The Count of Monte Cristo

by Alexandre Dumas

  ‘It expresses how I feel, which is all I need… “After that” was three days ago. Three days ago you had a discussion on politics with Monsieur Debray and you thought he said that Don Carlos had returned to Spain. As a result, I sold my stock. The news spread, there was a panic and I wasn’t able to sell any more, I was giving it away. The next day, the news turned out to have been false, and this false news had cost me seven hundred thousand francs!’

  ‘So, what of it?’

  ‘So, since I give you a quarter when I win, you owe me a quarter when I lose. A quarter of seven hundred thousand francs is one hundred and seventy-five thousand francs.’

  ‘What you are saying is ludicrous. And I really cannot see why you should bring Monsieur Debray’s name into all this.’

  ‘Because if you don’t happen to have the one hundred and seventy-five thousand francs that I am claiming from you, you can borrow from your friends, of whom Monsieur Debray is one.’

  ‘Fiddle-de-dee!’ the baroness exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, let’s have no gestures, no cries, no melodrama, Madame, or I shall be obliged to tell you that I can see from here Monsieur Debray sniggering over the five hundred thousand francs or so that you have given him this year, and telling himself that he has at last found what the most skilful gambler has never found, which is a roulette wheel where you can win without playing and don’t lose even when you lose.’

  The baroness was fit to burst. ‘You wretch!’ she said. ‘Do you dare say that you were not aware of what you now venture to reproach me with?’

  ‘I don’t say that I knew or that I didn’t; I am just telling you this: consider how I have behaved in the four years since we have ceased to live as man and wife, and you will see that my conduct has always been consistent. Some time before the breach between us, you wanted to study music with that famous baritone who was such a success at the Théâtre Italien, while I wanted to study dancing with that dancer who had been so warmly received when she appeared in London. It cost me, for you and for me, some hundred thousand francs. I did not complain, because one must try to preserve the peace in one’s home. A hundred thousand francs for the man and the woman to perfect their dancing and their music is not excessive. Then you soon became bored with singing, and you got the idea that you would like to study diplomacy with one of the minister’s secretaries. I let you. You see, it doesn’t matter to me, as long as you are paying for your lessons out of your own pocket. But I now see that you are dipping into mine and that your further education might cost me as much as seven hundred thousand francs a month. Whoa, Madame! It can’t go on like this. Either the diplomat will have to start giving his… lessons for nothing, and I shall put up with him, or he will not be allowed to set foot again in my house. Do you understand?’

  ‘But this is really too much, Monsieur!’ Hermine cried, barely able to speak. ‘You are exceeding the bounds of ignominy!’

  ‘And I am glad to see,’ said Danglars, ‘that you are not far behind me, and that you have willingly chosen to obey the legal maxim: “The wife should follow her husband.” ’

  ‘You insult me.’

  ‘You are right. Let’s stop arguing and be reasonable. I have never interfered with your business except to do you good; you do the same. You say that my wealth is none of your business? Very well, look after your own, but don’t try to increase or diminish mine. In any case, who can tell if this is not some kind of political chicanery – if the minister, furious because I am with the opposition and jealous of the popular sympathy that I enjoy, has not been in league with Monsieur Debray to ruin me?’

  ‘Very likely, I must say!’

  ‘Why not? Who has ever seen anything like it: a false message on the telegraph, in other words something more or less impossible: different signals given by the two operators! It was done specifically to harm me, that’s the truth of it.’

  ‘Monsieur,’ the baroness said humbly, ‘you must know, I think, that the operator in question was dismissed, there was even talk of bringing him to trial and the order had gone out to arrest him, which would have been done if he had not escaped detection by fleeing in a way that proves his madness, or his guilt… There was some mistake.’

  ‘Yes, and one which makes fools laugh, the minister lose a night’s sleep and the secretaries of state blacken a lot of paper, but which cost me seven hundred thousand francs.’

  ‘But then,’ Hermine said, suddenly, ‘if all this, according to you, is Monsieur Debray’s fault, why not tell him about it directly, instead of coming to me? Why accuse the man and attack the woman?’

  ‘Do I know Monsieur Debray?’ said Danglars. ‘Do I want to know him? Do I want to know that he gives advice? Do I want to take it? Do I gamble? No, you do all these things, not I.’

  ‘But I would have thought, since you profit by it…’

  Danglars shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘What mad creatures they are, these women who think themselves geniuses because they have managed to carry on one or two affairs without everyone in Paris knowing about them! But just consider: even if you had disguised your irregularities from your husband himself – and that is the most elementary skill in the business, because most of the time husbands don’t want to see what is going on – you would still only be a pale copy of what most of your society friends are doing. With me it is different: I saw and I have always seen. In roughly the past sixteen years you may have hidden a thought from me, but never a step, an action or a sin. While you were flattering yourself as to your skill and firmly believed that you were deceiving me, what happened? The truth was that, thanks to my turning a blind eye, there has not been one of your friends, from Monsieur de Villefort to Monsieur Debray, who has not been afraid of me. There is not one who has not treated me as the master of the house, which is my only claim on you. In short, not one would have dared say to you the things about myself that I am telling you today. I will let you make me hateful, but I refuse to allow you to make me ridiculous and, above all, I absolutely forbid you to ruin me.’

  Until the name of Villefort was mentioned, the baroness had looked fairly confident but, on hearing that name, she paled and, getting up as though driven by a spring, she held out her arms as if to ward off an apparition and took three steps towards her husband, as though trying to extract from him the remains of a secret that he did not know; or which, perhaps, he did not want to reveal altogether, as part of some vile scheme – for all Danglars’ schemes were vile.

  ‘Monsieur de Villefort! What is this? What do you mean?’

  ‘What I mean, Madame, is that Monsieur de Nargonne, your first husband, being neither a philosopher nor a banker – or, perhaps, being both – and seeing that there was nothing to be obtained from a crown prosecutor, died of sorrow or of wrath on coming back from a nine months’ absence to find you pregnant by six. I am brutal: not only do I know that, I am proud of it: it is one secret of my success in business. Why, instead of killing the other man, did he kill himself? Because he had no fortune to save. But I do, and I have an obligation to my money. My associate, Monsieur Debray, has lost me seven hundred thousand francs. Let him pay for his share of the loss and we shall continue to do business. Otherwise, let him go bankrupt for his hundred and seventy-five thousand livres and do what all bankrupts do, which is to disappear. Heavens, he’s a charming youth, I know, when his news is accurate; but when it’s wrong there are fifty others in society who are worth more than he is.’

  Mme Danglars was crushed, but she made one final effort to respond to this last assault. She fell back into a chair, thinking of Villefort, of the scene at the dinner and of the strange series of misfortunes that had fallen, one by one, on her family over the past few days, replacing the comfortable peace of her household with shocking arguments. Danglars was not even looking at her, even though she did all she could to faint. He opened the bedroom door without a further word and went back to his own apartments, so that Mme Danglars, recovering from her half-unconscious state, might even have t
hought she had suffered a nightmare.

  LXVI

  MARRIAGE PLANS

  The day after this scene, at the time which Debray usually chose to make a brief visit to Mme Danglars on his way to the office, his coupé did not appear in the courtyard. Instead, at this same time, around half-past twelve, Mme Danglars called for her carriage and went out.

  Danglars had been expecting this departure and watched it from behind a curtain. He gave orders that he should be told as soon as madame returned, but at two o’clock she had still not done so. He called for his horses and went to the House, where he had his name put down to speak against the budget.

  Between midday and two o’clock, Danglars had been in his study, breaking the seals on his dispatches and growing more and more gloomy as he piled one set of figures on another. He also received some visitors, including Major Cavalcanti who, in blue as always, stiff and punctual, arrived at the time appointed on the previous day to complete his business with the banker.

