The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (182 page)

Valentine had raised herself up on her elbow and only just had time to fall back into bed and hide her eyes under her arm. Then, trembling, anxious, her heart seized with unspeakable fear, she waited.

Someone was coming over to the bed and touching the curtains. Valentine gathered all her strength and gave out that regular breathing that is the sign of untroubled sleep.

‘Valentine!’ a voice whispered.

The young woman shuddered to the depths of her heart, but did not reply.

‘Valentine!’ the same voice repeated.

The silence continued: Valentine had promised not to wake up. Then nothing moved. The only sound that Valentine could hear was the almost inaudible one of a liquid filling the glass that she had just emptied.

At this she dared to half-open her eyelids, behind the protection of her outstretched arm. She saw a woman in a white robe who was pouring a liquid out of a phial into her glass.

For that brief moment Valentine may have held her breath or made some movement, because the woman anxiously stopped and leant over the bed to see if she was really sleeping. It was Madame de Villefort.

When she recognized her stepmother, Valentine was unable to repress a shudder that made the bed move. Mme de Villefort immediately slipped along the wall and there, hidden by the bed-curtain, silent, attentive, she watched Valentine’s every movement.

Valentine herself recalled Monte Cristo’s dreadful words. In the hand that was not holding the phial she thought she had seen a sort of long, sharp knife shining. So, summoning up all the power of her will, she tried to shut her eyes; but this operation of the most fearful of our senses, an operation that is normally so simple, at that moment became almost impossible to carry out, so strongly did eager curiosity struggle to push back her eyelids and discover the truth.

However, reassured by the silence in which she could again hear, by Valentine’s regular breathing, that she was asleep, Mme de Villefort once more reached out and, half hidden behind the curtains which were drawn back to the head of the bed, finished emptying the contents of her phial into Valentine’s glass. Then she left, without the slightest noise to tell Valentine that she was no longer there. She had seen the arm vanish, that’s all – the fresh, plump arm of a woman of twenty-five, young and beautiful, who was pouring out death.

It is impossible to express what Valentine had felt for the minute and a half that Mme de Villefort was in her room.

The scratching of a fingernail on the bookcase roused the young woman from the state of torpor into which she had lapsed, and which seemed like the numbness of sleep. She had difficulty in
raising her head. The door, still silent, opened again on its hinges and Monte Cristo reappeared.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Do you still doubt?’

‘Oh, my God!’ she muttered.

‘Did you see?’

‘Alas, yes!’

‘Did you recognize her?’

Valentine groaned. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I cannot believe it.’

‘Would you rather die, then, and kill Maximilien?’

‘My God, my God!’ the young woman repeated, almost distracted. ‘Can’t I leave the house and escape?’

‘Valentine, the hand which is pursuing you will reach you wherever you go; it will bribe your servants with gold and death will reach out to you under every disguise: in the water you drink from the spring, or the fruit you pluck from the tree.’

‘But surely you said that my grandfather’s precautions had given me immunity against poison?’

‘Against one poison and, even then, only if given in a small dose. The poison will be changed or the quantity increased.’

He took the glass and touched the liquid against his lips. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘It’s already being done. She is no longer using brucine to poison you, but a simple narcotic. I recognize the taste of the alcohol in which it has been dissolved. If you had drunk what Madame de Villefort has just poured into this glass, Valentine, you would have been lost.’

‘But why in heaven’s name is she hounding me like this?’ she cried.

‘What! Are you so sweet, so good, so immune to thoughts of evil that you do not know, Valentine?’

‘No,’ the girl said. ‘I have never done her any harm.’

‘But you are rich, Valentine. You have an income of two hundred thousand
livres
and you are taking this money away from her son.’

‘What! My fortune is not his. It comes from my parents.’

‘Indeed. That is why Monsieur and Madame de Saint-Méran died: so that you would inherit from your parents; that is why, on the day he made you his heir, Monsieur Noirtier was condemned; and that is why you, too, must die, Valentine – so that your father can inherit from you, and your brother, now an only child, can inherit from your father.’

‘Edouard! Poor child! Is it for his sake that all these crimes are being committed?’

‘Ah, you do understand at last.’

‘My God! As long as it does not all rebound on him!’

‘You are an angel, Valentine.’

‘But she has given up trying to kill my grandfather, then?’

‘She considered that, if you were dead, except in the event of disinheritance, the fortune would naturally revert to your brother; and that, when it came down to it, the crime was pointless and doubly dangerous to commit.’

‘How could such a plot have been hatched in the mind of a woman! Oh, my God!’

‘Remember Perugia, the arbour at the post-house and the man with the brown cape whom your stepmother was asking about
aqua tofana
. Well, it was at that time that this whole infernal plot was born in her head.’

‘Oh, Monsieur!’ the sweet young woman cried, bursting into tears. ‘I can see, in that case, that I am condemned to die.’

‘No, Valentine, no. I have provided against every intrigue. Our enemy is vanquished, now that we know her. No, Valentine, you will live… live to love and be loved, to be happy and to make a noble heart happy. But if you are to live, you must trust in me.’

‘Tell, me, Monsieur: what must I do?’

‘You must blindly follow my instructions and take what I tell you.’

‘As God is my witness,’ Valentine exclaimed, ‘if I were alone, I should prefer to let myself die.’

‘Don’t confide in anyone, even your father.’

‘My father is not a part of this frightful plot, is he, Monsieur?’ Valentine said, clasping her hands.

‘No, yet your father, as a man used to juridical accusations, must suspect that all these deaths in his family are not natural. It is your father who should be watching over you, who should now be here in my place, who should already have emptied this glass and have taken action against the murderess. A spectre against a spectre,’ he murmured, completing his sentence aloud.

