บทที่ บทที่ 41 · The Guests

In the house in the Rue du Helder, where Albert had invited the Count

of Monte Cristo, everything was being prepared on the morning of the

21st of May to do honor to the occasion. Albert de Morcerf inhabited a

pavilion situated at the corner of a large court, and directly opposite

another building, in which were the servants’ apartments. Two windows

only of the pavilion faced the street; three other windows looked into

the court, and two at the back into the garden.

Between the court and the garden, built in the heavy style of the

imperial architecture, was the large and fashionable dwelling of the

Count and Countess of Morcerf.

A high wall surrounded the whole of the property, surmounted at

intervals by vases filled with flowers, and broken in the centre by a

large gate of gilded iron, which served as the carriage entrance. A

small door, close to the lodge of the _concierge_, gave ingress and

egress to the servants and masters when they were on foot.

It was easy to discover that the delicate care of a mother, unwilling

to part from her son, and yet aware that a young man of the viscount’s

age required the full exercise of his liberty, had chosen this

habitation for Albert. There were not lacking, however, evidences of

what we may call the intelligent egoism of a youth who is charmed with

the indolent, careless life of an only son, and who lives as it were in

a gilded cage. By means of the two windows looking into the street,

Albert could see all that passed; the sight of what is going on is

necessary to young men, who always want to see the world traverse their

horizon, even if that horizon is only a public thoroughfare. Then,

should anything appear to merit a more minute examination, Albert de

Morcerf could follow up his researches by means of a small gate,

similar to that close to the _concierge’s_ door, and which merits a

particular description.

It was a little entrance that seemed never to have been opened since

the house was built, so entirely was it covered with dust and dirt; but

the well-oiled hinges and locks told quite another story. This door was

a mockery to the _concierge_, from whose vigilance and jurisdiction it

was free, and, like that famous portal in the _Arabian Nights_, opening

at the “_Sesame_” of Ali Baba, it was wont to swing backward at a

cabalistic word or a concerted tap from without from the sweetest

voices or whitest fingers in the world.

At the end of a long corridor, with which the door communicated, and

which formed the antechamber, was, on the right, Albert’s

breakfast-room, looking into the court, and on the left the salon,

looking into the garden. Shrubs and creeping plants covered the

windows, and hid from the garden and court these two apartments, the

only rooms into which, as they were on the ground floor, the prying

eyes of the curious could penetrate.

On the floor above were similar rooms, with the addition of a third,

formed out of the antechamber; these three rooms were a salon, a

boudoir, and a bedroom. The salon downstairs was only an Algerian

divan, for the use of smokers. The boudoir upstairs communicated with

the bedchamber by an invisible door on the staircase; it was evident

that every precaution had been taken. Above this floor was a large

_atelier_, which had been increased in size by pulling down the

partitions—a pandemonium, in which the artist and the dandy strove for

pre-eminence.

There were collected and piled up all Albert’s successive caprices,

hunting-horns, bass-viols, flutes—a whole orchestra, for Albert had had

not a taste but a fancy for music; easels, palettes, brushes,

pencils—for music had been succeeded by painting; foils, boxing-gloves,

broadswords, and single-sticks—for, following the example of the

fashionable young men of the time, Albert de Morcerf cultivated, with

far more perseverance than music and drawing, the three arts that

complete a dandy’s education, i.e., fencing, boxing, and single-stick;

and it was here that he received Grisier, Cooks, and Charles Leboucher.

The rest of the furniture of this privileged apartment consisted of old

cabinets, filled with Chinese porcelain and Japanese vases, Lucca della

Robbia _faïences_, and Palissy platters; of old armchairs, in which

perhaps had sat Henry IV. or Sully, Louis XIII. or Richelieu—for two of

these armchairs, adorned with a carved shield, on which were engraved

the fleur-de-lis of France on an azure field, evidently came from the

Louvre, or, at least, some royal residence.

Over these dark and sombre chairs were thrown splendid stuffs, dyed

beneath Persia’s sun, or woven by the fingers of the women of Calcutta

or of Chandernagor. What these stuffs did there, it was impossible to

say; they awaited, while gratifying the eyes, a destination unknown to

their owner himself; in the meantime they filled the place with their

golden and silky reflections.

In the centre of the room was a Roller and Blanchet “baby grand” piano

in rosewood, but holding the potentialities of an orchestra in its

narrow and sonorous cavity, and groaning beneath the weight of the

_chefs-d’œuvre_ of Beethoven, Weber, Mozart, Haydn, Grétry, and

Porpora.

On the walls, over the doors, on the ceiling, were swords, daggers,

Malay creeses, maces, battle-axes; gilded, damasked, and inlaid suits

of armor; dried plants, minerals, and stuffed birds, their

flame-colored wings outspread in motionless flight, and their beaks

forever open. This was Albert’s favorite lounging place.

