The Count of Monte Cristo

11 The Corsican Ogre

AT THE SIGHT of this agitation Louis XVIII pushed from him violently the table at which he was writing.

“What ails you, M. le Baron?” he exclaimed. “You appear quite aghast. This trouble—this hesitation—have they anything to do with what M. de Blacas has told me, and M. de Villefort has just confirmed?”

M. de Blacas moved suddenly towards the baron, but the fright of the courtier precluded the triumph of the statesman; and besides, as matters were, it was much more to his advantage that the prefect of police should triumph over him than that he should humiliate the prefect.

“Sire———” stammered the baron.

“Well, what is it?” asked Louis XVIII.

The minister of police, giving way to an impulse of despair, was about to throw himself at the feet of Louis XVIII, who retreated a step and frowned.

“Will you speak?” he said.

“Oh! sire, what a dreadful misfortune! I am indeed, to be pitied. I can never forgive myself!”

“Monsieur,” said Louis XVIII, “I command you to speak.”

“Well, sire, the usurper left Elba on the 26th February, and landed on the 1st of March.”

“And where? In Italy?” asked the king eagerly.

“In France, sire, at a small port near Antibes, in the Gulf of Juan.”

“The usurper landed in France near Antibes, in the Gulf of Juan, 250 leagues from Paris, on the 1st of March, and you only acquired this information today, the 4th of March! Well, sir, what you tell me is impossible. You must have received a false report, or you have gone mad.”

“Alas! sire, it is but too true!”

Louis made a gesture of indescribable anger and alarm, and then drew himself up as if this sudden blow had struck him at the same moment in heart and countenance.

“In France!” he cried, “the usurper in France! Then they did not watch over this man. Who knows? they were, perhaps, in league with him.”

“Oh, sire!” exclaimed the Duc de Blacas, “M. Dandré is not a man to be accused of treason! Sire, we have all been blind, and the minister of police has shared the general blindness, that is all.”

“But———” said Villefort, and then suddenly checking himself, he was silent; then he continued, “Your pardon, sire,” he said, bowing, “my zeal carried me away. Will your majesty deign to excuse me?”

“Speak, sir, speak boldly,” replied Louis. “You alone forewarned us of the evil; now try and aid us with the remedy!”

“Sire,” said Villefort, “the usurper is detested in the south; and it seems to me that if he ventured into the south, it would be easy to raise Languedoc and Provence against him.”

“Yes, assuredly,” replied the minister; “but he is advancing by Gap and Sisteron.”

“Advancing! he is advancing!” said Louis XVIII. “Is he then advancing on Paris?”

The minister of police kept a silence which was equivalent to a complete avowal.

“And Dauphiné, sir?” inquired the king, of Villefort. “Do you think it possible to rouse that as well as Provence?”

“Sire, I am sorry to tell your majesty a cruel fact; but the feeling in Dauphiné is far from resembling that of Provence or Languedoc. The mountaineers are Bonapartists, sire.”

“Then,” murmured Louis, “he was well informed. And how many men had he with him?”

“I do not know, sire,” answered the minister of police.

“What! you do not know? Have you neglected to obtain information of this circumstance? It is true this is of small importance,” he added, with a withering smile.

“Sire, it was impossible to learn; the despatch simply stated the fact of the landing and the route taken by the usurper.”

“And how did this despatch reach you?” inquired the king.

The minister bowed his head, and whilst a deep colour overspread his cheeks he stammered out:

“By the telegraph, sire.”

Louis XVIII advanced a step, and folded his arms over his chest as Napoleon would have done.

“So then!” he exclaimed, turning pale with anger, “seven conjoined and allied armies overthrew that man. A miracle of Heaven replaced me on the throne of my fathers after five-and-twenty years of exile. I have, during those five-and-twenty years, studied, sounded, analysed the men and things of that France which was promised to me; and when I have attained the end of all my wishes, the power I hold in my hands bursts and shatters me to atoms!”

“Sire, it is fatality!” murmured the minister, feeling that such a pressure, however light for destiny, was sufficient to overwhelm a man.

