The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (131 page)

‘Heaven preserve us, Madame!’ he exclaimed. ‘What has happened? Who has put you in this state? And is Monsieur de Saint-Méran not with you?’

‘Monsieur de Saint-Méran is dead,’ the old marchioness said, coming directly to the matter, but without any sign of feeling, in a kind of stupor.

Villefort started back and struck his hands together. ‘Dead!’ he stammered. ‘Dead, like that… so suddenly?’

‘A week ago,’ Mme de Saint-Méran continued. ‘We were getting into the carriage after dinner. For some days, Monsieur de Saint-Méran had been unwell, yet the idea of seeing our dear Valentine gave him strength despite his pain. He was just starting out when, six leagues from Marseille, after taking his usual pills, he fell into an unnaturally deep sleep. I was unwilling to wake him, but then his face seemed to go red and the veins in his temples to beat more violently than usual. However, as it was now night and getting too dark to see, I let him sleep. Shortly afterwards he gave a dull, heart-rending cry, like a man tormented by a nightmare, and sharply threw back his head. I called the valet, had the coach stopped, called to Monsieur de Saint-Méran and got him to breathe my sal volatile, but it was all over, he was dead and I journeyed to Aix seated beside his corpse.’

Villefort stood there, thunderstruck, his mouth gaping. ‘You called a doctor, I suppose?’ he said.

‘Immediately, but, as I told you, it was too late.’

‘Of course, but at least he could say from what illness the poor marquis died.’

‘Yes, Monsieur, he did that. It appears to have been an apoplectic stroke.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Monsieur de Saint-Méran always used to say that if he died far from Paris he would like his body to be brought to rest in the family vault. I had it put into a lead coffin and it is on its way, a few days’ drive behind me.’

‘Oh, poor mother!’ said Villefort. ‘To be entrusted with such a task, and after such a blow!’

‘God gave me strength; and in any case the dear marquis would surely have done for me what I did for him. It is true that, since I left him behind me there, I have felt I am going mad. I can no longer weep, yet I feel that one should do so, as long as one is suffering. Where is Valentine, Monsieur? We were coming for her; I want to see Valentine.’

Villefort thought that it would be frightful to reply that Valentine
was at the ball. He simply told the marchioness that her granddaughter had gone out with her stepmother and that she would be informed.

‘Now, Monsieur, at once, I beg you,’ said the old lady.

Villefort slipped his arm under that of Mme de Saint-Méran and took her to her apartment. ‘Rest, mother,’ he said.

At that word, the marchioness looked up and, seeing the man who reminded her of the much-mourned daughter who seemed to live again for her in Valentine, struck by the name of ‘mother’, she burst into tears and sank to her knees before a chair in which she buried her venerable head. Villefort told the women to look after her, while old Barrois hurried across in a state of consternation to his master: nothing terrifies old people so much as when death leaves their side to strike down another old person. Then, while Mme de Saint-Méran, still kneeling, began to pray from the depths of her heart, Villefort sent for a carriage and took it himself to collect his wife and daughter from Mme de Morcerf’s. He was so pale when he got to the door of the drawing-room that Valentine ran across to him, crying: ‘Oh, father! Something terrible has happened!’

‘Your grandmother has just arrived, Valentine,’ he said.

‘And grandfather?’ the girl asked, trembling.

M. de Villefort’s only reply was to give her his arm. He was only just in time because Valentine reeled, nearly fainting. Mme de Villefort hurried over to support her and helped her husband to get her into the carriage, saying: ‘How strange! Who would have thought it! This truly is strange!’ With that, the stricken family drove off, casting its sadness like a black veil across the rest of the gathering.

Valentine found Barrois waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. ‘Monsieur Noirtier would like to see you this evening,’ he whispered.

‘Tell him to expect me when I have seen my dear grandmother,’ Valentine said, her delicate soul having realized that Mme de Saint-Méran was the person who needed her most at that time.

