CHAPTER VII.
DANTES AND HIS DAUGHTER.
Even in the immediate vicinity of the Morcerf mansion, No. 27 Rue duHelder, no one was aware that its new tenant was M. Dantes, the famousDeputy from Marseilles. All the neighbors knew was that the palatialedifice had been purchased by a stranger, who said he was acting for hismaster, a man of great wealth lately arrived from the east. No repairsor alterations had been made, while the Morcerf furniture was boughtwith the house, the only new articles making their appearance beingseveral huge bookcases and a number of large boxes evidently containingbooks, together with a host of traveling trunks filled, as was to bepresumed, with the wardrobe of the family. The servants took possessionduring the day and were duly noted, but how or when the proprietor camecould not be ascertained, while after his installation glimpses of himwere exceedingly rare.
Occasionally, however, a beautiful girl, with an oriental looknotwithstanding her tasteful and elegant Parisian attire, would be seenfor a moment at the windows, but she invariably vanished on realizingthat she was observed. Sometimes, a handsome young man stood at herside, but he also seemed anxious to avoid the scrutiny of the curious,although he evinced less timidity than his companion, always withdrawingslowly and with great deliberation.
It was after midnight. On the second floor of the pavilion onceinhabited by the Viscount Albert de Morcerf was now a spacious library.The walls were lined with tall book-shelves, mounting to the loftyceiling, and groaning under ponderous piles of volumes, from the hugeblack letter folio of the Middle Ages to the lightest duodecimo of theday; while in all parts of the chamber, on the floor, tables and chairs,and in the deep embrasures of the windows, were scattered huge masses ofpapers, pamphlets, manuscripts and charts. Over the bookcases stoodmarble busts of Danton, Mirabeau, Napoleon, Armand Carrel, the Duc deSt. Simon and other great men whose names are identified with France;between the windows looking out on the garden, shrouded in shrubs andcreeping plants, hung a full-length and magnificent picture of Fourier.Near the centre of the apartment stood a vast table covered with books,papers, manuscripts and writing materials, beside which stood one ofthose sombre and massive arm-chairs, on the possession of which theformer proprietor had so felicitated himself, bearing on a carved shieldthe fleur-de-lis of the Louvre, and in whose sumptuous and antiqueembrace had, perhaps, reposed a Richelieu, a Mazarin or a Sully. Thewindows were hung with heavy tapestry of ancient pattern and rich dye,and also the walls, save where covered with books. A soft and summeryatmosphere, the warmth of which emanated from concealed furnaces,neutralized the chill of an autumnal night, and the mellow chiaro-oscuroof a vast astral diffused its lunar effulgence on all around.
Within this chamber was a man, who, with arms crossed upon his bosom andeyes fastened in profound and seemingly mournful contemplation upon thefloor, slowly paced from one extremity of the spacious apartment to theother.
This man was M. Dantes, representative of Marseilles in the FrenchChamber of Deputies.
"At last, at last," he murmured, "the avenging Nemesis ceases to gnaw!At length the angel Peace begins to smile! The tempest, which, fornearly thirty years, has raved and swelled in my heart, begins to lull!At length I commence to live--at length I realize and pursue life's trueend. Let me reflect," he continued, after a pause, "let me review thepast. The past! alas! my past is a painful blank! At twenty, from thevery marriage-feast, from the side of her whom more than life I loved, Iwas torn by the envy of one man and the jealousy of another, and then,by the ambition of a third, to whom nothing was crime if it butministered to that unhallowed impulse, I was plunged into a dungeon,whose counterpart only the vaults of hell can furnish. For fourteen longyears I was the tenant of a sombre tomb. The agony, the despair ofthose awful years--oh! God! oh! God!" and he shuddered and clasped hishands over his head as if to crush the recollection.
