The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (7 page)

‘Indeed, I am, and I hold you in all the greater esteem, since honest people are so rare! But it seems you have come into money, my boy?’ the tailor went on, glancing at the handful of gold and silver that Dantès had emptied on to the table.

The young man observed a flash of greed light up his neighbour’s dark eyes. ‘Heavens, no!’ he said casually. ‘That money is not mine. I was just telling my father that I was afraid he might have wanted for something while I was away and, to reassure me, he emptied his purse on the table. Come, father,’ he continued. ‘Put that money back in your pocket – unless, of course, our neighbour needs some for himself, in which case it is at his disposal.’

‘Indeed not, my boy,’ said Caderousse. ‘I need nothing and, thank God, my business holds body and soul together. Keep your money, keep it; one can never have too much. Still, I am obliged for your offer, as much as if I had taken advantage of it.’

‘It was well meant,’ said Dantès.

‘I don’t doubt that it was. So, I learn that you are on good terms with Monsieur Morrel, sly one that you are?’

‘Monsieur Morrel has always been very good to me,’ Dantès answered.

‘In that case, you were wrong to refuse dinner with him.’

‘What do you mean: refuse dinner?’ Old Dantès asked. ‘Did he invite you to dinner?’

‘Yes, father,’ said Edmond, smiling at his father’s astonishment on learning of this high honour.

‘So why did you refuse, son?’ the old man asked.

‘So that I could come straight back here, father,’ the young man answered. ‘I was anxious to see you.’

‘He must have been put out by it, that good Monsieur Morrel,’ Caderousse remarked. ‘When one hopes to be made captain, it is a mistake to get on the wrong side of one’s owner.’

‘I explained the reason for my refusal and I hope he understood it.’

‘Even so, to be promoted to captain, one must flatter one’s bosses a little.’

‘I expect to become captain without that,’ Dantès retorted.

‘So much the better! All your old friends will be pleased for you and I know someone over there, behind the Citadelle de Saint-Nicholas, who will not be unhappy about it, either.’

‘Mercédès?’ the old man said.

‘Yes, father,’ Dantès resumed. ‘And, with your permission, now that I’ve seen you, now that I know you are well and that you have all you need, I would like to ask your leave to go and visit Les Catalans.’

‘Go, child,’ Old Dantès said. ‘And may God bless you as much in your wife as He has blessed me in my son.’

‘His wife!’ said Caderousse. ‘Hold on, old man, hold on! As far as I know, she’s not that yet!’

‘No,’ Edmond replied, ‘but in all probability she soon will be.’

‘Never mind,’ said Caderousse, ‘never mind. You have done well to hurry back, my boy.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Mercédès is a beautiful girl, and beautiful girls are never short of admirers, especially that one: there are dozens of them after her.’

‘Really?’ Edmond said with a smile, not entirely concealing a hint of unease.

‘Oh, yes,’ Caderousse continued, ‘and some with good prospects, too. But, of course, you are going to be a captain, so she’ll be sure not to refuse you.’

‘By which you mean,’ Dantès said, smiling, but barely concealing his anxiety, ‘that if I were not a captain…’

‘Ah! Ah!’ said Caderousse.

‘Come, now,’ the young man said. ‘I have a better opinion than you of women in general, and Mercédès in particular, and I am persuaded that, whether I were a captain or not, she would remain faithful to me.’

‘So much the better! When one is going to get married, it is always a good thing to have faith. But enough of that. Take my advice, lad: don’t waste any time in telling her of your return and letting her know about your aspirations.’

‘I am going at once,’ said Edmond.

He embraced his father, nodded to Caderousse and left.

Caderousse stayed a moment longer, then, taking his leave of the elder Dantès, followed the young man down and went to find Danglars who was waiting for him on the corner of the Rue Senac.

‘Well?’ Danglars asked. ‘Did you see him?’

‘I have just left them,’ said Caderousse.

‘And did he talk about his hope of being made captain?’

