‘Ah, Monsieur le Comte de Monte Cristo!’ she exclaimed with the joy that every member of the family usually displayed when the count visited the Rue Meslay.
‘Maximilien has just come home, I believe, Madame?’ the count said.
‘I think I saw him go past, yes…’ the young woman said. ‘But, please, call Emmanuel.’
‘No, Madame, you must excuse me: I have to go up immediately to Maximilien’s,’ Monte Cristo replied. ‘I have something of the utmost importance to tell him.’
‘Then go,’ she said, following him with her delightful smile until he had vanished up the stairs.
Monte Cristo soon went up the two floors between the ground and Maximilien’s room. On the landing he stopped to listen. Not a sound could be heard. As in most old houses inhabited by a single master, the landing was closed off only by a glazed door. However, there was no key on the outside. Maximilien had shut himself inside, but it was impossible to see through the glass, because there was a red silk curtain across the door.
The count’s anxiety showed itself in a reddening of the face, a quite unusual sign of emotion in this impassive man. ‘What should I do?’ he muttered, and thought for a moment.
‘Should I ring? No, no! The sound of a bell, that is to say of a visitor, often precipitates the resolve of those in Maximilien’s situation, and then another sound follows that of the bell.’
He shuddered from head to toe; then, since he was a man whose decisions are made with the swiftness of lightning, he struck one of the panes of glass in the door with his elbow. It shattered and he lifted the curtain to see Morrel in front of his desk, a quill in his hand, having just leapt up at the sound of the breaking glass.
‘Nothing!’ the count said. ‘A thousand apologies, my dear friend. I slipped, and my elbow went through your glass door. But now, since it is broken, I shall take advantage of that to come in. Please don’t disturb yourself, I beg you.’ And, putting his hand through the broken pane, he opened the door.
Morrel got up, evidently irritated, and came across to Monte Cristo, less to greet him than to bar his way.
‘I do declare, it’s your servants’ fault,’ Monte Cristo said, rubbing his elbow. ‘The floors here shine like mirrors.’
‘Have you hurt yourself, Monsieur?’ Morrel asked coldly.
‘I don’t know. What were you doing there? Writing?’
‘What was I doing?’
‘Your fingers are all ink-stained.’
‘That’s true,’ Morrel replied. ‘I was writing. It does happen sometimes, even though I’m a soldier.’
Monte Cristo took a few steps into the apartment. Maximilien was obliged to let him pass, but he followed behind.
‘You were writing, then?’ Monte Cristo said, with a daunting stare.
‘I’ve already had the honour to answer yes,’ said Morrel.
The count took another look around him. ‘And your pistols are beside the writing table!’ he said, pointing to the weapons on Morrel’s desk.
‘I am leaving on a journey,’ Maximilien answered.
‘My dear fellow!’ Monte Cristo said, with infinite tenderness.
‘Monsieur!’
‘My friend, my dear Maximilien, I beg you, do nothing irrevocable.’
‘Irrevocable?’ Morrel said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘How can a voyage be irrevocable, I wonder?’
‘Maximilien,’ Monte Cristo said, ‘let’s both drop the masks we are wearing. You no more deceive me with that appearance of calm than I do you with my light-hearted concern. You realize, don’t you, that to do what I have just done, to have broken your door and violated the privacy of a friend’s room, you realize, I say, that to do such a thing, I must be harbouring some serious anxiety, or rather a dreadful certainty. Morrel, you want to kill yourself!’
‘Well, now,’ Morrel said, shaking. ‘Where did you get that idea, Monsieur le Comte?’
‘I say that you want to kill yourself,’ the count went on in the same tone of voice. ‘And here is the proof!’ Going over to the desk, he picked up the white sheet of paper that the young man had thrown over the letter he had been writing, and took the letter.
Morrel rushed forward to snatch it from his hands. However, Monte Cristo had anticipated the gesture and grasped Maximilien by the wrist, halting him like a steel chain halts an unfolding spring.
‘You see,’ said the count. ‘You do want to kill yourself: here it is in black and white!’
