Summarise the following in one paragraph: THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO

by Alexandre Dumas [père]




Contents


 VOLUME ONE
Chapter 1. Marseilles—The Arrival
Chapter 2. Father and Son
Chapter 3. The Catalans
Chapter 4. Conspiracy
Chapter 5. The Marriage Feast
Chapter 6. The Deputy Procureur du Roi
Chapter 7. The Examination
Chapter 8. The Château d’If
Chapter 9. The Evening of the Betrothal
Chapter 10. The King’s Closet at the Tuileries
Chapter 11. The Corsican Ogre
Chapter 12. Father and Son
Chapter 13. The Hundred Days
Chapter 14. The Two Prisoners
Chapter 15. Number 34 and Number 27
Chapter 16. A Learned Italian
Chapter 17. The Abbé’s Chamber
Chapter 18. The Treasure
Chapter 19. The Third Attack
Chapter 20. The Cemetery of the Château d’If
Chapter 21. The Island of Tiboulen
Chapter 22. The Smugglers
Chapter 23. The Island of Monte Cristo
Chapter 24. The Secret Cave
Chapter 25. The Unknown
Chapter 26. The Pont du Gard Inn
Chapter 27. The Story

 VOLUME TWO
Chapter 28. The Prison Register
Chapter 29. The House of Morrel & Son
Chapter 30. The Fifth of September
Chapter 31. Italy: Sinbad the Sailor
Chapter 32. The Waking
Chapter 33. Roman Bandits
Chapter 34. The Colosseum
Chapter 35. La Mazzolata
Chapter 36. The Carnival at Rome.
Chapter 37. The Catacombs of Saint Sebastian
Chapter 38. The Rendezvous
Chapter 39. The Guests
Chapter 40. The Breakfast
Chapter 41. The Presentation
Chapter 42. Monsieur Bertuccio
Chapter 43. The House at Auteuil
Chapter 44. The Vendetta
Chapter 45. The Rain of Blood
Chapter 46. Unlimited Credit
Chapter 47. The Dappled Grays

 VOLUME THREE
Chapter 48. Ideology
Chapter 49. Haydée
Chapter 50. The Morrel Family
Chapter 51. Pyramus and Thisbe
Chapter 52. Toxicology
Chapter 53. Robert le Diable
Chapter 54. A Flurry in Stocks
Chapter 55. Major Cavalcanti
Chapter 56. Andrea Cavalcanti
Chapter 57. In the Lucern Patch
Chapter 58. M. Noirtier de Villefort
Chapter 59. The Will
Chapter 60. The Telegraph
Chapter 61. How a Gardener May Get Rid of the Dormice
Chapter 62. Ghosts
Chapter 63. The Dinner
Chapter 64. The Beggar
Chapter 65. A Conjugal Scene
Chapter 66. Matrimonial Projects
Chapter 67. The Office of the King’s Attorney
Chapter 68. A Summer Ball
Chapter 69. The Inquiry
Chapter 70. The Ball
Chapter 71. Bread and Salt
Chapter 72. Madame de Saint-Méran
Chapter 73. The Promise

VOLUME FOUR
Chapter 74. The Villefort Family Vault
Chapter 75. A Signed Statement
Chapter 76. Progress of Cavalcanti the Younger
Chapter 77. Haydée
Chapter 78. We hear From Yanina
Chapter 79. The Lemonade
Chapter 80. The Accusation
Chapter 81. The Room of the Retired Baker
Chapter 82. The Burglary
Chapter 83. The Hand of God
Chapter 84. Beauchamp
Chapter 85. The Journey
Chapter 86. The Trial
Chapter 87. The Challenge
Chapter 88. The Insult
Chapter 89. The Night
Chapter 90. The Meeting
Chapter 91. Mother and Son
Chapter 92. The Suicide
Chapter 93. Valentine
Chapter 94. Maximilian’s Avowal
Chapter 95. Father and Daughter

VOLUME FIVE
Chapter 96. The Contract
Chapter 97. The Departure for Belgium
Chapter 98. The Bell and Bottle Tavern
Chapter 99. The Law
Chapter 100. The Apparition
Chapter 101. Locusta
Chapter 102. Valentine
Chapter 103. Maximilian
Chapter 104. Danglars’ Signature
Chapter 105. The Cemetery of Père-Lachaise
Chapter 106. Dividing the Proceeds
Chapter 107. The Lions’ Den
Chapter 108. The Judge
Chapter 109. The Assizes
Chapter 110. The Indictment
Chapter 111. Expiation
Chapter 112. The Departure
Chapter 113. The Past
Chapter 114. Peppino
Chapter 115. Luigi Vampa’s Bill of Fare
Chapter 116. The Pardon
Chapter 117. The Fifth of October



VOLUME ONE



 Chapter 1. Marseilles—The Arrival

On the 24th of February, 1815, the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde
signalled the three-master, the _Pharaon_ from Smyrna, Trieste, and
Naples.

As usual, a pilot put off immediately, and rounding the Château d’If,
got on board the vessel between Cape Morgiou and Rion island.

Immediately, and according to custom, the ramparts of Fort Saint-Jean
were covered with spectators; it is always an event at Marseilles for a
ship to come into port, especially when this ship, like the _Pharaon_,
has been built, rigged, and laden at the old Phocee docks, and belongs
to an owner of the city.

The ship drew on and had safely passed the strait, which some volcanic
shock has made between the Calasareigne and Jaros islands; had doubled
Pomègue, and approached the harbor under topsails, jib, and spanker,
but so slowly and sedately that the idlers, with that instinct which is
the forerunner of evil, asked one another what misfortune could have
happened on board. However, those experienced in navigation saw plainly
that if any accident had occurred, it was not to the vessel herself,
for she bore down with all the evidence of being skilfully handled, the
anchor a-cockbill, the jib-boom guys already eased off, and standing by
the side of the pilot, who was steering the _Pharaon_ towards the
narrow entrance of the inner port, was a young man, who, with activity
and vigilant eye, watched every motion of the ship, and repeated each
direction of the pilot.

The vague disquietude which prevailed among the spectators had so much
affected one of the crowd that he did not await the arrival of the
vessel in harbor, but jumping into a small skiff, desired to be pulled
alongside the _Pharaon_, which he reached as she rounded into La
Réserve basin.

When the young man on board saw this person approach, he left his
station by the pilot, and, hat in hand, leaned over the ship’s
bulwarks.

He was a fine, tall, slim young fellow of eighteen or twenty, with
black eyes, and hair as dark as a raven’s wing; and his whole
appearance bespoke that calmness and resolution peculiar to men
accustomed from their cradle to contend with danger.

“Ah, is it you, Dantès?” cried the man in the skiff. “What’s the
matter? and why have you such an air of sadness aboard?”

“A great misfortune, M. Morrel,” replied the young man, “a great
misfortune, for me especially! Off Civita Vecchia we lost our brave
Captain Leclere.”

“And the cargo?” inquired the owner, eagerly.

“Is all safe, M. Morrel; and I think you will be satisfied on that
head. But poor Captain Leclere——”

“What happened to him?” asked the owner, with an air of considerable
resignation. “What happened to the worthy captain?”

“He died.”

“Fell into the sea?”

“No, sir, he died of brain-fever in dreadful agony.” Then turning to
the crew, he said, “Bear a hand there, to take in sail!”

All hands obeyed, and at once the eight or ten seamen who composed the
crew, sprang to their respective stations at the spanker brails and
outhaul, topsail sheets and halyards, the jib downhaul, and the topsail
clewlines and buntlines. The young sailor gave a look to see that his
orders were promptly and accurately obeyed, and then turned again to
the owner.

“And how did this misfortune occur?” inquired the latter, resuming the
interrupted conversation.

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“Alas, sir, in the most unexpected manner. After a long talk with the
harbor-master, Captain Leclere left Naples greatly disturbed in mind.
In twenty-four hours he was attacked by a fever, and died three days
afterwards. We performed the usual burial service, and he is at his
rest, sewn up in his hammock with a thirty-six-pound shot at his head
and his heels, off El Giglio island. We bring to his widow his sword
and cross of honor. It was worth while, truly,” added the young man
with a melancholy smile, “to make war against the English for ten
years, and to die in his bed at last, like everybody else.”

“Why, you see, Edmond,” replied the owner, who appeared more comforted
at every moment, “we are all mortal, and the old must make way for the
young. If not, why, there would be no promotion; and since you assure
me that the cargo——”

“Is all safe and sound, M. Morrel, take my word for it; and I advise
you not to take 25,000 francs for the profits of the voyage.”

Then, as they were just passing the Round Tower, the young man shouted:
“Stand by there to lower the topsails and jib; brail up the spanker!”

The order was executed as promptly as it would have been on board a
man-of-war.

“Let go—and clue up!” At this last command all the sails were lowered,
and the vessel moved almost imperceptibly onwards.

“Now, if you will come on board, M. Morrel,” said Dantès, observing the
owner’s impatience, “here is your supercargo, M. Danglars, coming out
of his cabin, who will furnish you with every particular. As for me, I
must look after the anchoring, and dress the ship in mourning.”

The owner did not wait for a second invitation. He seized a rope which
Dantès flung to him, and with an activity that would have done credit
to a sailor, climbed up the side of the ship, while the young man,
going to his task, left the conversation to Danglars, who now came
towards the owner. He was a man of twenty-five or twenty-six years of
age, of unprepossessing countenance, obsequious to his superiors,
insolent to his subordinates; and this, in addition to his position as
responsible agent on board, which is always obnoxious to the sailors,
made him as much disliked by the crew as Edmond Dantès was beloved by
them.

“Well, M. Morrel,” said Danglars, “you have heard of the misfortune
that has befallen us?”

“Yes—yes: poor Captain Leclere! He was a brave and an honest man.”

“And a first-rate seaman, one who had seen long and honorable service,
as became a man charged with the interests of a house so important as
that of Morrel & Son,” replied Danglars.

“But,” replied the owner, glancing after Dantès, who was watching the
anchoring of his vessel, “it seems to me that a sailor needs not be so
old as you say, Danglars, to understand his business, for our friend
Edmond seems to understand it thoroughly, and not to require
instruction from anyone.”

“Yes,” said Danglars, darting at Edmond a look gleaming with hate.
“Yes, he is young, and youth is invariably self-confident. Scarcely was
the captain’s breath out of his body when he assumed the command
without consulting anyone, and he caused us to lose a day and a half at
the Island of Elba, instead of making for Marseilles direct.”

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“As to taking command of the vessel,” replied Morrel, “that was his
duty as captain’s mate; as to losing a day and a half off the Island of
Elba, he was wrong, unless the vessel needed repairs.”

“The vessel was in as good condition as I am, and as, I hope you are,
M. Morrel, and this day and a half was lost from pure whim, for the
pleasure of going ashore, and nothing else.”

“Dantès,” said the shipowner, turning towards the young man, “come this
way!”

“In a moment, sir,” answered Dantès, “and I’m with you.” Then calling
to the crew, he said, “Let go!”

The anchor was instantly dropped, and the chain ran rattling through
the port-hole. Dantès continued at his post in spite of the presence of
the pilot, until this manœuvre was completed, and then he added,
“Half-mast the colors, and square the yards!”

“You see,” said Danglars, “he fancies himself captain already, upon my
word.”

“And so, in fact, he is,” said the owner.

“Except your signature and your partner’s, M. Morrel.”

“And why should he not have this?” asked the owner; “he is young, it is
true, but he seems to me a thorough seaman, and of full experience.”

A cloud passed over Danglars’ brow.

“Your pardon, M. Morrel,” said Dantès, approaching, “the vessel now
rides at anchor, and I am at your service. You hailed me, I think?”

Danglars retreated a step or two. “I wished to inquire why you stopped
at the Island of Elba?”

“I do not know, sir; it was to fulfil the last instructions of Captain
Leclere, who, when dying, gave me a packet for Marshal Bertrand.”

“Then did you see him, Edmond?”

“Who?”

“The marshal.”

“Yes.”

Morrel looked around him, and then, drawing Dantès on one side, he said
suddenly—

“And how is the emperor?”

“Very well, as far as I could judge from the sight of him.”

“You saw the emperor, then?”

“He entered the marshal’s apartment while I was there.”

“And you spoke to him?”

“Why, it was he who spoke to me, sir,” said Dantès, with a smile.

“And what did he say to you?”

“Asked me questions about the vessel, the time she left Marseilles, the
course she had taken, and what was her cargo. I believe, if she had not
been laden, and I had been her master, he would have bought her. But I
told him I was only mate, and that she belonged to the firm of Morrel &
Son. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘I know them. The Morrels have been shipowners
from father to son; and there was a Morrel who served in the same
regiment with me when I was in garrison at Valence.’”

“_Pardieu!_ and that is true!” cried the owner, greatly delighted. “And
that was Policar Morrel, my uncle, who was afterwards a captain.
Dantès, you must tell my uncle that the emperor remembered him, and you
will see it will bring tears into the old soldier’s eyes. Come, come,”
continued he, patting Edmond’s shoulder kindly, “you did very right,
Dantès, to follow Captain Leclere’s instructions, and touch at Elba,
although if it were known that you had conveyed a packet to the
marshal, and had conversed with the emperor, it might bring you into
trouble.”

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“How could that bring me into trouble, sir?” asked Dantès; “for I did
not even know of what I was the bearer; and the emperor merely made
such inquiries as he would of the first comer. But, pardon me, here are
the health officers and the customs inspectors coming alongside.” And
the young man went to the gangway. As he departed, Danglars approached,
and said,—

“Well, it appears that he has given you satisfactory reasons for his
landing at Porto-Ferrajo?”

“Yes, most satisfactory, my dear Danglars.”

“Well, so much the better,” said the supercargo; “for it is not
pleasant to think that a comrade has not done his duty.”

“Dantès has done his,” replied the owner, “and that is not saying much.
It was Captain Leclere who gave orders for this delay.”

“Talking of Captain Leclere, has not Dantès given you a letter from
him?”

“To me?—no—was there one?”

“I believe that, besides the packet, Captain Leclere confided a letter
to his care.”

“Of what packet are you speaking, Danglars?”

“Why, that which Dantès left at Porto-Ferrajo.”

“How do you know he had a packet to leave at Porto-Ferrajo?”

Danglars turned very red.

“I was passing close to the door of the captain’s cabin, which was half
open, and I saw him give the packet and letter to Dantès.”

“He did not speak to me of it,” replied the shipowner; “but if there be
any letter he will give it to me.”

Danglars reflected for a moment. “Then, M. Morrel, I beg of you,” said
he, “not to say a word to Dantès on the subject. I may have been
mistaken.”

At this moment the young man returned; Danglars withdrew.

“Well, my dear Dantès, are you now free?” inquired the owner.

“Yes, sir.”

“You have not been long detained.”

“No. I gave the custom-house officers a copy of our bill of lading; and
as to the other papers, they sent a man off with the pilot, to whom I
gave them.”

“Then you have nothing more to do here?”

“No—everything is all right now.”

“Then you can come and dine with me?”

“I really must ask you to excuse me, M. Morrel. My first visit is due
to my father, though I am not the less grateful for the honor you have
done me.”

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“Right, Dantès, quite right. I always knew you were a good son.”

“And,” inquired Dantès, with some hesitation, “do you know how my
father is?”

“Well, I believe, my dear Edmond, though I have not seen him lately.”

“Yes, he likes to keep himself shut up in his little room.”

“That proves, at least, that he has wanted for nothing during your
absence.”

Dantès smiled. “My father is proud, sir, and if he had not a meal left,
I doubt if he would have asked anything from anyone, except from
Heaven.”

“Well, then, after this first visit has been made we shall count on
you.”

“I must again excuse myself, M. Morrel, for after this first visit has
been paid I have another which I am most anxious to pay.”

“True, Dantès, I forgot that there was at the Catalans someone who
expects you no less impatiently than your father—the lovely Mercédès.”

Dantès blushed.

“Ah, ha,” said the shipowner, “I am not in the least surprised, for she
has been to me three times, inquiring if there were any news of the
_Pharaon_. _Peste!_ Edmond, you have a very handsome mistress!”

“She is not my mistress,” replied the young sailor, gravely; “she is my
betrothed.”

“Sometimes one and the same thing,” said Morrel, with a smile.

“Not with us, sir,” replied Dantès.

“Well, well, my dear Edmond,” continued the owner, “don’t let me detain
you. You have managed my affairs so well that I ought to allow you all
the time you require for your own. Do you want any money?”

“No, sir; I have all my pay to take—nearly three months’ wages.”

“You are a careful fellow, Edmond.”

“Say I have a poor father, sir.”

“Yes, yes, I know how good a son you are, so now hasten away to see
your father. I have a son too, and I should be very wroth with those
who detained him from me after a three months’ voyage.”

“Then I have your leave, sir?”

“Yes, if you have nothing more to say to me.”

“Nothing.”

“Captain Leclere did not, before he died, give you a letter for me?”

“He was unable to write, sir. But that reminds me that I must ask your
leave of absence for some days.”

“To get married?”

“Yes, first, and then to go to Paris.”

“Very good; have what time you require, Dantès. It will take quite six
weeks to unload the cargo, and we cannot get you ready for sea until
three months after that; only be back again in three months, for the
_Pharaon_,” added the owner, patting the young sailor on the back,
“cannot sail without her captain.”

“Without her captain!” cried Dantès, his eyes sparkling with animation;
“pray mind what you say, for you are touching on the most secret wishes
of my heart. Is it really your intention to make me captain of the
_Pharaon_?”

“If I were sole owner we’d shake hands on it now, my dear Dantès, and
call it settled; but I have a partner, and you know the Italian
proverb—_Chi ha compagno ha padrone_—‘He who has a partner has a
master.’ But the thing is at least half done, as you have one out of
two votes. Rely on me to procure you the other; I will do my best.”

“Ah, M. Morrel,” exclaimed the young seaman, with tears in his eyes,
and grasping the owner’s hand, “M. Morrel, I thank you in the name of
my father and of Mercédès.”

“That’s all right, Edmond. There’s a providence that watches over the
deserving. Go to your father; go and see Mercédès, and afterwards come
to me.”

“Shall I row you ashore?”

“No, thank you; I shall remain and look over the accounts with
Danglars. Have you been satisfied with him this voyage?”

“That is according to the sense you attach to the question, sir. Do you
mean is he a good comrade? No, for I think he never liked me since the
day when I was silly enough, after a little quarrel we had, to propose
to him to stop for ten minutes at the island of Monte Cristo to settle
the dispute—a proposition which I was wrong to suggest, and he quite
right to refuse. If you mean as responsible agent when you ask me the
question, I believe there is nothing to say against him, and that you
will be content with the way in which he has performed his duty.”

“But tell me, Dantès, if you had command of the _Pharaon_ should you be
glad to see Danglars remain?”

“Captain or mate, M. Morrel, I shall always have the greatest respect
for those who possess the owners’ confidence.”

“That’s right, that’s right, Dantès! I see you are a thoroughly good
fellow, and will detain you no longer. Go, for I see how impatient you
are.”

“Then I have leave?”

“Go, I tell you.”

“May I have the use of your skiff?”

“Certainly.”

“Then, for the present, M. Morrel, farewell, and a thousand thanks!”

“I hope soon to see you again, my dear Edmond. Good luck to you.”

The young sailor jumped into the skiff, and sat down in the stern
sheets, with the order that he be put ashore at La Canebière. The two
oarsmen bent to their work, and the little boat glided away as rapidly
as possible in the midst of the thousand vessels which choke up the
narrow way which leads between the two rows of ships from the mouth of
the harbor to the Quai d’Orléans.

The shipowner, smiling, followed him with his eyes until he saw him
spring out on the quay and disappear in the midst of the throng, which
from five o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock at night, swarms in
the famous street of La Canebière,—a street of which the modern
Phocéens are so proud that they say with all the gravity in the world,
and with that accent which gives so much character to what is said, “If
Paris had La Canebière, Paris would be a second Marseilles.” On turning
round the owner saw Danglars behind him, apparently awaiting orders,
but in reality also watching the young sailor,—but there was a great
difference in the expression of the two men who thus followed the
movements of Edmond Dantès.



 Chapter 2. Father and Son

We will leave Danglars struggling with the demon of hatred, and
endeavoring to insinuate in the ear of the shipowner some evil
suspicions against his comrade, and follow Dantès, who, after having
traversed La Canebière, took the Rue de Noailles, and entering a small
house, on the left of the Allées de Meilhan, rapidly ascended four
flights of a dark staircase, holding the baluster with one hand, while
with the other he repressed the beatings of his heart, and paused
before a half-open door, from which he could see the whole of a small
room.

This room was occupied by Dantès’ father. The news of the arrival of
the _Pharaon_ had not yet reached the old man, who, mounted on a chair,
was amusing himself by training with trembling hand the nasturtiums and
sprays of clematis that clambered over the trellis at his window.
Suddenly, he felt an arm thrown around his body, and a well-known voice
behind him exclaimed, “Father—dear father!”

The old man uttered a cry, and turned round; then, seeing his son, he
fell into his arms, pale and trembling.

“What ails you, my dearest father? Are you ill?” inquired the young
man, much alarmed.

“No, no, my dear Edmond—my boy—my son!—no; but I did not expect you;
and joy, the surprise of seeing you so suddenly—Ah, I feel as if I were
going to die.”

“Come, come, cheer up, my dear father! ’Tis I—really I! They say joy
never hurts, and so I came to you without any warning. Come now, do
smile, instead of looking at me so solemnly. Here I am back again, and
we are going to be happy.”

“Yes, yes, my boy, so we will—so we will,” replied the old man; “but
how shall we be happy? Shall you never leave me again? Come, tell me
all the good fortune that has befallen you.”

“God forgive me,” said the young man, “for rejoicing at happiness
derived from the misery of others, but, Heaven knows, I did not seek
this good fortune; it has happened, and I really cannot pretend to
lament it. The good Captain Leclere is dead, father, and it is probable
that, with the aid of M. Morrel, I shall have his place. Do you
understand, father? Only imagine me a captain at twenty, with a hundred
louis pay, and a share in the profits! Is this not more than a poor
sailor like me could have hoped for?”

“Yes, my dear boy,” replied the old man, “it is very fortunate.”

“Well, then, with the first money I touch, I mean you to have a small
house, with a garden in which to plant clematis, nasturtiums, and
honeysuckle. But what ails you, father? Are you not well?”

“’Tis nothing, nothing; it will soon pass away”—and as he said so the
old man’s strength failed him, and he fell backwards.

“Come, come,” said the young man, “a glass of wine, father, will revive
you. Where do you keep your wine?”

“No, no; thanks. You need not look for it; I do not want it,” said the
old man.

“Yes, yes, father, tell me where it is,” and he opened two or three
cupboards.

“It is no use,” said the old man, “there is no wine.”

“What, no wine?” said Dantès, turning pale, and looking alternately at
the hollow cheeks of the old man and the empty cupboards. “What, no
wine? Have you wanted money, father?”

“I want nothing now that I have you,” said the old man.

“Yet,” stammered Dantès, wiping the perspiration from his brow,—“yet I
gave you two hundred francs when I left, three months ago.”

“Yes, yes, Edmond, that is true, but you forgot at that time a little
debt to our neighbor, Caderousse. He reminded me of it, telling me if I
did not pay for you, he would be paid by M. Morrel; and so, you see,
lest he might do you an injury——”

“Well?”

“Why, I paid him.”

“But,” cried Dantès, “it was a hundred and forty francs I owed
Caderousse.”

“Yes,” stammered the old man.

“And you paid him out of the two hundred francs I left you?”

The old man nodded.

“So that you have lived for three months on sixty francs,” muttered
Edmond.

“You know how little I require,” said the old man.

“Heaven pardon me,” cried Edmond, falling on his knees before his
father.

“What are you doing?”

“You have wounded me to the heart.”

“Never mind it, for I see you once more,” said the old man; “and now
it’s all over—everything is all right again.”

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“Yes, here I am,” said the young man, “with a promising future and a
little money. Here, father, here!” he said, “take this—take it, and
send for something immediately.” And he emptied his pockets on the
table, the contents consisting of a dozen gold pieces, five or six
five-franc pieces, and some smaller coin. The countenance of old Dantès
brightened.

“Whom does this belong to?” he inquired.

“To me, to you, to us! Take it; buy some provisions; be happy, and
tomorrow we shall have more.”

“Gently, gently,” said the old man, with a smile; “and by your leave I
will use your purse moderately, for they would say, if they saw me buy
too many things at a time, that I had been obliged to await your
return, in order to be able to purchase them.”

“Do as you please; but, first of all, pray have a servant, father. I
will not have you left alone so long. I have some smuggled coffee and
most capital tobacco, in a small chest in the hold, which you shall
have tomorrow. But, hush, here comes somebody.”

“’Tis Caderousse, who has heard of your arrival, and no doubt comes to
congratulate you on your fortunate return.”

“Ah, lips that say one thing, while the heart thinks another,” murmured
Edmond. “But, never mind, he is a neighbor who has done us a service on
a time, so he’s welcome.”

As Edmond paused, the black and bearded head of Caderousse appeared at
the door. He was a man of twenty-five or six, and held a piece of
cloth, which, being a tailor, he was about to make into a coat-lining.

“What, is it you, Edmond, back again?” said he, with a broad
Marseillaise accent, and a grin that displayed his ivory-white teeth.

“Yes, as you see, neighbor Caderousse; and ready to be agreeable to you
in any and every way,” replied Dantès, but ill-concealing his coldness
under this cloak of civility.

“Thanks—thanks; but, fortunately, I do not want for anything; and it
chances that at times there are others who have need of me.” Dantès
made a gesture. “I do not allude to you, my boy. No!—no! I lent you
money, and you returned it; that’s like good neighbors, and we are
quits.”

“We are never quits with those who oblige us,” was Dantès’ reply; “for
when we do not owe them money, we owe them gratitude.”

“What’s the use of mentioning that? What is done is done. Let us talk
of your happy return, my boy. I had gone on the quay to match a piece
of mulberry cloth, when I met friend Danglars. ‘You at
Marseilles?’—‘Yes,’ says he.

“‘I thought you were at Smyrna.’—‘I was; but am now back again.’

“‘And where is the dear boy, our little Edmond?’

“‘Why, with his father, no doubt,’ replied Danglars. And so I came,”
added Caderousse, “as fast as I could to have the pleasure of shaking
hands with a friend.”

0037m



“Worthy Caderousse!” said the old man, “he is so much attached to us.”

“Yes, to be sure I am. I love and esteem you, because honest folks are
so rare. But it seems you have come back rich, my boy,” continued the
tailor, looking askance at the handful of gold and silver which Dantès
had thrown on the table.

