So passed the night. The lamp went out when the oil was consumed. Mercédès was no more aware of the darkness than she had been of the light. Day broke but she heeded it not. Grief had made her blind to all but Edmond.
M. Morrel did not give up hope: he had learnt of Dantès’ imprisonment and had gone to all his friends and all the influential men of the town, but it was already reported that Dantès had been arrested as a Bonapartist, and since even the most sanguine looked upon any attempt of Napoleon’s to remount the throne as impossible he met with nothing but coldness, fear, or refusals, and returned home in despair.
Caderousse was restless and uneasy, but instead of trying to do something to help Dantès he had shut himself up in his house with two bottles of wine.
Danglars alone felt no pang of remorse or restlessness: he was even happy, for had he not avenged himself on an enemy and assured for himself the position on board the Pharaon he was in danger of losing? He was one of those calculating men who are born with a pen behind their ears and an inkpot in place of a heart. He went to bed at the usual hour and slept peacefully.
Chapter IX
THE LITTLE CABINET OF THE TUILERIES
We will now leave Villefort travelling with all speed to Paris and pass into the little cabinet of the Tuileriest with its arched windows, which is so well known as being the favourite cabinet of Napoleon, Louis XVIII, and Louis-Philippe.
There, seated at a walnut table which he had brought from Hartwell, and to which he was greatly attached, King Louis XVIII was listlessly listening to a grey-haired, well-groomed, aristocratic-looking man of fifty or fifty-two years of age, and was at the same time making notes on the margin of a volume of Gryphius’ edition of Horace,u an edition full of inaccuracies but nevertheless much valued, from which His Majesty drew many of his wise, philosophical observations.
“What did you say?” the King inquired.
“That I am somewhat harassed, Sire.”
“Really? What carkingv care is on your mind, my dear Blacas?”
“Sire, I have every reason to believe that a storm is brewing in the South.”
“Well, my dear Duke,” Louis XVIII replied, “I believe that you are misinformed, for I know for certain that the weather is very fine in that quarter.”
Intellectual as he was, Louis XVIII was very fond of a pleasant jest.
“Sire,” M. de Blacas continued, “if only to ease the mind of a faithful servant, could Your Majesty not send to Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphiné some trustworthy men who would report on the feeling in these three provinces?”
“Canimus surdis,” w answered the King, continuing his annotations.
“Sire,” the courtier laughingly replied, “as you appear to understand the hemistich of the poet of Venusia,x it is only fitting that Your Majesty should believe in the good feeling of France; nevertheless I do not think I am quite wrong in fearing some desperate attempt.”
“By whom?”
“By Bonaparte, or at any rate his party.”
“My dear Blacas,” replied the King, “your alarms prevent me from working.”
“And your feeling of security, Sire, prevents me from sleeping.”
“Wait, my dear Duke, wait a moment. I have a happy note on pastor quum traheret; y you can continue afterwards.”
There was a moment’s silence during which Louis XVIII wrote in as minute a handwriting as possible a note on the margin of his Horace, which having finished, he said, rising with the satisfied air of a man who thinks he has an idea of his own because he has commented on the idea of another, “Continue, my dear Duke, I am listening.”
“Sire,” Blacas said, for one moment hoping to use Villefort to his own advantage, “I must tell you that these are not mere meaningless rumours and idle tales that disquiet me. A man of strong common sense, meriting all my confidence and charged by me to watch over the South”—the Duke uttered these last words hesitatingly—“has arrived in all haste to bring me the news that a great danger threatens the King. I came without delay to you, Sire.”
“Mala ducis avi domum,” z Louis XVIII continued, still making his notes. “Ah, here is Monsieur Dandré. You did say Monsieur Dandré?” he asked of the chamberlain, who had just announced the Minister of Police.
“Yes, Sire, Baron Dandré.”
