He needed to see his gold again, but he felt that he would not at that moment have the strength to bear the sight of it a second time. For a short while he clasped the top of his head with his hands, as if to hold in his reason. Then he set off across the island, not only running away from the beaten track – there are no beaten tracks on Monte Cristo – but altogether aimlessly, scaring the mountain goats and the seabirds by his cries and gesticulations. Then, by a roundabout route, he came back, still doubting, plunged through the first and second caverns, and found himself confronted by this mine of gold and diamonds.
This time he fell to his knees, convulsively clasping both hands to his beating heart and muttering a prayer that God alone could understand.
At length he felt calmer – and yet happier, because it was only from then on that he started to believe in his happiness.
Then he began to count his fortune. There were a thousand gold ingots, each of two or three pounds. Next to these, he piled 25,000 gold écus, each worth perhaps twenty-four francs in today’s money, each bearing the head of Pope Alexander VI or his predecessors – and he observed that the compartment was only half empty. Finally, he measured ten times the capacity of his joined hands in pearls, precious stones and diamonds, many of which were in settings made by the finest goldsmiths of the time, giving them great additional value on top of their intrinsic worth.
He saw the sun go down and daylight fade little by little. He was afraid that someone would surprise him if he stayed in the cave, so he came out holding his gun. His supper was a piece of ship’s biscuit and a few mouthfuls of wine. Then he replaced the stone and lay down on it, sleeping for a few hours with his body covering the entrance to the cave. This night was both terrible and delicious, a night such as this man of powerful feelings had experienced only once or twice before in his life.
XXV
THE STRANGER
Day broke. Dantès had been waiting for it for a long time. At the sun’s first rays, he got up and, as he had done on the previous day, climbed to the highest point on the island to look around. As before, everything was deserted.
Edmond went down, lifted the rock, filled his pockets with precious stones and replaced the boards and the iron bindings of the casket as best he could; then he covered it with earth, which he trampled down and scattered with sand, to make the newly turned soil look similar to the rest. He went out of the cave, replaced the entrance, piled stones of various sizes around it, put earth into the gaps, planted myrtle and heather in them, and watered these new plants to make them seem well established. Finally, he covered the traces of his footprints around the spot and waited impatiently for the return of his companions. There was no sense now in spending his time looking at this gold and these diamonds, and staying on Monte Cristo like a dragon guarding a useless treasure: he must return to life and take his place among men and in society, with the rank, influence and power that are bestowed in this world by wealth – that first and greatest of forces that a human being can control.
The smugglers returned on the sixth day. From afar, Dantès recognized the Jeune-Amélie by its cut and its gait: it was limping into port like a wounded Philoctetes. When his companions stepped ashore, Dantès told them that he was considerably better, though he continued to complain. Then in turn he listened to the smugglers’ tales. They had certainly been successful, but hardly had the cargo been off-loaded than they learned that a brig of the excise from Toulon had just left harbour and was heading in their direction. They took flight at once, regretting that Dantès, who knew how to get so much greater speed out of the vessel, was not there to guide them. The following boat soon came into view, but they managed to escape under cover of night and by rounding the Cap Corse. In short, the voyage had not been unsuccessful and everyone, particularly Jacopo, expressed regret that Dantès had not been with them, so that he could have his share of the profits they had brought back, a share which amounted to fifty piastres.
Edmond remained impassive. He did not even smile when they emphasized how much he would have benefited by leaving the island; and, since the Jeune-Amélie had called at Monte Cristo only to pick him up, he embarked the same evening and went with the boat to Leghorn. There he went to visit a Jew and sold four of his smallest diamonds for five thousand francs apiece. The Jew might have enquired how a mere seaman came into possession of such things, but he was careful not to ask; he was making a thousand francs on each diamond.
The next day Dantès bought a new boat which he gave to Jacopo, together with a hundred piastres so that he could engage a crew, all on condition that Jacopo went to Marseille and asked for news of an old man called Louis Dantès, living in the Allées de Meilhan, and a young woman from the Catalan village, named Mercédès.
