Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Alexandre Dumas

  “Listen, my friend,” said the Count. “I may call you thus, for, without knowing it, you have been my friend for eleven years. The discovery of this secret has been torn from me by a great event of which you must ever remain in ignorance. God is my witness that I intended to bury it for ever in the depths of my heart, but your brother Maximilian has wrested it from me by a violence which, I am sure, he now regrets.” Then, seeing that Maximilian had thrown himself on to a chair apart from the others, he added in a low voice: “Watch over him.”

  “Why?” asked the young man amazed.

  “I cannot give you the reason, but watch over him.”

  Emmanuel looked round the room and caught sight of the pistols. With a frightened look, he slowly raised his hand and pointed to them. Monte Cristo nodded his head. Emmanuel went to take the pistols.

  “Leave them!” said the Count, and, going to Maximilian, took his hand. The tumultuous emotions that had for a moment shaken the young man’s heart had now given way to profound stupor.

  Julie returned, holding in her hand the red silk purse; two bright tears of joy coursed down her cheeks like two drops of morning dew.

  “Here is the relic,” she said, “but do not imagine it will be less dear to us because our benefactor has been revealed to us.”

  “Permit me to take back that purse,” responded Monte Cristo, turning a deep red. “Since you know the features of my face, I only wish to be remembered by the affection I ask you to give me.”

  “Oh, no! no!” said Julie, pressing the purse to her heart. “I entreat you not to take it away, for unfortunately you might be leaving us one day. Is that not so?”

  “You have guessed rightly,” replied Monte Cristo with a smile. “In a week I shall have left this country where so many people who merit the vengeance of Heaven live happily, whilst my father died of grief and hunger.”

  Then, realizing that he must make one final struggle against his friend’s grief, he took Julie’s and Emmanuel’s hands in his, and said to them with the gentle authority of a father: “My good friends, I pray you, leave me alone with Maximilian.”

  Julie saw a means of carrying away her precious relic, which Monte Cristo had forgotten to mention again, so she drew her husband away, saying: “Let us leave them.”

  The Count stayed behind with Morrel, who remained as still as a statue.

  “Come, come!” said the Count, tapping him on the shoulder with his burning fingers. “Are you going to be a man again?”

  “Yes, since I am again beginning to suffer.”

  The Count’s forehead wrinkled in apparent indecision. “Maximilian! Maximilian,” said he. “The ideas to which you are giving way are unworthy of a Christian.”

  “Oh, do not be afraid!” said Morrel, raising his head and smiling at the Count with a smile of ineffable sadness. “I shall make no attempt on my life.”

  “Then we shall have no more weapons and no more despair!”

  “No, for I have a better remedy for my grief than a bullet or the point of a knife.”

  “You poor, foolish fellow! What is this remedy?”

  “My grief itself will kill me!”

  “Listen to me, my friend,” said Monte Cristo. “One day, in a moment of despair as deep as yours, since it evoked a similar resolution, I, like you, wished to take my life; one day your father, equally desperate, wanted to kill himself. If anyone had said to your father at the moment when he put the muzzle of the pistol to his forehead—if anyone had said to me when I pushed from me the prison bread I had not tasted for three days—if anyone had said to us both at those critical moments: ‘Live! The day will come when you will be happy and will bless your life!’—no matter whence the voice had come, we should have welcomed it with a doubtful smile or with agonizing incredulity. Yet how many times has your father not blessed his life when he embraced you—how many times have I myself . . .”

  “Ah! you only lost your liberty,” interrupted Morrel. “My father had only lost his fortune, but I have lost Valentine!”

  “Look at me, Morrel,” said Monte Cristo with that air of solemnity which, on certain occasions, made him so grand and persuasive. “I have neither tears in my eyes nor fever in my veins, yet I see you suffer, Maximilian, you whom I love as a son! Does that not tell you that in grief as in life there is always a hidden future? And if I entreat, nay, command you to live, Morrel, it is because I am convinced that the day will come when you will thank me for having saved your life!”

