‘Gaspard, you can do as you wish, you are the master here,’ said his wife. ‘But if you take my advice, you’ll say nothing.’
‘This time, I think you may be right, woman,’ said Caderousse.
‘So, you don’t want to tell me?’ the abbé continued.
‘What is the use? If the lad was alive and if he came to me to tell him, once and for all, who were his friends and who his enemies, then I might do it. But he is dead and gone, so you say; he can feel hatred no longer, nor can he take revenge. Let’s draw the blind on all this.’
‘So, you want me to give these people, who you tell me are unworthy and false friends, a gift that was meant to reward their fidelity?’
‘That’s true, you’re right,’ said Caderousse. ‘In any case, what would poor Edmond’s bequest be to them now? A drop of water in the ocean.’
‘Apart from which, those people could crush you with a flick of the hand,’ said his wife.
‘What do you mean? Have they become rich and powerful then?’
‘Don’t you know what happened to them?’
‘No. Tell me.’
Caderousse seemed to reflect for a short time. Then he said: ‘No, in fact the story is too long.’
‘You are quite at liberty to keep it to yourself,’ the abbé said, with an air of the most profound indifference. ‘If so, I shall respect any reservations you may have. Indeed, you are showing yourself to be a truly generous man, so let’s say no more about it. The duty that I have to carry out is a mere formality: I shall sell the diamond.’
He took it out of his pocket, opened the box and displayed the shining stone before Caderousse’s eyes.
‘Come and see it, wife!’ the innkeeper said, his voice breaking.
‘A diamond!’ said La Carconte, getting up and walking quite resolutely down the stairs. ‘What is this diamond then?’
‘Didn’t you hear? It’s a diamond that the boy left us: first of all to his father, then to his three friends: Fernand, Danglars and myself, and to his wife Mercédès. It’s worth fifty thousand francs.’
‘Ah! What a lovely thing!’ she exclaimed.
‘So, one-fifth of the amount belongs to us?’ Caderousse asked.
‘Yes, Monsieur. Plus Dantès’ father’s share, which I feel I have the right to divide among the four of you.’
‘But why among four?’ asked La Carconte.
‘Because the four of you were Edmond’s friends.’
‘Traitors are not friends,’ the woman muttered grimly.
‘Yes, just so,’ said Caderousse. ‘I was only saying as much. It’s almost blasphemy, almost sacrilegious to reward treachery, or even crime.’
‘That’s what you wanted,’ the abbé continued calmly, putting the diamond back into his cassock pocket. ‘Now, give me the address of Edmond’s friends, so that I can carry out his last wishes.’
Sweat was pouring down Caderousse’s forehead. He saw the abbé get up and go towards the door, as if to make sure that his horse was waiting, before coming back.
Caderousse and his wife exchanged an indescribable look.
‘The diamond would belong to us alone,’ Caderousse said.
‘Do you think so?’ his wife replied.
‘A man of the cloth would not try to deceive us.’
‘As you wish. I am having nothing to do with it.’
She returned, shivering, to the staircase. Her teeth were chattering, despite the burning heat of the day. On the top step she paused and said: ‘Think about it, Gaspard!’
‘I’ve made up my mind,’ said Caderousse.
La Carconte went back to her room with a sigh. The ceiling creaked under her feet until she reached her armchair and let herself fall heavily into it.
‘What have you decided to do?’ asked the abbé.
‘To tell you everything.’
‘Quite honestly, I think that’s best,’ said the priest. ‘Not that I want to know anything that you want to hide from me; but if you can help me to distribute the bequest in accordance with the wishes of the departed, that will be best.’
‘I hope so,’ Caderousse replied, his cheeks flushed with greed and expectation.
‘I am listening,’ said the abbé.
‘One moment,’ said Caderousse. ‘We might be interrupted at the most interesting point, which would be a pity. In any case, it’s better that no one knows you have been here.’ He went across to the door of the inn and closed it, putting the bolt across it as an extra precaution.
