The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (135 page)

Villefort grasped the doctor’s hand.

‘Impossible!’ he said. ‘My God, I must be dreaming! I must be dreaming! It is appalling to hear a man like yourself say such things. In heaven’s name, doctor, tell me you may be mistaken.’

‘Of course, I may, but…’

‘But?’

‘But I think not.’

‘Doctor, spare me. In the last few days, so many unheard-of things have been happening to me that I am beginning to believe in the possibility that I may be going mad.’

‘Did anyone apart from me see Madame de Saint-Méran?’

‘No one.’

‘Were any prescriptions sent out to the chemist’s that were not shown to me?’

‘None.’

‘Did Madame de Saint-Méran have any enemies?’

‘I know of none.’

‘Did anyone have an interest in seeing her dead?’

‘No, good heavens! My daughter is her sole heir. Valentine alone… Oh, but if I could ever entertain such a thought I should drive a dagger into my heart to punish it for conceiving the idea.’

‘Come!’ M. d’Avrigny exclaimed in his turn. ‘My dear friend, God forbid that I should accuse anyone; I am only speaking of an accident, you understand, a mistake. But whether accident or mistake, the fact is there, and it whispers to my conscience; so my conscience speaks aloud to you: make enquiries.’

‘Of whom? How? What about?’

‘Let’s see. Perhaps Barrois, the old servant, made a mistake and gave Madame de Saint-Méran a potion which had been prepared for his master.’

‘For my father?’

‘Yes.’

‘But how could a potion that had been prepared for Monsieur Noirtier poison Madame de Saint-Méran?’

‘Quite simply. As you know, in some illnesses, poisons become remedies; paralysis is one of those. About three months ago, after trying everything to restore the power of speech and movement to Monsieur Noirtier, I decided to resort to one final remedy; so, as I say, for the past three months I have been treating him with brucine. The last potion that I ordered for him contained six centigrammes. These six centigrammes had no effect on Monsieur Noirtier’s paralysed organs; he has in any case become accustomed to them by successive doses; but the same six centigrammes would be enough to kill anyone else but him.’

‘But my dear doctor, there is no direct access from Monsieur Noirtier’s apartment to that of Madame de Saint-Méran, and Barrois never used to go into my mother-in-law’s. So, even though I know you to be the most skilled and, above all, the most conscientious man in the world, and even though your words are on every occasion a guiding light to me, equal to that of the sun, well, doctor, even so and despite my belief in you, I must have recourse to the maxim:
errare humanum est
.’

‘Listen, Villefort,’ said the doctor, ‘is there any of my colleagues in whom you have as much confidence as you do in me?’

‘Why do you ask? What are you suggesting?’

‘Call him in; I shall tell him what I saw, what I observed, and we shall perform an autopsy.’

‘Will you find any traces of poison?’

‘No, not of poison, I’m not saying that, but we can establish the exasperation of the nervous system and recognize the obvious and undeniable signs of asphyxia, and tell you: my dear Villefort, if this was caused by negligence, take care for your servants; if by hatred, take care for your enemies.’

‘Good Lord, d’Avrigny, what are you suggesting?’ Villefort answered despondently. ‘If anyone apart from you were to be taken into our confidence, an enquiry would become necessary – an enquiry, in my house! Impossible! But of course,’ the crown prosecutor continued, pulling himself up and looking anxiously at the doctor, ‘of course, if you want it, if you absolutely insist, I shall have it done. Indeed, it may be my duty to pursue the matter; my character demands it. But you see me already overwhelmed with
sadness: to start such a scandal in my house after such sorrow. It would kill my wife and daughter; and I, doctor, I… You know, a man does not reach my position, a man cannot be crown prosecutor for twenty-five years, without acquiring a fair number of enemies. I have many of them. If this affair were to come out, it would be a triumph that would make them leap for joy and cover me with shame. Forgive me these base thoughts. If you were a priest, I should not dare to say that to you, but you are a man and you know other men. Doctor, doctor, tell me: you have not told me anything, have you?’