Now it was Jacopo’s turn to think he was dreaming. Edmond told him that he had become a sailor on an impulse, because his family would not give him money to support himself; but that on arriving in Leghorn he had received a bequest from an uncle who had made him his sole heir. This story seemed plausible enough, in view of Dantès’ superior upbringing, and Jacopo did not for a moment doubt that his former comrade had told him the truth.
In addition, since Edmond’s contract of service with the Jeune-Amélie had ended, he said farewell to the master, who at first tried to dissuade him but, having learnt the same story as Jacopo about the inheritance, abandoned hope of overcoming his former employee’s resolve.
The next day Jacopo set sail for Marseille; he was to pick Edmond up on Monte Cristo. The same day Dantès himself left without saying where he was going, bidding farewell to the crew of the Jeune-Amélie with a splendid present and to the master with the promise that he would hear from him again one day.
Dantès was going to Genoa.
He arrived at the moment when they were testing a little yacht ordered by an Englishman who, having heard it said that the Genoese were the best boat-builders in the Mediterranean, had decided to have a yacht built there. He had settled on a price of forty thousand francs; Dantès offered sixty, on condition that the boat was delivered to him that same day. The Englishman had gone on a trip to Switzerland while the boat was being completed. He was not due to return for three weeks or a month, so the boat-builder reckoned he would have time to start building another. Dantès took him to a Jewish banker, who led them behind his shop and counted out sixty thousand francs for the boat-builder.
The latter offered Dantès his services to find a crew, but Dantès thanked him and said that he was used to sailing by himself and that the only thing he wanted was for the man to build him, in the cabin behind the bed, a secret cupboard with three hidden compartments in it. He gave the measurements for the compartments, and they were completed by the following day.
Two hours later Dantès sailed out of Genoa, followed by the stares of a crowd of inquisitive onlookers who wanted to see this Spanish gentleman who was in the habit of sailing on his own.
He succeeded brilliantly: with the help of the rudder, and without needing to leave it, he put his boat through its paces, so that it seemed like an intelligent being, ready to obey the slightest command. Silently, Dantès agreed that the Genoese deserved their reputation as the finest boat-builders in the world.
The crowd looked after the little ship until it was out of sight, then fell to discussing where it was going. Some said Corsica, others Elba; there were those ready to bet that he was heading for Spain, but some argued just as warmly that he was en route for Africa. No one thought to mention the island of Monte Cristo.
Dantès was bound for Monte Cristo.
He reached the island around the end of the second day. The ship handled superbly and he had covered the distance in thirty-five hours. He recognized every inch of the coast and, instead of making for the usual port, he dropped anchor in the little creek.
The island was deserted. No one appeared to have landed there since Dantès was last there. He went to his treasure. Everything was just as he had left it.
By the ne
xt day his huge fortune had been transported on to the yacht and shut up in the three secret compartments of the hidden cupboard.
He waited another week. During this time, he sailed his yacht around the island, studying it as a horseman studies his mount; by the end he knew all its qualities and its defects and had promised himself to enhance the former and remedy the latter.
On the eighth day he saw a little ship sailing at full speed towards the island, and recognized Jacopo’s vessel. He made a signal, Jacopo replied, and two hours later the ship had drawn alongside the yacht.
There was bad news in reply to both Edmond’s questions. Old Dantès was dead; Mercédès had vanished.
Edmond’s face remained impassive as he listened to this information, but he immediately disembarked, not allowing anyone to follow him.
Two hours later he returned. Two men from Jacopo’s vessel joined him on his yacht to help him sail it and he gave orders to make for Marseille. He was not surprised at the death of his father; but what had become of Mercédès?
