CHAPTER V.
EDMOND DANTES, DEPUTY FROM MARSEILLES.
Beauchamp, Lucien Debray and Chateau-Renaud were not the only personspuzzled with regard to the enigmatical M. Dantes; all Paris was more orless bothered about him; his entire career prior to his appearance atthe capital as the Deputy from Marseilles seemed shrouded inimpenetrable mystery, and this was the more galling to the curiousParisians as his wonderful oratorical powers and his intenserepublicanism rendered him the cynosure of all eyes and made him thesensation of the hour. The Government had instituted investigationsconcerning him, but without result; even in Marseilles his antecedentswere unknown; he had come there from the east utterly unheralded,attended only by a black servant, and bringing with him his son anddaughter, but almost immediately he had plunged into politics, winninghis way to the front with startling rapidity. From the first he hadardently espoused the cause of the working people, and such was hispersonal magnetism that he had made hosts of admirers, and had beenchosen Deputy with hardly a dissenting voice. Some of the inhabitants ofMarseilles, indeed, remembered a youthful sailor named Edmond Dantes,but they asserted that he had been dead many years, and that the Deputywas unlike him in every particular.
As the young men passed the Theatre Francais, on their way to theChamber of Deputies, after a glass of sherry and a biscuit at Very's,their attention was attracted by a crowd gathered around an immenseposter spread upon the bill-board. There seemed no little excitementamong the throng, a large proportion of whom appeared to be artisans andlaborers, and loud expressions of admiration, accompanied by animatedgestures, were heard. Nor were there wanting also words of deepdenunciation and of significant threatening.
"Down! down with the tyrants! Bread or blood! Wages for work! Food forthe laborer!" and other cries of equally fearful significance wereaudible.
"Do you hear that, Beauchamp?" said Debray, quietly.
"Undoubtedly," was the equally quiet reply.
"Those laborers have deserted the daily toil which would give them thebread they so fiercely demand, in order to discuss their imaginarymisery, and denounce those who are richer than themselves."
"But what brings them to the theatre at this hour?" askedChateau-Renaud.
"The new play," suggested Beauchamp.
"Ah! the new play. 'The Laborer of Lyons,' is it not?"
"Yes," said Debray, "and one of the most dangerous productions of thehour."
"It is evidently from the pen of one unaccustomed to dramaticcomposition, yet familiar with stage effect," added the journalist. "Andyet, without the least claptrap, with but little melodramatic power,against strong opposition and bitter prejudices, and without claqueurs,its own native force and the popularity of the principles it supportshave carried it triumphantly through the ordeal of two representations.It will, doubtless, have a long run, and its influence will beincalculable in the cause it advocates--the cause of human liberty andhuman right."
"No doubt it will exert a most baneful influence," bitterly rejoinedDebray. "Without containing a syllable to which the Ministry can object,at least sufficiently to warrant its suppression, it yet abounds withprinciples, sentiments and theories of the most incendiary description,well calculated to rouse the disaffection of the laboring classes tofrenzy. Its inevitable effect will be to give them a false andexaggerated idea of their wrongs and their rights, and to stimulate themto revolution. Oh! these men have much to answer for. They are drawingdown an avalanche."
"They are the champions of human liberty," said Beauchamp, warmly, "andwill be blessed by posterity, if not by the men of the presentgeneration."
"Truce to politics, Messieurs!" cried the Deputy, observing that hisfriends were becoming excited. "I had heard of this play and itspowerful character. Who's the author, Beauchamp?"
"The production is attributed to M. Dantes, the Deputy from Marseilles,with what truth I know not; but he is fully capable of composing such adrama. To-morrow night, it is supposed, the author, whoever he may be,will be compelled by the people to appear and claim the laurels ready tobe showered on him in such profusion. But it is nearly three o'clock,"continued Beauchamp, "and M. Dantes is expected to speak in the earlypart of the sitting."
"To the Chamber, then," said the others, and the trio mingled with thecrowd hurrying in the same direction.
"What a glorious thing is popularity!" exclaimed the Count.
"What a glorious thing to be the champion of the people!" rejoinedBeauchamp.
"And how glorious is that champion's glorious career!" cried theSecretary. "Let the hydra alone. Like the antique god of mythology, iteats up its own children as soon as they get large enough to be eaten.It is a fickle beast, and the idol of to-day it crushes to-morrow."
The hall of the Chamber of Deputies was crowded when the three friendsentered. Although the hour for the President to take the chair had notyet arrived, the benches were full, and the galleries, public andprivate, were overflowing. Strong agitation was visible among theMinisterial benches of the extreme left. The Premier himself waspresent, although his cold countenance, like the surface of a frozenlake, betrayed neither apprehension nor the reverse. Self-reliant,self-poised, calm, seemingly insensible to surrounding objects andevents, this man of iron, with a heart of ice and a brain of fire,glanced quietly and fixedly around him, with his cold, dark eye, which,from time to time, rested on the Communist benches of the extreme right,unmoved by the stern glances hurled at him by his many fierce opponentsand the almost tumultuous excitement by which they were agitated.
At length President Sauzet took the chair. The house came to order, andthe sitting opened with the usual preliminary business. A large numberof petitions from the workmen of Paris for employment by the Governmentwere presented and referred, and one immense roll containing a hundredthousand names, which came from the manufacturing districts, was broughtin on the shoulders of two men and placed in the area before thePresident's chair, escorted by a deputation from the artisans; it wasreceived with an uproar of applause from the centre of the extreme rightof the benches, and from the throngs of blouses in the galleries. Thetumult having, at length, subsided, the order of the day was announcedto be the discussion of the bill introduced by M. Dantes, having for itspurpose the general amelioration of the condition of the industrialclasses in the Kingdom; and M. Dantes was himself announced to be thefirst on the list to occupy the tribune. A deep murmur of anticipationran around the vast hall at this announcement. The multitudes in thegalleries leaned forward to gain a better view of this idol, and tocatch every syllable that might fall from his lips; and every eye amongthe members was turned to the seat of M. Dantes, on the centre right ofthe benches.
