‘It’s extraordinary, Monsieur le Président,’ Benedetto said, in the most condescending tone of voice and with the politest of manners, ‘how clearly you have read my mind. That was indeed precisely why I asked you to change round the order of questions.’
The amazement was at its height. The accused’s words showed no trace of boasting or cynicism, and a stunned audience sensed that there was some burst of lightning gathering in the depths of this dark cloud.
‘Very well,’ said the judge. ‘What is your name?’
‘I cannot tell you my name, because I do not know it; but I know the name of my father and I can tell you that.’
Villefort was blinded by a flash of pain. Bitter drops of sweat could be seen falling rapidly from his cheeks on to the papers which he was shuffling with distraught and convulsive hands.
‘Then tell us the name of your father,’ the judge said.
Not a breath or a sigh broke the silence: the whole of this vast assembly was hushed and waiting.
‘My father is a crown prosecutor,’ Andrea replied calmly.
‘A crown prosecutor!’ the judge said in astonishment, without noticing the shocked expression on Villefort’s face. ‘A crown prosecutor!’
‘Yes, and since you ask me his name, I shall tell you. His name is de Villefort.’
The outburst that had for so long been contained by the respect that is paid to the law while a court is in session erupted, like a peal of thunder, from every breast. The court itself did not even consider trying to repress this movement in the crowd. There were interjections, insults shouted at Benedetto (who remained impassive), violent gestures, commotion among the gendarmes and the sniggering of that baser element which in any crowd rises to the surface in times of disturbance or scandal. All this lasted five minutes, before the judges and ushers could manage to restore calm.
In the middle of all this noise, the presiding judge’s voice could be heard shouting: ‘Prisoner! Are you making fun of the law? Do you dare to give your fellow citizens the spectacle of a degree of corruption which is hitherto unequalled even in an age which has had more than its fair share of the same?’
Ten people flocked round the crown prosecutor, who was sitting, completely overwhelmed, and offered him consolation, encouragement and assurances of their entire sympathy.
Order was finally restored, except at one place in the room where a fairly large group continued to call out and agitate. It appeared that a woman had fainted. She was offered smelling salts and came back to her senses.
Throughout all this commotion, Andrea had turned a smiling face on the crowd. Then, at last resting one hand on the oak handle of his bench, in the most elegant posture, he said: ‘Gentlemen, God forbid that I should try to insult the court or, before such an august company, try to cause any unnecessary scandal. I was asked what age I am, and I answered; I was asked where I was born, and I replied; I was asked my name, and I cannot say it, because my parents abandoned me. But, even without saying my name, since I have none, I can say that of my father; so, I repeat, my father is called Monsieur de Villefort and I am ready to prove it.’
The young man’s voice carried a certainty, a conviction and a power that reduced everyone to silence. For a moment every eye turned towards the crown prosecutor who remained as motionless in his seat as a man who had just been struck dead by lightning.
‘Gentlemen,’ Andrea said, with a tone and a gesture that demanded silence, ‘I owe you proof of my words and an explanation for them.’
‘But,’ snapped the presiding judge, ‘you declared in the preliminary hearings that you were called Benedetto and that you were an orphan, describing Corsica as your homeland.’
‘I said at that hearing what was convenient for me to say then, because I did not want anyone to weaken or even prevent the solemn repercussions of my words – and this would surely have been done.
‘I now repeat that I was born in Auteuil, in the night of September the twenty-seventh to the twenty-eighth, 1817, and that I am the son of Crown Prosecutor de Villefort. Now, do you want some details? Here they are.
‘I was born on the first floor of Number twenty-eight, Rue de la Fontaine, in a room hung with red damask. My father took me in his arms, telling my mother that I was dead, wrapped me in a towel marked with an “H” and an “N”, and carried me down to the garden, where he buried me alive.’
A shudder went through the whole room when they saw that the prisoner’s confidence was growing, to keep pace with M. de Villefort’s horror.