After a pause he resumed: "And then those daily vows of vengeance! oh!vain and impotent vows as then they seemed! vows of awful agony, offiendish retribution, though at that time I knew not all! I knew notthat a venerable father had pined and died of starvation through thewrong done to me! I knew not that the woman I loved had become the brideof my destroyer! Yet those vows, awful and blasphemous as they were,those vows of vengeance have been terribly, dreadfully fulfilled! As thedestroying angel of God's retributive providence, I was endowed withsuperhuman powers to walk the earth, to administer His justice and toexecute His decrees. For fourteen years was that vengeance prepared, yetdelayed. At last, it fell--it fell. All who had wronged me met theirdreadful doom. Ambition was changed to madness. Avarice was torturedwith bankruptcy. Falsehood sought refuge in self destruction; andall--all--all--even the meanest of those who had contributed to blightmy life--perished miserably at my will! And did the guilty suffer alone?Alas! impious, remorseless, horrible revenge! The innocent and thecriminal suffered alike. A might approaching omnipotence was vouchsafedme, but no power of omniscience to direct my hand or stay its effects.Blind and mad I knew not what I did. Those I most loved fell beneath theblow which crushed those I most abhorred, and shared the same fate. Theterrible agencies I had summoned as my slaves became my masters. Thefiends which, as ministers of God's justice, garbed in the guise ofangels of light, I had, by hideous necromancy, evoked to aid me inrighteous retribution, proved the dark demons of hell and derided allorders to accomplish my bidding. The awful engines I had set in motion Ifound myself powerless to arrest or control. Effects ceased not with thecauses in which they had their origin. The stroke of vengeance, aimed atfoes, recoiled on friends--recoiled on myself. And when I fain wouldstop, when I would arrest the awful havoc which my will had commenced,the dark ministers I had called up howled in my ears, 'On! on! on!vengeance is thine! vengeance is thine!' They mocked my terror andlaughed at my apprehensions.
"At last there seemed a pause. Fate appeared to have done her worst, tohave executed her decrees. The blind agencies of vengeance blasted nomore, because there seemed no more to blast. The misery I had caused Istrove to alleviate, the innocent hearts I had crushed I endeavored toheal; rejoicing in the joy I had created and the affection I gratified,once more I loved--loved, but, oh! not as I first had loved--not withthat deep, adoring, delirious passion of my youth, and yet with asubdued, fraternal feeling I loved; in the calm and sweet seclusion of afavored clime, parted from the world with all its miseries and itscrimes, environed by all that man or nature could contribute to humanbliss, I began to dream of happiness, in the happiness I had created.But, alas! I forgot that man's happiness lies not in his own hand, butin the hand of his Maker. I forgot that an omniscient eye pursued me,that a blasphemed and omnipotent Power was over me. The blowpaused--hovered--fell, not upon me, not on the guilty, but again it fellon the innocent; and she, who was my only hope, my beloved Haydee, mywife, was snatched from my heart, ruthlessly murdered by that fiend,Benedetto!"
The unhappy man pressed his hand to his forehead, and for some timepaced the chamber in silence; then, approaching a small alcove at oneextremity of the apartment, he raised the heavy and sumptuous hangingsand revealed a small silver casket of exquisite workmanship andappointments, that sparkled as the mellow light poured in upon it. M.Dantes knelt beside the ebony table on which this casket rested, and forsome moments seemed absorbed in prayer; then, rising and taking thecasket in his hands, he touched a spring, when the lid flew open,disclosing a miniature portrait of Haydee, set in a frame of gold,ornamented with flashing diamonds and emeralds; he gazed long andlovingly at this portrait, that seemed designed to show how exquisitelyfair God's creatures may be, after which he kissed it reverently, closedthe casket, restored it to the table, and slowly dropped the hangings totheir place. Resuming his walk, he said, mournfully: "But the deepestwound will close; the heaviest grief, the bitterest woe, becomesassuaged. Time, the comforter, soothes and consoles. From this stroke ofbereavement I at length awoke, and, at the same moment, awoke to theconviction that my whole past had been an error; that my life had been alie; that the years which
had succeeded my imprisonment had been moreutterly lost than those passed within my dungeon itself; and there cameto me the conviction that time, talent, power and wealth had been worsethan wasted--that the wondrous riches, undreamed of save in the wildestflights of oriental fiction, and by a miracle bestowed upon me, weredesigned for nobler, holier purposes than to subserve a fiendish andblasphemous vengeance for even unutterable wrongs, or to minister to thegratification of pride, and the satisfaction of selfish tastes andappetites, however refined and sublimated.