Edmond had not been able to give detailed enough instructions to another party without divulging his secret; in any event, there was further information that he wanted to obtain and for which he could rely only on himself. His mirror had informed him in Leghorn that he ran no danger of being recognized and, moreover, he now had at his disposal every means to disguise himself. So one morning the yacht, followed by the little ship, sailed proudly into the port of Marseille and stopped directly in front of the place from which, on that fatal evening, they had set sail for the Château d’If.
Dantès shuddered a little at the sight of a gendarme being rowed out towards him. But, with the perfect self-assurance that he had acquired, he handed over an English passport which he had bought in Leghorn. With this foreign document, far more highly respected in France than our own, he had no difficulty in landing.
The first person he saw when he set foot on the Canebière was a sailor who had served under him on the Pharaon, as if placed there to reassure Dantès as to the changes which had taken place in him. He went straight up to the man and asked him a number of questions, to which he replied without the slightest hint in his words or his expression that he recalled ever having seen the man who was talking to him.
Dantès gave the sailor a coin to thank him for the information, only to hear the man running after him a moment later. He turned around.
‘Excuse me, Monsieur,’ the sailor said. ‘You must have made a mistake. You doubtless thought you were giving me forty sous, but in reality this is a double napoléon.’1
‘Yes, indeed, my friend,’ said Dantès, ‘I was mistaken; but as your honesty deserves a reward, here is a second coin which I beg you to accept, and drink to my health with your friends.’
The sailor looked at Edmond in such astonishment that he did not even consider thanking him, but watched him walk away, saying: ‘Here’s some nabob straight off the boat from India.’
Dantès carried on, but every step he took brought some new emotion to his heart. All his childhood memories, those memories that are never effaced, but remain ever-present in one’s thoughts, lay here, rising up from each street corner, in every square and at every crossroads. When he reached the end of the Rue de Noailles and saw the Allées de Meilhan, he felt his knees give way and nearly fell under the wheels of a carriage. At last he reached the house in which he had lived with his father. The aristoloches and the nasturtiums had vanished from the attic roof where the old man’s hands used once to trellis them so carefully.
He leant against a tree and stayed for a while, thinking and looking up at the top floor of the mean little house. Finally he went across to the door, stepped inside and asked if there was no lodging vacant. Even though it was occupied, he insisted on going to visit the one on the fifth floor, until finally the concierge agreed to go up and ask the people living in it whether a stranger could take a look at their two rooms. The little lodging was inhabited by a young man and woman who had been married only a week. When he saw this young couple, Dantès gave a deep sigh.
As it happened, there was nothing to remind Dantès of his father’s apartment. The wallpaper had changed and all the old furniture, Edmond’s childhood friends, which he recalled in every detail, had disappeared. Only the walls were the same.
He turned towards the bed, which the new tenants had kept in the same place. Involuntarily his eyes filled with tears: this was where the old man must have expired with his son’s name on his lips.
The young couple looked in astonishment at this stern-faced man down whose otherwise impassive cheeks two large tears were falling. But as every sorrow inspires some awe, they did not question the stranger, but stepped back to let him weep at his ease. When he left, they went with him to the door and told him that he could come back whenever he wished: there would always be a welcome in their humble abode.
Reaching the floor below, Edmond paused in front of another door and asked if the tailor, Caderousse, lived there. But the concierge told him that the person he mentioned had failed in business and now kept a little inn on the Bellegarde road in Beaucaire.
Dantès went down to the street, asked for the address of the owner of the house in the Allées de Meilhan, went to visit him and was announced as Lord Wilmore – which was the name and title on his passport. He bought the house for twenty-five thousand francs, which was at least ten thousand more than it was worth; but if it had stood at half a million, Dantès would have bought it for that.
The same day, the young couple on the fifth floor were informed by the notary who had drawn up the contract that the new owner was offering them any apartment in the house, at no additional rent, provided they would let him have the two rooms that they then occupied.
These strange events preoccupied all the regulars in the Allées de Meilhan for more than a week and were the subject of a thousand conjectures, none of which proved correct. But what muddled everyone and confused every mind was that, on the same evening, this same man who had been seen going into the house in the Allées de Meilhan was observed walking in the little Catalan village and going into a poor fisherman’s house, where he stayed for more than an hour asking for news of several people who were either dead or who had vanished more than fifteen or sixteen years earlier.