The young man remarked the greedy glance which shone in the dark eyes
of his neighbor. “Eh,” he said, negligently, “this money is not mine. I
was expressing to my father my fears that he had wanted many things in
my absence, and to convince me he emptied his purse on the table. Come,
father” added Dantès, “put this money back in your box—unless neighbor
Caderousse wants anything, and in that case it is at his service.”

“No, my boy, no,” said Caderousse. “I am not in any want, thank God, my
living is suited to my means. Keep your money—keep it, I say;—one never
has too much;—but, at the same time, my boy, I am as much obliged by
your offer as if I took advantage of it.”

“It was offered with good will,” said Dantès.

“No doubt, my boy; no doubt. Well, you stand well with M. Morrel I
hear,—you insinuating dog, you!”

“M. Morrel has always been exceedingly kind to me,” replied Dantès.

“Then you were wrong to refuse to dine with him.”

“What, did you refuse to dine with him?” said old Dantès; “and did he
invite you to dine?”

“Yes, my dear father,” replied Edmond, smiling at his father’s
astonishment at the excessive honor paid to his son.

“And why did you refuse, my son?” inquired the old man.

“That I might the sooner see you again, my dear father,” replied the
young man. “I was most anxious to see you.”

“But it must have vexed M. Morrel, good, worthy man,” said Caderousse.
“And when you are looking forward to be captain, it was wrong to annoy
the owner.”

“But I explained to him the cause of my refusal,” replied Dantès, “and
I hope he fully understood it.”

“Yes, but to be captain one must do a little flattery to one’s
patrons.”

“I hope to be captain without that,” said Dantès.

“So much the better—so much the better! Nothing will give greater
pleasure to all your old friends; and I know one down there behind the
Saint Nicolas citadel who will not be sorry to hear it.”

“Mercédès?” said the old man.

“Yes, my dear father, and with your permission, now I have seen you,
and know you are well and have all you require, I will ask your consent
to go and pay a visit to the Catalans.”

“Go, my dear boy,” said old Dantès; “and Heaven bless you in your wife,
as it has blessed me in my son!”

“His wife!” said Caderousse; “why, how fast you go on, father Dantès;
she is not his wife yet, as it seems to me.”

“No, but according to all probability she soon will be,” replied
Edmond.

“Yes—yes,” said Caderousse; “but you were right to return as soon as
possible, my boy.”

“And why?”

“Because Mercédès is a very fine girl, and fine girls never lack
followers; she particularly has them by dozens.”

“Really?” answered Edmond, with a smile which had in it traces of
slight uneasiness.

0039m



“Ah, yes,” continued Caderousse, “and capital offers, too; but you
know, you will be captain, and who could refuse you then?”

“Meaning to say,” replied Dantès, with a smile which but ill-concealed
his trouble, “that if I were not a captain——”

“Eh—eh!” said Caderousse, shaking his head.

“Come, come,” said the sailor, “I have a better opinion than you of
women in general, and of Mercédès in particular; and I am certain that,
captain or not, she will remain ever faithful to me.”

“So much the better—so much the better,” said Caderousse. “When one is
going to be married, there is nothing like implicit confidence; but
never mind that, my boy,—go and announce your arrival, and let her know
all your hopes and prospects.”

“I will go directly,” was Edmond’s reply; and, embracing his father,
and nodding to Caderousse, he left the apartment.

Caderousse lingered for a moment, then taking leave of old Dantès, he
went downstairs to rejoin Danglars, who awaited him at the corner of
the Rue Senac.

“Well,” said Danglars, “did you see him?”

“I have just left him,” answered Caderousse.

“Did he allude to his hope of being captain?”

“He spoke of it as a thing already decided.”

“Indeed!” said Danglars, “he is in too much hurry, it appears to me.”

“Why, it seems M. Morrel has promised him the thing.”

“So that he is quite elated about it?”

“Why, yes, he is actually insolent over the matter—has already offered
me his patronage, as if he were a grand personage, and proffered me a
loan of money, as though he were a banker.”

“Which you refused?”

“Most assuredly; although I might easily have accepted it, for it was I
who put into his hands the first silver he ever earned; but now M.
Dantès has no longer any occasion for assistance—he is about to become
a captain.”

“Pooh!” said Danglars, “he is not one yet.”

“_Ma foi!_ it will be as well if he is not,” answered Caderousse; “for
if he should be, there will be really no speaking to him.”

“If we choose,” replied Danglars, “he will remain what he is; and
perhaps become even less than he is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing—I was speaking to myself. And is he still in love with the
Catalane?”

“Over head and ears; but, unless I am much mistaken, there will be a
storm in that quarter.”

0041m



“Explain yourself.”

“Why should I?”

“It is more important than you think, perhaps. You do not like Dantès?”

“I never like upstarts.”

“Then tell me all you know about the Catalane.”

“I know nothing for certain; only I have seen things which induce me to
believe, as I told you, that the future captain will find some
annoyance in the vicinity of the Vieilles Infirmeries.”

“What have you seen?—come, tell me!”

“Well, every time I have seen Mercédès come into the city she has been
accompanied by a tall, strapping, black-eyed Catalan, with a red
complexion, brown skin, and fierce air, whom she calls cousin.”

“Really; and you think this cousin pays her attentions?”

“I only suppose so. What else can a strapping chap of twenty-one mean
with a fine wench of seventeen?”

“And you say that Dantès has gone to the Catalans?”

“He went before I came down.”

“Let us go the same way; we will stop at La Réserve, and we can drink a
glass of La Malgue, whilst we wait for news.”

“Come along,” said Caderousse; “but you pay the score.”

“Of course,” replied Danglars; and going quickly to the designated
place, they called for a bottle of wine, and two glasses.

Père Pamphile had seen Dantès pass not ten minutes before; and assured
that he was at the Catalans, they sat down under the budding foliage of
the planes and sycamores, in the branches of which the birds were
singing their welcome to one of the first days of spring.



 Chapter 3. The Catalans

Beyond a bare, weather-worn wall, about a hundred paces from the spot
where the two friends sat looking and listening as they drank their
wine, was the village of the Catalans. Long ago this mysterious colony
quitted Spain, and settled on the tongue of land on which it is to this
day. Whence it came no one knew, and it spoke an unknown tongue. One of
its chiefs, who understood Provençal, begged the commune of Marseilles
to give them this bare and barren promontory, where, like the sailors
of old, they had run their boats ashore. The request was granted; and
three months afterwards, around the twelve or fifteen small vessels
which had brought these gypsies of the sea, a small village sprang up.
This village, constructed in a singular and picturesque manner, half
Moorish, half Spanish, still remains, and is inhabited by descendants
of the first comers, who speak the language of their fathers. For three
or four centuries they have remained upon this small promontory, on
which they had settled like a flight of seabirds, without mixing with
the Marseillaise population, intermarrying, and preserving their
original customs and the costume of their mother-country as they have
preserved its language.

Our readers will follow us along the only street of this little
village, and enter with us one of the houses, which is sunburned to the
beautiful dead-leaf color peculiar to the buildings of the country, and
within coated with whitewash, like a Spanish posada. A young and
beautiful girl, with hair as black as jet, her eyes as velvety as the
gazelle’s, was leaning with her back against the wainscot, rubbing in
her slender delicately moulded fingers a bunch of heath blossoms, the
flowers of which she was picking off and strewing on the floor; her
arms, bare to the elbow, brown, and modelled after those of the
Arlesian Venus, moved with a kind of restless impatience, and she
tapped the earth with her arched and supple foot, so as to display the
pure and full shape of her well-turned leg, in its red cotton, gray and
blue clocked, stocking. At three paces from her, seated in a chair
which he balanced on two legs, leaning his elbow on an old worm-eaten
table, was a tall young man of twenty, or two-and-twenty, who was
looking at her with an air in which vexation and uneasiness were
mingled. He questioned her with his eyes, but the firm and steady gaze
of the young girl controlled his look.

“You see, Mercédès,” said the young man, “here is Easter come round
again; tell me, is this the moment for a wedding?”

“I have answered you a hundred times, Fernand, and really you must be
very stupid to ask me again.”

“Well, repeat it,—repeat it, I beg of you, that I may at last believe
it! Tell me for the hundredth time that you refuse my love, which had
your mother’s sanction. Make me understand once for all that you are
trifling with my happiness, that my life or death are nothing to you.
Ah, to have dreamed for ten years of being your husband, Mercédès, and
to lose that hope, which was the only stay of my existence!”

“At least it was not I who ever encouraged you in that hope, Fernand,”
replied Mercédès; “you cannot reproach me with the slightest coquetry.
I have always said to you, ‘I love you as a brother; but do not ask
from me more than sisterly affection, for my heart is another’s.’ Is
not this true, Fernand?”

“Yes, that is very true, Mercédès,” replied the young man, “Yes, you
have been cruelly frank with me; but do you forget that it is among the
Catalans a sacred law to intermarry?”

0045m



“You mistake, Fernand; it is not a law, but merely a custom, and, I
pray of you, do not cite this custom in your favor. You are included in
the conscription, Fernand, and are only at liberty on sufferance,
liable at any moment to be called upon to take up arms. Once a soldier,
what would you do with me, a poor orphan, forlorn, without fortune,
with nothing but a half-ruined hut and a few ragged nets, the miserable
inheritance left by my father to my mother, and by my mother to me? She
has been dead a year, and you know, Fernand, I have subsisted almost
entirely on public charity. Sometimes you pretend I am useful to you,
and that is an excuse to share with me the produce of your fishing, and
I accept it, Fernand, because you are the son of my father’s brother,
because we were brought up together, and still more because it would
give you so much pain if I refuse. But I feel very deeply that this
fish which I go and sell, and with the produce of which I buy the flax
I spin,—I feel very keenly, Fernand, that this is charity.”

“And if it were, Mercédès, poor and lone as you are, you suit me as
well as the daughter of the first shipowner or the richest banker of
Marseilles! What do such as we desire but a good wife and careful
housekeeper, and where can I look for these better than in you?”

“Fernand,” answered Mercédès, shaking her head, “a woman becomes a bad
manager, and who shall say she will remain an honest woman, when she
loves another man better than her husband? Rest content with my
friendship, for I say once more that is all I can promise, and I will
promise no more than I can bestow.”

“I understand,” replied Fernand, “you can endure your own wretchedness
patiently, but you are afraid to share mine. Well, Mercédès, beloved by
you, I would tempt fortune; you would bring me good luck, and I should
become rich. I could extend my occupation as a fisherman, might get a
place as clerk in a warehouse, and become in time a dealer myself.”

“You could do no such thing, Fernand; you are a soldier, and if you
remain at the Catalans it is because there is no war; so remain a
fisherman, and contented with my friendship, as I cannot give you
more.”

“Well, I will do better, Mercédès. I will be a sailor; instead of the
costume of our fathers, which you despise, I will wear a varnished hat,
a striped shirt, and a blue jacket, with an anchor on the buttons.
Would not that dress please you?”

“What do you mean?” asked Mercédès, with an angry glance,—“what do you
mean? I do not understand you?”

“I mean, Mercédès, that you are thus harsh and cruel with me, because
you are expecting someone who is thus attired; but perhaps he whom you
await is inconstant, or if he is not, the sea is so to him.”

“Fernand,” cried Mercédès, “I believed you were good-hearted, and I was
mistaken! Fernand, you are wicked to call to your aid jealousy and the
anger of God! Yes, I will not deny it, I do await, and I do love him of
whom you speak; and, if he does not return, instead of accusing him of
the inconstancy which you insinuate, I will tell you that he died
loving me and me only.” The young girl made a gesture of rage. “I
understand you, Fernand; you would be revenged on him because I do not
love you; you would cross your Catalan knife with his dirk. What end
would that answer? To lose you my friendship if he were conquered, and
see that friendship changed into hate if you were victor. Believe me,
to seek a quarrel with a man is a bad method of pleasing the woman who
loves that man. No, Fernand, you will not thus give way to evil
thoughts. Unable to have me for your wife, you will content yourself
with having me for your friend and sister; and besides,” she added, her
eyes troubled and moistened with tears, “wait, wait, Fernand; you said
just now that the sea was treacherous, and he has been gone four
months, and during these four months there have been some terrible
storms.”

Fernand made no reply, nor did he attempt to check the tears which
flowed down the cheeks of Mercédès, although for each of these tears he
would have shed his heart’s blood; but these tears flowed for another.
He arose, paced a while up and down the hut, and then, suddenly
stopping before Mercédès, with his eyes glowing and his hands
clenched,—“Say, Mercédès,” he said, “once for all, is this your final
determination?”

“I love Edmond Dantès,” the young girl calmly replied, “and none but
Edmond shall ever be my husband.”

“And you will always love him?”

“As long as I live.”

Fernand let fall his head like a defeated man, heaved a sigh that was
like a groan, and then suddenly looking her full in the face, with
clenched teeth and expanded nostrils, said,—“But if he is dead——”

“If he is dead, I shall die too.”

“If he has forgotten you——”

“Mercédès!” called a joyous voice from without,—“Mercédès!”

“Ah,” exclaimed the young girl, blushing with delight, and fairly
leaping in excess of love, “you see he has not forgotten me, for here
he is!” And rushing towards the door, she opened it, saying, “Here,
Edmond, here I am!”

Fernand, pale and trembling, drew back, like a traveller at the sight
of a serpent, and fell into a chair beside him. Edmond and Mercédès
were clasped in each other’s arms. The burning Marseilles sun, which
shot into the room through the open door, covered them with a flood of
light. At first they saw nothing around them. Their intense happiness
isolated them from all the rest of the world, and they only spoke in
broken words, which are the tokens of a joy so extreme that they seem
rather the expression of sorrow. Suddenly Edmond saw the gloomy, pale,
and threatening countenance of Fernand, as it was defined in the
shadow. By a movement for which he could scarcely account to himself,
the young Catalan placed his hand on the knife at his belt.

“Ah, your pardon,” said Dantès, frowning in his turn; “I did not
perceive that there were three of us.” Then, turning to Mercédès, he
inquired, “Who is this gentleman?”

“One who will be your best friend, Dantès, for he is my friend, my
cousin, my brother; it is Fernand—the man whom, after you, Edmond, I
love the best in the world. Do you not remember him?”

“Yes!” said Dantès, and without relinquishing Mercédès’ hand clasped in
one of his own, he extended the other to the Catalan with a cordial
air. But Fernand, instead of responding to this amiable gesture,
remained mute and trembling. Edmond then cast his eyes scrutinizingly
at the agitated and embarrassed Mercédès, and then again on the gloomy
and menacing Fernand. This look told him all, and his anger waxed hot.

“I did not know, when I came with such haste to you, that I was to meet
an enemy here.”

“An enemy!” cried Mercédès, with an angry look at her cousin. “An enemy
in my house, do you say, Edmond! If I believed that, I would place my
arm under yours and go with you to Marseilles, leaving the house to
return to it no more.”

Fernand’s eye darted lightning. “And should any misfortune occur to
you, dear Edmond,” she continued with the same calmness which proved to
Fernand that the young girl had read the very innermost depths of his
sinister thought, “if misfortune should occur to you, I would ascend
the highest point of the Cape de Morgiou and cast myself headlong from
it.”

Fernand became deadly pale. “But you are deceived, Edmond,” she
continued. “You have no enemy here—there is no one but Fernand, my
brother, who will grasp your hand as a devoted friend.”

And at these words the young girl fixed her imperious look on the
Catalan, who, as if fascinated by it, came slowly towards Edmond, and
offered him his hand. His hatred, like a powerless though furious wave,
was broken against the strong ascendancy which Mercédès exercised over
him. Scarcely, however, had he touched Edmond’s hand when he felt he
had done all he could do, and rushed hastily out of the house.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, running furiously and tearing his hair—“Oh, who
will deliver me from this man? Wretched—wretched that I am!”

“Hallo, Catalan! Hallo, Fernand! where are you running to?” exclaimed a
voice.

The young man stopped suddenly, looked around him, and perceived
Caderousse sitting at table with Danglars, under an arbor.

“Well”, said Caderousse, “why don’t you come? Are you really in such a
hurry that you have no time to pass the time of day with your friends?”

“Particularly when they have still a full bottle before them,” added
Danglars. Fernand looked at them both with a stupefied air, but did not
say a word.

“He seems besotted,” said Danglars, pushing Caderousse with his knee.
“Are we mistaken, and is Dantès triumphant in spite of all we have
believed?”

“Why, we must inquire into that,” was Caderousse’s reply; and turning
towards the young man, said, “Well, Catalan, can’t you make up your
mind?”

Fernand wiped away the perspiration steaming from his brow, and slowly
entered the arbor, whose shade seemed to restore somewhat of calmness
to his senses, and whose coolness somewhat of refreshment to his
exhausted body.

“Good-day,” said he. “You called me, didn’t you?” And he fell, rather
than sat down, on one of the seats which surrounded the table.

“I called you because you were running like a madman, and I was afraid
you would throw yourself into the sea,” said Caderousse, laughing.
“Why, when a man has friends, they are not only to offer him a glass of
wine, but, moreover, to prevent his swallowing three or four pints of
water unnecessarily!”

Fernand gave a groan, which resembled a sob, and dropped his head into
his hands, his elbows leaning on the table.

“Well, Fernand, I must say,” said Caderousse, beginning the
conversation, with that brutality of the common people in which
curiosity destroys all diplomacy, “you look uncommonly like a rejected
lover;” and he burst into a hoarse laugh.

“Bah!” said Danglars, “a lad of his make was not born to be unhappy in
love. You are laughing at him, Caderousse.”

“No,” he replied, “only hark how he sighs! Come, come, Fernand,” said
Caderousse, “hold up your head, and answer us. It’s not polite not to
reply to friends who ask news of your health.”

“My health is well enough,” said Fernand, clenching his hands without
raising his head.

“Ah, you see, Danglars,” said Caderousse, winking at his friend, “this
is how it is; Fernand, whom you see here, is a good and brave Catalan,
one of the best fishermen in Marseilles, and he is in love with a very
fine girl, named Mercédès; but it appears, unfortunately, that the fine
girl is in love with the mate of the _Pharaon_; and as the _Pharaon_
arrived today—why, you understand!”

“No; I do not understand,” said Danglars.

“Poor Fernand has been dismissed,” continued Caderousse.

“Well, and what then?” said Fernand, lifting up his head, and looking
at Caderousse like a man who looks for someone on whom to vent his
anger; “Mercédès is not accountable to any person, is she? Is she not
free to love whomsoever she will?”

“Oh, if you take it in that sense,” said Caderousse, “it is another
thing. But I thought you were a Catalan, and they told me the Catalans
were not men to allow themselves to be supplanted by a rival. It was
even told me that Fernand, especially, was terrible in his vengeance.”

Fernand smiled piteously. “A lover is never terrible,” he said.

“Poor fellow!” remarked Danglars, affecting to pity the young man from
the bottom of his heart. “Why, you see, he did not expect to see Dantès
return so suddenly—he thought he was dead, perhaps; or perchance
faithless! These things always come on us more severely when they come
suddenly.”

“Ah, _ma foi_, under any circumstances!” said Caderousse, who drank as
he spoke, and on whom the fumes of the wine began to take
effect,—“under any circumstances Fernand is not the only person put out
by the fortunate arrival of Dantès; is he, Danglars?”

“No, you are right—and I should say that would bring him ill-luck.”

“Well, never mind,” answered Caderousse, pouring out a glass of wine
for Fernand, and filling his own for the eighth or ninth time, while
Danglars had merely sipped his. “Never mind—in the meantime he marries
Mercédès—the lovely Mercédès—at least he returns to do that.”

During this time Danglars fixed his piercing glance on the young man,
on whose heart Caderousse’s words fell like molten lead.

“And when is the wedding to be?” he asked.

“Oh, it is not yet fixed!” murmured Fernand.

“No, but it will be,” said Caderousse, “as surely as Dantès will be
captain of the _Pharaon_—eh, Danglars?”

Danglars shuddered at this unexpected attack, and turned to Caderousse,
whose countenance he scrutinized, to try and detect whether the blow
was premeditated; but he read nothing but envy in a countenance already
rendered brutal and stupid by drunkenness.

“Well,” said he, filling the glasses, “let us drink to Captain Edmond
Dantès, husband of the beautiful Catalane!”

Caderousse raised his glass to his mouth with unsteady hand, and
swallowed the contents at a gulp. Fernand dashed his on the ground.

“Eh, eh, eh!” stammered Caderousse. “What do I see down there by the
wall, in the direction of the Catalans? Look, Fernand, your eyes are
better than mine. I believe I see double. You know wine is a deceiver;
but I should say it was two lovers walking side by side, and hand in
hand. Heaven forgive me, they do not know that we can see them, and
they are actually embracing!”

Danglars did not lose one pang that Fernand endured.

“Do you know them, Fernand?” he said.

“Yes,” was the reply, in a low voice. “It is Edmond and Mercédès!”

“Ah, see there, now!” said Caderousse; “and I did not recognize them!
Hallo, Dantès! hello, lovely damsel! Come this way, and let us know
when the wedding is to be, for Fernand here is so obstinate he will not
tell us.”

“Hold your tongue, will you?” said Danglars, pretending to restrain
Caderousse, who, with the tenacity of drunkards, leaned out of the
arbor. “Try to stand upright, and let the lovers make love without
interruption. See, look at Fernand, and follow his example; he is
well-behaved!”

0051m



Fernand, probably excited beyond bearing, pricked by Danglars, as the
bull is by the bandilleros, was about to rush out; for he had risen
from his seat, and seemed to be collecting himself to dash headlong
upon his rival, when Mercédès, smiling and graceful, lifted up her
lovely head, and looked at them with her clear and bright eyes. At this
Fernand recollected her threat of dying if Edmond died, and dropped
again heavily on his seat. Danglars looked at the two men, one after
the other, the one brutalized by liquor, the other overwhelmed with
love.

“I shall get nothing from these fools,” he muttered; “and I am very
much afraid of being here between a drunkard and a coward. Here’s an
envious fellow making himself boozy on wine when he ought to be nursing
his wrath, and here is a fool who sees the woman he loves stolen from
under his nose and takes on like a big baby. Yet this Catalan has eyes
that glisten like those of the vengeful Spaniards, Sicilians, and
Calabrians, and the other has fists big enough to crush an ox at one
blow. Unquestionably, Edmond’s star is in the ascendant, and he will
marry the splendid girl—he will be captain, too, and laugh at us all,
unless”—a sinister smile passed over Danglars’ lips—“unless I take a
hand in the affair,” he added.

“Hallo!” continued Caderousse, half-rising, and with his fist on the
table, “hallo, Edmond! do you not see your friends, or are you too
proud to speak to them?”

“No, my dear fellow!” replied Dantès, “I am not proud, but I am happy,
and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.”

“Ah, very well, that’s an explanation!” said Caderousse. “How do you
do, Madame Dantès?”

Mercédès courtesied gravely, and said—“That is not my name, and in my
country it bodes ill fortune, they say, to call a young girl by the
name of her betrothed before he becomes her husband. So call me
Mercédès, if you please.”

“We must excuse our worthy neighbor, Caderousse,” said Dantès, “he is
so easily mistaken.”

“So, then, the wedding is to take place immediately, M. Dantès,” said
Danglars, bowing to the young couple.

“As soon as possible, M. Danglars; today all preliminaries will be
arranged at my father’s, and tomorrow, or next day at latest, the
wedding festival here at La Réserve. My friends will be there, I hope;
that is to say, you are invited, M. Danglars, and you, Caderousse.”

“And Fernand,” said Caderousse with a chuckle; “Fernand, too, is
invited!”

“My wife’s brother is my brother,” said Edmond; “and we, Mercédès and
I, should be very sorry if he were absent at such a time.”

Fernand opened his mouth to reply, but his voice died on his lips, and
he could not utter a word.

“Today the preliminaries, tomorrow or next day the ceremony! You are in
a hurry, captain!”

“Danglars,” said Edmond, smiling, “I will say to you as Mercédès said
just now to Caderousse, ‘Do not give me a title which does not belong
to me’; that may bring me bad luck.”

“Your pardon,” replied Danglars, “I merely said you seemed in a hurry,
and we have lots of time; the _Pharaon_ cannot be under weigh again in
less than three months.”

“We are always in a hurry to be happy, M. Danglars; for when we have
suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good
fortune. But it is not selfishness alone that makes me thus in haste; I
must go to Paris.”

“Ah, really?—to Paris! and will it be the first time you have ever been
there, Dantès?”

“Yes.”

“Have you business there?”

“Not of my own; the last commission of poor Captain Leclere; you know
to what I allude, Danglars—it is sacred. Besides, I shall only take the
time to go and return.”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Danglars, and then in a low tone, he
added, “To Paris, no doubt to deliver the letter which the grand
marshal gave him. Ah, this letter gives me an idea—a capital idea! Ah;
Dantès, my friend, you are not yet registered number one on board the
good ship _Pharaon_;” then turning towards Edmond, who was walking
away, “A pleasant journey,” he cried.

“Thank you,” said Edmond with a friendly nod, and the two lovers
continued on their way, as calm and joyous as if they were the very
elect of heaven.



 Chapter 4. Conspiracy

Danglars followed Edmond and Mercédès with his eyes until the two
lovers disappeared behind one of the angles of Fort Saint Nicolas;
then, turning round, he perceived Fernand, who had fallen, pale and
trembling, into his chair, while Caderousse stammered out the words of
a drinking-song.

“Well, my dear sir,” said Danglars to Fernand, “here is a marriage
which does not appear to make everybody happy.”

“It drives me to despair,” said Fernand.

“Do you, then, love Mercédès?”

“I adore her!”

“For long?”

“As long as I have known her—always.”

“And you sit there, tearing your hair, instead of seeking to remedy
your condition; I did not think that was the way of your people.”

“What would you have me do?” said Fernand.

“How do I know? Is it my affair? I am not in love with Mademoiselle
Mercédès; but for you—in the words of the gospel, seek, and you shall
find.”

“I have found already.”

“What?”

“I would stab the man, but the woman told me that if any misfortune
happened to her betrothed, she would kill herself.”

“Pooh! Women say those things, but never do them.”

“You do not know Mercédès; what she threatens she will do.”

“Idiot!” muttered Danglars; “whether she kill herself or not, what
matter, provided Dantès is not captain?”

“Before Mercédès should die,” replied Fernand, with the accents of
unshaken resolution, “I would die myself!”

“That’s what I call love!” said Caderousse with a voice more tipsy than
ever. “That’s love, or I don’t know what love is.”

“Come,” said Danglars, “you appear to me a good sort of fellow, and
hang me, I should like to help you, but——”

“Yes,” said Caderousse, “but how?”

“My dear fellow,” replied Danglars, “you are three parts drunk; finish
the bottle, and you will be completely so. Drink then, and do not
meddle with what we are discussing, for that requires all one’s wit and
cool judgment.”

“I—drunk!” said Caderousse; “well that’s a good one! I could drink four
more such bottles; they are no bigger than cologne flasks. Père
Pamphile, more wine!”