“What our enemies say of us is then true. We have learnt nothing, forgotten nothing! If I were betrayed as he was, I would console myself; but to be in the midst of persons elevated by myself to dignities, who ought to watch over me more preciously than over themselves; for my fortune is theirs!—before me they were nothing—after me they will be nothing, and perish miserably from incapacity—ineptitude! Oh, yes, sir! you are right—it is fatality!”

The minister was bowed beneath this crushing sarcasm. M. de Blacas wiped the moisture from his brow. Villefort smiled within himself, for he felt his increased importance.

“To fall!” continued King Louis, who at the first glance had sounded the abyss on which the monarchy hung suspended,—“to fall, and learn that fall by the telegraph! Oh! I would rather mount the scaffold of my brother, Louis XVI, than thus descend the staircase of the Tuileries driven away by ridicule. Ridicule, sir—why, you know not its power in France, and yet you ought to know it!”

“Sire, sire,” murmured the minister, “for pity’s———”

“Approach, M. de Villefort,” resumed the king, addressing the young man, who, motionless and breathless, was listening to a conversation on which depended the destiny of a kingdom. “Approach, and tell monsieur that it is possible to know beforehand all that he has not known.”

“Sire, it was really impossible to learn secrets which that man concealed from all the world.”

“Really impossible! Yes—that is a great word, sir. Unfortunately, there are great words, as there are great men; I have measured them. Really impossible for a minister who has an office, agents, spies, and fifteen hundred thousand francs for secret service money, to know what is going on at sixty leagues from the coast of France! Well, then, see, here is a gentleman who had none of these resources at his disposal—a gentleman, only a simple magistrate, who learned more than you with all your police, and who would have saved my crown, if, like you, he had the power of directing a telegraph.”

The look of the minister of police was turned with concentrated spite on Villefort, who bent his head with the modesty of triumph.

“I do not mean that for you, Blacas,” continued Louis XVIII; “for if you have discovered nothing, at least you have had the good sense to persevere in your suspicions. Any other than yourself would have considered the disclosure of M. de Villefort as insignificant, or else dictated by a venal ambition.”

These words were meant to allude to those which the minister of police had uttered with so much confidence an hour before.

Villefort understood the drift of the king. Any other person would, perhaps, have been too much overcome by the intoxication of praise; but he feared to make for himself a mortal enemy of the police minister, although he perceived Dandré was irrevocably lost. In fact, the minister who, in the plenitude of his power, had been unable to penetrate Napoleon’s secret, might in the convulsions of his dying throes penetrate his (Villefort’s) secret, for which end he had but to interrogate Dantès. He therefore, came to the rescue of the crestfallen minister, instead of aiding to crush him.

“Sire,” said Villefort, “the rapidity of the event must prove to your majesty that God alone can prevent it, by raising a tempest; what your majesty is pleased to attribute to me as profound perspicacity is simply owing to chance; and I have profited by that chance, like a good and devoted servant, that’s all. Do not attribute to me more than I deserve, sire, that your majesty may never have occasion to recall the first opinion you have been pleased to form of me.”

The minister of police thanked the young man by an eloquent look, and Villefort understood that he had succeeded in his design; that is to say, that without forfeiting the gratitude of the king, he had made a friend of one on whom, in case of necessity, he might rely.

“‘Tis well!” resumed the king. “And now, gentlemen,” he continued, turning towards M. de Blacas and the minister of police, “I have no further occasion for you, and you may retire; what now remains to do is in the department of the minister of war.”

“Fortunately, sire,” said M. de Blacas, “we can rely on the army; your majesty knows how every report confirms their loyalty and attachment.”

“Do not mention reports, sir, to me! for I know now what confidence to place in them. Yet, apropos of reports, M. le Baron, what intelligence have you as to our affair in the Rue Saint-Jacques?”

“The affair in the Rue Saint-Jacques!” exclaimed Villefort, unable to repress an exclamation. Then, suddenly pausing, he added, “Your pardon, sire, but my devotion to your majesty has made me forget, not the respect I have, for that is too deeply engraven in my heart, but the rules of etiquette.”

