‘Does this mean,’ Villefort said, increasingly amazed and thinking he must be speaking to a visionary or a madman, ‘that you consider yourself to be like one of these extraordinary beings you have just mentioned?’
‘Why not?’ Monte Cristo asked coldly.
‘Please forgive me, Monsieur,’ Villefort continued, in bewilderment, ‘if when I called on you I was not aware that I was to be introduced to a man whose understanding and mind extend so far beyond the ordinary knowledge and usual cast of thought of mankind. It is not common among us, unfortunate victims as we are of the corrupting effects of civilization, for gentlemen who, like yourself, possess a vast fortune – at least, that is what I am told; but please do not think that I am prying, only repeating – as I say it is not customary for those who enjoy the privilege of wealth to waste their time in social speculation and philosophical dreams, which are rather designed to console those whom fate has deprived of the goods of the earth.’
‘Well, well, Monsieur,’ the count replied, ‘have you reached your present eminent position without admitting that there may be exceptions, or even without encountering any? Do you never exercise your mind, which must surely require both subtlety and assurance, in trying to guess in an instant what kind of man you have before you? Should a jurist not be, not the best applier of the law or the cleverest interpreter of legal quibbles, but a steel probe for the testing of hearts and a touchstone against which to assay the gold that every soul contains in greater or lesser amounts?’
‘Monsieur,’ said Villefort, ‘I have to admit, I am bewildered: on my word, I have never heard anyone speak as you do.’
‘That is because you have constantly remained enclosed in the realm of general conditions, never daring to rise up on beating wings into the higher spheres that God has peopled with invisible and exceptional beings.’
‘Are you saying that such spheres exist and that these exceptional and invisible beings mingle among us?’
‘Why not? Do you see the air that you breathe, without which you could not live?’
‘So we cannot see these beings of whom you speak?’
‘Indeed we can, we can see them when God permits them to take material form. You touch them, you rub elbows with them, you speak to them and they answer you.’
‘Ah!’ Villefort said with a smile. ‘I must confess that I should like to be told when one of these beings was in contact with me.’
‘You have your wish, Monsieur. You were told a moment ago and I am telling you again.’
‘You mean that you… ?’
‘Yes, Monsieur. I am one of those exceptional beings and I believe that, before today, no man has found himself in a position similar to my own. The kingdoms of kings are confined, either by mountains or rivers, or by a change in customs or by a difference of language; but my kingdom is as great as the world, because I am neither Italian, nor French, nor Hindu, nor American, nor a Spaniard; I am a cosmopolitan. No country can claim to be my birthplace. God alone knows in what region I shall die. I adopt every custom, I speak every tongue. You think I am French, is that not so? Because I speak French as fluently and as perfectly as you do. Well, now. Ali, my Nubian, thinks me an Arab. Bertuccio, my steward, takes me for a Roman. Haydée, my slave, believes I am Greek. In this way, you see, being of no country, asking for the protection of no government and acknowledging no man as my brother, I am not restrained or hampered by a single one of the scruples that tie the hands of the powerful or the obstacles that block the path of the weak. I have only two enemies: I shall not say two conquerors, because with persistence I can make them bow to my will: they are distance and time. The third and most awful is my condition as a mortal man. Only that can halt me on the path I have chosen before I have reached my appointed goal. Everything else is planned for. I have foreseen all those things that men call the vagaries of fate: ruin, change and chance. If some of them might injure me, none could defeat me. Unless I die, I shall always be what I am. This is why I am telling you things that you have never heard, even from the mouths of kings, because kings need you and other men fear you. Who does not say to himself, in a society as ridiculously arranged as our own: “Perhaps one day I shall come up against the crown prosecutor”?’
‘But, Monsieur, you too might say that yourself because, as long as you live in France, you are automatically subject to French law.’
‘I know that,’ Monte Cristo replied. ‘But when I have to go to a country, I begin by studying, by methods peculiar to me, all those persons from whom I may have something to hope or to fear. I get to know them quite well, perhaps even better than they know themselves. The result of this is that the crown prosecutor with whom I had to deal, whoever he might be, would certainly be more put out by it than I would be myself.’
‘By which you mean,’ Villefort said hesitantly, ‘that, in your view, human nature being weak, every man has committed some… error or other?’
‘Some error… or crime,’ Monte Cristo replied casually.
‘And that you alone, among these men whom, as you yourself said, you do not recognize as your brothers…’ (Villefort’s voice sounded slightly strained) ‘you alone are perfect?’
‘Not perfect,’ the count replied. ‘Just impenetrable. But let us change the subject, Monsieur, if this one displeases you. I am no more threatened by your justice than you are by my second sight.’
‘No, no!’ Villefort said quickly, doubtless afraid that he might appear to be abandoning the field. ‘Certainly not! With your brilliant and almost sublime conversation, you have elevated me above ordinary matters: we were no longer merely chatting, but discoursing. Well, now, you know theologians lecturing at the Sorbonne or philosophers in their disputations must sometimes tell one another painful truths. Imagine that we were debating social theology or theological philosophy, and I would say this, brutal though it is: brother, you are giving in to pride. You are above other men, but above you is God.’
