الفصل الفصل 91 · The Night

Monte Cristo waited, according to his usual custom, until Duprez had

sung his famous “_Suivez-moi!_” then he rose and went out. Morrel took

leave of him at the door, renewing his promise to be with him the next

morning at seven o’clock, and to bring Emmanuel. Then he stepped into

his _coupé_, calm and smiling, and was at home in five minutes. No one

who knew the count could mistake his expression when, on entering, he

said:

“Ali, bring me my pistols with the ivory cross.”

Ali brought the box to his master, who examined the weapons with a

solicitude very natural to a man who is about to intrust his life to a

little powder and shot. These were pistols of an especial pattern,

which Monte Cristo had had made for target practice in his own room. A

cap was sufficient to drive out the bullet, and from the adjoining room

no one would have suspected that the count was, as sportsmen would say,

keeping his hand in.

He was just taking one up and looking for the point to aim at on a

little iron plate which served him as a target, when his study door

opened, and Baptistin entered. Before he had spoken a word, the count

saw in the next room a veiled woman, who had followed closely after

Baptistin, and now, seeing the count with a pistol in his hand and

swords on the table, rushed in. Baptistin looked at his master, who

made a sign to him, and he went out, closing the door after him.

“Who are you, madame?” said the count to the veiled woman.

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The stranger cast one look around her, to be certain that they were

quite alone; then bending as if she would have knelt, and joining her

hands, she said with an accent of despair:

“Edmond, you will not kill my son!”

The count retreated a step, uttered a slight exclamation, and let fall

the pistol he held.

“What name did you pronounce then, Madame de Morcerf?” said he.

“Yours!” cried she, throwing back her veil,—“yours, which I alone,

perhaps, have not forgotten. Edmond, it is not Madame de Morcerf who is

come to you, it is Mercédès.”

“Mercédès is dead, madame,” said Monte Cristo; “I know no one now of

that name.”

“Mercédès lives, sir, and she remembers, for she alone recognized you

when she saw you, and even before she saw you, by your voice,

Edmond,—by the simple sound of your voice; and from that moment she has

followed your steps, watched you, feared you, and she needs not to

inquire what hand has dealt the blow which now strikes M. de Morcerf.”

“Fernand, do you mean?” replied Monte Cristo, with bitter irony; “since

we are recalling names, let us remember them all.” Monte Cristo had

pronounced the name of Fernand with such an expression of hatred that

Mercédès felt a thrill of horror run through every vein.

“You see, Edmond, I am not mistaken, and have cause to say, ‘Spare my

son!’”

“And who told you, madame, that I have any hostile intentions against

your son?”

“No one, in truth; but a mother has twofold sight. I guessed all; I

followed him this evening to the Opera, and, concealed in a parquet

box, have seen all.”

“If you have seen all, madame, you know that the son of Fernand has

publicly insulted me,” said Monte Cristo with awful calmness.

“Oh, for pity’s sake!”

“You have seen that he would have thrown his glove in my face if

Morrel, one of my friends, had not stopped him.”

“Listen to me, my son has also guessed who you are,—he attributes his

father’s misfortunes to you.”

“Madame, you are mistaken, they are not misfortunes,—it is a

punishment. It is not I who strike M. de Morcerf; it is Providence

which punishes him.”

“And why do you represent Providence?” cried Mercédès. “Why do you

remember when it forgets? What are Yanina and its vizier to you,

Edmond? What injury has Fernand Mondego done you in betraying Ali

Tepelini?”

“Ah, madame,” replied Monte Cristo, “all this is an affair between the

French captain and the daughter of Vasiliki. It does not concern me,

you are right; and if I have sworn to revenge myself, it is not on the

French captain, or the Count of Morcerf, but on the fisherman Fernand,

the husband of Mercédès the Catalane.”

“Ah, sir!” cried the countess, “how terrible a vengeance for a fault

which fatality made me commit!—for I am the only culprit, Edmond, and

if you owe revenge to anyone, it is to me, who had not fortitude to

bear your absence and my solitude.”

“But,” exclaimed Monte Cristo, “why was I absent? And why were you

alone?”

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“Because you had been arrested, Edmond, and were a prisoner.”

“And why was I arrested? Why was I a prisoner?”

“I do not know,” said Mercédès.

“You do not, madame; at least, I hope not. But I will tell you. I was

arrested and became a prisoner because, under the arbor of La Réserve,

the day before I was to marry you, a man named Danglars wrote this

letter, which the fisherman Fernand himself posted.”

Monte Cristo went to a secretaire, opened a drawer by a spring, from

which he took a paper which had lost its original color, and the ink of

which had become of a rusty hue—this he placed in the hands of

Mercédès. It was Danglars’ letter to the king’s attorney, which the

Count of Monte Cristo, disguised as a clerk from the house of Thomson &

French, had taken from the file against Edmond Dantès, on the day he

had paid the two hundred thousand francs to M. de Boville. Mercédès

read with terror the following lines:

“The king’s attorney is informed by a friend to the throne and religion

that one Edmond Dantès, second in command on board the _Pharaon_, this

day arrived from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and

Porto-Ferrajo, is the bearer of a letter from Murat to the usurper, and

of another letter from the usurper to the Bonapartist club in Paris.

Ample corroboration of this statement may be obtained by arresting the

above-mentioned Edmond Dantès, who either carries the letter for Paris

about with him, or has it at his father’s abode. Should it not be found

in possession of either father or son, then it will assuredly be

discovered in the cabin belonging to the said Dantès on board the

_Pharaon_.”

“How dreadful!” said Mercédès, passing her hand across her brow, moist

with perspiration; “and that letter——”

“I bought it for two hundred thousand francs, madame,” said Monte

Cristo; “but that is a trifle, since it enables me to justify myself to

you.”

“And the result of that letter——”

“You well know, madame, was my arrest; but you do not know how long

that arrest lasted. You do not know that I remained for fourteen years

within a quarter of a league of you, in a dungeon in the Château d’If.

You do not know that every day of those fourteen years I renewed the

vow of vengeance which I had made the first day; and yet I was not

aware that you had married Fernand, my calumniator, and that my father

had died of hunger!”

“Can it be?” cried Mercédès, shuddering.

“That is what I heard on leaving my prison fourteen years after I had

entered it; and that is why, on account of the living Mercédès and my

deceased father, I have sworn to revenge myself on Fernand, and—I have

revenged myself.”

“And you are sure the unhappy Fernand did that?”

“I am satisfied, madame, that he did what I have told you; besides,

that is not much more odious than that a Frenchman by adoption should

pass over to the English; that a Spaniard by birth should have fought

against the Spaniards; that a stipendiary of Ali should have betrayed

and murdered Ali. Compared with such things, what is the letter you

have just read?—a lover’s deception, which the woman who has married

that man ought certainly to forgive; but not so the lover who was to

have married her. Well, the French did not avenge themselves on the

traitor, the Spaniards did not shoot the traitor, Ali in his tomb left

the traitor unpunished; but I, betrayed, sacrificed, buried, have risen

from my tomb, by the grace of God, to punish that man. He sends me for

that purpose, and here I am.”

The poor woman’s head and arms fell; her legs bent under her, and she

fell on her knees.

“Forgive, Edmond, forgive for my sake, who love you still!”

The dignity of the wife checked the fervor of the lover and the mother.

Her forehead almost touched the carpet, when the count sprang forward

and raised her. Then seated on a chair, she looked at the manly

countenance of Monte Cristo, on which grief and hatred still impressed

a threatening expression.

“Not crush that accursed race?” murmured he; “abandon my purpose at the

moment of its accomplishment? Impossible, madame, impossible!”

“Edmond,” said the poor mother, who tried every means, “when I call you

Edmond, why do you not call me Mercédès?”

“Mercédès!” repeated Monte Cristo; “Mercédès! Well yes, you are right;

that name has still its charms, and this is the first time for a long

period that I have pronounced it so distinctly. Oh, Mercédès, I have

uttered your name with the sigh of melancholy, with the groan of

sorrow, with the last effort of despair; I have uttered it when frozen

with cold, crouched on the straw in my dungeon; I have uttered it,

consumed with heat, rolling on the stone floor of my prison. Mercédès,

I must revenge myself, for I suffered fourteen years,—fourteen years I

wept, I cursed; now I tell you, Mercédès, I must revenge myself.”

The count, fearing to yield to the entreaties of her he had so ardently

loved, called his sufferings to the assistance of his hatred.

“Revenge yourself, then, Edmond,” cried the poor mother; “but let your

vengeance fall on the culprits,—on him, on me, but not on my son!”

“It is written in the good book,” said Monte Cristo, “that the sins of

the fathers shall fall upon their children to the third and fourth

generation. Since God himself dictated those words to his prophet, why

should I seek to make myself better than God?”

“Edmond,” continued Mercédès, with her arms extended towards the count,

“since I first knew you, I have adored your name, have respected your

memory. Edmond, my friend, do not compel me to tarnish that noble and

pure image reflected incessantly on the mirror of my heart. Edmond, if

you knew all the prayers I have addressed to God for you while I

thought you were living and since I have thought you must be dead! Yes,

dead, alas! I imagined your dead body buried at the foot of some gloomy

tower, or cast to the bottom of a pit by hateful jailers, and I wept!

What could I do for you, Edmond, besides pray and weep? Listen; for ten

years I dreamed each night the same dream. I had been told that you had

endeavored to escape; that you had taken the place of another prisoner;

that you had slipped into the winding sheet of a dead body; that you

had been thrown alive from the top of the Château d’If, and that the

cry you uttered as you dashed upon the rocks first revealed to your

jailers that they were your murderers. Well, Edmond, I swear to you, by

the head of that son for whom I entreat your pity,—Edmond, for ten

years I saw every night every detail of that frightful tragedy, and for

ten years I heard every night the cry which awoke me, shuddering and

cold. And I, too, Edmond—oh! believe me—guilty as I was—oh, yes, I,

too, have suffered much!”

