The Count of Monte-Cristo/Volume 1/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
THE EVENING OF THE BETROTHAL
ILLEFORT had, as we have said, hastened back to the Place du Grand Cours, and on entering the house found all the guests in the salon at coffee. Renée was, with all the rest of the company, anxiously awaiting him, and his entrance was followed by a general exclamation.
"Well, Decapitator, Guardian of the State, royalist Brutus, what is the matter?" said one.
"Are we threatened with a fresh Reign of Terror?" asked another.
"Has the Corsican ogre broke loose?" cried the third.
"Madame la Marquise," said Villefort, approaching his future mother in-law, "I request your pardon for thus leaving you. M. le Marquis, honor me by a few moments' private conversation!"
"Ah! this affair is really serious, then?" asked the marquis, remarking the cloud on Villefort's brow.
"So serious, that I must take leave of you for a few days; so," added he, turning to Renée, "judge for yourself if it be not important."
"You are going to leave us?" cried Renée, unable to hide the emotion caused by this unexpected intelligence.
"Alas!" returned Villefort, "I must!"
"Where, then, are you going?" asked the marquise.
"That, madame, is the secret of justice; but if you have any commissions for Paris, a friend of mine is going there to-night, and will gladly fulfill them."
The guests looked at each other.
"You wish to speak to me alone?" said the marquis.
"Yes; let us go into your cabinet."
The marquis took his arm and left the salon.
"Well!" asked he, as soon as they were in his closet, "tell me, what is it?"
"An affair of the greatest importance, that demands my immediate presence in Paris. Now, excuse the indiscretion, marquis, but have you any funded property?"
"All my fortune is in the funds; — six or seven hundred thousand francs."
"Then sell out — sell out, marquis, as soon as you can."
"Eh! how can I sell out here?"
"You have a broker, have you not?"
"Yes."
"Then give me a letter to him, and tell him to sell out without an instant's delay; perhaps, even now I shall arrive too late."
"What say you?" said the marquis, "let us lose no time, then!"
And, sitting down, he wrote a letter to his broker, ordering him to sell out at any loss.
"Now, then," said Villefort, placing the letter in his pocket-book, "write another."
"To whom?"
"To the king."
"I dare not write to his majesty."
"I do not ask you to write to his majesty, but ask M. de Salvieux to do so. I want a letter that will enable me to reach the king's presence without all the formalities of demanding an audience; that would occasion a loss of time."
"But address yourself to the keeper of the seals; he has the right of entry, and can procure you audience with the king, day or night."
"Doubtless; but there is no occasion to divide the merit of my discovery with him. The keeper would leave me in the background, and take all the honor to himself. I tell you, marquis, my fortune is made if I only reach the Tuileries the first, for the king will not forget the service I do him."
"In that case make your preparations, and I will call Salvieux and get him to write the letter of introduction."
"Be as quick as possible; I must be en route in a quarter of an hour."
"Make your carriage stop at the door."
"You will present my excuses to the marquise and Mademoiselle Renée, whom I leave on such a day with great regret."
"They are both in my room; you can say all this for yourself."
"A thousand thanks — busy yourself with the letter."
The marquis rang, a servant entered.
"Inform the Count de Salvieux I am waiting for him."
"Now, then, go!" said the marquis to Villefort.
"I only go for a few moments."
Villefort hastily quitted the apartment, but reflecting that the sight of the deputy procureur running through the streets would be enough to throw the whole city into confusion, he resumed his ordinary dignified pace. At his door he perceived in the shade, as it were, a white phantom, erect and motionless, that seemed to wait for him. It was Mercédѐs, who, hearing no news of her lover, had come herself at nightfall from the Pharos to inquire after him.
As Villefort drew near, she advanced and stood before him. Dantѐs had spoken of his bride, and Villefort instantly recognized her. Her beauty and high bearing surprised him, and when she inquired what had become of her lover, it seemed to him that she was the judge, and he the accused.
"The young man you speak of," said Villefort abruptly, "is a great criminal, and I can do nothing for him, mademoiselle."
Mercédès burst into tears, and, as Villefort strove to pass her, again addressed him.
"But, at least, tell me where he is, that I may learn if he is alive or dead," said she.
"I do not know; he is no longer in my hands," replied Villefort.
And, desirous of putting an end to the interview, he pushed by her, and closed the door, as if to exclude the pain he felt. But remorse is not thus banished; like the wounded hero of Virgil, the arrow remained in the wound, and when he arrived at the salon his limbs failed him. Villefort, in his turn, uttered a sigh that resembled a sob, and sank into a chair.
