"Well," said Monte-Cristo, "it is just as I thought; it was politics which brought Noirtier and M. d'Epinay into personal contact. Although General d'Epinay served under Napoleon, did he not still retain royalist sentiments? And was he not the person who was assassinated one evening on leaving a Bonapartist meeting to which he had been invited on the supposition of his favoring the cause of the emperor?" Villefort looked at the count almost with terror.
"Am I mistaken, then?" said Monte-Cristo.
"No, sir, the facts were precisely what you have stated," said Madame de Villefort; "and it was to prevent the renewal of old feuds that M. de Villefort formed the idea of uniting the two children of these enemies."
"It was a sublime and charitable thought," said Monte-Cristo, "and the whole world should applaud it. It would be noble to see Mademoiselle Noirtier de Villefort assuming the title of Madame Franz d'Epinay."
Villefort shuddered and looked at Monte-Cristo as if he wished to read in his countenance the real feelings which had dictated the words he had just pronounced. But the count completely baffled the penetration of the procureur du roi, and prevented him from discovering anything beneath the never-varying smile he was so constantly in the habit of assuming.
"Although," said Villefort, "it will be a serious thing for Valentine to lose the fortune of her grandfather, I do not think that M. d'Epinay will be frightened at this pecuniary loss; he will, perhaps, hold me in greater esteem than the money itself, seeing that I sacrifice everything in order to keep my word with him; besides he knows that Valentine is rich in right of her mother, and that she will, in all probability, inherit the fortune of M. and Mme. de Saint-Meran, her mother's parents, who both love her tenderly."
"And who are fully as well worth loving and tending as M. de Noirtier," said Madame de Villefort; "besides, they are to come to Paris in about a month, and Valentine, after the affront she has received, need not continue to bury herself alive with M. Noirtier."
The count listened with satisfaction to this tale of wounded self-love and defeated ambition.
"But it seems to me," said Monte-Cristo, "and I must begin by asking your pardon for what I am about to say, that if M. Noirtier disinherits Mademoiselle de Villefort on account of her marrying a man whose father he detested, he cannot have the same cause of complaint against this dear Edward."