  During the debate Danglars had shown signs of violent agitation and, above all, had been more than usually cutting about the government; on leaving the House, he got into his carriage and asked to be driven to No. 30, Avenue des Champs-Elysées.

  Monte Cristo was at home, but he had a visitor, so he asked Danglars to wait for a moment in the drawing-room. While he was waiting, the door opened and he saw a man enter, in the dress of an abbé. This person, instead of waiting like Danglars, appeared to be a more familiar visitor at the house: he bowed, went through into the inner room and disappeared.

  A moment later, the door through which the priest had entered opened and Monte Cristo appeared. ‘Forgive me, dear Baron,’ he said, ‘but one of my good friends, Abbé Busoni, whom you saw enter, has just arrived in Paris. It is a long time since we last met and I could not tear myself away from him immediately. I hope that this reason will be sufficient to persuade you to excuse me for keeping you waiting.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Danglars. ‘I am the one who chose my time badly. I shall leave at once.’

  ‘Not at all. On the contrary, please sit down. But, my goodness, what is wrong? You seem quite worried. In truth, you alarm me. A crestfallen capitalist is like a comet: he always warns of some great misfortune to come.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Monsieur,’ said Danglars, ‘is that I have been suffering a run of bad luck for the past few days, and all the news I have is bad news.’

  ‘Heaven preserve us!’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Have you had another loss on the Exchange?’

  ‘No, I’m cured of that, at least for a few days. The latest is a bankruptcy in Trieste.’

  ‘Really? I suppose your bankrupt wouldn’t be Jacopo Manfredi by any chance?’

  ‘The very man! Here is someone who – for I don’t know how long – has been doing eight or nine hundred thousand francs of business with me a year. Never any mistakes, never any delays: the man used to settle his debts like a prince… like a paying prince. I advance him a million and, lo and behold, for the first time the devil stops his remittance.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘It’s an extraordinary piece of luck. I drew six hundred thousand livres on him, which has been returned, unpaid, and, in addition to that, I hold bills of exchange to the value of four hundred thousand francs, signed by him and payable by his partner in Paris at the end of the month. It is the thirtieth. I send someone for the money and – as you’ve guessed – the partner is not to be found. With this Spanish business, it’s been a good month, I can tell you!’

  ‘But did you really lose on that Spanish business?’

  ‘No doubt about it: I’m not less than seven hundred thousand francs down.’

  ‘How on earth did an old fox like you get caught in that way?’

  ‘There you are! It’s my wife’s fault. She dreamt that Don Carlos had returned to Spain, and she believes in dreams. It’s to do with magnetism, she says, and when she dreams something, it must surely happen. I allow her to gamble on her beliefs: she has her own account and her broker. She gambled and lost. Of course it was her money and not mine that she lost, but you must still see that, when seven hundred thousand francs go out of the wife’s pocket, the husband is bound to notice it a little. What! Didn’t you know about it? Everyone was talking about what happened.’

  ‘Yes, I did hear tell of it, but I didn’t know the details. And then I am utterly ignorant when it comes to anything to do with stocks and shares.’

  ‘You don’t gamble on the Exchange?’

  ‘Me? How do you expect me to gamble? I already have enough trouble working out my income. I should be obliged to take on a clerk and an accountant as well as my steward. But, on this matter of Spain, it seems to me that the baroness was not alone in dreaming about the return of Don Carlos. Didn’t the papers have something to say about it?’

  ‘Do you believe what you read in the papers?’

  ‘Not in the least, but I did think that Le Messager was an exception to the rule, and that it only carried authenticated news, news from the telegraph.’

  ‘And that is precisely what can’t be explained,’ Danglars said. ‘The news of Don Carlos’ return did come through the telegraph.’

  ‘All of which means that you have lost around one million seven hundred thousand francs this month?’

  ‘It’s not a matter of “around”, that’s the figure.’

