An icy sweat poured across Villefort’s brow, his feet stumbled on the floor and his thoughts began to whirl in his head like the disordered works of a broken watch. ‘To Madame’s room!’ he muttered. ‘To Madame’s…’ And he slowly retraced his steps, wiping his forehead with one hand and supporting himself with the other against the wall.
Going back into the room meant once more seeing the unhappy woman’s body. Calling Edouard meant reawakening the echo of this room which had become a coffin: to speak was to violate the silence of a tomb. Villefort’s tongue seemed to be paralysed in his throat.
‘Edouard,’ he stammered. ‘Edouard…’
The child did not reply. So where was he if, as the servants said, he had gone into his mother’s room and not come out?
Villefort stepped forward.
Mme de Villefort’s body was lying across the doorway to the boudoir in which Edouard must be: the body seemed to be keeping watch on the threshold with staring, open eyes and with a frightful and mysterious look of irony on the mouth.
Behind the body, the curtain was lifted to reveal part of the boudoir, a piano and the end of a blue satin sofa.
Villefort took three or four steps forward and saw his child lying on the divan. No doubt the boy was sleeping.
The unfortunate man had a sudden feeling of unspeakable joy. A ray of pure light had shone into the hell in which he was writhing. It was merely a matter of stepping over the body into the boudoir, taking the child in his arms and fleeing with him a long, long way away.
Villefort was no longer the man whose exquisite corruption made a model of civilized man. He was a mortally wounded tiger leaving its broken teeth in its last wound. He was no longer afraid of prejudice, but of ghosts. He took a running jump over the body, as if he had been leaping across a blazing fire.
He picked the child up in his arms, holding him close, shaking him, calling to him; the child did not reply. He pressed his eager lips to his cheeks, but the cheeks were livid and ice-cold. He massaged his stiffened limbs, he put his hand to his heart, but the heart was no longer beating.
The child was dead.
A sheet of folded paper fluttered from Edouard’s breast. Devastated, Villefort dropped on his knees. The child fell from his lifeless arms and rolled over towards his mother. Villefort picked up the paper, recognized his wife’s handwriting and perused it eagerly. This is what he read:
‘You know that I was a good mother, since it was for the sake of my child that I became a criminal. A good mother does not go away without taking her son with her!’ Villefort could not believe his eyes; Villefort could not believe his own reason. He dragged himself towards Edouard’s body and examined it with the minute attention that a lioness gives to the study of a dead cub. Then he gave a heart-rending cry.
‘God!’ he cried. ‘As ever, God!’
The two victims appalled him. Within himself he could feel rising the horror of a solitude peopled by two corpses.
A moment before, he had been sustained by fury, that huge resource for a strong man; and by despair, the supreme virtue of grief, which drove the Titans to climb the heavens and Ajax to brandish his fist at the gods.2
Villefort bent his head under the weight of sorrows, rose up on his knees, shook his hair, which was damp with sweat and standing on end with horror, and this man, who had never had pity on anyone, went to seek out the old man, his father, just so that in his weakness he might have someone to whom to tell his misfortune and someone with whom to weep.
He went down the staircase that we already know and came into Noirtier’s.
When Villefort entered, Noirtier seemed to be listening, attentively and as affectionately as his paralysis allowed, to Abbé Busoni, who was as calm and emotionless as ever.
Seeing the abbé, Villefort put his hand to his forehead. The past returned to him like one of those waves which in its rage raises more foam than any of its fellows. He recalled the visit that he had paid to the abbé the day after the dinner in Auteuil and the visit that the abbé had paid him on the day of Valentine’s death.
‘Are you here, Monsieur!’ he said. ‘And do you never appear except in the company of Death?’
Busoni rose to his feet. Seeing the look on the lawyer’s face and the fierce light burning in his eyes, he realized, or thought he realized, that the events at the assizes had taken place. He knew nothing of the rest.
‘I came to pray over the body of your daughter,’ Busoni replied.
‘And today? Why are you here today?’