She found her in bed. Silent caresses, painful swelling of the heart, broken sighs and burning tears were the only positive events in what passed between them. Mme de Villefort was also present, on her husband’s arm, and was full of respect for the poor widow – or so at least it seemed.

After a short while she leant across to whisper in her husband’s ear: ‘With your permission, I think I should retire, because the sight of me appears to make your mother-in-law more distressed.’

Mme de Saint-Méran overheard the remark. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said in Valentine’s ear. ‘Let her go; but you, stay.’

Mme de Villefort went out and Valentine was left alone at her grandmother’s bedside because the crown prosecutor, dismayed by this unexpected death, followed his wife.

Barrois, however, had gone back to Noirtier’s side the first time; the old man had heard the commotion in the house and sent his servant, as we said, to find out the cause of it. When he returned, the lively and, above all, intelligent eyes asked for his message.

‘Alas, Monsieur,’ said Barrois, ‘something terrible has happened: Madame de Saint-Méran is here and her husband is dead.’

M. de Saint-Méran and Noirtier had never been close, but the effect on one old man of hearing that another has died is well known. Noirtier let his head fall on his chest, like a man weighed down with sorrow or deep in thought, then shut one eye.

‘Mademoiselle Valentine?’ Barrois asked.

Noirtier indicated: ‘Yes.’

‘Monsieur knows very well that she is at the ball, because she came to say goodbye and to show him her dress.’

Noirtier again shut his left eye.

‘You want to see her?’

The old man indicated that he did.

‘Well, no doubt they are going to fetch her from Madame de Morcerf’s. I shall await her on her return and tell her to come up. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ said the paralysed man.

This is why Barrois was waiting for Valentine’s return and, as we have seen, informed her of her grandfather’s wishes. Consequently, Valentine went up to M. Noirtier’s on leaving Mme de Saint-Méran who, despite her distress, had finally succumbed to tiredness and was sleeping feverishly. Within her reach they had put a little table with a carafe of orange juice, her usual drink, and a glass. When that was done, the girl left the marchioness’s bedside to go up to Noirtier.

She went to kiss the old man, who looked at her with such tenderness that the young woman felt new tears rising to her eyes from a well that she thought had dried. The old man looked insistently at her.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Valentine. ‘What you are saying is that I still have one good grandfather; is that it?’ The old man indicated that this was indeed what his look had meant.

‘Luckily, alas!’ said Valentine. ‘Because, without that, what would become of me?’

It was one o’clock in the morning. Barrois, who wanted to go to bed himself, remarked that after such a painful evening everyone needed rest. The old man did not like to say that rest, as far as he was concerned, was to see his granddaughter. He sent Valentine away; tiredness and sorrow had indeed made her look unwell.

The next day she came in to see her grandmother and found her still in bed. Her fever had not gone down; on the contrary, a dull fire burned in the old marchioness’s eyes and she seemed to have been seized by a violent fit of nervous irritation.

‘Oh, my dear grandmother! Are you feeling worse this morning?’ Valentine exclaimed, seeing these signs of agitation.

‘No, no, my girl,’ said Mme de Saint-Méran. ‘I was waiting for you to come so that I could send you to fetch your father.’

‘My father?’ Valentine asked anxiously.

‘Yes, I want to speak to him.’

Valentine did not dare to object to the old woman’s wish – and in any case did not know what was behind it; so a moment later Villefort came in.

‘Monsieur,’ Mme de Saint-Méran said, without any preliminaries and as though she was afraid of running out of time. ‘You wrote to tell me that there were plans to marry your daughter, I believe?’

‘Yes, Madame,’ Villefort replied. ‘It is more than a plan, it is an agreement.’

‘And your future son-in-law is Franz d’Epinay?’

‘Yes, Madame.’

‘Son of General d’Epinay, one of our people, who was assassinated a few days before the usurper returned from Elba?’

‘Precisely.’

‘The son is not deterred by the idea of marrying the granddaughter of a Jacobin?’

