The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (198 page)

‘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!

The count stayed alone and motioned for the carriage to come forward. Then he stood for a long time with his arms crossed, contemplating this furnace in which all the ideas that rise, boiling, from the depths to shake the world melt, twine and take shape. Then, when he had turned his powerful gaze on this Babylon which inspires religious poets as it does materialistic sceptics, he bent his head and clasped his hands as if in prayer, and murmured: ‘Great city, it is less than six months since I came through your gates. I think that the spirit of God brought me here and takes me away triumphant. To God, who alone can read my heart, I confided the secret of my presence within your walls. He alone knows that I am leaving without hatred and without pride, but not without regret. He alone knows that I employed the power with which He had entrusted me, not for myself, nor for any idle purpose. O great city!
In your heaving breast I found what I was looking for; like a patient miner, I churned your entrails to expel the evil from them. Now my work is complete, my mission accomplished; now you can offer me no further joys or sorrows. Farewell, Paris! Farewell!’

His eyes, like those of some spirit of the night, swept once more across the vast plain. Then, mopping his brow, he got back into the carriage, closing the door behind him, and they had soon vanished down the far side of the hill in a welter of dust and noise. They covered two leagues in utter silence. Morrel was dreaming, Monte Cristo watching him dream.

‘Morrel,’ the count asked, ‘do you regret coming with me?’

‘No, Count; but leaving Paris, perhaps…’

‘If I had thought that happiness awaited you in Paris, Morrel, I should have left you there.’

‘But it is in Paris that Valentine rests, and leaving Paris is to lose her for the second time.’

‘Maximilien,’ the count said, ‘the friends whom we have lost do not rest in the earth, they are buried in our hearts, and that is how God wanted it, so that we should always be in their company. I have two friends who are always with me, in that way: one is the man who gave me life, the other is the one who gave me understanding. The spirit of both lives in me. I consult them when I am in doubt and, if I have done any good, I owe it to their advice. Look into your heart, Morrel, and ask it if you should continue to show me that sorry face.’

‘My friend,’ said Maximilien, ‘the voice of my heart is sad indeed and promises only misfortune.’

‘Only a weak spirit sees everything from behind a dark veil. The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is overcast, and that is why the sky seems stormy to you.’

‘That may be true,’ Maximilien said, then he reverted to his reverie.

The journey was accomplished with that astonishing speed that was a peculiar talent of the count’s. Towns passed by like shadows on the road; the trees, shaken by the first winds of autumn, seemed to rise up before them like dishevelled giants and fled rapidly into the distance as soon as they had caught up with them. The next morning they arrived at Chalon, where the count’s steamship was waiting. Without wasting an instant, the carriage was put on board and, even before that, the two travellers had embarked.

The ship was built for speed, like an Indian dugout. Its two paddle-wheels were like two wings on which it skimmed the water – a migrating bird. Morrel himself experienced that heady intoxication of speed, and at times the wind, lifting his hair, seemed also for a moment nearly to lift the cloud from his brow.

As for the count, the further he moved away from Paris, the more a sort of inhuman serenity appeared to envelop him like an aura. It was as though an exile was returning home.

Soon Marseille – white, warm, throbbing with life; Marseille, twin sister of Tyre and Carthage, their successor as ruler of the Mediterranean; Marseille, ever younger, the older she grows – Marseille appeared before them. For both men the scene was rich in memories: the round tower, the Fort Saint-Nicholas, Puget’s town hall and the port with its brick quays where both of them had played as children.

So, by common agreement, they stopped on the Canebière.

A ship was leaving for Algiers. The packages, the passengers crowded on the deck, the host of friends and relations saying goodbye, shouting, weeping, made a spectacle that is always moving, even for those who see it every day; but even this commotion could not take Maximilien’s mind off something that had struck him as soon as he set foot on the broad stones of the quay.

‘Look,’ he said, taking Monte Cristo’s arm. ‘This is the place where my father stopped when the
Pharaon
came into port. Here the good man whom you saved from death and dishonour threw himself into my arms. I can still feel his tears on my face – and he did not weep alone. Many other people were in tears when they saw us.’

Monte Cristo smiled.

‘I was there,’ he said, showing Morrel the corner of a street.