‘He spoke of it as though he had already been appointed.’

‘Patience!’ Danglars said. ‘It seems to me that he is in rather too much of a hurry.’

‘Why, it seems Monsieur Morrel has given him his word.’

‘So he is pleased?’

‘He is even insolent about it. He has already offered me his services, like some superior personage; he wanted to lend me money, like some banker or other.’

‘You refused?’

‘Indeed I did, though I could well have accepted, since I am the one who gave him the first silver coins he ever had in his hands. But now Monsieur Dantès has no need of anyone: he is going to be a captain.’

‘Huh!’ said Danglars. ‘He’s not one yet.’

‘My God, it would be a fine thing indeed if he wasn’t,’ said Caderousse. ‘Otherwise there will be no talking to him.’

‘If we really want,’ said Danglars, ‘he will stay as he is, and perhaps even become less than he is.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing, I was talking to myself. Is he still in love with the beautiful Catalan?’

‘Madly. He has gone there now; but, unless I am gravely mistaken, he will not find things altogether to his liking.’

‘Explain.’

‘What does it matter?’

‘This is more important than you may think. You don’t like Dantès, do you?’

‘I don’t like arrogance.’

‘Well, then: tell me what you know about the Catalan woman.’

‘I have no positive proof, but I have seen things, as I said, that make me think the future captain will not be pleased with what he finds around the Chemin des Vieilles-Infirmeries.’

‘What have you seen? Come on, tell me.’

‘Well, I have observed that every time Mercédès comes into town, she is accompanied by a large Catalan lad, with black eyes, ruddy cheeks, very dark in colour and very passionate, whom she calls “my cousin”.’

‘Ah, indeed! And do you think this cousin is courting her?’

‘I imagine so: what else does a fine lad of twenty-one do to a pretty girl of seventeen?’

‘And you say that Dantès has gone to Les Catalans?’

‘He left before me.’

‘Suppose we were to go in the same direction, stop in the Réserve and, over a glass of La Malgue wine, learn what we can learn.’

‘Who would tell us anything?’

‘We shall be on the spot and we’ll see what has happened from Dantès’ face.’

‘Let’s go then,’ said Caderousse. ‘But you are paying?’

‘Certainly,’ Danglars replied.

The two of them set off at a brisk pace for the spot they had mentioned and, when they arrived, called for a bottle and two glasses.

Old Pamphile had seen Dantès go by less than two minutes before. Certain that he was in Les Catalans, they sat under the budding leaves of the plane-trees and sycamores, in the branches of which a happy band of birds was serenading one of the first fine days of spring.

A hundred yards away from the place where the two friends, staring into the distance with their ears pricked, were enjoying the sparkling wine of La Malgue, lay the village of Les Catalans, behind a bare hillock ravaged by the sun and the mistral.

One day, a mysterious group of colonists set out from Spain and landed on this spit of land, where it still resides today. No one knew where they had come from or what language they spoke. One of the leaders, who understood Provençal, asked the commune of Marseille to give them this bare and arid promontory on to which, like the sailors of Antiquity, they had drawn up their boats. The request was granted and, three months later, a little village grew up around the twelve or fifteen boats that brought these gypsies of the sea.

The same village, built in a bizarre and picturesque manner that is partly Moorish and partly Spanish, is the one that can be seen today, inhabited by the descendants of those men, who speak the language of their forefathers. For three or four centuries they have remained faithful to the little promontory on which they first landed, clinging to it like a flock of seabirds, in no way mixing with the inhabitants of Marseille, marrying among themselves and retaining the habits and dress of their motherland, just as they have retained its tongue.

The reader must follow us along the only street of the little village and enter one of those houses, to the outside of which the sunlight has given that lovely colour of dead leaves which is peculiar to the buildings of the country; with, inside, a coat of whitewash, the only decoration of a Spanish
posada
.