‘I have come to tell you that you have paid your debt to me and that from now on I shall pray God that He will be satisfied, as I am.’
‘My God!’ Villefort cried, shrinking back with a horrified look on his face. ‘That voice! It is not Abbé Busoni’s!’
‘No.’
The abbé tore off his tonsured wig and shook his head, so that his long black hair fell freely across his shoulders, framing his masculine features.
‘That is the face of Monte Cristo!’ Villefort exclaimed, looking aghast.
‘Not quite, Monsieur. Look harder, and further back.’
‘That voice! That voice! Where did I hear it for the first time?’
‘You heard it first in Marseille, twenty-three years ago, on the day of your wedding to Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran. Look in your files.’
‘You are not Busoni? You are not Monte Cristo? My God, you are that hidden enemy, deadly and implacable! I did something to harm you, something in Marseille! Oh, woe is me!’
‘Yes, you are right, you are absolutely right,’ the count said, crossing his arms over his broad chest. ‘Think! Think!’
‘But what did I do to you?’ Villefort cried, his mind already hovering on the borderline between reason and madness, in that mist which is no longer a dream but not yet wakefulness. ‘What did I do to you? Tell me! Speak!’
‘You condemned me to a slow and frightful death, you killed my father and you deprived me of love at the same time as you deprived me of freedom, and of fortune as well as love!’
‘Who are you? Then who are you? My God!’
‘I am the spectre of an unfortunate man whom you locked up in the dungeons of the Château d’If. When this spectre finally emerged from its tomb, God put on it the mask of the Count of Monte Cristo and showered it with diamonds and gold so that you should not recognize it until today.’
‘Ah! I recognize you, I do recognize you!’ the crown prosecutor said. ‘You are…’
‘I am Edmond Dantès!’
‘You are Edmond Dantès!’ cried the crown prosecutor, grasping the count by the wrist. ‘Then, come with me!’
He dragged him down the staircase, and Monte Cristo followed him, amazed, not himself knowing where he was being taken, but with a premonition of some further catastrophe.
‘There, Edmond Dantès!’ he said, showing the count the bodies of his wife and child. ‘There! Look! Are you fully avenged?’
Monte Cristo paled at this terrible spectacle. He realized that he had exceeded the limits of vengeance, he realized that he could no longer say: ‘God is for me and with me.’
With an inexpressible feeling of anguish, he threw himself on the child’s body, opened the eyes, felt the pulse and dashed with it into Valentine’s room, double-locking the door behind him…
‘My child!’ Villefort cried. ‘He is stealing my child’s body! Accursed man! Woe betide you!’
He tried to rush after Monte Cristo but, as if in a dream, felt his feet rooted to the ground, his eyes bursting out of their sockets and his fingers gradually burying themselves in his chest until blood reddened his nails. The veins of his temples swelled with boiling ferments that tried to burst the narrow vault of his skull and drown his brain in a deluge of fire. This paralysis lasted for several minutes, until the frightful commotion in his mind was stilled.
Then he gave a great cry, followed by a long burst of laughter, and dashed down the stairs.
A quarter of an hour later,
the door to Valentine’s room opened and Monte Cristo reappeared, pale, leaden-eyed and heavy in heart. All the features of his face, which was usually so calm and noble, were distorted with pain. In his arms he held the child whom no measure had succeeded in restoring to life. Monte Cristo knelt on one knee and reverently set him down beside his mother, his head resting on her breast.
After that, he got up and went out. Coming across a servant, he said: ‘Where is Monsieur de Villefort?’
The servant did not answer but merely pointed towards the garden.
Monte Cristo went down the steps and proceeded towards the place where the man had pointed. There, with his servants making a circle around him, he saw Villefort, a spade in his hand, digging the ground in a kind of fury. ‘It’s not here,’ he was saying. ‘And it’s not here, either.’ After which he would dig a little further on.
Monte Cristo went over to him and said quietly, in what was almost a humble voice: ‘Monsieur, you have lost a son, but…’
Villefort interrupted. He had neither listened nor heard. ‘Oh, I’ll find him,’ he said. ‘Even though you say he’s not here, I’ll find him, even if I have to look until Judgement Day.’
