The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (73 page)

‘What does that matter? I know.’

The count stayed silent for a moment, frowning.

‘If I went to meet Vampa, would you come with me?’

‘If my company was not too displeasing to you.’

‘Very well. The night is fair and a walk in the Roman
campagna
can only do us good.’

‘Should we arm ourselves?’

‘What for?’

‘Should we take any money?’

‘There is no need. Where is the man who brought this note?’

‘Outside, in the street.’

‘Is he waiting for an answer?’

‘Yes.’

‘We must have some idea of where we are going. I’ll call him.’

‘It is pointless, he does not want to come up.’

‘To your apartments, perhaps, but he will not mind coming to mine.’

The count went to the window of the study, which overlooked the street, and whistled in a particular way. The man in the cloak stepped out of the shadows and into the middle of the street.

‘Salite!’
the count said, as if giving orders to a servant. The messenger obeyed at once without hesitation, even eagerly, and, leaping across the four steps at the entrance to the hotel, came in. Five seconds later, he was at the study door.

‘Ah, it’s you, Peppino!’ said the count.

Peppino, instead of answering, fell to his knees, grasped the count’s hand and pressed his lips to it repeatedly.

‘Well, I never,’ said the count. ‘You have not yet forgotten how I saved your life. Odd. It was already a week ago.’

‘No, Excellency, and I shall never forget,’ said Peppino, in a tone of voice that expressed the depth of his gratitude.

‘Never is a very long time, but it counts for a lot that you should believe it. Stand up and answer me.’

Peppino looked anxiously at Franz.

‘Oh! You can speak in front of His Excellency,’ the count said. ‘He is a friend of mine.’ Then he added, in French, turning to Franz: ‘I hope you will allow me to call you that. It is necessary to gain this man’s confidence.’

‘You may speak in front of me,’ Franz said. ‘I am a friend of the count’s.’

‘Fine!’ said Peppino, turning back to the count. ‘Your Excellency can ask the questions and I shall reply.’

‘How did Vicomte Albert fall into Luigi’s hands?’

‘Excellency, the Frenchman’s carriage drove several times past the one with Teresa in it.’

‘The chief’s mistress?’

‘Yes. The Frenchman flirted with her and it amused Teresa to reply. The Frenchman threw her bouquets, she threw some back. All this, of course, was with the chief’s consent. He was in the carriage himself.’

‘What!’ Franz exclaimed. ‘Luigi Vampa was in the carriage with the peasant women!’

‘He was driving it, disguised as the coachman.’

‘And then?’ asked the count.

‘Well, then the Frenchman took off his mask. Teresa, still with the chief’s agreement, did the same. The Frenchman asked for a rendez-vous, and Teresa agreed; however, in place of Teresa, it was Beppo who was waiting on the steps of San Giacomo.’

‘What!’ Franz exclaimed, interrupting him again. ‘The peasant girl who took his
moccoletto
from him… ?’

‘Was a fifteen-year-old boy,’ Peppino answered. ‘But there is no shame for your friend in the mistake; Beppo has fooled lots of others, take my word for it.’

‘And Beppo took him outside the walls?’ asked the count.

‘Just so. A carriage was waiting at the end of the Via Macello. Beppo got in and told the Frenchman to follow; he did not need asking twice. He graciously offered the right-hand seat to Beppo and sat beside him. Thereupon Beppo told him he would be driven to a villa a league outside Rome. The Frenchman assured Beppo that he was prepared to follow him to the end of the earth. At this, the coachman went up the Via Ripetta, through the Porta San Paolo and, two hundred yards into the countryside, as the Frenchman was starting to get a little too forward, Beppo stuck a pair of pistols in his throat; upon which the coachman stopped the horses, turned around in his seat and did the same. At the same time four of our men who had been hiding on the banks of the Almo rushed across to the doors. The Frenchman tried his best to defend himself and even, so I heard, half strangled Beppo, but there was not much to be done against five armed men. He had to give up. He was taken out of the coach, along the banks of the stream and eventually to Teresa and Luigi, who were waiting for him in the Catacombs of San Sebastian.’

‘Well, what do you say to that?’ said the count, turning towards Franz. ‘That’s not a bad story, I think. You are a connoisseur in such matters; what do you think?’

‘I think I would find it most amusing,’ Franz replied, ‘if it had happened to anyone except poor Albert.’

‘The fact is,’ said the count, ‘that if you had not found me there, your friend’s good fortune would have cost him dear. But don’t worry: in the event he will get away with a fright.’

‘We’re still going to find him?’

‘Certainly! All the more so since he is in a very picturesque spot. Do you know the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian?’

‘No, I have never been into them, but I had promised myself that I would visit them one day.’

‘Well, now you have a ready-made opportunity, and it would be hard to find a better one. Do you have your carriage?’

‘No.’

‘No matter. They invariably keep one ready harnessed for me, day and night.’

‘Ready harnessed?’

‘Yes, I must tell you, I am a very capricious person. Sometimes I get up from the table at the end of my dinner, in the middle of the night, and have a sudden desire to set off for some part of the world; so I leave.’

The count rang and his valet appeared.

‘Bring the carriage out of the coachhouse,’ he said, ‘and take the pistols which you will find in the pockets. There is no sense in waking the coachman, Ali will drive.’

A moment later the carriage could be heard drawing up outside the door. The count took out his watch.

‘Half-past midnight,’ he said. ‘We could have left at five o’clock in the morning and still arrived in time; but that delay might have meant your friend spending an unpleasant night, so we had better set off at once to rescue him from the clutches of the infidel. Are you still set on accompanying me?’

‘More than ever.’

‘Well then, come.’

Franz and the count left, followed by Peppino. They found the carriage waiting at the door, with Ali on the box. Franz recognized the dumb slave from the grotto on Monte Cristo.