A lovely young girl with jet-black hair and the velvet eyes of a gazelle, was standing, leaning against an inner wall, rubbing an innocent sprig of heather between slender fingers like those on a classical statue, and pulling off the flowers, the remains of which were already strewn across the floor. At the same time, her arms, naked to the elbow, arms that were tanned but otherwise seemed modelled on those of the Venus of Arles, trembled with a sort of feverish impatience, and she was tapping the ground with her
supple, well-made foot, revealing a leg that was shapely, bold and proud, but imprisoned in a red cotton stocking patterned in grey and blue lozenges.

A short distance away, a tall young man of between twenty and twenty-two was sitting on a chair, rocking it fitfully on two legs while supporting himself on his elbow against an old worm-eaten dresser and watching her with a look that combined anxiety with irritation. His eyes were questioning, but those of the young woman, firm and unwavering, dominated their conversation.

‘Please, Mercédès,’ the man said. ‘Easter is coming round again; it’s the time for weddings. Give me your answer!’

‘You have had it a hundred times, Fernand, and you really must like torturing yourself, to ask me again.’

‘Well, repeat it, I beg you, repeat it once more so that I can come to believe it. Tell me, for the hundredth time, that you reject my love, even though your mother approves of me. Convince me that you are prepared to trifle with my happiness and that my life and my death are nothing to you. My God, my God! To dream for ten years of being your husband, Mercédès, and then to lose that hope which was the sole aim of my existence!’

‘I, at least, never encouraged you in that hope, Fernand,’ Mercédès replied. ‘You cannot accuse me of having, even once, flirted with you. I’ve said repeatedly: “I love you like a brother, but never demand anything more from me than this fraternal love, because my heart belongs to another.” Isn’t that what I have always told you, Fernand?’

‘Yes, Mercédès, I know,’ the young man replied. ‘Yes, you have always been laudably, and cruelly, honest with me. But are you forgetting that it is a sacred law among the Catalans only to marry among themselves?’

‘You are wrong, Fernand, it is not a law, but a custom, nothing more; and I advise you not to appeal to that custom on your behalf. You have been chosen for conscription, Fernand, and the freedom that you now enjoy is merely a temporary reprieve: at any moment you might be called up to serve in the army. Once you are a soldier, what will you do with me – I mean, with a poor orphan girl, sad and penniless, whose only possession is a hut, almost in ruins, in which hang a few worn nets, the paltry legacy that was left by my father to my mother, and by my mother to me? Consider, Fernand, that in the year since she died, I have virtually lived on charity!
Sometimes you pretend that I am of some use to you, so that you can be justified in sharing your catch with me. And I accept, Fernand, because you are the son of one of my father’s brothers, because we grew up together and, beyond that, most of all, because it would hurt you too much if I were to refuse. But I know full well that the fish I take to the market, which bring me the money to buy the hemp that I spin – I know, full well, Fernand, that it is charity.’

‘What does it matter, Mercédès, poor and alone as you are, when you suit me thus better than the daughter of the proudest shipowner or the richest banker in Marseille? What do people like us need? An honest wife and a good housekeeper. Where could I find better than you on either score?’

‘Fernand,’ Mercédès replied, shaking her head, ‘one is not a good housekeeper and one cannot promise to remain an honest woman when one loves a man other than one’s husband. Be satisfied with my friendship for, I repeat, that is all I can promise you and I only promise what I am sure of being able to give.’

‘Yes, I understand,’ said Fernand. ‘You bear your own poverty patiently, but you are afraid of mine. Well, Mercédès, with your love, I would try to make my fortune; you would bring me luck and I should become rich. I can cast my fisherman’s net wider, I can take a job as a clerk in a shop, I could even become a merchant myself!’

‘You can’t do any such thing, Fernand: you’re a soldier and, if you stay here among the Catalans, it is because there is no war for you to fight. So remain a fisherman, don’t dream of things that will make reality seem even more terrible to you – and be content with my friendship, because I cannot give you anything else.’