Chapter Chapter 50 · Ideology

If the Count of Monte Cristo had been for a long time familiar with the

ways of Parisian society, he would have appreciated better the

significance of the step which M. de Villefort had taken. Standing well

at court, whether the king regnant was of the older or younger branch,

whether the government was doctrinaire liberal, or conservative; looked

upon by all as a man of talent, since those who have never experienced

a political check are generally so regarded; hated by many, but warmly

supported by others, without being really liked by anybody, M. de

Villefort held a high position in the magistracy, and maintained his

eminence like a Harlay or a Molé. His drawing-room, under the

regenerating influence of a young wife and a daughter by his first

marriage, scarcely eighteen, was still one of the well-regulated Paris

salons where the worship of traditional customs and the observance of

rigid etiquette were carefully maintained. A freezing politeness, a

strict fidelity to government principles, a profound contempt for

theories and theorists, a deep-seated hatred of ideality,—these were

the elements of private and public life displayed by M. de Villefort.

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M. de Villefort was not only a magistrate, he was almost a diplomatist.

His relations with the former court, of which he always spoke with

dignity and respect, made him respected by the new one, and he knew so

many things, that not only was he always carefully considered, but

sometimes consulted. Perhaps this would not have been so had it been

possible to get rid of M. de Villefort; but, like the feudal barons who

rebelled against their sovereign, he dwelt in an impregnable fortress.

This fortress was his post as king’s attorney, all the advantages of

which he exploited with marvellous skill, and which he would not have

resigned but to be made deputy, and thus to replace neutrality by

opposition.

Ordinarily M. de Villefort made and returned very few visits. His wife

visited for him, and this was the received thing in the world, where

the weighty and multifarious occupations of the magistrate were

accepted as an excuse for what was really only calculated pride, a

manifestation of professed superiority—in fact, the application of the

axiom, _Pretend to think well of yourself, and the world will think

well of you_, an axiom a hundred times more useful in society nowadays

than that of the Greeks, “Know thyself,” a knowledge for which, in our

days, we have substituted the less difficult and more advantageous

science of _knowing others_.

To his friends M. de Villefort was a powerful protector; to his

enemies, he was a silent, but bitter opponent; for those who were

neither the one nor the other, he was a statue of the law-made man. He

had a haughty bearing, a look either steady and impenetrable or

insolently piercing and inquisitorial. Four successive revolutions had

built and cemented the pedestal upon which his fortune was based.

M. de Villefort had the reputation of being the least curious and the

least wearisome man in France. He gave a ball every year, at which he

appeared for a quarter of an hour only,—that is to say, five-and-forty

minutes less than the king is visible at his balls. He was never seen

at the theatres, at concerts, or in any place of public resort.

Occasionally, but seldom, he played at whist, and then care was taken

to select partners worthy of him—sometimes they were ambassadors,

sometimes archbishops, or sometimes a prince, or a president, or some

dowager duchess.

Such was the man whose carriage had just now stopped before the Count

of Monte Cristo’s door. The valet de chambre announced M. de Villefort

at the moment when the count, leaning over a large table, was tracing

on a map the route from St. Petersburg to China.

The procureur entered with the same grave and measured step he would

have employed in entering a court of justice. He was the same man, or

rather the development of the same man, whom we have heretofore seen as

assistant attorney at Marseilles. Nature, according to her way, had

made no deviation in the path he had marked out for himself. From being

slender he had now become meagre; once pale, he was now yellow; his

deep-set eyes were hollow, and the gold spectacles shielding his eyes

seemed to be an integral portion of his face. He dressed entirely in

black, with the exception of his white tie, and his funeral appearance

was only mitigated by the slight line of red ribbon which passed almost

imperceptibly through his button-hole, and appeared like a streak of

blood traced with a delicate brush.

Although master of himself, Monte Cristo, scrutinized with

irrepressible curiosity the magistrate whose salute he returned, and

who, distrustful by habit, and especially incredulous as to social

prodigies, was much more despised to look upon “the noble stranger,” as

Monte Cristo was already called, as an adventurer in search of new

fields, or an escaped criminal, rather than as a prince of the Holy

See, or a sultan of the _Thousand and One Nights_.

