The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (97 page)

Their footsteps attracted the attention of a young woman of between twenty and twenty-five, wearing a silk robe, who was concentrating on pruning a reddish brown rose bush. This was little Julie. As the emissary of the firm of Thomson and French had predicted, she was now Mme Emmanuel Herbault. She looked up and gave a cry on seeing a stranger. Maximilien began to laugh.

‘Don’t worry, sister,’ he said. ‘The count has only been in Paris for two or three days, but he already knows what to expect from a lady with a private income in the Marais. If he doesn’t, you will show him.’

‘Oh, Monsieur,’ said Julie. ‘This is treachery on the part of my brother, bringing you here without the slightest regard for how his sister looks… Penelon! Penelon!’

An old man who was digging a bed of Bengal roses stuck his spade in the ground and came over, cap in hand, doing his best to hide a quid of tobacco which he had temporarily pushed to the back of his cheek. His hair was still thick, though streaked with a few while strands, while his sunburnt complexion and his sharp, fearless eyes betrayed the old sailor, tanned by the equatorial sun and weathered in the storm.

‘I think you called me, Mademoiselle Julie. Here I am.’

Penelon still called his boss’s daughter ‘Mademoiselle Julie’,
never having managed to accustom himself to call her ‘Madame Herbault’.

‘Penelon,’ Julie said, ‘go and inform Monsieur Emmanuel of our visitor’s welcome arrival, while Monsieur Maximilien is showing the count into the drawing-room.’ Then, turning to Monte Cristo, she added: ‘You will permit me to retire for a moment, I hope?’ and, without waiting for the count’s consent, she set off briskly behind a bank of flowers, taking a side-path into the house.

‘Oh, now, my dear Monsieur Morrel!’ Monte Cristo said. ‘It pains me to see that I am turning your whole house upside down.’

‘Come, come,’ Maximilien said, laughing. ‘Look: there is the husband, who is also changing his jacket for a frock-coat! You are known in the Rue Meslay and, I beg you to believe me, your arrival was announced.’

‘It appears to me that you have a happy family here,’ said the count, following his own train of thought.

‘Yes, indeed, you may be assured of that. What do you expect? They have all that they need to be happy. They are young, merry, in love and, with their income of twenty-five thousand
livres
a year, even though they have rubbed shoulders with vast fortunes, they think themselves as wealthy as Rothschild.’

‘Yet, it is a small sum, twenty-five thousand
livres
a year,’ said Monte Cristo with such softness that it found a path to the depths of Maximilien’s heart like the voice of a loving father. ‘But these young people will not stop there. They will be millionaires in their turn. Is your brother-in-law a lawyer… a doctor… ?’

‘He was a merchant, Count. He took over my poor father’s business. Monsieur Morrel died leaving five hundred thousand francs. There were only two children, so I had one half and my sister the other. Her husband, who had married her with no other fortune except his unflinching honesty, his outstanding intelligence and his spotless reputation, wanted to match his wife’s patrimony. He worked until he had saved two hundred and fifty thousand francs; six years were enough. I assure you, Count, it was touching to see these two young people, so hardworking, so devoted to one another, destined by their talents to enjoy the greatest good fortune, desirous of changing nothing in the customary methods of the family firm: they took six years to accomplish what an innovator could have done in two or three, and all Marseille resounded with
praise for such brave self-denial. Finally, one day, Emmanuel came to his wife, who had just made the final payment.

‘ “Julie,” he told her, “here is the last bundle of one hundred francs that Coclès has just given me, completing the two hundred and fifty thousand francs that we set as the limit to our profits. Will you be content with this small sum on which we shall have henceforth to survive? Listen, the firm has a turnover of a million a year and can bring in a profit of forty thousand francs. If we wish, we can sell our clientele within the hour for three hundred thousand francs: here is a letter from Monsieur Delaunay, offering us that in exchange for our assets, which he wants to merge with his own. Consider what we should do.”

‘ “My dear,” my sister answered, “the firm of Morrel can only be run by a Morrel. Is it not worth three hundred thousand francs, to save our father’s name for ever from the mischances of fortune?”