‘Monsieur,’ Valentine said, ‘I will do anything to live, because there are two beings in the world who love me enough to die if I should die: my grandfather and Maximilien.’

‘I shall watch over them as I have watched over you.’

‘Very well, then, do what you will with me,’ said Valentine; then she added, more softly: ‘Oh, my God, my God! What is to become of me?’

‘Whatever happens, Valentine, have no fear. If you are in pain, if you lose your sense of sight, hearing or touch, fear nothing. If you should wake up without knowing where you are, do not be afraid, even if when you awoke you were to find yourself in some tomb-like crypt or nailed into some coffin. Summon your strength and think: at this moment, a friend, a father, a man who wants my happiness and Maximilien’s, is watching over me.’

‘Alas, alas, what a dreadful extremity!’

‘But Valentine, would you prefer to denounce your stepmother?’

‘I’d rather die a hundred times! Oh, yes, I’d rather die.’

‘You shall not die; and promise me that, whatever should happen to you, you will not complain, you will have hope?’

‘I shall think of Maximilien.’

‘You are my dear child, Valentine. Only I can save you, and I shall.’

Valentine, at the height of terror, realizing that the moment had come to ask God for strength, put her hands together and sat up to pray, muttering a jumble of words and forgetting that her white shoulders had no covering other than her long hair, and that her heart could be seen beating under the fine lace of her nightdress.

The count gently touched the young woman’s arm, drew the velvet counterpane up to cover her neck and said, with a paternal smile: ‘My child, believe in my devotion, as you believe in the goodness of God and the love of Maximilien.’

Valentine gave him a look full of gratitude and remained as docile as a child under the bedclothes.

The count took his emerald pillbox out of his waistcoat, raised the golden lid and emptied a little pastille the size of a pea into Valentine’s right hand.

She took it in her other hand and looked closely at the count. The face of her fearless protector wore a look of divine majesty and power, while on Valentine’s there was clearly a question. ‘Yes,’ he told her. Valentine put the pastille to her lips and swallowed it.

‘And now, goodbye, my child,’ he said. ‘I am going to try to sleep, because you are saved.’

‘Do,’ said Valentine. ‘Whatever happens to me, I promise I shall not be afraid.’

Monte Cristo remained looking at the young woman for a long time as she gradually fell asleep, overcome by the power of the drug that the count had just given her. Then he took the glass, emptied three-quarters of it into the fireplace, so that it would seem as though Valentine had drunk the missing portion, and put it back on the bedside table. Finally he went back to the door behind the bookcase and disappeared, after a final glance towards Valentine, who was sleeping with the confidence and candour of an angel lying at the feet of the Lord.

The night-light continued to burn on Valentine’s mantelpiece, exhausting the last drops of oil still floating on the water. Already the alabaster of the shade was reddening and a brighter flame flared up, crackling with those last sparks that represent, in inanimate objects, the final death throes, so often compared to those of poor human creatures. A faint, sinister light cast an opal hue over the white curtains and the sheets on the young woman’s bed. All sound from the street, for once, was hushed and the silence was dreadful.

Now it was that the door to Edouard’s room opened and a head which we have already seen appeared in the mirror opposite the door: it was Mme de Villefort, coming to see the effect of her potion.

She stopped on the threshold, listened to the crackling of the lamp, the only sound audible in this room which appeared to be unoccupied; then she went cautiously over to the bedside table to see if Valentine’s glass was empty.

It was still one-quarter full, as we said.

Mme de Villefort took it and emptied it into the fireplace, stirring the ashes to ensure that the liquid was absorbed. Then she carefully washed the glass, wiped it with her own handkerchief and put it back on the bedside table.

If anyone had been watching and able to see inside the room, they would have observed Mme de Villefort’s reluctance to look at
Valentine or to go over to the bed. The gloomy light, the silence and the awful poetry of night had no doubt combined with the fearful poetry of her conscience: the poisoner was afraid to see her work.

At length she did pluck up courage, drew back the curtain, leant on the head of the bed and looked at Valentine.

The young woman was no longer breathing and her teeth, half-clenched, did not give out a single trace of that respiration which indicates life. Her pale lips had ceased to tremble; her eyes, drowning in a violet mist that seemed to have seeped beneath the skin, formed a whiter protuberance where the orb swelled beneath the lid; and her long black lashes were outlined against skin that was already as dull as wax.

Mme de Villefort looked at this face with an expression that was eloquent in its passivity. Then she grew bolder and, lifting the blanket, put her hand to the young woman’s heart.

It was silent and icy cold. All that she could feel beating was the pulse in her own fingers. She shuddered and drew back her hand.

Valentine’s arm was hanging out of the bed. This arm, from the shoulder to the elbow, appeared to have been modelled on that of one of Germain Pilon’s three Graces,
¹
but the forearm was slightly deformed by a contraction of the muscles and the wrist, so pure in shape, was resting on the walnut table, slightly stiffened, with the fingers spread.

There was a bluish tinge at the base of the fingernails.

For Mme de Villefort there could be no further doubt. Everything was over: the dreadful task, the last she had to carry out, had finally been accomplished.

There was nothing further for the poisoner to do in the room. She withdrew with such care that it was evident she was afraid of the sound of her feet on the carpet; yet even as she went she still kept the curtain lifted, taking in the scene of death, which exercises an irresistible attraction when death is not decomposition but only immobility and, so long as it remains a mystery, does not yet inspire disgust.

The minutes passed. Mme de Villefort could not let go of the curtain which she was holding like a shroud above Valentine’s head. She was paying her tribute to reflection: but reflection, in the case of crime, should be remorse.