Meanwhile the abbé had chosen a place from which he could listen in comfort. He was sitting in a corner, in such a way as to be in shadow, while the light fell full on the face of whoever was opposite him. His head bowed, his hands folded – or, rather, clasped together – he prepared to give all his attention to the story.
Caderousse drew up a stool and sat down opposite the abbé.
‘Remember, I’m not forcing you,’ said the quavering voice of La Carconte, as if she had observed the setting of this scene through the floor of the room above.
‘Agreed, agreed,’ said Caderousse. ‘Say no more about it. I take full responsibility.’
And he began his tale.
XXVII
CADEROUSSE’S STORY
‘Before we start, Monsieur,’ said Caderousse, ‘I must beg you to promise me one thing.’
‘Which is?’
‘Which is that, if you should ever make any use of the information I am about to give you, no one should ever know that it came from me, because the men I am about to speak of are rich and powerful; if they were merely to touch me with the tip of a finger, they would shatter me like glass.’
‘Have no fear, my friend,’ said the abbé. ‘I am a priest and confessions die in my heart. Remember that we have no other purpose than to carry out the wishes of our friend in a proper manner, so speak frankly, but without animosity; tell the truth, and the whole truth. I do not know and probably never shall know the people about whom you are to speak. In any case, I am Italian and not French. I belong to God and not to men: I am going to return to my monastery, having left it only to carry out the last wishes of a dying man.’
This positive promise seemed to reassure Caderousse slightly.
‘Well, in that case,’ he said, ‘I want to tell you the truth – I might even say, I am obliged to tell you about those whom poor Edmond considered his sincere and devoted friends.’
‘Let us start with his father, if you would,’ the abbé said. ‘Edmond spoke a great deal to me about the old man, to whom he was most deeply attached.’
‘It is a sad story,’ said Caderousse, shaking his head. ‘You probably know how it started.’
‘Yes, Edmond told me what happened up to the moment of his arrest, in a little cabaret near Marseille.’
‘La Réserve! Good Lord, yes! I can see the whole thing as if it were yesterday.’
‘Was the occasion not his betrothal feast?’
‘Yes: a meal that started in merriment and ended in sorrow. A police commissioner came in, followed by four soldiers, and Dantès was arrested.’
‘From this point onwards I know nothing,’ said the priest. ‘Dantès himself only knew whatever concerned him directly, because he never again saw any of the five people I mentioned to you or heard any news of them.’
‘Well, once Dantès had been taken into custody, Monsieur Morrel went to discover what had happened to him, and the news was not good. The old man went back home alone, wept as he folded up his best suit, spent the rest of the day pacing backwards and forwards in his room and did not go to bed that night: I was living directly below and I could hear him walking around from dusk till dawn. I must tell you that I did not sleep, either, because the poor father’s grief was so painful to me that each of his steps crashed against my heart as if he had really stamped his foot on my chest.
‘The next day, Mercédès came to Marseille to beg Monsieur de Villefort’s protection. She obtained nothing from him, but at the same time she wen
t to see the old man. When she found him so sad and depressed, and learned that he had not been to bed that night or eaten since the day before, she wanted him to go with her so that she could take care of him, but the old man would never agree to it.
‘ “No,” he used to say, “I shall never leave the house, because I am the person that my poor child loves above everything; and, if he comes out of prison, I am the one he will come to see first. What would he say if I was not there, waiting for him?”
‘I could hear all this from the landing, because I would have liked Mercédès to persuade the old man to go with her: I could not get a moment’s rest with his footsteps resounding day after day above my head.’
‘But did you not go up to console the old man yourself?’ the priest asked.
‘Ah, Monsieur,’ said Caderousse, ‘you can only console those who wish to be consoled, and he didn’t. In any case, I don’t know why, but it seemed to me that he felt some disgust at the sight of me. Even so, one night when I could hear him sobbing, I could bear it no longer, so I went up. When I reached the door, he had stopped sobbing and was praying. I can’t tell you, Monsieur, what eloquent words and what heart-rending pleas he found for his prayer: it was more than piety, it was more than grief. I’m no pious hypocrite myself, and I don’t like the Jesuits, and that day I thought: it’s as well, after all, that I am alone and the Good Lord never gave me any children, because if I was a father and I felt the same sorrow as that poor old man, I wouldn’t be able to find all the words that he had for the Good Lord, either in my memory or in my heart, so I would go straight away and throw myself into the sea, to avoid suffering any longer.’
