A man of between forty-five and fifty years of age came in; to Franz he was the spitting image of the smuggler who had shown him into the cave, but he gave not the slightest sign of recognition. He understood that the man was under orders.
‘Monsieur Bertuccio,’ the count said, ‘I asked you yesterday to obtain a window for me overlooking the Piazza del Popolo; did you take care of it?’
‘Yes, Excellency,’ the steward answered. ‘But we left it very late.’
‘What!’ the count said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Didn’t I tell you that I wished to have one?’
‘And Your Excellency does have one, the same that was rented to Prince Lubaniev; but I was obliged to pay a hundred…’
‘Very good, very good, Monsieur Bertuccio, you may spare these gentlemen all the housekeeping details; you managed to obtain the window, which is all that matters. Give the address of the house to the coachman and be ready on the stairs to conduct us there. That’s all; you may go.’
The steward bowed and took a step towards the door.
‘One moment!’ the count said. ‘Be so good as to ask Pastrini if he has received the tavoletta and if he could send me the programme of the execution.’
‘No need,’ said Franz, taking his notebook out of his pocket. ‘I have seen the tablet myself and copied it down: here it is.’
‘Splendid. In that case, Bertuccio, you may go, I shan’t need you any more. Just get them to tell us when luncheon is served. Will these gentlemen,’ he asked, turning to the two friends, ‘do me the honour of taking lunch with me?’
‘But, Monsieur le Comte,’ said Albert, ‘that would really be imposing on you.’
‘Not at all, on the contrary, you would oblige me greatly; and one or other, or perhaps both of you, can return the favour one day in Paris. Monsieur Bertuccio, ask them to lay three places.’
He took the notebook from Franz’s hand.
‘So, we were saying…’ he continued in the same tone of voice as though he were reading the personal column, ‘that “on Tuesday the twenty-second of February, the first day of carnival, by order of the Court of La Rota, the sentence of death will be carried out in the Piazza del Popolo on Andrea Rondolo, guilty of murder against the most respectable and venerated person of don Cesare Terlini, Canon of the Church of Saint John Lateran, and Peppino, alias Rocca Priori, found guilty of complicity with the abominable bandit Luigi Vampa and his followers…” Hum! “The first will be mazzolato, the second decapitato.” Yes, this is what was originally intended, but I think that since yesterday there has been a change in the order and conduct of the ceremony.’
‘Huh!’ said Franz.
‘Yes, I spent the evening yesterday with Cardinal Rospigliosi and they were speaking of some kind of stay of execution having been granted to one of the two condemned men.’
‘To Andrea Rondolo?’ asked Franz.
‘No…’ the count replied casually. ‘To the other…’ (he looked at the notebook as if to remind himself of the name) ‘… to Peppino, alias Rocca Priori. That means you will be denied a guillotining, but you still have the mazzolata, which is a very curious form of torture when you see it for the first time – or even the second; while the other, which in any case you must know, is too simple, too unvaried. There is nothing unexpected in it. The mandaïa makes no mistakes, its hand doesn’t shake, it doesn’t miss and it doesn’t make thirty attempts before succeeding, like the soldier who beheaded the Comte de Chalais1 and who had perhaps been particularly chosen for this victim by Richelieu. Ah, come now,’ said the count in a scornful tone, ‘don’t talk to me about Europeans where torture is concerned. They understand nothing about it. With them, cruelty is in its infancy – or perhaps its old age.’
‘Truly, Monsieur le Comte,’ said Franz, ‘anyone would think you had made a comparative study of executions in different parts of the world.’
‘There are very few types at least that I have not seen,’ the count replied coldly.
‘Did it please you to witness these horrible spectacles?’
‘My first feeling was repulsion, my second, indifference, and my third, curiosity.’
‘Curiosity! The idea is terrible, isn’t it?’
‘Why? There is only one serious matter to be considered in life, and that is death. So! Isn’t it worth one’s curiosity to study the different ways that the soul may leave the body and how, according to the character, the temperament, or even the local customs of a country, individuals face up to that supreme journey from being to nothingness? As for me, I can assure you of one thing: the more you have seen others die, the easier it becomes to die oneself. So, in my opinion, death may be a torment, but it is not an expiation.’