‘My dear Monsieur de Villefort,’ the doctor replied, shaken, ‘my first duty is one of humanity. I would have saved Madame de Saint-Méran, if it had been within the power of science to do so, but she is dead and my responsibility is to the living. Let us bury this terrible secret in the depth of our hearts. If the eyes of anyone are opened to it, I shall allow my silence to be blamed on my ignorance. However, Monsieur, keep on looking, actively, because this may not be an end to it. And when you find the guilty party, if you find him, I shall say: you are the judge, do what you will!’

‘Thank you, doctor, thank you,’ Villefort said, with inexpressible joy. ‘I shall never have a better friend than you.’ And, as though afraid that Dr d’Avrigny might change his mind, he got up and led him back towards the house.

They vanished. Morrel, as if needing to breathe, put his head out of the arbour so that the moon shone on a face so pale that it might have been taken for that of a ghost.

‘God is protecting me, in an obvious but terrible way,’ he said. ‘But Valentine, Valentine, my poor friend! Can she withstand so much sorrow?’ And he looked alternately from the window with the red curtains to the three with the white ones.

The light had almost entirely disappeared from the red-curtained window. No doubt Mme de Villefort had just put out her lamp and only a night-light cast a flicker on the window-panes. But at the far end of the building he saw someone open one of the three windows with the red curtains. A candle on the mantelpiece cast a few rays of pale light outside and a shadow came and leant over the balcony. Morrel shuddered: he thought he had heard a sob.

It was not surprising that this soul, usually so strong and resolute, now tossed alternately up and down between the two most powerful
of human passions, love and fear, should have been weakened to the point where he had begun to have hallucinations.

Although it was impossible for Valentine to see him where he was hiding, he thought he saw the shadow in the window motion to him: his troubled mind told him and his warm heart repeated this to him. The double error became a compelling reality and, with one of those incomprehensible impulses of youth, he leapt from his hiding-place, at the risk of being seen, or of terrifying Valentine and raising the alarm, were she to give an involuntary cry. In two bounds he crossed the flower garden that seemed in the moonlight as broad and white as a lake and, beyond the row of orange trees planted in boxes in front of the house, he reached the steps, ran up them and pushed the door, which opened freely before him.

Valentine had not seen him. Her eyes were lifted upwards, following a silver cloud gliding in front of the deep blue sky, its shape like that of a ghost rising to heaven. Her romantic and poetic nature told her it was her grandmother’s soul.

Meanwhile Morrel had crossed the antechamber and found the banisters. A staircarpet muffled his steps. In any event, he had reached such a degree of exultation that not even the presence of M. de Villefort himself would have frightened him. Should M. de Villefort appear in front of him, he had decided what to do: he would go up to him and confess everything, begging his forgiveness and his approval of the love that bound Morrel to his daughter and vice versa.

Morrel was mad. Fortunately he did not see anyone.

Now, most of all, he found a use for Valentine’s descriptions of the internal layout of the house. He arrived safely at the top of the stairs and, once there, was taking his bearings when a sob, in tones that he recognized, showed him the way. He turned around. A half-open door gave out a shaft of light and the moaning voice. He pushed it and went in.

At the bottom of an alcove, under a white sheet covering its head and outlining its shape, lay the corpse, still more terrifying in Morrel’s eyes now that he had chanced on the secret of her death. Valentine was kneeling beside the bed, her head buried in the cushions of a broad-backed chair, shivering and heaving with sobs, her two hands stiffly joined above her head, which remained invisible.

She had come back here from the still-open window and was praying aloud in tones that would have melted the hardest heart. The words poured swiftly from her lips, made incoherent by the pain that grasped her throat in its burning embrace.

The moon, its light coming in shafts through the blinds, outshone the candle and cast a funereal glow over this scene of desolation.

