She loved Villefort, and he left her at the moment he was about to become her husband. Villefort knew not when he should return, and Renee, far from pleading for Dantes, hated the man whose crime separated her from her lover.
Villefort escorted Renee into the next room to steal away a moment without the marquis looking on. He led her to a chaise off to the side of the room, wide enough for their use. They sat, facing each other, the room dark as the curtains and shutters were drawn tight.
“You do not plead mercy then?”
Renee met his eyes, “I no longer feel merciful toward the man that causes your absence.”
“My love, I will return with haste. I have no wish to be parted from you for longer than necessary”
“Will you stay with me for a moment, allow for a proper goodbye?”
His smile turned increasingly seductive.
“What sort of goodbye do you have in mind?”
“A goodbye that is not rushed behind a parlor door.”
“Either way, my love, we will still need to make haste, I journey to Paris, remember.”
“There is no need to tell me.” Renee entrenched in the task of removing some of the easily accessible pieces of clothing she wore. A woman’s clothing took entirely more work than a man’s but Renee and Villefort adapted by leaving laces untied and hidden or folds gently rumpled. Sometimes people didn’t notice things because they didn’t care to look.
Villefore watched his lover undress as fast as she was able and he endeavored to help when she needed it. When every pale expanse of her skin was present Villefort could no longer hold back his ardor. He would take his fiancé, ignite her passions, and leave her needing for the next time they met, so she did not forget him during his journey, short as it may be.
Even while rushed, Villefort was capable of great pleasure. He stroked Renee to a slow burn, a frenzy, inciting panting moans with every breath. She clung to him like a leaf on a tree in autumn, with every part of her. Only once she was ready to receive him, did he lay himself between her spread thighs and make her his all over again.
This night showed him a new side of Renee, usually her heart remained guarded while opening her affections to him. Tonight she was open, he could feel her emotions in her touch, even though time ran short the words they needed to say held aloft on the tips of their tongues.
“Please.” It was only a whisper, an entreaty into the darkness of the room. Villefort gave her what she needed, what she yearned for. Once he was seated fully inside her, he lay wrapped in her arms, her legs encircling his own. There were only minutes left but he allowed this one small pleasure, to cherish this moment before everything changed. The whole country would be ripped apart should Napoleon land and if his efforts proved fruitful the life of him and his bride would also be forever altered.
He pulled his mind back into the present and began to move inside Renee, slow and gentle, a far cry for their usual lovemaking. The cherished feeling he acquired in her arms was wondrous and he wanted to impart that to her as well. Slow and gentle did not last long, with her sex clenching his every thrust and her sharp nails digging into his back. He entered her in long shallow thrusts, trying to bring her to a completion unlike any she had previously. Even though he would soon be her husband, he wanted to be sure no other man eclipsed him in her mind.
Her breathing quickly became ragged and he could not help but match the pace she tried to set with her hips tilting this way and that. Only minutes passed before he lost all thought of anything other than her sex surrounding his. She arched her back drawing him further into herself, allowing him better angles for which to pleasure her.
“Gerard,” she said, nothing more than a breath into his neck. It was enough to have him increasing the pace as she never uttered his given name. The sound of it on her lips was intoxicating and exhilarating.
“Renee,” he answered in kind, pushing into her faster and with more force. Upon his return from Paris they would have more time, he draw things out with his lover, have her at his will for as long as either of them could stand it. For now, this was all they each had and he would take joy in it.
They reached the climax of their lovemaking together, both stifling a shout into the curves of one another’s shoulder and neck. It crashed over them both like a wave at high tide, strong and insistent, drawing the last vestiges of pleasure from their bodies.
Villefore lay motionless, slumped, on top of his fiancé, and she bore his weight easily. A comfort spread through them both as they enjoyed the small quiet moment together. It ended quickly and finally Villefort rose to dress. Renee also rose as she would need to rejoin the marquise to properly see her lover away.
“Return quickly, my love. We shall marry soon and I may already bear your child.”
His eyes flashes as his gaze pinned her.
“Truly?”
“It is too soon to tell but seeing as you are voracious in your appetites, it might be possible.”
He clutches his pants in one hand and reached out to kiss Renee with his other.
“I would love nothing more than to return, marry you, and learn that you carry my son.”
Having a son so soon after they marry would look very well for his lineage, and his efforts to secure a future without the stink of treason marring his name.
He helped Renee right her own attire after he finished his and they exited together, hand in hand. They had become adept at ensuring no one knew they had made love and tonight was no exception. The color on Renee’s cheeks could be attributed to tears shed for her departing fiancé and no one would dare suggest otherwise.
• • •
Meanwhile what of Mercedes? She had met Fernand at the corner of the Rue de la Loge; she had returned to the Catalans, and had despairingly cast herself on her couch. Fernand, kneeling by her side, took her hand, and covered it with kisses that Mercedes did not even feel. She passed the night thus. The lamp went out for want of oil, but she paid no heed to the darkness, and dawn came, but she knew not that it was day. Grief had made her blind to all but one object — that was Edmond.
“Ah, you are there,” said she, at length, turning towards Fernand.
“I have not quitted you since yesterday,” returned Fernand sorrowfully.