"I looked around me--the world was full of misery--and the samedisposition which had plunged me into a dungeon was crushing the heartsand hopes of millions of my race. My bosom softened by bereavementyearned toward my suffering fellows, and the path of duty, peace andhappiness seemed open to my desolate and despairing heart. Resolutionfollowed conviction; the world was my field; liberty, equality andfraternity were my objects. Not France alone, with her miserablemillions, but Russia with her serfs, Poland with her wrongs, theenslaved Italian, the oppressed German, the starving son of Erin, thesqualid operative of England, the priest-ridden slave of Jesuit Spain,and the oppressed but free-born Switzer. Great men and good men I foundhad already, with superhuman skill, constructed a system, a machine forthe amelioration of mankind's condition, which needed only theco-operation of boundless wealth to set it in motion. That wealth wasmine! The common house for the laborer, the asylum for the insane, forthe orphan, the Magdalen, the destitute, the sick, the friendless, thedeserted, the bereaved, or the asylum for the victim of his own vices,or the vices of others, for the depravity which originates in misery,ignorance or fate--all these my riches could sustain. Around me, in theaccomplishment of this design, the uncounted wealth intrusted to mystewardship has already gathered the mightiest minds in every departmentof intellect, and the best hearts; and if but a few years are vouchsafedus to carry out the system we have adopted, all Europe, despite herthroned and sceptred tyrants, impiously claiming the right to oppress bythe will of God, shall be free! Silently but surely, the principle ofhuman liberty is ceaselessly at work, undermining thrones andoverthrowing dynasties. The hush that precedes the tornado even nowbroods over Europe; nations slumber the heavy sleep that preludes theearthquake. The hour of revolution is at hand--of social regeneration,disenthrallment, redemption, over all the world. In every capital ofEurope the mine is prepared--the train laid to be lighted, and from thissolitary chamber the free thought on the lightning's pinion flies toVienna, St. Petersburg, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, London, over mountain andplain--over sea and land--through the forest wilderness and the throngedcity; taken up by the press, it makes thrones totter and tyrantstremble--tremble at an influence which emanates they know not whence andcontemplates a purpose they know not what--an influence whose mysterythey are impotent to penetrate, and whose shadowy but awful right theyare powerless to resist!"
At that instant the silvery tinkle of a bell was heard at the table, anda low and continuous whizzing as of clockwork at once commenced. TheDeputy advanced hastily to the table. The register of the electrictelegraph like a living thing was unfolding the secrets of events atthat moment transpiring at the furthest extremity of the Kingdom!Eagerly seizing the slip of paper which was gliding through the machine,he glanced over the cabalistic cipher there traced."Lyons--Marseilles--Rome--Algeria," he murmured. "All goes well." Andwhile the wonderful register, like a thing of life, still whizzed,clicked and delivered its magic scroll, covered with charactersunintelligible to all but him for whose eye they were designed, hetouched a spring, and a row of ivory keys resembling those of apiano-forte was revealed. Then rapidly touching them with the fingers ofone hand, while he held up before him the endless slip of paper in theother as it was evolved, he transferred its cabalistic contents,character by character, to their distant destination.
And when the day dawned on Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Madrid, theintelligence thus concentrated, and thus distributed in that solitarychamber, was laid by the press before a hundred thousand eyes, in alanguage which each could comprehend, for in every capital of Europeunbounded wealth had established a press which groaned in unceasingparturition for human rights, causing princes to tremble and ministersto wonder and grow pale; over each press, thus set in motion as ifliterally by an electric touch a thousand miles away, presided men ofthe greatest powers and most varied attainments which philanthropy orcovetousness could enlist, while the result of their labors was sownbroadcast among the poorest and humblest, without price or compensation,pouring light upon their darkened understandings and giving themknowledge of their rights.
