The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (159 page)

It was half-past two in the morning. Morcerf was shown to his rooms. He found a bath and supper ready for him. The servant who had travelled on the rear box of the carriage was at his disposal, while Baptistin, who had travelled in front, was to serve the count.

Albert took his bath, had supper and went to bed. All night he was rocked by the melancholy sound of the waves. Getting up the next morning, he went over to the window, opened it and found himself on a little terrace, with the vastness of the sea in front of him and, behind, a pretty park adjoining a small wood.

A little corvette was bobbing in a fairly large cove; it had a narrow hull and tall mast with a flag flying from the lateen yard and bearing Monte Cristo’s coat of arms: a mountain on a field
azure with a cross gules at the chief, which could also have been an allusion to his name (evoking Calvary, which Our Saviour’s passion has made a mountain more precious than gold, and the infamous cross which his divine blood made holy) as much as to any personal memory of suffering and regeneration buried in the mysterious night of the man’s past. Around the schooner were several little boats belonging to the fishermen in the surrounding villages, which seemed like humble subjects awaiting the orders of their queen.

Here, as wherever Monte Cristo stopped, even if only for two days, the temperature of life was raised to a high degree of comfort, which meant that life immediately became easy. Albert found two guns and every other piece of equipment necessary for hunting in a small room beside his bedroom. A more lofty room on the ground floor was given over to all those ingenious devices that the English – who are great fishermen, because they have both patience and leisure – have so far not managed to persuade the more workaday fishermen of France to adopt.

All their time was spent in these different pursuits, at which Monte Cristo excelled: they killed a dozen pheasants in the park, caught the same number of trout in the streams, dined in a pergola overlooking the sea and took tea in the library.

Around the evening of the third day, Albert, worn to a thread by the exertions of this life, which seemed to be a game for Monte Cristo, was sleeping at a window while the count and his architect ran over the plan of a conservatory that he wanted to build in his house, when the sound of a horse’s hoofs crushing the gravel on the path made the young man sit up. He looked out of the window and was extremely and unpleasantly surprised to see his valet in the courtyard, having left the man behind to save embarrassment to Monte Cristo.

‘Florentin!’ he exclaimed, leaping up from his chair. ‘Can my mother be ill?’ He ran to the door of the room.

Monte Cristo looked after him and saw him in conversation with the valet who, still out of breath, took a small sealed packet from his pocket. The packet contained a newspaper and a letter.

‘Who is this letter from?’ Albert asked urgently.

‘From Monsieur Beauchamp,’ Florentin replied.

‘So did Monsieur Beauchamp send you?’

‘Yes, Monsieur. He called me to his house, gave me the money for my journey, summoned a post-horse for me and made me
promise not to stop until I reached Monsieur. I covered the distance in fifteen hours.’

Albert opened the letter, trembling. At the first lines, he gave a cry and grasped the newspaper, a visible shudder running through his frame. Suddenly his eyes clouded, his knees seemed to buckle and, as he was on the point of falling, he leant against Florentin, who reached out to support him.

‘Poor young man!’ Monte Cristo muttered, so low that even he could not hear these words of compassion as he spoke them. ‘It is written that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the sons, even to the third and fourth generation.’

Meanwhile Albert’s strength had returned and he went on reading, while shaking the hair on a head drenched in sweat. Then, crumpling both the paper and the letter, he said: ‘Florentin, is your horse in any condition to return to Paris?’

‘It’s a lame old post-horse.’

‘Oh, good Lord! And how was the house when you left?’

‘Quite calm. But when I returned from Monsieur Beauchamp’s, I found madame in tears. She called me to ask when you would return, so I told her that I was going to fetch you, at Monsieur Beauchamp’s request. Her first impulse was to reach out as if to restrain me, but after thinking for a moment, she said: “Yes, go, Florentin. Let him come back.” ’

‘Yes, mother, yes,’ said Albert. ‘Have no fear, I am coming – and a curse on the vile slanderer! But, first of all, I must get started.’ And he set off towards the room where he had left Monte Cristo.

He was no longer the same man. Five minutes had been enough to accomplish a pitiful change in Albert. He had left, his usual self; and now he returned, his voice strangled, his face blotched with feverish flushes, his eyes glistening beneath blue-veined lids and his walk unsteady like that of a drunken man.

‘Count,’ he said, ‘thank you for your excellent hospitality, which I should like to have enjoyed longer, but I have to go back to Paris.’

‘What has happened?’

‘A great misfortune; but please let me leave: this is something more important than life itself to me. No questions, Count, I beg you; just a horse!’

‘My stables are at your disposal, Viscount,’ Monte Cristo said. ‘But you will drop dead of exhaustion if you go by post-horse. Take a brougham, a coupé, some sort of carriage…’

‘No, that would take too long, and in any case I need the fatigue that you fear for me: it will do me good.’

Albert took a few steps, reeling like a man with a bullet wound, and slumped into a chair near the door. Monte Cristo did not see this second moment of dizziness; he was already at the window, shouting: ‘Ali, a horse for Monsieur de Morcerf! Hurry, he has no time to lose!’

These words brought Albert back to his senses. He ran out of the room, followed by the count. ‘Thank you,’ he muttered, bounding into the saddle. ‘Come back as soon as you can, Florentin. Is there any password I need to get horses?’

‘None. Simply hand over the one you are riding and another will instantly be saddled up for you.’

Albert was about to gallop off, but paused.

‘You may find my departure odd, even senseless,’ he said. ‘You may not realize how a few lines in a newspaper can drive a man to despair. Well,’ the young man added, throwing the paper to the count, ‘read this, but only after I have left, so that you do not see my shame.’

While the count was picking up the paper, he dug the spurs that had just been attached to his boots into the horse’s flanks and the animal, astonished at coming across any rider who thought he needed such encouragement, went off like a shot from a sling.