Franz and the count got into the carriage, a coupé. Peppino sat beside Ali and they set off at a gallop. Ali had had his orders in advance, for he followed the Corso, crossed the Campo Vaccino and drove up the Strada San Gregorio until they reached the Porto San Sebastiano. Here the gatekeeper tried to detain them, but the Count of Monte Cristo showed him an authorization from the governor of Rome allowing him to go in or out of the City at any time of the day or night, so the gateway was raised, the keeper had a
louis
for his trouble and they passed through.

The road that the carriage followed was the old Appian Way, lined with tombs. From time to time, in the light of the newly risen moon, Franz saw what he thought was a sentry gliding out of a ruin; but as soon as a sign had been exchanged between Peppino and this wraith, it vanished back into the shadows.

A little way before the amphitheatre of Caracalla, the carriage halted, Peppino opened the door, and Franz and the count got down. ‘In ten minutes,’ the count told his companion, ‘we shall be there.’ He took Peppino aside, whispered some order to him, and Peppino left after taking a torch which they found in the trunk of the coupé.

Five more minutes elapsed, during which Franz saw the shepherd follow a little path through the hillocks, which litter the uneven surface of the Roman plain, and disappear into a clump of that tall, reddish grass which resembles the bristling mane of some gigantic lion.

‘Now,’ said the count. ‘Let’s follow him.’

They went along the same path and found that, after a hundred paces, it went down a slope to the bottom of a little valley. Soon they saw two men talking together in the darkness.

‘Should we go on,’ Franz asked the count, ‘or should we wait?’

‘Carry on. Peppino must have warned the sentry of our arrival.’

One of the men, as it turned out, was Peppino, and the other a bandit acting as a guard. Franz and the count approached and the bandit greeted them.

‘Excellency,’ Peppino told the count, ‘please be so good as to follow me: the entrance to the catacombs is a short distance from here.’

‘Very well,’ said the count. ‘Lead the way.’

Behind a clump of bushes and hidden among some rocks was an opening through which a man could barely pass. Peppino went through this slit first, but he had hardly advanced more than a step or two before the passage widened; so he stopped, lit his torch and turned around to see that the others were following. The count had been the next to venture into this sort of funnel and Franz came after.

The ground sloped gently downwards and the path widened as they went on, but Franz and the count were obliged to walk bent double and would still have had difficulty in going two abreast. They continued for a further fifty yards like this and were then
stopped by the cry of:
‘Who goes there?’
At the same time they saw the light from their own torch shining on the barrel of a rifle in the midst of the darkness.

‘A friend!’ said Peppino. And he went on alone to say a few words in a low voice to this second sentry who, like the first, greeted the nocturnal visitors with a sign showing that they could continue on their way.

Behind the sentry was a staircase of about twenty steps. Franz and the count went down them and found themselves in a sort of crossroads of tombs: five paths led off it like the rays of a star and the walls were carved out with niches, one above the other, in the form of coffins, indicating that they had at last reached the catacombs.

In one of the cavities, the depth of which it was impossible to assess, one could see by day a few chinks of light. The count put his hand on Franz’s shoulder. ‘Would you like to see an encampment of bandits at rest?’ he asked.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Franz.

‘Then come with me. Peppino, put out the light.’

Peppino obeyed, and they found themselves plunged into the most profound darkness; however, about fifty yards ahead of them, a few reddish lights continued to play across the walls, made more visible since Peppino had put out his torch.

They went on in silence, the count guiding Franz as if he had the unusual ability of being able to see in the dark; and Franz himself could make out the way more easily, the closer they approached to the glow that showed them their way. Eventually, they passed through three arches, the middle one serving as a door.

On one side, these arches opened on the corridor down which the count and Franz had walked and, on the other, on a large square room completely surrounded by niches like the ones we have already mentioned. In the middle of the room stood four stones which had once served as an altar, as the cross on them still showed. A single lamp, placed on the shaft of a column, threw a faint and flickering light on the strange scene that met the eyes of the two visitors as they watched from the shadows.

A man was sitting, his elbow resting on the column, and reading with his back turned towards the arches through which the new arrivals could watch him. It was the chief of the band, Luigi Vampa.

Around him could be seen some twenty bandits, lying as they chose, wrapped in their cloaks or propped against a sort of stone bench that ran all round the walls of the chamber. Each had his gun within reach. At the far end, hardly visible, like a ghost, a sentry was walking backwards and forwards in front of a sort of opening that could only be made out because the darkness seemed thicker at this point.

When the count decided that Franz had had time to take in this picturesque scene, he put a finger to his lips to ensure his silence, then climbed the three steps leading from the passage to the chamber, went through the middle archway and walked across to Vampa, who was so deeply engrossed in what he was reading that he did not hear the sound of footsteps.

‘Who goes there?’ cried the sentry, more alert, seeing a sort of shadow growing in the light of the lamp behind his chief.

At this, Vampa leapt to his feet, at the same time drawing a pistol from his belt. Immediately all the bandits were on their feet, and twenty gun-barrels were pointing towards the count.

‘Well, well,’ he said quietly, in a perfectly calm voice, with a muscle twitching in his face. ‘My dear Vampa, there is no need to go to such trouble just to greet a friend.’

‘Put down your weapons,’ the bandit chief said, with an imperious gesture of one hand, while with the other he respectfully removed his hat. Then, turning to the remarkable figure who dominated the whole of the scene, he added; ‘I beg your pardon, Monsieur le Comte. I was not expecting you to honour me with a visit and consequently did not recognize you.’

‘It seems that your memory is short in everything, Vampa,’ the count said. ‘Not only do you forget a man’s face, but also the agreement you have made with him.’