The Count of Monte Cristo
coin. I require honorable guaranties.”
“I am, sir, a living guaranty,” replied Monte Cristo, motionless, but
with a threatening look; “we have both blood in our veins which we wish
to shed—that is our mutual guaranty. Tell the viscount so, and that
tomorrow, before ten o’clock, I shall see what color his is.”
“Then I have only to make arrangements for the duel,” said Beauchamp.
“It is quite immaterial to me,” said Monte Cristo, “and it was very
unnecessary to disturb me at the Opera for such a trifle. In France
people fight with the sword or pistol, in the colonies with the
carbine, in Arabia with the dagger. Tell your client that, although I
am the insulted party, in order to carry out my eccentricity, I leave
him the choice of arms, and will accept without discussion, without
dispute, anything, even combat by drawing lots, which is always stupid,
but with me different from other people, as I am sure to gain.”
“Sure to gain!” repeated Beauchamp, looking with amazement at the
count.
“Certainly,” said Monte Cristo, slightly shrugging his shoulders;
“otherwise I would not fight with M. de Morcerf. I shall kill him—I
cannot help it. Only by a single line this evening at my house let me
know the arms and the hour; I do not like to be kept waiting.”
“Pistols, then, at eight o’clock, in the Bois de Vincennes,” said
Beauchamp, quite disconcerted, not knowing if he was dealing with an
arrogant braggadocio or a supernatural being.
“Very well, sir,” said Monte Cristo. “Now all that is settled, do let
me see the performance, and tell your friend Albert not to come any
more this evening; he will hurt himself with all his ill-chosen
barbarisms: let him go home and go to sleep.”
Beauchamp left the box, perfectly amazed.
“Now,” said Monte Cristo, turning towards Morrel, “I may depend upon
you, may I not?”
“Certainly,” said Morrel, “I am at your service, count; still——”
“What?”
“It is desirable I should know the real cause.”
“That is to say, you would rather not?”
“No.”
“The young man himself is acting blindfolded, and knows not the true
cause, which is known only to God and to me; but I give you my word,
Morrel, that God, who does know it, will be on our side.”
“Enough,” said Morrel; “who is your second witness?”
“I know no one in Paris, Morrel, on whom I could confer that honor
besides you and your brother Emmanuel. Do you think Emmanuel would
oblige me?”
“I will answer for him, count.”
“Well? that is all I require. Tomorrow morning, at seven o’clock, you
will be with me, will you not?”
“We will.”
“Hush, the curtain is rising. Listen! I never lose a note of this opera
if I can avoid it; the music of _William Tell_ is so sweet.”
Chapter 89. The Night
Monte Cristo waited, according to his usual custom, until Duprez had
sung his famous “_Suivez-moi!_” then he rose and went out. Morrel took
leave of him at the door, renewing his promise to be with him the next
morning at seven o’clock, and to bring Emmanuel. Then he stepped into
his _coupé_, calm and smiling, and was at home in five minutes. No one
who knew the count could mistake his expression when, on entering, he
said:
“Ali, bring me my pistols with the ivory cross.”
Ali brought the box to his master, who examined the weapons with a
solicitude very natural to a man who is about to intrust his life to a
little powder and shot. These were pistols of an especial pattern,
which Monte Cristo had had made for target practice in his own room. A
cap was sufficient to drive out the bullet, and from the adjoining room
no one would have suspected that the count was, as sportsmen would say,
keeping his hand in.
He was just taking one up and looking for the point to aim at on a
little iron plate which served him as a target, when his study door
opened, and Baptistin entered. Before he had spoken a word, the count
saw in the next room a veiled woman, who had followed closely after
Baptistin, and now, seeing the count with a pistol in his hand and
swords on the table, rushed in. Baptistin looked at his master, who
made a sign to him, and he went out, closing the door after him.
“Who are you, madame?” said the count to the veiled woman.
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The stranger cast one look around her, to be certain that they were
quite alone; then bending as if she would have knelt, and joining her
hands, she said with an accent of despair:
“Edmond, you will not kill my son!”
The count retreated a step, uttered a slight exclamation, and let fall
the pistol he held.
“What name did you pronounce then, Madame de Morcerf?” said he.
“Yours!” cried she, throwing back her veil,—“yours, which I alone,
perhaps, have not forgotten. Edmond, it is not Madame de Morcerf who is
come to you, it is Mercédès.”
“Mercédès is dead, madame,” said Monte Cristo; “I know no one now of
that name.”
“Mercédès lives, sir, and she remembers, for she alone recognized you
when she saw you, and even before she saw you, by your voice,
Edmond,—by the simple sound of your voice; and from that moment she has
followed your steps, watched you, feared you, and she needs not to
inquire what hand has dealt the blow which now strikes M. de Morcerf.”
“Fernand, do you mean?” replied Monte Cristo, with bitter irony; “since
we are recalling names, let us remember them all.” Monte Cristo had
pronounced the name of Fernand with such an expression of hatred that
Mercédès felt a thrill of horror run through every vein.
“You see, Edmond, I am not mistaken, and have cause to say, ‘Spare my
son!’”
“And who told you, madame, that I have any hostile intentions against
your son?”
“No one, in truth; but a mother has twofold sight. I guessed all; I
followed him this evening to the Opera, and, concealed in a parquet
box, have seen all.”
