Caderousse was weakening visibly. ‘Water,’ he said. ‘I’m thirsty, I’m burning.’
Monte Cristo gave him a glass of water.
‘That scoundrel Benedetto,’ Caderousse said, giving back the glass, ‘he’ll get away with it, even so!’
‘No one will escape: I am telling you that, Caderousse. Benedetto will be punished.’
‘Then you too will be punished,’ said Caderousse. ‘Because you did not do your duty as a priest. You should have stopped Benedetto killing me.’
‘I!’ said the count, with a smile that made the dying man shudder with fear. ‘I, stop Benedetto killing you, just after you had broken your dagger on the mail-coat protecting my chest! Yes, perhaps, if I had found you humble and repentant, then I should have stopped Benedetto killing you. But I found you arrogant and bloodthirsty, so I let God’s will be done!’
‘I don’t believe in God!’ Caderousse shouted. ‘Nor do you… You are lying… lying… !’
‘Be quiet,’ said the abbé. ‘You are urging the last drops of blood out of your body. Oh, so you don’t believe in God – yet you are dying at His hand! Oh, so you don’t believe in God; yet God only asks for a single prayer, a single word, a single tear to forgive you. God could have guided the murderer’s dagger so that you would die immediately, yet He gave you a quarter of an hour to reconsider. So look in your heart, you wretch, and repent!’
‘No,’ said Caderousse. ‘No, I do not repent. There is no God, there is no Providence. There is only chance.’
‘There is both Providence and God,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘The proof is that you are lying there, desperate, denying God, and I am standing before you, rich, happy, healthy and safe, clasping my hands before the God in whom you try not to believe and in whom, even so, you do believe in the depths of your heart.’
‘But who are you then?’ asked Caderousse, turning his dying eyes towards the count.
‘Look carefully at me,’ Monte Cristo said, taking the candle and putting it next to his face.
‘Well: the Abbé… Busoni.’
Monte Cristo took off the wig that was disguising his features and let down the fine black hair that so harmoniously framed his pale face.
‘Oh!’ Caderousse exclaimed in terror. ‘If it were not for that black hair, I would take you for the Englishman, I would take you for Lord Wilmore.’
‘I am not Abbé Busoni, or Lord Wilmore,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Look more carefully; go back further; look into your earliest memories.’ These words were spoken by the count with such a magnetic vibrancy that the man’s exhausted senses were awakened for one last time.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I think I did see you, I did know you once.’
‘Yes, Caderousse, you saw me. Yes, you did know me.’
‘Who are you then? And, if you saw me, if you knew me, why are you letting me die?’
‘Because nothing can save you, Caderousse: your wounds are mortal. If you could have been saved, I would have seen that as one last act of God’s mercy and, I swear it on my father’s grave, I should have tried to bring you back to life and to repentance.’
‘On your father’s grave!’ said Caderousse, fired by one last flickering spark of life and raising himself to look more closely at this man who had just made an oath sacred to all men. ‘Who are you, then?’
The count had watched every stage of Caderousse’s agony. He realized that this burst of life was the last. He bent over the dying man and, with a look that was both calm and sad, he said, whispering in his ear: ‘I am…’ And his lips, barely parting, let fall a name spoken so low that the count himself seemed to fear the sound of it.
Caderousse, who had pulled himself up to his knees, reached out his arms, made an effort to shrink back, then clasped his hands and raised them in one supreme final effort: ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘Oh, God, forgive me for denying You. You do indeed exist, You are the father of men in heaven and their judge on earth. Oh, my Lord, I have long mistaken You! My Lord God, forgive me! My God, my Lord, receive my soul!’ And, closing his eyes, Caderousse fell backwards with a last cry and a final gasp.
At once the blood stopped on his lips and ceased to flow from his wounds. He was dead.
‘One!’ the count said, mysteriously, staring at the corpse already disfigured by its awful death.
Ten minutes later the doctor and the crown prosecutor arrived, the first with the concierge, the other with Ali. They found Abbé Busoni praying beside the body.
LXXXIV
BEAUCHAMP
For a whole fortnight, no one in Paris spoke of anything except this daring attempted robbery at the count’s. The dying man had signed a statement naming Benedetto as his murderer. The police were asked to put all their agents on the criminal’s trail.
Caderousse’s knife, his shrouded lantern, his bunch of keys and his clothes, except for the waistcoat, which could not be found, were handed over to the clerk of the court, and the body was taken to the morgue.
The count told everyone that this adventure had happened while he was in his house in Auteuil and that, consequently, he knew only what he had been told by Abbé Busoni. By sheer chance, the abbé had asked the count if he might spend the night at his house in order to do some research into one or two of the precious volumes in his library.
Only Bertuccio went pale every time the name of Benedetto was mentioned in his presence, but there was no reason for anyone to notice the pallor on Bertuccio’s cheeks.
Villefort, called in to establish the facts of the crime, had allocated the case to himself and was pursuing the investigation with all the passionate enthusiasm that he gave to every criminal case in which he was involved. But three weeks had already elapsed without the most active enquiries bringing any result; and society gossips were starting to forget about the attempted robbery at the Count of Monte Cristo’s and the murder of the thief by his accomplice, turning instead to the forthcoming marriage of Mlle Danglars to Count Andrea Cavalcanti.