Nor was the newspaper press alone active. The feuilleton press was alsoat work; and magazines, reviews, pamphlets, whole libraries of volumes,were flung like Sibylline leaves on the four winds of heaven. Fiction,the drama, religion, art, literature, moral and mechanical science--alldepartments of intellect--silently, unseen, yet surely exerted theiromnipotent influence for the attainment of one single glorious end--thehappiness, rights, freedom of man; all this was under the guidance ofone powerful mind and benevolent heart, wielding the resistlessnecromancy of countless and exhaustless treasure! Not a point in allEurope whence influence could radiate and be distributed was there atwhich this man, in one brief year, had not set in motion the press andthe telegraph, those tremendous levers of the age to move the world, andall the more powerfully to move it because oft unseen. Not a court wasthere of emperor or prince, czar or kaiser, king, duke or potentate inwhich dwelt not his emissary, who suspected, least of all, kneweverything that occurred, and, on the lightning's wing, dispatched it toits destination, so that the most important decrees of thecabinet-council of Vienna were exposed to the whole world by theParisian press long before they had been communicated by Metternich tohis sovereign. And thus, often, the ruler first learned the purposes ofthe Minister. Not a city or village was there in all Europe whichnourished not in its bosom the germ of reform and revolution, while thegreat principle of association combined, embodied, and concentrated intoa focus energies and influences which would otherwise have provedcomparatively powerless.
The click and buzz of the register ceased--the engine had revealed itssecret--the shadowy tale had been caught up as it fell and given to thepress of all Europe, thence to be laid before men's minds.
Exhausted by the severe mental toil, and by the lateness of the hour,the Deputy sank back into his arm-chair and clasped his hands."Glorious, omnipotent science!" he exclaimed in low and trembling, yeteager and enthusiastic tones. "Wealth must yield in power to thee, forwhat wealth can rival thy achievements or secure thy results? Thou hastgirt the earth with web-work, forced the lightning to syllable theunspoken thought and made man's mind ubiquitous like God's; ere long,thou wilt have knit together with thy magic spells a world of mankindinto one vast brotherhood!"
M. Dantes ceased and, closing his eyes wearily, continued to think overthe possibilities of the future. As he sat there motionless andseemingly asleep, a light footfall was heard in the apartment and hisdaughter stood before him. Zuleika was now sixteen, tall and maturedbeyond her years; she greatly resembled her dead mother, Haydee, thebeautiful Greek, and the half-oriental costume she wore helped to renderthe resemblance still more striking; her abundant hair was the hue ofthe raven's wing, her feet and hands were those of a fairy, while herlarge and expressive eyes flashed like diamonds, and her parted lips, asred as rubies, disclosed perfect teeth of the whiteness of pearls. Ashade of anxiety settled upon her handsome countenance as she bent overher weary father. The Deputy opened his eyes and glanced at her.
"Why are you up so late, my child?" he asked, fondly. "I thought youwere sleeping soundly long ere this."
"I was waiting for you, papa," replied Zuleika, in a low, musical voice,that sounded like a chime of tiny bells; "I could not retire to mycouch while you were toiling."
M. Dantes pointed to a stool; the young girl brought it and seatedherself at his feet; he drew her to his knee, smoothing her tressesgently and affectionately.
&
nbsp; "So you would not desert me, darling?" he said, with a glad smile.
"No, indeed, dear papa," answered she, nestling closer to him.
"Will you always love me as you do now, Zuleika?" asked the father,looking down into the liquid depths of her eyes.
"Oh! papa, what a question, what a singular question!" said the girl,springing to her feet, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissinghim again and again.
"But love of another kind and for another will come along after awhile,"said the Deputy sadly, "and then you will forget your father."
Zuleika blushed and hung her head in maidenly modesty; then sheexclaimed:
"No, no, papa; never will I forget you whatever may happen!"
"Ah! my darling, you know not what you are saying; it is only naturalfor a woman to cast her father aside and cleave unto her husband."