Monte Cristo shrank back in horror, exclaiming: ‘He is mad!’ And, as if fearing that the walls of the accursed house might fall in on him, he rushed out into the street, wondering for the first time whether he had had the right to do what he had done.
‘Enough!’ he said. ‘Let that be enough, and we will save the last one.’
On arriving home, Monte Cristo met Morrel, who was wandering around the house in the Champs-Elysées, silent as a ghost waiting for the moment appointed by God for it to return to the tomb.
‘Get ready, Maximilien,’ the count said, smiling. ‘We’re leaving Paris tomorrow.’
‘Have you nothing more to do here?’ Morrel asked.
‘No,’ Monte Cristo replied. ‘Pray God that I have not already done too much.’
CXII
DEPARTURE
All Paris was engrossed in what had just taken place. Emmanuel and his wife discussed it, with quite understandable surprise, in their little house on the Rue Meslay; and they drew comparisons between the three disasters, all as sudden as they were unexpected, that had struck Morcerf, Danglars and Villefort.
Maximilien, who had come to visit, listened to their conversation; or, at least, he was present while they talked, plunged into his usual state of insensibility.
‘Really, Emmanuel,’ said Julie, ‘wouldn’t you think that all these rich people, so happy only a short while ago, had built their fortunes, their happiness and their social position, while forgetting to allow for the wicked genie; and that this genie, like the wicked fairy in Perrault’s stories1 who is not invited to some wedding or christening, had suddenly appeared to take revenge for that fatal omission?’
‘So many disasters!’ Emmanuel said, thinking of Morcerf and Danglars.
‘So much suffering!’ said Julie, remembering Valentine, though her woman’s instinct told her not to mention the name in front of her brother.
‘If God did strike them,’ Emmanuel said, ‘that’s because God, who is goodness itself, could find nothing in the past life of these people which would justify a mitigation of sentence: it means that they were indeed damned.’
‘Isn’t that a rather rash judgement?’ said Julie. ‘When my father had a pistol in his hand and was ready to blow out his brains, if someone had said, as you are now doing, “That man deserves his punishment”, wouldn’t that person have been wrong?’
‘Yes, but God did not allow our father to succumb, just as he did not allow Abraham to sacrifice his son. He sent the Patriarch – and us – his angel, who cut the wings of Death in mid-flight.’
He had just said this when the bell rang. This was the signal from the concierge that a visitor had arrived. Almost at the same instant the drawing-room door opened and the Count of Monte Cristo appeared on the threshold. The two young people gave a double cry of joy.
Maximilien looked up, then let his head fall back.
‘Maximilien,’ the count said, apparently unaware of the different reactions of his hosts to his arrival, ‘I have come to look for you.’
‘For me?’ said Morrel, as if waking from a dream.
‘Yes,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Didn’t we agree that I should take you, and did I not ask you to be ready to leave?’
‘Here I am,’ said Maximilien. ‘I had come to say goodbye to them.’
‘Where are you going, Count?’ Julie asked.
‘First of all, to Marseille, Madame.’
‘To Marseille?’ both the young people said together.
‘Yes, and I’m taking your brother.’
‘Alas, Count, bring him back to us, cured!’
Morrel turned his blushing face away from them.
‘Did you notice that he was unwell?’ asked the count.
‘Yes,’ the young woman replied. ‘I am afraid that he is not happy with us.’
‘I shall distract him,’ said the count.
‘I am ready, Monsieur,’ said Maximilien. ‘Farewell, my good friends! Adieu, Emmanuel! Julie, adieu!’
‘What: adieu?’ Julie exclaimed. ‘Are you leaving like that, at once, with no preparations and no passports?’
‘Delays double the pain of parting,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘And Maximilien, I am sure, must have prepared everything in advance. I advised him to do so.’
‘I have my passport, and my trunks are packed,’ Morrel said, in a dull monotone.
‘Excellent,’ said Monte Cristo with a smile. ‘That is the punctiliousness of a good soldier.’