However, the morning of the appointment, the young man had established

himself in the small salon downstairs. There, on a table, surrounded at

some distance by a large and luxurious divan, every species of tobacco

known,—from the yellow tobacco of Petersburg to the black of Sinai, and

so on along the scale from Maryland and Porto Rico, to Latakia,—was

exposed in pots of crackled earthenware of which the Dutch are so fond;

beside them, in boxes of fragrant wood, were ranged, according to their

size and quality, puros, regalias, havanas, and manillas; and, in an

open cabinet, a collection of German pipes, of chibouques, with their

amber mouth-pieces ornamented with coral, and of narghiles, with their

long tubes of morocco, awaiting the caprice or the sympathy of the

smokers.

Albert had himself presided at the arrangement, or, rather, the

symmetrical derangement, which, after coffee, the guests at a breakfast

of modern days love to contemplate through the vapor that escapes from

their mouths, and ascends in long and fanciful wreaths to the ceiling.

At a quarter to ten, a valet entered; he composed, with a little groom

named John, and who only spoke English, all Albert’s establishment,

although the cook of the hotel was always at his service, and on great

occasions the count’s _chasseur_ also. This valet, whose name was

Germain, and who enjoyed the entire confidence of his young master,

held in one hand a number of papers, and in the other a packet of

letters, which he gave to Albert. Albert glanced carelessly at the

different missives, selected two written in a small and delicate hand,

and enclosed in scented envelopes, opened them and perused their

contents with some attention.

“How did these letters come?” said he.

“One by the post, Madame Danglars’ footman left the other.”

“Let Madame Danglars know that I accept the place she offers me in her

box. Wait; then, during the day, tell Rosa that when I leave the Opera

I will sup with her as she wishes. Take her six bottles of different

wine—Cyprus, sherry, and Malaga, and a barrel of Ostend oysters; get

them at Borel’s, and be sure you say they are for me.”

“At what o’clock, sir, do you breakfast?”

20227m

“What time is it now?”

“A quarter to ten.”

“Very well, at half past ten. Debray will, perhaps, be obliged to go to

the minister—and besides” (Albert looked at his tablets), “it is the

hour I told the count, 21st May, at half past ten; and though I do not

much rely upon his promise, I wish to be punctual. Is the countess up

yet?”

“If you wish, I will inquire.”

“Yes, ask her for one of her _liqueur_ cellarets, mine is incomplete;

and tell her I shall have the honor of seeing her about three o’clock,

and that I request permission to introduce someone to her.”

The valet left the room. Albert threw himself on the divan, tore off

the cover of two or three of the papers, looked at the theatre

announcements, made a face seeing they gave an opera, and not a ballet;

hunted vainly amongst the advertisements for a new tooth-powder of

which he had heard, and threw down, one after the other, the three

leading papers of Paris, muttering,

“These papers become more and more stupid every day.”

A moment after, a carriage stopped before the door, and the servant

announced M. Lucien Debray. A tall young man, with light hair, clear

gray eyes, and thin and compressed lips, dressed in a blue coat with

beautifully carved gold buttons, a white neckcloth, and a tortoiseshell

eye-glass suspended by a silken thread, and which, by an effort of the

superciliary and zygomatic muscles, he fixed in his eye, entered, with

a half-official air, without smiling or speaking.

“Good-morning, Lucien, good-morning,” said Albert; “your punctuality

really alarms me. What do I say? punctuality! You, whom I expected

last, you arrive at five minutes to ten, when the time fixed was

half-past! Has the ministry resigned?”

“No, my dear fellow,” returned the young man, seating himself on the

divan; “reassure yourself; we are tottering always, but we never fall,

and I begin to believe that we shall pass into a state of immobility,

and then the affairs of the Peninsula will completely consolidate us.”

“Ah, true; you drive Don Carlos out of Spain.”

“No, no, my dear fellow, do not confound our plans. We take him to the

other side of the French frontier, and offer him hospitality at

Bourges.”

“At Bourges?”

“Yes, he has not much to complain of; Bourges is the capital of Charles

VII. Do you not know that all Paris knew it yesterday, and the day

before it had already transpired on the Bourse, and M. Danglars (I do

not know by what means that man contrives to obtain intelligence as

soon as we do) made a million!”

“And you another order, for I see you have a blue ribbon at your

button-hole.”

“Yes; they sent me the order of Charles III.,” returned Debray

carelessly.

“Come, do not affect indifference, but confess you were pleased to have

it.”

“Oh, it is very well as a finish to the toilet. It looks very neat on a

black coat buttoned up.”

“And makes you resemble the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Reichstadt.”