‘ “I had reached the same conclusion,” Emmanuel said, “but I wanted to know your opinion.”

‘ “Now you know it, my dear. All our accounts are up to date, all our bills are paid. We can draw a line under the balance sheet for this fortnight and put up the shutters: let’s do it.” And they did, immediately. It was three o’clock. At a quarter past, a customer came in to insure two ships for a voyage, which would have meant a clear profit of fifteen thousand francs.

‘ “Monsieur,” Emmanuel said, “please be so good as to take your business to our colleague, Monsieur Delaunay. We are no longer in business.”

‘ “Since when?” the customer asked in amazement.

‘ “Since a quarter of an hour ago.”

‘And that, Monsieur,’ Maximilien continued, with a smile, ‘is how my sister and my brother-in-law come to have an income of only twenty-five thousand
livres
.’

Maximilien had barely finished his story – the count’s heart had swelled progressively as it proceeded – when Emmanuel reappeared, properly fitted out with a hat and frock-coat. He gave a bow that acknowledged the visitor’s importance, then, after showing the count round the little flower garden, he led him back to the house.

The drawing-room was already redolent of the flowers that burst out of a huge, wicker-handled Japanese vase. Julie, tidily dressed
and her hair prettily done (she had achieved this
tour de force
in ten minutes), was waiting to receive the count as he came in.

Birds could be heard singing in a nearby aviary, and the blue velvet curtains were bordered with clusters of laburnum and pink acacia branches: everything in this charming little retreat spoke of tranquillity, from the song of the birds to the smile of the owners.

From the moment he entered the house, the count had been filled with this happiness. He remained silent and meditative, forgetting that the others were waiting for him to resume the conversation, which had halted after the first exchange of greetings. Finally, becoming aware of this silence, which was on the point of becoming embarrassing, and forcing himself out of his reverie, he said: ‘Madame, forgive me. Accustomed as you are to the atmosphere of happiness that I find here, my feelings must astonish you. But, for me, the sight of contentment on a human face is so novel that I cannot resist looking at you and your husband.’

‘We are, indeed, very happy, Monsieur,’ Julie replied. ‘But we had to suffer for a long time, and few people have bought their happiness as dearly as we have.’

The count’s face expressed his curiosity.

‘Oh, there is a whole family history here, as Château-Renaud told you the other day,’ Maximilien remarked. ‘You, Monsieur le Comte, accustomed as you are to notorious misfortunes and illustrious joys, will find little to interest you in this domestic scene. Yet, as Julie says, we have suffered much pain, even though it was confined to a small stage…’

‘And did God give you consolation for your sufferings, as He does for all of us?’ Monte Cristo asked.

‘Yes, Count,’ Julie said. ‘We can say that, indeed, for He did something for us that He does only for the chosen few: He sent us one of his angels.’

The count blushed and he coughed, to give himself an excuse to put a handkerchief to his mouth and hide the evidence of his feelings.

‘Those who are born with a silver spoon,’ Emmanuel said, ‘those who have never needed anything, do not understand what happiness is, any more than those who do not know the blessing of a clear sky and who have never entrusted their lives to four planks tossing on a raging sea.’

Monte Cristo got up and started to pace up and down the
room, but said nothing, because his voice would have betrayed his emotion.

‘You are smiling at the splendour of our apartments, Count,’ said Maximilien, watching him.

‘No, not at all,’ replied Monte Cristo, pale, holding one hand across his chest to repress the beating of his heart and pointing with the other to a crystal globe under which a silk purse was carefully preserved, lying on a black velvet cushion. ‘I was just wondering what was the purpose of this purse which, it seems to me, holds on one side a piece of paper and on the other a rather fine diamond.’

‘That, Monsieur le Comte, is the most precious of the family treasures.’

‘The diamond is indeed rather fine,’ the Count replied.

‘Oh, my brother is not referring to the value of the stone, Monsieur, though it is estimated at a hundred thousand francs. He merely wishes to tell you that the objects in this purse are the relics of the angel about whom we spoke a moment ago.’

