The baroness, who had signed, returned the pen to the notary.
"Prince Cavalcanti!" said the latter; "Prince Cavalcanti, where are you?"
"Andrea! Andrea!" repeated several young people, who were already on sufficiently intimate terms with him to call him by his Christian name.
"Call the prince! inform him it is his turn to sign!" cried Danglars to one of the door-keepers.
But at the same instant the crowd of guests rushed, terrified, into the principal salon, as if some frightful monster had entered the apartments, quærens quem devoret. There was, indeed, reason to retreat, to be alarmed, and to scream. An officer was placing two policemen at the door of each drawing-room, and was advancing toward Danglars, preceded by a commissioner of police, girded with his scarf. Madame Danglars uttered a scream and fainted. Danglars, who thought himself threatened (certain consciences are never calm),—Danglars appeared before his guests with a terrified countenance.
"What is the matter, sir?" asked Monte-Cristo, advancing to meet the commissioner.
"Which of you gentlemen," asked the magistrate, without replying to the count, "answers to the name of Andrea Cavalcanti?"
A cry of stupor was heard from all parts of the room. They searched; they questioned.
"But who then is Andrea Cavalcanti?" asked Danglars, in amazement.
"A galley-slave, escaped from confinement at Toulon."
"And what crime has he committed?"
"He is accused," said the commissary, with his inflexible voice, "of having assassinated the man named Caderousse, his former companion in prison, at the moment he was making his escape from the house of the Count of Monte-Cristo."
Monte-Cristo cast a rapid glance around him. Andrea had disappeared.