“You have just come at the right moment,” said Louis. “Come in, Baron, and tell the Duke your latest news of Monsieur Bonaparte. Do not conceal anything, no matter how serious. Is the Isle of Elba a volcano from which will issue a bloody, death-bringing war? Bella, horrida bella? ”aa
M. Dandré balanced himself gracefully on the back of a chair on which he was leaning his hands, and said:
“Has Your Majesty been pleased to peruse yesterday’s report?”
“Yes, yes, but give the Duke the contents of the report; tell him exactly what the usurper is doing on his island.”
“Monsieur,” said the Baron to the Duke, “all His Majesty’s faithful servants have good reason to rejoice at the latest news that has reached us from Elba. Bonaparte . . .”
M. Dandré looked at Louis who, busily engaged in writing a note, did not even raise his head.
“Bonaparte is bored to distraction,” continued the Baron. “He spends whole days watching his miners at work at Porto Longone. Moreover, we have ascertained that it will not be very long before the usurper is quite insane. His brain is giving way. One moment he is weeping bitterly, the next laughing boisterously. At other times he will spend hours on the shore throwing pebbles into the water, and if he succeeds in making five or six ducks and drakes he is as pleased with himself as if he had won another Marengo or a second Austerlitz.ab You must agree with me that these are sure signs of insanity.”
“Or else signs of wisdom, monsieur,” smiled Louis. “The great captains of olden times amused themselves by casting pebbles into the sea; see Plutarch’s Life of Scipio Africanus. Well, Blacas,” the King continued triumphantly, “what do you say to that?”
“I say, Sire, that either the Minister of Police is mistaken or else I am; but as this would be impossible for a Minister of Police who has the safe custody of Your Majesty in his keeping, it is probably I who am under a wrong impression. Nevertheless, Sire, I would question before Your Majesty the gentleman of whom I spoke just now; in fact, I beg Your Majesty to do him this honour.”
“Most willingly, Duke. Under your auspices, I will receive whom you will, but I must receive him armed to the teeth. Have you a later report than this one, Dandré? This one is dated February the twentieth and to-day is March the third.”
“No, Sire, I am expecting one hourly. I have been out since early morning and it is possible that one has arrived during my absence.”
“Then hie you to your office and do not forget that I am waiting for you.”
“I go, Sire, and shall be gone but ten minutes.”
“In the meantime, Sire,” said Monsieur de Blacas, “I will fetch my messenger. He has covered two hundred and twenty leaguesac in barely three days.”
“Why all this unnecessary fatigue and anxiety when we have the telegraphad which takes but three or four hours!”
“Ah, Sire, that is poor recompense for Monsieur de Villefort, who has come all that distance with such haste to communicate to Your Majesty some valuable information.”
“Monsieur de Villefort?” exclaimed the King. “Is that the messenger’s name?”
“Yes, Sire. I thought the name was unknown to Your Majesty.”
“Not at all, not at all, Blacas. He is a serious-minded and intellectual young man, and above all he is ambitious. Added to that his father’s name is Noirtier!”
“Noirtier the Girondin? Noirtier the Senator?”
“The very same.”
“And Your Majesty has employed the son of such a man?”
“Blacas, my dear friend, you are very slow of understanding. I told you that Villefort was ambitious; he would sacrifice everything to gain his end, even his father. Go a
nd fetch him.”
When Blacas returned with Villefort, the King said:
“The Duke of Blacas tells me you have some important information. Give me full details, if you please, and above all begin at the beginning. I like order in all things.”
“Sire,” Villefort answered, “I will give Your Majesty a faithful report. I have come to Paris with all speed to inform Your Majesty that, in the exercise of my duties, I have discovered a conspiracy; not one of those everyday, meaningless, vulgar plots of the lower classes of our people, but a veritable tempest which threatens Your Majesty’s very throne. Sire, the usurper has manned three vessels; he meditates some attack, senseless perhaps, yet it may have terrible consequences. By this time he will have left Elba, bound for I know not whither. He will most probably attempt to land either at Naples or on the coast of Tuscany, or even in France. Your Majesty is aware that the lord of the Isle of Elba has maintained relations with Italy and France?”