At the bottom of his diseased heart, the first roots of a mortal ulcer were forming. The man he sacrificed to his ambition, that innocent victim he made pay the penalty of his father's faults, appeared to him pale and threatening, leading his affianced bride by the hand, and bringing with him remorse, not such as the ancients figured, furious and terrible, but that slow and consuming agony which, at times, strikes the heart and lacerates it with recollections of past deeds, — a laceration whose poignant pangs increase and deepen the evil till death comes. Then he had a moment's hesitation. He had frequently called, without any other emotion than that of the struggle between the prosecution and defense, for capital punishment on criminals, and owing to his irresistible eloquence they had been condemned, and yet the slightest shadow of remorse had never clouded Villefort's brow, because they were guilty, or, at least, he believed so; but here the case was different. He was about to send into perpetual imprisonment an innocent man, an innocent man with a happy future before him, and was destroying not only his liberty, but his happiness. In this case he was not the judge, but the executioner.
As he thus reflected, he felt the sensation we have described, and which had hitherto been unknown to him, arise in his bosom and fill him with vague apprehensions. It is thus that a wounded man trembles instinctively at the approach of the finger to his wound until it be healed, but Villefort's was one of those that never close, or, if they do, only close to re-open more agonizing than ever. If at this moment the sweet voice of Renée had sounded in his ears pleading for mercy, or the fair Mercédѐs had entered and said, "In the name of God, I conjure you to restore me my affianced husband," his cold and trembling hands would have signed his release at any risk; but no voice broke the stillness of the chamber, and the door was opened only by Villefort's valet, who came to tell him the traveling-carriage was in readiness.
Villefort rose, or rather sprang, from his chair, hastily opened one of the drawers of his secrétaire, emptied all the gold it contained into his pocket, stood motionless an instant, his hand pressed to his head, muttered a few inarticulate sounds, and then, perceiving his servant had placed his cloak on his shoulders, he sprang into the carriage, ordering the postilions to go, Rue du Grand Cours, to the house of M. de Saint-Méran.
The wretched Dantѐs was condemned.
As the marquis had promised, Villefort found the marquise and Renée in the parlor. He started when he saw Renée, for he fancied she was again about to plead for Dantès. Alas! she was thinking only of Villefort's departure.
She loved Villefort, and he left her at the moment he was about to become her husband. Villefort knew not when he should return,
and Renée, far from pleading for Dantès, hated the man whose crime separated her from her lover.
What had Mercédès to say?
Mercédès had met Fernand at the corner of the Rue de la Loge; she had returned to the Catalans, and had despairingly cast herself on her couch. Feruand, kneeling by her side, took her hand and covered it with kisses that Mercédѐs did not even feel. She passed the night thus; the lamp died out for want of oil, she saw neither light nor dark, and the day returned without her noticing it. Grief had made her blind to all but one object — that was Edmond.
"Ah! you are there," said she, at length.
"I have not quitted you since yesterday," returned Fernand sorrowfully.
M. Morrel had learned that Dantѐs had been conducted to prison, and he had gone to all his friends and the influential persons of the city, but the report was already in circulation that Dantѐs was arrested as a Bonapartist agent; and as the most sanguine looked upon any attempt of Napoleon to remount the throne as impossible, he met with nothing but coldness, alarm, and refusal, and had returned home in despair, confessing that Dantѐs was in a dangerous position, beyond his aid.
Caderousse was equally restless and uneasy, but, instead of seeking to aid Dantѐs, he had shut himself up with two bottles of wine, in the hope of drowning reflection. But he did not succeed, and became too intoxicated to fetch any more wine, and yet not so intoxicated as to forget what had happened, and as he leaned on his shaky table, opposite his two empty bottles, he saw in the flare of his dull candle all the specters of Hoffmann's punch-inspired tales.
Danglars alone was content and joyous — he had got rid of an enemy and preserved his situation on board the Pharaon. Danglars was one of those men born with a pen behind the ear and an inkstand in place of a heart. Everything with him was multiplication or subtraction, and he estimated the life of a man as less precious than a figure, when that figure could increase, and that life would diminish, the total of the amount.
Villefort, after having received M. de Salvieux's letter, embraced Renée, kissed the marquise's hand, and shaken hands with the marquis, started for Paris.
Old Dantѐs was dying with anxiety, and, as regards Edmond, we know what had become of him.