And Caderousse rattled his glass upon the table.

“You were saying, sir——” said Fernand, awaiting with great anxiety the
end of this interrupted remark.

“What was I saying? I forget. This drunken Caderousse has made me lose
the thread of my sentence.”

“Drunk, if you like; so much the worse for those who fear wine, for it
is because they have bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will
extract from their hearts;” and Caderousse began to sing the two last
lines of a song very popular at the time:

‘Tous les méchants sont buveurs d’eau;

C’est bien prouvé par le déluge.’1


“You said, sir, you would like to help me, but——”

“Yes; but I added, to help you it would be sufficient that Dantès did
not marry her you love; and the marriage may easily be thwarted,
methinks, and yet Dantès need not die.”

“Death alone can separate them,” remarked Fernand.

“You talk like a noodle, my friend,” said Caderousse; “and here is
Danglars, who is a wide-awake, clever, deep fellow, who will prove to
you that you are wrong. Prove it, Danglars. I have answered for you.
Say there is no need why Dantès should die; it would, indeed, be a pity
he should. Dantès is a good fellow; I like Dantès. Dantès, your
health.”

Fernand rose impatiently. “Let him run on,” said Danglars, restraining
the young man; “drunk as he is, he is not much out in what he says.
Absence severs as well as death, and if the walls of a prison were
between Edmond and Mercédès they would be as effectually separated as
if he lay under a tombstone.”

0056m



“Yes; but one gets out of prison,” said Caderousse, who, with what
sense was left him, listened eagerly to the conversation, “and when one
gets out and one’s name is Edmond Dantès, one seeks revenge——”

“What matters that?” muttered Fernand.

“And why, I should like to know,” persisted Caderousse, “should they
put Dantès in prison? he has neither robbed, nor killed, nor murdered.”

“Hold your tongue!” said Danglars.

“I won’t hold my tongue!” replied Caderousse; “I say I want to know why
they should put Dantès in prison; I like Dantès; Dantès, your health!”
and he swallowed another glass of wine.

0057m



Danglars saw in the muddled look of the tailor the progress of his
intoxication, and turning towards Fernand, said, “Well, you understand
there is no need to kill him.”

“Certainly not, if, as you said just now, you have the means of having
Dantès arrested. Have you that means?”

“It is to be found for the searching. But why should I meddle in the
matter? it is no affair of mine.”

“I know not why you meddle,” said Fernand, seizing his arm; “but this I
know, you have some motive of personal hatred against Dantès, for he
who himself hates is never mistaken in the sentiments of others.”

“I! motives of hatred against Dantès? None, on my word! I saw you were
unhappy, and your unhappiness interested me; that’s all; but since you
believe I act for my own account, adieu, my dear friend, get out of the
affair as best you may;” and Danglars rose as if he meant to depart.

“No, no,” said Fernand, restraining him, “stay! It is of very little
consequence to me at the end of the matter whether you have any angry
feeling or not against Dantès. I hate him! I confess it openly. Do you
find the means, I will execute it, provided it is not to kill the man,
for Mercédès has declared she will kill herself if Dantès is killed.”

Caderousse, who had let his head drop on the table, now raised it, and
looking at Fernand with his dull and fishy eyes, he said, “Kill Dantès!
who talks of killing Dantès? I won’t have him killed—I won’t! He’s my
friend, and this morning offered to share his money with me, as I
shared mine with him. I won’t have Dantès killed—I won’t!”

“And who has said a word about killing him, muddlehead?” replied
Danglars. “We were merely joking; drink to his health,” he added,
filling Caderousse’s glass, “and do not interfere with us.”

“Yes, yes, Dantès’ good health!” said Caderousse, emptying his glass,
“here’s to his health! his health—hurrah!”

“But the means—the means?” said Fernand.

“Have you not hit upon any?” asked Danglars.

“No!—you undertook to do so.”

“True,” replied Danglars; “the French have the superiority over the
Spaniards, that the Spaniards ruminate, while the French invent.”

“Do you invent, then,” said Fernand impatiently.

“Waiter,” said Danglars, “pen, ink, and paper.”

“Pen, ink, and paper,” muttered Fernand.

“Yes; I am a supercargo; pen, ink, and paper are my tools, and without
my tools I am fit for nothing.”

“Pen, ink, and paper, then,” called Fernand loudly.

“There’s what you want on that table,” said the waiter.

“Bring them here.” The waiter did as he was desired.

0059m



“When one thinks,” said Caderousse, letting his hand drop on the paper,
“there is here wherewithal to kill a man more sure than if we waited at
the corner of a wood to assassinate him! I have always had more dread
of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper, than of a sword or
pistol.”

“The fellow is not so drunk as he appears to be,” said Danglars. “Give
him some more wine, Fernand.” Fernand filled Caderousse’s glass, who,
like the confirmed toper he was, lifted his hand from the paper and
seized the glass.

The Catalan watched him until Caderousse, almost overcome by this fresh
assault on his senses, rested, or rather dropped, his glass upon the
table.

“Well!” resumed the Catalan, as he saw the final glimmer of
Caderousse’s reason vanishing before the last glass of wine.

“Well, then, I should say, for instance,” resumed Danglars, “that if
after a voyage such as Dantès has just made, in which he touched at the
Island of Elba, someone were to denounce him to the king’s procureur as
a Bonapartist agent——”

“I will denounce him!” exclaimed the young man hastily.

“Yes, but they will make you then sign your declaration, and confront
you with him you have denounced; I will supply you with the means of
supporting your accusation, for I know the fact well. But Dantès cannot
remain forever in prison, and one day or other he will leave it, and
the day when he comes out, woe betide him who was the cause of his
incarceration!”

“Oh, I should wish nothing better than that he would come and seek a
quarrel with me.”

“Yes, and Mercédès! Mercédès, who will detest you if you have only the
misfortune to scratch the skin of her dearly beloved Edmond!”

“True!” said Fernand.

“No, no,” continued Danglars; “if we resolve on such a step, it would
be much better to take, as I now do, this pen, dip it into this ink,
and write with the left hand (that the writing may not be recognized)
the denunciation we propose.” And Danglars, uniting practice with
theory, wrote with his left hand, and in a writing reversed from his
usual style, and totally unlike it, the following lines, which he
handed to Fernand, and which Fernand read in an undertone:

“The honorable, the king’s attorney, is informed by a friend of the
throne and religion, that one Edmond Dantès, mate of the ship
_Pharaon_, arrived this morning from Smyrna, after having touched at
Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, has been intrusted by Murat with a letter for
the usurper, and by the usurper with a letter for the Bonapartist
committee in Paris. Proof of this crime will be found on arresting him,
for the letter will be found upon him, or at his father’s, or in his
cabin on board the _Pharaon_.”

“Very good,” resumed Danglars; “now your revenge looks like common
sense, for in no way can it revert to yourself, and the matter will
thus work its own way; there is nothing to do now but fold the letter
as I am doing, and write upon it, ‘To the king’s attorney,’ and that’s
all settled.” And Danglars wrote the address as he spoke.

“Yes, and that’s all settled!” exclaimed Caderousse, who, by a last
effort of intellect, had followed the reading of the letter, and
instinctively comprehended all the misery which such a denunciation
must entail. “Yes, and that’s all settled; only it will be an infamous
shame;” and he stretched out his hand to reach the letter.

“Yes,” said Danglars, taking it from beyond his reach; “and as what I
say and do is merely in jest, and I, amongst the first and foremost,
should be sorry if anything happened to Dantès—the worthy Dantès—look
here!” And taking the letter, he squeezed it up in his hands and threw
it into a corner of the arbor.

“All right!” said Caderousse. “Dantès is my friend, and I won’t have
him ill-used.”

“And who thinks of using him ill? Certainly neither I nor Fernand,”
said Danglars, rising and looking at the young man, who still remained
seated, but whose eye was fixed on the denunciatory sheet of paper
flung into the corner.

“In this case,” replied Caderousse, “let’s have some more wine. I wish
to drink to the health of Edmond and the lovely Mercédès.”

“You have had too much already, drunkard,” said Danglars; “and if you
continue, you will be compelled to sleep here, because unable to stand
on your legs.”

“I?” said Caderousse, rising with all the offended dignity of a drunken
man, “I can’t keep on my legs? Why, I’ll wager I can go up into the
belfry of the Accoules, and without staggering, too!”

“Done!” said Danglars, “I’ll take your bet; but tomorrow—today it is
time to return. Give me your arm, and let us go.”

“Very well, let us go,” said Caderousse; “but I don’t want your arm at
all. Come, Fernand, won’t you return to Marseilles with us?”

“No,” said Fernand; “I shall return to the Catalans.”

“You’re wrong. Come with us to Marseilles—come along.”

“I will not.”

“What do you mean? you will not? Well, just as you like, my prince;
there’s liberty for all the world. Come along, Danglars, and let the
young gentleman return to the Catalans if he chooses.”

Danglars took advantage of Caderousse’s temper at the moment, to take
him off towards Marseilles by the Porte Saint-Victor, staggering as he
went.

When they had advanced about twenty yards, Danglars looked back and saw
Fernand stoop, pick up the crumpled paper, and putting it into his
pocket then rush out of the arbor towards Pillon.

“Well,” said Caderousse, “why, what a lie he told! He said he was going
to the Catalans, and he is going to the city. Hallo, Fernand! You are
coming, my boy!”

“Oh, you don’t see straight,” said Danglars; “he’s gone right by the
road to the Vieilles Infirmeries.”

“Well,” said Caderousse, “I should have sworn that he turned to the
right—how treacherous wine is!”

“Come, come,” said Danglars to himself, “now the thing is at work and
it will effect its purpose unassisted.”



 Chapter 5. The Marriage Feast

The morning’s sun rose clear and resplendent, touching the foamy waves
into a network of ruby-tinted light.

The feast had been made ready on the second floor at La Réserve, with
whose arbor the reader is already familiar. The apartment destined for
the purpose was spacious and lighted by a number of windows, over each
of which was written in golden letters for some inexplicable reason the
name of one of the principal cities of France; beneath these windows a
wooden balcony extended the entire length of the house. And although
the entertainment was fixed for twelve o’clock, an hour previous to
that time the balcony was filled with impatient and expectant guests,
consisting of the favored part of the crew of the _Pharaon_, and other
personal friends of the bridegroom, the whole of whom had arrayed
themselves in their choicest costumes, in order to do greater honor to
the occasion.

Various rumors were afloat to the effect that the owners of the
_Pharaon_ had promised to attend the nuptial feast; but all seemed
unanimous in doubting that an act of such rare and exceeding
condescension could possibly be intended.

Danglars, however, who now made his appearance, accompanied by
Caderousse, effectually confirmed the report, stating that he had
recently conversed with M. Morrel, who had himself assured him of his
intention to dine at La Réserve.

In fact, a moment later M. Morrel appeared and was saluted with an
enthusiastic burst of applause from the crew of the _Pharaon_, who
hailed the visit of the shipowner as a sure indication that the man
whose wedding feast he thus delighted to honor would ere long be first
in command of the ship; and as Dantès was universally beloved on board
his vessel, the sailors put no restraint on their tumultuous joy at
finding that the opinion and choice of their superiors so exactly
coincided with their own.

With the entrance of M. Morrel, Danglars and Caderousse were despatched
in search of the bridegroom to convey to him the intelligence of the
arrival of the important personage whose coming had created such a
lively sensation, and to beseech him to make haste.

Danglars and Caderousse set off upon their errand at full speed; but
ere they had gone many steps they perceived a group advancing towards
them, composed of the betrothed pair, a party of young girls in
attendance on the bride, by whose side walked Dantès’ father; the whole
brought up by Fernand, whose lips wore their usual sinister smile.

Neither Mercédès nor Edmond observed the strange expression of his
countenance; they were so happy that they were conscious only of the
sunshine and the presence of each other.

Having acquitted themselves of their errand, and exchanged a hearty
shake of the hand with Edmond, Danglars and Caderousse took their
places beside Fernand and old Dantès,—the latter of whom attracted
universal notice.

The old man was attired in a suit of glistening watered silk, trimmed
with steel buttons, beautifully cut and polished. His thin but wiry
legs were arrayed in a pair of richly embroidered clocked stockings,
evidently of English manufacture, while from his three-cornered hat
depended a long streaming knot of white and blue ribbons. Thus he came
along, supporting himself on a curiously carved stick, his aged
countenance lit up with happiness, looking for all the world like one
of the aged dandies of 1796, parading the newly opened gardens of the
Luxembourg and Tuileries.

Beside him glided Caderousse, whose desire to partake of the good
things provided for the wedding party had induced him to become
reconciled to the Dantès, father and son, although there still lingered
in his mind a faint and unperfect recollection of the events of the
preceding night; just as the brain retains on waking in the morning the
dim and misty outline of a dream.

0065m



As Danglars approached the disappointed lover, he cast on him a look of
deep meaning, while Fernand, as he slowly paced behind the happy pair,
who seemed, in their own unmixed content, to have entirely forgotten
that such a being as himself existed, was pale and abstracted;
occasionally, however, a deep flush would overspread his countenance,
and a nervous contraction distort his features, while, with an agitated
and restless gaze, he would glance in the direction of Marseilles, like
one who either anticipated or foresaw some great and important event.

Dantès himself was simply, but becomingly, clad in the dress peculiar
to the merchant service—a costume somewhat between a military and a
civil garb; and with his fine countenance, radiant with joy and
happiness, a more perfect specimen of manly beauty could scarcely be
imagined.

Lovely as the Greek girls of Cyprus or Chios, Mercédès boasted the same
bright flashing eyes of jet, and ripe, round, coral lips. She moved
with the light, free step of an Arlesienne or an Andalusian. One more
practiced in the arts of great cities would have hid her blushes
beneath a veil, or, at least, have cast down her thickly fringed
lashes, so as to have concealed the liquid lustre of her animated eyes;
but, on the contrary, the delighted girl looked around her with a smile
that seemed to say: “If you are my friends, rejoice with me, for I am
very happy.”

As soon as the bridal party came in sight of La Réserve, M. Morrel
descended and came forth to meet it, followed by the soldiers and
sailors there assembled, to whom he had repeated the promise already
given, that Dantès should be the successor to the late Captain Leclere.
Edmond, at the approach of his patron, respectfully placed the arm of
his affianced bride within that of M. Morrel, who, forthwith conducting
her up the flight of wooden steps leading to the chamber in which the
feast was prepared, was gayly followed by the guests, beneath whose
heavy tread the slight structure creaked and groaned for the space of
several minutes.

“Father,” said Mercédès, stopping when she had reached the centre of
the table, “sit, I pray you, on my right hand; on my left I will place
him who has ever been as a brother to me,” pointing with a soft and
gentle smile to Fernand; but her words and look seemed to inflict the
direst torture on him, for his lips became ghastly pale, and even
beneath the dark hue of his complexion the blood might be seen
retreating as though some sudden pang drove it back to the heart.

During this time, Dantès, at the opposite side of the table, had been
occupied in similarly placing his most honored guests. M. Morrel was
seated at his right hand, Danglars at his left; while, at a sign from
Edmond, the rest of the company ranged themselves as they found it most
agreeable.

Then they began to pass around the dusky, piquant, Arlesian sausages,
and lobsters in their dazzling red cuirasses, prawns of large size and
brilliant color, the echinus with its prickly outside and dainty morsel
within, the clovis, esteemed by the epicures of the South as more than
rivalling the exquisite flavor of the oyster, North. All the
delicacies, in fact, that are cast up by the wash of waters on the
sandy beach, and styled by the grateful fishermen “fruits of the sea.”

“A pretty silence truly!” said the old father of the bridegroom, as he
carried to his lips a glass of wine of the hue and brightness of the
topaz, and which had just been placed before Mercédès herself. “Now,
would anybody think that this room contained a happy, merry party, who
desire nothing better than to laugh and dance the hours away?”

“Ah,” sighed Caderousse, “a man cannot always feel happy because he is
about to be married.”

“The truth is,” replied Dantès, “that I am too happy for noisy mirth;
if that is what you meant by your observation, my worthy friend, you
are right; joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us
almost the same as sorrow.”

Danglars looked towards Fernand, whose excitable nature received and
betrayed each fresh impression.

“Why, what ails you?” asked he of Edmond. “Do you fear any approaching
evil? I should say that you were the happiest man alive at this
instant.”

“And that is the very thing that alarms me,” returned Dantès. “Man does
not appear to me to be intended to enjoy felicity so unmixed; happiness
is like the enchanted palaces we read of in our childhood, where
fierce, fiery dragons defend the entrance and approach; and monsters of
all shapes and kinds, requiring to be overcome ere victory is ours. I
own that I am lost in wonder to find myself promoted to an honor of
which I feel myself unworthy—that of being the husband of Mercédès.”

“Nay, nay!” cried Caderousse, smiling, “you have not attained that
honor yet. Mercédès is not yet your wife. Just assume the tone and
manner of a husband, and see how she will remind you that your hour is
not yet come!”

The bride blushed, while Fernand, restless and uneasy, seemed to start
at every fresh sound, and from time to time wiped away the large drops
of perspiration that gathered on his brow.

“Well, never mind that, neighbor Caderousse; it is not worthwhile to
contradict me for such a trifle as that. ’Tis true that Mercédès is not
actually my wife; but,” added he, drawing out his watch, “in an hour
and a half she will be.”

A general exclamation of surprise ran round the table, with the
exception of the elder Dantès, whose laugh displayed the still perfect
beauty of his large white teeth. Mercédès looked pleased and gratified,
while Fernand grasped the handle of his knife with a convulsive clutch.

“In an hour?” inquired Danglars, turning pale. “How is that, my
friend?”

“Why, thus it is,” replied Dantès. “Thanks to the influence of M.
Morrel, to whom, next to my father, I owe every blessing I enjoy, every
difficulty has been removed. We have purchased permission to waive the
usual delay; and at half-past two o’clock the Mayor of Marseilles will
be waiting for us at the city hall. Now, as a quarter-past one has
already struck, I do not consider I have asserted too much in saying,
that, in another hour and thirty minutes Mercédès will have become
Madame Dantès.”

0069m



Fernand closed his eyes, a burning sensation passed across his brow,
and he was compelled to support himself by the table to prevent his
falling from his chair; but in spite of all his efforts, he could not
refrain from uttering a deep groan, which, however, was lost amid the
noisy felicitations of the company.

“Upon my word,” cried the old man, “you make short work of this kind of
affair. Arrived here only yesterday morning, and married today at three
o’clock! Commend me to a sailor for going the quick way to work!”

“But,” asked Danglars, in a timid tone, “how did you manage about the
other formalities—the contract—the settlement?”

“The contract,” answered Dantès, laughingly, “it didn’t take long to
fix that. Mercédès has no fortune; I have none to settle on her. So,
you see, our papers were quickly written out, and certainly do not come
very expensive.” This joke elicited a fresh burst of applause.

“So that what we presumed to be merely the betrothal feast turns out to
be the actual wedding dinner!” said Danglars.

“No, no,” answered Dantès; “don’t imagine I am going to put you off in
that shabby manner. Tomorrow morning I start for Paris; four days to
go, and the same to return, with one day to discharge the commission
entrusted to me, is all the time I shall be absent. I shall be back
here by the first of March, and on the second I give my real marriage
feast.”

This prospect of fresh festivity redoubled the hilarity of the guests
to such a degree, that the elder Dantès, who, at the commencement of
the repast, had commented upon the silence that prevailed, now found it
difficult, amid the general din of voices, to obtain a moment’s
tranquillity in which to drink to the health and prosperity of the
bride and bridegroom.

Dantès, perceiving the affectionate eagerness of his father, responded
by a look of grateful pleasure; while Mercédès glanced at the clock and
made an expressive gesture to Edmond.

Around the table reigned that noisy hilarity which usually prevails at
such a time among people sufficiently free from the demands of social
position not to feel the trammels of etiquette. Such as at the
commencement of the repast had not been able to seat themselves
according to their inclination rose unceremoniously, and sought out
more agreeable companions. Everybody talked at once, without waiting
for a reply and each one seemed to be contented with expressing his or
her own thoughts.

Fernand’s paleness appeared to have communicated itself to Danglars. As
for Fernand himself, he seemed to be enduring the tortures of the
damned; unable to rest, he was among the first to quit the table, and,
as though seeking to avoid the hilarious mirth that rose in such
deafening sounds, he continued, in utter silence, to pace the farther
end of the salon.

Caderousse approached him just as Danglars, whom Fernand seemed most
anxious to avoid, had joined him in a corner of the room.

“Upon my word,” said Caderousse, from whose mind the friendly treatment
of Dantès, united with the effect of the excellent wine he had partaken
of, had effaced every feeling of envy or jealousy at Dantès’ good
fortune,—“upon my word, Dantès is a downright good fellow, and when I
see him sitting there beside his pretty wife that is so soon to be. I
cannot help thinking it would have been a great pity to have served him
that trick you were planning yesterday.”

“Oh, there was no harm meant,” answered Danglars; “at first I certainly
did feel somewhat uneasy as to what Fernand might be tempted to do; but
when I saw how completely he had mastered his feelings, even so far as
to become one of his rival’s attendants, I knew there was no further
cause for apprehension.” Caderousse looked full at Fernand—he was
ghastly pale.

“Certainly,” continued Danglars, “the sacrifice was no trifling one,
when the beauty of the bride is concerned. Upon my soul, that future
captain of mine is a lucky dog! Gad! I only wish he would let me take
his place.”

“Shall we not set forth?” asked the sweet, silvery voice of Mercédès;
“two o’clock has just struck, and you know we are expected in a quarter
of an hour.”

0071m



“To be sure!—to be sure!” cried Dantès, eagerly quitting the table;
“let us go directly!”

His words were re-echoed by the whole party, with vociferous cheers.

At this moment Danglars, who had been incessantly observing every
change in Fernand’s look and manner, saw him stagger and fall back,
with an almost convulsive spasm, against a seat placed near one of the
open windows. At the same instant his ear caught a sort of indistinct
sound on the stairs, followed by the measured tread of soldiery, with
the clanking of swords and military accoutrements; then came a hum and
buzz as of many voices, so as to deaden even the noisy mirth of the
bridal party, among whom a vague feeling of curiosity and apprehension
quelled every disposition to talk, and almost instantaneously the most
deathlike stillness prevailed.

The sounds drew nearer. Three blows were struck upon the panel of the
door. The company looked at each other in consternation.

“I demand admittance,” said a loud voice outside the room, “in the name
of the law!” As no attempt was made to prevent it, the door was opened,
and a magistrate, wearing his official scarf, presented himself,
followed by four soldiers and a corporal. Uneasiness now yielded to the
most extreme dread on the part of those present.

“May I venture to inquire the reason of this unexpected visit?” said M.
Morrel, addressing the magistrate, whom he evidently knew; “there is
doubtless some mistake easily explained.”

“If it be so,” replied the magistrate, “rely upon every reparation
being made; meanwhile, I am the bearer of an order of arrest, and
although I most reluctantly perform the task assigned me, it must,
nevertheless, be fulfilled. Who among the persons here assembled
answers to the name of Edmond Dantès?”

Every eye was turned towards the young man who, spite of the agitation
he could not but feel, advanced with dignity, and said, in a firm
voice:

“I am he; what is your pleasure with me?”

“Edmond Dantès,” replied the magistrate, “I arrest you in the name of
the law!”

“Me!” repeated Edmond, slightly changing color, “and wherefore, I
pray?”

“I cannot inform you, but you will be duly acquainted with the reasons
that have rendered such a step necessary at the preliminary
examination.”

M. Morrel felt that further resistance or remonstrance was useless. He
saw before him an officer delegated to enforce the law, and perfectly
well knew that it would be as unavailing to seek pity from a magistrate
decked with his official scarf, as to address a petition to some cold
marble effigy. Old Dantès, however, sprang forward. There are
situations which the heart of a father or a mother cannot be made to
understand. He prayed and supplicated in terms so moving, that even the
officer was touched, and, although firm in his duty, he kindly said,
“My worthy friend, let me beg of you to calm your apprehensions. Your
son has probably neglected some prescribed form or attention in
registering his cargo, and it is more than probable he will be set at
liberty directly he has given the information required, whether
touching the health of his crew, or the value of his freight.”

“What is the meaning of all this?” inquired Caderousse, frowningly, of
Danglars, who had assumed an air of utter surprise.

0073m



“How can I tell you?” replied he; “I am, like yourself, utterly
bewildered at all that is going on, and cannot in the least make out
what it is about.” Caderousse then looked around for Fernand, but he
had disappeared.

The scene of the previous night now came back to his mind with
startling clearness. The painful catastrophe he had just witnessed
appeared effectually to have rent away the veil which the intoxication
of the evening before had raised between himself and his memory.

“So, so,” said he, in a hoarse and choking voice, to Danglars, “this,
then, I suppose, is a part of the trick you were concerting yesterday?
All I can say is, that if it be so, ’tis an ill turn, and well deserves
to bring double evil on those who have projected it.”

“Nonsense,” returned Danglars, “I tell you again I have nothing
whatever to do with it; besides, you know very well that I tore the
paper to pieces.”

“No, you did not!” answered Caderousse, “you merely threw it by—I saw
it lying in a corner.”

“Hold your tongue, you fool!—what should you know about it?—why, you
were drunk!”

“Where is Fernand?” inquired Caderousse.

“How do I know?” replied Danglars; “gone, as every prudent man ought to
be, to look after his own affairs, most likely. Never mind where he is,
let you and I go and see what is to be done for our poor friends.”

During this conversation, Dantès, after having exchanged a cheerful
shake of the hand with all his sympathizing friends, had surrendered
himself to the officer sent to arrest him, merely saying, “Make
yourselves quite easy, my good fellows, there is some little mistake to
clear up, that’s all, depend upon it; and very likely I may not have to
go so far as the prison to effect that.”

0075m



“Oh, to be sure!” responded Danglars, who had now approached the group,
“nothing more than a mistake, I feel quite certain.”

Dantès descended the staircase, preceded by the magistrate, and
followed by the soldiers. A carriage awaited him at the door; he got
in, followed by two soldiers and the magistrate, and the vehicle drove
off towards Marseilles.

“Adieu, adieu, dearest Edmond!” cried Mercédès, stretching out her arms
to him from the balcony.

The prisoner heard the cry, which sounded like the sob of a broken
heart, and leaning from the coach he called out, “Good-bye, Mercédès—we
shall soon meet again!” Then the vehicle disappeared round one of the
turnings of Fort Saint Nicholas.

“Wait for me here, all of you!” cried M. Morrel; “I will take the first
conveyance I find, and hurry to Marseilles, whence I will bring you
word how all is going on.”

“That’s right!” exclaimed a multitude of voices, “go, and return as
quickly as you can!”