“Sir,” said Villefort, in the squeaky tone assumed by magistrates in

their oratorical periods, and of which they cannot, or will not, divest

themselves in society, “sir, the signal service which you yesterday

rendered to my wife and son has made it a duty for me to offer you my

thanks. I have come, therefore, to discharge this duty, and to express

to you my overwhelming gratitude.”

And as he said this, the “eye severe” of the magistrate had lost

nothing of its habitual arrogance. He spoke in a voice of the

procureur-general, with the rigid inflexibility of neck and shoulders

which caused his flatterers to say (as we have before observed) that he

was the living statue of the law.

“Monsieur,” replied the count, with a chilling air, “I am very happy to

have been the means of preserving a son to his mother, for they say

that the sentiment of maternity is the most holy of all; and the good

fortune which occurred to me, monsieur, might have enabled you to

dispense with a duty which, in its discharge, confers an undoubtedly

great honor; for I am aware that M. de Villefort is not usually lavish

of the favor which he now bestows on me,—a favor which, however

estimable, is unequal to the satisfaction which I have in my own

consciousness.”

Villefort, astonished at this reply, which he by no means expected,

started like a soldier who feels the blow levelled at him over the

armor he wears, and a curl of his disdainful lip indicated that from

that moment he noted in the tablets of his brain that the Count of

Monte Cristo was by no means a highly bred gentleman.

He glanced around, in order to seize on something on which the

conversation might turn, and seemed to fall easily on a topic. He saw

the map which Monte Cristo had been examining when he entered, and

said:

“You seem geographically engaged, sir? It is a rich study for you, who,

as I learn, have seen as many lands as are delineated on this map.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the count; “I have sought to make of the human

race, taken in the mass, what you practice every day on individuals—a

physiological study. I have believed it was much easier to descend from

the whole to a part than to ascend from a part to the whole. It is an

algebraic axiom, which makes us proceed from a known to an unknown

quantity, and not from an unknown to a known; but sit down, sir, I beg

of you.”

Monte Cristo pointed to a chair, which the procureur was obliged to

take the trouble to move forwards himself, while the count merely fell

back into his own, on which he had been kneeling when M. Villefort

entered. Thus the count was halfway turned towards his visitor, having

his back towards the window, his elbow resting on the geographical

chart which furnished the theme of conversation for the moment,—a

conversation which assumed, as in the case of the interviews with

Danglars and Morcerf, a turn analogous to the persons, if not to the

situation.

“Ah, you philosophize,” replied Villefort, after a moment’s silence,

during which, like a wrestler who encounters a powerful opponent, he

took breath; “well, sir, really, if, like you, I had nothing else to

do, I should seek a more amusing occupation.”

“Why, in truth, sir,” was Monte Cristo’s reply, “man is but an ugly

caterpillar for him who studies him through a solar microscope; but you

said, I think, that I had nothing else to do. Now, really, let me ask,

sir, have you?—do you believe you have anything to do? or to speak in

plain terms, do you really think that what you do deserves being called

anything?”

Villefort’s astonishment redoubled at this second thrust so forcibly

made by his strange adversary. It was a long time since the magistrate

had heard a paradox so strong, or rather, to say the truth more

exactly, it was the first time he had ever heard of it. The procureur

exerted himself to reply.

“Sir,” he responded, “you are a stranger, and I believe you say

yourself that a portion of your life has been spent in Oriental

countries, so you are not aware how human justice, so expeditious in

barbarous countries, takes with us a prudent and well-studied course.”

“Oh, yes—yes, I do, sir; it is the _pede claudo_ of the ancients. I

know all that, for it is with the justice of all countries especially

that I have occupied myself—it is with the criminal procedure of all

nations that I have compared natural justice, and I must say, sir, that

it is the law of primitive nations, that is, the law of retaliation,

that I have most frequently found to be according to the law of God.”

“If this law were adopted, sir,” said the procureur, “it would greatly

simplify our legal codes, and in that case the magistrates would not

(as you just observed) have much to do.”

“It may, perhaps, come to this in time,” observed Monte Cristo; “you

know that human inventions march from the complex to the simple, and

simplicity is always perfection.”

“In the meanwhile,” continued the magistrate, “our codes are in full

force, with all their contradictory enactments derived from Gallic

customs, Roman laws, and Frank usages; the knowledge of all which, you

will agree, is not to be acquired without extended labor; it needs

tedious study to acquire this knowledge, and, when acquired, a strong

power of brain to retain it.”