‘Unhappy father!’ the priest muttered.
‘Day by day, he lived more alone and more isolated. Often, Monsieur Morrel and Mercédès came to see him, but his door was shut and, even though I was quite sure he was at home, he would not answer. One day when, exceptionally, he had invited Mercédès in and the poor girl, who was in despair herself, was trying to comfort him, he told her: “Believe me, my dear, he’s dead. Instead of us waiting for him, he is waiting for us; I am happy to think that, being older than you, I shall be the first to see him again.”
‘However good-hearted one is, you understand, one eventually stops seeing people who depress you, so in the end Old Dantès was all alone. From time to time, from then on, I would see only strangers going up to his room, then coming down again with some packet under their coats. I soon guessed what the packets were: he was gradually selling everything he had in order to stay alive. Finally he came to the end of his miserable possessions. He owed three lots of rent and the landlord threatened to evict him. He begged for another week, which he was allowed – I know all this because the landlord would come in to see me after leaving him.
‘The first three days, I heard him walking around as usual, then on the fourth the sounds stopped. I ventured to go up: the door was locked but through the keyhole I could see him, looking so pale and haggard that I thought he must be really ill; so I sent for Monsieur Morrel and went to see Mercédès. They both hurried round. Monsieur Morrel brought a doctor who diagnosed gastroenteritis and prescribed a diet. I was there, Monsieur, and I shall never forget the old man’s smile when he heard that prescription. From then on, he opened his door: he had an excuse for not eating, since the doctor had put him on a diet.’
The abbé gave a sort of groan.
‘You are interested in this story, I think, Monsieur?’ said Caderousse.
‘Yes,’ the abbé replied. ‘It is touching.’
‘Mercédès came back. She found him so changed that once more she wanted to take him to her home. This was also Monsieur Morrel’s advice, and he wanted to take him there by force; but the old man protested so loudly that they were afraid. Mercédès remained at his bedside and Monsieur Morrel went away, indicating to the Catalan that he was leaving a purse on the mantelpiece. But, with the doctor’s prescription to back him up, the old man refused to take anything. Finally, after nine days of despair and abstinence, he died, cursing those who were the cause of his misfortune and telling Mercédès: “If ever you see my Edmond again, tell him that I died with a blessing for him.” ’
The abbé got up, walked twice round the room and brought a trembling hand up to his dry throat.
‘And you think that he died…’
‘Of starvation, Monsieur, of starvation…’ said Caderousse. ‘I swear it, as surely as I am standing here.’
Convulsively the abbé seized the glass of water which was still half full, emptied it at a draught and sat down, red-eyed and pale-cheeked. ‘You must admit that was dreadful misfortune!’ he said hoarsely.
‘All the more so as God had nothing to do with it, and men alone were responsible.’
‘So tell me about these men,’ said the abbé; then he added, in a tone that was almost threatening: ‘but remember that you promised to tell me everything. Who were these men who killed the son with despair and the father with hunger?’
‘Two who were jealous of him, one for love, the other for ambition: Fernand and Danglars.’
‘So, how did this jealousy manifest itself?’
‘They denounced Edmond as a Bonapartist agent.’
‘Which of them denounced him – who was the real guilty party?’
‘Both of them, Monsieur. One wrote the letter, the other sent it.’
‘And where was the letter written?’
‘At La Réserve itself, the day before the wedding.’
‘That’s it, that’s it,’ the abbé muttered. ‘Oh, Faria, Faria! How well you could read the hearts of men and the ways of the world!’
‘I beg your pardon, Monsieur?’
‘Nothing; continue.’
‘It was Danglars who wrote the denunciation with his left hand, so that the writing would not be recognized, and it was Fernand who sent it.’
‘But…’ the abbé exclaimed suddenly, ‘you were there!’
