The Count of Monte Cristo
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“I did not know, when I came with such haste to you, that I was to meet an enemy here.”
“An enemy!” cried Mercédès, with an angry look at her cousin. “An enemy in my house, do you say, Edmond! If I believed that, I would place my arm under yours and go with you to Marseilles, leaving the house to return to it no more.”
Fernand’s eye darted lightning.
“And, should any misfortune occur to you, dear Edmond,” she continued, with the same calmness, which proved to Fernand that the young girl had read the very innermost depths of his sinister thought, “if misfortune should occur to you, I would ascend the highest point of the Cape de Morgion, and cast myself headlong from it.”
Fernand became deadly pale.
“But you are deceived, Edmond,” she continued. “You have no enemy here—there is no one but Fernand, my brother, who will grasp your hand as a devoted friend.”
And at these words the young girl fixed her imperious look on the Catalan, who, as if fascinated by it, came slowly towards Edmond, and offered him his hand.
His hatred, like a powerless though furious wave, was broken against the strong ascendancy which Mercédès exercised over him.
Scarcely, however, had he touched Edmond’s hand than he felt he had done all he could do, and rushed hastily out of the house.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, running furiously and tearing his hair—“oh! who will deliver me from this man? Wretched—wretched that I am!”
“Hallo, Catalan! Hallo, Fernand! where are you running to?” exclaimed a voice.
The young man stopped suddenly, looked around him, and perceived Caderousse sitting at table with Danglars under an arbour.
“Well,” said Caderousse, “why don’t you come? Are you really in such a hurry that you have not time to say, ‘how do’ to your friends?”
“Particularly when they have still a full bottle before them,” added Danglars. Fernand looked at them both with a stupefied air, but did not say a word.
“He seems besotted,” said Danglars, pushing Caderousse with his knee. “Are we mistaken, and is Dantès triumphant in spite of all we have believed?”
“Why, we must inquire into that,” was Caderousse’s reply; and turning towards the young man, said, “Well, Catalan, can’t you make up your mind?”
Fernand wiped away the perspiration steaming from his brow, and slowly entered the arbour, whose shade seemed to restore somewhat of calmness to his senses, and whose coolness, somewhat of refreshment to his exhausted body.
“Good day,” said he. “You called me, didn’t you?” And he fell rather than sat down on one of the seats which surrounded the table.
“I called you because you were running like a madman; and I was afraid you would throw yourself into the sea,” said Caderousse, laughing. “Why! when a man has friends, they are not only to offer him a glass of wine, but, moreover, to prevent his swallowing three or four pints of water unnecessarily!”
Fernand gave a groan, which resembled a sob, and dropped his head into his hands, his elbows leaning on the table.
“Well, Fernand, I must say,” said Caderousse, beginning the conversation, with that brutality of the common people, in which curiosity destroys all diplomacy, “you look uncommonly like a rejected lover;” and he burst into a hoarse laugh.
“Bah!” said Danglars, “a lad of his make was not born to be unhappy in love. You are laughing at him, Caderousse!”
“No,” he replied, “only hark how he sighs! Come, come, Fernand!” said Caderousse, “hold up your head and answer us. It’s not polite not to reply to friends who ask news of your health.”
“My health is well enough,” said Fernand, clenching his hands without raising his head.
“Ah! you see, Danglars,” said Caderousse, winking at his friend, “this it is, Fernand whom you see here is a good and brave Catalan, one of the best fishermen in Marseilles, and he is in love with a very fine girl, named Mercédès; but it appears, unfortunately, that the fine girl is in love with the second in command on board the Pharaon; and, as the Pharaon arrived today—why, you understand!”
“No, I do not understand,” said Danglars.
“Poor Fernand has been dismissed,” continued Caderousse.
“Well, and what then?” said Fernand, lifting up his head, and looking at Caderousse like a man who looks for some one on whom to vent his anger; “Mercédès is not accountable to any person, is she? Is she not free to love whomsoever she will?”
“Oh! if you take it in that sense,” said Caderousse, “it is another thing! But I thought you were a Catalan, and they told me the Catalans were not men to allow themselves to be supplanted by a rival. It was even told me that Fernand, especially, was terrible in his vengeance.”
Fernand smiled piteously. “A lover is never terrible,” he said.