“Yes, monsieur, I know,” replied the King, greatly agitated, “and lately we have been informed of Bonapartist meetings in the Rue Saint-Jacques. Whence have you your details?”
“Sire, I have them from a man whom I have been watching for some time past, and for whose arrest I gave orders the day before my departure from Marseilles. He is a turbulent sailor whom I suspected of Bonapartism, and he has been secretly to Elba. There he saw the Grand Maréchal, who entrusted him with a verbal mission to a Bonapartist in Paris, whose name he would not disclose; the nature of the mission was to prepare the adherents of Bonaparte for a return—note, Sire, these are the man’s very words—for a return which must take place very shortly.”
“Where is this man?”
“In prison, Sire.”
“Do you think the thing is serious?”
“Sire, I fear it is more than a mere plot, it is a conspiracy.”
“In these days it is easy to plan a conspiracy,” the King answered, smiling, “but it is difficult to carry it out for the simple reason that, being recently re-established on the throne of our ancestors, we have our eyes at once on the past, the present, and the future. If Bonaparte landed at Naples, the whole coalition would be at his heels before he reached Piombino; if he landed in Tuscany, he would be in a hostile country; whereas if he landed in France he would have but a handful of men and we should soon overpower him.”
At this moment the Minister of Police entered, pale and trembling and with a scared look.
Chapter X
THE OGRE
On perceiving the Minister’s agitated demeanour, Louis violently pushed back the table at which he had been sitting.
“Why, Baron,” he cried, “what is your trouble? You appear completely upset! Is your agitation in any way connected with the report given by Monsieur Blacas and confirmed by Monsieur de Villefort?”
“Sire . . .” stammered the Baron.
“Well . . . go on,” replied Louis.
The Minister of Police was about to throw himself in despair at the King’s feet, but the latter drew back a step and knitting his brows, said:
“Well, are you going to speak? I command you to give me your news!”
“Sire, the usurper left Elba on February the twenty-eighth and disembarked on March the first in France, at a little port near Antibes in the Gulf of Juan.”
“The usurper disembarked in France near Antibes in the Gulf of Juan, two hundred and fifty leagues from Paris on March the first and you only report it to me on March the third?”
Louis XVIII made a movement of indescribable anger and alarm and drew himself up straight as if a sudden blow had struck him both mentally and physically.
“In France!” he cried. “The usurper in France! Is he marching on Paris?”
“Sire, I know not. The dispatch only states that he has landed and the route he has taken,” was the Police Minister’s answer.
“How did you get the dispatch?”
The Minister bowed his head while a deep colour suffused his cheeks.
“By telegraph, Sire.”
Louis XVIII took a step forward and crossed his arms as Napoleon would have done.
“So,” he said, turning pale with anger, “seven allied armies overthrew that man; a miracle of God placed me on the throne of my fathers after an exile of twenty-five years, during which time I studied, probed, analysed the men and affairs of this France that was promised me, so that when I had attained my desires the power I held in my hand should burst and break me! What our enemies say of us is only too true. We have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing! If I had been betrayed like him, some consolation would be left to me; but to be surrounded by men whom I have raised to high dignities, who were to watch over me with more care than over themselves, who before my time were nothing, and who, when I have gone, will again be nothing and will probably perish through their own inability and ineptitude! Oh, cruel fate! Oh, I would sooner mount the scaffold of my brother Louis the Sixteenth than thus be forced down the steps of the Tuileries by ridicule! You do not know what ridicule is in France, yet you ought to know. And now, messieurs,” he continued, turning toward M. de Blacas and the Police Minister, “I have no further need of you. The War Minister alone can help now.” Then suddenly turning to Baron Dandré, he asked: “What further news have you in regard to the Rue Saint-Jacques affair?”