“I agree with you entirely, sir; but all that even you know with

respect to the French code, I know, not only in reference to that code,

but as regards the codes of all nations. The English, Turkish,

Japanese, Hindu laws, are as familiar to me as the French laws, and

thus I was right, when I said to you, that relatively (you know that

everything is relative, sir)—that relatively to what I have done, you

have very little to do; but that relatively to all I have learned, you

have yet a great deal to learn.”

“But with what motive have you learned all this?” inquired Villefort,

in astonishment.

Monte Cristo smiled.

“Really, sir,” he observed, “I see that in spite of the reputation

which you have acquired as a superior man, you look at everything from

the material and vulgar view of society, beginning with man, and ending

with man—that is to say, in the most restricted, most narrow view which

it is possible for human understanding to embrace.”

“Pray, sir, explain yourself,” said Villefort, more and more

astonished, “I really do—not—understand you—perfectly.”

“I say, sir, that with the eyes fixed on the social organization of

nations, you see only the springs of the machine, and lose sight of the

sublime workman who makes them act; I say that you do not recognize

before you and around you any but those office-holders whose

commissions have been signed by a minister or king; and that the men

whom God has put above those office-holders, ministers, and kings, by

giving them a mission to follow out, instead of a post to fill—I say

that they escape your narrow, limited field of observation. It is thus

that human weakness fails, from its debilitated and imperfect organs.

Tobias took the angel who restored him to light for an ordinary young

man. The nations took Attila, who was doomed to destroy them, for a

conqueror similar to other conquerors, and it was necessary for both to

reveal their missions, that they might be known and acknowledged; one

was compelled to say, ‘I am the angel of the Lord’; and the other, ‘I

am the hammer of God,’ in order that the divine essence in both might

be revealed.”

“Then,” said Villefort, more and more amazed, and really supposing he

was speaking to a mystic or a madman, “you consider yourself as one of

those extraordinary beings whom you have mentioned?”

“And why not?” said Monte Cristo coldly.

“Your pardon, sir,” replied Villefort, quite astounded, “but you will

excuse me if, when I presented myself to you, I was unaware that I

should meet with a person whose knowledge and understanding so far

surpass the usual knowledge and understanding of men. It is not usual

with us corrupted wretches of civilization to find gentlemen like

yourself, possessors, as you are, of immense fortune—at least, so it is

said—and I beg you to observe that I do not inquire, I merely

repeat;—it is not usual, I say, for such privileged and wealthy beings

to waste their time in speculations on the state of society, in

philosophical reveries, intended at best to console those whom fate has

disinherited from the goods of this world.”

“Really, sir,” retorted the count, “have you attained the eminent

situation in which you are, without having admitted, or even without

having met with exceptions? and do you never use your eyes, which must

have acquired so much _finesse_ and certainty, to divine, at a glance,

the kind of man by whom you are confronted? Should not a magistrate be

not merely the best administrator of the law, but the most crafty

expounder of the chicanery of his profession, a steel probe to search

hearts, a touchstone to try the gold which in each soul is mingled with

more or less of alloy?”

“Sir,” said Villefort, “upon my word, you overcome me. I really never

heard a person speak as you do.”

“Because you remain eternally encircled in a round of general

conditions, and have never dared to raise your wings into those upper

spheres which God has peopled with invisible or exceptional beings.”

“And you allow then, sir, that spheres exist, and that these marked and

invisible beings mingle amongst us?”

“Why should they not? Can you see the air you breathe, and yet without

which you could not for a moment exist?”

“Then we do not see those beings to whom you allude?”

“Yes, we do; you see them whenever God pleases to allow them to assume

a material form. You touch them, come in contact with them, speak to

them, and they reply to you.”

“Ah,” said Villefort, smiling, “I confess I should like to be warned

when one of these beings is in contact with me.”

“You have been served as you desire, monsieur, for you were warned just

now, and I now again warn you.”

“Then you yourself are one of these marked beings?”