The count looked after him with a feeling of infinite compassion. Only when he had altogether disappeared did he turn back to the newspaper, where he read as follows:

The French officer in the service of Ali, Pasha of Janina, who was mentioned three weeks ago in the newspaper
L’Impartial
, and who not only betrayed the castles of Janina, but also sold his benefactor to the Turks, was indeed at that time named Fernand, as stated by our honourable colleagues in that newspaper. Since then, as well as his Christian name, he has acquired a title of nobility and the name of a landed estate.

Today, he calls himself Monsieur le Comte de Morcerf and is a member of the chamber of peers.

So the dreadful secret which Beauchamp had so generously buried had reappeared like an armed phantom; and, on the day after Albert’s departure for Normandy, another newspaper had been maliciously informed and had published these few lines that drove the unfortunate young man to the brink of insanity.

At eight o’clock in the morning, Albert stormed into Beauchamp’s like a thunderbolt. The valet had been forewarned and showed Morcerf into his master’s room, where Beauchamp had just got into his bath.

‘Well?’ Albert asked.

‘Well, my poor friend,’ Beauchamp replied, ‘I was expecting you.’

‘Here I am. I don’t need to say, Beauchamp, that I consider you too good and loyal a friend to have spoken of this to anyone; no, my dear fellow. In any case, the message you sent me is proof of your affection. So let’s lose no time in preliminaries: do you have any idea where this blow comes from?’

‘I’ll say something about that later.’

‘Yes, and first, my friend, you must tell me that story of this abominable treachery in all its details.’

Beauchamp told the young man, who was crushed with shame and anguish, the following simple facts.

Two days earlier, in the morning, the article appeared in a newspaper other than
L’Impartial
and (something which made the matter even more serious) in a paper well known for supporting the government. Beauchamp was having lunch when the passage leapt out at him. He immediately ordered a cab and, without finishing his meal, hurried round to the paper. Although his professed political opinions were diametrically opposed to those of the managing editor of the paper making the accusation, Beauchamp and he were close friends, something that happens occasionally – or even, we might say, quite often.

When he arrived, the editor was holding a copy of his own paper and apparently admiring a leader on sugar beet, probably of his own composition.

‘Good!’ said Beauchamp. ‘As I see you have a copy of your paper, my dear chap, I don’t need to tell you what brings me.’

‘Are you by any chance an advocate of cane sugar?’ asked the editor of the government paper.

‘No,’ Beauchamp replied. ‘In fact I have absolutely no ideas on the matter. I’m here for another reason.’

‘So why are you here?’

‘About the Morcerf article.’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Odd, isn’t it?’

‘So odd that you are in danger of a libel case, I would think, and a very risky trial.’

‘Not at all. With the note, we received all the supporting evidence, and we are quite convinced that Monsieur de Morcerf will keep quiet. Anyway, it’s a service to the country to denounce these wretches who don’t deserve the honours they have received.’

Beauchamp was astonished. ‘But who gave you all this information?’ he asked. ‘My paper, which first raised the matter, had to hush it up for lack of proof, even though we have more interest than you do in unmasking Monsieur de Morcerf, since he’s a peer of the realm and we belong to the Opposition.’

‘Heavens, it’s very simple. We didn’t go looking for scandal, it came and found us. A man came yesterday from Janina, bringing the incriminating dossier and, since we were still slightly unwilling to make the accusation, he told us that if we refused, the article would appear in another paper. Come on now, Beauchamp: you know what important news is; we didn’t want to let this slip through our fingers. Now it’s out, there’ll be terrible repercussions to the ends of Europe.’

Beauchamp realized that there was nothing more to be done, so he left in despair and dispatched a message to Morcerf.

What he had not been able to tell Albert, because it took place after his letter had left, was that the same day there had been a great commotion in the Upper House which had broken out and spread among the ordinarily tranquil groups that made up the assembly. Everyone had arrived almost before time and was discussing the grim news that was to preoccupy public opinion and turn every eye on one of the most prominent members of that illustrious body.

The article was read in a whisper, followed by an exchange of comments and recollections which gave more details about the facts. The Comte de Morcerf was not liked by his colleagues. Like all those who have risen in the world, he had been obliged to behave with a degree of hauteur, in order to maintain his rank. Great aristocrats laughed at him, talented men rejected him and those whose reputations were justly pure instinctively despised him. The count was in the unhappy situation of a scapegoat: once he had
been designated by the Lord’s finger to be the sacrificial victim, everyone was prepared to cry him down.

The Comte de Morcerf alone knew nothing of this. He did not receive the newspaper in which the defamatory article had appeared, and he had spent the morning writing letters and trying out a horse.

He arrived at his usual hour, his head held high, with a proud look and insolent manner, got down from his carriage, and strode along the corridors and into the chamber, not noticing the sidelong glances of the ushers or the grudging nods of his colleagues. When he came into the chamber, it had already been in session for more than half an hour.

Though the count, as we have said, ignorant of what had happened, made no change in his look or manner, this look and this manner seemed to everyone even more arrogant than usual, and his presence on this occasion appeared such an act of aggression in this assembly that was jealous of its honour, that everyone considered it a breach of etiquette, while several thought it an act of bravado, and a few took it as an insult. Clearly, the whole chamber was burning with eagerness to begin the debate.

The accusing newspaper could be seen in everyone’s hands but, as is always the case, no one was keen to take on the responsibility of opening the attack. Finally one honourable peer, a declared enemy of the Comte de Morcerf, mounted the tribune with a solemnity that proclaimed the long-expected moment had come.

There was a fearful silence. Only Morcerf remained unaware of the reason for this awed attention, paid for once to an orator who was seldom accorded such an attentive audience.