got up and left. Only then did I see that something had upset my grandfather. I must tell you, Maximilien, that I am the only person who can tell how he feels, because no one else takes any notice of the poor, paralysed old man; and I guessed that the conversation might have impressed him, since they had been speaking ill of his emperor and it appears he was a fanatical Bonapartist.’

‘Certainly,’ said Maximilien. ‘He was one of the leading figures of the imperial era. He was a senator and, whether you realize it or not, Valentine, he was close to all the Bonapartist conspiracies under the Restoration.’

‘I have sometimes heard whispers about that, and was surprised by them: a Bonapartist grandfather and a Royalist father. Anyway, what do you expect? I turned back to him and his eyes indicated the paper.

‘ “What is it, papa?” I asked. “Are you pleased?”

‘He nodded.

‘ “At what my father has just said?” I asked.

‘He shook his head.

‘ “At what Monsieur Danglars said?”

‘Again, he shook his head.

‘ “So, you are pleased that Monsieur Morrel” (I did not dare say, Maximilien) “has been appointed officer of the Legion of Honour?”

‘He nodded.

‘Can you believe that, Maximilien? He was pleased that you had been appointed to the Legion of Honour, even though he does not know you. It may perhaps be folly on his part, because people say he is entering a second childhood; but I love him, even so.’

‘That’s odd,’ Maximilien meditated. ‘Your father hates me, while your grandfather… How peculiar these political loves and hatreds are!’

‘Hush!’ Valentine suddenly exclaimed. ‘Hide! Quickly! Go away, someone is coming!’

Maximilien grasped a spade and began to dig pitilessly into the alfalfa.

‘Mademoiselle!’ cried a voice behind the trees. ‘Madame de Villefort is looking everywhere for you and asking after you. There is a visitor in the drawing-room.’

‘A visitor!’ Valentine said, in an anxious voice. ‘Who is visiting us?’

‘A great lord, a prince, they say. The Count of Monte Cristo.’

‘I’m coming,’ Valentine said loudly.

On the other side of the gate, the man to whom Valentine’s ‘I’m coming!’ served as a farewell at the end of every meeting, started on hearing the name of her visitor.

‘Well, well,’ Maximilien said to himself, leaning thoughtfully on his spade. ‘How does the Count of Monte Cristo happen to know Monsieur de Villefort?’

It really was the Count of Monte Cristo who had just arrived at the Villeforts’, intending to repay the crown prosecutor’s visit. As one may imagine, the whole household had been put into a state of great excitement at the announcement of his name.

Mme de Villefort, who was in the drawing-room, immediately called for her son, so that he could repeat his thanks to the count. Edouard, who for the past two days had heard tell of nothing except this great man, hurried down – not out of any desire to obey his mother or to thank the count, but from curiosity and to make some remark which would allow him the opportunity for one of those jibes that his mother always greeted with: ‘Oh, the wicked child! But you have to forgive him, he’s so witty!’

When the usual greetings had been exchanged, the count asked after M. de Villefort.

‘My husband is dining with the chancellor,’ the young woman replied. ‘He has just left and will be very sorry, I am sure, at having been deprived of the pleasure of seeing you.’

Two visitors who had arrived in the drawing-room before the count, and who could not take their eyes off him, left after the period of time needed to satisfy good manners and curiosity.

‘By the way,’ Mme de Villefort asked Edouard, ‘what is your sister Valentine doing? Someone must go and fetch her so that I can present her to Monsieur le Comte.’

‘You have a daughter, Madame?’ the count asked. ‘But she must be a little girl?’