The marriage was more or less arranged and the young man received at the banker’s as a future son-in-law.
The elder Cavalcanti had been contacted by letter and had warmly approved of the match. Expressing deep regret that his duties absolutely forbade him to leave Parma, where he then was, he stated his intention of releasing a capital sum sufficient to give an income of 150,000 livres. It was agreed that the three million would be entrusted to Danglars, who would invest them. Some people had tried to sow doubt in the young man’s mind about the solidity of his future father-in-law’s position: Danglars had recently been making repeated losses on the Exchange; but the young man, with sublime confidence and disinterestedness, dismissed all these vain murmurings, and had the tact to say nothing about them to the baron.
The baron, consequently, adored Count Andrea Cavalcanti.
The same could not be said of Mlle Eugénie Danglars. Having an instinctive horror of marriage, she had welcomed Andrea as a means of repelling Morcerf; but now that Andrea was coming too close, she began to feel a visible repulsion towards him. The baron may perhaps have noticed it but, as he could only attribute this feeling to a whim, he had pretended not to notice it.
Meanwhile, the period of grace that Beauchamp had asked for had almost passed. During it, Morcerf had come to appreciate the value of Monte Cristo’s advice when he told him to let the matter clear itself up. No one had remarked on the note about the general and no one had thought to identify the officer who had betrayed the castle of Janina with the noble count who sat in the Upper House.
Even so, Albert felt insulted, because the intention to offend was quite obviously there, in the few lines that had wounded his honour. Moreover, the manner in which Beauchamp had ended their meeting had left a bitter taste in his mouth. For these reasons, he still harboured the idea of a duel but hoped, if Beauchamp would agree, that they might be able to disguise the real reason for it, even from their seconds.
As for Beauchamp, he had not been seen since the day of Albert�
�s visit and, whenever anyone asked for him, the reply was that he had left for a few days’ journey. Where was he? Nobody knew.
One morning Albert was awoken by his valet, announcing Beauchamp. He rubbed his eyes and asked for the visitor to be shown into the little smoking parlour on the ground floor. Then he dressed quickly and went down.
Beauchamp was pacing up and down, but he stopped when he saw Albert.
‘Your decision to come and see me yourself, instead of waiting for the visit that I intended to pay on you today myself, seems to me like a good omen,’ said Albert. ‘Come, tell me straight away, can I offer you my hand and say: “Beauchamp, admit your mistake and keep your friend,” or should I simply instruct you to choose your weapons?’
‘Albert,’ Beauchamp said with an expression of grief that astonished the young man, ‘let’s first sit down and talk.’
‘Come, Monsieur: it seems to me that, before we sit down together, you must answer me.’
‘There are occasions,’ the journalist said, ‘when the difficulty lies in the answer itself.’
‘Let me make it easier for you then, by repeating my question: do you retract – yes or no?’
‘Morcerf, one cannot answer yes or no to a question that touches on the honour, the social standing and the life of a man like Lieutenant-General the Comte de Morcerf, peer of the realm.’
‘So what can one do?’
‘One can do what I did, Albert, which is to say: money, time and effort are nothing when it is a matter of the reputation and interests of an entire family. One says: more than probability is needed, we must have certainty if we are to accept a duel to the death with a friend. One says: if I cross swords or pull the trigger against a man whose hand I have shaken over the past three years, I must at least know why I am doing such a thing, so that I may arrive at the appointed place with my mind at rest and the easy conscience which a man needs when he must use his arm to save his life.’
‘Very well, then,’ Morcerf asked impatiently, ‘what does all this mean?’
‘It means that I have just come back from Janina.’
‘From Janina? You!’
‘Yes, I.’
‘Impossible!’
‘My dear Albert, here is my passport. Look at the visas: Geneva, Milan, Venice, Trieste, Delvino, Janina. Do you believe the authorities of a republic, a kingdom and an empire?’
Albert looked at the passport, then again, with astonishment, at Beauchamp. ‘You went to Janina?’ he said.
‘Albert, if you had been a foreigner, a stranger, or a mere lord like that Englishman who came to challenge me three or four months ago, and whom I killed to stop him bothering me, you will realize that I would not have taken such trouble. But I thought I owed you this mark of my consideration. I spent a week on the outward journey, a week on the return, plus four days in quarantine and forty-eight hours when I arrived: that adds up to my three weeks. I got back last night, and here I am.’
‘My God! My God, what a roundabout story, Beauchamp, and still you won’t tell me what I am waiting to hear.’
‘The truth is, Albert…’
‘You seem reluctant.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid.’
‘Afraid of admitting that your correspondent deceived you? Now, now, Beauchamp, don’t be proud! Admit it: no one can doubt your courage.’
‘Oh, it’s not that,’ the journalist muttered. ‘On the contrary…’
Albert went deathly pale. He tried to speak but the words failed on his lips.
‘My friend,’ Beauchamp said, in the most affectionate tone, ‘believe me, I should be delighted if I could apologize to you, and I should do so with all my heart; but alas…’
‘But what?’
