The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (top 10 novels to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
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“Forgive my servants,” he said, “for a terror I cannot blame them for; from being suspected they have become suspicious.”
Madame Danglars had often heard of the terror to which the magistrate alluded, but without the evidence of her own eyesight she could never have believed that the sentiment had been carried so far.
“You too, then, are unhappy?” she said.
“Yes, madame,” replied the magistrate.
“Then you pity me!”
“Sincerely, madame.”
“And you understand what brings me here?”
“You wish to speak to me about the circumstance which has just happened?”
“Yes, sir,—a fearful misfortune.”
“You mean a mischance.”
“A mischance?” repeated the baroness.
“Alas, madame,” said the procureur with his imperturbable calmness of manner, “I consider those alone misfortunes which are irreparable.”
“And do you suppose this will be forgotten?”
“Everything will be forgotten, madame,” said Villefort. “Your daughter will be married tomorrow, if not today—in a week, if not tomorrow; and I do not think you can regret the intended husband of your daughter.”
Madame Danglars gazed on Villefort, stupefied to find him so almost insultingly calm. “Am I come to a friend?” she asked in a tone full of mournful dignity.
“You know that you are, madame,” said Villefort, whose pale cheeks became slightly flushed as he gave her the assurance. And truly this assurance carried him back to different events from those now occupying the baroness and him.
“Well, then, be more affectionate, my dear Villefort,” said the baroness. “Speak to me not as a magistrate, but as a friend; and when I am in bitter anguish of spirit, do not tell me that I ought to be gay.” Villefort bowed.
“When I hear misfortunes named, madame,” he said, “I have within the last few months contracted the bad habit of thinking of my own, and then I cannot help drawing up an egotistical parallel in my mind. That is the reason that by the side of my misfortunes yours appear to me mere mischances; that is why my dreadful position makes yours appear enviable. But this annoys you; let us change the subject. You were saying, madame——”
“I came to ask you, my friend,” said the baroness, “what will be done with this impostor?”
“Impostor,” repeated Villefort; “certainly, madame, you appear to extenuate some cases, and exaggerate others. Impostor, indeed!—M. Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather M. Benedetto, is nothing more nor less than an assassin!”
“Sir, I do not deny the justice of your correction, but the more severely you arm yourself against that unfortunate man, the more deeply will you strike our family. Come, forget him for a moment, and instead of pursuing him, let him go.”
“You are too late, madame; the orders are issued.”
“Well, should he be arrested—do they think they will arrest him?”
“I hope so.”
“If they should arrest him (I know that sometimes prisons afford means of escape), will you leave him in prison?”
The procureur shook his head.
“At least keep him there till my daughter be married.”
“Impossible, madame; justice has its formalities.”
“What, even for me?” said the baroness, half jesting, half in earnest.
“For all, even for myself among the rest,” replied Villefort.
“Ah!” exclaimed the baroness, without expressing the ideas which the exclamation betrayed. Villefort looked at her with that piercing glance which reads the secrets of the heart.
“Yes, I know what you mean,” he said; “you refer to the terrible rumors spread abroad in the world, that the deaths which have kept me in mourning for the last three months, and from which Valentine has only escaped by a miracle, have not happened by natural means.”
“I was not thinking of that,” replied Madame Danglars quickly.
“Yes, you were thinking of it, and with justice. You could not help thinking of it, and saying to yourself, ‘you, who pursue crime so vindictively, answer now, why are there unpunished crimes in your dwelling?’” The baroness became pale. “You were saying this, were you not?”
“Well, I own it.”
“I will answer you.”
Villefort drew his armchair nearer to Madame Danglars; then resting both hands upon his desk he said in a voice more hollow than usual:
“There are crimes which remain unpunished because the criminals are unknown, and we might strike the innocent instead of the guilty; but when the culprits are discovered” (Villefort here extended his hand toward a large crucifix placed opposite to his desk)—“when they are discovered, I swear to you, by all I hold most sacred, that whoever they may be they shall die. Now, after the oath I have just taken, and which I will keep, madame, dare you ask for mercy for that wretch!”
“But, sir, are you sure he is as guilty as they say?”
“Listen; this is his description: ‘Benedetto, condemned, at the age of sixteen, for five years to the galleys for forgery.’ He promised well, as you see—first a runaway, then an assassin.”
“And who is this wretch?”
“Who can tell?—a vagabond, a Corsican.”
“Has no one owned him?”
“No one; his parents are unknown.”
“But who was the man who brought him from Lucca?”
“Another rascal like himself, perhaps his accomplice.” The baroness clasped her hands.
“Villefort,” she exclaimed in her softest and most captivating manner.
“For Heaven’s sake, madame,” said Villefort, with a firmness of expression not altogether free from harshness—“for Heaven’s sake, do not ask pardon of me for a guilty wretch! What am I?—the law. Has the law any eyes to witness your grief? Has the law ears to be melted by your sweet voice? Has the law a memory for all those soft recollections you endeavor to recall? No, madame; the law has commanded, and when it commands it strikes. You will tell me that I am a living being, and not a code—a man, and not a volume. Look at me, madame—look around me. Has mankind treated me as a brother? Have men loved me? Have they spared me? Has anyone shown the mercy towards me that you now ask at my hands? No, madame, they struck me, always struck me!
