The Count of Monte Cristo
Everyone looked at Monte Cristo with astonishment; he spoke with so
much simplicity that it was evident he spoke the truth, or that he was
mad. However, the sight of the emerald made them naturally incline to
the former belief.
“And what did these two sovereigns give you in exchange for these
magnificent presents?” asked Debray.
“The Sultan, the liberty of a woman,” replied the Count; “the Pope, the
life of a man; so that once in my life I have been as powerful as if
heaven had brought me into the world on the steps of a throne.”
“And it was Peppino you saved, was it not?” cried Morcerf; “it was for
him that you obtained pardon?”
“Perhaps,” returned the count, smiling.
“My dear count, you have no idea what pleasure it gives me to hear you
speak thus,” said Morcerf. “I had announced you beforehand to my
friends as an enchanter of the _Arabian Nights_, a wizard of the Middle
Ages; but the Parisians are so subtle in paradoxes that they mistake
for caprices of the imagination the most incontestable truths, when
these truths do not form a part of their daily existence. For example,
here is Debray who reads, and Beauchamp who prints, every day, ‘A
member of the Jockey Club has been stopped and robbed on the
Boulevard;’ ‘four persons have been assassinated in the Rue St. Denis’
or ‘the Faubourg St. Germain;’ ‘ten, fifteen, or twenty thieves, have
been arrested in a _café_ on the Boulevard du Temple, or in the Thermes
de Julien,’—and yet these same men deny the existence of the bandits in
the Maremma, the Campagna di Romana, or the Pontine Marshes. Tell them
yourself that I was taken by bandits, and that without your generous
intercession I should now have been sleeping in the Catacombs of St.
Sebastian, instead of receiving them in my humble abode in the Rue du
Helder.”
“Ah,” said Monte Cristo “you promised me never to mention that
circumstance.”
“It was not I who made that promise,” cried Morcerf; “it must have been
someone else whom you have rescued in the same manner, and whom you
have forgotten. Pray speak of it, for I shall not only, I trust, relate
the little I do know, but also a great deal I do not know.”
“It seems to me,” returned the count, smiling, “that you played a
sufficiently important part to know as well as myself what happened.”
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“Well, you promise me, if I tell all I know, to relate, in your turn,
all that I do not know?”
“That is but fair,” replied Monte Cristo.
“Well,” said Morcerf, “for three days I believed myself the object of
the attentions of a masque, whom I took for a descendant of Tullia or
Poppæa, while I was simply the object of the attentions of a
_contadina_, and I say _contadina_ to avoid saying peasant girl. What I
know is, that, like a fool, a greater fool than he of whom I spoke just
now, I mistook for this peasant girl a young bandit of fifteen or
sixteen, with a beardless chin and slim waist, and who, just as I was
about to imprint a chaste salute on his lips, placed a pistol to my
head, and, aided by seven or eight others, led, or rather dragged me,
to the Catacombs of St. Sebastian, where I found a highly educated
brigand chief perusing Cæsar’s _Commentaries_, and who deigned to leave
off reading to inform me, that unless the next morning, before six
o’clock, four thousand piastres were paid into his account at his
banker’s, at a quarter past six I should have ceased to exist. The
letter is still to be seen, for it is in Franz d’Épinay’s possession,
signed by me, and with a postscript of M. Luigi Vampa. This is all I
know, but I know not, count, how you contrived to inspire so much
respect in the bandits of Rome who ordinarily have so little respect
for anything. I assure you, Franz and I were lost in admiration.”
“Nothing more simple,” returned the count. “I had known the famous
Vampa for more than ten years. When he was quite a child, and only a
shepherd, I gave him a few gold pieces for showing me my way, and he,
in order to repay me, gave me a poniard, the hilt of which he had
carved with his own hand, and which you may have seen in my collection
of arms. In after years, whether he had forgotten this interchange of
presents, which ought to have cemented our friendship, or whether he
did not recollect me, he sought to take me, but, on the contrary, it
was I who captured him and a dozen of his band. I might have handed him
over to Roman justice, which is somewhat expeditious, and which would
have been particularly so with him; but I did nothing of the sort—I
suffered him and his band to depart.”
“With the condition that they should sin no more,” said Beauchamp,
laughing. “I see they kept their promise.”
“No, monsieur,” returned Monte Cristo “upon the simple condition that
they should respect myself and my friends. Perhaps what I am about to
say may seem strange to you, who are socialists, and vaunt humanity and
your duty to your neighbor, but I never seek to protect a society which
does not protect me, and which I will even say, generally occupies
itself about me only to injure me; and thus by giving them a low place
in my esteem, and preserving a neutrality towards them, it is society
and my neighbor who are indebted to me.”
“Bravo,” cried Château-Renaud; “you are the first man I ever met
sufficiently courageous to preach egotism. Bravo, count, bravo!”
“It is frank, at least,” said Morrel. “But I am sure that the count
does not regret having once deviated from the principles he has so
boldly avowed.”
“How have I deviated from those principles, monsieur?” asked Monte
Cristo, who could not help looking at Morrel with so much intensity,
that two or three times the young man had been unable to sustain that
clear and piercing glance.
“Why, it seems to me,” replied Morrel, “that in delivering M. de
Morcerf, whom you did not know, you did good to your neighbor and to
society.”