“Say and act, sir!” replied the king; “you have acquired the right to inquire.”

“Sire,” replied the minister of police, “I came this moment to give your majesty fresh information which I had obtained on this head, when your majesty’s attention was attracted by this terrible affair of the gulf, and now these facts will cease to interest your majesty.”

“On the contrary, sir,—on the contrary,” said Louis XVIII, “this affair seems to me to have a decided connection with that which occupies our attention; and the death of General Quesnel will, perhaps, put us on the direct track of a great internal conspiracy.”

At the name of General Quesnel, Villefort trembled.

“All combines, sire,” said the minister of police, “to ensure the probability that this death is not the result of a suicide, as we at first believed, but of an assassination. General Quesnel had quitted, as it appears, a Bonapartist club when he disappeared. An unknown person had been with him that morning, and made an appointment with him in the Rue Saint-Jacques; unfortunately, the general’s valet-de-chambre, who was dressing his hair at the moment when the stranger entered, heard the street mentioned, but did not catch the number.”

As the police minister related this to the king, Villefort, who seemed as if his very existence hung on his lips, turned alternately red and pale. The king looked towards him.

“Do you not think with me, M. de Villefort, that General Quesnel, whom they believed attached to the usurper, but who was really entirely devoted to me, has perished the victim of a Bonapartist ambush?”

“It is probable, sire,” replied Villefort. “But is this all that is known?”

“They are on the traces of the man who appointed the meeting with him.”

“On his traces?” said Villefort.

“Yes, the servant has given his description. He is a man of from fifty to fifty-two years of age, brown, with black eyes, covered with shaggy eyebrows, and a thick moustache. He was dressed in a blue frock-coat, buttoned up to the chin, and wore at his button-hole the rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honour. Yesterday an individual was followed exactly corresponding with this description, but he was lost sight of at the corner of the Rue de la Jussienne and the Rue Coq-Héron.”

Villefort leaned on the back of an arm-chair, for in proportion as the minister of police spoke, he felt his legs bend under him; but when he learnt that the unknown had escaped the vigilance of the agent who followed him, he breathed again.

“Continue to seek for this man, sir,” said the king to the minister of police; “for if, as all conspires to convince me, General Quesnel, who would have been so useful to us at this moment, has been murdered, his assassins, Bonapartists or not, shall be cruelly punished.”

It required all Villefort’s sang-froid not to betray the terror with which this declaration of the king inspired him.

“How strange!” continued the king, with some asperity, “the police thinks all is said when it says, ‘A murder has been committed,’ and particularly when it adds, ‘And we are on the trace of the guilty persons.’”

“Sire, your majesty will, I trust, be amply satisfied on this point, at least.”

“We shall see; I will no longer detain you, baron. M. de Villefort, you must be fatigued after so long a journey, go and repose yourself. Of course you stopped at your father’s?”

A faintness came over Villefort.

“No, sire,” he replied, “I alighted at the Hôtel de Madrid, in the Rue de Tournon.”

“But you have seen him?”

“Sire, I went straight to the Duc de Blacas.”

“But you will see him, then?”

“I think not, sire.”

“Ah, I forgot,” said Louis, smiling in a manner which proved that all these questions were not made without a motive,—“I forgot you and M. Noirtier are not on the best terms possible, and that this is another sacrifice made to the royal cause, and for which you should be recompensed.”

“Sire, the kindness your majesty deigns to evince towards me is a recompense which so far surpasses my utmost ambition that I have nothing more to request.”

“Never mind, sir, we will not forget you, make your mind easy. In the meanwhile” (the king here detached the cross of the Legion of Honour he usually wore over his blue coat, near the cross of Saint Louis, above the order of Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel and Saint Lazare, and gave it to Villefort)—” in the meanwhile take this cross.”

“Sire,” said Villefort, “your majesty mistakes, this cross is that of an officer.”

“Ma foi!” said Louis XVIII, “take it, such as it is, for I have not the time to procure you another. Blacas, let it be your care to see that the brevet is made out and sent to M. de Villefort.”