This second departure was followed by a long and fearful state of
terrified silence on the part of those who were left behind. The old
father and Mercédès remained for some time apart, each absorbed in
grief; but at length the two poor victims of the same blow raised their
eyes, and with a simultaneous burst of feeling rushed into each other’s
arms.

Meanwhile Fernand made his appearance, poured out for himself a glass
of water with a trembling hand; then hastily swallowing it, went to sit
down at the first vacant place, and this was, by mere chance, placed
next to the seat on which poor Mercédès had fallen half fainting, when
released from the warm and affectionate embrace of old Dantès.
Instinctively Fernand drew back his chair.

“He is the cause of all this misery—I am quite sure of it,” whispered
Caderousse, who had never taken his eyes off Fernand, to Danglars.

“I don’t think so,” answered the other; “he’s too stupid to imagine
such a scheme. I only hope the mischief will fall upon the head of
whoever wrought it.”

“You don’t mention those who aided and abetted the deed,” said
Caderousse.

“Surely,” answered Danglars, “one cannot be held responsible for every
chance arrow shot into the air.”

“You can, indeed, when the arrow lights point downward on somebody’s
head.”

Meantime the subject of the arrest was being canvassed in every
different form.

“What think you, Danglars,” said one of the party, turning towards him,
“of this event?”

“Why,” replied he, “I think it just possible Dantès may have been
detected with some trifling article on board ship considered here as
contraband.”

“But how could he have done so without your knowledge, Danglars, since
you are the ship’s supercargo?”

“Why, as for that, I could only know what I was told respecting the
merchandise with which the vessel was laden. I know she was loaded with
cotton, and that she took in her freight at Alexandria from Pastret’s
warehouse, and at Smyrna from Pascal’s; that is all I was obliged to
know, and I beg I may not be asked for any further particulars.”

“Now I recollect,” said the afflicted old father; “my poor boy told me
yesterday he had got a small case of coffee, and another of tobacco for
me!”

“There, you see,” exclaimed Danglars. “Now the mischief is out; depend
upon it the custom-house people went rummaging about the ship in our
absence, and discovered poor Dantès’ hidden treasures.”

Mercédès, however, paid no heed to this explanation of her lover’s
arrest. Her grief, which she had hitherto tried to restrain, now burst
out in a violent fit of hysterical sobbing.

“Come, come,” said the old man, “be comforted, my poor child; there is
still hope!”

“Hope!” repeated Danglars.

“Hope!” faintly murmured Fernand, but the word seemed to die away on
his pale agitated lips, and a convulsive spasm passed over his
countenance.

“Good news! good news!” shouted forth one of the party stationed in the
balcony on the lookout. “Here comes M. Morrel back. No doubt, now, we
shall hear that our friend is released!”

Mercédès and the old man rushed to meet the shipowner and greeted him
at the door. He was very pale.

“What news?” exclaimed a general burst of voices.

“Alas, my friends,” replied M. Morrel, with a mournful shake of his
head, “the thing has assumed a more serious aspect than I expected.”

“Oh, indeed—indeed, sir, he is innocent!” sobbed forth Mercédès.

“That I believe!” answered M. Morrel; “but still he is charged——”

“With what?” inquired the elder Dantès.

“With being an agent of the Bonapartist faction!” Many of our readers
may be able to recollect how formidable such an accusation became in
the period at which our story is dated.

A despairing cry escaped the pale lips of Mercédès; the old man sank
into a chair.

“Ah, Danglars!” whispered Caderousse, “you have deceived me—the trick
you spoke of last night has been played; but I cannot suffer a poor old
man or an innocent girl to die of grief through your fault. I am
determined to tell them all about it.”

“Be silent, you simpleton!” cried Danglars, grasping him by the arm,
“or I will not answer even for your own safety. Who can tell whether
Dantès be innocent or guilty? The vessel did touch at Elba, where he
quitted it, and passed a whole day in the island. Now, should any
letters or other documents of a compromising character be found upon
him, will it not be taken for granted that all who uphold him are his
accomplices?”

With the rapid instinct of selfishness, Caderousse readily perceived
the solidity of this mode of reasoning; he gazed, doubtfully,
wistfully, on Danglars, and then caution supplanted generosity.

“Suppose we wait a while, and see what comes of it,” said he, casting a
bewildered look on his companion.

“To be sure!” answered Danglars. “Let us wait, by all means. If he be
innocent, of course he will be set at liberty; if guilty, why, it is no
use involving ourselves in a conspiracy.”

“Let us go, then. I cannot stay here any longer.”

“With all my heart!” replied Danglars, pleased to find the other so
tractable. “Let us take ourselves out of the way, and leave things for
the present to take their course.”

After their departure, Fernand, who had now again become the friend and
protector of Mercédès, led the girl to her home, while some friends of
Dantès conducted his father, nearly lifeless, to the Allées de Meilhan.

The rumor of Edmond’s arrest as a Bonapartist agent was not slow in
circulating throughout the city.

“Could you ever have credited such a thing, my dear Danglars?” asked M.
Morrel, as, on his return to the port for the purpose of gleaning fresh
tidings of Dantès, from M. de Villefort, the assistant procureur, he
overtook his supercargo and Caderousse. “Could you have believed such a
thing possible?”

“Why, you know I told you,” replied Danglars, “that I considered the
circumstance of his having anchored at the Island of Elba as a very
suspicious circumstance.”

“And did you mention these suspicions to any person beside myself?”

0079m



“Certainly not!” returned Danglars. Then added in a low whisper, “You
understand that, on account of your uncle, M. Policar Morrel, who
served under the _other_ government, and who does not altogether
conceal what he thinks on the subject, you are strongly suspected of
regretting the abdication of Napoleon. I should have feared to injure
both Edmond and yourself, had I divulged my own apprehensions to a
soul. I am too well aware that though a subordinate, like myself, is
bound to acquaint the shipowner with everything that occurs, there are
many things he ought most carefully to conceal from all else.”

“’Tis well, Danglars—’tis well!” replied M. Morrel. “You are a worthy
fellow; and I had already thought of your interests in the event of
poor Edmond having become captain of the _Pharaon_.”

“Is it possible you were so kind?”

“Yes, indeed; I had previously inquired of Dantès what was his opinion
of you, and if he should have any reluctance to continue you in your
post, for somehow I have perceived a sort of coolness between you.”

“And what was his reply?”

“That he certainly did think he had given you offence in an affair
which he merely referred to without entering into particulars, but that
whoever possessed the good opinion and confidence of the ship’s owners
would have his preference also.”

“The hypocrite!” murmured Danglars.

“Poor Dantès!” said Caderousse. “No one can deny his being a
noble-hearted young fellow.”

“But meanwhile,” continued M. Morrel, “here is the _Pharaon_ without a
captain.”

“Oh,” replied Danglars, “since we cannot leave this port for the next
three months, let us hope that ere the expiration of that period Dantès
will be set at liberty.”

“No doubt; but in the meantime?”

“I am entirely at your service, M. Morrel,” answered Danglars. “You
know that I am as capable of managing a ship as the most experienced
captain in the service; and it will be so far advantageous to you to
accept my services, that upon Edmond’s release from prison no further
change will be requisite on board the _Pharaon_ than for Dantès and
myself each to resume our respective posts.”

“Thanks, Danglars—that will smooth over all difficulties. I fully
authorize you at once to assume the command of the _Pharaon_, and look
carefully to the unloading of her freight. Private misfortunes must
never be allowed to interfere with business.”

“Be easy on that score, M. Morrel; but do you think we shall be
permitted to see our poor Edmond?”

“I will let you know that directly I have seen M. de Villefort, whom I
shall endeavor to interest in Edmond’s favor. I am aware he is a
furious royalist; but, in spite of that, and of his being king’s
attorney, he is a man like ourselves, and I fancy not a bad sort of
one.”

“Perhaps not,” replied Danglars; “but I hear that he is ambitious, and
that’s rather against him.”

“Well, well,” returned M. Morrel, “we shall see. But now hasten on
board, I will join you there ere long.”

So saying, the worthy shipowner quitted the two allies, and proceeded
in the direction of the Palais de Justice.

0081m



“You see,” said Danglars, addressing Caderousse, “the turn things have
taken. Do you still feel any desire to stand up in his defence?”

“Not the slightest, but yet it seems to me a shocking thing that a mere
joke should lead to such consequences.”

“But who perpetrated that joke, let me ask? neither you nor myself, but
Fernand; you knew very well that I threw the paper into a corner of the
room—indeed, I fancied I had destroyed it.”

“Oh, no,” replied Caderousse, “that I can answer for, you did not. I
only wish I could see it now as plainly as I saw it lying all crushed
and crumpled in a corner of the arbor.”

“Well, then, if you did, depend upon it, Fernand picked it up, and
either copied it or caused it to be copied; perhaps, even, he did not
take the trouble of recopying it. And now I think of it, by Heavens, he
may have sent the letter itself! Fortunately, for me, the handwriting
was disguised.”

“Then you were aware of Dantès being engaged in a conspiracy?”

“Not I. As I before said, I thought the whole thing was a joke, nothing
more. It seems, however, that I have unconsciously stumbled upon the
truth.”

“Still,” argued Caderousse, “I would give a great deal if nothing of
the kind had happened; or, at least, that I had had no hand in it. You
will see, Danglars, that it will turn out an unlucky job for both of
us.”

“Nonsense! If any harm come of it, it should fall on the guilty person;
and that, you know, is Fernand. How can we be implicated in any way?
All we have got to do is, to keep our own counsel, and remain perfectly
quiet, not breathing a word to any living soul; and you will see that
the storm will pass away without in the least affecting us.”

“Amen!” responded Caderousse, waving his hand in token of adieu to
Danglars, and bending his steps towards the Allées de Meilhan, moving
his head to and fro, and muttering as he went, after the manner of one
whose mind was overcharged with one absorbing idea.

“So far, then,” said Danglars, mentally, “all has gone as I would have
it. I am, temporarily, commander of the _Pharaon_, with the certainty
of being permanently so, if that fool of a Caderousse can be persuaded
to hold his tongue. My only fear is the chance of Dantès being
released. But, there, he is in the hands of Justice; and,” added he
with a smile, “she will take her own.” So saying, he leaped into a
boat, desiring to be rowed on board the _Pharaon_, where M. Morrel had
agreed to meet him.



 Chapter 6. The Deputy Procureur du Roi

In one of the aristocratic mansions built by Puget in the Rue du Grand
Cours opposite the Medusa fountain, a second marriage feast was being
celebrated, almost at the same hour with the nuptial repast given by
Dantès. In this case, however, although the occasion of the
entertainment was similar, the company was strikingly dissimilar.
Instead of a rude mixture of sailors, soldiers, and those belonging to
the humblest grade of life, the present assembly was composed of the
very flower of Marseilles society,—magistrates who had resigned their
office during the usurper’s reign; officers who had deserted from the
imperial army and joined forces with Condé; and younger members of
families, brought up to hate and execrate the man whom five years of
exile would convert into a martyr, and fifteen of restoration elevate
to the rank of a god.

The guests were still at table, and the heated and energetic
conversation that prevailed betrayed the violent and vindictive
passions that then agitated each dweller of the South, where unhappily,
for five centuries religious strife had long given increased bitterness
to the violence of party feeling.

The emperor, now king of the petty Island of Elba, after having held
sovereign sway over one-half of the world, counting as his subjects a
small population of five or six thousand souls,—after having been
accustomed to hear the “_Vive Napoléons_” of a hundred and twenty
millions of human beings, uttered in ten different languages,—was
looked upon here as a ruined man, separated forever from any fresh
connection with France or claim to her throne.

The magistrates freely discussed their political views; the military
part of the company talked unreservedly of Moscow and Leipsic, while
the women commented on the divorce of Josephine. It was not over the
downfall of the man, but over the defeat of the Napoleonic idea, that
they rejoiced, and in this they foresaw for themselves the bright and
cheering prospect of a revivified political existence.

An old man, decorated with the cross of Saint Louis, now rose and
proposed the health of King Louis XVIII. It was the Marquis de
Saint-Méran. This toast, recalling at once the patient exile of
Hartwell and the peace-loving King of France, excited universal
enthusiasm; glasses were elevated in the air _à l’Anglaise_, and the
ladies, snatching their bouquets from their fair bosoms, strewed the
table with their floral treasures. In a word, an almost poetical fervor
prevailed.

“Ah,” said the Marquise de Saint-Méran, a woman with a stern,
forbidding eye, though still noble and distinguished in appearance,
despite her fifty years—“ah, these revolutionists, who have driven us
from those very possessions they afterwards purchased for a mere trifle
during the Reign of Terror, would be compelled to own, were they here,
that all true devotion was on our side, since we were content to follow
the fortunes of a falling monarch, while they, on the contrary, made
their fortune by worshipping the rising sun; yes, yes, they could not
help admitting that the king, for whom we sacrificed rank, wealth, and
station was truly our ‘Louis the well-beloved,’ while their wretched
usurper has been, and ever will be, to them their evil genius, their
‘Napoleon the accursed.’ Am I not right, Villefort?”

“I beg your pardon, madame. I really must pray you to excuse me, but—in
truth—I was not attending to the conversation.”

“Marquise, marquise!” interposed the old nobleman who had proposed the
toast, “let the young people alone; let me tell you, on one’s wedding
day there are more agreeable subjects of conversation than dry
politics.”

“Never mind, dearest mother,” said a young and lovely girl, with a
profusion of light brown hair, and eyes that seemed to float in liquid
crystal, “’tis all my fault for seizing upon M. de Villefort, so as to
prevent his listening to what you said. But there—now take him—he is
your own for as long as you like. M. Villefort, I beg to remind you my
mother speaks to you.”

“If the marquise will deign to repeat the words I but imperfectly
caught, I shall be delighted to answer,” said M. de Villefort.

“Never mind, Renée,” replied the marquise, with a look of tenderness
that seemed out of keeping with her harsh dry features; but, however
all other feelings may be withered in a woman’s nature, there is always
one bright smiling spot in the desert of her heart, and that is the
shrine of maternal love. “I forgive you. What I was saying, Villefort,
was, that the Bonapartists had not our sincerity, enthusiasm, or
devotion.”

“They had, however, what supplied the place of those fine qualities,”
replied the young man, “and that was fanaticism. Napoleon is the
Mahomet of the West, and is worshipped by his commonplace but ambitious
followers, not only as a leader and lawgiver, but also as the
personification of equality.”

“He!” cried the marquise: “Napoleon the type of equality! For mercy’s
sake, then, what would you call Robespierre? Come, come, do not strip
the latter of his just rights to bestow them on the Corsican, who, to
my mind, has usurped quite enough.”

0085m



“Nay, madame; I would place each of these heroes on his right
pedestal—that of Robespierre on his scaffold in the Place Louis Quinze;
that of Napoleon on the column of the Place Vendôme. The only
difference consists in the opposite character of the equality advocated
by these two men; one is the equality that elevates, the other is the
equality that degrades; one brings a king within reach of the
guillotine, the other elevates the people to a level with the throne.
Observe,” said Villefort, smiling, “I do not mean to deny that both
these men were revolutionary scoundrels, and that the 9th Thermidor and
the 4th of April, in the year 1814, were lucky days for France, worthy
of being gratefully remembered by every friend to monarchy and civil
order; and that explains how it comes to pass that, fallen, as I trust
he is forever, Napoleon has still retained a train of parasitical
satellites. Still, marquise, it has been so with other
usurpers—Cromwell, for instance, who was not half so bad as Napoleon,
had his partisans and advocates.”

“Do you know, Villefort, that you are talking in a most dreadfully
revolutionary strain? But I excuse it, it is impossible to expect the
son of a Girondin to be free from a small spice of the old leaven.” A
deep crimson suffused the countenance of Villefort.

“’Tis true, madame,” answered he, “that my father was a Girondin, but
he was not among the number of those who voted for the king’s death; he
was an equal sufferer with yourself during the Reign of Terror, and had
well-nigh lost his head on the same scaffold on which your father
perished.”

“True,” replied the marquise, without wincing in the slightest degree
at the tragic remembrance thus called up; “but bear in mind, if you
please, that our respective parents underwent persecution and
proscription from diametrically opposite principles; in proof of which
I may remark, that while my family remained among the staunchest
adherents of the exiled princes, your father lost no time in joining
the new government; and that while the Citizen Noirtier was a Girondin,
the Count Noirtier became a senator.”

“Dear mother,” interposed Renée, “you know very well it was agreed that
all these disagreeable reminiscences should forever be laid aside.”

“Suffer me, also, madame,” replied Villefort, “to add my earnest
request to Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran’s, that you will kindly allow
the veil of oblivion to cover and conceal the past. What avails
recrimination over matters wholly past recall? For my own part, I have
laid aside even the name of my father, and altogether disown his
political principles. He was—nay, probably may still be—a Bonapartist,
and is called Noirtier; I, on the contrary, am a staunch royalist, and
style myself de Villefort. Let what may remain of revolutionary sap
exhaust itself and die away with the old trunk, and condescend only to
regard the young shoot which has started up at a distance from the
parent tree, without having the power, any more than the wish, to
separate entirely from the stock from which it sprung.”

“Bravo, Villefort!” cried the marquis; “excellently well said! Come,
now, I have hopes of obtaining what I have been for years endeavoring
to persuade the marquise to promise; namely, a perfect amnesty and
forgetfulness of the past.”

“With all my heart,” replied the marquise; “let the past be forever
forgotten. I promise you it affords _me_ as little pleasure to revive
it as it does you. All I ask is, that Villefort will be firm and
inflexible for the future in his political principles. Remember, also,
Villefort, that we have pledged ourselves to his majesty for your
fealty and strict loyalty, and that at our recommendation the king
consented to forget the past, as I do” (and here she extended to him
her hand)—“as I now do at your entreaty. But bear in mind, that should
there fall in your way anyone guilty of conspiring against the
government, you will be so much the more bound to visit the offence
with rigorous punishment, as it is known you belong to a suspected
family.”

“Alas, madame,” returned Villefort, “my profession, as well as the
times in which we live, compels me to be severe. I have already
successfully conducted several public prosecutions, and brought the
offenders to merited punishment. But we have not done with the thing
yet.”

0087m



“Do you, indeed, think so?” inquired the marquise.

“I am, at least, fearful of it. Napoleon, in the Island of Elba, is too
near France, and his proximity keeps up the hopes of his partisans.
Marseilles is filled with half-pay officers, who are daily, under one
frivolous pretext or other, getting up quarrels with the royalists;
from hence arise continual and fatal duels among the higher classes of
persons, and assassinations in the lower.”

“You have heard, perhaps,” said the Comte de Salvieux, one of M. de
Saint-Méran’s oldest friends, and chamberlain to the Comte d’Artois,
“that the Holy Alliance purpose removing him from thence?”

“Yes; they were talking about it when we left Paris,” said M. de
Saint-Méran; “and where is it decided to transfer him?”

“To Saint Helena.”

“For heaven’s sake, where is that?” asked the marquise.

“An island situated on the other side of the equator, at least two
thousand leagues from here,” replied the count.

“So much the better. As Villefort observes, it is a great act of folly
to have left such a man between Corsica, where he was born, and Naples,
of which his brother-in-law is king, and face to face with Italy, the
sovereignty of which he coveted for his son.”

“Unfortunately,” said Villefort, “there are the treaties of 1814, and
we cannot molest Napoleon without breaking those compacts.”

“Oh, well, we shall find some way out of it,” responded M. de Salvieux.
“There wasn’t any trouble over treaties when it was a question of
shooting the poor Duc d’Enghien.”

“Well,” said the marquise, “it seems probable that, by the aid of the
Holy Alliance, we shall be rid of Napoleon; and we must trust to the
vigilance of M. de Villefort to purify Marseilles of his partisans. The
king is either a king or no king; if he be acknowledged as sovereign of
France, he should be upheld in peace and tranquillity; and this can
best be effected by employing the most inflexible agents to put down
every attempt at conspiracy—’tis the best and surest means of
preventing mischief.”

“Unfortunately, madame,” answered Villefort, “the strong arm of the law
is not called upon to interfere until the evil has taken place.”

“Then all he has got to do is to endeavor to repair it.”

“Nay, madame, the law is frequently powerless to effect this; all it
can do is to avenge the wrong done.”

“Oh, M. de Villefort,” cried a beautiful young creature, daughter to
the Comte de Salvieux, and the cherished friend of Mademoiselle de
Saint-Méran, “do try and get up some famous trial while we are at
Marseilles. I never was in a law-court; I am told it is so very
amusing!”

“Amusing, certainly,” replied the young man, “inasmuch as, instead of
shedding tears as at the fictitious tale of woe produced at a theatre,
you behold in a law-court a case of real and genuine distress—a drama
of life. The prisoner whom you there see pale, agitated, and alarmed,
instead of—as is the case when a curtain falls on a tragedy—going home
to sup peacefully with his family, and then retiring to rest, that he
may recommence his mimic woes on the morrow,—is removed from your sight
merely to be reconducted to his prison and delivered up to the
executioner. I leave you to judge how far your nerves are calculated to
bear you through such a scene. Of this, however, be assured, that
should any favorable opportunity present itself, I will not fail to
offer you the choice of being present.”

“For shame, M. de Villefort!” said Renée, becoming quite pale; “don’t
you see how you are frightening us?—and yet you laugh.”

“What would you have? ’Tis like a duel. I have already recorded
sentence of death, five or six times, against the movers of political
conspiracies, and who can say how many daggers may be ready sharpened,
and only waiting a favorable opportunity to be buried in my heart?”

“Gracious heavens, M. de Villefort,” said Renée, becoming more and more
terrified; “you surely are not in earnest.”

“Indeed I am,” replied the young magistrate with a smile; “and in the
interesting trial that young lady is anxious to witness, the case would
only be still more aggravated. Suppose, for instance, the prisoner, as
is more than probable, to have served under Napoleon—well, can you
expect for an instant, that one accustomed, at the word of his
commander, to rush fearlessly on the very bayonets of his foe, will
scruple more to drive a stiletto into the heart of one he knows to be
his personal enemy, than to slaughter his fellow-creatures, merely
because bidden to do so by one he is bound to obey? Besides, one
requires the excitement of being hateful in the eyes of the accused, in
order to lash one’s self into a state of sufficient vehemence and
power. I would not choose to see the man against whom I pleaded smile,
as though in mockery of my words. No; my pride is to see the accused
pale, agitated, and as though beaten out of all composure by the fire
of my eloquence.” Renée uttered a smothered exclamation.

“Bravo!” cried one of the guests; “that is what I call talking to some
purpose.”

“Just the person we require at a time like the present,” said a second.

“What a splendid business that last case of yours was, my dear
Villefort!” remarked a third; “I mean the trial of the man for
murdering his father. Upon my word, you killed him ere the executioner
had laid his hand upon him.”

“Oh, as for parricides, and such dreadful people as that,” interposed
Renée, “it matters very little what is done to them; but as regards
poor unfortunate creatures whose only crime consists in having mixed
themselves up in political intrigues——”

“Why, that is the very worst offence they could possibly commit; for,
don’t you see, Renée, the king is the father of his people, and he who
shall plot or contrive aught against the life and safety of the parent
of thirty-two millions of souls, is a parricide upon a fearfully great
scale?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” replied Renée; “but, M. de
Villefort, you have promised me—have you not?—always to show mercy to
those I plead for.”

“Make yourself quite easy on that point,” answered Villefort, with one
of his sweetest smiles; “you and I will always consult upon our
verdicts.”

“My love,” said the marquise, “attend to your doves, your lap-dogs, and
embroidery, but do not meddle with what you do not understand. Nowadays
the military profession is in abeyance and the magisterial robe is the
badge of honor. There is a wise Latin proverb that is very much in
point.”

“_Cedant arma togæ_,” said Villefort with a bow.

“I cannot speak Latin,” responded the marquise.

“Well,” said Renée, “I cannot help regretting you had not chosen some
other profession than your own—a physician, for instance. Do you know I
always felt a shudder at the idea of even a _destroying_ angel?”

“Dear, good Renée,” whispered Villefort, as he gazed with unutterable
tenderness on the lovely speaker.

“Let us hope, my child,” cried the marquis, “that M. de Villefort may
prove the moral and political physician of this province; if so, he
will have achieved a noble work.”

“And one which will go far to efface the recollection of his father’s
conduct,” added the incorrigible marquise.

“Madame,” replied Villefort, with a mournful smile, “I have already had
the honor to observe that my father has—at least, I hope so—abjured his
past errors, and that he is, at the present moment, a firm and zealous
friend to religion and order—a better royalist, possibly, than his son;
for he has to atone for past dereliction, while I have no other impulse
than warm, decided preference and conviction.” Having made this
well-turned speech, Villefort looked carefully around to mark the
effect of his oratory, much as he would have done had he been
addressing the bench in open court.

“Do you know, my dear Villefort,” cried the Comte de Salvieux, “that is
exactly what I myself said the other day at the Tuileries, when
questioned by his majesty’s principal chamberlain touching the
singularity of an alliance between the son of a Girondin and the
daughter of an officer of the Duc de Condé; and I assure you he seemed
fully to comprehend that this mode of reconciling political differences
was based upon sound and excellent principles. Then the king, who,
without our suspecting it, had overheard our conversation, interrupted
us by saying, ‘Villefort’—observe that the king did not pronounce the
word Noirtier, but, on the contrary, placed considerable emphasis on
that of Villefort—‘Villefort,’ said his majesty, ‘is a young man of
great judgment and discretion, who will be sure to make a figure in his
profession; I like him much, and it gave me great pleasure to hear that
he was about to become the son-in-law of the Marquis and Marquise de
Saint-Méran. I should myself have recommended the match, had not the
noble marquis anticipated my wishes by requesting my consent to it.’”

“Is it possible the king could have condescended so far as to express
himself so favorably of me?” asked the enraptured Villefort.

“I give you his very words; and if the marquis chooses to be candid, he
will confess that they perfectly agree with what his majesty said to
him, when he went six months ago to consult him upon the subject of
your espousing his daughter.”

0091m



“That is true,” answered the marquis.

“How much do I owe this gracious prince! What is there I would not do
to evince my earnest gratitude!”

“That is right,” cried the marquise. “I love to see you thus. Now,
then, were a conspirator to fall into your hands, he would be most
welcome.”

“For my part, dear mother,” interposed Renée, “I trust your wishes will
not prosper, and that Providence will only permit petty offenders, poor
debtors, and miserable cheats to fall into M. de Villefort’s
hands,—then I shall be contented.”

“Just the same as though you prayed that a physician might only be
called upon to prescribe for headaches, measles, and the stings of
wasps, or any other slight affection of the epidermis. If you wish to
see me the king’s attorney, you must desire for me some of those
violent and dangerous diseases from the cure of which so much honor
redounds to the physician.”