‘So you are leaving us like that?’ said Julie. ‘Immediately? Won’t you give us another day, or an hour?’
‘My carriage is at the door, Madame. I must be in Rome in five days.’
‘Surely Maximilien isn’t going to Rome?’ said Emmanuel.
‘I shall go wherever it pleases the count to take me,’ Morrel said, with a sad smile. ‘I belong to him for another month.’
‘Oh, my God! He says that in such a voice, Count!’
‘Maximilien is accompanying me,’ the count said in his reassuringly pleasant manner. ‘Don’t worry about your brother.’
‘Farewell, sister,’ Morrel repeated. ‘Farewell, Emmanuel.’
‘He worries me so much with his nonchalance,’ said Julie. ‘Oh, Maximilien, Maximilien, you are hiding something from us.’
‘Pooh!’ said Monte Cristo. ‘When you see him again, he will be happy, smiling and joyful.’
Maximilien gave the count a look that was almost contemptuous, and almost irritated.
‘Let’s go,’ said the count.
‘Before you do, Count,’ said Julie, ‘will you let me tell you that the other day…’
‘Madame,’ the count said, taking both her hands, ‘anything that you might have to say to me will never be worth what I can read in your eyes, what your heart has thought and mine felt. Like a benefactor in a novel, I should have left without seeing you again; but such conduct was beyond my feeble powers, because I am a weak and vain man, and because a joyful and tender look from one of my fellow-creatures does me good. Now I am leaving, and I shall take selfishness to the point of saying to you: Don’t forget me, my friends, because you will probably never see me again.’
‘Not see you again!’ Emmanuel cried, while two large tears rolled down Julie’s cheeks. ‘Not see you again! This is not a man, but a god who is leaving us, and this god will return to heaven after appearing on earth to do good.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Monte Cristo said urgently. ‘My friends, don’t ever say that. Gods never do ill, gods stop when they want to stop. Chance is not stronger than they are and it is they, on the contrary, who dictate to chance. No, Emmanuel, on the contrary, I am a man and your admiration is as unjust as your words are sacrilegious.’
He pressed Julie’s hand to his lips and she fell into his arms, while he offered his other hand
to Emmanuel. Then, tearing himself away from this house, a sweet and welcoming nest, he made a sign to Maximilien, who followed him, passive, unfeeling and bewildered as he had been since the death of Valentine.
‘Make my brother happy again!’ Julie whispered in Monte Cristo’s ear. He pressed her hand, as he had done eleven years earlier on the staircase leading to Morrel’s study.
‘Do you still trust Sinbad the Sailor?’ he asked, smiling.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Well, you may sleep in peace and trust in the Lord.’
As we have said, the post-chaise was waiting. Four lively horses were shaking their manes and impatiently pawing the road.
At the bottom of the steps, Ali waited, his face shining with sweat. He looked as though he had just run a long way.
‘Well?’ the count asked, in Arabic. ‘Did you go to the old man’s?’
Ali nodded.
‘And you showed him the letter, in front of his eyes, as I told you?’
‘Yes,’ the slave repeated, respectfully.
‘And what did he say – or, rather, do?’
Ali stood under the light, so that his master could see him and, with his intelligent devotion, imitated the old man’s face, closing his eyes as Noirtier did when he meant ‘yes’.
‘Very good, he accepts,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Let’s go.’
Hardly had he said the words than the carriage began to move and the horses’ hoofs struck a shower of sparks from the cobbles. Maximilien settled into his corner without saying a word.
After half an hour, the coach suddenly stopped: the count had just tugged on the silver thread attached to Ali’s finger. The Nubian got down and opened the door.
The night was shining with stars. They were at the top of the Montée de Villejuif, on the plateau from which Paris is a dark sea shimmering with millions of lights like phosphorescent waves; and waves they are, more thunderous, more passionate, more shifting, more furious and more greedy than those of the stormy ocean, waves which never experience the tranquillity of a vast sea, but constantly pound together, ever foaming and engulfing everything!