Next day, the people among whom he had made these enquiries received a present of a brand-new Catalan boat, with two seine nets and a trawl net. The good people would have liked to thank the generous enquirer, but he had been seen, after leaving them, giving orders to a sailor, mounting a horse and leaving Marseille through the Porte d’Aix.
XXVI
AT THE SIGN OF THE PONT DU GARD
Those who have walked across the south of France, as I have done, may have noticed an inn, situated between Bellegarde and Beaucaire, roughly half-way between the village and the town (though rather closer to Beaucaire than to Bellegarde), outside which hangs a crude painting of the Pont du Gard on a metal plate which creaks at the slightest breath of wind. This little inn, lying parallel to the course of the Rhône, is situated on the left side of the road with its back to the river. It has what in Languedoc is described as a garden: that is to say that the side opposite the one through which travellers enter overlooks an enclosure in which a few stunted olive-trees lurk beside some wild figs, their leaves silvered with dust. Between them, the only vegetables that grow here are some heads of garlic, some peppers and some shallots. Finally, in one corner, like a forgotten sentry, a tall umbrella pine rises in melancholy fashion on its pliable trunk, while its crest, fanned out, blisters under thirty degrees of sunshine.
All these trees, large or small, are naturally bent in the direction of the mistral, one of the three scourges of Provence, the two others, as you may or may not know, being the River Durance and Parliament.
Here and there in the surrounding plain, which is like a great lake of dust, stand a few stalks of wheat that the farmers hereabouts must surely grow out of mere curiosity. There is a cicada p
erched on every one of these stalks which pursues any traveller who has strayed into this wilderness with its high-pitched, monotonous call.
For perhaps the last seven or eight years this little inn had been kept by a man and woman whose only staff were a chambermaid called Trinette and a stableboy answering to the name of Pacaud. In fact, these two assistants had amply sufficed for the task, since a canal between Beaucaire and Aigues-Mortes had ensured the victory of water over road haulage, and barges had taken the place of the stagecoach.
As if to torment still further the unfortunate innkeeper, who was ruined by it, the canal ran between the Rhône – which supplied it with water – and the road – which it drained of traffic – only some hundred yards from the inn which we have just briefly (but accurately) described.
The innkeeper was a man of forty to forty-five, tall, dry, nervous, a typical Southerner with his deep-set, shining eyes, his hooked nose and his teeth as white as those of some beast of prey. Though his hair had felt the first breath of age, it could not make up its mind to go grey: like the beard that he wore following the line of his jaw, it was thick, curly and spattered with just a few strands of white. His complexion, naturally swarthy, was covered by yet a new layer of brown from the habit he had adopted of standing from morning to night on the threshold of his door to see if some customer might not arrive, either on foot or by carriage. His expectations were almost invariably disappointed; but he stood there still, with no protection against the burning heat of the sun other than a red handkerchief knotted about his head, like a Spanish mule-driver. This man was our old acquaintance, Gaspard Caderousse.
His wife, in contrast, whose maiden name had been Madeleine Radelle, was pale, thin and sickly. She came from the region around Arles and had preserved some traces of the traditional beauty of the women of that area, while seeing her features slowly deteriorate, ravaged by one of those persistent fevers which are so common among the peoples who live near the ponds of Aigues-Mortes and the swamps of the Camargue. In consequence she spent most of her time seated, shivering, in her room on the first floor, either stretched out in an armchair or leaning against her bed, while her husband kept his customary watch at the door. He was all the more happy to spend his time there, since whenever he found himself in the same room as his better – or certainly bitter – half, she would harass him with unending lamentations on her fate, to which her husband would normally only respond with these philosophical words: ‘Quiet, La Carconte! It’s God’s will.’
The Count of Monte Cristo Page 32