  ‘The deuce it is!’ Monte Cristo said sympathetically. ‘For a third-class fortune, that’s a hard blow.’

  ‘A third-class fortune!’ Danglars exclaimed, slightly insulted. ‘What the devil do you mean by that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, no doubt,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘I divide the rich into three categories: first-class, second-class and third-class fortunes. A first-class fortune, I would call one which is made up of disposable treasures, land, mines and incomes from government bonds in countries like France, Austria or England, provided these treasures, possessions or incomes add up to a total of at least a hundred million. A second-class fortune is one whose owner possesses factories, business interests, viceroyships or principalities yielding under one million five hundred thousand francs, all adding up to a capital of some fifty million. Finally, a third-class fortune would be capital paying compound interest, profits depending on the will of others or on chance, which are liable to be damaged by a bankruptcy or shattered by a telegraph signal; occasional speculation and other operations subject to the whims of a fate which we might call force mineure, by analogy with the whims of nature which are force majeure; all of it amounting to a real or hypothetical capital of some fifteen million. Isn’t that roughly your situation?’

  ‘Good heavens, yes!’ said Danglars.

  ‘So that means that six months like the one you have just had would send a third-class firm to its deathbed,’ Monte Cristo said imperturbably.

  ‘Huh!’ Danglars said, with a very pale smile. ‘That’s a nice way of putting it.’

  ‘Say seven months,’ Monte Cristo continued, in the same tone. ‘Tell me, have you ever considered that seven times one million seven hundred thousand francs makes about twelve million? No? Well, you are right, because if one were to reflect on such things, one would never venture one’s capital, which is to the financier what his skin is to a civilized man. We have our more or less sumptuous clothes, which are our credit, but when a man dies he has only his skin. Just as, when you leave business, you will have your real wealth – five or six million at most… because a third-class fortune barely represents a third or a quarter of what it appears, much as the locomotive of a railway train, amid the steam and smoke that enwraps it and enlarges it, is only at base a more or less powerful machine. Well, of the five million that represent your real capital, you have just lost around two million, which reduces your notional fortune or your credit by the same amount. All this means, my dear Monsieur Danglars, that your skin has just been opened by a wound which, repeated four times, would mean death. Well, well! You must be careful, my dear Monsieur Dang
lars. Do you need money? Can I lend you some?’

  ‘Your sums are quite wrong!’ Danglars exclaimed, summoning up all the philosophy and dissimulation he could muster. ‘The way things stand, money has been coming into my account from successful speculation. The blood that flowed out of the wound has been replaced by nourishment. I may have lost a battle in Spain, and I was defeated at Trieste, but my Indian navy should have captured some galleons and my Mexican prospectors have found a mine.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent; but the scar remains. At the first loss it will re-open.’

  ‘No, because my business is founded on certainties,’ said Danglars with the glibness of a charlatan whose profession is to extol his own credit. ‘For me to be overthrown, three governments would have to fall.’

  ‘Well, it has happened.’

  ‘And for the harvest to fail.’

  ‘Remember the seven fat cows and the seven lean cows.’1

  ‘Or for the sea to part, as at the time of the Pharaohs; and even then, there are several seas, and the ships would get by through turning into caravans.’

  ‘So much the better, a thousand times, my dear Monsieur Danglars,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘I see I was wrong and that yours comes into the category of second-class fortunes.’

  ‘I think I may aspire to that honour,’ said Danglars with one of those fatuous smiles which had the same effect on Monte Cristo as the pallid moons that inferior painters plant in the sky above their ruins. ‘But since we are talking business,’ he continued, delighted at finding this excuse to change the subject, ‘can you give me some idea of what I might do for Monsieur Cavalcanti?’

  ‘Give him some money, I suppose, if he has a credit with you and you think it’s good.’

  ‘Splendid! He presented himself this morning with a bill for forty thousand francs, drawn on you and payable on sight, signed Busoni and forwarded to me by you with your endorsement. You will appreciate that I gave him his forty notes straight away.’