‘I am not sure that I understand,’ said Franz. ‘Please explain. I can’t tell you how interested I am in what you say.’
‘Listen,’ said the count, his face flushing with the gall of hatred as another face might be coloured with blood. ‘If a man had murdered your father, your mother, your mistress, or any of those beings who, when they are torn from your heart, leave an eternal void and a wound that can never be staunched, and if he had subjected them to unspeakable torture and endless torment, would you consider that society had accorded you sufficient reparation just because the blade of the guillotine had travelled between the base of the murderer’s occipital and his trapezius muscles, and because the person who had caused you to feel years of moral suffering had experienced a few seconds of physical pain?’
‘I know,’ Franz said. ‘Human justice is inadequate as a consolation: it can spill blood for blood, that’s all. But one must only ask it for what is possible, not for anything more.’
‘Moreover, the example that I give you is a material one,’ the count went on; ‘one where society, attacked by the death of an individual among the mass of individuals which composes it, avenges that death by another. But are there not millions of sufferings which can rend the entrails of a man without society taking the slightest heed of them or providing even the inadequate means of reparation that we spoke of just now? Are there not crimes for which impalement à la turque, or Persian burial alive, or the whips of the Iraqis would be too mild a torment, but which society in its indifference leaves unpunished? Answer me: are there no such crimes?’
‘Yes,’ Franz replied. ‘It is precisely to punish them that we tolerate duelling.’
‘Ah, duelling!’ exclaimed the count. ‘There’s a fine way, I must say, to achieve one’s end, when the end is vengeance! A man has stolen your mistress, a man has seduced your wife, a man has dishonoured your daughter. He has taken an entire life, a life that had the right to expect from God the share of happiness that He promises to every human being in creating us, and turned it into a mere existence of pain, misery and infamy; and you consider yourself revenged because you have run this man through with your sword or put a bullet in his head, after he has turned your mind to delirium and your heart to despair? Come, come! Even without considering that he is often the one who comes out of this contest on top, purged in the eyes of the world and in some respect pardoned by God… No, no,’ the count went on, ‘if I ever had to take my revenge, that is not how I should do it.’
‘You mean, you disapprove of duelling? You mean, you wouldn’t fight a duel?’ Albert asked, joining the conversation and astonished at hearing anyone express such an odd point of view.
‘Oh, certainly!’ said the count. ‘Make no mistake: I should fight a duel for a trifle, an insult, a contradiction, a slap – and all the more merrily for knowing that, thanks to the skill I have acquired in all physical exercises and long experience of danger, I should be more or less certain of killing my opponent. Oh, yes, indeed! I should fight a duel for any of these things; but in return for a slow, deep, infinite, eternal pain, I should return as nearly as possible a pain equivalent to the one inflicted on me. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as they say in the East, those men who are the elect of creation, and who have learnt to make a life of dreams and
a paradise of reality.’
‘But, with such an outlook,’ Franz told the count, ‘which makes you judge and executioner in your own case, it would be hard for you to confine yourself to actions that would leave you forever immune to the power of the law. Hatred is blind and anger deaf: the one who pours himself a cup of vengeance is likely to drink a bitter draught.’
‘Yes, if he is poor and clumsy; no, if he is a millionaire and adroit. In any case, if the worst comes to the worst, he can only suffer the ultimate penalty which we mentioned just now: the one that the philanthropic French Revolution put in place of quartering and the wheel. Well, then! What does the penalty matter if he is avenged? In truth, I am almost irritated at the fact that, quite probably, this miserable Peppino will not be decapitato, as they say; you’d see how long it takes, and whether it’s really worth bothering about. But, gentlemen, this is indeed an odd topic of discussion for carnival time. How did we get round to it? Ah, yes, I remember! You asked for a seat at my window. Very well, yes, you shall have one. But first, let’s eat: I see that they have come to tell us we are served.’
