Pharaon, trading in cotton with Alexandria and Smyrna, and belonging to Morrel and Son, of Marseilles."
"Before he entered the merchant service, had he ever served in the navy?"
"Oh, no, monsieur; he is very young."
"How old?"
"Nineteen or twenty at the most."
At this moment, and as Villefort, following the Grand Rue, had arrived at the corner of the Rue des Conseils, a man, who seemed to have been waiting for him, approached: it was M. Morrel.
"Ah! M. de Villefort," cried he, "I am delighted to see you. Some of your people have committed the strangest, most unheard-of mistake — they have just arrested Edmond Dantès, the mate of my ship."
"I know it, monsieur," replied Villefort, "and I am now going to examine him."
"Oh," said Morrel, carried away by his friendship, "you do not know him, and I do. He is the most estimable, the most trustworthy man, and, I will venture to say, the man who knows his business best in all the merchant service. Oh, M. de Villefort, I beseech your indulgence for him."
Villefort, as we have seen, belonged to the aristocratic party at Marseilles; Morrel to the plebeian. The first was an ultra royalist; the other suspected of Bonapartism. Villefort looked disdainfully at Morrel, and replied coldly:
"You are aware, monsieur, that a man may be estimable and trustworthy in private life and his commercial relations, and the best seaman in the merchant service, and yet be, politically speaking, a great criminal. Is it not true?"
The magistrate laid emphasis on these words, as if he wished to apply them to the owner himself, whilst his eyes seemed to plunge into the heart of him who, whilst he interceded for another, had himself need of indulgence.
Morrel reddened, for his own conscience was not quite clear on politics; besides, what Dantès had told him of his interview with the grand-marshal, and what the emperor had said to him, embarrassed him. He replied, however, in a tone of deep interest:
"I entreat you, M. de Villefort, be just, as is your duty, and, as you always are, kind, and give him back to us soon."
This give us sounded revolutionary in the sub-prefect's ears.
"Ah, ah!" murmured he, "is Dantès then a member of some Carbonari society, that his protector thus employs the collective form? He was, if I recollect, arrested in a cabaret, in company with a great many others." Then he added aloud:
