The Count of Monte Cristo
family which could make such sacrifices in order to keep a promise and
fulfil a duty.”
At the conclusion of these words, the count rose to depart.
“Are you going to leave us, count?” said Madame de Villefort.
“I am sorry to say I must do so, madame, I only came to remind you of
your promise for Saturday.”
“Did you fear that we should forget it?”
“You are very good, madame, but M. de Villefort has so many important
and urgent occupations.”
“My husband has given me his word, sir,” said Madame de Villefort; “you
have just seen him resolve to keep it when he has everything to lose,
and surely there is more reason for his doing so where he has
everything to gain.”
“And,” said Villefort, “is it at your house in the Champs-Élysées that
you receive your visitors?”
“No,” said Monte Cristo, “which is precisely the reason which renders
your kindness more meritorious,—it is in the country.”
“In the country?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it, then? Near Paris, is it not?”
“Very near, only half a league from the Barriers,—it is at Auteuil.”
“At Auteuil?” said Villefort; “true, Madame de Villefort told me you
lived at Auteuil, since it was to your house that she was taken. And in
what part of Auteuil do you reside?”
“Rue de la Fontaine.”
“Rue de la Fontaine!” exclaimed Villefort in an agitated tone; “at what
number?”
“No. 28.”
“Then,” cried Villefort, “was it you who bought M. de Saint-Méran’s
house!”
“Did it belong to M. de Saint-Méran?” demanded Monte Cristo.
“Yes,” replied Madame de Villefort; “and, would you believe it,
count——”
“Believe what?”
“You think this house pretty, do you not?”
“I think it charming.”
“Well, my husband would never live in it.”
“Indeed?” returned Monte Cristo, “that is a prejudice on your part, M.
de Villefort, for which I am quite at a loss to account.”
“I do not like Auteuil, sir,” said the procureur, making an evident
effort to appear calm.
“But I hope you will not carry your antipathy so far as to deprive me
of the pleasure of your company, sir,” said Monte Cristo.
“No, count,—I hope—I assure you I shall do my best,” stammered
Villefort.
“Oh,” said Monte Cristo, “I allow of no excuse. On Saturday, at six
o’clock. I shall be expecting you, and if you fail to come, I shall
think—for how do I know to the contrary?—that this house, which has
remained uninhabited for twenty years, must have some gloomy tradition
or dreadful legend connected with it.”
“I will come, count,—I will be sure to come,” said Villefort eagerly.
“Thank you,” said Monte Cristo; “now you must permit me to take my
leave of you.”
“You said before that you were obliged to leave us, monsieur,” said
Madame de Villefort, “and you were about to tell us why when your
attention was called to some other subject.”
“Indeed madame,” said Monte Cristo: “I scarcely know if I dare tell you
where I am going.”
“Nonsense; say on.”
“Well, then, it is to see a thing on which I have sometimes mused for
hours together.”
“What is it?”
“A telegraph. So now I have told my secret.”
“A telegraph?” repeated Madame de Villefort.
“Yes, a telegraph. I had often seen one placed at the end of a road on
a hillock, and in the light of the sun its black arms, bending in every
direction, always reminded me of the claws of an immense beetle, and I
assure you it was never without emotion that I gazed on it, for I could
not help thinking how wonderful it was that these various signs should
be made to cleave the air with such precision as to convey to the
distance of three hundred leagues the ideas and wishes of a man sitting
at a table at one end of the line to another man similarly placed at
the opposite extremity, and all this effected by a simple act of
volition on the part of the sender of the message. I began to think of
genii, sylphs, gnomes, in short, of all the ministers of the occult
sciences, until I laughed aloud at the freaks of my own imagination.
Now, it never occurred to me to wish for a nearer inspection of these
large insects, with their long black claws, for I always feared to find
under their stone wings some little human genius fagged to death with
cabals, factions, and government intrigues. But one fine day I learned
that the mover of this telegraph was only a poor wretch, hired for
twelve hundred francs a year, and employed all day, not in studying the
heavens like an astronomer, or in gazing on the water like an angler,
or even in enjoying the privilege of observing the country around him,
but all his monotonous life was passed in watching his white-bellied,
black-clawed fellow insect, four or five leagues distant from him. At
length I felt a desire to study this living chrysalis more closely, and
to endeavor to understand the secret part played by these insect-actors
when they occupy themselves simply with pulling different pieces of
string.”
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“And are you going there?”
“I am.”
“What telegraph do you intend visiting? that of the home department, or
of the observatory?”
“Oh, no; I should find there people who would force me to understand
things of which I would prefer to remain ignorant, and who would try to
explain to me, in spite of myself, a mystery which even they do not
understand. _Ma foi!_ I should wish to keep my illusions concerning
insects unimpaired; it is quite enough to have those dissipated which I
had formed of my fellow-creatures. I shall, therefore, not visit either
of these telegraphs, but one in the open country where I shall find a
good-natured simpleton, who knows no more than the machine he is
employed to work.”
“You are a singular man,” said Villefort.
“What line would you advise me to study?”
“The one that is most in use just at this time.”
“The Spanish one, you mean, I suppose?”
