Edmond Dantès
play was, of course, immense. Long before the time for the curtain to
rise, the vast edifice was crowded to its utmost capacity with an eager
and enthusiastic assemblage. Not only were the galleries, parquette and
lobbies filled with blouses, but the boxes were glittering with a
perfect galaxy of fashion, loveliness and rank. Conspicuous in the
orchestra stalls were the three friends--the Secretary, the journalist
and the Deputy. In a small and private loge in the second tier,
concealed from all eyes by its light curtain of green silk, and its
position, but himself viewing everything upon the stage or in the house,
sat the author of the play, calmly awaiting the rising of the curtain.
The performance at length began, and the piece proceeded to its
termination amid thunders of applause, which, as the curtain finally
descended on the last scene of the last act, became perfectly deafening,
accompanied by cries for the author. But no author appeared behind the
footlights or in the proscenium box; and, at last, the uproar becoming
redoubled, the manager came forward, and, in the author's behalf,
tendered grateful acknowledgments for the unprecedented favor, even by a
Parisian audience, with which the production had been received, but, at
the same time, entreated the additional favor that they would grant the
author's request, and permit his name, for the present, to remain
unknown. He would, however, venture to reveal this much, that the author
was a distinguished friend of the people. The earthquake of applause
which succeeded this announcement was almost frightful, and while the
scene was at its height, the three friends with great difficulty managed
to extricate themselves from the multitude which wedged up the lobbies,
and to make their escape.
"A friend of the people!" cried Debray, bitterly, as his coupe,
containing himself and companions, drove off to Very's. "From such
friends let the people be saved, and they may save themselves from their
foes."
"And the play, what think you of that?" cried Beauchamp.
"That it is a most able and abominable production, eminently calculated
to cause exactly the evils which we have this night perceived--to excite
and rouse the worst passions of the mob, and render the masses
dissatisfied with their inevitable and irredeemable lot, and as
dangerous as wild beasts to all whose lot is more favored."
"Man has rights as man, and men in masses have rights, and one of those
rights is to know actually what those rights are," said Beauchamp. "The
most melancholy feature in the oppression of man is his ignorance that
he is oppressed. Enlighten him as to those rights, elevate his mind to
appreciate and value them, and then counsel him firmly and resolutely to
demand those rights, and quietly and wisely to obtain them."
"Aye! but will he obey such counsel?" exclaimed Chateau-Renaud. "Will
not the result of such enlightenment and excitement prove, as it ever
has proved, anarchy, revolution, guilt, blood? Who shall restrain the
monster once lashed into madness?"
"But you can surely perceive no such design in this play, and no such
effect," rejoined Beauchamp.
"In the abstract," replied the Count, "this production is
unexceptionable--most beautiful, yet most powerful. How it could have
been the work of an unpracticed pen, embodying as it does passages of
which the first dramatists of the romantic school might be proud, I
cannot imagine. Besides, there seems familiar acquaintance with stage
effect and the way in which it is produced. But that might have been,
and probably was, the result of some professional player's suggestions."
"And, then, the profound knowledge of the human heart evinced--its
passions, motives and principles of action," added the journalist.
"There seems an individuality, a personality in the production, which
compels the idea that the author is himself the hero, that he has
himself experienced the evils he so vividly portrays, that the drama is
at once the effusion of his own heart and the embodiment of his own
history. Can that man be M. Dantes?"
"If it be he," cried the Secretary, "there is more reason than ever to
call him the most dangerous man in Paris. What with his speeches in the
Chamber and his plays at the theatre, all tending to one most
unrighteous end, and all aiming to inflame such an explosive mass as the
workmen of Paris, he may be regarded as little less than the very agent
of the fiend to accomplish havoc on earth!"
"Yet, strange to say, my dear Secretary," said the journalist,
laughing, "you have not yet estimated the tithe of this man's influence
for good, or, as you think, for evil. Rumor proclaims him to be as
immensely opulent as appearances would indicate him to be impoverished.
That his whole soul, as you say, is devoted to the people, with all his
wonderful powers of mind and person, is undoubted. That he has availed
himself of that grand lever, the press, to accomplish his purposes, be
they good or bad, seems equally certain. 'La Reforme,' the new daily, is
undoubtedly under his control, if not sustained by his pen and his
purse, for it has a wider circulation than all the other Parisian papers
put together. It goes everywhere--it seeks the alleys, not the
boulevards, finds its way to the threshold of all, whether paid for or
not."
"Ah!" cried Debray, in great agitation. "Is it so?"
"And, then, not only is the public press subsidized by this man, if
report is not even falser than usual, but a whole army of pamphleteers,
journalists, litterateurs and students await his bidding, as well as
some of the most distinguished novelists and dramatists of the nation
and age!"
"My God!" exclaimed the Count. "Can this be so?"
"Nay--nay," replied Beauchamp, "I make no assertions, I merely retail
rumors. But what cannot uncounted wealth achieve, directed by genius and
intelligence?"
"But is this man actually so wealthy?" asked Debray, pale with
agitation. "His manners, dress, equipage, residence and mode of life
would indicate just the reverse."