“Yes, monsieur, I believe so; for until now, no man has found himself

in a position similar to mine. The dominions of kings are limited

either by mountains or rivers, or a change of manners, or an alteration

of language. My kingdom is bounded only by the world, for I am not an

Italian, or a Frenchman, or a Hindu, or an American, or a Spaniard—I am

a cosmopolite. No country can say it saw my birth. God alone knows what

country will see me die. I adopt all customs, speak all languages. You

believe me to be a Frenchman, for I speak French with the same facility

and purity as yourself. Well, Ali, my Nubian, believes me to be an

Arab; Bertuccio, my steward, takes me for a Roman; Haydée, my slave,

thinks me a Greek. You may, therefore, comprehend, that being of no

country, asking no protection from any government, acknowledging no man

as my brother, not one of the scruples that arrest the powerful, or the

obstacles which paralyze the weak, paralyzes or arrests me. I have only

two adversaries—I will not say two conquerors, for with perseverance I

subdue even them,—they are time and distance. There is a third, and the

most terrible—that is my condition as a mortal being. This alone can

stop me in my onward career, before I have attained the goal at which I

aim, for all the rest I have reduced to mathematical terms. What men

call the chances of fate—namely, ruin, change, circumstances—I have

fully anticipated, and if any of these should overtake me, yet it will

not overwhelm me. Unless I die, I shall always be what I am, and

therefore it is that I utter the things you have never heard, even from

the mouths of kings—for kings have need, and other persons have fear of

you. For who is there who does not say to himself, in a society as

incongruously organized as ours, ‘Perhaps some day I shall have to do

with the king’s attorney’?”

“But can you not say that, sir? The moment you become an inhabitant of

France, you are naturally subjected to the French law.”

“I know it sir,” replied Monte Cristo; “but when I visit a country I

begin to study, by all the means which are available, the men from whom

I may have anything to hope or to fear, till I know them as well as,

perhaps better than, they know themselves. It follows from this, that

the king’s attorney, be he who he may, with whom I should have to deal,

would assuredly be more embarrassed than I should.”

“That is to say,” replied Villefort with hesitation, “that human nature

being weak, every man, according to your creed, has committed faults.”

“Faults or crimes,” responded Monte Cristo with a negligent air.

“And that you alone, amongst the men whom you do not recognize as your

brothers—for you have said so,” observed Villefort in a tone that

faltered somewhat—“you alone are perfect.”

“No, not perfect,” was the count’s reply; “only impenetrable, that’s

all. But let us leave off this strain, sir, if the tone of it is

displeasing to you; I am no more disturbed by your justice than are you

by my second-sight.”

“No, no,—by no means,” said Villefort, who was afraid of seeming to

abandon his ground. “No; by your brilliant and almost sublime

conversation you have elevated me above the ordinary level; we no

longer talk, we rise to dissertation. But you know how the theologians

in their collegiate chairs, and philosophers in their controversies,

occasionally say cruel truths; let us suppose for the moment that we

are theologizing in a social way, or even philosophically, and I will

say to you, rude as it may seem, ‘My brother, you sacrifice greatly to

pride; you may be above others, but above you there is God.’”

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“Above us all, sir,” was Monte Cristo’s response, in a tone and with an

emphasis so deep that Villefort involuntarily shuddered. “I have my

pride for men—serpents always ready to threaten everyone who would pass

without crushing them under foot. But I lay aside that pride before

God, who has taken me from nothing to make me what I am.”

“Then, count, I admire you,” said Villefort, who, for the first time in

this strange conversation, used the aristocratic form to the unknown

personage, whom, until now, he had only called monsieur. “Yes, and I

say to you, if you are really strong, really superior, really pious, or

impenetrable, which you were right in saying amounts to the same

thing—then be proud, sir, for that is the characteristic of

predominance. Yet you have unquestionably some ambition.”

“I have, sir.”

“And what may it be?”

“I too, as happens to every man once in his life, have been taken by

Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he showed

me all the kingdoms of the world, and as he said before, so said he to

me, ‘Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?’ I

reflected long, for a gnawing ambition had long preyed upon me, and

then I replied, ‘Listen,—I have always heard of Providence, and yet I

have never seen him, or anything that resembles him, or which can make

me believe that he exists. I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel

that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is

to recompense and punish.’ Satan bowed his head, and groaned. ‘You

mistake,’ he said, ‘Providence does exist, only you have never seen

him, because the child of God is as invisible as the parent. You have

seen nothing that resembles him, because he works by secret springs,

and moves by hidden ways. All I can do for you is to make you one of

the agents of that Providence.’ The bargain was concluded. I may

sacrifice my soul, but what matters it?” added Monte Cristo. “If the

thing were to do again, I would again do it.”

Villefort looked at Monte Cristo with extreme amazement.