‘The report was correct, my friend.’
‘What! The French officer…’
‘Yes.’
‘This Fernand?’
‘Yes.’
‘The traitor who delivered the castles of the man in whose service he was…’
‘Forgive me for saying this, my friend: that man was your father!’
Albert leapt up furiously to throw himself on Beauchamp, but he was restrained more by the other’s compassionate look than by his outstretched hand.
‘Here,’ he said, taking a sheet of paper out of his pocket. ‘My dear friend, here is the proof of it.’
Albert unfolded the sheet of paper. It was a sworn statement by four leading inhabitants of Janina, confirming that Colonel Fernand Mondego, army instructor in the service of the Vizier Ali Tebelin, had betrayed the castle of Janina for a payment of two thousand purses.
The signatures had been validated by the consul.
Albert staggered and fell, dumbstruck, into a chair. This time there could be no doubt: the family name was there. And, after a moment of painful silence, his heart swelled, the veins bulged on his neck and a stream of tears burst from his eyes.
Beauchamp, who had looked with the utmost compassion on the young man as he gave way to his grief, came over to him and said: ‘Do you understand, now, Albert? I wanted to see everything and to judge everything for myself, in the hope that the explanation would be favourable to your father and that I could do full justice to him. But on the contrary the information that I obtained stated that the instructing officer, Fernand Mondego, promoted by Ali Pasha to the rank of governor-general, was none other than Count Fernand de Morcerf. So I returned, reminding myself of the honour you had done in admitting me to your friendship, and I hastened round to see you.’
Albert, still stretched out in the chair, was covering both eyes with his hands, as if to prevent the daylight reaching him.
‘I hastened round to see you,’ Beauchamp continued, ‘to say this to you: Albert, the sins of our fathers, in these times of action and reaction, cannot be visited on their children. Albert, few men have gone through the revolutions in which we were born, without some spot of mire or of blood staining their soldier’s uniform or their judge’s robe. No one in the world, Albert, now that I have all the proof, now that I am the master of your secret, can force me to engage in a combat that your conscience, I am sure, would tell you was a crime. But I have come to offer you what you no longer have the right to demand of me. This proof, these revelations, these statements that I alone possess – would you like me to make them disappear? Would you like this terrible secret to remain between the two of us? Protected by my word of honour, it will never cross my lips. Tell me, Albert: would you like that? Is that what you want, my friend?’
Albert fell on Beauchamp’s neck. ‘Oh, noble heart,’ he cried.
‘Here, then,’ said Beauchamp, handing the papers to him. Albert seized them convulsively, crumpled them, twisted them and considered tearing them up; but, fearing that the smallest scrap might be blown away in the wind and come back to haunt him one day, he went across to the candle which he kept burning continually to light cigars, and let the flames devour them to the last fragment.
‘Dear friend, best of friends!’ he muttered, as he burned the papers.
‘Let all this be forgotten like a bad dream,’ Beauchamp said. ‘Let it vanish like those last sparks flickering on the blackened paper, and let all fade like that wisp of smoke drifting away from those silent ashes.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Albert. ‘Let nothing remain except the eternal friendship that I owe to my saviour, a friendship that my children will transfer to yours, a friendship that will always remind me that I owe you the blood in my veins, the life in my body and the honour of my name… For, if such a thing were to be known, oh, Beauchamp! I am telling you, I would blow my brains out. Or else, no, my poor mother! I should not wish to kill her at the same time – otherwise, I should go abroad.’
‘My dear Albert!’ Beauchamp said.
But the young man’s unexpected and somewhat artificial joy was short-lived, and he soon relapsed into an even deeper melancholy.
‘What is it, dear friend?’ Beauchamp asked. ‘What is it?’
‘What it
is,’ Albert said, ‘is that something is broken in my heart. You must understand, Beauchamp, that one cannot in an instant abandon that feeling of respect, of confidence and pride, that a father’s spotless name inspires in his son. Oh, Beauchamp! How shall I face him? Shall I shrink back when he puts his lips to my forehead or withdraw my hand from his touch? Beauchamp, I am the most wretched of men. Oh, my mother, my poor mother!’ he said, looking through tear-filled eyes at her portrait. ‘How you would have suffered, had you witnessed all this!’
‘Come, come,’ Beauchamp said, clasping him by both hands. ‘Take heart.’
‘But that first note that you printed in your paper: where did it come from?’ Albert exclaimed. ‘There is some secret hatred, some invisible enemy behind all this.’
‘All the more reason, then,’ said Beauchamp. ‘Courage, Albert! Let nothing show on your face. Carry your sorrow inside you as the cloud conceals ruin and death like a deadly secret that is understood only when the storm breaks. Come, my friend, gather strength for the moment when the storm will break.’
‘What! You don’t think it’s over yet?’ Albert said in horror.
‘I don’t think anything, but everything is possible. By the way…’
‘What?’ Albert asked, seeing Beauchamp hesitate.
‘Are you still going to marry Mademoiselle Danglars?’
‘What makes you ask that now, Beauchamp?’
The Count of Monte Cristo Page 116