At this moment, and as though the utterance of Villefort’s wish had
sufficed to effect its accomplishment, a servant entered the room, and
whispered a few words in his ear. Villefort immediately rose from table
and quitted the room upon the plea of urgent business; he soon,
however, returned, his whole face beaming with delight. Renée regarded
him with fond affection; and certainly his handsome features, lit up as
they then were with more than usual fire and animation, seemed formed
to excite the innocent admiration with which she gazed on her graceful
and intelligent lover.

“You were wishing just now,” said Villefort, addressing her, “that I
were a doctor instead of a lawyer. Well, I at least resemble the
disciples of Esculapius in one thing [people spoke in this style in
1815], that of not being able to call a day my own, not even that of my
betrothal.”

“And wherefore were you called away just now?” asked Mademoiselle de
Saint-Méran, with an air of deep interest.

“For a very serious matter, which bids fair to make work for the
executioner.”

“How dreadful!” exclaimed Renée, turning pale.

“Is it possible?” burst simultaneously from all who were near enough to
the magistrate to hear his words.

“Why, if my information prove correct, a sort of Bonapartist conspiracy
has just been discovered.”

“Can I believe my ears?” cried the marquise.

“I will read you the letter containing the accusation, at least,” said
Villefort:

“‘The king’s attorney is informed by a friend to the throne and the
religious institutions of his country, that one named Edmond Dantès,
mate of the ship _Pharaon_, this day arrived from Smyrna, after having
touched at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, has been the bearer of a letter
from Murat to the usurper, and again taken charge 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 the
possession of father or son, then it will assuredly be discovered in
the cabin belonging to the said Dantès on board the _Pharaon_.’”

“But,” said Renée, “this letter, which, after all, is but an anonymous
scrawl, is not even addressed to you, but to the king’s attorney.”

0093m



“True; but that gentleman being absent, his secretary, by his orders,
opened his letters; thinking this one of importance, he sent for me,
but not finding me, took upon himself to give the necessary orders for
arresting the accused party.”

“Then the guilty person is absolutely in custody?” said the marquise.

“Nay, dear mother, say the accused person. You know we cannot yet
pronounce him guilty.”

“He is in safe custody,” answered Villefort; “and rely upon it, if the
letter is found, he will not be likely to be trusted abroad again,
unless he goes forth under the especial protection of the headsman.”

“And where is the unfortunate being?” asked Renée.

“He is at my house.”

“Come, come, my friend,” interrupted the marquise, “do not neglect your
duty to linger with us. You are the king’s servant, and must go
wherever that service calls you.”

“Oh, Villefort!” cried Renée, clasping her hands, and looking towards
her lover with piteous earnestness, “be merciful on this the day of our
betrothal.”

The young man passed round to the side of the table where the fair
pleader sat, and leaning over her chair said tenderly:

“To give you pleasure, my sweet Renée, I promise to show all the lenity
in my power; but if the charges brought against this Bonapartist hero
prove correct, why, then, you really must give me leave to order his
head to be cut off.”

Renée shuddered at the word _cut_, for the growth in question had a
head.

“Never mind that foolish girl, Villefort,” said the marquise. “She will
soon get over these things.” So saying, Madame de Saint-Méran extended
her dry bony hand to Villefort, who, while imprinting a son-in-law’s
respectful salute on it, looked at Renée, as much as to say, “I must
try and fancy ’tis your dear hand I kiss, as it should have been.”

“These are mournful auspices to accompany a betrothal,” sighed poor
Renée.

“Upon my word, child!” exclaimed the angry marquise, “your folly
exceeds all bounds. I should be glad to know what connection there can
possibly be between your sickly sentimentality and the affairs of the
state!”

“Oh, mother!” murmured Renée.

“Nay, madame, I pray you pardon this little traitor. I promise you that
to make up for her want of loyalty, I will be most inflexibly severe;”
then casting an expressive glance at his betrothed, which seemed to
say, “Fear not, for your dear sake my justice shall be tempered with
mercy,” and receiving a sweet and approving smile in return, Villefort
departed with paradise in his heart.



 Chapter 7. The Examination

No sooner had Villefort left the salon, than he assumed the grave air
of a man who holds the balance of life and death in his hands. Now, in
spite of the nobility of his countenance, the command of which, like a
finished actor, he had carefully studied before the glass, it was by no
means easy for him to assume an air of judicial severity. Except the
recollection of the line of politics his father had adopted, and which
might interfere, unless he acted with the greatest prudence, with his
own career, Gérard de Villefort was as happy as a man could be. Already
rich, he held a high official situation, though only twenty-seven. He
was about to marry a young and charming woman, whom he loved, not
passionately, but reasonably, as became a deputy attorney of the king;
and besides her personal attractions, which were very great,
Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran’s family possessed considerable political
influence, which they would, of course, exert in his favor. The dowry
of his wife amounted to fifty thousand crowns, and he had, besides, the
prospect of seeing her fortune increased to half a million at her
father’s death. These considerations naturally gave Villefort a feeling
of such complete felicity that his mind was fairly dazzled in its
contemplation.

At the door he met the commissary of police, who was waiting for him.
The sight of this officer recalled Villefort from the third heaven to
earth; he composed his face, as we have before described, and said, “I
have read the letter, sir, and you have acted rightly in arresting this
man; now inform me what you have discovered concerning him and the
conspiracy.”

“We know nothing as yet of the conspiracy, monsieur; all the papers
found have been sealed up and placed on your desk. The prisoner himself
is named Edmond Dantès, mate on board the three-master the _Pharaon_,
trading in cotton with Alexandria and Smyrna, and belonging to Morrel &
Son, of Marseilles.”

“Before he entered the merchant service, had he ever served in the
marines?”

“Oh, no, monsieur, he is very young.”

“How old?”

“Nineteen or twenty at the most.”

At this moment, and as Villefort had arrived at the corner of the Rue
des Conseils, a man, who seemed to have been waiting for him,
approached; it was M. Morrel.

“Ah, M. de Villefort,” cried he, “I am delighted to see you. Some of
your people have committed the strangest mistake—they have just
arrested Edmond Dantès, mate of my vessel.”

“I know it, monsieur,” replied Villefort, “and I am now going to
examine him.”

“Oh,” said Morrel, carried away by his friendship, “you do not know
him, and I do. He is the most estimable, the most trustworthy creature
in the world, and I will venture to say, there is not a better seaman
in all the merchant service. Oh, M. de Villefort, I beseech your
indulgence for him.”

Villefort, as we have seen, belonged to the aristocratic party at
Marseilles, Morrel to the plebeian; the first was a royalist, the other
suspected of Bonapartism. Villefort looked disdainfully at Morrel, and
replied coldly:

“You are aware, monsieur, that a man may be estimable and trustworthy
in private life, and the best seaman in the merchant service, and yet
be, politically speaking, a great criminal. Is it not true?”

The magistrate laid emphasis on these words, as if he wished to apply
them to the owner himself, while his eyes seemed to plunge into the
heart of one who, interceding for another, had himself need of
indulgence. Morrel reddened, for his own conscience was not quite clear
on politics; besides, what Dantès had told him of his interview with
the grand-marshal, and what the emperor had said to him, embarrassed
him. He replied, however, in a tone of deep interest:

“I entreat you, M. de Villefort, be, as you always are, kind and
equitable, and give him back to us soon.” This _give us_ sounded
revolutionary in the deputy’s ears.

“Ah, ah,” murmured he, “is Dantès then a member of some Carbonari
society, that his protector thus employs the collective form? He was,
if I recollect, arrested in a tavern, in company with a great many
others.” Then he added, “Monsieur, you may rest assured I shall perform
my duty impartially, and that if he be innocent you shall not have
appealed to me in vain; should he, however, be guilty, in this present
epoch, impunity would furnish a dangerous example, and I must do my
duty.”

0097m



As he had now arrived at the door of his own house, which adjoined the
Palais de Justice, he entered, after having, coldly saluted the
shipowner, who stood, as if petrified, on the spot where Villefort had
left him. The antechamber was full of police agents and gendarmes, in
the midst of whom, carefully watched, but calm and smiling, stood the
prisoner. Villefort traversed the antechamber, cast a side glance at
Dantès, and taking a packet which a gendarme offered him, disappeared,
saying, “Bring in the prisoner.”

Rapid as had been Villefort’s glance, it had served to give him an idea
of the man he was about to interrogate. He had recognized intelligence
in the high forehead, courage in the dark eye and bent brow, and
frankness in the thick lips that showed a set of pearly teeth.
Villefort’s first impression was favorable; but he had been so often
warned to mistrust first impulses, that he applied the maxim to the
impression, forgetting the difference between the two words. He
stifled, therefore, the feelings of compassion that were rising,
composed his features, and sat down, grim and sombre, at his desk. An
instant after Dantès entered. He was pale, but calm and collected, and
saluting his judge with easy politeness, looked round for a seat, as if
he had been in M. Morrel’s salon. It was then that he encountered for
the first time Villefort’s look,—that look peculiar to the magistrate,
who, while seeming to read the thoughts of others, betrays nothing of
his own.

“Who and what are you?” demanded Villefort, turning over a pile of
papers, containing information relative to the prisoner, that a police
agent had given to him on his entry, and that, already, in an hour’s
time, had swelled to voluminous proportions, thanks to the corrupt
espionage of which “the accused” is always made the victim.

“My name is Edmond Dantès,” replied the young man calmly; “I am mate of
the _Pharaon_, belonging to Messrs. Morrel & Son.”

“Your age?” continued Villefort.

“Nineteen,” returned Dantès.

“What were you doing at the moment you were arrested?”

“I was at the festival of my marriage, monsieur,” said the young man,
his voice slightly tremulous, so great was the contrast between that
happy moment and the painful ceremony he was now undergoing; so great
was the contrast between the sombre aspect of M. de Villefort and the
radiant face of Mercédès.

“You were at the festival of your marriage?” said the deputy,
shuddering in spite of himself.

“Yes, monsieur; I am on the point of marrying a young girl I have been
attached to for three years.” Villefort, impassive as he was, was
struck with this coincidence; and the tremulous voice of Dantès,
surprised in the midst of his happiness, struck a sympathetic chord in
his own bosom—he also was on the point of being married, and he was
summoned from his own happiness to destroy that of another. “This
philosophic reflection,” thought he, “will make a great sensation at M.
de Saint-Méran’s;” and he arranged mentally, while Dantès awaited
further questions, the antithesis by which orators often create a
reputation for eloquence. When this speech was arranged, Villefort
turned to Dantès.

0099m



“Go on, sir,” said he.

“What would you have me say?”

“Give all the information in your power.”

“Tell me on which point you desire information, and I will tell all I
know; only,” added he, with a smile, “I warn you I know very little.”

“Have you served under the usurper?”

“I was about to be mustered into the Royal Marines when he fell.”

“It is reported your political opinions are extreme,” said Villefort,
who had never heard anything of the kind, but was not sorry to make
this inquiry, as if it were an accusation.

“My political opinions!” replied Dantès. “Alas, sir, I never had any
opinions. I am hardly nineteen; I know nothing; I have no part to play.
If I obtain the situation I desire, I shall owe it to M. Morrel. Thus
all my opinions—I will not say public, but private—are confined to
these three sentiments,—I love my father, I respect M. Morrel, and I
adore Mercédès. This, sir, is all I can tell you, and you see how
uninteresting it is.” As Dantès spoke, Villefort gazed at his ingenuous
and open countenance, and recollected the words of Renée, who, without
knowing who the culprit was, had besought his indulgence for him. With
the deputy’s knowledge of crime and criminals, every word the young man
uttered convinced him more and more of his innocence. This lad, for he
was scarcely a man,—simple, natural, eloquent with that eloquence of
the heart never found when sought for; full of affection for everybody,
because he was happy, and because happiness renders even the wicked
good—extended his affection even to his judge, spite of Villefort’s
severe look and stern accent. Dantès seemed full of kindness.

_“Pardieu!”_ said Villefort, “he is a noble fellow. I hope I shall gain
Renée’s favor easily by obeying the first command she ever imposed on
me. I shall have at least a pressure of the hand in public, and a sweet
kiss in private.” Full of this idea, Villefort’s face became so joyous,
that when he turned to Dantès, the latter, who had watched the change
on his physiognomy, was smiling also.

“Sir,” said Villefort, “have you any enemies, at least, that you know.”

“I have enemies?” replied Dantès; “my position is not sufficiently
elevated for that. As for my disposition, that is, perhaps, somewhat
too hasty; but I have striven to repress it. I have had ten or twelve
sailors under me, and if you question them, they will tell you that
they love and respect me, not as a father, for I am too young, but as
an elder brother.”

“But you may have excited jealousy. You are about to become captain at
nineteen—an elevated post; you are about to marry a pretty girl, who
loves you; and these two pieces of good fortune may have excited the
envy of someone.”

“You are right; you know men better than I do, and what you say may
possibly be the case, I confess; but if such persons are among my
acquaintances I prefer not to know it, because then I should be forced
to hate them.”

“You are wrong; you should always strive to see clearly around you. You
seem a worthy young man; I will depart from the strict line of my duty
to aid you in discovering the author of this accusation. Here is the
paper; do you know the writing?” As he spoke, Villefort drew the letter
from his pocket, and presented it to Dantès. Dantès read it. A cloud
passed over his brow as he said:

“No, monsieur, I do not know the writing, and yet it is tolerably
plain. Whoever did it writes well. I am very fortunate,” added he,
looking gratefully at Villefort, “to be examined by such a man as you;
for this envious person is a real enemy.” And by the rapid glance that
the young man’s eyes shot forth, Villefort saw how much energy lay hid
beneath this mildness.

“Now,” said the deputy, “answer me frankly, not as a prisoner to a
judge, but as one man to another who takes an interest in him, what
truth is there in the accusation contained in this anonymous letter?”
And Villefort threw disdainfully on his desk the letter Dantès had just
given back to him.

“None at all. I will tell you the real facts. I swear by my honor as a
sailor, by my love for Mercédès, by the life of my father——”

“Speak, monsieur,” said Villefort. Then, internally, “If Renée could
see me, I hope she would be satisfied, and would no longer call me a
decapitator.”

“Well, when we quitted Naples, Captain Leclere was attacked with a
brain fever. As we had no doctor on board, and he was so anxious to
arrive at Elba, that he would not touch at any other port, his disorder
rose to such a height, that at the end of the third day, feeling he was
dying, he called me to him. ‘My dear Dantès,’ said he, ‘swear to
perform what I am going to tell you, for it is a matter of the deepest
importance.’

“‘I swear, captain,’ replied I.

“‘Well, as after my death the command devolves on you as mate, assume
the command, and bear up for the Island of Elba, disembark at
Porto-Ferrajo, ask for the grand-marshal, give him this letter—perhaps
they will give you another letter, and charge you with a commission.
You will accomplish what I was to have done, and derive all the honor
and profit from it.’

“‘I will do it, captain; but perhaps I shall not be admitted to the
grand-marshal’s presence as easily as you expect?’

“‘Here is a ring that will obtain audience of him, and remove every
difficulty,’ said the captain. At these words he gave me a ring. It was
time—two hours after he was delirious; the next day he died.”

“And what did you do then?”

“What I ought to have done, and what everyone would have done in my
place. Everywhere the last requests of a dying man are sacred; but with
a sailor the last requests of his superior are commands. I sailed for
the Island of Elba, where I arrived the next day; I ordered everybody
to remain on board, and went on shore alone. As I had expected, I found
some difficulty in obtaining access to the grand-marshal; but I sent
the ring I had received from the captain to him, and was instantly
admitted. He questioned me concerning Captain Leclere’s death; and, as
the latter had told me, gave me a letter to carry on to a person in
Paris. I undertook it because it was what my captain had bade me do. I
landed here, regulated the affairs of the vessel, and hastened to visit
my affianced bride, whom I found more lovely than ever. Thanks to M.
Morrel, all the forms were got over; in a word I was, as I told you, at
my marriage feast; and I should have been married in an hour, and
tomorrow I intended to start for Paris, had I not been arrested on this
charge which you as well as I now see to be unjust.”

“Ah,” said Villefort, “this seems to me the truth. If you have been
culpable, it was imprudence, and this imprudence was in obedience to
the orders of your captain. Give up this letter you have brought from
Elba, and pass your word you will appear should you be required, and go
and rejoin your friends.

“I am free, then, sir?” cried Dantès joyfully.

“Yes; but first give me this letter.”

“You have it already, for it was taken from me with some others which I
see in that packet.”

“Stop a moment,” said the deputy, as Dantès took his hat and gloves.
“To whom is it addressed?”

_“To Monsieur Noirtier, Rue Coq-Héron, Paris.”_ Had a thunderbolt
fallen into the room, Villefort could not have been more stupefied. He
sank into his seat, and hastily turning over the packet, drew forth the
fatal letter, at which he glanced with an expression of terror.

“M. Noirtier, Rue Coq-Héron, No. 13,” murmured he, growing still paler.

“Yes,” said Dantès; “do you know him?”

“No,” replied Villefort; “a faithful servant of the king does not know
conspirators.”

0103m



“It is a conspiracy, then?” asked Dantès, who after believing himself
free, now began to feel a tenfold alarm. “I have, however, already told
you, sir, I was entirely ignorant of the contents of the letter.”

“Yes; but you knew the name of the person to whom it was addressed,”
said Villefort.

“I was forced to read the address to know to whom to give it.”

“Have you shown this letter to anyone?” asked Villefort, becoming still
more pale.

“To no one, on my honor.”

“Everybody is ignorant that you are the bearer of a letter from the
Island of Elba, and addressed to M. Noirtier?”

“Everybody, except the person who gave it to me.”

“And that was too much, far too much,” murmured Villefort. Villefort’s
brow darkened more and more, his white lips and clenched teeth filled
Dantès with apprehension. After reading the letter, Villefort covered
his face with his hands.

“Oh,” said Dantès timidly, “what is the matter?” Villefort made no
answer, but raised his head at the expiration of a few seconds, and
again perused the letter.

“And you say that you are ignorant of the contents of this letter?”

“I give you my word of honor, sir,” said Dantès; “but what is the
matter? You are ill—shall I ring for assistance?—shall I call?”

“No,” said Villefort, rising hastily; “stay where you are. It is for me
to give orders here, and not you.”

“Monsieur,” replied Dantès proudly, “it was only to summon assistance
for you.”

“I want none; it was a temporary indisposition. Attend to yourself;
answer me.” Dantès waited, expecting a question, but in vain. Villefort
fell back on his chair, passed his hand over his brow, moist with
perspiration, and, for the third time, read the letter.

“Oh, if he knows the contents of this!” murmured he, “and that Noirtier
is the father of Villefort, I am lost!” And he fixed his eyes upon
Edmond as if he would have penetrated his thoughts.

“Oh, it is impossible to doubt it,” cried he, suddenly.

“In heaven’s name!” cried the unhappy young man, “if you doubt me,
question me; I will answer you.” Villefort made a violent effort, and
in a tone he strove to render firm:

“Sir,” said he, “I am no longer able, as I had hoped, to restore you
immediately to liberty; before doing so, I must consult the trial
justice; what my own feeling is you already know.”

“Oh, monsieur,” cried Dantès, “you have been rather a friend than a
judge.”

0105m



“Well, I must detain you some time longer, but I will strive to make it
as short as possible. The principal charge against you is this letter,
and you see——” Villefort approached the fire, cast it in, and waited
until it was entirely consumed.

“You see, I destroy it?”

“Oh,” exclaimed Dantès, “you are goodness itself.”

“Listen,” continued Villefort; “you can now have confidence in me after
what I have done.”

“Oh, command, and I will obey.”

“Listen; this is not a command, but advice I give you.”

“Speak, and I will follow your advice.”

“I shall detain you until this evening in the Palais de Justice. Should
anyone else interrogate you, say to him what you have said to me, but
do not breathe a word of this letter.”

“I promise.” It was Villefort who seemed to entreat, and the prisoner
who reassured him.

“You see,” continued he, glancing toward the grate, where fragments of
burnt paper fluttered in the flames, “the letter is destroyed; you and
I alone know of its existence; should you, therefore, be questioned,
deny all knowledge of it—deny it boldly, and you are saved.”

“Be satisfied; I will deny it.”

“It was the only letter you had?”

“It was.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear it.”

Villefort rang. A police agent entered. Villefort whispered some words
in his ear, to which the officer replied by a motion of his head.

“Follow him,” said Villefort to Dantès. Dantès saluted Villefort and
retired. Hardly had the door closed when Villefort threw himself
half-fainting into a chair.

“Alas, alas,” murmured he, “if the procureur himself had been at
Marseilles I should have been ruined. This accursed letter would have
destroyed all my hopes. Oh, my father, must your past career always
interfere with my successes?” Suddenly a light passed over his face, a
smile played round his set mouth, and his haggard eyes were fixed in
thought.

“This will do,” said he, “and from this letter, which might have ruined
me, I will make my fortune. Now to the work I have in hand.” And after
having assured himself that the prisoner was gone, the deputy procureur
hastened to the house of his betrothed.

0107m




 Chapter 8. The Château d’If

The commissary of police, as he traversed the antechamber, made a sign
to two gendarmes, who placed themselves one on Dantès’ right and the
other on his left. A door that communicated with the Palais de Justice
was opened, and they went through a long range of gloomy corridors,
whose appearance might have made even the boldest shudder. The Palais
de Justice communicated with the prison,—a sombre edifice, that from
its grated windows looks on the clock-tower of the Accoules. After
numberless windings, Dantès saw a door with an iron wicket. The
commissary took up an iron mallet and knocked thrice, every blow
seeming to Dantès as if struck on his heart. The door opened, the two
gendarmes gently pushed him forward, and the door closed with a loud
sound behind him. The air he inhaled was no longer pure, but thick and
mephitic,—he was in prison.

He was conducted to a tolerably neat chamber, but grated and barred,
and its appearance, therefore, did not greatly alarm him; besides, the
words of Villefort, who seemed to interest himself so much, resounded
still in his ears like a promise of freedom. It was four o’clock when
Dantès was placed in this chamber. It was, as we have said, the 1st of
March, and the prisoner was soon buried in darkness. The obscurity
augmented the acuteness of his hearing; at the slightest sound he rose
and hastened to the door, convinced they were about to liberate him,
but the sound died away, and Dantès sank again into his seat. At last,
about ten o’clock, and just as Dantès began to despair, steps were
heard in the corridor, a key turned in the lock, the bolts creaked, the
massy oaken door flew open, and a flood of light from two torches
pervaded the apartment.

By the torchlight Dantès saw the glittering sabres and carbines of four
gendarmes. He had advanced at first, but stopped at the sight of this
display of force.

“Are you come to fetch me?” asked he.

“Yes,” replied a gendarme.

“By the orders of the deputy procureur?”

“I believe so.” The conviction that they came from M. de Villefort
relieved all Dantès’ apprehensions; he advanced calmly, and placed
himself in the centre of the escort. A carriage waited at the door, the
coachman was on the box, and a police officer sat beside him.

“Is this carriage for me?” said Dantès.

“It is for you,” replied a gendarme.

Dantès was about to speak; but feeling himself urged forward, and
having neither the power nor the intention to resist, he mounted the
steps, and was in an instant seated inside between two gendarmes; the
two others took their places opposite, and the carriage rolled heavily
over the stones.

The prisoner glanced at the windows—they were grated; he had changed
his prison for another that was conveying him he knew not whither.
Through the grating, however, Dantès saw they were passing through the
Rue Caisserie, and by the Rue Saint-Laurent and the Rue Taramis, to the
quay. Soon he saw the lights of La Consigne.

The carriage stopped, the officer descended, approached the guardhouse,
a dozen soldiers came out and formed themselves in order; Dantès saw
the reflection of their muskets by the light of the lamps on the quay.

“Can all this force be summoned on my account?” thought he.

The officer opened the door, which was locked, and, without speaking a
word, answered Dantès’ question; for he saw between the ranks of the
soldiers a passage formed from the carriage to the port. The two
gendarmes who were opposite to him descended first, then he was ordered
to alight and the gendarmes on each side of him followed his example.
They advanced towards a boat, which a custom-house officer held by a
chain, near the quay.

The soldiers looked at Dantès with an air of stupid curiosity. In an
instant he was placed in the stern-sheets of the boat, between the
gendarmes, while the officer stationed himself at the bow; a shove sent
the boat adrift, and four sturdy oarsmen impelled it rapidly towards
the Pilon. At a shout from the boat, the chain that closes the mouth of
the port was lowered and in a second they were, as Dantès knew, in the
Frioul and outside the inner harbor.

The prisoner’s first feeling was of joy at again breathing the pure
air—for air is freedom; but he soon sighed, for he passed before La
Réserve, where he had that morning been so happy, and now through the
open windows came the laughter and revelry of a ball. Dantès folded his
hands, raised his eyes to heaven, and prayed fervently.

0111m



The boat continued her voyage. They had passed the Tête de Mort, were
now off the Anse du Pharo, and about to double the battery. This
manœuvre was incomprehensible to Dantès.

“Whither are you taking me?” asked he.

“You will soon know.”

“But still——”

“We are forbidden to give you any explanation.” Dantès, trained in
discipline, knew that nothing would be more absurd than to question
subordinates, who were forbidden to reply; and so he remained silent.

The most vague and wild thoughts passed through his mind. The boat they
were in could not make a long voyage; there was no vessel at anchor
outside the harbor; he thought, perhaps, they were going to leave him
on some distant point. He was not bound, nor had they made any attempt
to handcuff him; this seemed a good augury. Besides, had not the
deputy, who had been so kind to him, told him that provided he did not
pronounce the dreaded name of Noirtier, he had nothing to apprehend?
Had not Villefort in his presence destroyed the fatal letter, the only
proof against him?

He waited silently, striving to pierce through the darkness.

They had left the Ile Ratonneau, where the lighthouse stood, on the
right, and were now opposite the Point des Catalans. It seemed to the
prisoner that he could distinguish a feminine form on the beach, for it
was there Mercédès dwelt. How was it that a presentiment did not warn
Mercédès that her lover was within three hundred yards of her?

One light alone was visible; and Dantès saw that it came from Mercédès’
chamber. Mercédès was the only one awake in the whole settlement. A
loud cry could be heard by her. But pride restrained him and he did not
utter it. What would his guards think if they heard him shout like a
madman?

He remained silent, his eyes fixed upon the light; the boat went on,
but the prisoner thought only of Mercédès. An intervening elevation of
land hid the light. Dantès turned and perceived that they had got out
to sea. While he had been absorbed in thought, they had shipped their
oars and hoisted sail; the boat was now moving with the wind.

In spite of his repugnance to address the guards, Dantès turned to the
nearest gendarme, and taking his hand,

“Comrade,” said he, “I adjure you, as a Christian and a soldier, to
tell me where we are going. I am Captain Dantès, a loyal Frenchman,
thought accused of treason; tell me where you are conducting me, and I
promise you on my honor I will submit to my fate.”