‘Above everything, Monsieur!’ Monte Cristo replied, in a voice of such deep emotion that Villefort shuddered involuntarily. ‘I have my pride for men, those serpents always ready to rise up against anyone who overtakes them, without crushing them beneath his foot. But I lay down that pride before God, who brought me out of nothingness to make me what I am.’
‘In that case, Monsieur le Comte, I admire you,’ Villefort said – for the first time in this strange dialogue addressing the foreigner, whom he had until then called simply ‘Monsieur’, by his aristocratic title. ‘Yes, I say, if you are really strong, if you are really a superior being, really holy or impenetrable – you are quite right, the two amount virtually to the same thing – then revel in your magnificence – that is the law of domination. But do you have some kind of ambition?’
‘Yes, I do have one.’
‘What is it?’
‘Like every other man, at least once in his life, I too have been carried up by Satan to the highest mountain on earth. Once there, he showed me the whole world and, as he did to Christ, said to me: “Now, Son of Man, what do you want if you are to worship me?” So I thought for a long time, because in reality a terrible ambition had long been devouring my soul. Then I answered him: “Listen, I have always heard speak of Providence, yet I have never seen her or anything that resembles her, which makes me think that she does not exist. I want to be Providence, because the thing that I know which is finest, greatest and most sublime in the world is to reward and to punish.” But Satan bowed his head and sighed. “You are wrong,” he said. “Providence does exist, but you cannot see her, because, as the daughter of God, she is invisible like her father. You have seen nothing that resembles her because she proceeds by hidden means and walks down dark paths. All that I can do for you is to make you one of the agents of this Providence.” The deal was concluded. I shall perhaps lose my soul,’ Monte Cristo continued. ‘But, what matter? If the deal had to be struck over again, I should do it.’
Villefort looked at him with sublime amazement.
‘None, Monsieur. I am alone in the world.’
‘So much the worse!’
‘Why?’ asked Monte Cristo.
‘Because you might have a spectacle capable of breaking your pride. You fear nothing but death, I think you said?’
‘I did not say that I feared it. I said that it alone could prevent me.’
‘And old age?’
‘My mission will be accomplished before I am old.’
‘And madness?’
‘Once, I did almost become mad – and you know the saying: non bis in idem.6 It is an axiom of the criminal law, so it falls within your province.’
‘There are other things to fear, Monsieur,’ Villefort said, ‘apart from death, old age and madness. For example, apoplexy, that lightning bolt which strikes you down without destroying you, yet after which all is finished. You are still yourself, but you are no longer yourself: from a near-angel like Ariel you have become a dull mass which, like Caliban, is close to the beasts. As I said, in human language, this is quite simply called an apoplexy or stroke. Count, I beg you to come and finish this conversation at my house one day when you feel like meeting an opponent able to understand you and eager to refute what you say, and I shall show you my father, Monsieur Noirtier de Villefort, one of the most fiery Jacobins of the French Revolution – which means the most splendid daring put to the service of the most rigorous organization; a man who may not, like you, have seen all the kingdoms on earth, but who helped to overthrow one of the most powerful; a man who did not, like you, claim to be one of the envoys of God, but of the Supreme Being, not of Providence but of Fate. Well, Monsieur, the rupture of a blood vessel in the brain put an end to all that, not in a day, not in an hour, but in a second. One day he was Monsieur Noirtier, former Jacobin, former senator, former carbonaro,7 who scorned the guillotine, the cannon and the dagger; Monsieur Noirtier, manipulator of revolutions; Monsieur Noirtier, for whom France was only a vast chessboard from which pawns, castles, knights and queens were to vanish when the king was mated. The next day, this redoubtable Monsieur Noirtier had become “poor Monsieur Noirtier”, a paralysed old man, at the mercy of the weakest being in his household, his granddaughter Valentine. In short, a silent, icy corpse who only lives without suffering to allow time for the flesh to progress easily to total decomposition.’
‘Alas, Monsieur,’ Monte Cristo replied, ‘this spectacle is not unknown to my eyes or to my thoughts. I have some training in medicine and, like my colleagues, I have more than once sought the soul in matter, living and dead; and, like Providence, it remained invisible to my eyes, though present in my heart. A hundred writers, from Socrates onwards, or Seneca, Saint Augustine or Gall, have made the same remark as you, whether in prose or in verse; yet I can understand that the sufferings of a father can accomplish great changes in the mind of his son. Since you are good enough to invite me, Monsieur, I shall come and observe this sad spectacle, which must bring great sorrow to your house and will incite me to humility.’
‘The household would indeed be sad were it not that God has given me ample compensation. To counterbalance the old man who is thus delayed in his descent towards the grave, there are two whose lives have just begun: Valentine, daughter of my first marriage to Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran, and Edouard, the son whose life you saved.’
‘What do you conclude from this compensation?’ Monte Cristo asked.
‘I conclude that my father, led astray by his passions, committed some of those sins that fall within the sphere of divine rather than human justice, and that God, wishing to punish only one person, struck him down alone.’