"But, papa, I have not even a lover yet, and, besides, I am not a woman;I am merely a little girl and your own, true, loving daughter."
"Yes, yes, but you must remember that last year, young as you werethen, you attracted marked attention from several youthful Romans of thebest families in the Eternal City, and that one of them, the ViscountGiovanni Massetti, went so far as to ask me for your hand."
At the mention of Massetti's name the blush upon Zuleika's cheekdeepened. She trembled slightly, but said nothing; her heart flutteredpainfully, but the pain was not altogether disagreeable. The youngViscount was evidently not unpleasing to her.
M. Dantes resumed, looking at her fixedly the while:
"My daughter, as you were then attending the convent school I felt it myduty to deny Giovanni Massetti's solicitation, nay, his ardent,impetuous prayer, but I did not deprive him of all hope; I gave himpermission to urge his suit with you personally after a year from thattime had elapsed. Did I do right?"
Zuleika maintained silence, but blushed and trembled more than ever,while her heart fluttered so that she placed her hand upon her breast tostill it.
"Come, come, my daughter, answer me," said the Deputy, kindly, "did I doright? Tell me what your little heart says."
"I do not know, oh! I do not know!" cried Zuleika, bursting into tears.
"There, there now," said her father, soothingly; "I did not mean eitherto frighten or wound you. If the Viscount is displeasing to you I willanswer his letter to-morrow and tell him as gently as possible that hehas no hope of winning your hand."
"What! have you received a letter from Giovanni?" exclaimed Zuleika,with sudden interest, her tears vanishing instantly and her pretty facebrightening up.
"Ho! ho!" said M. Dantes to himself, "Mademoiselle has waked up inearnest now." Then he added aloud: "Yes, one came this afternoon. TheViscount is in Paris, and has claimed the privilege I accorded him ayear ago, provided you interposed no objection. However, the matter canspeedily be settled. Young Massetti is a man of honor, and will not foran instant think of troubling with his attentions a lady to whom theycannot prove acceptable."
"Oh! papa, papa, don't tell him that; he wouldn't come here if you did;besides, did--did--did I ever tell you that Giovanni's attentions wouldprove unacceptable to me?"
"No, not in so many words," answered M. Dantes, archly, "but I inferredas much from your manner and tears just now. So I am to understand thatyou do not want me to reply to the Viscount's letter, am I?"
"Oh! yes, I want you to reply to his letter, but--but----"
"But what, darling?"
"I do not wish you to tell him there is no hope!"
"You think there is hope, then?"
"I--I--am afraid so, dear papa!"
"Yet a moment ago you told me you had no lover, and were merely a littlegirl!"
"I did not know then that Giovanni was in Paris, and I--I--thought hehad forgotten all about me."
M. Dantes smiled as he said:
"That makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes," answered Zuleika, innocently; then she added in a tone of greatearnestness: "Write to Giovanni in the morning, and--and tell him Ishall be delighted to see him."
"I will write and inform him that, so far as I have been able todiscover, my daughter does not object to receiving a visit from him."
"Oh! that would be too cold and formal, and Giovanni is such an oldfriend."
"Well, well," said M. Dantes, "I will so frame my reply as to giveentire satisfaction both to you and him. Now, my child, kiss me andretire to your couch, for it is very, very late."
Zuleika embraced her father and kissed him repeatedly; then, withbeaming eyes and a countenance overflowing with happiness she ranlightly from the apartment.
As she tripped joyously away, M. Dantes arose from his arm-chair andgazed after her with a look of the utmost sadness.
"Oh! my daughter, my daughter," he murmured, "soon will you also quitme, and then I shall be alone, indeed! True, Esperance will remain,but, generous, manly and heroic as he is, he can never fill the voidZuleika will leave. Oh! Haydee, Haydee, my beloved wife, why were youtorn so ruthlessly from your husband's heart!"
Zuleika's dreams that night were rose-hued and delicious, and in all ofthem the central figure was the youthful Roman Viscount.
When day dawned M. Dantes was still pacing his library.