The Count of Monte Cristo
“By the Porta del Popolo or by the streets, your excellencies?”
“By the streets, _morbleu!_ by the streets!” cried Franz.
“Ah, my dear fellow,” said Albert, rising, and lighting his third
cigar, “really, I thought you had more courage.”
So saying, the two young men went down the staircase, and got into the
carriage.
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Chapter 34. The Colosseum
Franz had so managed his route, that during the ride to the Colosseum
they passed not a single ancient ruin, so that no preliminary
impression interfered to mitigate the colossal proportions of the
gigantic building they came to admire. The road selected was a
continuation of the Via Sistina; then by cutting off the right angle of
the street in which stands Santa Maria Maggiore and proceeding by the
Via Urbana and San Pietro in Vincoli, the travellers would find
themselves directly opposite the Colosseum.
This itinerary possessed another great advantage,—that of leaving Franz
at full liberty to indulge his deep reverie upon the subject of Signor
Pastrini’s story, in which his mysterious host of Monte Cristo was so
strangely mixed up. Seated with folded arms in a corner of the
carriage, he continued to ponder over the singular history he had so
lately listened to, and to ask himself an interminable number of
questions touching its various circumstances without, however, arriving
at a satisfactory reply to any of them.
One fact more than the rest brought his friend “Sinbad the Sailor” back
to his recollection, and that was the mysterious sort of intimacy that
seemed to exist between the brigands and the sailors; and Pastrini’s
account of Vampa’s having found refuge on board the vessels of
smugglers and fishermen, reminded Franz of the two Corsican bandits he
had found supping so amicably with the crew of the little yacht, which
had even deviated from its course and touched at Porto-Vecchio for the
sole purpose of landing them. The very name assumed by his host of
Monte Cristo and again repeated by the landlord of the Hôtel de
Londres, abundantly proved to him that his island friend was playing
his philanthropic part on the shores of Piombino, Civita Vecchia,
Ostia, and Gaëta, as on those of Corsica, Tuscany, and Spain; and
further, Franz bethought him of having heard his singular entertainer
speak both of Tunis and Palermo, proving thereby how largely his circle
of acquaintances extended.
But however the mind of the young man might be absorbed in these
reflections, they were at once dispersed at the sight of the dark
frowning ruins of the stupendous Colosseum, through the various
openings of which the pale moonlight played and flickered like the
unearthly gleam from the eyes of the wandering dead. The carriage
stopped near the Meta Sudans; the door was opened, and the young men,
eagerly alighting, found themselves opposite a _cicerone_, who appeared
to have sprung up from the ground, so unexpected was his appearance.
The usual guide from the hotel having followed them, they had paid two
conductors, nor is it possible, at Rome, to avoid this abundant supply
of guides; besides the ordinary _cicerone_, who seizes upon you
directly you set foot in your hotel, and never quits you while you
remain in the city, there is also a special _cicerone_ belonging to
each monument—nay, almost to each part of a monument. It may,
therefore, be easily imagined there is no scarcity of guides at the
Colosseum, that wonder of all ages, which Martial thus eulogizes:
“Let Memphis cease to boast the barbarous miracles of her pyramids, and
the wonders of Babylon be talked of no more among us; all must bow to
the superiority of the gigantic labor of the Cæsars, and the many
voices of Fame spread far and wide the surpassing merits of this
incomparable monument.”
As for Albert and Franz, they essayed not to escape from their
_ciceronian_ tyrants; and, indeed, it would have been so much the more
difficult to break their bondage, as the guides alone are permitted to
visit these monuments with torches in their hands. Thus, then, the
young men made no attempt at resistance, but blindly and confidingly
surrendered themselves into the care and custody of their conductors.
Franz had already made seven or eight similar excursions to the
Colosseum, while his less favored companion trod for the first time in
his life the classic ground forming the monument of Flavius Vespasian;
and, to his credit be it spoken, his mind, even amid the glib loquacity
of the guides, was duly and deeply touched with awe and enthusiastic
admiration of all he saw; and certainly no adequate notion of these
stupendous ruins can be formed save by such as have visited them, and
more especially by moonlight, at which time the vast proportions of the
building appear twice as large when viewed by the mysterious beams of a
southern moonlit sky, whose rays are sufficiently clear and vivid to
light the horizon with a glow equal to the soft twilight of a western
clime.
Scarcely, therefore, had the reflective Franz walked a hundred steps
beneath the interior porticoes of the ruin, when, abandoning Albert to
the guides (who would by no means yield their prescriptive right of
carrying their victims through the routine regularly laid down, and as
regularly followed by them, but dragged the unconscious visitor to the
various objects with a pertinacity that admitted of no appeal,
beginning, as a matter of course, with the “Lions’ Den”, the “Hall of
the Gladiators” and finishing with “Cæsar’s Podium”), to escape a
jargon and mechanical survey of the wonders by which he was surrounded,
Franz ascended a half-dilapidated staircase, and, leaving them to
follow their monotonous round, seated himself at the foot of a column,
and immediately opposite a large aperture, which permitted him to enjoy
a full and undisturbed view of the gigantic dimensions of the majestic
ruin.