“Woman, siren that you are, do you persist in fixing on me that fascinating eye, which reminds me that I ought to blush? Well, be it so; let me blush for the faults you know, and perhaps—perhaps for even more than those! But having sinned myself,—it may be more deeply than others,—I never rest till I have torn the disguises from my fellow-creatures, and found out their weaknesses. I have always found them; and more,—I repeat it with joy, with triumph,—I have always found some proof of human perversity or error. Every criminal I condemn seems to me living evidence that I am not a hideous exception to the rest. Alas, alas, alas; all the world is wicked; let us therefore strike at wickedness!”
Villefort pronounced these last words with a feverish rage, which gave a ferocious eloquence to his words.
“But”’ said Madame Danglars, resolving to make a last effort, “this young man, though a murderer, is an orphan, abandoned by everybody.”
“So much the worse, or rather, so much the better; it has been so ordained that he may have none to weep his fate.”
“But this is trampling on the weak, sir.”
“The weakness of a murderer!”
“His dishonor reflects upon us.”
“Is not death in my house?”
“Oh, sir,” exclaimed the baroness, “you are without pity for others, well, then, I tell you they will have no mercy on you!”
“Be it so!” said Villefort, raising his arms to heaven with a threatening gesture.
“At least, delay the trial till the next assizes; we shall then have six months before us.”
“No, madame,” said Villefort; “instructions have been given. There are yet five days left; five days are more than I require. Do you not think that I also long for forgetfulness? While working night and day, I sometimes lose all recollection of the past, and then I experience the same sort of happiness I can imagine the dead feel; still, it is better than suffering.”
“But, sir, he has fled; let him escape—inaction is a pardonable offence.”
“I tell you it is too late; early this morning the telegraph was employed, and at this very minute——”
“Sir,” said the valet de chambre, entering the room, “a dragoon has brought this despatch from the Minister of the Interior.”
Villefort seized the letter, and hastily broke the seal. Madame Danglars trembled with fear; Villefort started with joy.
“Arrested!” he exclaimed; “he was taken at Compiègne, and all is over.”
Madame Danglars rose from her seat, pale and cold.
“Adieu, sir,” she said.
“Adieu, madame,” replied the king’s attorney, as in an almost joyful manner he conducted her to the door. Then, turning to his desk, he said, striking the letter with the back of his right hand:
“Come, I had a forgery, three robberies, and two cases of arson, I only wanted a murder, and here it is. It will be a splendid session!”
Chapter 100. The Apparition
As the procureur had told Madame Danglars, Valentine was not yet recovered. Bowed down with fatigue, she was indeed confined to her bed; and it was in her own room, and from the lips of Madame de Villefort, that she heard all the strange events we have related; we mean the flight of Eugénie and the arrest of Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather Benedetto, together with the accusation of murder pronounced against him. But Valentine was so weak that this recital scarcely produced the same effect it would have done had she been in her usual state of health. Indeed, her brain was only the seat of vague ideas, and confused forms, mingled with strange fancies, alone presented themselves before her eyes.
During the daytime Valentine’s perceptions remained tolerably clear, owing to the constant presence of M. Noirtier, who caused himself to be carried to his granddaughter’s room, and watched her with his paternal tenderness; Villefort also, on his return from the law courts, frequently passed an hour or two with his father and child.
At six o’clock Villefort retired to his study, at eight M. d’Avrigny himself arrived, bringing the night draught prepared for the young girl, and then M. Noirtier was carried away. A nurse of the doctor’s choice succeeded them, and never left till about ten or eleven o’clock, when Valentine was asleep. As she went downstairs she gave the keys of Valentine’s room to M. de Villefort, so that no one could reach the sick-room excepting through that of Madame de Villefort and little Edward.
Every morning Morrel called on Noirtier to receive news of Valentine, and, extraordinary as it seemed, each day found him less uneasy. Certainly, though Valentine still labored under dreadful nervous excitement, she was better; and moreover, Monte Cristo had told him when, half distracted, he had rushed to the count’s house, that if she were not dead in two hours she would be saved. Now four days had elapsed, and Valentine still lived.
The nervous excitement of which we speak pursued Valentine even in her sleep, or rather in that state of somnolence which succeeded her waking hours; it was then, in the silence of night, in the dim light shed from the alabaster lamp on the chimney-piece, that she saw the shadows pass and repass which hover over the bed of sickness, and fan the fever with their trembling wings. First she fancied she saw her stepmother threatening her, then Morrel stretched his arms towards her; sometimes mere strangers, like the Count of Monte Cristo came to visit her; even the very furniture, in these moments of delirium, seemed to move, and this state lasted till about three o’clock in the morning, when a deep, heavy slumber overcame the young girl, from which she did not awake till daylight.
On the evening of the day on which Valentine had learned of the flight of Eugénie
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