‘Very well,’ Morrel exclaimed, instantaneously switching from an appearance of calm to one of extreme violence. ‘Very well, suppose that is so, suppose I have decided to turn the barrel of this pistol against myself, who will stop me? Who will have the courage to stop me? Suppose I should say: all my hopes are dashed, my heart is broken, my life is extinguished, there is nothing about me except mourning and horror, the earth has turned to ashes and every human voice is tearing me apart… Suppose I should say: it is only humane to let me die because, if you do not, I shall lose my reason, I shall become mad… Tell, me, Monsieur, if I should say that, and when it is seen that it is voiced with the anguish and the tears of my heart, will anyone answer me: “You are wrong”? Will anyone prevent me from being the most unhappy of creatures? Tell me, Count, would you have the courage to do so?’
‘Yes, Morrel,’ Monte Cristo said, in a voice so calm that it contrasted strangely with the young man’s excited tones. ‘Yes, I am the one.’
‘You!’ Morrel cried, with a growing expression of anger and reproach. ‘You, who deceived me with absurd hopes; you, who restrained me, lulled me, deadened me with vain promises when, by some dramatic stroke or extreme resolve, I might have been able to save her, or at least to see her die in my arms; you, who pretend to have all the resources of intelligence and the powers of matter; you, who play – or appear to play – the role of Providence and don’t even have the power to give an antidote to a young girl who has been poisoned… ! Oh, Monsieur, I swear it, you would inspire pity in me if you did not inspire horror!’
‘Morrel…’
‘Yes, you told me to lay down the mask. Well, you may have your wish: I shall lay it down.
‘Yes, when you followed me to the cemetery, I still answered you, out of the goodness of my heart; when you came in here, I allowed you to do so… But now that you are taking advantage of my goodness, and challenging me even here in this room, to which I had retired as if to my tomb; since you are inflicting a new torment on me, when I thought I had exhausted every form of torment… Count of Monte Cristo, my supposed benefactor, Count of Monte Cristo, universal saviour, then be satisfied! You will witness the death of your friend!’ And, with a mad laugh on his lips, Morrel threw himself once more towards the pistols.
Monte Cristo, pale as a ghost but with his eyes flashing, reached out for the weapons and said to the frenzied man: ‘I repeat that you will not kill yourself!’
‘Just try to stop me!’ Morrel said, making a final grasp which, like the previous one, exhausted itself against the count’s steely arm.
‘I will prevent you!’
‘But who are you, then, after all, to dare claim this tyranny over free, intelligent creatures!’
‘Who am I?’ Monte Cristo repeated. ‘Let me tell you…’ And he continued: ‘I am the only man in the world who has the right to say to you: Morrel, I do not want your father’s son to die this day!’
Monte Cristo, majestic, transfigured, sublime, advanced with arms folded towards the trembling young man who, overcome despite himself by the near divinity of the man, shrank back a step.
‘Why do you mention my father?’ he stammered. ‘Why involve the memory of my father in what is happening to me now?’
‘Because I am the man who has already saved your father’s life, one day when he wanted to kill himself as you do today; because I am the man who sent the purse to your young sister and the Pharaon to old Morrel; because I am Edmond Dantès, who dandled you on his knees when you were a child!’
Mo
rrel shrank back again, staggering, panting, speechless, overwhelmed. Then all his sense failed him and he fell prostrate at Monte Cristo’s feet. But then, at once, just as suddenly and completely, there was a surge of regeneration in that admirable constitution. He got up, leapt out of the room and dashed to the top of the stairs, crying at the top of his voice: ‘Julie, Julie! Emmanuel, Emmanuel!’
Monte Cristo also tried to follow, but Maximilien would have died rather than release the hinges of the door which he thrust back against the count.
At the sound of Maximilien’s cries, Julie, Emmanuel, Penelon and some servants ran up in fright. Morrel took them by the hands and, re-opening the door, gasped out in a voice stifled by sobs: ‘On your knees, on your knees! This is the benefactor, this is our father’s saviour, this is…’
He was about to say: ‘This is Edmond Dantès!’
The count stopped him by grasping his arm.
Julie seized the count’s hand, Emmanuel embraced him as he would a guardian angel and Morrel again fell to his knees, dashing his forehead against the ground.
