The Count of Monte Cristo
you authorize Mademoiselle Valentine to intrust herself to my honor?”
“No.”
“Do you prefer I should seek M. d’Épinay?”
“No.”
“Whence then will come the help we need—from chance?” resumed Morrel.
“No.”
“From you?”
“Yes.”
“You thoroughly understand me, sir? Pardon my eagerness, for my life
depends on your answer. Will our help come from you?”
“Yes.”
“You are sure of it?”
“Yes.” There was so much firmness in the look which gave this answer,
no one could, at any rate, doubt his will, if they did his power.
“Oh, thank you a thousand times! But how, unless a miracle should
restore your speech, your gesture, your movement, how can you, chained
to that armchair, dumb and motionless, oppose this marriage?” A smile
lit up the old man’s face, a strange smile of the eyes in a paralyzed
face.
“Then I must wait?” asked the young man.
“Yes.”
“But the contract?” The same smile returned. “Will you assure me it
shall not be signed?”
“Yes,” said Noirtier.
“The contract shall not be signed!” cried Morrel. “Oh, pardon me, sir;
I can scarcely realize so great a happiness. Will they not sign it?”
“No,” said the paralytic. Notwithstanding that assurance, Morrel still
hesitated. This promise of an impotent old man was so strange that,
instead of being the result of the power of his will, it might emanate
from enfeebled organs. Is it not natural that the madman, ignorant of
his folly, should attempt things beyond his power? The weak man talks
of burdens he can raise, the timid of giants he can confront, the poor
of treasures he spends, the most humble peasant, in the height of his
pride, calls himself Jupiter. Whether Noirtier understood the young
man’s indecision, or whether he had not full confidence in his
docility, he looked uneasily at him.
“What do you wish, sir?” asked Morrel; “that I should renew my promise
of remaining tranquil?” Noirtier’s eye remained fixed and firm, as if
to imply that a promise did not suffice; then it passed from his face
to his hands.
“Shall I swear to you, sir?” asked Maximilian.
“Yes,” said the paralytic with the same solemnity. Morrel understood
that the old man attached great importance to an oath. He extended his
hand.
“I swear to you, on my honor,” said he, “to await your decision
respecting the course I am to pursue with M. d’Épinay.”
“That is right,” said the old man.
“Now,” said Morrel, “do you wish me to retire?”
“Yes.”
“Without seeing Mademoiselle Valentine?”
“Yes.”
Morrel made a sign that he was ready to obey. “But,” said he, “first
allow me to embrace you as your daughter did just now.” Noirtier’s
expression could not be understood. The young man pressed his lips on
the same spot, on the old man’s forehead, where Valentine’s had been.
Then he bowed a second time and retired.
He found outside the door the old servant, to whom Valentine had given
directions. Morrel was conducted along a dark passage, which led to a
little door opening on the garden, soon found the spot where he had
entered, with the assistance of the shrubs gained the top of the wall,
and by his ladder was in an instant in the clover-field where his
cabriolet was still waiting for him. He got in it, and thoroughly
wearied by so many emotions, arrived about midnight in the Rue Meslay,
threw himself on his bed and slept soundly.
VOLUME FOUR
40010m
40012m
40020m
Chapter 74. The Villefort Family Vault
Two days after, a considerable crowd was assembled, towards ten o’clock
in the morning, around the door of M. de Villefort’s house, and a long
file of mourning-coaches and private carriages extended along the
Faubourg Saint-Honoré and the Rue de la Pépinière. Among them was one
of a very singular form, which appeared to have come from a distance.
It was a kind of covered wagon, painted black, and was one of the first
to arrive. Inquiry was made, and it was ascertained that, by a strange
coincidence, this carriage contained the corpse of the Marquis de
Saint-Méran, and that those who had come thinking to attend one funeral
would follow two. Their number was great. The Marquis de Saint-Méran,
one of the most zealous and faithful dignitaries of Louis XVIII. and
King Charles X., had preserved a great number of friends, and these,
added to the personages whom the usages of society gave Villefort a
claim on, formed a considerable body.
Due information was given to the authorities, and permission obtained
that the two funerals should take place at the same time. A second
hearse, decked with the same funereal pomp, was brought to M. de
Villefort’s door, and the coffin removed into it from the post-wagon.
The two bodies were to be interred in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise,
where M. de Villefort had long since had a tomb prepared for the
reception of his family. The remains of poor Renée were already
deposited there, and now, after ten years of separation, her father and
mother were to be reunited with her.
The Parisians, always curious, always affected by funereal display,
looked on with religious silence while the splendid procession
accompanied to their last abode two of the number of the old
aristocracy—the greatest protectors of commerce and sincere devotees to
their principles.
In one of the mourning-coaches Beauchamp, Debray, and Château-Renaud
were talking of the very sudden death of the marchioness.
“I saw Madame de Saint-Méran only last year at Marseilles, when I was
coming back from Algiers,” said Château-Renaud; “she looked like a
woman destined to live to be a hundred years old, from her apparent
sound health and great activity of mind and body. How old was she?”
“Franz assured me,” replied Albert, “that she was sixty-six years old.
But she has not died of old age, but of grief; it appears that since
the death of the marquis, which affected her very deeply, she has not
completely recovered her reason.”
“But of what disease, then, did she die?” asked Debray.
