The Count of Monte Cristo
France, you are naturally subjected to the French law.”
“I know it sir,” replied Monte Cristo; “but when I visit a country I
begin to study, by all the means which are available, the men from whom
I may have anything to hope or to fear, till I know them as well as,
perhaps better than, they know themselves. It follows from this, that
the king’s attorney, be he who he may, with whom I should have to deal,
would assuredly be more embarrassed than I should.”
“That is to say,” replied Villefort with hesitation, “that human nature
being weak, every man, according to your creed, has committed faults.”
“Faults or crimes,” responded Monte Cristo with a negligent air.
“And that you alone, amongst the men whom you do not recognize as your
brothers—for you have said so,” observed Villefort in a tone that
faltered somewhat—“you alone are perfect.”
“No, not perfect,” was the count’s reply; “only impenetrable, that’s
all. But let us leave off this strain, sir, if the tone of it is
displeasing to you; I am no more disturbed by your justice than are you
by my second-sight.”
“No, no,—by no means,” said Villefort, who was afraid of seeming to
abandon his ground. “No; by your brilliant and almost sublime
conversation you have elevated me above the ordinary level; we no
longer talk, we rise to dissertation. But you know how the theologians
in their collegiate chairs, and philosophers in their controversies,
occasionally say cruel truths; let us suppose for the moment that we
are theologizing in a social way, or even philosophically, and I will
say to you, rude as it may seem, ‘My brother, you sacrifice greatly to
pride; you may be above others, but above you there is God.’”
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“Above us all, sir,” was Monte Cristo’s response, in a tone and with an
emphasis so deep that Villefort involuntarily shuddered. “I have my
pride for men—serpents always ready to threaten everyone who would pass
without crushing them under foot. But I lay aside that pride before
God, who has taken me from nothing to make me what I am.”
“Then, count, I admire you,” said Villefort, who, for the first time in
this strange conversation, used the aristocratic form to the unknown
personage, whom, until now, he had only called monsieur. “Yes, and I
say to you, if you are really strong, really superior, really pious, or
impenetrable, which you were right in saying amounts to the same
thing—then be proud, sir, for that is the characteristic of
predominance. Yet you have unquestionably some ambition.”
“I have, sir.”
“And what may it be?”
“I too, as happens to every man once in his life, have been taken by
Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he showed
me all the kingdoms of the world, and as he said before, so said he to
me, ‘Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?’ I
reflected long, for a gnawing ambition had long preyed upon me, and
then I replied, ‘Listen,—I have always heard of Providence, and yet I
have never seen him, or anything that resembles him, or which can make
me believe that he exists. I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel
that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is
to recompense and punish.’ Satan bowed his head, and groaned. ‘You
mistake,’ he said, ‘Providence does exist, only you have never seen
him, because the child of God is as invisible as the parent. You have
seen nothing that resembles him, because he works by secret springs,
and moves by hidden ways. All I can do for you is to make you one of
the agents of that Providence.’ The bargain was concluded. I may
sacrifice my soul, but what matters it?” added Monte Cristo. “If the
thing were to do again, I would again do it.”
Villefort looked at Monte Cristo with extreme amazement.
“Count,” he inquired, “have you any relations?”
“No, sir, I am alone in the world.”
“So much the worse.”
“Why?” asked Monte Cristo.
“Because then you might witness a spectacle calculated to break down
your pride. You say you fear nothing but death?”
“I did not say that I feared it; I only said that death alone could
check the execution of my plans.”
“And old age?”
“My end will be achieved before I grow old.”
“And madness?”
“I have been nearly mad; and you know the axiom,—_non bis in idem_. It
is an axiom of criminal law, and, consequently, you understand its full
application.”
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“Sir,” continued Villefort, “there is something to fear besides death,
old age, and madness. For instance, there is apoplexy—that
lightning-stroke which strikes but does not destroy you, and yet which
brings everything to an end. You are still yourself as now, and yet you
are yourself no longer; you who, like Ariel, verge on the angelic, are
but an inert mass, which, like Caliban, verges on the brutal; and this
is called in human tongues, as I tell you, neither more nor less than
apoplexy. Come, if so you will, count, and continue this conversation
at my house, any day you may be willing to see an adversary capable of
understanding and anxious to refute you, and I will show you my father,
M. Noirtier de Villefort, one of the most fiery Jacobins of the French
Revolution; that is to say, he had the most remarkable audacity,
seconded by a most powerful organization—a man who has not, perhaps,
like yourself seen all the kingdoms of the earth, but who has helped to
overturn one of the greatest; in fact, a man who believed himself, like
you, one of the envoys, not of God, but of a supreme being; not of
Providence, but of fate. Well, sir, the rupture of a blood-vessel on
the lobe of the brain has destroyed all this, not in a day, not in an
hour, but in a second. M. Noirtier, who, on the previous night, was the
old Jacobin, the old senator, the old Carbonaro, laughing at the
guillotine, the cannon, and the dagger—M. Noirtier, playing with
revolutions—M. Noirtier, for whom France was a vast chess-board, from
which pawns, rooks, knights, and queens were to disappear, so that the
king was checkmated—M. Noirtier, the redoubtable, was the next morning
_poor M. Noirtier_, the helpless old man, at the tender mercies of the
weakest creature in the household, that is, his grandchild, Valentine;
a dumb and frozen carcass, in fact, living painlessly on, that time may
be given for his frame to decompose without his consciousness of its
decay.”