‘Thankfully, mother, our civil strife is ended,’ said Villefort. ‘Monsieur d’Epinay was little more than a child when his father died. He is not well acquainted with Monsieur Noirtier and will regard him, if not with pleasure, at least with indifference.’

‘Is it a good match?’

‘In every way.’

‘The young man…’

‘Enjoys general respect.’

‘Is he acceptable?’

‘He is one of the most distinguished young men I know.’

Valentine had remained silent throughout this conversation.

‘Well, Monsieur,’ said Mme de Saint-Méran after a few moments’ thought. ‘You must hurry, because I have little time left to live.’

‘You, Madame! You, dear grandmother!’ Villefort and Valentine exclaimed together.

‘I know what I am saying,’ the marchioness went on. ‘You must hurry so that, not having a mother, she may at least have a grandmother to bless her marriage. I am the only one remaining to her from the side of my poor dear Renée, whom you so soon forgot, Monsieur.’

‘Madame,’ said Villefort, ‘you forget that I had to give this poor child a mother when she no longer had her own.’

‘A stepmother can never be a mother. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about Valentine. Let the dead lie!’

All this was said with such volubility and emphasis that the conversation almost seemed like the beginning of a delirium.

‘Everything shall be done according to your wishes, Madame,’ said Villefort, ‘particularly as they accord with my own; and as soon as Monsieur d’Epinay arrives in Paris…’

‘Grandmother,’ said Valentine, ‘think of convention, your recent bereavement… Would you wish a marriage to take place under such sad auspices?’

‘My dear girl,’ said the grandmother, brusquely interrupting her, ‘don’t give me any of those trite arguments that prevent weak minds from building a solid future for themselves. I too was married at my mother’s deathbed, and was no unhappier for that.’

‘Again, this idea of death, Madame!’ said Villefort.

‘Again! Still! I tell you, I am going to die, do you understand? Well, before dying I want to see my grandson-in-law, I want to tell him to make my granddaughter happy, I want to read in his eyes whether he intends to obey me, in short I want to know him,’ the old woman continued, with a terrifying look, ‘so that I can seek him out from the depth of my tomb if he is not what he should be, if he is not what he must be.’

‘Madame,’ said Villefort, ‘you must put aside such wild fancies,
which are close to madness. Once the dead have been laid in their tombs, they sleep there and do not return.’

‘Oh, yes, grandmother, calm yourself,’ said Valentine.

‘Whatever you say, Monsieur,’ the marchioness said, ‘I have to tell you that things are not as you believe. Last night I slept very badly. I could, as it were, see myself sleeping, as though my soul was already hovering above my body. I struggled to open my eyes, but they refused to obey me. I know that this will seem impossible to you, especially to you, Monsieur, but with my eyes shut, at the very spot where you are now standing, coming from the corner where there is a door leading to Madame de Villefort’s dressing-room, I saw a white shape.’

Valentine gave a cry. Villefort said: ‘You were feverish, Madame.’

‘Doubt me if you wish, but I am sure of what I am saying. I saw a white figure and, as if God were afraid that I might doubt the evidence of any of my senses, I heard my glass move – that glass, on the table.’

‘Oh, grandmother, it was a dream!’

‘It was so surely not a dream that I reached out for the bell, and upon that the shadow vanished. Then the chambermaid came in with a lantern. Ghosts only appear to those who ought to see them. This was the soul of my husband. Well, if my husband’s soul is coming back to call me, why should my soul not come back to defend my granddaughter? I think the tie is even stronger.’

In spite of himself, Villefort was profoundly shaken. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘do not give way to such mournful ideas. You will live with us, you will live for a long time, happy, loved, honoured, and we shall help you to forget…’

‘Never! Never! Never!’ said the marquise. ‘When does Monsieur d’Epinay return?’

‘We are expecting him at any moment.’

‘Very well. Tell me as soon as he arrives. We must hurry. Then I should like to see a lawyer to ensure that all our property goes to Valentine.’