As he said this, from the direction towards which the count was pointing they heard a painful groan and saw a woman waving to a passenger on the boat that was about to leave. The woman was veiled. Monte Cristo watched her with an emotion that Morrel would easily have perceived if, unlike the count’s, his eyes had not been fixed on the boat.

‘Oh, my God!’ he cried. ‘I’m right! That young man waving his hat, the one in uniform: it’s Albert de Morcerf!’

‘Yes,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘I recognized him.’

‘How could you? You were looking in the opposite direction.’

The count smiled, as he did when he did not want to reply; and his eyes turned back to the veiled woman, who disappeared round the corner of the street. Then he turned back to Morrel.

‘Dear friend,’ he said. ‘Don’t you have something to do in town?’

‘I must go and weep on my father’s grave,’ Morrel replied softly.

‘Very well. Go, and wait for me there. I shall join you.’

‘Are you leaving me?’

‘Yes. I too have a pious duty to perform.’

Morrel placed a limp hand in the one the count offered him. Then, with an indescribably melancholy movement of the head, he left his companion and walked towards the east of the town. Monte Cristo let him go, remaining on the same spot until he had disappeared, before turning towards the Allées de Meilhan, going back to the little house that our readers must remember from the start of this story.

The house was still standing in the shadow of the great avenue of lime-trees which serves idle Marseillais as a place to stroll, furnished with huge curtains of vines which cross their arms, blackened and shredded by age, on stones turned yellow by the burning southern sun. Two stone steps, worn down by passing feet, led to the door, which consisted of three planks, repaired every year but never touched by putty or paint, patiently waiting for the damp to reunite them.

Old as it was, the house was charming, joyful despite its evident poverty, and still the same as the one where Old Dantès had once lived. The difference was that the old man used to occupy the attic, and the count had put the entire house at Mercédès’ disposal.

The woman whom Monte Cristo had seen leaving the departing ship came here and was shutting the door just as he appeared at the corner of the street, so that he saw her vanish almost as soon as he caught up with her. The worn steps were old acquaintances and he knew better than anyone how to open the old door, its inner latch raised by a broad-headed hook. He went in without knocking or calling, like a friend, like a guest.

At the end of a passage paved in brick lay a little garden, bathed in warmth, sun and light. Here, at the place he had mentioned, Mercédès had found the money that the count had considerately put there twenty-five years earlier. The trees of this garden could be seen from the street door. As he reached the threshold, Monte Cristo heard a sigh which was like a sob. This sigh guided his eyes
to a leafy arbour of jasmine with long purple flowers, where he saw Mercédès sitting, weeping.

She had raised her veil and, alone in the sight of heaven, her face hidden in her hands, she freely abandoned herself to the sighs and tears that she had repressed for so long in her son’s presence.

Monte Cristo took a few steps forward, the sand crunching under his feet. Mercédès looked up and cried out in terror at seeing a man in front of her.

‘Madame,’ the count said, ‘I am no longer able to bring you happiness, but I can give you consolation. Would you accept it, as from a friend?’

‘Indeed,’ said Mercédès, ‘I am very unhappy, and alone in the world. I only had my son and he has left me.’

‘He did the right thing,’ the count replied. ‘He has a noble heart. He realized that every man owes some debt to his country: some give their talents, others their hard work; some watch, others bleed. Had he stayed with you, he would have wasted a life that had become useless to him and would have been unable to accustom himself to your grief. The frustration would have filled him with hatred. Now he will become great and strong by struggling against adversities that he will change into good fortune. Let him rebuild the future for both of you, Madame. I can promise that he is in good hands.’

‘Alas,’ the poor woman murmured, sadly shaking her head, ‘I shall not enjoy this good fortune that you speak of and which with all my heart I pray God to give him. So much has been broken in me and around me that I feel I am near to my grave. You did well, Count, in bringing me close to the place where I was so happy: one should die in the place in which one was happy.’

‘Madame!’ Monte Cristo exclaimed. ‘Every one of your words falls, bitter and burning, on my heart, and all the more so since you have cause to hate me. I am responsible for all your misfortunes. Why do you not pity me instead of accusing me? You would make me still more unhappy…’