Franz had remained for nearly a quarter of an hour perfectly hidden by
the shadow of the vast column at whose base he had found a
resting-place, and from whence his eyes followed the motions of Albert
and his guides, who, holding torches in their hands, had emerged from a
vomitorium at the opposite extremity of the Colosseum, and then again
disappeared down the steps conducting to the seats reserved for the
Vestal virgins, resembling, as they glided along, some restless shades
following the flickering glare of so many _ignes fatui_. All at once
his ear caught a sound resembling that of a stone rolling down the
staircase opposite the one by which he had himself ascended. There was
nothing remarkable in the circumstance of a fragment of granite giving
way and falling heavily below; but it seemed to him that the substance
that fell gave way beneath the pressure of a foot, and also that
someone, who endeavored as much as possible to prevent his footsteps
from being heard, was approaching the spot where he sat.
Conjecture soon became certainty, for the figure of a man was
distinctly visible to Franz, gradually emerging from the staircase
opposite, upon which the moon was at that moment pouring a full tide of
silvery brightness.
The stranger thus presenting himself was probably a person who, like
Franz, preferred the enjoyment of solitude and his own thoughts to the
frivolous gabble of the guides. And his appearance had nothing
extraordinary in it; but the hesitation with which he proceeded,
stopping and listening with anxious attention at every step he took,
convinced Franz that he expected the arrival of some person.
By a sort of instinctive impulse, Franz withdrew as much as possible
behind his pillar.
About ten feet from the spot where he and the stranger were, the roof
had given way, leaving a large round opening, through which might be
seen the blue vault of heaven, thickly studded with stars.
Around this opening, which had, possibly, for ages permitted a free
entrance to the brilliant moonbeams that now illumined the vast pile,
grew a quantity of creeping plants, whose delicate green branches stood
out in bold relief against the clear azure of the firmament, while
large masses of thick, strong fibrous shoots forced their way through
the chasm, and hung floating to and fro, like so many waving strings.
The person whose mysterious arrival had attracted the attention of
Franz stood in a kind of half-light, that rendered it impossible to
distinguish his features, although his dress was easily made out. He
wore a large brown mantle, one fold of which, thrown over his left
shoulder, served likewise to mask the lower part of his countenance,
while the upper part was completely hidden by his broad-brimmed hat.
The lower part of his dress was more distinctly visible by the bright
rays of the moon, which, entering through the broken ceiling, shed
their refulgent beams on feet cased in elegantly made boots of polished
leather, over which descended fashionably cut trousers of black cloth.
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From the imperfect means Franz had of judging, he could only come to
one conclusion,—that the person whom he was thus watching certainly
belonged to no inferior station of life.
Some few minutes had elapsed, and the stranger began to show manifest
signs of impatience, when a slight noise was heard outside the aperture
in the roof, and almost immediately a dark shadow seemed to obstruct
the flood of light that had entered it, and the figure of a man was
clearly seen gazing with eager scrutiny on the immense space beneath
him; then, as his eye caught sight of him in the mantle, he grasped a
floating mass of thickly matted boughs, and glided down by their help
to within three or four feet of the ground, and then leaped lightly on
his feet. The man who had performed this daring act with so much
indifference wore the Transtevere costume.
“I beg your excellency’s pardon for keeping you waiting,” said the man,
in the Roman dialect, “but I don’t think I’m many minutes after my
time, ten o’clock has just struck by the clock of Saint John Lateran.”
“Say not a word about being late,” replied the stranger in purest
Tuscan; “’tis I who am too soon. But even if you had caused me to wait
a little while, I should have felt quite sure that the delay was not
occasioned by any fault of yours.”
“Your excellency is perfectly right in so thinking,” said the man; “I
came here direct from the Castle of St. Angelo, and I had an immense
deal of trouble before I could get a chance to speak to Beppo.”
“And who is Beppo?”
“Oh, Beppo is employed in the prison, and I give him so much a year to
let me know what is going on within his holiness’s castle.”
“Indeed! You are a provident person, I see.”
“Why, you see, no one knows what may happen. Perhaps some of these days
I may be entrapped, like poor Peppino and may be very glad to have some
little nibbling mouse to gnaw the meshes of my net, and so help me out
of prison.”
“Briefly, what did you learn?”
“That two executions of considerable interest will take place the day
after tomorrow at two o’clock, as is customary at Rome at the
commencement of all great festivals. One of the culprits will be
_mazzolato_;3 he is an atrocious villain, who murdered the priest who
brought him up, and deserves not the smallest pity. The other sufferer
is sentenced to be _decapitato_;4 and he, your excellency, is poor
Peppino.”
“The fact is, that you have inspired not only the pontifical
government, but also the neighboring states, with such extreme fear,
that they are glad of all opportunity of making an example.”
“But Peppino did not even belong to my band; he was merely a poor
shepherd, whose only crime consisted in furnishing us with provisions.”
“Which makes him your accomplice to all intents and purposes. But mark
the distinction with which he is treated; instead of being knocked on