The gendarme looked irresolutely at his companion, who returned for
answer a sign that said, “I see no great harm in telling him now,” and
the gendarme replied:

“You are a native of Marseilles, and a sailor, and yet you do not know
where you are going?”

“On my honor, I have no idea.”

“Have you no idea whatever?”

“None at all.”

“That is impossible.”

“I swear to you it is true. Tell me, I entreat.”

“But my orders.”

“Your orders do not forbid your telling me what I must know in ten
minutes, in half an hour, or an hour. You see I cannot escape, even if
I intended.”

“Unless you are blind, or have never been outside the harbor, you must
know.”

“I do not.”

“Look round you then.” Dantès rose and looked forward, when he saw rise
within a hundred yards of him the black and frowning rock on which
stands the Château d’If. This gloomy fortress, which has for more than
three hundred years furnished food for so many wild legends, seemed to
Dantès like a scaffold to a malefactor.

“The Château d’If?” cried he, “what are we going there for?”

The gendarme smiled.

“I am not going there to be imprisoned,” said Dantès; “it is only used
for political prisoners. I have committed no crime. Are there any
magistrates or judges at the Château d’If?”

“There are only,” said the gendarme, “a governor, a garrison, turnkeys,
and good thick walls. Come, come, do not look so astonished, or you
will make me think you are laughing at me in return for my good
nature.”

Dantès pressed the gendarme’s hand as though he would crush it.

“You think, then,” said he, “that I am taken to the Château d’If to be
imprisoned there?”

“It is probable; but there is no occasion to squeeze so hard.”

“Without any inquiry, without any formality?”

“All the formalities have been gone through; the inquiry is already
made.”

“And so, in spite of M. de Villefort’s promises?”

“I do not know what M. de Villefort promised you,” said the gendarme,
“but I know we are taking you to the Château d’If. But what are you
doing? Help, comrades, help!”

By a rapid movement, which the gendarme’s practiced eye had perceived,
Dantès sprang forward to precipitate himself into the sea; but four
vigorous arms seized him as his feet quitted the bottom of the boat. He
fell back cursing with rage.

“Good!” said the gendarme, placing his knee on his chest; “this is the
way you keep your word as a sailor! Believe soft-spoken gentlemen
again! Hark ye, my friend, I have disobeyed my first order, but I will
not disobey the second; and if you move, I will blow your brains out.”
And he levelled his carbine at Dantès, who felt the muzzle against his
temple.

For a moment the idea of struggling crossed his mind, and of so ending
the unexpected evil that had overtaken him. But he bethought him of M.
de Villefort’s promise; and, besides, death in a boat from the hand of
a gendarme seemed too terrible. He remained motionless, but gnashing
his teeth and wringing his hands with fury.

At this moment the boat came to a landing with a violent shock. One of
the sailors leaped on shore, a cord creaked as it ran through a pulley,
and Dantès guessed they were at the end of the voyage, and that they
were mooring the boat.

His guards, taking him by the arms and coat-collar, forced him to rise,
and dragged him towards the steps that lead to the gate of the
fortress, while the police officer carrying a musket with fixed bayonet
followed behind.

Dantès made no resistance; he was like a man in a dream; he saw
soldiers drawn up on the embankment; he knew vaguely that he was
ascending a flight of steps; he was conscious that he passed through a
door, and that the door closed behind him; but all this indistinctly as
through a mist. He did not even see the ocean, that terrible barrier
against freedom, which the prisoners look upon with utter despair.

They halted for a minute, during which he strove to collect his
thoughts. He looked around; he was in a court surrounded by high walls;
he heard the measured tread of sentinels, and as they passed before the
light he saw the barrels of their muskets shine.

They waited upwards of ten minutes. Certain Dantès could not escape,
the gendarmes released him. They seemed awaiting orders. The orders
came.

“Where is the prisoner?” said a voice.

“Here,” replied the gendarmes.

“Let him follow me; I will take him to his cell.”

“Go!” said the gendarmes, thrusting Dantès forward.

The prisoner followed his guide, who led him into a room almost under
ground, whose bare and reeking walls seemed as though impregnated with
tears; a lamp placed on a stool illumined the apartment faintly, and
showed Dantès the features of his conductor, an under-jailer,
ill-clothed, and of sullen appearance.

0113m



“Here is your chamber for tonight,” said he. “It is late, and the
governor is asleep. Tomorrow, perhaps, he may change you. In the
meantime there is bread, water, and fresh straw; and that is all a
prisoner can wish for. Goodnight.” And before Dantès could open his
mouth—before he had noticed where the jailer placed his bread or the
water—before he had glanced towards the corner where the straw was, the
jailer disappeared, taking with him the lamp and closing the door,
leaving stamped upon the prisoner’s mind the dim reflection of the
dripping walls of his dungeon.

Dantès was alone in darkness and in silence—cold as the shadows that he
felt breathe on his burning forehead. With the first dawn of day the
jailer returned, with orders to leave Dantès where he was. He found the
prisoner in the same position, as if fixed there, his eyes swollen with
weeping. He had passed the night standing, and without sleep. The
jailer advanced; Dantès appeared not to perceive him. He touched him on
the shoulder. Edmond started.

“Have you not slept?” said the jailer.

“I do not know,” replied Dantès. The jailer stared.

“Are you hungry?” continued he.

“I do not know.”

“Do you wish for anything?”

“I wish to see the governor.”

The jailer shrugged his shoulders and left the chamber.

Dantès followed him with his eyes, and stretched forth his hands
towards the open door; but the door closed. All his emotion then burst
forth; he cast himself on the ground, weeping bitterly, and asking
himself what crime he had committed that he was thus punished.

The day passed thus; he scarcely tasted food, but walked round and
round the cell like a wild beast in its cage. One thought in particular
tormented him: namely, that during his journey hither he had sat so
still, whereas he might, a dozen times, have plunged into the sea, and,
thanks to his powers of swimming, for which he was famous, have gained
the shore, concealed himself until the arrival of a Genoese or Spanish
vessel, escaped to Spain or Italy, where Mercédès and his father could
have joined him. He had no fears as to how he should live—good seamen
are welcome everywhere. He spoke Italian like a Tuscan, and Spanish
like a Castilian; he would have been free, and happy with Mercédès and
his father, whereas he was now confined in the Château d’If, that
impregnable fortress, ignorant of the future destiny of his father and
Mercédès; and all this because he had trusted to Villefort’s promise.
The thought was maddening, and Dantès threw himself furiously down on
his straw. The next morning at the same hour, the jailer came again.

“Well,” said the jailer, “are you more reasonable today?” Dantès made
no reply.

“Come, cheer up; is there anything that I can do for you?”

“I wish to see the governor.”

“I have already told you it was impossible.”

“Why so?”

“Because it is against prison rules, and prisoners must not even ask
for it.”

“What is allowed, then?”

“Better fare, if you pay for it, books, and leave to walk about.”

“I do not want books, I am satisfied with my food, and do not care to
walk about; but I wish to see the governor.”

“If you worry me by repeating the same thing, I will not bring you any
more to eat.”

“Well, then,” said Edmond, “if you do not, I shall die of hunger—that
is all.”

The jailer saw by his tone he would be happy to die; and as every
prisoner is worth ten sous a day to his jailer, he replied in a more
subdued tone.

“What you ask is impossible; but if you are very well behaved you will
be allowed to walk about, and some day you will meet the governor, and
if he chooses to reply, that is his affair.”

“But,” asked Dantès, “how long shall I have to wait?”

“Ah, a month—six months—a year.”

“It is too long a time. I wish to see him at once.”

“Ah,” said the jailer, “do not always brood over what is impossible, or
you will be mad in a fortnight.”

“You think so?”

“Yes; we have an instance here; it was by always offering a million of
francs to the governor for his liberty that an abbé became mad, who was
in this chamber before you.”

0119m



“How long has he left it?”

“Two years.”

“Was he liberated, then?”

“No; he was put in a dungeon.”

“Listen!” said Dantès. “I am not an abbé, I am not mad; perhaps I shall
be, but at present, unfortunately, I am not. I will make you another
offer.”

“What is that?”

“I do not offer you a million, because I have it not; but I will give
you a hundred crowns if, the first time you go to Marseilles, you will
seek out a young girl named Mercédès, at the Catalans, and give her two
lines from me.”

0120m



“If I took them, and were detected, I should lose my place, which is
worth two thousand francs a year; so that I should be a great fool to
run such a risk for three hundred.”

“Well,” said Dantès, “mark this; if you refuse at least to tell
Mercédès I am here, I will some day hide myself behind the door, and
when you enter I will dash out your brains with this stool.”

“Threats!” cried the jailer, retreating and putting himself on the
defensive; “you are certainly going mad. The abbé began like you, and
in three days you will be like him, mad enough to tie up; but,
fortunately, there are dungeons here.”

Dantès whirled the stool round his head.

“All right, all right,” said the jailer; “all right, since you will
have it so. I will send word to the governor.”

“Very well,” returned Dantès, dropping the stool and sitting on it as
if he were in reality mad. The jailer went out, and returned in an
instant with a corporal and four soldiers.

“By the governor’s orders,” said he, “conduct the prisoner to the tier
beneath.”

“To the dungeon, then,” said the corporal.

“Yes; we must put the madman with the madmen.” The soldiers seized
Dantès, who followed passively.

He descended fifteen steps, and the door of a dungeon was opened, and
he was thrust in. The door closed, and Dantès advanced with
outstretched hands until he touched the wall; he then sat down in the
corner until his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. The jailer was
right; Dantès wanted but little of being utterly mad.



 Chapter 9. The Evening of the Betrothal

Villefort had, as we have said, hastened back to Madame de
Saint-Méran’s in the Place du Grand Cours, and on entering the house
found that the guests whom he had left at table were taking coffee in
the salon. Renée was, with all the rest of the company, anxiously
awaiting him, and his entrance was followed by a general exclamation.

“Well, Decapitator, Guardian of the State, Royalist, Brutus, what is
the matter?” said one. “Speak out.”

“Are we threatened with a fresh Reign of Terror?” asked another.

“Has the Corsican ogre broken loose?” cried a third.

“Marquise,” said Villefort, approaching his future mother-in-law, “I
request your pardon for thus leaving you. Will the marquis honor me by
a few moments’ private conversation?”

“Ah, it is really a serious matter, then?” asked the marquis, remarking
the cloud on Villefort’s brow.

“So serious that I must take leave of you for a few days; so,” added
he, turning to Renée, “judge for yourself if it be not important.”

“You are going to leave us?” cried Renée, unable to hide her emotion at
this unexpected announcement.

“Alas,” returned Villefort, “I must!”

“Where, then, are you going?” asked the marquise.

“That, madame, is an official secret; but if you have any commissions
for Paris, a friend of mine is going there tonight, and will with
pleasure undertake them.” The guests looked at each other.

“You wish to speak to me alone?” said the marquis.

“Yes, let us go to the library, please.” The marquis took his arm, and
they left the salon.

“Well,” asked he, as soon as they were by themselves, “tell me what it
is?”

“An affair of the greatest importance, that demands my immediate
presence in Paris. Now, excuse the indiscretion, marquis, but have you
any landed property?”

“All my fortune is in the funds; seven or eight hundred thousand
francs.”

“Then sell out—sell out, marquis, or you will lose it all.”

0123m



“But how can I sell out here?”

“You have a broker, have you not?”

“Yes.”

“Then give me a letter to him, and tell him to sell out without an
instant’s delay, perhaps even now I shall arrive too late.”

“The deuce you say!” replied the marquis, “let us lose no time, then!”

And, sitting down, he wrote a letter to his broker, ordering him to
sell out at the market price.

“Now, then,” said Villefort, placing the letter in his pocketbook, “I
must have another!”

“To whom?”

“To the king.”

“To the king?”

“Yes.”

“I dare not write to his majesty.”

“I do not ask you to write to his majesty, but ask M. de Salvieux to do
so. I want a letter that will enable me to reach the king’s presence
without all the formalities of demanding an audience; that would
occasion a loss of precious time.”

“But address yourself to the keeper of the seals; he has the right of
entry at the Tuileries, and can procure you audience at any hour of the
day or night.”

“Doubtless; but there is no occasion to divide the honors of my
discovery with him. The keeper would leave me in the background, and
take all the glory to himself. I tell you, marquis, my fortune is made
if I only reach the Tuileries the first, for the king will not forget
the service I do him.”

“In that case go and get ready. I will call Salvieux and make him write
the letter.”

“Be as quick as possible, I must be on the road in a quarter of an
hour.”

“Tell your coachman to stop at the door.”

“You will present my excuses to the marquise and Mademoiselle Renée,
whom I leave on such a day with great regret.”

“You will find them both here, and can make your farewells in person.”

“A thousand thanks—and now for the letter.”

The marquis rang, a servant entered.

“Say to the Comte de Salvieux that I would like to see him.”

“Now, then, go,” said the marquis.

“I shall be gone only a few moments.”

Villefort hastily quitted the apartment, but reflecting that the sight
of the deputy procureur running through the streets would be enough to
throw the whole city into confusion, he resumed his ordinary pace. At
his door he perceived a figure in the shadow that seemed to wait for
him. It was Mercédès, who, hearing no news of her lover, had come
unobserved to inquire after him.

As Villefort drew near, she advanced and stood before him. Dantès had
spoken of Mercédès, and Villefort instantly recognized her. Her beauty
and high bearing surprised him, and when she inquired what had become
of her lover, it seemed to him that she was the judge, and he the
accused.

“The young man you speak of,” said Villefort abruptly, “is a great
criminal, and I can do nothing for him, mademoiselle.” Mercédès burst
into tears, and, as Villefort strove to pass her, again addressed him.

“But, at least, tell me where he is, that I may know whether he is
alive or dead,” said she.

0125m



“I do not know; he is no longer in my hands,” replied Villefort.

And desirous of putting an end to the interview, he pushed by her, and
closed the door, as if to exclude the pain he felt. But remorse is not
thus banished; like Virgil’s wounded hero, he carried the arrow in his
wound, and, arrived at the salon, Villefort uttered a sigh that was
almost a sob, and sank into a chair.

Then the first pangs of an unending torture seized upon his heart. The
man he sacrificed to his ambition, that innocent victim immolated on
the altar of his father’s faults, appeared to him pale and threatening,
leading his affianced bride by the hand, and bringing with him remorse,
not such as the ancients figured, furious and terrible, but that slow
and consuming agony whose pangs are intensified from hour to hour up to
the very moment of death. Then he had a moment’s hesitation. He had
frequently called for capital punishment on criminals, and owing to his
irresistible eloquence they had been condemned, and yet the slightest
shadow of remorse had never clouded Villefort’s brow, because they were
guilty; at least, he believed so; but here was an innocent man whose
happiness he had destroyed. In this case he was not the judge, but the
executioner.

As he thus reflected, he felt the sensation we have described, and
which had hitherto been unknown to him, arise in his bosom, and fill
him with vague apprehensions. It is thus that a wounded man trembles
instinctively at the approach of the finger to his wound until it be
healed, but Villefort’s was one of those that never close, or if they
do, only close to reopen more agonizing than ever. If at this moment
the sweet voice of Renée had sounded in his ears pleading for mercy, or
the fair Mercédès had entered and said, “In the name of God, I conjure
you to restore me my affianced husband,” his cold and trembling hands
would have signed his release; but no voice broke the stillness of the
chamber, and the door was opened only by Villefort’s valet, who came to
tell him that the travelling carriage was in readiness.

Villefort rose, or rather sprang, from his chair, hastily opened one of
the drawers of his desk, emptied all the gold it contained into his
pocket, stood motionless an instant, his hand pressed to his head,
muttered a few inarticulate sounds, and then, perceiving that his
servant had placed his cloak on his shoulders, he sprang into the
carriage, ordering the postilions to drive to M. de Saint-Méran’s. The
hapless Dantès was doomed.

As the marquis had promised, Villefort found the marquise and Renée in
waiting. He started when he saw Renée, for he fancied she was again
about to plead for Dantès. Alas, her emotions were wholly personal: she
was thinking only of Villefort’s departure.

She loved Villefort, and he left her at the moment he was about to
become her husband. Villefort knew not when he should return, and
Renée, far from pleading for Dantès, hated the man whose crime
separated her from her lover.

0127m



Meanwhile what of Mercédès? She had met Fernand at the corner of the
Rue de la Loge; she had returned to the Catalans, and had despairingly
cast herself on her couch. Fernand, kneeling by her side, took her
hand, and covered it with kisses that Mercédès did not even feel. She
passed the night thus. The lamp went out for want of oil, but she paid
no heed to the darkness, and dawn came, but she knew not that it was
day. Grief had made her blind to all but one object—that was Edmond.

“Ah, you are there,” said she, at length, turning towards Fernand.

“I have not quitted you since yesterday,” returned Fernand sorrowfully.

M. Morrel had not readily given up the fight. He had learned that
Dantès had been taken to prison, and he had gone to all his friends,
and the influential persons of the city; but the report was already in
circulation that Dantès was arrested as a Bonapartist agent; and as the
most sanguine looked upon any attempt of Napoleon to remount the throne
as impossible, he met with nothing but refusal, and had returned home
in despair, declaring that the matter was serious and that nothing more
could be done.

Caderousse was equally restless and uneasy, but instead of seeking,
like M. Morrel, to aid Dantès, he had shut himself up with two bottles
of black currant brandy, in the hope of drowning reflection. But he did
not succeed, and became too intoxicated to fetch any more drink, and
yet not so intoxicated as to forget what had happened. With his elbows
on the table he sat between the two empty bottles, while spectres
danced in the light of the unsnuffed candle—spectres such as Hoffmann
strews over his punch-drenched pages, like black, fantastic dust.

Danglars alone was content and joyous—he had got rid of an enemy and
made his own situation on the _Pharaon_ secure. Danglars was one of
those men born with a pen behind the ear, and an inkstand in place of a
heart. Everything with him was multiplication or subtraction. The life
of a man was to him of far less value than a numeral, especially when,
by taking it away, he could increase the sum total of his own desires.
He went to bed at his usual hour, and slept in peace.

Villefort, after having received M. de Salvieux’s letter, embraced
Renée, kissed the marquise’s hand, and shaken that of the marquis,
started for Paris along the Aix road.

Old Dantès was dying with anxiety to know what had become of Edmond.
But we know very well what had become of Edmond.



 Chapter 10. The King’s Closet at the Tuileries

We will leave Villefort on the road to Paris, travelling—thanks to
trebled fees—with all speed, and passing through two or three
apartments, enter at the Tuileries the little room with the arched
window, so well known as having been the favorite closet of Napoleon
and Louis XVIII., and now of Louis Philippe.

There, seated before a walnut table he had brought with him from
Hartwell, and to which, from one of those fancies not uncommon to great
people, he was particularly attached, the king, Louis XVIII., was
carelessly listening to a man of fifty or fifty-two years of age, with
gray hair, aristocratic bearing, and exceedingly gentlemanly attire,
and meanwhile making a marginal note in a volume of Gryphius’s rather
inaccurate, but much sought-after, edition of Horace—a work which was
much indebted to the sagacious observations of the philosophical
monarch.

“You say, sir——” said the king.

“That I am exceedingly disquieted, sire.”

“Really, have you had a vision of the seven fat kine and the seven lean
kine?”

“No, sire, for that would only betoken for us seven years of plenty and
seven years of scarcity; and with a king as full of foresight as your
majesty, scarcity is not a thing to be feared.”

“Then of what other scourge are you afraid, my dear Blacas?”

“Sire, I have every reason to believe that a storm is brewing in the
south.”

“Well, my dear duke,” replied Louis XVIII., “I think you are wrongly
informed, and know positively that, on the contrary, it is very fine
weather in that direction.” Man of ability as he was, Louis XVIII.
liked a pleasant jest.

“Sire,” continued M. de Blacas, “if it only be to reassure a faithful
servant, will your majesty send into Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphiné,
trusty men, who will bring you back a faithful report as to the feeling
in these three provinces?”

“_Canimus surdis_,” replied the king, continuing the annotations in his
Horace.

“Sire,” replied the courtier, laughing, in order that he might seem to
comprehend the quotation, “your majesty may be perfectly right in
relying on the good feeling of France, but I fear I am not altogether
wrong in dreading some desperate attempt.”

“By whom?”

“By Bonaparte, or, at least, by his adherents.”

“My dear Blacas,” said the king, “you with your alarms prevent me from
working.”

“And you, sire, prevent me from sleeping with your security.”

“Wait, my dear sir, wait a moment; for I have such a delightful note on
the _Pastor quum traheret_—wait, and I will listen to you afterwards.”

There was a brief pause, during which Louis XVIII. wrote, in a hand as
small as possible, another note on the margin of his Horace, and then
looking at the duke with the air of a man who thinks he has an idea of
his own, while he is only commenting upon the idea of another, said:

“Go on, my dear duke, go on—I listen.”

“Sire,” said Blacas, who had for a moment the hope of sacrificing
Villefort to his own profit, “I am compelled to tell you that these are
not mere rumors destitute of foundation which thus disquiet me; but a
serious-minded man, deserving all my confidence, and charged by me to
watch over the south” (the duke hesitated as he pronounced these
words), “has arrived by post to tell me that a great peril threatens
the king, and so I hastened to you, sire.”

“_Mala ducis avi domum_,” continued Louis XVIII., still annotating.

“Does your majesty wish me to drop the subject?”

“By no means, my dear duke; but just stretch out your hand.”

“Which?”

“Whichever you please—there to the left.”

“Here, sire?”

“I tell you to the left, and you are looking to the right; I mean on my
left—yes, there. You will find yesterday’s report of the minister of
police. But here is M. Dandré himself;” and M. Dandré, announced by the
chamberlain-in-waiting, entered.

“Come in,” said Louis XVIII., with repressed smile, “come in, Baron,
and tell the duke all you know—the latest news of M. de Bonaparte; do
not conceal anything, however serious,—let us see, the Island of Elba
is a volcano, and we may expect to have issuing thence flaming and
bristling war—_bella, horrida bella_.”

M. Dandré leaned very respectfully on the back of a chair with his two
hands, and said:

“Has your majesty perused yesterday’s report?”

“Yes, yes; but tell the duke himself, who cannot find anything, what
the report contains—give him the particulars of what the usurper is
doing in his islet.”

“Monsieur,” said the baron to the duke, “all the servants of his
majesty must approve of the latest intelligence which we have from the
Island of Elba. Bonaparte——”

M. Dandré looked at Louis XVIII., who, employed in writing a note, did
not even raise his head. “Bonaparte,” continued the baron, “is mortally
wearied, and passes whole days in watching his miners at work at
Porto-Longone.”

“And scratches himself for amusement,” added the king.

“Scratches himself?” inquired the duke, “what does your majesty mean?”

“Yes, indeed, my dear duke. Did you forget that this great man, this
hero, this demigod, is attacked with a malady of the skin which worries
him to death, _prurigo_?”

“And, moreover, my dear duke,” continued the minister of police, “we
are almost assured that, in a very short time, the usurper will be
insane.”

“Insane?”

“Raving mad; his head becomes weaker. Sometimes he weeps bitterly,
sometimes laughs boisterously, at other time he passes hours on the
seashore, flinging stones in the water and when the flint makes
‘duck-and-drake’ five or six times, he appears as delighted as if he
had gained another Marengo or Austerlitz. Now, you must agree that
these are indubitable symptoms of insanity.”

“Or of wisdom, my dear baron—or of wisdom,” said Louis XVIII.,
laughing; “the greatest captains of antiquity amused themselves by
casting pebbles into the ocean—see Plutarch’s life of Scipio
Africanus.”

M. de Blacas pondered deeply between the confident monarch and the
truthful minister. Villefort, who did not choose to reveal the whole
secret, lest another should reap all the benefit of the disclosure, had
yet communicated enough to cause him the greatest uneasiness.

“Well, well, Dandré,” said Louis XVIII., “Blacas is not yet convinced;
let us proceed, therefore, to the usurper’s conversion.” The minister
of police bowed.

“The usurper’s conversion!” murmured the duke, looking at the king and
Dandré, who spoke alternately, like Virgil’s shepherds. “The usurper
converted!”

“Decidedly, my dear duke.”

“In what way converted?”

“To good principles. Tell him all about it, baron.”

“Why, this is the way of it,” said the minister, with the gravest air
in the world: “Napoleon lately had a review, and as two or three of his
old veterans expressed a desire to return to France, he gave them their
dismissal, and exhorted them to ‘serve the good king.’ These were his
own words, of that I am certain.”

“Well, Blacas, what think you of this?” inquired the king triumphantly,
and pausing for a moment from the voluminous scholiast before him.

“I say, sire, that the minister of police is greatly deceived or I am;
and as it is impossible it can be the minister of police as he has the
guardianship of the safety and honor of your majesty, it is probable
that I am in error. However, sire, if I might advise, your majesty will
interrogate the person of whom I spoke to you, and I will urge your
majesty to do him this honor.”

“Most willingly, duke; under your auspices I will receive any person
you please, but you must not expect me to be too confiding. Baron, have
you any report more recent than this, dated the 20th February, and this
is the 3rd of March?”

“No, sire, but I am hourly expecting one; it may have arrived since I
left my office.”

“Go thither, and if there be none—well, well,” continued Louis XVIII.,
“make one; that is the usual way, is it not?” and the king laughed
facetiously.

“Oh, sire,” replied the minister, “we have no occasion to invent any;
every day our desks are loaded with most circumstantial denunciations,
coming from hosts of people who hope for some return for services which
they seek to render, but cannot; they trust to fortune, and rely upon
some unexpected event in some way to justify their predictions.”

“Well, sir, go,” said Louis XVIII., “and remember that I am waiting for
you.”

“I will but go and return, sire; I shall be back in ten minutes.”

“And I, sire,” said M. de Blacas, “will go and find my messenger.”

“Wait, sir, wait,” said Louis XVIII. “Really, M. de Blacas, I must
change your armorial bearings; I will give you an eagle with
outstretched wings, holding in its claws a prey which tries in vain to
escape, and bearing this device—_Tenax_.”

0133m



“Sire, I listen,” said De Blacas, biting his nails with impatience.

“I wish to consult you on this passage, ‘_Molli fugiens anhelitu_,’ you
know it refers to a stag flying from a wolf. Are you not a sportsman
and a great wolf-hunter? Well, then, what do you think of the _molli
anhelitu_?”

“Admirable, sire; but my messenger is like the stag you refer to, for
he has posted two hundred and twenty leagues in scarcely three days.”

“Which is undergoing great fatigue and anxiety, my dear duke, when we
have a telegraph which transmits messages in three or four hours, and
that without getting in the least out of breath.”