‘But how do you know all these details?’ the judge asked.
‘I shall tell you, Monsieur le Président. That very same night, in the garden where my father had just buried me, a man who was his mortal enemy had entered, having long waited and watched in order to carry out an act of Corsican vengeance against him. The man had hidden himself in a clump of bushes. He saw my father bury something in the ground and struck him with a knife while he was still engaged in the operation. Then, thinking that the object must be some treasure, he dug up the hole and found me, still alive. The man took me to the orphanage, where I was admitted under the number fifty-seven. Three months later, his sister travelled from Rogliano to Paris to fetch me, claimed me as her son and took me away. This is how, even though I was born in Auteuil, I was brought up in Corsica.’
There was a moment’s silence, but a silence so profound that, had it not been for the tension that seemed to be exhaled from a thousand breasts, you would have thought the room empty.
‘Continue,’ said the presiding judge.
‘No doubt,’ Benedetto went on, ‘I could have been happy with these good people who adored me; but my perverse nature gained the upper hand over all the virtues that my adoptive mother tried to instil in my heart. I grew up badly and turned to crime. One day, when I was cursing God for making me so wicked and giving me such a dreadful fate, my adoptive father said: “Don’t blaspheme, you wretch! God was generous in giving you life. The evil comes not from you but from your father – the father who doomed you to hell should you die, and to misery if some miracle should give you life!”
‘From then on, I ceased to blaspheme God, but I cursed my father. That is why I have come here and spoken the words for which you have reproached me, Monsieur le Président. That is why I caused the commotion from which this gathering has still not recovered. If that is a further crime, punish me for it. But if I have convinced you that from the day of my birth my fate has been mortal, tormented, bitter and lamentable, then pity me!’
‘And what about your mother?’ the judge asked.
‘My mother thought me dead; my mother is not guilty. I have never wanted to know my mother’s name, and I do not know it.’
At that moment, a shrill cry, ending in a sob, rang out from the midst of the group which, as we have said, included a woman. She fell to the ground in a violent fit of hysteria and was taken out of the room. As she was being helped out, the thick veil hiding her face slipped aside and they recognized Mme Danglars. Though nearly paralysed by nervous exhaustion, and despite the humming in his ears and the sort of madness that had seized his brain, Villefort too recognized her and rose to his feet.
‘Proof!’ cried the presiding judge. ‘Proof! Prisoner, do you realize that this tissue of horrors must be supported by the most incontrovertible proof?’
‘Proof?’ Benedetto said, with a laugh. ‘Do you want proof?’
‘We do.’
‘Then look at Monsieur de Villefort, and ask me for further proof.’
Everyone turned towards the crown prosecutor who, beneath the weight of a thousand eyes turned towards him, stepped forward into the well of the court, staggering, his hair awry and his face blotchy from the pressure of his fingernails.
The whole room heaved a long murmur of astonishment.
‘Father, they are asking me for proof,’ said Benedetto. ‘Do you wish me to provide it?’
‘No,’ M. de Villefort stammered, in a strangled voice. ‘No
, there is no need.’
‘What do you mean, no need?’ cried the judge.
‘I mean,’ said the crown prosecutor, ‘that I should struggle in vain against the deadly fate that holds me in its grasp. Gentlemen, I realize that I am in the hands of a vengeful God. No proof, there is no need. Everything this young man has just said is true!’
A dark and heavy silence, such as precedes some natural catastrophe, wrapped its leaden cloak around all those who heard these words, and the hair stood up on their heads.
‘What! Monsieur de Villefort,’ the judge cried, ‘are you sure you are not dreaming? Are you really in full command of your faculties? One might believe that such a strange accusation, so dreadful and so unexpected, must have troubled your mind. Come, now, pull yourself together.’
The crown prosecutor shook his head. His teeth were chattering violently like those of a man eaten up with fever; and yet he was deathly pale.