M. Morrel had not readily given up the fight. He had learned that Dantes had been taken to prison, and he had gone to all his friends, and the influential persons of the city; but the report was already in circulation that Dantes was arrested as a Bonapartist agent; and as the most sanguine looked upon any attempt of Napoleon to remount the throne as impossible, he met with nothing but refusal, and had returned home in despair, declaring that the matter was serious and that nothing more could be done.
Caderousse was equally restless and uneasy, but instead of seeking, like M. Morrel, to aid Dantes, he had shut himself up with two bottles of black currant brandy, in the hope of drowning reflection. But he did not succeed, and became too intoxicated to fetch any more drink, and yet not so intoxicated as to forget what had happened. With his elbows on the table he sat between the two empty bottles, while spectres danced in the light of the unsnuffed candle — spectres such as Hoffmann strews over his punch-drenched pages, like black, fantastic dust.
Danglars alone was content and joyous — he had got rid of an enemy and made his own situation on the Pharaon secure. Danglars was one of those men born with a pen behind the ear, and an inkstand in place of a heart. Everything with him was multiplication or subtraction. The life of a man was to him of far less value than a numeral, especially when, by taking it away, he could increase the sum total of his own desires. He went to bed at his usual hour, and slept in peace.
Villefort, after having received M. de Salvieux’ letter, embraced Renee, kissed the marquise’s hand, and shaken that of the marquis, started for Paris along the Aix road.
Old Dantes was dying with anxiety to know what had become of Edmond. But we know very well what had become of Edmond.
Chapter 1
0. The King’s Closet at the Tuileries.
We will leave Villefort on the road to Paris, travelling — thanks to trebled fees — with all speed, and passing through two or three apartments, enter at the Tuileriesthe little room with the arched window, so well known as having been the favorite closet of Napoleon and Louis XVIII., and now of Louis Philippe.
There, seated before a walnut table he had brought with him from Hartwell, and to which, from one of those fancies not uncommon to great people, he was particularly attached, the king, Louis XVIII., was carelessly listening to a man of fifty or fifty-two years of age, with gray hair, aristocratic bearing, and exceedingly gentlemanly attire, and meanwhile making a marginal note in a volume of Gryphius’s rather inaccurate, but much sought-after, edition of Horace — a work which was much indebted to the sagacious observations of the philosophical monarch.
“You say, sir” — said the king.
“That I am exceedingly disquieted, sire.”
“Really, have you had a vision of the seven fat kine and the seven lean kine?”
“No, sire, for that would only betoken for us seven years of plenty and seven years of scarcity; and with a king as full of foresight as your majesty, scarcity is not a thing to be feared.”
“Then of what other scourge are you afraid, my dear Blacas?”
“Sire, I have every reason to believe that a storm is brewing in the south.”
“Well, my dear duke,” replied Louis XVIII., “I think you are wrongly informed, and know positively that, on the contrary, it is very fine weather in that direction.” Man of ability as he was, Louis XVIII. liked a pleasant jest.
“Sire,” continued M. de Blacas, “if it only be to reassure a faithful servant, will your majesty send into Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphine, trusty men, who will bring you back a faithful report as to the feeling in these three provinces?”
“Caninus surdis,” replied the king, continuing the annotations in his Horace.
“Sire,” replied the courtier, laughing, in order that he might seem to comprehend the quotation, “your majesty may be perfectly right in relying on the good feeling of France, but I fear I am not altogether wrong in dreading some desperate attempt.”
“By whom?”
“By Bonaparte, or, at least, by his adherents.”
“My dear Blacas,” said the king, “you with your alarms prevent me from working.”
“And you, sire, prevent me from sleeping with your security.”
“Wait, my dear sir, wait a moment; for I have such a delightful note on the Pastor quum traheret — wait, and I will listen to you afterwards.”
There was a brief pause, during which Louis XVIII. wrote, in a hand as small as possible, another note on the margin of his Horace, and then looking at the duke with the air of a man who thinks he has an idea of his own, while he is only commenting upon the idea of another, said, — “Go on, my dear duke, go on — I listen.”
“Sire,” said Blacas, who had for a moment the hope of sacrificing Villefort to his own profit, “I am compelled to tell you that these are not mere rumors destitute of foundation which thus disquiet me; but a serious-minded man, deserving all my confidence, and charged by me to watch over the south” (the duke hesitated as he pronounced these words), “has arrived by post to tell me that a great peril threatens the king, and so I hastened to you, sire.”
“Mala ducis avi domum,” continued Louis XVIII., still annotating.
“Does your majesty wish me to drop the subject?”
“By no means, my dear duke; but just stretch out your hand.”
“Which?”
“Whichever you please — there to the left.”
“Here, sire?”
“I tell you to the left, and you are looking to the right; I mean on my left — yes, there. You will find yesterday’s report of the minister of police. But here is M. Dandre himself;” and M. Dandre, announced by the chamberlain-in-waiting, entered.