“Count,” he inquired, “have you any relations?”

“No, sir, I am alone in the world.”

“So much the worse.”

“Why?” asked Monte Cristo.

“Because then you might witness a spectacle calculated to break down

your pride. You say you fear nothing but death?”

“I did not say that I feared it; I only said that death alone could

check the execution of my plans.”

“And old age?”

“My end will be achieved before I grow old.”

“And madness?”

“I have been nearly mad; and you know the axiom,—_non bis in idem_. It

is an axiom of criminal law, and, consequently, you understand its full

application.”

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“Sir,” continued Villefort, “there is something to fear besides death,

old age, and madness. For instance, there is apoplexy—that

lightning-stroke which strikes but does not destroy you, and yet which

brings everything to an end. You are still yourself as now, and yet you

are yourself no longer; you who, like Ariel, verge on the angelic, are

but an inert mass, which, like Caliban, verges on the brutal; and this

is called in human tongues, as I tell you, neither more nor less than

apoplexy. Come, if so you will, count, and continue this conversation

at my house, any day you may be willing to see an adversary capable of

understanding and anxious to refute you, and I will show you my father,

M. Noirtier de Villefort, one of the most fiery Jacobins of the French

Revolution; that is to say, he had the most remarkable audacity,

seconded by a most powerful organization—a man who has not, perhaps,

like yourself seen all the kingdoms of the earth, but who has helped to

overturn one of the greatest; in fact, a man who believed himself, like

you, one of the envoys, not of God, but of a supreme being; not of

Providence, but of fate. Well, sir, the rupture of a blood-vessel on

the lobe of the brain has destroyed all this, not in a day, not in an

hour, but in a second. M. Noirtier, who, on the previous night, was the

old Jacobin, the old senator, the old Carbonaro, laughing at the

guillotine, the cannon, and the dagger—M. Noirtier, playing with

revolutions—M. Noirtier, for whom France was a vast chess-board, from

which pawns, rooks, knights, and queens were to disappear, so that the

king was checkmated—M. Noirtier, the redoubtable, was the next morning

_poor M. Noirtier_, the helpless old man, at the tender mercies of the

weakest creature in the household, that is, his grandchild, Valentine;

a dumb and frozen carcass, in fact, living painlessly on, that time may

be given for his frame to decompose without his consciousness of its

decay.”

“Alas, sir,” said Monte Cristo “this spectacle is neither strange to my

eye nor my thought. I am something of a physician, and have, like my

fellows, sought more than once for the soul in living and in dead

matter; yet, like Providence, it has remained invisible to my eyes,

although present to my heart. A hundred writers since Socrates, Seneca,

St. Augustine, and Gall, have made, in verse and prose, the comparison

you have made, and yet I can well understand that a father’s sufferings

may effect great changes in the mind of a son. I will call on you, sir,

since you bid me contemplate, for the advantage of my pride, this

terrible spectacle, which must have been so great a source of sorrow to

your family.”

“It would have been so unquestionably, had not God given me so large a

compensation. In contrast with the old man, who is dragging his way to

the tomb, are two children just entering into life—Valentine, the

daughter by my first wife—Mademoiselle Renée de Saint-Méran—and Edward,

the boy whose life you have this day saved.”

“And what is your deduction from this compensation, sir?” inquired

Monte Cristo.

“My deduction is,” replied Villefort, “that my father, led away by his

passions, has committed some fault unknown to human justice, but marked

by the justice of God. That God, desirous in his mercy to punish but

one person, has visited this justice on him alone.”

Monte Cristo with a smile on his lips, uttered in the depths of his

soul a groan which would have made Villefort fly had he but heard it.

“Adieu, sir,” said the magistrate, who had risen from his seat; “I

leave you, bearing a remembrance of you—a remembrance of esteem, which

I hope will not be disagreeable to you when you know me better; for I

am not a man to bore my friends, as you will learn. Besides, you have

made an eternal friend of Madame de Villefort.”

The count bowed, and contented himself with seeing Villefort to the

door of his cabinet, the procureur being escorted to his carriage by

two footmen, who, on a signal from their master, followed him with

every mark of attention. When he had gone, Monte Cristo breathed a

profound sigh, and said:

“Enough of this poison, let me now seek the antidote.”

Then sounding his bell, he said to Ali, who entered:

“I am going to madame’s chamber—have the carriage ready at one

o’clock.”