‘I am in full command of my faculties, Monsieur,’ he said. ‘Only my body is unwell, as you may well understand. I admit my guilt for everything that the young man has accused me of, and I shall henceforth remain at home at the disposal of the crown prosecutor, my successor.’
After saying which, in a dull and almost inaudible voice, M. de Villefort staggered towards the door, which the duty usher automatically opened for him.
The whole company was left speechless and appalled by this revelation and this confession, making such a dreadful conclusion to all the various incidents that had shaken Parisian society over the preceding fortnight.
‘Well!’ Beauchamp said. ‘Let anyone now deny that drama is only in art and not in nature!’
‘Good Lord,’ said Château-Renaud. ‘I’d really much rather end like Monsieur de Morcerf: a pistol-shot is a kindness beside such a disaster.’
‘And it does kill you,’ said Beauchamp.
‘Just think! I briefly considered marrying his daughter,’ said Debray. ‘Poor child: my God, she did well to die!’
‘The session is ended, gentlemen,’ said the presiding judge. ‘The case will be adjourned to the next assizes. The matter must be investigated afresh and entrusted to another counsel.’
As for Andrea – calm as ever and much more interesting – he left the room, escorted by the gendarmes, who involuntarily showed him some sign of respect.
‘So, what do you think of that, my good man?’ Debray asked the sergeant-at-arms, slipping a louis into his hand.
‘They’ll find extenuating circumstances,’ he answered.
CXI
EXPIATION
The crowd, closely packed though it was, opened to let M. de Villefort pass. Great sorrow is so august that, even in the most unfortunate times, there is no case recorded when the first reaction of the mass has not been to sympathize with a great catastrophe. Many hated people have been killed by the mob, but rarely has anyone unfortunate, even a criminal, been attacked by the men who were present when he was condemned to death.
Thus Villefort was able to pass through the ranks of spectators, guards and officials of the courts, and to walk away, having admitted his guilt but protected by his grief.
There are some situations which men instinctively comprehend but are unable to comment on intellectually. In such cases, the greatest poet is the one who emits the most powerful and the most natural cry. The crowd takes this cry for a complete story, and it is right to be satisfied with that, and still more so to find it sublime when it is truthful.
In any case, it would have been impossible to express the state of stupefaction in which Villefort found himself on leaving the courts, or to describe the fever that made every artery throb, tensed every fibre, swelled every vein to bursting and dissected every point of his mortal body in millions of agonies.
He dragged himself along the corridors, guided solely by habit. He threw the magistrate’s gown off his shoulders, not because he felt it was proper for him to quit it, but because it had become an overwhelming burden, a shirt of Nessus,1 full of torments.
Staggering, he reached the Cour Dauphine, saw his carriage, woke the coachman by opening the door himself and slumped back against the cushions, while pointing towards the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The coachman set off.
The full weight of his devastated fortune had come down upon his head and this weight was crushing him. He did not know what the outcome would be, he had not measured it; he felt it, but did not assess the legal consequences like a cold murderer commenting on the letter of the law.
God was in the depth of his heart.
‘God!’ he murmured, without even knowing what he was saying. ‘God, God!’
He could only see the hand of God behind the maelstrom that had overwhelmed him.
The carriage sped along. Writhing on his cushions, Villefort felt something underneath them.
He reached for it: it was a fan that Mme de Villefort had lost between the cushion and the back wall of the carriage. The fan woke some memory, and the memory was like a flash of lightning in the dark.
Villefort thought of his wife.
‘Oh!’ he cried, as if a hot iron had traversed his heart.
For the past hour he had had only one side of his misfortune before his eyes; now, suddenly, his mind saw another, and one no less terrible than the first.
He had just assumed the role of implacable judge with this woman, condemning her to death; and she, stricken with terror, crushed with remorse and sunk beneath the shame that he had aroused in her with the eloquence born of his own spotless virtue, she, a poor, feeble woman, defenceless against this absolute and supreme authority, might perhaps at this very moment be preparing to die.