“Come in,” said Louis XVIII., with repressed smile, “come in, Baron, and tell the duke all you know — the latest news of M. de Bonaparte; do not conceal anything, however serious, — let us see, the Island of Elba is a volcano, and we may expect to have issuing thence flaming and bristling war — bella, horrida bella.” M. Dandre leaned very respectfully on the back of a chair with his two hands, and said, — “Has your majesty perused yesterday’s report?”
“Yes, yes; but tell the duke himself, who cannot find anything, what the report contains — give him the particulars of what the usurper is doing in his islet.”
“Monsieur,” said the baron to the duke, “all the servants of his majesty must approve of the latest intelligence which we have from the Island of Elba. Bonaparte” — M. Dandre looked at Louis XVIII., who, employed in writing a note, did not even raise his head. “Bonaparte,” continued the baron, “is mortally wearied, and passes whole days in watching his miners at work at Porto-Longone.”
“And scratches himself for amusement,” added the king.
“Scratches himself?” inquired the duke, “what does your majesty mean?”
“Yes, indeed, my dear duke. Did you forget that this great man, this hero, this demigod, is attacked with a malady of the skin which worries him to death, prurigo?”
“And, moreover, my dear duke,” continued the minister of police, “we are almost assured that, in a very short time, the usurper will be insane.”
“Insane?”
“Raving mad; his head becomes weaker. Sometimes he weeps bitterly, sometimes laughs boisterously, at other time he passes hours on the seashore, flinging stones in the water and when the flint makes ‘duck-and-drake’ five or six times, he appears as delighted as if he had gained another Marengo or Austerlitz. Now, you must agree that these are indubitable symptoms of insanity.”
“Or of wisdom, my dear baron — or of wisdom,” said Louis XVIII., laughing; “the greatest captains of antiquity amused themselves by casting pebbles into the ocean — see Plutarch’s life of Scipio Africanus.”
M. de Blacas pondered deeply between the confident monarch and the truthful minister. Villefort, who did not choose to reveal the whole secret, lest another should reap all the benefit of the disclosure, had yet communicated enough to cause him the greatest uneasiness.
“Well, well, Dandre,” said Louis XVIII., “Blacas is not yet convinced; let us proceed, therefore, to the usurper’s conversion.” The minister of police bowed.
“The usurper’s conversion!” murmured the duke, looking at the king and Dandre, who spoke alternately, like Virgil’s shepherds. “The usurper converted!”
“Decidedly, my dear duke.”
“In what way converted?”
“To good principles. Tell him all about it, Baron.”
“Why, this is the way of it,” said the minister, with the gravest air in the world: “Napoleon lately had a review, and as two or three of his old veterans expressed a desire to return to France, he gave them their dismissal, and exhorted them to ‘serve the good king.’ These were his own words, of that I am certain.”
“Well, Blacas, what think you of this?” inquired the king triumphantly, and pausing for a moment from the voluminous scholiast before him.
“I say, sire, that the minister of police is greatly deceived or I am; and as it is impossible it can be the minister of police as he has the guardianship of the safety and honor of your majesty, it is probable that I am in error. However, sire, if I might advise, your majesty will interrogate the person of whom I spoke to you, and I will urge your majesty to do him this honor.”
“Most willingly, Duke; under your auspices I will receive any person you please, but you must not expect me to be too confiding. Baron, have you any report more recent than this dated the 20th February. — this is the 4th of March?”
“No, sire, but I am hourly expecting one; it may have arrived since I left my office.”
“Go thither, and if there be none — well, well,” continued Louis XVIII., “make one; that is
the usual way, is it not?” and the king laughed facetiously.
“Oh, sire,” replied the minister, “we have no occasion to invent any; every day our desks are loaded with most circumstantial denunciations, coming from hosts of people who hope for some return for services which they seek to render, but cannot; they trust to fortune, and rely upon some unexpected event in some way to justify their predictions.”
“Well, sir, go;” said Louis XVIII., “and remember that I am waiting for you.”
“I will but go and return, sire; I shall be back in ten minutes.”
“And I, sire,” said M. de Blacas, “will go and find my messenger.”
“Wait, sir, wait,” said Louis XVIII. “Really, M. de Blacas, I must change your armorial bearings; I will give you an eagle with outstretched wings, holding in its claws a prey which tries in vain to escape, and bearing this device — Tenax.”
“Sire, I listen,” said De Blacas, biting his nails with impatience.
“I wish to consult you on this passage, ‘Molli fugiens anhelitu,’ you know it refers to a stag flying from a wolf. Are you not a sportsman and a great wolf-hunter? Well, then, what do you think of the molli anhelitu?”
“Admirable, sire; but my messenger is like the stag you refer to, for he has posted two hundred and twenty leagues in scarcely three days.”
“Which is undergoing great fatigue and anxiety, my dear duke, when we have a telegraph which transmits messages in three or four hours, and that without getting in the least out of breath.”
“Ah, sire, you recompense but badly this poor young man, who has come so far, and with so much ardor, to give your majesty useful information. If only for the sake of M. de Salvieux, who recommends him to me, I entreat your majesty to receive him graciously.”
“M. de Salvieux, my brother’s chamberlain?”
“Yes, sire.”
“He is at Marseilles.”
The Count of Monte Cristo (The Wild and Wanton Edition) Page 11