“Ah, sire, you recompense but badly this poor young man, who has come
so far, and with so much ardor, to give your majesty useful
information. If only for the sake of M. de Salvieux, who recommends him
to me, I entreat your majesty to receive him graciously.”

“M. de Salvieux, my brother’s chamberlain?”

“Yes, sire.”

“He is at Marseilles.”

“And writes me thence.”

“Does he speak to you of this conspiracy?”

“No; but strongly recommends M. de Villefort, and begs me to present
him to your majesty.”

“M. de Villefort!” cried the king, “is the messenger’s name M. de
Villefort?”

“Yes, sire.”

“And he comes from Marseilles?”

“In person.”

“Why did you not mention his name at once?” replied the king, betraying
some uneasiness.

“Sire, I thought his name was unknown to your majesty.”

“No, no, Blacas; he is a man of strong and elevated understanding,
ambitious, too, and, _pardieu!_ you know his father’s name!”

“His father?”

“Yes, Noirtier.”

“Noirtier the Girondin?—Noirtier the senator?”

“He himself.”

“And your majesty has employed the son of such a man?”

“Blacas, my friend, you have but limited comprehension. I told you
Villefort was ambitious, and to attain this ambition Villefort would
sacrifice everything, even his father.”

“Then, sire, may I present him?”

“This instant, duke! Where is he?”

“Waiting below, in my carriage.”

“Seek him at once.”

“I hasten to do so.”

The duke left the royal presence with the speed of a young man; his
really sincere royalism made him youthful again. Louis XVIII. remained
alone, and turning his eyes on his half-opened Horace, muttered:

“_Justum et tenacem propositi virum_.”

M. de Blacas returned as speedily as he had departed, but in the
antechamber he was forced to appeal to the king’s authority.
Villefort’s dusty garb, his costume, which was not of courtly cut,
excited the susceptibility of M. de Brezé, who was all astonishment at
finding that this young man had the audacity to enter before the king
in such attire. The duke, however, overcame all difficulties with a
word—his majesty’s order; and, in spite of the protestations which the
master of ceremonies made for the honor of his office and principles,
Villefort was introduced.

The king was seated in the same place where the duke had left him. On
opening the door, Villefort found himself facing him, and the young
magistrate’s first impulse was to pause.

“Come in, M. de Villefort,” said the king, “come in.”

Villefort bowed, and advancing a few steps, waited until the king
should interrogate him.

“M. de Villefort,” said Louis XVIII., “the Duc de Blacas assures me you
have some interesting information to communicate.”

“Sire, the duke is right, and I believe your majesty will think it
equally important.”

0137m



“In the first place, and before everything else, sir, is the news as
bad in your opinion as I am asked to believe?”

“Sire, I believe it to be most urgent, but I hope, by the speed I have
used, that it is not irreparable.”

“Speak as fully as you please, sir,” said the king, who began to give
way to the emotion which had showed itself in Blacas’s face and
affected Villefort’s voice. “Speak, sir, and pray begin at the
beginning; I like order in everything.”

“Sire,” said Villefort, “I will render a faithful report to your
majesty, but I must entreat your forgiveness if my anxiety leads to
some obscurity in my language.” A glance at the king after this
discreet and subtle exordium, assured Villefort of the benignity of his
august auditor, and he went on:

“Sire, I have come as rapidly to Paris as possible, to inform your
majesty that I have discovered, in the exercise of my duties, not a
commonplace and insignificant plot, such as is every day got up in the
lower ranks of the people and in the army, but an actual conspiracy—a
storm which menaces no less than your majesty’s throne. Sire, the
usurper is arming three ships, he meditates some project, which,
however mad, is yet, perhaps, terrible. At this moment he will have
left Elba, to go whither I know not, but assuredly to attempt a landing
either at Naples, or on the coast of Tuscany, or perhaps on the shores
of France. Your majesty is well aware that the sovereign of the Island
of Elba has maintained his relations with Italy and France?”

“I am, sir,” said the king, much agitated; “and recently we have had
information that the Bonapartist clubs have had meetings in the Rue
Saint-Jacques. But proceed, I beg of you. How did you obtain these
details?”

“Sire, they are the results of an examination which I have made of a
man of Marseilles, whom I have watched for some time, and arrested on
the day of my departure. This person, a sailor, of turbulent character,
and whom I suspected of Bonapartism, has been secretly to the Island of
Elba. There he saw the grand-marshal, who charged him with an oral
message to a Bonapartist in Paris, whose name I could not extract from
him; but this mission was to prepare men’s minds for a return (it is
the man who says this, sire)—a return which will soon occur.”

“And where is this man?”

“In prison, sire.”

“And the matter seems serious to you?”

“So serious, sire, that when the circumstance surprised me in the midst
of a family festival, on the very day of my betrothal, I left my bride
and friends, postponing everything, that I might hasten to lay at your
majesty’s feet the fears which impressed me, and the assurance of my
devotion.”

“True,” said Louis XVIII., “was there not a marriage engagement between
you and Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran?”

“Daughter of one of your majesty’s most faithful servants.”

“Yes, yes; but let us talk of this plot, M. de Villefort.”

“Sire, I fear it is more than a plot; I fear it is a conspiracy.”

“A conspiracy in these times,” said Louis XVIII., smiling, “is a thing
very easy to meditate, but more difficult to conduct to an end,
inasmuch as, re-established so recently on the throne of our ancestors,
we have our eyes open at once upon the past, the present, and the
future. For the last ten months my ministers have redoubled their
vigilance, in order to watch the shore of the Mediterranean. If
Bonaparte landed at Naples, the whole coalition would be on foot before
he could even reach Piombino; if he land in Tuscany, he will be in an
unfriendly territory; if he land in France, it must be with a handful
of men, and the result of that is easily foretold, execrated as he is
by the population. Take courage, sir; but at the same time rely on our
royal gratitude.”

“Ah, here is M. Dandré!” cried de Blacas. At this instant the minister
of police appeared at the door, pale, trembling, and as if ready to
faint. Villefort was about to retire, but M. de Blacas, taking his
hand, restrained him.



 Chapter 11. The Corsican Ogre

At the sight of this agitation Louis XVIII. pushed from him violently
the table at which he was sitting.

“What ails you, baron?” he exclaimed. “You appear quite aghast. Has
your uneasiness anything to do with what M. de Blacas has told me, and
M. de Villefort has just confirmed?” M. de Blacas moved suddenly
towards the baron, but the fright of the courtier pleaded for the
forbearance of the statesman; and besides, as matters were, it was much
more to his advantage that the prefect of police should triumph over
him than that he should humiliate the prefect.

“Sire,——” stammered the baron.

“Well, what is it?” asked Louis XVIII. The minister of police, giving
way to an impulse of despair, was about to throw himself at the feet of
Louis XVIII., who retreated a step and frowned.

“Will you speak?” he said.

“Oh, sire, what a dreadful misfortune! I am, indeed, to be pitied. I
can never forgive myself!”

“Monsieur,” said Louis XVIII., “I command you to speak.”

“Well, sire, the usurper left Elba on the 26th February, and landed on
the 1st of March.”

“And where? In Italy?” asked the king eagerly.

“In France, sire,—at a small port, near Antibes, in the Gulf of Juan.”

“The usurper landed in France, near Antibes, in the Gulf of Juan, two
hundred and fifty leagues from Paris, on the 1st of March, and you only
acquired this information today, the 3rd of March! Well, sir, what you
tell me is impossible. You must have received a false report, or you
have gone mad.”

“Alas, sire, it is but too true!” Louis made a gesture of indescribable
anger and alarm, and then drew himself up as if this sudden blow had
struck him at the same moment in heart and countenance.

“In France!” he cried, “the usurper in France! Then they did not watch
over this man. Who knows? they were, perhaps, in league with him.”

“Oh, sire,” exclaimed the Duc de Blacas, “M. Dandré is not a man to be
accused of treason! Sire, we have all been blind, and the minister of
police has shared the general blindness, that is all.”

“But——” said Villefort, and then suddenly checking himself, he was
silent; then he continued, “Your pardon, sire,” he said, bowing, “my
zeal carried me away. Will your majesty deign to excuse me?”

“Speak, sir, speak boldly,” replied Louis. “You alone forewarned us of
the evil; now try and aid us with the remedy.”

“Sire,” said Villefort, “the usurper is detested in the south; and it
seems to me that if he ventured into the south, it would be easy to
raise Languedoc and Provence against him.”

“Yes, assuredly,” replied the minister; “but he is advancing by Gap and
Sisteron.”

“Advancing—he is advancing!” said Louis XVIII. “Is he then advancing on
Paris?” The minister of police maintained a silence which was
equivalent to a complete avowal.

“And Dauphiné, sir?” inquired the king, of Villefort. “Do you think it
possible to rouse that as well as Provence?”

“Sire, I am sorry to tell your majesty a cruel fact; but the feeling in
Dauphiné is quite the reverse of that in Provence or Languedoc. The
mountaineers are Bonapartists, sire.”

“Then,” murmured Louis, “he was well informed. And how many men had he
with him?”

“I do not know, sire,” answered the minister of police.

“What, you do not know! Have you neglected to obtain information on
that point? Of course it is of no consequence,” he added, with a
withering smile.

“Sire, it was impossible to learn; the despatch simply stated the fact
of the landing and the route taken by the usurper.”

“And how did this despatch reach you?” inquired the king. The minister
bowed his head, and while a deep color overspread his cheeks, he
stammered out:

“By the telegraph, sire.” Louis XVIII. advanced a step, and folded his
arms over his chest as Napoleon would have done.

0141m



“So then,” he exclaimed, turning pale with anger, “seven conjoined and
allied armies overthrew that man. A miracle of heaven replaced me on
the throne of my fathers after five-and-twenty years of exile. I have,
during those five-and-twenty years, spared no pains to understand the
people of France and the interests which were confided to me; and now,
when I see the fruition of my wishes almost within reach, the power I
hold in my hands bursts and shatters me to atoms!”

“Sire, it is fatality!” murmured the minister, feeling that the
pressure of circumstances, however light a thing to destiny, was too
much for any human strength to endure.

“What our enemies say of us is then true. We have learnt nothing,
forgotten nothing! If I were betrayed as he was, I would console
myself; but to be in the midst of persons elevated by myself to places
of honor, who ought to watch over me more carefully than over
themselves,—for my fortune is theirs—before me they were nothing—after
me they will be nothing, and perish miserably from
incapacity—ineptitude! Oh, yes, sir, you are right—it is fatality!”

The minister quailed before this outburst of sarcasm. M. de Blacas
wiped the moisture from his brow. Villefort smiled within himself, for
he felt his increased importance.

“To fall,” continued King Louis, who at the first glance had sounded
the abyss on which the monarchy hung suspended,—“to fall, and learn of
that fall by telegraph! Oh, I would rather mount the scaffold of my
brother, Louis XVI., than thus descend the staircase at the Tuileries
driven away by ridicule. Ridicule, sir—why, you know not its power in
France, and yet you ought to know it!”

“Sire, sire,” murmured the minister, “for pity’s——”

“Approach, M. de Villefort,” resumed the king, addressing the young
man, who, motionless and breathless, was listening to a conversation on
which depended the destiny of a kingdom. “Approach, and tell monsieur
that it is possible to know beforehand all that he has not known.”

“Sire, it was really impossible to learn secrets which that man
concealed from all the world.”

“Really impossible! Yes—that is a great word, sir. Unfortunately, there
are great words, as there are great men; I have measured them. Really
impossible for a minister who has an office, agents, spies, and fifteen
hundred thousand francs for secret service money, to know what is going
on at sixty leagues from the coast of France! Well, then, see, here is
a gentleman who had none of these resources at his disposal—a
gentleman, only a simple magistrate, who learned more than you with all
your police, and who would have saved my crown, if, like you, he had
the power of directing a telegraph.” The look of the minister of police
was turned with concentrated spite on Villefort, who bent his head in
modest triumph.

“I do not mean that for you, Blacas,” continued Louis XVIII.; “for if
you have discovered nothing, at least you have had the good sense to
persevere in your suspicions. Any other than yourself would have
considered the disclosure of M. de Villefort insignificant, or else
dictated by venal ambition.” These words were an allusion to the
sentiments which the minister of police had uttered with so much
confidence an hour before.

Villefort understood the king’s intent. Any other person would,
perhaps, have been overcome by such an intoxicating draught of praise;
but he feared to make for himself a mortal enemy of the police
minister, although he saw that Dandré was irrevocably lost. In fact,
the minister, who, in the plenitude of his power, had been unable to
unearth Napoleon’s secret, might in despair at his own downfall
interrogate Dantès and so lay bare the motives of Villefort’s plot.
Realizing this, Villefort came to the rescue of the crest-fallen
minister, instead of aiding to crush him.

“Sire,” said Villefort, “the suddenness of this event must prove to
your majesty that the issue is in the hands of Providence; what your
majesty is pleased to attribute to me as profound perspicacity is
simply owing to chance, and I have profited by that chance, like a good
and devoted servant—that’s all. Do not attribute to me more than I
deserve, sire, that your majesty may never have occasion to recall the
first opinion you have been pleased to form of me.” The minister of
police thanked the young man by an eloquent look, and Villefort
understood that he had succeeded in his design; that is to say, that
without forfeiting the gratitude of the king, he had made a friend of
one on whom, in case of necessity, he might rely.

“’Tis well,” resumed the king. “And now, gentlemen,” he continued,
turning towards M. de Blacas and the minister of police, “I have no
further occasion for you, and you may retire; what now remains to do is
in the department of the minister of war.”

“Fortunately, sire,” said M. de Blacas, “we can rely on the army; your
majesty knows how every report confirms their loyalty and attachment.”

“Do not mention reports, duke, to me, for I know now what confidence to
place in them. Yet, speaking of reports, baron, what have you learned
with regard to the affair in the Rue Saint-Jacques?”

“The affair in the Rue Saint-Jacques!” exclaimed Villefort, unable to
repress an exclamation. Then, suddenly pausing, he added, “Your pardon,
sire, but my devotion to your majesty has made me forget, not the
respect I have, for that is too deeply engraved in my heart, but the
rules of etiquette.”

“Go on, go on, sir,” replied the king; “you have today earned the right
to make inquiries here.”

“Sire,” interposed the minister of police, “I came a moment ago to give
your majesty fresh information which I had obtained on this head, when
your majesty’s attention was attracted by the terrible event that has
occurred in the gulf, and now these facts will cease to interest your
majesty.”

“On the contrary, sir,—on the contrary,” said Louis XVIII., “this
affair seems to me to have a decided connection with that which
occupies our attention, and the death of General Quesnel will, perhaps,
put us on the direct track of a great internal conspiracy.” At the name
of General Quesnel, Villefort trembled.

“Everything points to the conclusion, sire,” said the minister of
police, “that death was not the result of suicide, as we first
believed, but of assassination. General Quesnel, it appears, had just
left a Bonapartist club when he disappeared. An unknown person had been
with him that morning, and made an appointment with him in the Rue
Saint-Jacques; unfortunately, the general’s valet, who was dressing his
hair at the moment when the stranger entered, heard the street
mentioned, but did not catch the number.” As the police minister
related this to the king, Villefort, who looked as if his very life
hung on the speaker’s lips, turned alternately red and pale. The king
looked towards him.

“Do you not think with me, M. de Villefort, that General Quesnel, whom
they believed attached to the usurper, but who was really entirely
devoted to me, has perished the victim of a Bonapartist ambush?”

“It is probable, sire,” replied Villefort. “But is this all that is
known?”

“They are on the track of the man who appointed the meeting with him.”

“On his track?” said Villefort.

“Yes, the servant has given his description. He is a man of from fifty
to fifty-two years of age, dark, with black eyes covered with shaggy
eyebrows, and a thick moustache. He was dressed in a blue frock-coat,
buttoned up to the chin, and wore at his button-hole the rosette of an
officer of the Legion of Honor. Yesterday a person exactly
corresponding with this description was followed, but he was lost sight
of at the corner of the Rue de la Jussienne and the Rue Coq-Héron.”
Villefort leaned on the back of an armchair, for as the minister of
police went on speaking he felt his legs bend under him; but when he
learned that the unknown had escaped the vigilance of the agent who
followed him, he breathed again.

“Continue to seek for this man, sir,” said the king to the minister of
police; “for if, as I am all but convinced, General Quesnel, who would
have been so useful to us at this moment, has been murdered, his
assassins, Bonapartists or not, shall be cruelly punished.” It required
all Villefort’s coolness not to betray the terror with which this
declaration of the king inspired him.

“How strange,” continued the king, with some asperity; “the police
think that they have disposed of the whole matter when they say, ‘A
murder has been committed,’ and especially so when they can add, ‘And
we are on the track of the guilty persons.’”

“Sire, your majesty will, I trust, be amply satisfied on this point at
least.”

“We shall see. I will no longer detain you, M. de Villefort, for you
must be fatigued after so long a journey; go and rest. Of course you
stopped at your father’s?” A feeling of faintness came over Villefort.

0145m



“No, sire,” he replied, “I alighted at the Hotel de Madrid, in the Rue
de Tournon.”

“But you have seen him?”

“Sire, I went straight to the Duc de Blacas.”

“But you will see him, then?”

“I think not, sire.”

“Ah, I forgot,” said Louis, smiling in a manner which proved that all
these questions were not made without a motive; “I forgot you and M.
Noirtier are not on the best terms possible, and that is another
sacrifice made to the royal cause, and for which you should be
recompensed.”

“Sire, the kindness your majesty deigns to evince towards me is a
recompense which so far surpasses my utmost ambition that I have
nothing more to ask for.”

“Never mind, sir, we will not forget you; make your mind easy. In the
meanwhile” (the king here detached the cross of the Legion of Honor
which he usually wore over his blue coat, near the cross of St. Louis,
above the order of Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel and St. Lazare, and gave
it to Villefort)—“in the meanwhile take this cross.”

“Sire,” said Villefort, “your majesty mistakes; this is an officer’s
cross.”

“_Ma foi!_” said Louis XVIII., “take it, such as it is, for I have not
the time to procure you another. Blacas, let it be your care to see
that the brevet is made out and sent to M. de Villefort.” Villefort’s
eyes were filled with tears of joy and pride; he took the cross and
kissed it.

“And now,” he said, “may I inquire what are the orders with which your
majesty deigns to honor me?”

“Take what rest you require, and remember that if you are not able to
serve me here in Paris, you may be of the greatest service to me at
Marseilles.”

“Sire,” replied Villefort, bowing, “in an hour I shall have quitted
Paris.”

“Go, sir,” said the king; “and should I forget you (kings’ memories are
short), do not be afraid to bring yourself to my recollection. Baron,
send for the minister of war. Blacas, remain.”

“Ah, sir,” said the minister of police to Villefort, as they left the
Tuileries, “you entered by luck’s door—your fortune is made.”

“Will it be long first?” muttered Villefort, saluting the minister,
whose career was ended, and looking about him for a hackney-coach. One
passed at the moment, which he hailed; he gave his address to the
driver, and springing in, threw himself on the seat, and gave loose to
dreams of ambition.

Ten minutes afterwards Villefort reached his hotel, ordered horses to
be ready in two hours, and asked to have his breakfast brought to him.
He was about to begin his repast when the sound of the bell rang sharp
and loud. The valet opened the door, and Villefort heard someone speak
his name.

0147m



“Who could know that I was here already?” said the young man. The valet
entered.

“Well,” said Villefort, “what is it?—Who rang?—Who asked for me?”

“A stranger who will not send in his name.”

“A stranger who will not send in his name! What can he want with me?”

“He wishes to speak to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes.”

“Did he mention my name?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of person is he?”

“Why, sir, a man of about fifty.”

“Short or tall?”

“About your own height, sir.”

“Dark or fair?”

“Dark,—very dark; with black eyes, black hair, black eyebrows.”

“And how dressed?” asked Villefort quickly.

“In a blue frock-coat, buttoned up close, decorated with the Legion of
Honor.”

“It is he!” said Villefort, turning pale.

0148m



“Eh, _pardieu!_” said the individual whose description we have twice
given, entering the door, “what a great deal of ceremony! Is it the
custom in Marseilles for sons to keep their fathers waiting in their
anterooms?”

“Father!” cried Villefort, “then I was not deceived; I felt sure it
must be you.”

“Well, then, if you felt so sure,” replied the new-comer, putting his
cane in a corner and his hat on a chair, “allow me to say, my dear
Gérard, that it was not very filial of you to keep me waiting at the
door.”

“Leave us, Germain,” said Villefort. The servant quitted the apartment
with evident signs of astonishment.



 Chapter 12. Father and Son

M. Noirtier—for it was, indeed, he who entered—looked after the servant
until the door was closed, and then, fearing, no doubt, that he might
be overheard in the antechamber, he opened the door again, nor was the
precaution useless, as appeared from the rapid retreat of Germain, who
proved that he was not exempt from the sin which ruined our first
parents. M. Noirtier then took the trouble to close and bolt the
antechamber door, then that of the bedchamber, and then extended his
hand to Villefort, who had followed all his motions with surprise which
he could not conceal.

“Well, now, my dear Gérard,” said he to the young man, with a very
significant look, “do you know, you seem as if you were not very glad
to see me?”

“My dear father,” said Villefort, “I am, on the contrary, delighted;
but I so little expected your visit, that it has somewhat overcome me.”

“But, my dear fellow,” replied M. Noirtier, seating himself, “I might
say the same thing to you, when you announce to me your wedding for the
28th of February, and on the 3rd of March you turn up here in Paris.”

“And if I have come, my dear father,” said Gérard, drawing closer to M.
Noirtier, “do not complain, for it is for you that I came, and my
journey will be your salvation.”

“Ah, indeed!” said M. Noirtier, stretching himself out at his ease in
the chair. “Really, pray tell me all about it, for it must be
interesting.”

“Father, you have heard speak of a certain Bonapartist club in the Rue
Saint-Jacques?”

“No. 53; yes, I am vice-president.”

“Father, your coolness makes me shudder.”

“Why, my dear boy, when a man has been proscribed by the mountaineers,
has escaped from Paris in a hay-cart, been hunted over the plains of
Bordeaux by Robespierre’s bloodhounds, he becomes accustomed to most
things. But go on, what about the club in the Rue Saint-Jacques?”

“Why, they induced General Quesnel to go there, and General Quesnel,
who quitted his own house at nine o’clock in the evening, was found the
next day in the Seine.”

0151m



“And who told you this fine story?”

“The king himself.”

“Well, then, in return for your story,” continued Noirtier, “I will
tell you another.”

“My dear father, I think I already know what you are about to tell me.”

“Ah, you have heard of the landing of the emperor?”

“Not so loud, father, I entreat of you—for your own sake as well as
mine. Yes, I heard this news, and knew it even before you could; for
three days ago I posted from Marseilles to Paris with all possible
speed, half-desperate at the enforced delay.”

“Three days ago? You are crazy. Why, three days ago the emperor had not
landed.”

“No matter, I was aware of his intention.”

“How did you know about it?”

“By a letter addressed to you from the Island of Elba.”

“To me?”

“To you; and which I discovered in the pocket-book of the messenger.
Had that letter fallen into the hands of another, you, my dear father,
would probably ere this have been shot.” Villefort’s father laughed.

“Come, come,” said he, “will the Restoration adopt imperial methods so
promptly? Shot, my dear boy? What an idea! Where is the letter you
speak of? I know you too well to suppose you would allow such a thing
to pass you.”

“I burnt it, for fear that even a fragment should remain; for that
letter must have led to your condemnation.”

“And the destruction of your future prospects,” replied Noirtier; “yes,
I can easily comprehend that. But I have nothing to fear while I have
you to protect me.”

“I do better than that, sir—I save you.”

“You do? Why, really, the thing becomes more and more dramatic—explain
yourself.”

“I must refer again to the club in the Rue Saint-Jacques.”

“It appears that this club is rather a bore to the police. Why didn’t
they search more vigilantly? they would have found——”

“They have not found; but they are on the track.”

“Yes, that the usual phrase; I am quite familiar with it. When the
police is at fault, it declares that it is on the track; and the
government patiently awaits the day when it comes to say, with a
sneaking air, that the track is lost.”

“Yes, but they have found a corpse; the general has been killed, and in
all countries they call that a murder.”

“A murder do you call it? why, there is nothing to prove that the
general was murdered. People are found every day in the Seine, having
thrown themselves in, or having been drowned from not knowing how to
swim.”

“Father, you know very well that the general was not a man to drown
himself in despair, and people do not bathe in the Seine in the month
of January. No, no, do not be deceived; this was murder in every sense
of the word.”

“And who thus designated it?”

“The king himself.”

“The king! I thought he was philosopher enough to allow that there was
no murder in politics. In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well
as I do, there are no men, but ideas—no feelings, but interests; in
politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.
Would you like to know how matters have progressed? Well, I will tell
you. It was thought reliance might be placed in General Quesnel; he was
recommended to us from the Island of Elba; one of us went to him, and
invited him to the Rue Saint-Jacques, where he would find some friends.
He came there, and the plan was unfolded to him for leaving Elba, the
projected landing, etc. When he had heard and comprehended all to the
fullest extent, he replied that he was a royalist. Then all looked at
each other,—he was made to take an oath, and did so, but with such an
ill grace that it was really tempting Providence to swear thus, and
yet, in spite of that, the general was allowed to depart free—perfectly
free. Yet he did not return home. What could that mean? why, my dear
fellow, that on leaving us he lost his way, that’s all. A murder?
really, Villefort, you surprise me. You, a deputy procureur, to found
an accusation on such bad premises! Did I ever say to you, when you
were fulfilling your character as a royalist, and cut off the head of
one of my party, ‘My son, you have committed a murder?’ No, I said,
‘Very well, sir, you have gained the victory; tomorrow, perchance, it
will be our turn.’”

“But, father, take care; when our turn comes, our revenge will be
sweeping.”

“I do not understand you.”

“You rely on the usurper’s return?”

“We do.”

“You are mistaken; he will not advance two leagues into the interior of
France without being followed, tracked, and caught like a wild beast.”

“My dear fellow, the emperor is at this moment on the way to Grenoble;
on the 10th or 12th he will be at Lyons, and on the 20th or 25th at
Paris.”

“The people will rise.”

“Yes, to go and meet him.”

“He has but a handful of men with him, and armies will be despatched
against him.”

“Yes, to escort him into the capital. Really, my dear Gérard, you are
but a child; you think yourself well informed because the telegraph has
told you, three days after the landing, ‘The usurper has landed at
Cannes with several men. He is pursued.’ But where is he? what is he
doing? You do not know at all, and in this way they will chase him to
Paris, without drawing a trigger.”

“Grenoble and Lyons are faithful cities, and will oppose to him an
impassable barrier.”