Villefort’s eyes were filled with tears of joy and pride; he took the cross and kissed it.

“And now,” he said, “may I inquire what are the orders with which your majesty deigns to honour me?”

“Take what rest you require, and remember that, unable to serve me here in Paris, you may be of the greatest service to me at Marseilles.”

“Sire,” replied Villefort, bowing, “in an hour I shall have quitted Paris.”

“Go, sir,” said the king; “and should I forget you (kings’ memories are short), do not be afraid to bring yourself to my recollection. M. le Baron, send for the minister of war. Blacas, remain.”

“Ah, sir,” said the minister of police to Villefort, as they left the Tuileries, “you enter by the right door, and your fortune is made.”

“Will it be long first?” muttered Villefort, saluting the minister, whose career was ended, and looking about him for a hackney-coach. One passed at the moment, which he hailed: he gave his address to the driver, and springing in, threw himself on the seat, and gave loose to dreams of ambition.

Ten minutes afterwards Villefort reached his hotel, ordered his horses in two hours, and desired to have his breakfast brought to him. He was about to commence his repast when the sound of the bell, rung by a free and firm hand, was heard. The valet opened the door, and Villefort heard his name pronounced.

“Who could know that I was here already?” said the young man.

The valet entered.

“Well,” said Villefort, “what is it?—Who rang?—Who asked for me?”

“A stranger, who will not send in his name.”

“A stranger who will not send in his name! What can he want with me?”

“He wishes to speak to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes.”

“Did he mention my name?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of person is he?”

“Why, sir, a man of about fifty.”

“Short or tall?”

“About your own height, sir.”

“Dark or fair?”

“Dark—very dark: with black eyes, black hair, black eyebrows.”

“And how dressed?” asked Villefort quickly.

“In a blue frock-coat, buttoned up close, decorated with the Legion of Honour.”

“It is he!” said Villefort, turning pale.

“Eh, pardieu!” said the individual whose description we have twice given, entering the door, “what a great deal of ceremony! Is it the custom in Marseilles for sons to keep their fathers waiting in their anterooms?”

“Father!” cried Villefort, “then I was not deceived; I felt sure it must be you.”

“Well, then, if you felt so sure,” replied the newcomer, putting his cane in a corner and his hat on a chair, “allow me to say, my dear Gérard, that it was not very filial of you to keep me waiting at the door.”

“Leave us, Germain,” said Villefort.

The servant quitted the apartment with evident signs of astonishment.

12 Father and Son

M. NOIRTIER—FOR it was, indeed, he who entered—followed with his eyes the servant until he had closed the door, and then, fearing, no doubt, that he might be overheard in the antechamber, he opened the door again; nor was the precaution useless, as appeared from the rapid retreat of Germain, who proved that he was not exempt from the sin which ruined our first parents.

M. Noirtier then took the trouble to close carefully the door of the antechamber, then that of the bedchamber, and then extended his hand to Villefort, who had followed all his motions with surprise which he could not conceal.

“Well, now, my dear Gérard,” said he to the young man, with a very significant look, “do you know you seem as if you were not very glad to see me?”

“My dear father,” said Villefort, “I am, on the contrary, delighted, but I so little expected your visit, that it has somewhat overcome me.”

“But, my dear fellow,” replied M. Noirtier, seating himself, “I might say the same thing to you when you announce to me your wedding for the 28th of February, and on the 4th of March here you are in Paris.”

“And if I have come, my dear father,” said Gérard, drawing closer, to M. Noirtier, “do not complain, for it is for you that I came, and my journey will save you.”

“Ah, indeed!” said M. Noirtier, stretching himself out at his ease in the chair. “Really, pray, tell me all about it, M. le Magistrat, for it must be interesting.”

“Father, you have heard tell of a certain club of Bonapartists held in the Rue Saint-Jacques?”

“No. 53: yes, I am vice-president.”

“Father, your coolness makes me shudder.”