  “Good God!” cried the young man. “What are you telling me, Count? Take care. But perhaps you have never loved?”

  “Child!” was the sole reply.

  “I mean as I love. You see I have been a soldier ever since I was a boy, and was twenty-nine before I fell in love, for none of the feelings I experienced before that time were worthy of the name of love. Well, when I was twenty-nine years of age, I met Valentine, and have loved her for the past two years, and during that time I have observed in her all the virtues that make a true daughter and wife. To have possessed Valentine, Count, would have been an infinite and immense happiness, too complete and divine for this world. Since this happiness has been denied me, there is nothing left for me on earth but despair and desolation.”

  “I tell you to hope, Morrel,” repeated the Count.

  “Ah! you are trying to persuade me, you are trying to inspire me with the belief that I shall see Valentine again.”

  The Count smiled.

  “My friend, my father!” cried Morrel excitedly. “The ascendancy you hold over me alarms me. Weigh your words carefully, for my eyes lighten up again and my heart takes on a fresh lease on life. I should obey you though you commanded me to raise the stone which once more covers the sepulchre of the daughter of Jairus;ca I should walk upon the waves like the apostle if you made a sign to me to do so; so have a care, I should obey in all.”

  “Hope, my dear friend!” repeated the Count.

  “Ah, you are playing with me,” said Morrel, falling from the heights of exaltation to the abyss of despair. “You are doing the same as those good, or rather selfish, mothers who calm their children’s sorrow with honeyed words because their cries annoy them. No, my friend. I will bury my grief so deep down in my heart and shall guard it so carefully from the eyes of man that you will need have no sympathy for me. Good-bye, my friend, good-bye!”

  “On the contrary,” said the Count. “From now onward, you will live with me and not leave me. In a week we shall have left France behind us.”

  “Do you still bid me hope?”

  “I do, for I know of a remedy for you.”

  “You are only prolonging my agony, Count!”

  “Are you so feeble-hearted that you cannot give your friend a few days’ trial? I have great faith in my promise, so let me make the experiment. Do you know what the Count of Monte Cristo is capable of? Do you know that he has faith enough in God to obtain miracles from Him Who said that with faith one would remove mountains? Well, wait for the miracle for which I hope, or . . .”

  “Or . . .” repeated Morrel.

  “Or take care, Morrel, lest I call you ungrateful.”

  “Have pity on me, Count!”

  “I feel so much pity for you that if I do not cure you in a month to the very day, mark my words, Morrel, I myself will place before you two loaded pistols and a cup of the deadliest poison—a poison which is more potent and prompt of action than that which killed Valentine.”

  “Do you promise me this?”

  “I not only promise it, I swear it,” said Monte Cristo, giving him his hand.

  “Then on your word of honour, if I am not consoled in a month, you leave me free to take my life, and, whatever I may do, you will not call me ungrateful?”

  “In a month to the day, and it is a date that is sacred to us. I do not know whether you remember that to-day is the fifth of September? It is ten years ago to-day that I saved your father when he wanted to take his life.”

  Morrel seized the Cou
nt’s hands and kissed them, and the Count suffered him to do it, for he felt that this homage was due to him.

  “In a month,” continued Monte Cristo, “you will have before you on the table at which we shall both be seated, two trusty weapons and a gentle death-giving potion, but in return you must promise me to wait until then and live.”

  “I swear it!” exclaimed Morrel.

  Monte Cristo drew the young man toward him and held him for a few minutes in close embrace.

  “Well, then, from to-day you will live with me; you can occupy Haydee’s rooms, and my daughter will be replaced by my son.”

  “Haydee?” said Morrel. “What has happened to Haydee?”

  “She left last night.”

  “To leave you for ever?”

  “To wait for me . . . Make ready to join me at Rue des Champs-Élysées and now let me out without anyone seeing me.”