“Have you known what it is to have your father starve to death in your

absence?” cried Monte Cristo, thrusting his hands into his hair; “have

you seen the woman you loved giving her hand to your rival, while you

were perishing at the bottom of a dungeon?”

“No,” interrupted Mercédès, “but I have seen him whom I loved on the

point of murdering my son.”

Mercédès uttered these words with such deep anguish, with an accent of

such intense despair, that Monte Cristo could not restrain a sob. The

lion was daunted; the avenger was conquered.

“What do you ask of me?” said he,—“your son’s life? Well, he shall

live!”

Mercédès uttered a cry which made the tears start from Monte Cristo’s

eyes; but these tears disappeared almost instantaneously, for,

doubtless, God had sent some angel to collect them—far more precious

were they in his eyes than the richest pearls of Guzerat and Ophir.

“Oh,” said she, seizing the count’s hand and raising it to her lips;

“oh, thank you, thank you, Edmond! Now you are exactly what I dreamt

you were,—the man I always loved. Oh, now I may say so!”

“So much the better,” replied Monte Cristo; “as that poor Edmond will

not have long to be loved by you. Death is about to return to the tomb,

the phantom to retire in darkness.”

“What do you say, Edmond?”

“I say, since you command me, Mercédès, I must die.”

“Die? and why so? Who talks of dying? Whence have you these ideas of

death?”

“You do not suppose that, publicly outraged in the face of a whole

theatre, in the presence of your friends and those of your

son—challenged by a boy who will glory in my forgiveness as if it were

a victory—you do not suppose that I can for one moment wish to live.

What I most loved after you, Mercédès, was myself, my dignity, and that

strength which rendered me superior to other men; that strength was my

life. With one word you have crushed it, and I die.”

“But the duel will not take place, Edmond, since you forgive?”

“It will take place,” said Monte Cristo, in a most solemn tone; “but

instead of your son’s blood to stain the ground, mine will flow.”

Mercédès shrieked, and sprang towards Monte Cristo, but, suddenly

stopping, “Edmond,” said she, “there is a God above us, since you live

and since I have seen you again; I trust to him from my heart. While

waiting his assistance I trust to your word; you have said that my son

should live, have you not?”

“Yes, madame, he shall live,” said Monte Cristo, surprised that without

more emotion Mercédès had accepted the heroic sacrifice he made for

her. Mercédès extended her hand to the count.

“Edmond,” said she, and her eyes were wet with tears while looking at

him to whom she spoke, “how noble it is of you, how great the action

you have just performed, how sublime to have taken pity on a poor woman

who appealed to you with every chance against her, Alas, I am grown old

with grief more than with years, and cannot now remind my Edmond by a

smile, or by a look, of that Mercédès whom he once spent so many hours

in contemplating. Ah, believe me, Edmond, as I told you, I too have

suffered much; I repeat, it is melancholy to pass one’s life without

having one joy to recall, without preserving a single hope; but that

proves that all is not yet over. No, it is not finished; I feel it by

what remains in my heart. Oh, I repeat it, Edmond; what you have just

done is beautiful—it is grand; it is sublime.”

“Do you say so now, Mercédès?—then what would you say if you knew the

extent of the sacrifice I make to you? Suppose that the Supreme Being,

after having created the world and fertilized chaos, had paused in the

work to spare an angel the tears that might one day flow for mortal

sins from her immortal eyes; suppose that when everything was in

readiness and the moment had come for God to look upon his work and see

that it was good—suppose he had snuffed out the sun and tossed the

world back into eternal night—then—even then, Mercédès, you could not

imagine what I lose in sacrificing my life at this moment.”

Mercédès looked at the count in a way which expressed at the same time

her astonishment, her admiration, and her gratitude. Monte Cristo

pressed his forehead on his burning hands, as if his brain could no

longer bear alone the weight of its thoughts.

“Edmond,” said Mercédès, “I have but one word more to say to you.”

The count smiled bitterly.

“Edmond,” continued she, “you will see that if my face is pale, if my

eyes are dull, if my beauty is gone; if Mercédès, in short, no longer

resembles her former self in her features, you will see that her heart

is still the same. Adieu, then, Edmond; I have nothing more to ask of

heaven—I have seen you again, and have found you as noble and as great

as formerly you were. Adieu, Edmond, adieu, and thank you.”

But the count did not answer. Mercédès opened the door of the study and

had disappeared before he had recovered from the painful and profound

reverie into which his thwarted vengeance had plunged him.

The clock of the Invalides struck one when the carriage which conveyed

Madame de Morcerf rolled away on the pavement of the Champs-Élysées,

and made Monte Cristo raise his head.

“What a fool I was,” said he, “not to tear my heart out on the day when

I resolved to avenge myself!”