"I know not--no one knows," said Beauchamp. "It is only known to myself
and to a few others that he dwells in the mansion No. 27 Rue du Helder,
formerly the residence of the Count de Morcerf, and that his private
apartment is that pavilion at the corner of the court, where at
half-past ten, on the morning of the 21st of May, 1838, we breakfasted
with our amiable friend Albert, and were met by that remarkable man, the
Count of Monte-Cristo."
"I remember that morning well," said Chateau-Renaud.
"Everything, it is said, remains in that once splendid mansion precisely
as when it was deserted by the Countess and her son, at the time of the
suicide of the Count--everything except that glorious picture of the
Catalan fisherman by Leopold Robert, in Albert's exquisite chamber,
which alone he took with him."
"It is strange that a man so opulent as you represent M. Dantes to be,
should adopt his magnificence at second hand," observed Debray, coolly.
"But I do not represent him as opulent, my dear Lucien; and he certainly
is the last man either to invent magnificence or to adopt it. Why, he is
as plain in manners and mode as St. Simon himself. His dress you have
seen; as to equipage his only conveyance is a public fiacre; as to
diet, household arrangements and everything else of a personal nature,
nothing can be more republican and less epicurean than is witnessed at
his house. His study, Albert de Morcerf's pavilion, is said to be the
only sumptuous apartment in the whole establishment; and that
sumptuousness is of a character entirely literary and practical. His
retinue consists of three servants, called Baptistin, Bertuccio and Ali,
the latter being a Nubian, although fame gives him a perfect army of
servitors prompt to execute his bidding. But I will not indulge your
skeptical and sarcastic nature, Lucien, with a detail of all that rumor
says of this wonderful man. I will only say that all he is, and has or
hopes for seems devoted to one single object--the welfare of his race."
"Has he a wife?" asked Debray.
"He is a widower, with two children, a young girl, called Zuleika, and a
youthful son, called Esperance. But my acquaintance with him is wholly
of a public character. I have never been in his house, and very few
there are who have been. But here we are."
And the coupe stopped at Very's.
CHAPTER VII.
DANTES AND HIS DAUGHTER.
Even in the immediate vicinity of the Morcerf mansion, No. 27 Rue du
Helder, no one was aware that its new tenant was M. Dantes, the famous
Deputy from Marseilles. All the neighbors knew was that the palatial
edifice had been purchased by a stranger, who said he was acting for his
master, a man of great wealth lately arrived from the east. No repairs
or alterations had been made, while the Morcerf furniture was bought
with the house, the only new articles making their appearance being
several huge bookcases and a number of large boxes evidently containing
books, together with a host of traveling trunks filled, as was to be
presumed, with the wardrobe of the family. The servants took possession
during the day and were duly noted, but how or when the proprietor came
could not be ascertained, while after his installation glimpses of him
were exceedingly rare.
Occasionally, however, a beautiful girl, with an oriental look
notwithstanding her tasteful and elegant Parisian attire, would be seen
for a moment at the windows, but she invariably vanished on realizing
that she was observed. Sometimes, a handsome young man stood at her
side, but he also seemed anxious to avoid the scrutiny of the curious,
although he evinced less timidity than his companion, always withdrawing
slowly and with great deliberation.
It was after midnight. On the second floor of the pavilion once
inhabited by the Viscount Albert de Morcerf was now a spacious library.
The walls were lined with tall book-shelves, mounting to the lofty
ceiling, and groaning under ponderous piles of volumes, from the huge
black letter folio of the Middle Ages to the lightest duodecimo of the
day; while in all parts of the chamber, on the floor, tables and chairs,
and in the deep embrasures of the windows, were scattered huge masses of
papers, pamphlets, manuscripts and charts. Over the bookcases stood
marble busts of Danton, Mirabeau, Napoleon, Armand Carrel, the Duc de
St. Simon and other great men whose names are identified with France;
between the windows looking out on the garden, shrouded in shrubs and
creeping plants, hung a full-length and magnificent picture of Fourier.
Near the centre of the apartment stood a vast table covered with books,
papers, manuscripts and writing materials, beside which stood one of
those sombre and massive arm-chairs, on the possession of which the
former proprietor had so felicitated himself, bearing on a carved shield
the fleur-de-lis of the Louvre, and in whose sumptuous and antique
embrace had, perhaps, reposed a Richelieu, a Mazarin or a Sully. The
windows were hung with heavy tapestry of ancient pattern and rich dye,
and also the walls, save where covered with books. A soft and summery
atmosphere, the warmth of which emanated from concealed furnaces,
neutralized the chill of an autumnal night, and the mellow chiaro-oscuro
of a vast astral diffused its lunar effulgence on all around.
Within this chamber was a man, who, with arms crossed upon his bosom and
eyes fastened in profound and seemingly mournful contemplation upon the
floor, slowly paced from one extremity of the spacious apartment to the
other.
This man was M. Dantes, representative of Marseilles in the French
Chamber of Deputies.
"At last, at last," he murmured, "the avenging Nemesis ceases to gnaw!