“Sire,” the Minister of Police replied, “I was about to give Your Majesty the latest information on the matter when Your Majesty’s attention was attracted towards this other terrible catastrophe; now these facts will not interest Your Majesty.”
“On the contrary, monsieur, on the contrary. It seems to me that this affair may have some direct connexion with the other, and the death of General Quesnel will perhaps put us on the direct track of a great internal conspiracy.”
Villefort shuddered at the name of General Quesnel.
“In fact, Sire,” the Minister of Police continued, “everything goes to show that his death was not due to suicide as was at first believed, but was the work of some assassin. Apparently General Quesnel left the precincts of a Bonapartist Club and disappeared. An unknown man had called on him in the morning and arranged a meeting in the Rue Saint-Jacques.”
While the Minister was telling his story, Villefort, who seemed to hang on his very words, turned alternately red and pale.
The King turned to him. “Do you not share my opinion, Monsieur de Villefort, that Quesnel, who was believed to be attached to the usurper though he was in reality entirely loyal to me, was the victim of a Bonapartist trap?”
“It is very probable, Sire, but have you no further information?”
“We are on the track of the man who made the appointment with him. We have his description. He is a man of fifty to fifty-two years of age, has brown hair, dark eyes with bushy eyebrows, and wears a moustache. He was dressed in a blue coat, and in his buttonhole wore the rosette of an Officer of the Legion of Honour. Yesterday a man answering to this description was followed but was lost sight of at the corner of the Rue de la Jussienne and the Rue Coq Héron.”
Villefort leaned against the back of a chair; his legs seemed to be giving way under him, but when he heard that the unknown man had escaped his pursuers he breathed again.
“Seek this man out!” said the King to the Police Minister,
“for if, as everything leads me to suppose, General Quesnel, who would have been so useful to us now, has been the victim of a murder, I will have his assassins severely punished, be they Bonapartists or not. I will not detain you longer, Baron. Monsieur de Villefort, you must be fatigued after your long journey; go and rest. You are putting up at your father’s house, no doubt?”
Villefort seemed on the point of fainting.
“No, Your Majesty,” he said, “I am staying at the Hôtel de Madrid, in the Rue de Tournon.”
“But you will see him?”
“I think not, Sire.”
“Ah! of course,” said Louis XVIII, smiling in a manner which showed that all these
questions had been put to him with a motive. “I was forgetting that you are not on good terms with Monsieur Noirtier. Another sacrifice to the royal cause, for which you shall be recompensed.” The King detached the cross of the Legion of Honour which he usually wore on his blue coat and giving it to Villefort said: “In the meantime take this cross.”
Villefort’s eyes filled with tears of joy and pride. He took the cross and kissed it.
Chapter XI
THE HUNDRED DAYS
Events followed one another very rapidly. Everyone knows the history of the famous return from Elba, a return which, unexampled as it was in the past, will probably remain unimitated in the future.
Louis XVIII made but a feeble attempt to parry the blow. The monarchy which he had but ill reconstructed trembled on its insecure foundation, and a wave of the Emperor’s hand brought down with a crash the whole edifice that was naught but an unsightly mass of ancient prejudices and new ideas. Villefort therefore gained nothing from the King but a gratitude which was not only useless but dangerous at the present time, and the cross of the Legion of Honour, which he had the prudence not to display.
Napoleon would, doubtless, have dismissed Villefort but for the protection of Noirtier, who was all-powerful at the Court of the Hundred Days; the Procureur du Roi alone was deprived of his office, being under suspicion of lukewarm support of Bonaparte.
Meanwhile the imperial power had hardly been re-established, the Emperor had hardly re-entered the Tuileries and issued his numerous and divergent orders from that little cabinet into which we have introduced our readers, and on the table of which he found Louis XVIII’s snuff-box, still open and half full, when the flames of civil war, always smouldering in the South, began to light up in Marseilles, and the populace seemed like to indulge in acts of violence against the royalists of the town in place of the shouts and insults with which they hitherto had greeted them whenever they ventured abroad.
Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 9