‘Me?’ said Caderousse in astonishment. ‘Who told you that?’
The abbé saw that he had gone too far.
‘No one did,’ he said. ‘But, to know all these details, you must have witnessed the events.’
‘It’s true,’ Caderousse said, his voice choking. ‘I was there.’
‘And you did nothing to stop this outrage? Then you are an accomplice.’
‘Monsieur,’ said Caderousse, ‘they had both made me drink until I was almost senseless. Everything was blurred. I protested as much as a man can in such a state, but they assured me it was a joke they were playing and that nothing would come of it.’
‘The next day, Monsieur! You saw plainly that something did come of it, the next day, but still you said nothing. Yet you were there when he was arrested.’
‘Yes, I was there and I wanted to speak out, to tell everything, but Danglars stopped me. “Suppose that, by chance, he is guilty,” he said. “Suppose he really did stop off at Elba and has a letter to deliver to the Bonapartist committee in Paris: well then, if they find the letter on him, anyone who has spoken out in his favour will be suspected of complicity.”
‘I was afraid of getting mixed up in politics as they were then, I admit it. I said nothing, which was cowardly, I agree, but not a crime.’
‘I understand: you stood idly by, nothing more.’
‘Yes, Monsieur,’ said Caderousse, ‘and I regret it every day of my life. I often ask God to forgive me, I swear, all the more so since this deed, the only act I have ever committed that weighs seriously on my conscience, is no doubt the cause of my present adversity. I am paying for a moment of selfishness; as I always say to La Carconte whenever she complains: “Quiet, woman, it’s God’s will”.’
And Caderousse bowed his head with every sign of genuine remorse.
‘Very well, Monsieur,’ said the abbé. ‘You have been honest. Such a frank confession deserves forgiveness.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Caderousse said, ‘Edmond is dead and he never forgave me.’
‘Perhaps he does know now: they say that the dead know everything.’
There was a moment of silence. The abbé had risen and was walking around, deep in thought. Then he returned and sat down in his place.
‘You spoke to me two or three times of one Monsieur Morrel,’ he said. ‘Who is this man?’
‘The owner of the Pharaon, Dantès’ employer.’
‘What part did he play in this sad business?’
‘The part of an honest, brave and feeling man, Monsieur. He interceded twenty times on Edmond’s behalf. When the emperor returned, he wrote, begged and threatened – so much so that at the Second Restoration he was persecuted as a Bonapartist. Ten times, as I told you, he came to fetch old Dantès and take him to his own house; and the day before he died – or was it the day before that? – as I told you already, he left a purse on the mantelpiece which served to pay the old man’s debts and the expenses of his funeral; so the old fellow could at least die as he had lived, harming no one. I still have the purse, myself, a large one, in red crochet.’
‘Is Monsieur Morrel still alive?’
‘Yes,’ Caderousse replied.
‘In that case,’ said the abbé, ‘he must be a man blessed by God, he must be rich and happy… ?’
Caderousse smiled bitterly.
‘Yes, happy…’ he said, ‘as I am.’
‘Monsieur Morrel is unhappy?’ the abbé exclaimed.
‘He is on the brink of destitution, Monsieur; worse still, of dishonour.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s how it is,’ Caderousse continued. ‘After twenty-five years of work, after acquiring the most honourable place among the merchants of Marseille, Monsieur Morrel is utterly ruined. He has lost five vessels in the past two years, suffered three terrible bankruptcies and has nothing to hope for, except that same ship, the Pharaon that poor Dantès commanded, which is on its way from India with a cargo of cochineal and indigo. If that fails, as the others did, he is lost.’
‘Does this unfortunate man have a wife and children?’ asked the abbé.
‘Yes, he has a wife who has behaved like a saint through all this, and he has a daughter who was going to marry a man whom she loved, but now his family will not allow him to marry a ruined woman. He also has a son, a lieutenant in the army. But, as you will appreciate, this only increases the poor man’s suffering, instead of easing it. If he was by himself, he would blow out his brains and that would be an end to it.’
The Count of Monte Cristo Page 34