“Poor fellow!” remarked Danglars, affecting to pity the young man from the bottom of his heart. “Why, you see, he did not expect to see Dantès return so suddenly! he thought he was dead, perhaps; or, perchance, faithless! These things always come on us more severely when they come suddenly.”
“Ah, ma foi, under any circumstances!” said Caderousse, who drank as he spoke, and on whom the fumes of the wine of La Malgue began to take effect,—“under any circumstances Fernand is not the only person put out by the fortunate arrival of Dantès; is he, Danglars?”
“No, you are right—and I should say that would bring him ill luck.”
“Well, never mind,” answered Caderousse, pouring out a glass of wine for Fernand, and filling his own for the eighth or ninth time, whilst Danglars had merely sipped his. “Never mind—in the meantime he marries Mercédès—the lovely Mercédès—at least, he returns to do that.”
During this time Danglars fixed his piercing glance on the young man, on whose heart Caderousse’s words fell like molten lead.
“And when is the wedding to be?” he asked.
“Oh, it is not yet fixed!” murmured Fernand.
“No, but it will be,” said Caderousse, “as surely as Dantès will be captain of the Pharaon—eh, Danglars?”
Danglars shuddered at this unexpected attack, and turned to Caderousse, whose countenance he scrutinised to try and detect whether the blow was premeditated; but he read nothing but envy in a countenance already rendered brutal and stupid by drunkenness.
“Well,” said he, filling the glasses, “let us drink to Captain Edmond Dantès, husband of the beautiful Catalane!”
Caderousse raised his glass to his mouth with unsteady hand, and swallowed the contents at a gulp. Fernand dashed his on the ground.
“Eh! eh! eh!” stammered Caderousse. “What do I see down there by the wall in the direction of the Catalans? Look, Fernand! your eyes are better than mine. I believe I see double. You know wine is a deceiver; but I should say it was two lovers walking side by side, and hand in hand. Heaven forgive me! they do not know that we can see them, and they are actually embracing!”
Danglars did not lose one pang that Fernand endured.
“Do you know them, M. Fernand?” he said.
“Yes,” was the reply, in a low voice. “It is M. Edmond and Mademoiselle Mercédès!”
“Ah! see there, now!” said Caderousse; “and I did not recognise them! Holla, Dantès! holla, lovely damsel! Come this way, and let us know when the wedding is to be, for M. Fernand here is so obstinate he will not tell us!”
“Hold your tongue! will you?” said Danglars, pretending to restrain Caderousse, who, with the tenacity of drunkards, leaned out of the arbour. “Try to stand upright, and let the lovers make love without interruption. See, look at M. Fernand, and follow his example—he is well behaved!”
Fernand, probably excited beyond bearing, pricked by Danglars, as the bull is by the banderilleros, was about to rush out; for he had risen from his seat, and seemed to be collecting himself to dash headlong upon his rival, when Mercédès, smiling and graceful, lifted up her lovely head, and showed her clear and bright eye. At this Fernand recollected her threat of dying if Edmond died, and dropped again heavily on his seat.
Danglars looked at the two men, one after the other, the one brutalised by liquor, the other overwhelmed with love.
“I shall extract nothing from these fools,” he muttered; “and I am very much afraid of being here between a drunkard and a coward. Yet this Catalan has eyes that glisten like the Spaniards, Sicilians, and Calabrians, who practise revenge so well. Unquestionably, Edmond’s star is in the ascendant, and he will marry the splendid girl—he will be captain, too, and laugh at us all, unless”—a sinister smile passed over Danglars’ lips—“unless I take a hand in the affair,” he added.
“Hallo!” continued Caderousse, half rising, and with his fist on the table, “hallo, Edmond! do you not see your friends, or are you too proud to speak to them?”
“No, my dear fellow!” replied Dantès, “I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.”
“Ah! very well, that’s an explanation!” said Caderousse. “Well, good day, Madame Dantès!”
Mercédès curtseyed gravely, and said:
“That is not my name, and in my country it bodes ill fortune, they say, to call young girls by the name of their betrothed before he becomes their husband. Call me, then, Mercédès, if you please.”
“We must excuse our worthy neighbour, Caderousse,” said Dantès, “he is so easily mistaken.”