At this, the man of bronze felt his heart swell in his breast, a devouring flame shot from his throat to his eyes, and he lowered his head and wept.
For a few moments the room was full of a chorus of tears and sublime sobs that must have seemed harmonious even to the dearest angels of the Lord!
Scarcely had Julie recovered from the deep emotion that had overwhelmed her than she rushed out of the room, went down one floor and ran into the drawing-room, with childish glee, to lift the glass dome protecting the purse given by the stranger in the Allées de Meilhan.
Meanwhile Emmanuel said to the count, in a voice choking with emotion: ‘Oh, Count, how – when you heard us so often speak of our unknown benefactor, when you saw us surround his memory with such gratitude and adoration, how could you wait until today to reveal yourself? Oh, this is cruel towards us – and, I might almost say, towards yourself.’
‘Listen, my friend,’ the count said. ‘And I can call you that because, without realizing it, you have been my friend for eleven years: the revelation of this secret has come about by a great event that you cannot know. God is my witness that I wished to conceal it for ever in my soul, but your brother Maximilien forced it out of me by violence which, I am sure, he now regrets.’
Then, seeing that Maximilien had thrown himself sideways on to a chair while still remaining on his knees, he said softly, squeezing Emmanuel’s hand in a significant manner: ‘Take care of him.’
‘Why?’ the young man asked in astonishment.
‘I cannot tell you; but watch over him.’
Emmanuel looked around the room and saw Morrel’s pistols. His eyes settled in alarm on the weapons, which he pointed out to Monte Cristo by slowly raising his arm towards them. Monte Cristo nodded, and Emmanuel made a movement in the direction of the pistols. ‘Leave them,’ said the count.
Then, going to Morrel, he took his hand. The tumult that had briefly racked his heart had given way to a profound stupor.
Julie came back upstairs, holding the silk purse in her hands, and two shining and happy tears ran down her cheeks like two drops of morning dew.
‘Here is the relic,’ she said. ‘Do not think that it is any less dear to me since our saviour was revealed.’
‘My child,’ Monte Cristo said, blushing, ‘allow me to take back that purse. Now that you know the features of my face, I should not want to be recalled to your memory except by the affection that I beg you to give me.’
‘Oh, no!’ Julie said, pressing the purse to her heart. ‘No, I beg you, because one day you might leave us… because one day, alas, you will leave us, won’t you?’
‘You are right, Madame,’ Monte Cristo replied, smiling. ‘In a week, I shall have left this country where so many people who deserved the vengeance of heaven were living happily while my father was dying of hunger and grief.’
As he was announcing his forthcoming departure, Monte Cristo kept his eyes on Morrel and noticed that the words ‘I shall have left this country’ passed without rousing the young man from his lethargy. He realized that he must engage in a further bout against his friend’s grief and, taking the hands of Julie and Emmanuel and clasping them in his own, he told them, with the gentle authority of a father: ‘My dear friends, please leave me alone with Maximilien.’
For Julie this was an excuse to take away the precious relic which Monte Cristo had forgotten to mention again. She pulled her husband after her, saying: ‘Come, let’s leave them.’
The count remained alone with Morrel, who was as motionless as a statue.
‘Come, now,’ the count said, touching his shoulder with his fiery hand. ‘Are you once more becoming a man, Maximilien?’
‘Yes, because I am starting to suffer again.’
The count frowned, seemingly a prey to some grave dilemma.
‘Maximilien, Maximilien!’ he said. ‘The thoughts that obsess you are unworthy of a Christian.’
‘Have no fear, my friend,’ Morrel said, looking up with a smile of infinite sadness. ‘I shall no longer seek for death.’
‘So: no more weapons, no more despair?’
‘No, for I have something better than the barrel of a gun or the point of a knife to cure me of my grief.’
‘You poor, crazed man: what do you have?’
‘I have my grief itself: that will kill me.’
‘My friend,’ Monte Cristo said, in tones as melancholy as those of the man he was addressing, ‘listen to me. One day, in a moment of despair equal to your own, since it induced me to take a similar resolution, I too wanted to kill myself; and one day, your father, equally desperate, also wanted to do the same.