  Chapter LXVII

  SEPARATION

  In the house in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés that Albert de Morcerf had chosen for his mother, the first floor was let to a very mysterious person. The porter himself had never seen this man’s face, for in the winter he buried his chin in one of those red kerchiefs worn by coachmen of the nobility, and in the summer he always blew his nose when he passed the porter’s lodge. Contrary to custom, he was not watched, and it was reported that he was a man of high standing with a great deal of influence, so that his incognito was respected. His visits were generally regular. At four o’clock, winter and summer, he would arrive, and twenty minutes later a carriage drew up at the house. A woman dressed in black or dark blue, and always thickly veiled, would alight, and, passing by the lodge like a shadow, run up the stairs so gently that not a stair creaked under the pressure of her light foot. No one ever asked her whither she was going, and no one ever saw her face. Needless to say, she never went higher than the first floor. She tapped at the door in a peculiar way; it was opened to her and then fastened again. They left the house in the same way; the woman went first and was followed twenty minutes later by the unknown man.

  The day after that on which the Count of Monte Cristo had called on M. Danglars, the day of Valentine’s funeral, the mysterious tenant entered his flat at ten o’clock in the morning, instead of his usual hour. Almost immediately afterward, without the usual interval, a hired cab arrived, and the veiled lady quickly ran up the stairs. The door was opened, and before it could be closed again, she called out, “Oh, Lucien, oh, my dear!”

  In this way the porter who had overheard the exclamation, learned for the first time that his tenant was named Lucien, but as he was a model porter he decided not even to tell his wife.

  “Well, what is the matter, dear?” asked he whose name either trouble or eagerness had forced from the veiled lady’s lips. “Tell me quickly.”

  “Can I depend upon you?”

  “You know you can. But what is the matter? Your note of this morning, so hastily and untidily written, has made me feel very anxious.”

  “A great event has happened,” said the lady. “Monsieur Danglars left last night.”

  “Left! Monsieur Danglars left! Where has he gone to?”

  “I do not know.”

  “How do you mean, you do not know? Has he gone away for good?”

  “No doubt. At ten o’clock last night his horses took him to the Charenton gate, where he found a post-chaise waiting for him. He stepped into it with his valet, telling his coachman that he was going to Fontainebleau. He left me a letter.”

  “A letter?”

  “Yes, read it.” And the Baroness took from her pocket an unsealed letter, which she handed to Debray.

  Before reading it he hesitated a moment as though trying to guess its contents, or rather, as though knowing its contents, he was making up his mind what action to take. He had no doubt come to a decision after a second or two, for he read the note which had caused Mme Danglars so much anxiety and which ran as follows:

  MADAME AND MOST FAITHFUL WIFE . . .

  Debray involuntarily paused and looked at the Baroness, who blushed to the roots of her hair.

  “Read,” she said; and Debray continued:

  When you receive this letter, you will no longer have a husband. Oh, you need not be alarmed, you will only have lost him in the same way in which you have lost your daughter, that is to say, I shall be travelling along one of the thirty or forty roads which lead out of France.

  I owe you an explanation, and, as you are a woman of quick comprehension, I will give it to you. A bill of five million francs was unexpectedly presented to me for repayment this morning, which I effected. This was immediately followed by another bill for the same amount; I postponed this payment until to-morrow, and I am going away in order to escape that to-morrow, which would be too unpleasant for me to endure. You understand me, do you not, my most precious wife? I say you understand because you are as conversant with my business affairs as I am myself, in fact more so, for if I had to say what had become of a good half of my fortune, which until recently was quite a considerable one, I should be unable to do so, whereas I am certain that you, on the contrary, would be able to give a very fair answer. Women have infallible instincts, and, by means of an algebra unknown to man, they can explain the most marvellous things. I only understand my figures: from the day these figures fail me, I know nothing.

  I am leaving you, madame and most prudent wife, and my conscience does not reproach me in the least at doing so. You have your friends, and, to complete your happiness, the liberty I hasten to restore to you.