“So, then, the wedding is to take place immediately, M. Dantès,” said Danglars, bowing to the young couple.
“As soon as possible, M. Danglars; today all preliminaries will be arranged at my father’s, and tomorrow, or next day at latest, the wedding festival here at La Réserve. My friends will be there, I hope; that is to say, you are invited, M. Danglars, and you, Caderousse.”
“And Fernand,” said Caderousse, with a chuckle; “Fernand, too, is invited!”
“My wife’s brother, is my brother,” said Edmond; “and we, Mercédès and I, should be very sorry if he were absent at such a time.”
Fernand opened his mouth to reply, but his voice died on his lips, and he could not utter a word.
“Today the preliminaries, tomorrow or next day the ceremony! you are in a hurry, captain!”
“Danglars,” said Edmond, smiling, “I will say to you as Mercédès said just now to Caderousse, ‘Do not give me a title which does not belong to me;’ that may bring me bad luck.”
“Your pardon,” replied Danglars; “I merely said you seemed in a hurry, and we have lots of time, the Pharaon cannot be under weigh again in less than three months.”
“We are always in a hurry to be happy, M. Danglars; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune. But it is not selfishness alone that makes me thus in haste; I must go to Paris.”
“To Paris! really! and will it be the first time you have ever been there, Dantès?”
“Yes.”
“Have you business there?”
“Not of my own; the last commission of poor Captain Leclere; you know to what I allude, Danglars; it is sacred. Besides, I shall only take the time to go and return.”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Danglars; and then in a low tone, he added, “To Paris, no doubt to deliver the letter which the Grand Marshal gave him. Ah! this letter gives me an idea,—a capital idea! Ah! Dantès, my friend, you are not yet registered number One on board the good ship Pharaon;” then turning towards Edmond, who was walking away, “Good journey,” he cried.
“Thank ye,” said Edmond, with a friendly nod, and the two lovers continued their route, calm and joyous.
4 The Plotters
DANGLARS FOLLOWED EDMOND and Mercédès with his eyes until the two lovers disappeared behind one of the angles of Fort Saint Nicolas, then turning round, he perceived Fernand, who had fallen pale and trembling into his chair, whilst Caderousse stammered out the words of a drinking song.
“Well, my dear sir,” said Danglars to Fernand, “here is a marriage which does not appear to make everybody happy.”
“It drives me to despair,” said Fernand.
“Do you, then, love Mercédès?”
“I adore her!”
“Have you loved her long?”
“Ever since I have known her.”
“And you sit there, tearing your hair, instead of seeking to remedy your condition! I did not think it was thus your nation acted.”
“What would you have me do?” said Fernand.
“How do I know? Is it my affair? I am not in love with Mademoiselle Mercédès, but for you—seek, and you shall find.”
“I have found already.”
“What?”
“I would stab the man, but the woman told me that if any misfortune happened to her betrothed she would kill herself.”
“Pooh! women say those things, but never do them.”
“You do not know Mercédès; what she threatens she will do.”
“Idiot!” muttered Danglars, “whether she kills herself or not, what matter provided Dantès is not captain?”
“Before Mercédès should die,” replied Fernand, with the accents of unshaken resolution, “I would die myself!”
“That’s what I call love!” said Caderousse, with a voice more tipsy than ever. “That’s love, or I don’t know what love is.”
“Come,” said Danglars, “you appear to me a good sort of fellow, and hang me! but I should like to help you, but———”
“Yes,” said Caderousse, “but how?”
“My dear fellow,” replied Danglars, “you are three parts drunk; finish the bottle, and you will be completely so. Drink, then, and do not meddle with what we are discussing, for that requires all one’s wit and cool judgment.”
“I—drunk?” said Caderousse; “well, that’s a good one! I could drink four more such bottles; they are no bigger than eau-de-Cologne flasks. Père Pamphile, more wine!” and Caderousse rattled his glass upon the table.
“You were saying, sir———” said Fernand, awaiting with great anxiety the end of this interrupted remark.
“What was I saying? I forget. This drunken Caderousse has made me lose the thread of my thoughts.”
“Drunk, if you like; so much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have some bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts;” and Caderousse began to sing the two last lines of a song very popular at the time:
Tous les méchants sont beuveurs d’eau;
C’est bien prouvé par le déluge.