‘If anyone had said to your father, at the moment when he was lifting the barrel of the pistol to his head, and if anyone had said to me, at the moment when I was thrusting away from my bed the prison bread that I had not touched for three days, I say, if anyone had said to us at that climactic moment: Live! Because the day will come when you will be happy and bless life; then, wherever that voice had come from, we would have answered it with a smile of scepticism or with pained incredulity; and yet, how many times, when he embraced you, has your father not blessed life and how many times have I…’
‘Ah!’ Morrel cried, interrupting him. ‘But you only lost your freedom; my father only lost his fortune. I have lost Valentine.’
‘Look at me, Morrel,’ Monte Cristo said, with the solemnity that on certain occasions made him so great and so persuasive. ‘Look at me. I have no tears in my eyes, or fever in my veins, or dread beatings in my heart; yet I am watching you suffer, you, Maximilien, whom I love as I should my own son. Well, Maximilien, does that not tell you that grief is like life and that there is always something unknown beyond it? So, if I beg you, if I order you to live, Morrel, it is in the certainty that one day you will thank me for saving your life.’
‘My God!’ the young man exclaimed. ‘My God, what are you telling me, Count? Take care! Perhaps you have never been in love?’
‘Child!’ the count replied.
‘About love,’ Morrel said, ‘I do understand.
‘You see, I have been a soldier for as long as I have been a man. I reached the age of twenty-nine without ever being in love, because none of the feelings that I experienced up to then deserved the name of love. Then, at twenty-nine I saw Valentine. For almost two years I have loved her, for almost two years I have been able to read the virtues of womanhood, inscribed by the hand of the Lord on that heart which was as plain to me as a book.
‘Count, for me with Valentine there could be an infinite, immense, unknown happiness, a happiness too great, too complete and too divine for this world. Since this world has not given it to me, Count, that means that there is nothing for me on earth except despair and desolation.’
‘I told you to hope, Morrel,’ the count repeated.
‘Then I too shall repeat: take care,’ said Morrel, ‘because you are trying
to persuade me, and if you do persuade me, you will make me lose my mind, because you will make me believe I can see Valentine again.’
The count smiled.
‘My friend, my father!’ Morrel cried, in exultation. ‘For the third time I must tell you: take care, because I am terrified at the power you have over me. Beware of the meaning of your words, because my eyes are lighting up again, my heart is being born anew. Beware, or you will make me believe in the supernatural.
‘I should obey if you were to order me to raise the stone of the sepulchre in which the daughter of Jairus3 is entombed, I should walk on the water, like the apostle, if your hand were to signal to me to step on the waves. Take care: I should obey.’
‘Hope, my friend,’ the count repeated.
‘Oh!’ Morrel cried, crashing from the highest point of his exultation to the depths of sorrow. ‘Oh, you are toying with me: you are like one of those good mothers or, rather, like one of those selfish mothers who calm their children’s sorrows with honeyed words, because they are tired of hearing them cry.
‘No, my friend. I was wrong to tell you to beware. Fear nothing. I shall bury my grief with so much care in the depth of my heart, I shall make it so dark, so secret, that it will not even try your sympathy any more. Farewell, my friend! Adieu!’
‘On the contrary,’ the count said. ‘From this moment onwards, Maximilien, you will live near me and with me. You will not leave my side and in a week we shall have left France.’
‘Do you still tell me to hope?’
‘I do because I have the means to cure you.’
‘Count, you are making me even sadder, if that were possible. All you can see, after the blow that has struck me, is an ordinary grief, which you intend to console by ordinary means – by travel.’ And Morrel shook his head, in contemptuous disbelief.
‘What can I say?’ Monte Cristo replied. ‘I have faith in what I promise, so let me try the experiment.’
‘Count, you are prolonging my agony, nothing more.’
‘So, feeble spirit that you are,’ said the count, ‘you do not even have strength enough to allow your friend a few days for the experiment he is trying. Come, do you know what the Count of Monte Cristo can do? Do you know that he commands many powers on earth? Do you know that he has enough faith in God to obtain miracles from Him who said that if a man has faith he can move mountains? Well, wait for the miracle I am hoping for, or…’