  There is one more observation I should like to make. As long as I hoped you were working for the good of our firm and the fortune of our daughter, I philosophically closed my eyes to all, but since you have brought about the ruin of our firm, I do not wish to serve as a foundation for another’s fortune. You were rich when I married you, though little respected. Pardon me for speaking with such frankness, but as this is in all likelihood only between ourselves, I do not see why I should choose my words.

  I augmented our fortune, and it continued to increase for fifteen years until unexpected and incomprehensible disasters overtook me, and, through no fault of my own, I find myself a ruined man. You, madame, have only sought to increase your own fortune, and I am convinced you have been successful.

  I leave you then as you were when I married you, rich, though with little honour. Farewell! From to-day I also shall work for myself. Accept my gratitude for the example which you have set me and which I intend following.

  Your very devoted husband,

  BARON DANGLARS7

  The Baroness watched Debray as he read this long and painful letter, and saw that in spite of his self-command the young man had changed colour once or twice. When he had finished reading the letter, he folded it up slowly and reassumed his pensive attitude.

  “Well?” asked Mme Danglars, with very comprehensible anxiety.

  “Well, madame?” repeated Debray mechanically.

  “What do you think of that letter?”

  “It is quite simple, madame. Monsieur Danglars has gone away full of suspicion.”

  “Undoubtedly. But is that all you have to say to me?”

  “I do not understand you,” said Debray, with freezing coolness.

  “He has gone! Gone, never to return.”

  “Oh, do not believe that, Baroness.”

  “I tell you he will never return. Had he thought I should be useful to him, he would have taken me with him. He has left me at Paris because our separation would serve his purpose. It is therefore irrevocable, and I am free for ever,” added Madame Danglars, with the same tone of entreaty.

  But, instead of replying, Debray left her in suspense.

  “What!” she said at last. “You have no answer?”

  “I have but one question to put to you. What do you intend to do?”

  “That is what I was going to ask you,” replied the Baroness, with wildly beating heart. “I ask you to advise me.”


  “Then I advise you to travel,” replied the young man coldly.

  “To travel!” murmured Mme Danglars.

  “Certainly. As Monsieur Danglars says, you are rich and perfectly free. It is absolutely necessary for you to leave Paris, at least I think so, after the double scandal of your daughter’s rejected marriage and your husband’s disappearance. The world must be led to think that you are poor, for opulence in a bankrupt’s wife is an unforgivable sin. You have only to remain in Paris for a fortnight, telling everyone that you have been deserted; relate to your best friends how it all happened, and they will soon spread it abroad. Then you can quit your home, leaving your jewels behind you, and giving up your jointure, and then everyone will be singing your praises because of your disinterestedness. It will be known that your husband has deserted you, and it will be thought that you are poor. I alone know your financial position, and am ready to render you an account as an honest partner.”

  Pale with amazement, the Baroness listened to this discourse with as much despair and terror as Debray had manifested indifference in pronouncing it.

  “Deserted!” she repeated. “Ah, yes, utterly deserted. You are right, monsieur, everyone will know that.”

  “But you are rich, nay, very rich,” continued Debray, taking from his pocket-book some papers which he spread on the table. Mme Danglars suffered him to give her the details of their joint financial transactions, but she did not heed his words. She was fully occupied in stilling the turbulent beating of her heart and in keeping back the tears which she felt rising to the surface. At length her dignity conquered, and, though she may not have succeeded in restraining her heart, she at least prevented the fall of a single tear. It was with indifference that she listened as he recounted how he had multiplied their money, for all she wanted was a tender word to console her for being so rich. But she waited in vain for that word.

  “Now, madame,” Debray continued, “your share amounts to one million three hundred and forty thousand francs, so that you have a fine income, something like sixty thousand francs, which is enormous for a woman who cannot keep up an appearance of wealth, at least not for a year or so. Nevertheless, if this should prove insufficient for your needs, for the sake of the past, I am disposed to offer you the loan of all I possess, that is, one million sixty thousand francs.”