“It is for that reason you see me so early.”

“Because you have the order of Charles III., and you wish to announce

the good news to me?”

“No, because I passed the night writing letters,—five-and-twenty

despatches. I returned home at daybreak, and strove to sleep; but my

head ached and I got up to have a ride for an hour. At the Bois de

Boulogne, _ennui_ and hunger attacked me at once,—two enemies who

rarely accompany each other, and who are yet leagued against me, a sort

of Carlo-republican alliance. I then recollected you gave a breakfast

this morning, and here I am. I am hungry, feed me; I am bored, amuse

me.”

“It is my duty as your host,” returned Albert, ringing the bell, while

Lucien turned over, with his gold-mounted cane, the papers that lay on

the table. “Germain, a glass of sherry and a biscuit. In the meantime,

my dear Lucien, here are cigars—contraband, of course—try them, and

persuade the minister to sell us such instead of poisoning us with

cabbage leaves.”

“_Peste!_ I will do nothing of the kind; the moment they come from

government you would find them execrable. Besides, that does not

concern the home but the financial department. Address yourself to M.

Humann, section of the indirect contributions, corridor A., No. 26.”

“On my word,” said Albert, “you astonish me by the extent of your

knowledge. Take a cigar.”

“Really, my dear Albert,” replied Lucien, lighting a manilla at a

rose-colored taper that burnt in a beautifully enamelled stand—“how

happy you are to have nothing to do. You do not know your own good

fortune!”

“And what would you do, my dear diplomatist,” replied Morcerf, with a

slight degree of irony in his voice, “if you did nothing? What? private

secretary to a minister, plunged at once into European cabals and

Parisian intrigues; having kings, and, better still, queens, to

protect, parties to unite, elections to direct; making more use of your

cabinet with your pen and your telegraph than Napoleon did of his

battle-fields with his sword and his victories; possessing

five-and-twenty thousand francs a year, besides your place; a horse,

for which Château-Renaud offered you four hundred louis, and which you

would not part with; a tailor who never disappoints you; with the

opera, the jockey-club, and other diversions, can you not amuse

yourself? Well, I will amuse you.”

“How?”

“By introducing to you a new acquaintance.”

“A man or a woman?”

“A man.”

“I know so many men already.”

“But you do not know this man.”

“Where does he come from—the end of the world?”

“Farther still, perhaps.”

“The deuce! I hope he does not bring our breakfast with him.”

“Oh, no; our breakfast comes from my father’s kitchen. Are you hungry?”

“Humiliating as such a confession is, I am. But I dined at M. de

Villefort’s, and lawyers always give you very bad dinners. You would

think they felt some remorse; did you ever remark that?”

“Ah, depreciate other persons’ dinners; you ministers give such

splendid ones.”

“Yes; but we do not invite people of fashion. If we were not forced to

entertain a parcel of country boobies because they think and vote with

us, we should never dream of dining at home, I assure you.”

“Well, take another glass of sherry and another biscuit.”

“Willingly. Your Spanish wine is excellent. You see we were quite right

to pacify that country.”

“Yes; but Don Carlos?”

“Well, Don Carlos will drink Bordeaux, and in ten years we will marry

his son to the little queen.”

“You will then obtain the Golden Fleece, if you are still in the

ministry.”

“I think, Albert, you have adopted the system of feeding me on smoke

this morning.”

“Well, you must allow it is the best thing for the stomach; but I hear

Beauchamp in the next room; you can dispute together, and that will

pass away the time.”

“About what?”

“About the papers.”

“My dear friend,” said Lucien with an air of sovereign contempt, “do I

ever read the papers?”

“Then you will dispute the more.”

“M. Beauchamp,” announced the servant. “Come in, come in,” said Albert,

rising and advancing to meet the young man. “Here is Debray, who

detests you without reading you, so he says.”

“He is quite right,” returned Beauchamp; “for I criticise him without

knowing what he does. Good-day, commander!”

“Ah, you know that already,” said the private secretary, smiling and

shaking hands with him.

“_Pardieu!_”

“And what do they say of it in the world?”

“In which world? we have so many worlds in the year of grace 1838.”

“In the entire political world, of which you are one of the leaders.”

“They say that it is quite fair, and that sowing so much red, you ought

to reap a little blue.”

“Come, come, that is not bad!” said Lucien. “Why do you not join our

party, my dear Beauchamp? With your talents you would make your fortune

in three or four years.”

“I only await one thing before following your advice; that is, a

minister who will hold office for six months. My dear Albert, one word,

for I must give poor Lucien a respite. Do we breakfast or dine? I must

go to the Chamber, for our life is not an idle one.”

“You only breakfast; I await two persons, and the instant they arrive

we shall sit down to table.”