“Grenoble will open her gates to him with enthusiasm—all Lyons will
hasten to welcome him. Believe me, we are as well informed as you, and
our police are as good as your own. Would you like a proof of it? well,
you wished to conceal your journey from me, and yet I knew of your
arrival half an hour after you had passed the barrier. You gave your
direction to no one but your postilion, yet I have your address, and in
proof I am here the very instant you are going to sit at table. Ring,
then, if you please, for a second knife, fork, and plate, and we will
dine together.”

“Indeed!” replied Villefort, looking at his father with astonishment,
“you really do seem very well informed.”

“Eh? the thing is simple enough. You who are in power have only the
means that money produces—we who are in expectation, have those which
devotion prompts.”

“Devotion!” said Villefort, with a sneer.

“Yes, devotion; for that is, I believe, the phrase for hopeful
ambition.”

And Villefort’s father extended his hand to the bell-rope, to summon
the servant whom his son had not called. Villefort caught his arm.

“Wait, my dear father,” said the young man, “one word more.”

“Say on.”

“However stupid the royalist police may be, they do know one terrible
thing.”

“What is that?”

“The description of the man who, on the morning of the day when General
Quesnel disappeared, presented himself at his house.”

“Oh, the admirable police have found that out, have they? And what may
be that description?”

“Dark complexion; hair, eyebrows, and whiskers black; blue frock-coat,
buttoned up to the chin; rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honor
in his button-hole; a hat with wide brim, and a cane.”

“Ah, ha, that’s it, is it?” said Noirtier; “and why, then, have they
not laid hands on him?”

“Because yesterday, or the day before, they lost sight of him at the
corner of the Rue Coq-Héron.”

“Didn’t I say that your police were good for nothing?”

“Yes; but they may catch him yet.”

“True,” said Noirtier, looking carelessly around him, “true, if this
person were not on his guard, as he is;” and he added with a smile, “He
will consequently make a few changes in his personal appearance.” At
these words he rose, and put off his frock-coat and cravat, went
towards a table on which lay his son’s toilet articles, lathered his
face, took a razor, and, with a firm hand, cut off the compromising
whiskers. Villefort watched him with alarm not devoid of admiration.

His whiskers cut off, Noirtier gave another turn to his hair; took,
instead of his black cravat, a colored neckerchief which lay at the top
of an open portmanteau; put on, in lieu of his blue and high-buttoned
frock-coat, a coat of Villefort’s of dark brown, and cut away in front;
tried on before the glass a narrow-brimmed hat of his son’s, which
appeared to fit him perfectly, and, leaving his cane in the corner
where he had deposited it, he took up a small bamboo switch, cut the
air with it once or twice, and walked about with that easy swagger
which was one of his principal characteristics.

“Well,” he said, turning towards his wondering son, when this disguise
was completed, “well, do you think your police will recognize me now.”

“No, father,” stammered Villefort; “at least, I hope not.”

“And now, my dear boy,” continued Noirtier, “I rely on your prudence to
remove all the things which I leave in your care.”

“Oh, rely on me,” said Villefort.

“Yes, yes; and now I believe you are right, and that you have really
saved my life; be assured I will return the favor hereafter.”

Villefort shook his head.

“You are not convinced yet?”

“I hope at least, that you may be mistaken.”

“Shall you see the king again?”

“Perhaps.”

“Would you pass in his eyes for a prophet?”

“Prophets of evil are not in favor at the court, father.”

“True, but some day they do them justice; and supposing a second
restoration, you would then pass for a great man.”

“Well, what should I say to the king?”

“Say this to him: ‘Sire, you are deceived as to the feeling in France,
as to the opinions of the towns, and the prejudices of the army; he
whom in Paris you call the Corsican ogre, who at Nevers is styled the
usurper, is already saluted as Bonaparte at Lyons, and emperor at
Grenoble. You think he is tracked, pursued, captured; he is advancing
as rapidly as his own eagles. The soldiers you believe to be dying with
hunger, worn out with fatigue, ready to desert, gather like atoms of
snow about the rolling ball as it hastens onward. Sire, go, leave
France to its real master, to him who acquired it, not by purchase, but
by right of conquest; go, sire, not that you incur any risk, for your
adversary is powerful enough to show you mercy, but because it would be
humiliating for a grandson of Saint Louis to owe his life to the man of
Arcola, Marengo, Austerlitz.’ Tell him this, Gérard; or, rather, tell
him nothing. Keep your journey a secret; do not boast of what you have
come to Paris to do, or have done; return with all speed; enter
Marseilles at night, and your house by the back-door, and there remain,
quiet, submissive, secret, and, above all, inoffensive; for this time,
I swear to you, we shall act like powerful men who know their enemies.
Go, my son—go, my dear Gérard, and by your obedience to my paternal
orders, or, if you prefer it, friendly counsels, we will keep you in
your place. This will be,” added Noirtier, with a smile, “one means by
which you may a second time save me, if the political balance should
some day take another turn, and cast you aloft while hurling me down.
Adieu, my dear Gérard, and at your next journey alight at my door.”

Noirtier left the room when he had finished, with the same calmness
that had characterized him during the whole of this remarkable and
trying conversation. Villefort, pale and agitated, ran to the window,
put aside the curtain, and saw him pass, cool and collected, by two or
three ill-looking men at the corner of the street, who were there,
perhaps, to arrest a man with black whiskers, and a blue frock-coat,
and hat with broad brim.

Villefort stood watching, breathless, until his father had disappeared
at the Rue Bussy. Then he turned to the various articles he had left
behind him, put the black cravat and blue frock-coat at the bottom of
the portmanteau, threw the hat into a dark closet, broke the cane into
small bits and flung it in the fire, put on his travelling-cap, and
calling his valet, checked with a look the thousand questions he was
ready to ask, paid his bill, sprang into his carriage, which was ready,
learned at Lyons that Bonaparte had entered Grenoble, and in the midst
of the tumult which prevailed along the road, at length reached
Marseilles, a prey to all the hopes and fears which enter into the
heart of man with ambition and its first successes.



 Chapter 13. The Hundred Days

M. Noirtier was a true prophet, and things progressed rapidly, as he
had predicted. Everyone knows the history of the famous return from
Elba, a return which was unprecedented in the past, and will probably
remain without a counterpart in the future.

Louis XVIII. made but a faint attempt to parry this unexpected blow;
the monarchy he had scarcely reconstructed tottered on its precarious
foundation, and at a sign from the emperor the incongruous structure of
ancient prejudices and new ideas fell to the ground. Villefort,
therefore, gained nothing save the king’s gratitude (which was rather
likely to injure him at the present time) and the cross of the Legion
of Honor, which he had the prudence not to wear, although M. de Blacas
had duly forwarded the brevet.

Napoleon would, doubtless, have deprived Villefort of his office had it
not been for Noirtier, who was all powerful at court, and thus the
Girondin of ’93 and the Senator of 1806 protected him who so lately had
been his protector. All Villefort’s influence barely enabled him to
stifle the secret Dantès had so nearly divulged. The king’s procureur
alone was deprived of his office, being suspected of royalism.

However, scarcely was the imperial power established—that is, scarcely
had the emperor re-entered the Tuileries and begun to issue orders from
the closet into which we have introduced our readers,—he found on the
table there Louis XVIII.’s half-filled snuff-box,—scarcely had this
occurred when Marseilles began, in spite of the authorities, to
rekindle the flames of civil war, always smouldering in the south, and
it required but little to excite the populace to acts of far greater
violence than the shouts and insults with which they assailed the
royalists whenever they ventured abroad.

0159m



Owing to this change, the worthy shipowner became at that moment—we
will not say all powerful, because Morrel was a prudent and rather a
timid man, so much so, that many of the most zealous partisans of
Bonaparte accused him of “moderation”—but sufficiently influential to
make a demand in favor of Dantès.

Villefort retained his place, but his marriage was put off until a more
favorable opportunity. If the emperor remained on the throne, Gérard
required a different alliance to aid his career; if Louis XVIII.
returned, the influence of M. de Saint-Méran, like his own, could be
vastly increased, and the marriage be still more suitable. The deputy
procureur was, therefore, the first magistrate of Marseilles, when one
morning his door opened, and M. Morrel was announced.

Anyone else would have hastened to receive him; but Villefort was a man
of ability, and he knew this would be a sign of weakness. He made
Morrel wait in the antechamber, although he had no one with him, for
the simple reason that the king’s procureur always makes everyone wait,
and after passing a quarter of an hour in reading the papers, he
ordered M. Morrel to be admitted.

Morrel expected Villefort would be dejected; he found him as he had
found him six weeks before, calm, firm, and full of that glacial
politeness, that most insurmountable barrier which separates the
well-bred from the vulgar man.

He had entered Villefort’s office expecting that the magistrate would
tremble at the sight of him; on the contrary, he felt a cold shudder
all over him when he saw Villefort sitting there with his elbow on his
desk, and his head leaning on his hand. He stopped at the door;
Villefort gazed at him as if he had some difficulty in recognizing him;
then, after a brief interval, during which the honest shipowner turned
his hat in his hands,

“M. Morrel, I believe?” said Villefort.

“Yes, sir.”

“Come nearer,” said the magistrate, with a patronizing wave of the
hand, “and tell me to what circumstance I owe the honor of this visit.”

“Do you not guess, monsieur?” asked Morrel.

“Not in the least; but if I can serve you in any way I shall be
delighted.”

“Everything depends on you.”

“Explain yourself, pray.”

“Monsieur,” said Morrel, recovering his assurance as he proceeded, “do
you recollect that a few days before the landing of his majesty the
emperor, I came to intercede for a young man, the mate of my ship, who
was accused of being concerned in correspondence with the Island of
Elba? What was the other day a crime is today a title to favor. You
then served Louis XVIII., and you did not show any favor—it was your
duty; today you serve Napoleon, and you ought to protect him—it is
equally your duty; I come, therefore, to ask what has become of him?”

0161m



Villefort by a strong effort sought to control himself. “What is his
name?” said he. “Tell me his name.”

“Edmond Dantès.”

Villefort would probably have rather stood opposite the muzzle of a
pistol at five-and-twenty paces than have heard this name spoken; but
he did not blanch.

“Dantès,” repeated he, “Edmond Dantès.”

“Yes, monsieur.” Villefort opened a large register, then went to a
table, from the table turned to his registers, and then, turning to
Morrel,

“Are you quite sure you are not mistaken, monsieur?” said he, in the
most natural tone in the world.

Had Morrel been a more quick-sighted man, or better versed in these
matters, he would have been surprised at the king’s procureur answering
him on such a subject, instead of referring him to the governors of the
prison or the prefect of the department. But Morrel, disappointed in
his expectations of exciting fear, was conscious only of the other’s
condescension. Villefort had calculated rightly.

“No,” said Morrel; “I am not mistaken. I have known him for ten years,
the last four of which he was in my service. Do not you recollect, I
came about six weeks ago to plead for clemency, as I come today to
plead for justice. You received me very coldly. Oh, the royalists were
very severe with the Bonapartists in those days.”

“Monsieur,” returned Villefort, “I was then a royalist, because I
believed the Bourbons not only the heirs to the throne, but the chosen
of the nation. The miraculous return of Napoleon has conquered me, the
legitimate monarch is he who is loved by his people.”

“That’s right!” cried Morrel. “I like to hear you speak thus, and I
augur well for Edmond from it.”

“Wait a moment,” said Villefort, turning over the leaves of a register;
“I have it—a sailor, who was about to marry a young Catalan girl. I
recollect now; it was a very serious charge.”

“How so?”

“You know that when he left here he was taken to the Palais de
Justice.”

“Well?”

“I made my report to the authorities at Paris, and a week after he was
carried off.”

“Carried off!” said Morrel. “What can they have done with him?”

“Oh, he has been taken to Fenestrelles, to Pignerol, or to the
Sainte-Marguérite islands. Some fine morning he will return to take
command of your vessel.”

“Come when he will, it shall be kept for him. But how is it he is not
already returned? It seems to me the first care of government should be
to set at liberty those who have suffered for their adherence to it.”

“Do not be too hasty, M. Morrel,” replied Villefort. “The order of
imprisonment came from high authority, and the order for his liberation
must proceed from the same source; and, as Napoleon has scarcely been
reinstated a fortnight, the letters have not yet been forwarded.”

“But,” said Morrel, “is there no way of expediting all these
formalities—of releasing him from arrest?”

“There has been no arrest.”

“How?”

“It is sometimes essential to government to cause a man’s disappearance
without leaving any traces, so that no written forms or documents may
defeat their wishes.”

“It might be so under the Bourbons, but at present——”

“It has always been so, my dear Morrel, since the reign of Louis XIV.
The emperor is more strict in prison discipline than even Louis
himself, and the number of prisoners whose names are not on the
register is incalculable.” Had Morrel even any suspicions, so much
kindness would have dispelled them.

“Well, M. de Villefort, how would you advise me to act?” asked he.

“Petition the minister.”

“Oh, I know what that is; the minister receives two hundred petitions
every day, and does not read three.”

“That is true; but he will read a petition countersigned and presented
by me.”

“And will you undertake to deliver it?”

“With the greatest pleasure. Dantès was then guilty, and now he is
innocent, and it is as much my duty to free him as it was to condemn
him.” Villefort thus forestalled any danger of an inquiry, which,
however improbable it might be, if it did take place would leave him
defenceless.

“But how shall I address the minister?”

“Sit down there,” said Villefort, giving up his place to Morrel, “and
write what I dictate.”

“Will you be so good?”

“Certainly. But lose no time; we have lost too much already.”

“That is true. Only think what the poor fellow may even now be
suffering.”

Villefort shuddered at the suggestion; but he had gone too far to draw
back. Dantès must be crushed to gratify Villefort’s ambition.

Villefort dictated a petition, in which, from an excellent intention,
no doubt, Dantès’ patriotic services were exaggerated, and he was made
out one of the most active agents of Napoleon’s return. It was evident
that at the sight of this document the minister would instantly release
him. The petition finished, Villefort read it aloud.

“That will do,” said he; “leave the rest to me.”

“Will the petition go soon?”

“Today.”

“Countersigned by you?”

“The best thing I can do will be to certify the truth of the contents
of your petition.” And, sitting down, Villefort wrote the certificate
at the bottom.

“What more is to be done?”

“I will do whatever is necessary.” This assurance delighted Morrel, who
took leave of Villefort, and hastened to announce to old Dantès that he
would soon see his son.

As for Villefort, instead of sending to Paris, he carefully preserved
the petition that so fearfully compromised Dantès, in the hopes of an
event that seemed not unlikely,—that is, a second restoration. Dantès
remained a prisoner, and heard not the noise of the fall of Louis
XVIII.’s throne, or the still more tragic destruction of the empire.

Twice during the Hundred Days had Morrel renewed his demand, and twice
had Villefort soothed him with promises. At last there was Waterloo,
and Morrel came no more; he had done all that was in his power, and any
fresh attempt would only compromise himself uselessly.

Louis XVIII. remounted the throne; Villefort, to whom Marseilles had
become filled with remorseful memories, sought and obtained the
situation of king’s procureur at Toulouse, and a fortnight afterwards
he married Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran, whose father now stood higher
at court than ever.

And so Dantès, after the Hundred Days and after Waterloo, remained in
his dungeon, forgotten of earth and heaven.

Danglars comprehended the full extent of the wretched fate that
overwhelmed Dantès; and, when Napoleon returned to France, he, after
the manner of mediocre minds, termed the coincidence, _a decree of
Providence_. But when Napoleon returned to Paris, Danglars’ heart
failed him, and he lived in constant fear of Dantès’ return on a
mission of vengeance. He therefore informed M. Morrel of his wish to
quit the sea, and obtained a recommendation from him to a Spanish
merchant, into whose service he entered at the end of March, that is,
ten or twelve days after Napoleon’s return. He then left for Madrid,
and was no more heard of.

Fernand understood nothing except that Dantès was absent. What had
become of him he cared not to inquire. Only, during the respite the
absence of his rival afforded him, he reflected, partly on the means of
deceiving Mercédès as to the cause of his absence, partly on plans of
emigration and abduction, as from time to time he sat sad and
motionless on the summit of Cape Pharo, at the spot from whence
Marseilles and the Catalans are visible, watching for the apparition of
a young and handsome man, who was for him also the messenger of
vengeance. Fernand’s mind was made up; he would shoot Dantès, and then
kill himself. But Fernand was mistaken; a man of his disposition never
kills himself, for he constantly hopes.

During this time the empire made its last conscription, and every man
in France capable of bearing arms rushed to obey the summons of the
emperor. Fernand departed with the rest, bearing with him the terrible
thought that while he was away, his rival would perhaps return and
marry Mercédès. Had Fernand really meant to kill himself, he would have
done so when he parted from Mercédès. His devotion, and the compassion
he showed for her misfortunes, produced the effect they always produce
on noble minds—Mercédès had always had a sincere regard for Fernand,
and this was now strengthened by gratitude.

“My brother,” said she, as she placed his knapsack on his shoulders,
“be careful of yourself, for if you are killed, I shall be alone in the
world.” These words carried a ray of hope into Fernand’s heart. Should
Dantès not return, Mercédès might one day be his.

0165m



Mercédès was left alone face to face with the vast plain that had never
seemed so barren, and the sea that had never seemed so vast. Bathed in
tears she wandered about the Catalan village. Sometimes she stood mute
and motionless as a statue, looking towards Marseilles, at other times
gazing on the sea, and debating as to whether it were not better to
cast herself into the abyss of the ocean, and thus end her woes. It was
not want of courage that prevented her putting this resolution into
execution; but her religious feelings came to her aid and saved her.

Caderousse was, like Fernand, enrolled in the army, but, being married
and eight years older, he was merely sent to the frontier. Old Dantès,
who was only sustained by hope, lost all hope at Napoleon’s downfall.
Five months after he had been separated from his son, and almost at the
hour of his arrest, he breathed his last in Mercédès’ arms. M. Morrel
paid the expenses of his funeral, and a few small debts the poor old
man had contracted.

There was more than benevolence in this action; there was courage; the
south was aflame, and to assist, even on his death-bed, the father of
so dangerous a Bonapartist as Dantès, was stigmatized as a crime.



 Chapter 14. The Two Prisoners

A year after Louis XVIII.’s restoration, a visit was made by the
inspector-general of prisons. Dantès in his cell heard the noise of
preparation,—sounds that at the depth where he lay would have been
inaudible to any but the ear of a prisoner, who could hear the splash
of the drop of water that every hour fell from the roof of his dungeon.
He guessed something uncommon was passing among the living; but he had
so long ceased to have any intercourse with the world, that he looked
upon himself as dead.

The inspector visited, one after another, the cells and dungeons of
several of the prisoners, whose good behavior or stupidity recommended
them to the clemency of the government. He inquired how they were fed,
and if they had any request to make. The universal response was, that
the fare was detestable, and that they wanted to be set free.

The inspector asked if they had anything else to ask for. They shook
their heads. What could they desire beyond their liberty? The inspector
turned smilingly to the governor.

“I do not know what reason government can assign for these useless
visits; when you see one prisoner, you see all,—always the same
thing,—ill fed and innocent. Are there any others?”

“Yes; the dangerous and mad prisoners are in the dungeons.”

“Let us visit them,” said the inspector with an air of fatigue. “We
must play the farce to the end. Let us see the dungeons.”

“Let us first send for two soldiers,” said the governor. “The prisoners
sometimes, through mere uneasiness of life, and in order to be
sentenced to death, commit acts of useless violence, and you might fall
a victim.”

“Take all needful precautions,” replied the inspector.

Two soldiers were accordingly sent for, and the inspector descended a
stairway, so foul, so humid, so dark, as to be loathsome to sight,
smell, and respiration.

“Oh,” cried the inspector, “who can live here?”

“A most dangerous conspirator, a man we are ordered to keep the most
strict watch over, as he is daring and resolute.”

“He is alone?”

“Certainly.”

“How long has he been there?”

“Nearly a year.”

“Was he placed here when he first arrived?”

“No; not until he attempted to kill the turnkey, who took his food to
him.”

“To kill the turnkey?”

“Yes, the very one who is lighting us. Is it not true, Antoine?” asked
the governor.

“True enough; he wanted to kill me!” returned the turnkey.

“He must be mad,” said the inspector.

“He is worse than that,—he is a devil!” returned the turnkey.

“Shall I complain of him?” demanded the inspector.

“Oh, no; it is useless. Besides, he is almost mad now, and in another
year he will be quite so.”

“So much the better for him,—he will suffer less,” said the inspector.
He was, as this remark shows, a man full of philanthropy, and in every
way fit for his office.

“You are right, sir,” replied the governor; “and this remark proves
that you have deeply considered the subject. Now we have in a dungeon
about twenty feet distant, and to which you descend by another stair,
an old abbé, formerly leader of a party in Italy, who has been here
since 1811, and in 1813 he went mad, and the change is astonishing. He
used to weep, he now laughs; he grew thin, he now grows fat. You had
better see him, for his madness is amusing.”

“I will see them both,” returned the inspector; “I must conscientiously
perform my duty.”

This was the inspector’s first visit; he wished to display his
authority.

“Let us visit this one first,” added he.

“By all means,” replied the governor, and he signed to the turnkey to
open the door. At the sound of the key turning in the lock, and the
creaking of the hinges, Dantès, who was crouched in a corner of the
dungeon, whence he could see the ray of light that came through a
narrow iron grating above, raised his head. Seeing a stranger, escorted
by two turnkeys holding torches and accompanied by two soldiers, and to
whom the governor spoke bareheaded, Dantès, who guessed the truth, and
that the moment to address himself to the superior authorities was
come, sprang forward with clasped hands.

The soldiers interposed their bayonets, for they thought that he was
about to attack the inspector, and the latter recoiled two or three
steps. Dantès saw that he was looked upon as dangerous. Then, infusing
all the humility he possessed into his eyes and voice, he addressed the
inspector, and sought to inspire him with pity.

The inspector listened attentively; then, turning to the governor,
observed, “He will become religious—he is already more gentle; he is
afraid, and retreated before the bayonets—madmen are not afraid of
anything; I made some curious observations on this at Charenton.” Then,
turning to the prisoner, “What is it you want?” said he.

“I want to know what crime I have committed—to be tried; and if I am
guilty, to be shot; if innocent, to be set at liberty.”

“Are you well fed?” said the inspector.

“I believe so; I don’t know; it’s of no consequence. What matters
really, not only to me, but to officers of justice and the king, is
that an innocent man should languish in prison, the victim of an
infamous denunciation, to die here cursing his executioners.”

“You are very humble today,” remarked the governor; “you are not so
always; the other day, for instance, when you tried to kill the
turnkey.”

“It is true, sir, and I beg his pardon, for he has always been very
good to me, but I was mad.”

“And you are not so any longer?”

“No; captivity has subdued me—I have been here so long.”

“So long?—when were you arrested, then?” asked the inspector.

“The 28th of February, 1815, at half-past two in the afternoon.”

“Today is the 30th of July, 1816,—why, it is but seventeen months.”

“Only seventeen months,” replied Dantès. “Oh, you do not know what is
seventeen months in prison!—seventeen ages rather, especially to a man
who, like me, had arrived at the summit of his ambition—to a man, who,
like me, was on the point of marrying a woman he adored, who saw an
honorable career opened before him, and who loses all in an instant—who
sees his prospects destroyed, and is ignorant of the fate of his
affianced wife, and whether his aged father be still living! Seventeen
months’ captivity to a sailor accustomed to the boundless ocean, is a
worse punishment than human crime ever merited. Have pity on me, then,
and ask for me, not intelligence, but a trial; not pardon, but a
verdict—a trial, sir, I ask only for a trial; that, surely, cannot be
denied to one who is accused!”

“We shall see,” said the inspector; then, turning to the governor, “On
my word, the poor devil touches me. You must show me the proofs against
him.”

“Certainly; but you will find terrible charges.”

“Monsieur,” continued Dantès, “I know it is not in your power to
release me; but you can plead for me—you can have me tried—and that is
all I ask. Let me know my crime, and the reason why I was condemned.
Uncertainty is worse than all.”

“Go on with the lights,” said the inspector.

“Monsieur,” cried Dantès, “I can tell by your voice you are touched
with pity; tell me at least to hope.”

“I cannot tell you that,” replied the inspector; “I can only promise to
examine into your case.”

“Oh, I am free—then I am saved!”

“Who arrested you?”

“M. Villefort. See him, and hear what he says.”

“M. Villefort is no longer at Marseilles; he is now at Toulouse.”

“I am no longer surprised at my detention,” murmured Dantès, “since my
only protector is removed.”

“Had M. de Villefort any cause of personal dislike to you?”

“None; on the contrary, he was very kind to me.”

“I can, then, rely on the notes he has left concerning you?”

“Entirely.”

“That is well; wait patiently, then.”

Dantès fell on his knees, and prayed earnestly. The door closed; but
this time a fresh inmate was left with Dantès—Hope.

0173m



“Will you see the register at once,” asked the governor, “or proceed to
the other cell?”

“Let us visit them all,” said the inspector. “If I once went up those
stairs. I should never have the courage to come down again.”

“Ah, this one is not like the other, and his madness is less affecting
than this one’s display of reason.”

“What is his folly?”

“He fancies he possesses an immense treasure. The first year he offered
government a million of francs for his release; the second, two; the
third, three; and so on progressively. He is now in his fifth year of
captivity; he will ask to speak to you in private, and offer you five
millions.”

“How curious!—what is his name?”

“The Abbé Faria.”

“No. 27,” said the inspector.

“It is here; unlock the door, Antoine.”

The turnkey obeyed, and the inspector gazed curiously into the chamber
of the _mad abbé_, as the prisoner was usually called.

In the centre of the cell, in a circle traced with a fragment of
plaster detached from the wall, sat a man whose tattered garments
scarcely covered him. He was drawing in this circle geometrical lines,
and seemed as much absorbed in his problem as Archimedes was when the
soldier of Marcellus slew him. He did not move at the sound of the
door, and continued his calculations until the flash of the torches
lighted up with an unwonted glare the sombre walls of his cell; then,
raising his head, he perceived with astonishment the number of persons
present. He hastily seized the coverlet of his bed, and wrapped it
round him.

“What is it you want?” said the inspector.

“I, monsieur,” replied the abbé with an air of surprise,—“I want
nothing.”

“You do not understand,” continued the inspector; “I am sent here by
government to visit the prison, and hear the requests of the
prisoners.”

“Oh, that is different,” cried the abbé; “and we shall understand each
other, I hope.”

“There, now,” whispered the governor, “it is just as I told you.”

“Monsieur,” continued the prisoner, “I am the Abbé Faria, born at Rome.
I was for twenty years Cardinal Spada’s secretary; I was arrested, why,
I know not, toward the beginning of the year 1811; since then I have
demanded my liberty from the Italian and French government.”

“Why from the French government?”

“Because I was arrested at Piombino, and I presume that, like Milan and
Florence, Piombino has beco