“If you have seen all, madame, you know that the son of Fernand has
publicly insulted me,” said Monte Cristo with awful calmness.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!”
“You have seen that he would have thrown his glove in my face if
Morrel, one of my friends, had not stopped him.”
“Listen to me, my son has also guessed who you are,—he attributes his
father’s misfortunes to you.”
“Madame, you are mistaken, they are not misfortunes,—it is a
punishment. It is not I who strike M. de Morcerf; it is Providence
which punishes him.”
“And why do you represent Providence?” cried Mercédès. “Why do you
remember when it forgets? What are Yanina and its vizier to you,
Edmond? What injury has Fernand Mondego done you in betraying Ali
Tepelini?”
“Ah, madame,” replied Monte Cristo, “all this is an affair between the
French captain and the daughter of Vasiliki. It does not concern me,
you are right; and if I have sworn to revenge myself, it is not on the
French captain, or the Count of Morcerf, but on the fisherman Fernand,
the husband of Mercédès the Catalane.”
“Ah, sir!” cried the countess, “how terrible a vengeance for a fault
which fatality made me commit!—for I am the only culprit, Edmond, and
if you owe revenge to anyone, it is to me, who had not fortitude to
bear your absence and my solitude.”
“But,” exclaimed Monte Cristo, “why was I absent? And why were you
alone?”
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“Because you had been arrested, Edmond, and were a prisoner.”
“And why was I arrested? Why was I a prisoner?”
“I do not know,” said Mercédès.
“You do not, madame; at least, I hope not. But I will tell you. I was
arrested and became a prisoner because, under the arbor of La Réserve,
the day before I was to marry you, a man named Danglars wrote this
letter, which the fisherman Fernand himself posted.”
Monte Cristo went to a secretaire, opened a drawer by a spring, from
which he took a paper which had lost its original color, and the ink of
which had become of a rusty hue—this he placed in the hands of
Mercédès. It was Danglars’ letter to the king’s attorney, which the
Count of Monte Cristo, disguised as a clerk from the house of Thomson &
French, had taken from the file against Edmond Dantès, on the day he
had paid the two hundred thousand francs to M. de Boville. Mercédès
read with terror the following lines:
“The king’s attorney is informed by a friend to the throne and religion
that one Edmond Dantès, second in command on board the _Pharaon_, this
day arrived from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and
Porto-Ferrajo, is the bearer of a letter from Murat to the usurper, and
of another letter from the usurper to the Bonapartist club in Paris.
Ample corroboration of this statement may be obtained by arresting the
above-mentioned Edmond Dantès, who either carries the letter for Paris
about with him, or has it at his father’s abode. Should it not be found
in possession of either father or son, then it will assuredly be
discovered in the cabin belonging to the said Dantès on board the
_Pharaon_.”
“How dreadful!” said Mercédès, passing her hand across her brow, moist
with perspiration; “and that letter——”
“I bought it for two hundred thousand francs, madame,” said Monte
Cristo; “but that is a trifle, since it enables me to justify myself to
you.”
“And the result of that letter——”
“You well know, madame, was my arrest; but you do not know how long
that arrest lasted. You do not know that I remained for fourteen years
within a quarter of a league of you, in a dungeon in the Château d’If.
You do not know that every day of those fourteen years I renewed the
vow of vengeance which I had made the first day; and yet I was not
aware that you had married Fernand, my calumniator, and that my father
had died of hunger!”
“Can it be?” cried Mercédès, shuddering.
“That is what I heard on leaving my prison fourteen years after I had
entered it; and that is why, on account of the living Mercédès and my
deceased father, I have sworn to revenge myself on Fernand, and—I have
revenged myself.”
“And you are sure the unhappy Fernand did that?”
“I am satisfied, madame, that he did what I have told you; besides,
that is not much more odious than that a Frenchman by adoption should
pass over to the English; that a Spaniard by birth should have fought
against the Spaniards; that a stipendiary of Ali should have betrayed
and murdered Ali. Compared with such things, what is the letter you
have just read?—a lover’s deception, which the woman who has married
that man ought certainly to forgive; but not so the lover who was to
have married her. Well, the French did not avenge themselves on the
traitor, the Spaniards did not shoot the traitor, Ali in his tomb left
the traitor unpunished; but I, betrayed, sacrificed, buried, have risen
from my tomb, by the grace of God, to punish that man. He sends me for
that purpose, and here I am.”
The poor woman’s head and arms fell; her legs bent under her, and she
fell on her knees.
“Forgive, Edmond, forgive for my sake, who love you still!”
The dignity of the wife checked the fervor of the lover and the mother.
Her forehead almost touched the carpet, when the count sprang forward
and raised her. Then seated on a chair, she looked at the manly
countenance of Monte Cristo, on which grief and hatred still impressed
a threatening expression.
“Not crush that accursed race?” murmured he; “abandon my purpose at the
moment of its accomplishment? Impossible, madame, impossible!”
“Edmond,” said the poor mother, who tried every means, “when I call you
Edmond, why do you not call me Mercédès?”
“Mercédès!” repeated Monte Cristo; “Mercédès! Well yes, you are right;
that name has still its charms, and this is the first time for a long
period that I have pronounced it so distinctly. Oh, Mercédès, I have
uttered your name with the sigh of melancholy, with the groan of
sorrow, with the last effort of despair; I have uttered it when frozen
with cold, crouched on the straw in my dungeon; I have uttered it,