“Of which he is the brightest ornament,” said Beauchamp, drinking off a
glass of champagne.
“My dear count,” cried Morcerf, “you are at fault—you, one of the most
formidable logicians I know—and you must see it clearly proved that
instead of being an egotist, you are a philanthropist. Ah, you call
yourself Oriental, a Levantine, Maltese, Indian, Chinese; your family
name is Monte Cristo; Sinbad the Sailor is your baptismal appellation,
and yet the first day you set foot in Paris you instinctively display
the greatest virtue, or rather the chief defect, of us eccentric
Parisians,—that is, you assume the vices you have not, and conceal the
virtues you possess.”
“My dear vicomte,” returned Monte Cristo, “I do not see, in all I have
done, anything that merits, either from you or these gentlemen, the
pretended eulogies I have received. You were no stranger to me, for I
knew you from the time I gave up two rooms to you, invited you to
breakfast with me, lent you one of my carriages, witnessed the Carnival
in your company, and saw with you from a window in the Piazza del
Popolo the execution that affected you so much that you nearly fainted.
I will appeal to any of these gentlemen, could I leave my guest in the
hands of a hideous bandit, as you term him? Besides, you know, I had
the idea that you could introduce me into some of the Paris salons when
I came to France. You might some time ago have looked upon this
resolution as a vague project, but today you see it was a reality, and
you must submit to it under penalty of breaking your word.”
“I will keep it,” returned Morcerf; “but I fear that you will be much
disappointed, accustomed as you are to picturesque events and fantastic
horizons. Amongst us you will not meet with any of those episodes with
which your adventurous existence has so familiarized you; our
Chimborazo is Mortmartre, our Himalaya is Mount Valérien, our Great
Desert is the plain of Grenelle, where they are now boring an artesian
well to water the caravans. We have plenty of thieves, though not so
many as is said; but these thieves stand in far more dread of a
policeman than a lord. France is so prosaic, and Paris so civilized a
city, that you will not find in its eighty-five departments—I say
eighty-five, because I do not include Corsica—you will not find, then,
in these eighty-five departments a single hill on which there is not a
telegraph, or a grotto in which the commissary of police has not put up
a gaslamp. There is but one service I can render you, and for that I
place myself entirely at your orders, that is, to present, or make my
friends present, you everywhere; besides, you have no need of anyone to
introduce you—with your name, and your fortune, and your talent” (Monte
Cristo bowed with a somewhat ironical smile) “you can present yourself
everywhere, and be well received. I can be useful in one way only—if
knowledge of Parisian habits, of the means of rendering yourself
comfortable, or of the bazaars, can assist, you may depend upon me to
find you a fitting dwelling here. I do not dare offer to share my
apartments with you, as I shared yours at Rome—I, who do not profess
egotism, but am yet egotist _par excellence_; for, except myself, these
rooms would not hold a shadow more, unless that shadow were feminine.”
“Ah,” said the count, “that is a most conjugal reservation; I recollect
that at Rome you said something of a projected marriage. May I
congratulate you?”
“The affair is still in projection.”
“And he who says in ‘projection,’ means already decided,” said Debray.
“No,” replied Morcerf, “my father is most anxious about it; and I hope,
ere long, to introduce you, if not to my wife, at least to my
betrothed—Mademoiselle Eugénie Danglars.”
“Eugénie Danglars,” said Monte Cristo; “tell me, is not her father
Baron Danglars?”
“Yes,” returned Morcerf, “a baron of a new creation.”
“What matter,” said Monte Cristo “if he has rendered the State services
which merit this distinction?”
“Enormous ones,” answered Beauchamp. “Although in reality a Liberal, he
negotiated a loan of six millions for Charles X., in 1829, who made him
a baron and chevalier of the Legion of Honor; so that he wears the
ribbon, not, as you would think, in his waistcoat-pocket, but at his
button-hole.”
“Ah,” interrupted Morcerf, laughing, “Beauchamp, Beauchamp, keep that
for the _Corsaire_ or the _Charivari_, but spare my future
father-in-law before me.” Then, turning to Monte Cristo, “You just now
spoke his name as if you knew the baron?”
“I do not know him,” returned Monte Cristo; “but I shall probably soon
make his acquaintance, for I have a credit opened with him by the house
of Richard & Blount, of London, Arstein & Eskeles of Vienna, and
Thomson & French at Rome.” As he pronounced the two last names, the
count glanced at Maximilian Morrel. If the stranger expected to produce
an effect on Morrel, he was not mistaken—Maximilian started as if he
had been electrified.
“Thomson & French,” said he; “do you know this house, monsieur?”
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“They are my bankers in the capital of the Christian world,” returned
the count quietly. “Can my influence with them be of any service to
you?”
“Oh, count, you could assist me perhaps in researches which have been,
up to the present, fruitless. This house, in past years, did ours a
great service, and has, I know not for what reason, always denied
having rendered us this service.”
“I shall be at your orders,” said Monte Cristo bowing.
“But,” continued Morcerf, “_à propos_ of Danglars,—we have strangely
wandered from the subject. We were speaking of a suitable habitation
for the Count of Monte Cristo. Come, gentlemen, let us all propose some
place. Where shall we lodge this new guest in our great capital?”
“Faubourg Saint-Germain,” said Château-Renaud. “The count will find
there a charming hotel, with a court and garden.”