The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (76 page)

On the first floor, the two rooms were repeated with the addition of a third, above the antechamber. The three first-floor rooms were a drawing-room, a bedroom and a boudoir. The downstairs drawing-room was only a smoking-room, like an Algerian
diwan
. The first-floor boudoir led into the bedroom and, by a secret door, to the staircase. One can see that every precaution had been taken.

Above the first floor was a vast studio which had been enlarged by taking down the inner walls and partitions to make a domain of chaos in which the artist battled for supremacy over the dandy. Here was the resting-place in which were amassed all Albert’s successive whims: hunting horns, basses and flutes – a full orchestra – because Albert had once conceived, not a taste for music, but a fancy; easels, palettes and pastels, because the fancy for music had been followed by a fad for painting; and, last of all, foils, boxing gloves, swords and sticks of every variety, because finally, in the way of fashionable young men at the time when our story is set, Albert de Morcerf gave infinitely greater application than he had done to music and painting to the three arts that go to make up the education of a member of the dominant class in society, namely fencing, boxing and exercising with the quarter-staff. In this room, designed for all kinds of physical exertion, he would receive successively Grisier, Cooks and Charles Leboucher.
¹

The remaining furniture in this special room consisted of chests dating from the time of François I, full of Chinese porcelain, Japanese vases, faience by Luca della Robbia and plates by Bernard de Palissy; and antique chairs on which Henri IV or Sully, Louis XIII or Richelieu might have sat, for two of them, bearing carved blue shields on which shone the French fleur-de-lis surmounted by a royal crown, clearly came from the collection at the Louvre, or at least from some other royal palace. Across the chairs with their dark upholstery were casually draped rich materials in bright colours, dyed in the Persian sun or brought to light beneath the fingers of women in Calcutta or Chandannagar. It was impossible to say what these fabrics were doing there; they were awaiting some destiny unknown even to their owner, providing sustenance for the eyes and meanwhile setting the room ablaze with their silken and golden lights.

In the place of honour was a piano, made of rosewood by Roller
and Blanchet, and designed to fit into a modern drawing-room, yet containing a whole orchestra within its compact and sonorous frame and groaning under the weight of masterpieces by Beethoven, Weber, Mozart, Haydn, Grétry and Porpora.

Then, everywhere, along the walls, above the doors, on the ceiling, were swords, daggers,
kris
, maces, axes, complete suits of gilded, damascened or encrusted armour, as well as herbaria, blocks of mineral samples and stuffed birds spreading their brilliant, fiery wings in immobile flight and opening beaks that were never closed.

It goes without saying that this room was Albert’s favourite.

However, on the day fixed for the meeting, the young man, dressed, but wearing casual indoor clothes, had set up his headquarters in the little ground-floor drawing-room. Here, on a table set some way from the divan that surrounded it and magnificently displayed in the crackled faience pots that the Dutch appreciate so much, were all the known varieties of tobacco, from yellow Petersburg to black Sinai, through Maryland, Puerto Rico and Latakia. Beside them, in boxes of aromatic wood and in order of size and quality, were laid out puros, regalias, Havanas and Manillas. And finally, on an open rack, a collection of German pipes, chibouks with amber bowls, decorated with coral, and nargiles encrusted with gold, their long morocco stems twisted like serpents, awaited the smoker’s preference or whim. Albert himself had supervised the arrangement – or, rather, the systematic disorder that guests at a modern luncheon like to contemplate through the smoke as it escapes from their lips and rises, in long, fantastic spirals, towards the ceiling.

At a quarter to ten, a
valet de chambre
came in. This was a little fifteen-year-old groom, who spoke nothing but English and answered to the name of ‘John’. He was Morcerf’s only servant. Of course, on ordinary days the cook from the main house was at his disposal – as was also, on grand occasions, his father the count’s lackey.

The
valet de chambre
, who was called Germain and who enjoyed his young master’s entire confidence, was holding a bundle of newspapers, which he put down on a table, and a packet of letters, which he gave to Albert.