“You said, sir, you would like to help me, but———”
“Yes; but I added, to help you it would be sufficient that Dantès did not marry her you love; and the marriage may easily be thwarted, methinks, and yet Dantès need not die.”
“Death alone can separate them,” remarked Fernand.
“You talk like a noodle, my friend,” said Caderousse, “and here is Danglars, who is a wide-awake, clever, deep fellow, who will prove to you that you are wrong. Prove it, Danglars. I have answered for you. Say there is no need why Dantès should die: it would, indeed, be a pity he should. Dantès is a good fellow; I like Dantès! Dantès, your health!”
Fernand rose impatiently.
“Let him run on,” said Danglars, restraining the young man; “drunk as he is, he is not much out in what he says. Absence severs as well as death, and if the walls of a prison were between Edmond and Mercédès they would be as effectually separated as if they lay under a tombstone.”
“Yes; only people get out of prison,” said Caderousse, who, with what sense was left him, listened eagerly to the conversation, “and when they get out, and their names are Edmond Dantès, they revenge———”
“What matters that?” muttered Fernand.
“And why, I should like to know,” persisted Caderousse, “should they put Dantès in prison; he has neither robbed, nor killed, nor murdered.”
“Hold your tongue!” said Danglars.
“I won’t hold my tongue!” replied Caderousse; “I say I want to know why they should put Dantès in prison; I like Dantès; Dantès, your health!” and he swallowed another glass of wine.
Danglars saw in the muddled look of the tailor the progress of his intoxication, and turning towards Fernand, said:
“Well, you understand there is no need to kill him.”
“Certainly not, if, as you said just now, you have the means of having Dantès arrested. Have you that means?”
“It is to be found for the searching. But, why should I meddle in the matter? it is no affair of mine.”
“I know not why you meddle,” said Fernand, seizing his arm, “but this I know, you have some motive of personal hatred against Dantès, for he who himself hates, is never mistaken in the sentiments of others.”
“I! motives of hatred against Dantès? None, on my word! I saw you were unhappy, and your unhappiness interested me; that’s all; but the moment you believe I act for my own account, adieu, my dear friend, get out of the affair as best you may;” and Danglars rose as if he meant to depart.
“No, no,” said Fernand, restraining him, “stay! It is of very little consequence to me in the long-run whether you have any angry feelings or not against Dantès. I hate him! I confess it openly. Do you find the means, I will execute it, provided it is not to kill the man, for Mercédès has declared she will kill herself if Dantès is killed.”
Caderousse, who had let his head drop on the table, now raised it, and looking at Fernand with his dull and fishy eyes, he said:
“Kill Dantès! who talks of killing Dantès? I won’t have him killed—I won’t! He’s my friend, and this morning offered to share his money with me, as I shared mine with him. I won’t have Dantès killed—I won’t!”
“And who has said a word about killing him, muddlehead!” replied Danglars. “We were merely joking: drink to his health,” he added, filling Caderousse’s glass, “and do not interfere with us.”
“Yes, yes, Dantès’ good health!” said Caderousse, emptying his glass, “here’s to his health! his health!—hurrah!”
“But the means—the means?” said Fernand.
“Have you not hit upon any?”
“No!—you undertook to do so.”
“True,” replied Danglars; “the French have the superiority over the Spaniards, that the Spaniards ruminate whilst the French invent.”
“Do you invent, then?” said Fernand impatiently.
“Waiter,” said Danglars, “pen, ink, and paper.”
“Pen, ink, and paper,” muttered Fernand.
“Yes; I am a supercargo; pen, ink, and paper are my tools, and without my tools I am fit for nothing.”
“Pen, ink, and paper!” then called Fernand loudly.
“All you require is a table,” said the waiter, pointing to the writing materials.
“Bring them here.”
The waiter did as he was desired.
“When one thinks,” said Caderousse, letting his hand drop on the paper, “there is here wherewithal to kill a man more sure than if we waited at the corner of a wood to assassinate him. I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper, than of a sword or pistol.”
“The fellow is not so drunk as he appears to be,” said Danglars. “Give him some more wine, Fernand.” Fernand filled Caderousse’s glass, who, toper as he was, lifted his hand from the paper and seized the glass.
The Catalan watched him until Caderousse, almost overcome by this fresh assault on his senses, rested, or rather allowed his glass to fall upon the table.