Monte Cristo had a smile on his lips, but he gave a roar in the depth of his heart that would have put Villefort to flight, could he have heard it.
‘Farewell, Monsieur,’ said the judge, who had risen to his feet some time ago and was standing as he spoke. ‘I must leave you, taking away an esteem for you that, I hope, you will appreciate when you know me better, for I am not an insignificant person, far from it. In any case, you have made a friend for life in Madame de Villefort.’
The count bowed and accompanied Villefort only to the door of his study. The judge was conducted from there on to his carriage by two lackeys who, on a sign from their master, had rushed to open the door for him. Then, when the king’s prosecutor had gone, Monte Cristo forced himself to smile despite the weight on his soul and said: ‘Come, come. Enough of poison. Now that my heart is full of it, let us go and find the antidote.’
He struck the bell and, when Ali appeared, told him: ‘I am going up to Madame. Have my carriage ready in half an hour!’
XLIX
HAYDÉE
The reader will remember the new – or, rather, the old – acquaintances of the Count of Monte Cristo, living in the Rue Meslay: Maximilien, Julie and Emmanuel.
Anticipation of the pleasure of this visit, of these few happy moments and of this celestial light breaking through into the hell which he had chosen to inhabit, had spread a look of utter serenity across the count’s face as soon as Villefort was out of sight; and Ali, who had hurried to answer the ring of the bell, seeing his face radiant with such unaccustomed joy, had tiptoed out, holding his breath, as if to avoid scaring away the happy thoughts that he could see fluttering around his master.
It was midday. The count had put aside a time to go and see Haydée; it seemed as though joy could not penetrate all at once into a soul so deeply wounded but that it had to prepare itself for tender feelings, as the souls of others need to be prepared for violent ones.
The young Greek woman lived, as we have said, in a suite entirely separate from that of the count. It was completely furnished in the Oriental manner: that is to say, the floors were covered in thick Turkish carpets, brocade hangings were spread across the walls and, in each room, a broad divan ran all the way round the room, piled with cushions which those using them could arrange as they wished.
Haydée had three French maids and a Greek one. The three Frenchwomen remained in an outer room, ready to answer the sound of a little gold bell and obey the orders of the Romaic slave-girl, who knew enough French to pass on her mistress’s wishes to the three maids, who had been instructed by Monte Cristo to show the same consideration towards Haydée as they would to a queen.
The young woman herself was in the most distant room in her suite, that is to say a sort of round boudoir, lit only from above, into which daylight only penetrated through panes of pink glass. She was lying down on blue satin cushions trimmed with gold, half leaning backwards across the divan, her head framed in the soft curve of her right arm, while the left hand held to her lips a coral mouthpiece inserted into the flexible pipe of a hookah, from which her gentle breath drew the smoke, obliging it to pass through benzoin water so that none would arrive unperfumed to her mouth.
Her pose, quite natural for a woman of the East, might perhaps, in a Frenchwoman, have suggested slightly affected coquetry.
As for her dress, it was that of a woman of Epirus: white satin trousers embroidered with pink flowers, displaying a child’s feet which seemed carved out of Parian marble, except that they were toying with two tiny sandals, studded with gold thread and pearls, and with curled toes; a blue-and-white striped jacket, with wide slit sleeves, gold buttonholes and pearl buttons; and finally a sort of bodice, low cut across the heart, leaving the neck and upper part of the bosom bare, and buttoned across the breasts with three diamond buttons. The bottom part of this bodice and the top part of the trousers were concealed by one of those brightly coloured belts with long silken fringes that are so much admired by our elegant Parisian women.
On her head she wore a little skullcap, also in gold, studded with pearls, tipped to one side; and over this cap, on the side towards which it was leaning, a lovely purple-coloured rose emerged from hair so black that it seemed blue.
The beauty of her face was Grecian beauty in the full perfection of the type, wi
th luscious black eyes, straight nose, coral lips and pearl-white teeth. In addition, this charming whole was crowned with the flower of youth in all its brilliance and sweetness: Haydée would have been around nineteen or twenty years old.
Monte Cristo called the Greek maid and had her ask Haydée’s permission for him to go in to her. In reply, Haydée merely gestured to her maid to lift up the tapestry hanging over the door – the square outline of which framed the young woman on the divan like a delightful painting. Monte Cristo came into the room. Haydée rose on the elbow nearest to the hookah and offered the count her hand, greeting him with a smile and asking, in the resonant tongue of the daughters of Sparta and Athens: ‘Why do you ask my permission to come in? Are you not my master, am I not your slave?’
Monte Cristo also smiled and said: ‘You know, Haydée…’
‘Why do you not say tu to me,1 as usual?’ the young woman interrupted. ‘Have I done something wrong? In that case, I must be punished, but don’t say vous to me.’
‘Haydée,’ the count said, reverting to the familiar form of address, ‘you know that we are in France and that, consequently, you are free.’
‘Free to do what?’
‘Free to leave me.’
‘To leave you… Why should I leave you?’
‘How do I know? We are going to meet people.’
‘I don’t want to meet anyone.’
‘And among the handsome young men whom you will meet, you may find one whom you like. I would not be so unjust as to…’
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