received his friends. He was superintending the dressing of his horse, and smoking his cigar at the entrance of the garden, when the count's carriage stopped at the door.
Codes opened the gate, and Baptistin, springing from the box, inquired whether M. and Madame Herbaut and M. Maximilian Morrel would see M. le Comte de Monte-Cristo.
"M. le Comte de Monte-Cristo?" cried Morrel, throwing away his cigar and hastening to the carriage; "I should think we would see him. Ah! a thousand thanks, M. le Comte, for not having forgotten your promise."
And the young officer shook the count's hand so warmly, that the latter could not be mistaken as to the sincerity of his joy, and he saw that he had been expected with impatience, and was received with pleasure. "Come, come!" said Maximilian, "I will serve as your guide: such a man as you are ought not to be introduced by a servant. My sister is in the garden plucking the dead roses; my brother reading his two papers, la Presse and les Debats, within five steps of her, for wherever you see Madame Herbaut, you have only to look within a circle of four yards and you will find M. Emmanuel, and, 'reciprocally,' as they say at the Ecole Polytechnique."
At the sound of their steps a young woman of twenty to five-and-twenty, dressed in a silk robe-de-chambre, and busily engaged in plucking the dead leaves off the splendid rose-tree, raised her head. This was Julie, who had become, as the clerk of the house of Thomson and French had predicted, Madame Emmanuel Herbaut. She uttered a cry of surprise at the sight of a stranger, and Maximilian began to laugh.
"Don't disturb yourself, Julie," said he. "M. le Comte has only been two or three days in Paris, but he already knows what a lady of the Marais is, and if he does not, you will show him."
"Ah, monsieur!" returned Julie, "it is treason in my brother to bring you thus, but he never has any regard for his poor sister. Penelon! Penelon!"
An old man, who was digging busily at one of the beds of roses, stuck his spade in the earth, and approached cap in hand, and striving to conceal a quid of tobacco he had just thrust into his cheek. A few locks of gray mingled with his hair, which was still thick and matted, whilst his bronze features and determined glance announced the old sailor who had braved the heat of the equator and the storms of the tropics.
"I think you hailed me, Mademoiselle Julie?" said he.
Penelon had still preserved the habit of calling his master's daughter "Mademoiselle Julie," and had never been able to change the name to Madame Herbaut.