“Well!” resumed the Catalan, as he saw the final glimmer of Caderousse’s reason vanishing before the last glass of wine.
“Well, then, I should say, for instance,” resumed Danglars, “that if after a voyage such as Dantès has just made, and in which he touched the Isle of Elba, some one were to denounce him to the king’s procureur as a Bonapartist agent———”
“I will denounce him!” exclaimed the young man hastily.
“Yes, but they will make you then sign your declaration, and confront you with him you have denounced; I will supply you with the means of supporting your accusation, for I know the fact well. But Dantès cannot remain for ever in prison, and one day or other he will leave it, and the day when he comes out, woe betide him who was the cause of his incarceration!”
“Oh, I should wish nothing better than that he would come and seek a quarrel with me.”
“Yes, and Mercédès! Mercédès, who will detest you if you have only the misfortune to scratch the skin of her dearly beloved Edmond!”
“True!” said Fernand.
“No! no!” continued Danglars; “if we resolve on such a step, it would be much better to take, as I now do, this pen, dip it into this ink, and write with the left hand (that the writing may not be recognised) the denunciation we propose.” And Danglars, uniting practice with theory, wrote with his left hand, and in a writing reversed from his usual style, and totally unlike it, the following lines which he handed to Fernand, and which Fernand read in an undertone:—
“Monsieur,—The procureur du roi is informed by a friend of the throne and religion, that one Edmond Dantès, mate of the ship Pharaon, arrived this morning from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, has been intrusted by Murat with a letter for the usurper, and by the usurper with a letter for the Bonapartist committee in Paris.
“Proof of this crime will be found on arresting him, for the letter will be found upon him, or at his father’s, or in his cabin on board the Pharaon.”
“Very good,” resumed Danglars; “now your revenge looks like common sense, for in no way can it revert to yourself, and the matter will thus work its own way; there is nothing to do now but fold the letter as I am doing, and write upon it, ‘To M. le Procureur Royal,’ and that’s all settled.”
And Danglars wrote the address as he spoke.
“Yes, and that’s all settled!” exclaimed Caderousse, who, by a last effort of intellect, had followed the reading of the letter, and instinctively comprehended all the misery which such a denunciation must entail. “Yes, and that’s all settled: only it will be an infamous shame;” and he stretched out his hand to reach the letter.
“Yes,” said Danglars, taking it from beyond his reach; “and as what I say and do is merely in jest, and I amongst the first and foremost should be sorry if anything happened to Dantès—the worthy Dantès—look here!”
And taking the letter he squeezed it up in his hands, and threw it into a corner of the arbour.
“All right!” said Caderousse. “Dantès is my friend, and I won’t have him ill-used.”
“And who thinks of using him ill? Certainly neither I nor Fernand!” said Danglars, rising, and looking at the young man, who still remained seated, but whose eye was fixed on the denunciatory sheet of paper flung into the corner.
“In this case,” replied Caderousse, “let’s have some more wine. I wish to drink to the health of Edmond and the lovely Mercédès.”
“You have had too much already, drunkard,” said Danglars; “and if you continue you will be compelled to sleep here, because unable to stand on your legs.”
“I?” said Caderousse, rising with all the offended dignity of a drunken man, “I can’t keep on my legs! Why, I’ll bet a wager I go up into the belfry of the Acoules, and without staggering, too!”
“Well done!” said Danglars, “I’ll take your bet; but tomorrow—today it is time to return. Give me your arm, and let us go.”
“Very well, let us go,” said Caderousse; “but I don’t want your arm at all. Come, Fernand, won’t you return to Marseilles with us?”
“No,” said Fernand; “I shall return to the Catalans.”
“You’re wrong. Come with us to Marseilles—come along.”
“I will not.”
“What do you mean? you will not? Well, just as you like, my prince; there’s liberty for all the world. Come along, Danglars, and let the young gentleman return to the Catalans if he chooses.”
Danglars took advantage of Caderousse’s temper at the moment, to take him off towards Marseilles by the Porte-Saint-Victor, staggering as he went.
When they had advanced about twenty yards, Danglars looked back and saw Fernand stoop, pick up the crumpled paper, and, putting it into his pocket, then rush out of the arbour towards Pillon.