A servant had opened one of the four doors of the drawing-room and at this pronounced the sacramental words: ‘Al suo commando!’ The two young men got up and went through to the dining-room.
During lunch, which was excellent and served with the greatest refinement, Franz tried to read in Albert’s eyes the impression that he was sure their host’s words would have left on him. But, whether it was that, with his habitual insouciance, he had not paid great attention to them, or that the Count of Monte Cristo’s concession on the matter of duelling had reconciled him to the man, or finally that prior events which we have related, and which were known only to Franz, had doubled the effect that the count’s theories had on him, he did not perceive that his friend was in the slightest concerned. On the contrary, he was paying the meal the compliment one would expect from a man who has been condemned for four or five months to suffer Italian cooking (which is among the worst in the world). As for the count, he barely touched each dish: one would think that courtesy alone had induced him to sit down with his guests and that he was waiting for them to leave, to have himself brought some rare or special delicacy.
Franz was involuntarily reminded of the terror that the count had inspired in the Contessa G—, and her unshakeable conviction that the man whom he had shown her in the opposite box at the theatre was a vampire.
When lunch was finished, Franz took out his watch.
‘What are you doing?’ the count asked.
‘You must excuse us, Monsieur le Comte,’ Franz replied, ‘but we still have a thousand matters to attend to.’
‘What matters?’
‘We have no disguises, and today a disguise is obligatory.’
‘Don’t worry about that. I believe that we have a private room at the Piazza del Popolo. I shall have any costumes that you require brought there and we shall put on our masks as we go.’
‘After the execution?’ Franz cried.
‘Of course: after, during, before… as you wish.’
‘In front of the scaffold?’
‘The scaffold is part of the entertainment.’
‘Excuse me, Count,’ said Franz, ‘I’ve been thinking. I am most grateful to you for your generosity to us, and I shall be happy to accept a place in your carriage and a seat at the window of the Palazzo Rospoli, and you can feel free to give my place at the window in the Piazza del Popolo to someone else.’
‘But I must warn you, you will be missing something well worth seeing,’ the count replied.
‘You will tell me about it afterwards,’ Franz went on. ‘I am certain that the story will impress me almost as much from your mouth as it would if I were to see the events myself. In any case, I have more than once thought about watching an execution, but I have never been able to make up my mind to it. What about you, Albert?’
‘I did once,’ said the vicomte. ‘I saw them execute Castaing,2 but I think I was a little drunk that day. It was on my last day at school, and we spent the night in some cabaret or other.’
‘Come now, just because you have not done something in Paris, that is no reason for not doing it abroad. When one travels, one does so to learn: a change of place should mean a change of scenery. Imagine how you will look when people ask you: “How do they execute criminals in Rome?” and you have to answer: “I don’t know.” Then, they say that the condemned man is an infamous rogue, a maniac who took a gridiron and beat to death a good priest who had brought him up as his own son. Just think! When you kill a man of the cloth, you should at least use a more appropriate implement than a gridiron, especially when this priest could be your father. If you were travelling through Spain, you would go and see a bullfight, wouldn’t you? Well, imagine that we are going to see a fight; imagine the Ancient Romans and their Circus, those wild-beast hunts in which they killed three hundred lions and a hundred men. Remember the eighty thousand spectators clapping their hands, the virtuous matrons who would take their unmarried daughters, and those delightful Vestal Virgins whose pure white hands would give a charming little sign with the thumb that meant: “Come on, don’t be lazy! Finish him off, that man who is already three-quarters dead!” ’
‘Are you going, Albert?’ Franz asked.
‘Certainly, my dear fellow. I was like you, but the count’s eloquence has convinced me.’
‘Well, then, let’s go, if that’s what you want,’ Franz said. ‘But on my way to the Piazza del Popolo, I want to go by the Corso. Can we do that, Count?’
‘On foot we can, but not in the carriage.’
‘In that case, I’ll go on foot.’
‘Do you have to go via the Corso?’
‘Yes, there is something there I need to see.’