“Yes; should you like a letter to the minister that they might explain
to you——”
“No,” said Monte Cristo; “since, as I told you before, I do not wish to
comprehend it. The moment I understand it there will no longer exist a
telegraph for me; it will be nothing more than a sign from M. Duchâtel,
or from M. Montalivet, transmitted to the prefect of Bayonne, mystified
by two Greek words, _têle_, _graphein_. It is the insect with black
claws, and the awful word which I wish to retain in my imagination in
all its purity and all its importance.”
“Go then; for in the course of two hours it will be dark, and you will
not be able to see anything.”
“_Ma foi!_ you frighten me. Which is the nearest way? Bayonne?”
“Yes; the road to Bayonne.”
“And afterwards the road to Châtillon?”
“Yes.”
“By the tower of Montlhéry, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. Good-bye. On Saturday I will tell you my impressions
concerning the telegraph.”
At the door the count was met by the two notaries, who had just
completed the act which was to disinherit Valentine, and who were
leaving under the conviction of having done a thing which could not
fail of redounding considerably to their credit.
Chapter 61. How a Gardener May Get Rid of the Dormice that Eat His
Peaches
Not on the same night as he had stated, but the next morning, the Count
of Monte Cristo went out by the Barrière d’Enfer, taking the road to
Orléans. Leaving the village of Linas, without stopping at the
telegraph, which flourished its great bony arms as he passed, the count
reached the tower of Montlhéry, situated, as everyone knows, upon the
highest point of the plain of that name. At the foot of the hill the
count dismounted and began to ascend by a little winding path, about
eighteen inches wide; when he reached the summit he found himself
stopped by a hedge, upon which green fruit had succeeded to red and
white flowers.
Monte Cristo looked for the entrance to the enclosure, and was not long
in finding a little wooden gate, working on willow hinges, and fastened
with a nail and string. The count soon mastered the mechanism, the gate
opened, and he then found himself in a little garden, about twenty feet
long by twelve wide, bounded on one side by part of the hedge, which
contained the ingenious contrivance we have called a gate, and on the
other by the old tower, covered with ivy and studded with wall-flowers.
No one would have thought in looking at this old, weather-beaten,
floral-decked tower (which might be likened to an elderly dame dressed
up to receive her grandchildren at a birthday feast) that it would have
been capable of telling strange things, if,—in addition to the menacing
ears which the proverb says all walls are provided with,—it had also a
voice.
The garden was crossed by a path of red gravel, edged by a border of
thick box, of many years’ growth, and of a tone and color that would
have delighted the heart of Delacroix, our modern Rubens. This path was
formed in the shape of the figure of 8, thus, in its windings, making a
walk of sixty feet in a garden of only twenty.
Never had Flora, the fresh and smiling goddess of gardeners, been
honored with a purer or more scrupulous worship than that which was
paid to her in this little enclosure. In fact, of the twenty rose-trees
which formed the _parterre_, not one bore the mark of the slug, nor
were there evidences anywhere of the clustering aphis which is so
destructive to plants growing in a damp soil. And yet it was not
because the damp had been excluded from the garden; the earth, black as
soot, the thick foliage of the trees betrayed its presence; besides,
had natural humidity been wanting, it could have been immediately
supplied by artificial means, thanks to a tank of water, sunk in one of
the corners of the garden, and upon which were stationed a frog and a
toad, who, from antipathy, no doubt, always remained on the two
opposite sides of the basin. There was not a blade of grass to be seen
in the paths, or a weed in the flower-beds; no fine lady ever trained
and watered her geraniums, her cacti, and her rhododendrons, in her
porcelain _jardinière_ with more pains than this hitherto unseen
gardener bestowed upon his little enclosure.
Monte Cristo stopped after having closed the gate and fastened the
string to the nail, and cast a look around.
“The man at the telegraph,” said he, “must either engage a gardener or
devote himself passionately to agriculture.”
Suddenly he struck against something crouching behind a wheelbarrow
filled with leaves; the something rose, uttering an exclamation of
astonishment, and Monte Cristo found himself facing a man about fifty
years old, who was plucking strawberries, which he was placing upon
grape leaves. He had twelve leaves and about as many strawberries,
which, on rising suddenly, he let fall from his hand.
“You are gathering your crop, sir?” said Monte Cristo, smiling.
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“Excuse me, sir,” replied the man, raising his hand to his cap; “I am
not up there, I know, but I have only just come down.”
“Do not let me interfere with you in anything, my friend,” said the
count; “gather your strawberries, if, indeed, there are any left.”
“I have ten left,” said the man, “for here are eleven, and I had
twenty-one, five more than last year. But I am not surprised; the
spring has been warm this year, and strawberries require heat, sir.
This is the reason that, instead of the sixteen I had last year, I have
this year, you see, eleven, already plucked—twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Ah, I miss three, they were here
last night, sir—I am sure they were here—I counted them. It must be the
son of Mère Simon who has stolen them; I saw him strolling about here
this morning. Ah, the young rascal—stealing in a garden—he does not
know where that may lead him to.”
“Certainly, it is wrong,” said Monte Cristo, “but you should take into
consideration the youth and greediness of the delinquent.”