“Why, my dear boy, when a man has been proscribed by the mountaineers, has escaped from Paris in a hay-cart, been hunted in the landes of Bordeaux by M. Robespierre’s bloodhounds, he becomes accustomed to most things. But go on, what about the club in the Rue Saint-Jacques?”

“Why, they induced General Quesnel to go there, and General Quesnel, who quitted his own house at nine o’clock in the evening, was found the next day in the Seine.”

“And who told you this fine story?”

“The king himself.”

“Well, then, in return for your story,” continued Noirtier, “I will tell you one.”

“My dear father, I think I already know what you are about to tell me.”

“Ah, you have heard of the landing of the emperor?”

“Not so loud, father, I entreat of you—for your own sake as well as mine. Yes, I heard this news, and knew it even before you could; for three days ago I posted from Marseilles to Paris with all possible speed, and half desperate because I could not send with a wish two hundred leagues ahead of me the thought which was agitating my brain.”

“Three days ago? you are crazy. Why, three days ago the emperor had not landed.”

“No matter, I was aware of his project.”

“How did you learn it?”

“By a letter addressed to you from the Isle of Elba.”

“To me?”

“To you, and which I discovered in the pocket-book of the messenger; had that letter fallen into the hands of another, you, my dear father, would, probably, ere this have been shot.”

Villefort’s father laughed.

“Come, come,” said he, “it appears that the Restoration has learned from the Empire the mode of settling affairs speedily. Shot, my dear boy! you go ahead with a vengeance. Where is this letter you talk about? I know you too well to suppose you would allow such a thing to pass you.”

“I burnt it, for fear that even a fragment should remain; for that letter must have effected your condemnation.”

“And the destruction of your future prospects,” replied Noirtier; “yes, I can easily comprehend that. But I have nothing to fear whilst I have you to protect me.”

“I do better than that, sir—I save you.”

“You do? why, really, the thing becomes more and more dramatic—explain yourself.”

“I must refer again to the club in the Rue Saint-Jacques.”

“It appears that this club is rather a bore to the police. Why didn’t they search more vigilantly? they would have found———”

“They have not found, but they are on the track.”

“Yes, that’s the usual phrase, I know it well. When the police is at fault, it declares that it is on the track, and the government patiently awaits the day when it comes to say, with a sneaking air, that the track is lost.”

“Yes, but they have found a corpse; the general has been killed, and in all countries they call that a murder.”

“A murder do you call it? why, there is nothing to prove that the general was murdered. People are found every day in the Seine, having thrown themselves in, or having been drowned from not knowing how to swim.”

“Father, you know very well that the general was not a man to drown himself in despair, and people do not bathe in the Seine in the month of January. No, no, do not mistake, this death was a murder in every sense of the word.”

“And who thus designated it?”

“The king himself.”

“The king! I thought he was philosopher enough to allow that there was no murder in politics. In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas—no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all. Would you like to know how matters have progressed? well, I will tell you. It was thought reliance might be placed in General Quesnel, he was recommended to us from the Isle of Elba; one of us went to him and invited him to the Rue Saint-Jacques, where he would find some friends. He came there, and the plan was unfolded to him of the leaving Elba, the projected landing, etc. When he had heard and comprehended all to the fullest extent, he replied that he was a royalist. Then all looked at each other,—he was made to take an oath, and did so, but with such an ill grace that it was really tempting Providence to swear thus, and yet, in spite of that, the general was allowed to depart free—perfectly free. Yet he did not return home. What could that mean? why, my dear fellow, that on leaving us he lost his way, that’s all. A murder! really, Villefort, you surprise me. You, a deputy procureur, to found an accusation on such bad premises! Did I ever say to you, when you were fulfilling your character as a royalist, and cut off the head of one of my party, ‘My son, you have committed a murder’? No, I said, ‘Very well, sir, you have gained the victory, tomorrow, perchance, it will be our turn.’”

“But, father, take care when our turn comes, our revenge will be sweeping.”

“I do not understand you.”

“You rely on the usurper’s return?”

“We do.”

“You are mistaken, he will not advance two leagues into the interior of France without being followed, tracked, and caught like a wild beast.”