‘Then let’s go by the Corso and send the carriage by the Strada del Babuino, to wait for us in the Piazza del Popolo. As it happens, I shall not be sorry to go down the Corso, to see if some orders I gave have been carried out.’
‘Excellency,’ the servant said, opening the door, ‘a man dressed as a penitent has come to see you.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said the count. ‘I know who that is. Gentlemen, pray go back into the drawing-room, where you will find some excellent Havana cigars on the table. I shall join you shortly.’
The two young men got up and went out through one door while the count, after excusing himself again, went out of the other. Albert, who was a keen smoker and considered it no small sacrifice, since he had come to Italy, to have been deprived of the cigars that he smoked in Paris, went over to the table and exclaimed with joy on discovering some genuine puros.
‘So,’ Franz asked him, ‘what do you think of the Count of Monte Cristo?’
‘What do I think!’ Albert said, clearly astonished that his friend should even ask such a question. ‘I think he is a charming man, a wonderful host, someone who has seen a lot, studied a lot and thought a lot, who belongs like Brutus to the Stoic school, and –’ he added, allowing a voluptuous puff of smoke to escape from his lips and spiral up towards the ceiling, ‘someone who, in addition to all that, has the most excellent cigars.’
This was Albert’s opinion; and, since Franz knew that Albert claimed not to form any opinion on either men or things except after giving it deep thought, he did not try to change this one. ‘But,’ he said, ‘have you noticed something unusual?’
‘What’s that?’
‘How closely he looks at you.’
‘At me?’
‘Yes, at you.’
Albert thought for a moment.
‘Ah!’ he said, with a sigh. ‘There’s nothing surprising about that. I have been away from Paris for nearly a year and I must be dressed in the most outlandish fashion. I expect the count mistook me for a provincial: please take the first opportunity, I beg you, to tell him that this is not so.’
Franz smiled.
A moment later the count came back. ‘Here I am, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘entirely
at your disposal. I’ve given the orders: the carriage will go to the Piazza del Popolo by its route and we by ours, along the Corso, if you wish. Please help yourself to some of those cigars, Monsieur de Morcerf.’
‘By gad, yes, with great pleasure,’ said Albert. ‘Because those Italian cigars of yours are even worse than the ones sold by the state monopoly at home. When you come to Paris, I shall have the opportunity to repay you for all this.’
‘I shall not refuse your invitation. I hope to go to Paris one day and, since you give me leave to do so, I shall knock on your door. Now, Messieurs, come, we have no time to lose. It is half-past twelve. Let’s be going.’
All three went downstairs. There the coachman took his master’s latest orders and set off down the Via del Babuino, while the pedestrians went up through the Piazza di Spagna and along the Via Frattina, which led them directly between the Palazzo Fiano and the Palazzo Rospoli. Franz kept looking at the windows of the latter: he had not forgotten the signal agreed in the Colosseum between the man in the cloak and the Trasteveran.
‘Which windows are yours?’ he asked the count in the most natural manner he could.
‘The last three,’ he replied, with an entirely unaffected lack of concern, for he could not have guessed the reason for the question.
Franz immediately looked at the windows. Those on each side were hung with yellow damask and the one in the middle in white damask with a red cross. The man in the cloak had kept his word to the other, and there was no longer any doubt: the man in the cloak was the count.
The three windows were still empty.
Meanwhile on all sides preparations were being made, chairs were being set out, scaffolding put up and windows decorated. The masks could appear and the carriages start to drive around only at the sound of a bell, but you could sense the masks behind every window and the carriages behind every door.
Franz, Albert and the count continued on their way down the Corso. As they approached the Piazza del Popolo, the crowd became more dense and, above the heads of the people, they could see two things: the obelisk, surmounted by a cross, that stands in the centre of the square, and, in front of the obelisk, precisely at the point where the lines of sight of the three streets, Babuino, Corso and Ripetta, meet, the two highest beams of the scaffold with, burning between them, the rounded blade of the mandaïa.
The Count of Monte Cristo Page 50