An hour already had elapsed since her condemnation: no doubt she was going over all her crimes in her memory, asking for God’s mercy and writing a letter to humbly beg forgiveness of her virtuous husband, a favour that she would purchase at the cost of her life… Villefort gave another roar of pain and fury.
‘Oh!’ he cried, writhing on the satin upholstery of his carriage. ‘This woman only became a criminal because she touched me. I am oozing with crime. She caught it off me as one may catch typhus, or cholera, or the plague! And I am punishing her! I dared to tell her: “Repent and die…” I! No, no, she shall live! She will follow me. We will flee, leave France, wander as far as the earth will carry us. I spoke to her of the scaffold! Good Lord! How did I dare utter the word! The scaffold waits also for me. We shall flee… I shall confess all to her. Yes, every day I shall tell her, prostrating myself, that I too have committed a crime. What a marriage of the tiger and the snake – worthy wife of a husband such as I! She must live! My infamy must make hers pale into insignificance!’
And Villefort slammed down the window in the front of the carriage, rather than opening it, crying: ‘Faster! Faster!’ in a voice that made the coachman leap up on his seat. The horses, carried forward by fear, flew to the house.
‘Yes, yes,’ Villefort repeated as he drew closer to home. ‘The woman must live; she must repent and bring up my son, my poor child, the only one apart from the indestructible old man, who has survived the destruction of the family. She loved him: everything she did was for him. One must never despair of the heart of a mother who loves her child; she will repent. No one will know that she was guilty: the crimes that were committed in my house, which now trouble people’s thoughts, will be forgotten in time; or, if some enemies of mine do remember them, they will add them to the list of my crimes. One, two, three more: what does it matter! My wife will escape, taking some money with her or, and above all, taking my son, far from the abyss into which I feel everyone must tumble with me. She will live, she will be happy again, since all her love is invested in her son and her son will never leave her. I shall have done a good deed; my heart grows lighter at the thought.’ The crown prosecutor breathed more freely than he had for a long time.
The carriage drew up in the courtyard of the house. Villefort leapt from the running board on to the steps. He saw that the servan
ts were surprised at his early return. He read nothing else on their faces; no one said anything to him. They stopped in his path, as usual, to let him pass; nothing more.
He passed Noirtier’s room and, through the half-open door, he saw as it were two shadows; but he did not concern himself about the other person who was with his father: all his thoughts were drawing him somewhere else.
‘Come,’ he said, climbing the little stairway leading to his wife’s apartments and Valentine’s empty room. ‘Come, nothing here has changed.’
He took particular care to close the landing door.
‘No one must bother us here,’ he said. ‘I must be able to speak freely to her, to accuse myself before her, to tell her everything…’
He approached the door and reached out for the glass handle. The door opened.
‘Not locked! Oh, good, very good,’ he muttered, entering the little drawing-room where in the evenings they would put up Edouard’s bed. Though he was at a boarding school, the child returned home every evening: his mother did not want to be separated from him.
In a single glance, he took in the little drawing-room.
‘No one,’ he said. ‘She must be in her bedroom.’
He rushed to the door, but this one was locked. He stopped, trembling.
‘Héloïse!’ he shouted, and thought he heard a piece of furniture move.
‘Héloïse!’ he said, a second time.
‘Who is there?’ said the voice of the woman he was calling. It seemed to him that this voice was weaker than usual.
‘Open up! Open up!’ Villefort cried. ‘It is I.’
Despite the anguished tone in which this order was given, the door did not open. Villefort broke the lock with a kick.
Mme de Villefort was standing in the doorway to her boudoir, pale, drawn, looking at him with a terrifying stare.
‘Héloïse, Héloïse!’ he said. ‘What is it? Speak to me!’
She held out a rigid, ghastly white hand towards him. ‘It is done, Monsieur,’ she said, with a croaking sound that seemed to tear her throat. ‘What more do you want?’ And she fell full length on the carpet.
The Count of Monte Cristo Page 145