A tall figure in black, with a white cravat, rose and advanced to thetribune slowly, amid a stillness as hushed and breathless as the priorexcitement had been noisy. In age, M. Dantes seemed about fifty orfifty-five. His form was slight and his movements were graceful anddignified. His face was livid and as calm as marble; but for the largeand eloquent eye, dark as night, one might have thought that broad whitebrow, that massive chin, those firmly compressed lips and that colorlessmouth were those of a statue. Yet in the furrows of that forehead andthe deep lines of that face could be read the record of thought andsuffering. The busy plowshare had turned up the deep graves of departedpassions. No one could gaze or even glance at that face and not perceiveat once that it was the visage of a man of many sorrows--yet of a manproud, calm, self-possessed, self-poised and indomitable. His hair,which had been raven black, now rested in thin waves around hisexpansive forehead and was sprinkled with gray, while his intellectualcountenance wore that expression of weariness and melancholy whichillness, deep study and grief invariably trace.
Mounting the steps of the tribune with slow and deliberate tread, hedrew up his tall figure, and resting his left hand, which grasped a rollof papers, upon the marble slab, glanced around on the turbulent billowsof upturned and excited faces, as if at a loss how to address them.Having read the bill, after the u
sual prefatory remarks, he began bylaying down the platform which he proposed occupying in its advocacy andsupport, consisting, of course, of abstract, self-evident propositions,which none could have the hardihood to gainsay, yet, when once admitted,the deductions inevitably flowing therefrom none could resist. Thepropositions seemed safe and indisputable, but the deductions evolvedfrom those propositions were as frightful to the legitimist as they weredelightful to the liberal. That each man is born the heir to the samenatural rights--that each man, alike and equally with all others, has abirthright of which he cannot be divested and of which he cannot divesthimself, to act, to think and to pursue happiness wherever he can findit without infringement on the rights of his fellow beings--none weredisposed to deny. That each human animal, as each animal of inferiorgrade, has, also, the right of subsistence, drained from the bosom ofthe earth, the great mother of us all, which without his foreknowledgeor wish gave him being, seemed, also, indisputable. But when from thesepropositions were deduced that crime is rather the result of miserythan depravity, and that the office of government is more to preventcrime by creating happiness than to punish it by creating misery, andthat for the natural rights resigned by the individual in entering intoand upholding the social system human government is bound to affordemployment and subsistence to each of its members, that labor and itsproduce should be in partnership, that competition should be abolished,and work and wages so distributed by the State as to equalize thecondition of each individual in the community, and, finally, that theclaims of labor are not satisfied by wages, but the workman is entitledto a proprietary share in the capital which employs him, inasmuch as allthe woes and miseries of the laborer arise exclusively from thecompetition for work--when these deductions were advanced the opulentand the conservative started back in terror and dismay. Distribution ofproperty, universal plunder, havoc, bloodshed, sans culottism, a redrepublic and the ghastly shapes of another Reign of Terror rose infrightful vividness before the fancy. As the speaker proceeded toillustrate and sustain his positions, which were those of the Communist,Socialist, Fourierist, call them which we may, and poured forth a fieryflood of persuasion, invective, denunciation and shouts of applause,mingled with cries of rage and dismay, rose from all quarters of thehall. Unmoved and undaunted, that marble man, livid as a spectre, hisdark eyes blazing, his thin and writhing lip flecked with foam, histall form swaying to and fro, rising, bending--now thrown back, thenleaning over the marble bar of the tribune--continued to pour forth hisscathing sarcasm, his crushing invective, his eloquent persuasion andhis unanswerable argument in tones, now soft and tuneful as a silverybell, then sad and pitiful as an evening zephyr, then clear, high andsonorous as a clarion, then hoarse and deep as the thunder, for a periodof four hours, unbroken and continuous, without stop or stay.
The effect of this speech, as the orator, pale, exhausted, shattered,unstrung, with nerves like the torn cordage of a ship that has outriddenthe tempest, descended from the tribune, baffles all description.Fearful of its influence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at once arose,and in order to divert the attention of the Chamber asked leave to laybefore it the late dispatches from the seat of war, setting forth theglorious triumphs of the French arms in Algeria. This intelligence,which, at any other time, would have been received with rapturousenthusiasm, was listened to under the influence of a counterirritantalready at work, with comparative calmness, and its only effect was tocause a postponement of the vote on the laborers' bill upon the plea ofthe lateness of the hour, although not without strenuous opposition fromthe extreme right. The rejoicing of the galleries at the triumph oftheir champion and their fierce applause knew no bounds at the close ofthe sitting, and their idol escaped being borne in his chair to hislodgings only by gliding through a private exit from the hall to thefirst carriage he could find.
"What think you?" cried Beauchamp, triumphantly, to the MinisterialSecretary, as they were pressed together for an instant by the excitedthrong on the steps as they left the hall.
"Think, Monsieur!" was the bitter rejoinder of the Secretary, whoseagitation completely overcame his habitual and constitutionalself-possession, "I think Paris is on the eve of another Reign ofTerror!"
Beauchamp laughed, and the friends were drawn apart by the conflictingbillows of the crowd.