Albert glanced casually at the various missives and chose two, with perfumed envelopes addressed in fine hands; these he unsealed and read with a certain amount of attention.

‘How did these letters come?’ he asked.

‘One came by the post, the other was brought by Madame Danglars’ valet.’

‘Let Madame Danglars know that I accept the place she is offering me in her box… Wait… Then, during the day, go to Rosa’s and tell her that, in accordance with her invitation, I shall sup with her on leaving the opera; and take her six bottles of different wines, Cyprus, sherry, Malaga… and a barrel of Ostend oysters. Buy the oysters from Borel and make sure that he knows they are for me.’

‘At what time would Monsieur like to be served?’

‘What time is it now?’

‘A quarter to ten.’

‘Well, serve breakfast at exactly half-past ten. Debray may be obliged to go into his ministry; and in any case…’ (Albert looked at his notebook) ‘… that was the time that I agreed with the count: May the twenty-first at half-past ten in the morning. Even though I don’t set much store by his promise, I want to be punctual. Do you know if the countess is up?’

‘If Monsieur le Vicomte wishes, I can find out.’

‘Do. Ask her for one of her liqueur cabinets: mine is not fully replenished. And tell her that I shall have the honour to visit her at about three o’clock and should like her permission to introduce her to someone.’

When the valet had left, Albert slumped on to the divan, tore the wrappings off two or three newspapers, looked at the theatre programmes, winced on seeing that they were performing an opera and not a ballet, hunted in vain through the advertisements for cosmetics for an electuary for the teeth that he had heard mentioned, and successively tossed aside two or three of the most read prints in Paris, muttering in the midst of a prolonged yawn: ‘Really, these papers do get more and more frightfully dull.’

At that moment a light carriage pulled up in front of the door, and a moment later the valet returned to announce M. Lucien Debray. A tall young man, fair-haired, pale, with a confident grey eye and cold, thin lips, wearing a blue coat with engraved gold buttons, a white cravat and a monocle in a tortoiseshell rim dangling from a silk cord – which, by a co-ordinated effort of the supercilliary and zygomatic arches, he managed from time to time to secure in the cavity of his right eye – came in without smiling or speaking, and with a semi-official bearing.

‘Good morning, Lucien, good morning,’ Albert said. ‘Ah, but you terrify me, my dear fellow, with your punctuality! What am I saying – punctuality! I was expecting you last of all, and you arrive at five to ten, when the invitation was definitely fixed only at half-past! It’s a miracle! Can this mean that the government is overthrown, by any chance?’

‘No, my dearest fellow,’ the young man said, planting himself on the divan. ‘Rest assured, we are always unsteady, but we never fall. I am beginning to think that we are becoming utterly unmovable, even without the affairs of the Peninsula, which are going to fix us in place once and for all.’

‘Yes, that’s right. You are getting rid of Don Carlos of Spain.’
²

‘Not at all, dearest fellow, we must put this straight: we are taking him across the French frontier and entertaining him most royally in Bourges.’

‘In Bourges?’

‘Yes, and he has no grounds for complaint, dammit! Bourges is King Charles VII’s capital. What! You hadn’t heard? All Paris has known about it since yesterday, and it had already reached the Stock Exchange the day before that, because Monsieur Danglars – I haven’t the slightest idea how that man manages to learn everything as soon as we do – Danglars bet on a bull market and won a million.’

‘And you, a new ribbon, apparently. Isn’t that a blue band I can see with the rest of your decorations?’

‘Huh! They sent me the Charles III medal, y’know,’ Debray answered in an offhand manner.

‘Come now, don’t pretend you’re not pleased. Admit that you’re glad to have it.’

‘Well, yes, so I am. As a fashion accessory, a medal looks quite fine on a high-buttoned black frock-coat. Very elegant.’

‘And,’ Morcerf said, smiling, ‘it makes one look like the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Reichstadt.’

‘Which is why you are seeing me at this time in the morning, my dearest fellow.’

‘Because you wanted to let me know they had given you the Charles III medal?’

