Bab Bab 85 · The Hand of God

Caderousse continued to call piteously, “Help, reverend sir, help!”

“What is the matter?” asked Monte Cristo.

“Help,” cried Caderousse; “I am murdered!”

“We are here;—take courage.”

“Ah, it’s all over! You are come too late—you are come to see me die.

What blows, what blood!”

He fainted. Ali and his master conveyed the wounded man into a room.

Monte Cristo motioned to Ali to undress him, and he then examined his

dreadful wounds.

“My God!” he exclaimed, “thy vengeance is sometimes delayed, but only

that it may fall the more effectually.” Ali looked at his master for

further instructions. “Bring here immediately the king’s attorney, M.

de Villefort, who lives in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. As you pass the

lodge, wake the porter, and send him for a surgeon.”

Ali obeyed, leaving the abbé alone with Caderousse, who had not yet

revived.

When the wretched man again opened his eyes, the count looked at him

with a mournful expression of pity, and his lips moved as if in prayer.

“A surgeon, reverend sir—a surgeon!” said Caderousse.

“I have sent for one,” replied the abbé.

“I know he cannot save my life, but he may strengthen me to give my

evidence.”

“Against whom?”

“Against my murderer.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“Yes; it was Benedetto.”

“The young Corsican?”

“Himself.”

“Your comrade?”

“Yes. After giving me the plan of this house, doubtless hoping I should

kill the count and he thus become his heir, or that the count would

kill me and I should be out of his way, he waylaid me, and has murdered

me.”

“I have also sent for the procureur.”

“He will not come in time; I feel my life fast ebbing.”

“Wait a moment,” said Monte Cristo. He left the room, and returned in

five minutes with a phial. The dying man’s eyes were all the time

riveted on the door, through which he hoped succor would arrive.

“Hasten, reverend sir, hasten! I shall faint again!” Monte Cristo

approached, and dropped on his purple lips three or four drops of the

contents of the phial. Caderousse drew a deep breath. “Oh,” said he,

“that is life to me; more, more!”

“Two drops more would kill you,” replied the abbé.

“Oh, send for someone to whom I can denounce the wretch!”

“Shall I write your deposition? You can sign it.”

“Yes, yes,” said Caderousse; and his eyes glistened at the thought of

this posthumous revenge. Monte Cristo wrote:

“I die, murdered by the Corsican Benedetto, my comrade in the galleys

at Toulon, No. 59.”

“Quick, quick!” said Caderousse, “or I shall be unable to sign it.”

Monte Cristo gave the pen to Caderousse, who collected all his

strength, signed it, and fell back on his bed, saying:

“You will relate all the rest, reverend sir; you will say he calls

himself Andrea Cavalcanti. He lodges at the Hôtel des Princes. Oh, I am

dying!” He again fainted. The abbé made him smell the contents of the

phial, and he again opened his eyes. His desire for revenge had not

forsaken him.

“Ah, you will tell all I have said, will you not, reverend sir?”

“Yes, and much more.”

“What more will you say?”

“I will say he had doubtless given you the plan of this house, in the

hope the count would kill you. I will say, likewise, he had apprised

the count, by a note, of your intention, and, the count being absent, I

read the note and sat up to await you.”

“And he will be guillotined, will he not?” said Caderousse. “Promise me

that, and I will die with that hope.”

“I will say,” continued the count, “that he followed and watched you

the whole time, and when he saw you leave the house, ran to the angle

of the wall to conceal himself.”

“Did you see all that?”

“Remember my words: ‘If you return home safely, I shall believe God has

forgiven you, and I will forgive you also.’”

“And you did not warn me!” cried Caderousse, raising himself on his

elbows. “You knew I should be killed on leaving this house, and did not

warn me!”

40168m

“No; for I saw God’s justice placed in the hands of Benedetto, and

should have thought it sacrilege to oppose the designs of Providence.”

“God’s justice! Speak not of it, reverend sir. If God were just, you

know how many would be punished who now escape.”

“Patience,” said the abbé, in a tone which made the dying man shudder;

“have patience!”

Caderousse looked at him with amazement.

“Besides,” said the abbé, “God is merciful to all, as he has been to

you; he is first a father, then a judge.”

“Do you then believe in God?” said Caderousse.

“Had I been so unhappy as not to believe in him until now,” said Monte

Cristo, “I must believe on seeing you.”

Caderousse raised his clenched hands towards heaven.

“Listen,” said the abbé, extending his hand over the wounded man, as if

to command him to believe; “this is what the God in whom, on your

death-bed, you refuse to believe, has done for you—he gave you health,

strength, regular employment, even friends—a life, in fact, which a man

might enjoy with a calm conscience. Instead of improving these gifts,

rarely granted so abundantly, this has been your course—you have given

yourself up to sloth and drunkenness, and in a fit of intoxication have

ruined your best friend.”

“Help!” cried Caderousse; “I require a surgeon, not a priest; perhaps I

am not mortally wounded—I may not die; perhaps they can yet save my

life.”

“Your wounds are so far mortal that, without the three drops I gave

you, you would now be dead. Listen, then.”

“Ah,” murmured Caderousse, “what a strange priest you are; you drive

the dying to despair, instead of consoling them.”