Morrel was overcome by it. Though he was neither exceptionally pious nor easy to impress, it was more than he could do to remain silent on seeing Valentine suffer, weep and wring her hands in front of him. He sighed and breathed a name; the head, bathed in tears and like marble against the velvet cushion of the chair, the head of a Mary Magdalene by Correggio, was raised and turned towards him.

Valentine gave no sign of astonishment on seeing him there. No halfway emotions can exist in a heart swollen with utmost despair.

Morrel offered her his hand. To excuse herself for not coming to meet him, Valentine showed him the body lying under its shroud and once more began to sob. Neither one of them dared to speak in this room and each was reluctant to break a silence that seemed to have been ordered by some figure of Death standing in a corner with a finger to its lips.

Valentine, at length, was the first to speak.

‘My friend,’ she said, ‘what are you doing here? Alas! I should say welcome to you, if it were not that Death had opened the doors of this house to you.’

‘Valentine,’ Morrel said in a trembling voice, his hands clasped, ‘I have been here since half-past eight. Not seeing you come, I was overwhelmed with anxiety, so I leapt over the wall and entered the garden. Then I heard voices talking about the terrible occurrence…’

‘What voices?’ Valentine asked.

Morrel shuddered, suddenly remembering the whole conversation between the doctor and M. de Villefort; and, through the winding sheet, thought he could see those twisted arms, convulsed neck and violet lips.

‘The servants’ voices told me everything,’ he said.

‘But we are lost now that you have come here,’ Valentine said, with neither anger nor fear.

‘Forgive me,’ Morrel replied in the same tones. ‘I shall leave.’

‘No,’ said Valentine. ‘They will see you. Stay.’

‘Suppose someone comes?’

She shook her head. ‘No one will come,’ she said. ‘Have no fear. This is our safeguard.’ And she pointed to the shape of the body under its shroud.

‘But what happened to Monsieur d’Epinay? Tell me, I beg you.’

‘He arrived to sign the contract at the very moment when my dear grandmother was breathing her last.’

‘Alas!’ Morrel exclaimed, with a feeling of egoistic joy, thinking in himself that this death would indefinitely delay Valentine’s marriage.

‘But what increases my sorrow,’ the young woman went on – as if his feeling were destined for instant punishment, ‘is that my poor grandmother, as she died, ordered the marriage to be concluded as soon as possible. My God! Even she, thinking she was protecting me, acted against my interest!’

‘Listen!’ Morrel exclaimed. The two young people fell silent.

They could hear a door opening and footsteps along the floor in the corridor and on the staircase.

‘It’s my father, coming out of his study,’ Valentine said.

‘And showing the doctor out,’ said Morrel.

‘How do you know it is the doctor?’ she asked in astonishment.

‘I assume it must be,’ said Morrel.

Valentine looked at him.

Meanwhile they heard the street door shut. M. de Villefort also went to lock the door to the garden and then came back up the stairs. Reaching the antechamber, he paused for a moment, as though hesitating between his own room and that of Mme de Saint-Méran. Morrel hastily hid behind a door. Valentine did not move: it was as though the depth of her sorrow had put her beyond the reach of ordinary fears.

M. de Villefort went into his room.

‘Now,’ said Valentine, ‘you cannot leave either through the garden door or through that leading into the street.’ Morrel looked at her in astonishment. ‘Now,’ she continued, ‘there is only one safe way out remaining, which is through my grandfather’s apartments.’

She got up. ‘Follow me,’ she said.

‘Where?’ Maximilien asked.

‘To my grandfather’s.’

‘Me? To Monsieur Noirtier’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘How can you think of such a thing, Valentine?’

‘I have been thinking of it for a long time. He is my only friend in the world, and we both need him. Come.’

‘Careful, Valentine,’ Morrel said, reluctant to do as she said. ‘Take care. The scales have fallen from my eyes and I can see that I was mad to come here. Are you sure that you are acting altogether sensibly, my dearest?’

‘Yes,’ Valentine said. ‘I have no misgivings, except that I must leave the mortal remains of my grandmother alone when I promised to guard them.’