“Alas, sir,” said Monte Cristo “this spectacle is neither strange to my
eye nor my thought. I am something of a physician, and have, like my
fellows, sought more than once for the soul in living and in dead
matter; yet, like Providence, it has remained invisible to my eyes,
although present to my heart. A hundred writers since Socrates, Seneca,
St. Augustine, and Gall, have made, in verse and prose, the comparison
you have made, and yet I can well understand that a father’s sufferings
may effect great changes in the mind of a son. I will call on you, sir,
since you bid me contemplate, for the advantage of my pride, this
terrible spectacle, which must have been so great a source of sorrow to
your family.”
“It would have been so unquestionably, had not God given me so large a
compensation. In contrast with the old man, who is dragging his way to
the tomb, are two children just entering into life—Valentine, the
daughter by my first wife—Mademoiselle Renée de Saint-Méran—and Edward,
the boy whose life you have this day saved.”
“And what is your deduction from this compensation, sir?” inquired
Monte Cristo.
“My deduction is,” replied Villefort, “that my father, led away by his
passions, has committed some fault unknown to human justice, but marked
by the justice of God. That God, desirous in his mercy to punish but
one person, has visited this justice on him alone.”
Monte Cristo with a smile on his lips, uttered in the depths of his
soul a groan which would have made Villefort fly had he but heard it.
“Adieu, sir,” said the magistrate, who had risen from his seat; “I
leave you, bearing a remembrance of you—a remembrance of esteem, which
I hope will not be disagreeable to you when you know me better; for I
am not a man to bore my friends, as you will learn. Besides, you have
made an eternal friend of Madame de Villefort.”
The count bowed, and contented himself with seeing Villefort to the
door of his cabinet, the procureur being escorted to his carriage by
two footmen, who, on a signal from their master, followed him with
every mark of attention. When he had gone, Monte Cristo breathed a
profound sigh, and said:
“Enough of this poison, let me now seek the antidote.”
Then sounding his bell, he said to Ali, who entered:
“I am going to madame’s chamber—have the carriage ready at one
o’clock.”
Chapter 49. Haydée
It will be recollected that the new, or rather old, acquaintances of
the Count of Monte Cristo, residing in the Rue Meslay, were no other
than Maximilian, Julie, and Emmanuel.
The very anticipations of delight to be enjoyed in his forthcoming
visits—the bright, pure gleam of heavenly happiness it diffused over
the almost deadly warfare in which he had voluntarily engaged,
illumined his whole countenance with a look of ineffable joy and
calmness, as, immediately after Villefort’s departure, his thoughts
flew back to the cheering prospect before him, of tasting, at least, a
brief respite from the fierce and stormy passions of his mind. Even
Ali, who had hastened to obey the Count’s summons, went forth from his
master’s presence in charmed amazement at the unusual animation and
pleasure depicted on features ordinarily so stern and cold; while, as
though dreading to put to flight the agreeable ideas hovering over his
patron’s meditations, whatever they were, the faithful Nubian walked on
tiptoe towards the door, holding his breath, lest its faintest sound
should dissipate his master’s happy reverie.
It was noon, and Monte Cristo had set apart one hour to be passed in
the apartments of Haydée, as though his oppressed spirit could not all
at once admit the feeling of pure and unmixed joy, but required a
gradual succession of calm and gentle emotions to prepare his mind to
receive full and perfect happiness, in the same manner as ordinary
natures demand to be inured by degrees to the reception of strong or
violent sensations.
The young Greek, as we have already said, occupied apartments wholly
unconnected with those of the count. The rooms had been fitted up in
strict accordance with Oriental ideas; the floors were covered with the
richest carpets Turkey could produce; the walls hung with brocaded silk
of the most magnificent designs and texture; while around each chamber
luxurious divans were placed, with piles of soft and yielding cushions,
that needed only to be arranged at the pleasure or convenience of such
as sought repose.
Haydée had three French maids, and one who was a Greek. The first three
remained constantly in a small waiting-room, ready to obey the summons
of a small golden bell, or to receive the orders of the Romaic slave,
who knew just enough French to be able to transmit her mistress’s
wishes to the three other waiting-women; the latter had received most
peremptory instructions from Monte Cristo to treat Haydée with all the
deference they would observe to a queen.
The young girl herself generally passed her time in the chamber at the
farther end of her apartments. This was a sort of boudoir, circular,
and lighted only from the roof, which consisted of rose-colored glass.
Haydée was reclining upon soft downy cushions, covered with blue satin
spotted with silver; her head, supported by one of her exquisitely
moulded arms, rested on the divan immediately behind her, while the
other was employed in adjusting to her lips the coral tube of a rich
narghile, through whose flexible pipe she drew the smoke fragrant by