“It is said to have been a congestion of the brain, or apoplexy, which
is the same thing, is it not?”
“Nearly.”
“It is difficult to believe that it was apoplexy,” said Beauchamp.
“Madame de Saint-Méran, whom I once saw, was short, of slender form,
and of a much more nervous than sanguine temperament; grief could
hardly produce apoplexy in such a constitution as that of Madame de
Saint-Méran.”
“At any rate,” said Albert, “whatever disease or doctor may have killed
her, M. de Villefort, or rather, Mademoiselle Valentine,—or, still
rather, our friend Franz, inherits a magnificent fortune, amounting, I
believe, to 80,000 livres per annum.”
“And this fortune will be doubled at the death of the old Jacobin,
Noirtier.”
“That is a tenacious old grandfather,” said Beauchamp. “_Tenacem
propositi virum_. I think he must have made an agreement with death to
outlive all his heirs, and he appears likely to succeed. He resembles
the old Conventionalist of ’93, who said to Napoleon, in 1814, ‘You
bend because your empire is a young stem, weakened by rapid growth.
Take the Republic for a tutor; let us return with renewed strength to
the battle-field, and I promise you 500,000 soldiers, another Marengo,
and a second Austerlitz. Ideas do not become extinct, sire; they
slumber sometimes, but only revive the stronger before they sleep
entirely.’”
“Ideas and men appeared the same to him,” said Albert. “One thing only
puzzles me, namely, how Franz d’Épinay will like a grandfather who
cannot be separated from his wife. But where is Franz?”
“In the first carriage, with M. de Villefort, who considers him already
as one of the family.”
40024m
Such was the conversation in almost all the carriages; these two sudden
deaths, so quickly following each other, astonished everyone, but no
one suspected the terrible secret which M. d’Avrigny had communicated,
in his nocturnal walk to M. de Villefort. They arrived in about an hour
at the cemetery; the weather was mild, but dull, and in harmony with
the funeral ceremony. Among the groups which flocked towards the family
vault, Château-Renaud recognized Morrel, who had come alone in a
cabriolet, and walked silently along the path bordered with yew-trees.
“You here?” said Château-Renaud, passing his arms through the young
captain’s; “are you a friend of Villefort’s? How is it that I have
never met you at his house?”
“I am no acquaintance of M. de Villefort’s,” answered Morrel, “but I
was of Madame de Saint-Méran.” Albert came up to them at this moment
with Franz.
“The time and place are but ill-suited for an introduction.” said
Albert; “but we are not superstitious. M. Morrel, allow me to present
to you M. Franz d’Épinay, a delightful travelling companion, with whom
I made the tour of Italy. My dear Franz, M. Maximilian Morrel, an
excellent friend I have acquired in your absence, and whose name you
will hear me mention every time I make any allusion to affection, wit,
or amiability.”
Morrel hesitated for a moment; he feared it would be hypocritical to
accost in a friendly manner the man whom he was tacitly opposing, but
his oath and the gravity of the circumstances recurred to his memory;
he struggled to conceal his emotion and bowed to Franz.
“Mademoiselle de Villefort is in deep sorrow, is she not?” said Debray
to Franz.
“Extremely,” replied he; “she looked so pale this morning, I scarcely
knew her.”
These apparently simple words pierced Morrel to the heart. This man had
seen Valentine, and spoken to her! The young and high-spirited officer
required all his strength of mind to resist breaking his oath. He took
the arm of Château-Renaud, and turned towards the vault, where the
attendants had already placed the two coffins.
“This is a magnificent habitation,” said Beauchamp, looking towards the
mausoleum; “a summer and winter palace. You will, in turn, enter it, my
dear d’Épinay, for you will soon be numbered as one of the family. I,
as a philosopher, should like a little country-house, a cottage down
there under the trees, without so many free-stones over my poor body.
In dying, I will say to those around me what Voltaire wrote to Piron:
‘_Eo rus_, and all will be over.’ But come, Franz, take courage, your
wife is an heiress.”
“Indeed, Beauchamp, you are unbearable. Politics has made you laugh at
everything, and political men have made you disbelieve everything. But
when you have the honor of associating with ordinary men, and the
pleasure of leaving politics for a moment, try to find your
affectionate heart, which you leave with your stick when you go to the
Chamber.”
“But tell me,” said Beauchamp, “what is life? Is it not a halt in
Death’s anteroom?”
40026m
“I am prejudiced against Beauchamp,” said Albert, drawing Franz away,
and leaving the former to finish his philosophical dissertation with
Debray.
The Villefort vault formed a square of white stones, about twenty feet
high; an interior partition separated the two families, and each
apartment had its entrance door. Here were not, as in other tombs,
ignoble drawers, one above another, where thrift bestows its dead and
labels them like specimens in a museum; all that was visible within the
bronze gates was a gloomy-looking room, separated by a wall from the
vault itself. The two doors before mentioned were in the middle of this
wall, and enclosed the Villefort and Saint-Méran coffins. There grief
might freely expend itself without being disturbed by the trifling
loungers who came from a picnic party to visit Père-Lachaise, or by
lovers who make it their rendezvous.
The two coffins were placed on trestles previously prepared for their
reception in the right-hand crypt belonging to the Saint-Méran family.
Villefort, Franz, and a few near relatives alone entered the sanctuary.