‘I do not understand what you can mean, yet I have no right to question you about it, Madame,’ Monte Cristo said, with a bow. ‘Pray forgive me. I did not mean to be inquisitive.’

‘What do you mean, inquisitive? Please, Count, allow us the pleasure of this opportunity to talk about it. If we wished to conceal this fine deed and keep secret the story behind this purse, then we should not exhibit it in this way. But we wish, on the contrary, to publish it throughout the world, so that our unknown benefactor might give a sign which would betray his presence to us.’

‘Indeed!’ Monte Cristo exclaimed in a muffled voice.

Maximilien lifted the crystal dome and piously kissed the silk purse. ‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘this has been touched by the hand of a man who saved my father from death, us from ruin and our name from ignominy – a man thanks to whom we, poor children destined for poverty and tears, can today hear people rhapsodize about our happiness and good fortune. This letter’ (Maximilien took it out of the purse and handed it to the count) ‘was written by him on a day when my father had taken the most desperate decision and this diamond was given to my sister by this generous stranger as her dowry.’

Monte Cristo opened the letter and read it with an indescribable expression of happiness: it was the note that the reader
will already know: the one addressed to Julie and signed by ‘Sinbad the Sailor’.

‘A stranger, you say? So you have never discovered the identity of the man who did this for you?’

‘No, Monsieur, we have never had the pleasure of shaking his hand. It is not through want of praying God for the opportunity to do so,’ Maximilien continued, ‘but there was a mysterious purpose behind all this adventure that we cannot yet understand: it was entirely controlled by an invisible hand, powerful as that of an enchanter.’

‘Oh!’ Julie exclaimed. ‘I have not lost all hope that I may one day kiss that hand as I now kiss the purse that it touched. Four years ago Penelon was in Trieste – Penelon, Count, is the honest sailor whom you saw with a spade in his hand and who, once a bosun, is now a gardener. As I say, Penelon was in Trieste where he saw an Englishman on the quayside about to embark on a yacht and recognized the man who came to my father’s on June the fifth, 1829, and wrote me that note on September the fifth. He assures me it was the same man, but that he did not dare speak to him.’

‘An Englishman!’ Monte Cristo said thoughtfully, growing more anxious whenever Julie glanced at him. ‘You say it was an Englishman?’

‘Yes,’ Maximilien replied. ‘An Englishman who presented himself to us as an emissary from the firm of Thomson and French in Rome. That is why you saw me start the other day, at Monsieur Morcerf’s, when you mentioned that Messrs Thomson and French are your bankers. As we said, this happened in 1829: in heaven’s name, Monsieur, did you know this Englishman?’

‘I thought you also told me that Thomson and French consistently denied having performed this service for you?’

‘Yes, they do.’

‘So the Englishman might well be a man who, in gratitude to your father for some good deed that even your father had forgotten, used this as a pretext to do him a favour?’

‘In the circumstances, everything is possible, even a miracle.’

‘What was his name?’ Monte Cristo asked.

‘He left no name,’ Julie replied, looking very closely at the count, ‘except the one with which he signed the note: Sinbad the Sailor.’

‘Which is evidently not a name, but a pseudonym.’ Then, as Julie
was looking still more attentively at him and was trying to catch something in his voice and place it, the count continued: ‘Come now: was it perhaps a man of about my height, perhaps a little taller, somewhat slimmer, wearing a high cravat, buttoned up, tightly corseted, who always had a pencil in his hand?’

‘You do know him!’ Julie cried, her eyes gleaming with joy.

‘No,’ the count replied, ‘it was just a supposition. I did know a Lord Wilmore who would perform such acts of generosity.’

‘Without revealing himself!’

‘He was an odd man who did not believe in gratitude.’

‘In that case,’ Julie cried, in sublime tones, clasping her hands, ‘what did he believe in, the poor man?’

‘He certainly did not believe in it at the time when I knew him,’ Monte Cristo said, moved to the very depths of his being by her soulful voice. ‘Since then, he may perhaps have had some proof that gratitude does exist.’