“Listen,” continued the abbé. “When you had betrayed your friend, God

began not to strike, but to warn you. Poverty overtook you. You had

already passed half your life in coveting that which you might have

honorably acquired; and already you contemplated crime under the excuse

of want, when God worked a miracle in your behalf, sending you, by my

hands, a fortune—brilliant, indeed, for you, who had never possessed

any. But this unexpected, unhoped-for, unheard-of fortune sufficed you

no longer when you once possessed it; you wished to double it, and

how?—by a murder! You succeeded, and then God snatched it from you, and

brought you to justice.”

“It was not I who wished to kill the Jew,” said Caderousse; “it was La

Carconte.”

“Yes,” said Monte Cristo, “and God,—I cannot say in justice, for his

justice would have slain you,—but God, in his mercy, spared your life.”

“_Pardieu!_ to transport me for life, how merciful!”

“You thought it a mercy then, miserable wretch! The coward who feared

death rejoiced at perpetual disgrace; for like all galley-slaves, you

said, ‘I may escape from prison, I cannot from the grave.’ And you said

truly; the way was opened for you unexpectedly. An Englishman visited

Toulon, who had vowed to rescue two men from infamy, and his choice

fell on you and your companion. You received a second fortune, money

and tranquillity were restored to you, and you, who had been condemned

to a felon’s life, might live as other men. Then, wretched creature,

then you tempted God a third time. ‘I have not enough,’ you said, when

you had more than you before possessed, and you committed a third

crime, without reason, without excuse. God is wearied; he has punished

you.”

Caderousse was fast sinking. “Give me drink,” said he: “I thirst—I

burn!” Monte Cristo gave him a glass of water. “And yet that villain,

Benedetto, will escape!”

“No one, I tell you, will escape; Benedetto will be punished.”

“Then, you, too, will be punished, for you did not do your duty as a

priest—you should have prevented Benedetto from killing me.”

“I?” said the count, with a smile which petrified the dying man, “when

you had just broken your knife against the coat of mail which protected

my breast! Yet perhaps if I had found you humble and penitent, I might

have prevented Benedetto from killing you; but I found you proud and

blood-thirsty, and I left you in the hands of God.”

“I do not believe there is a God,” howled Caderousse; “you do not

believe it; you lie—you lie!”

“Silence,” said the abbé; “you will force the last drop of blood from

your veins. What! you do not believe in God when he is striking you

dead? you will not believe in him, who requires but a prayer, a word, a

tear, and he will forgive? God, who might have directed the assassin’s

dagger so as to end your career in a moment, has given you this quarter

of an hour for repentance. Reflect, then, wretched man, and repent.”

“No,” said Caderousse, “no; I will not repent. There is no God; there

is no Providence—all comes by chance.”

“There is a Providence; there is a God,” said Monte Cristo, “of whom

you are a striking proof, as you lie in utter despair, denying him,

while I stand before you, rich, happy, safe and entreating that God in

whom you endeavor not to believe, while in your heart you still believe

in him.”

“But who are you, then?” asked Caderousse, fixing his dying eyes on the

count.

“Look well at me!” said Monte Cristo, putting the light near his face.

“Well, the abbé—the Abbé Busoni.” Monte Cristo took off the wig which

disfigured him, and let fall his black hair, which added so much to the

beauty of his pallid features.

“Oh?” said Caderousse, thunderstruck, “but for that black hair, I

should say you were the Englishman, Lord Wilmore.”

“I am neither the Abbé Busoni nor Lord Wilmore,” said Monte Cristo;

“think again,—do you not recollect me?”

There was a magic effect in the count’s words, which once more revived

the exhausted powers of the miserable man.

“Yes, indeed,” said he; “I think I have seen you and known you

formerly.”

“Yes, Caderousse, you have seen me; you knew me once.”

“Who, then, are you? and why, if you knew me, do you let me die?”

“Because nothing can save you; your wounds are mortal. Had it been

possible to save you, I should have considered it another proof of

God’s mercy, and I would again have endeavored to restore you, I swear

by my father’s tomb.”

“By your father’s tomb!” said Caderousse, supported by a supernatural

power, and half-raising himself to see more distinctly the man who had

just taken the oath which all men hold sacred; “who, then, are you?”

The count had watched the approach of death. He knew this was the last

struggle. He approached the dying man, and, leaning over him with a

calm and melancholy look, he whispered, “I am—I am——”

And his almost closed lips uttered a name so low that the count himself

appeared afraid to hear it. Caderousse, who had raised himself on his

knees, and stretched out his arm, tried to draw back, then clasping his

hands, and raising them with a desperate effort, “Oh, my God, my God!”

said he, “pardon me for having denied thee; thou dost exist, thou art

indeed man’s father in heaven, and his judge on earth. My God, my Lord,

I have long despised thee! Pardon me, my God; receive me, Oh, my Lord!”

Caderousse sighed deeply, and fell back with a groan. The blood no

longer flowed from his wounds. He was dead.

“_One!_” said the count mysteriously, his eyes fixed on the corpse,

disfigured by so awful a death.

Ten minutes afterwards the surgeon and the procureur arrived, the one

accompanied by the porter, the other by Ali, and were received by the

Abbé Busoni, who was praying by the side of the corpse.