‘No, because I spent the night sending out letters: twenty-five diplomatic dispatches. When I arrived home this morning at dawn, I tried to sleep but I was overcome with a headache, so I got up to
go out for an hour’s ride. In the Bois de Boulogne I was overcome with hunger and boredom, two enemies that rarely attack together but, despite that, were leagued against me in a sort of Carlist – Republican alliance. It was then that I remembered we are feasting with you this morning. So here I am: I am hungry, feed me; I am bored, entertain me.’

‘It is my duty as your host to do both, dear friend,’ said Albert, ringing for his valet, while Lucien turned over the folded newspapers with the tip of a switch which he held by its gold knob inlaid with turquoise. ‘Germain, a glass of sherry and a biscuit. And, while you are waiting for those, dear Lucien, take a cigar – contraband, naturally. I insist that you try one and suggest to your ministry that they sell us the same, instead of those dried walnut-leaves that they condemn conscientious citizens to smoke.’

‘Pooh! Certainly not! As soon as you knew they came from the government, you would find them abominable and refuse to touch them. In any case, it’s nothing to do with the Home Office, it’s a matter for the Inland Revenue. Apply to Monsieur Humann, Department of Indirect Taxes, corridor A, room twenty-six.’

‘Well, I never,’ said Albert. ‘I am amazed at how much you know. But, go on: take a cigar.’

‘Ah, my dear Viscount,’ Lucien said, lighting a Manilla at a pink candle burning in a silver-gilt candlestick before slumping back on to the divan, ‘my dear Viscount, how lucky you are to have nothing to do! You really can’t tell how lucky!’

‘And what would you do, my jolly old pacifier of kingdoms,’ Morcerf asked, with a hint of irony, ‘if you had nothing to occupy you? What! The minister’s private secretary, engaged simultaneously in the great European cabal and in the petty intrigues of Parisian society; with kings – and, better still, queens – to protect, parties to unite, elections to manage; doing more from your study with your pen and your telegraph than Napoleon did from his battlefields with his sword and his victories; enjoying an income of twenty-five thousand
livres
apart from your salary, and a horse that Château-Renaud offered to buy from you for four hundred
louis
, which you refused to sell, and a tailor who never fails to make you a perfect pair of trousers; being able to go to the Opera, the Jockey Club and the Théâtre des Variétés… you have all this, and you are bored? Well, I have got something to entertain you.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’m going to introduce you to someone.’

‘Man or woman?’

‘A man.’

‘Huh! I already know plenty of those!’

‘Not like the one I am speaking about.’

‘Where does he come from? The end of the world?’

‘Perhaps from even further than that.’

‘No! Then I hope he’s not bringing our breakfast.’

‘Don’t worry. Breakfast is being cooked in the kitchens of the maternal home. Are you hungry, then?’

‘I am ashamed to confess it, but I am. I had dinner yesterday at the home of Baron Danglars. I don’t know if you have noticed, my friend, but one always dines very poorly with these Stock Exchange types. It’s as though they had a guilty conscience.’

‘Huh! You can afford to disparage other people’s dinners, seeing the kind of spread one gets from your ministers.’

‘Yes, but at least we don’t invite respectable people. If we were not obliged to do the honours for some right-thinking and, above all, right-voting bumpkins, we would shun our own tables like the plague, believe me.’

‘In that case, my good fellow, have another glass of sherry and a biscuit.’

‘With pleasure. Your Spanish wine is excellent: you see, we were quite right to pacify that country.’

‘Yes, but what about Don Carlos?’

‘Let Don Carlos drink claret, and in ten years we’ll marry his son to the little queen.’

‘Which should get you the Golden Fleece if you’re still in the ministry.’

‘I do believe, Albert, that you are quite set this morning on feeding me with illusions.’

‘Ah, you must admit that’s the diet that best satisfies the stomach. But wait: I can hear Beauchamp’s voice in the antechamber. You can have an argument; that will pass the time.’

‘Argument about what?’

‘About the newspapers.’