‘Well then, your government should have chosen something better from French history than those two placards I have noticed on your public monuments, which are meaningless in heraldic terms. As for you, Viscount,’ Monte Cristo continued, turning back towards Morcerf, ‘you are luckier than your government, because your coat of arms is truly beautiful and inspiring. Yes, that is it: you come both from Provence and from Spain and, if the portrait you showed me is a good likeness, that explains the fine tan that I so greatly admired on the face of the Catalan.’
One would have needed to be Oedipus or the Sphinx itself to detect the irony that the count put into these words, which were apparently delivered with the finest good manners. Morcerf consequently thanked him with a smile and, going ahead to show him the way, opened the door beneath his coat of arms, which, as we mentioned, led into the reception room.
In the most prominent place on the walls of the room there was another portrait. It depicted a man of between thirty-five and thirty-eight years old, wearing a general’s uniform with the twisted double epaulette that indicates the higher ranks and the ribbon of the Legion of Honour around his neck, showing that he was a Commander of the Order. On his chest, to the right, he wore the medal of a Grand Officer of the Order of the Saviour and, to the left, that of the Great Cross of Charles III, demonstrating that the person represented in the portrait must have fought in the Spanish and Greek Wars, or else (this being identical as far as medals were concerned) have carried out some diplomatic mission in those two countries.
Monte Cristo was examining this portrait with no less attention than he had given to the other when a side door opened and he was confronted with the Comte de Morcerf himself.
The count was aged between forty and forty-five but had the appearance of a man of at least fifty. His dark moustache and eyebrows contrasted oddly with almost white hair, cut short in the military manner. He was dressed in the everyday clothes of a man of his class; the different strands of the ribbon that he wore in his buttonhole recalled the various orders with which he had been decorated. He came in with quite an aristocratic step and, at the same time, a sort of condescending alacrity. Monte Cristo watched him approach without taking a step to meet him: it was as though his feet were fixed to the floor and his eyes on the Comte de Morcerf’s face.
‘Father,’ the young man said, ‘I have the honour to introduce the Count of Monte Cristo, the generous friend whom I was fortunate enough to meet in the awkward circumstances about which I told you.’
‘Monsieur is welcome to my house,’ the Comte de Morcerf said, smiling and bowing to Monte Cristo. ‘He has done our family such a favour, in preserving its only heir, that it will elicit our eternal gratitude.’ As he spoke, the Comte de Morcerf motioned to a chair and, at the same time, took one himself facing the window.
As for Monte Cristo, while he took the chair that the Comte de Morcerf had indicated, he repositioned it in such a way as to remain hidden in the shadow of the great velvet curtains. From there he could read in the count’s tired and careworn features a whole history of secret sorrows which lay imprinted there in each of the lines that the years had marked on it.
‘Madame la Comtesse was at her toilet,’ Morcerf said, ‘when the vicomte asked her to be informed that she had the good fortune to receive our guest. She will come down shortly and join us in ten minutes’ time.’
‘It is a great honour for me,’ Monte Cristo said, ‘on the very day of my arrival in Paris, to meet a man whose merits are equal to his reputation and whom Fortune, just once, has not been mistaken in favouring. But did she not have a marshal’s baton to offer you, somewhere on the plains of Mitidja or in the Atlas Mountains?’
‘Oh!’ Morcerf exclaimed, blushing slightly. ‘I have left the service, Monsieur. I was given my peerage under the Restoration and served under Maréchal de Bourmont. For that reason, I might have hoped for some higher command: who knows what would have happened if the senior branch of the royal family had remained on the throne! But it seems that the July Revolution was glorious enough to afford ingratitude: it behaved thus to all whose service did not date back to the empire. So I resigned because, when a man has won his epaulettes on the battlefield, he does not know how to manoeuvre on the slippery surface of a drawing-room. I put down my sword and devoted myself to politics, to industry; I studied the useful arts. I had wanted to do that during my twenty years’ service to my country, but I did not have time.’
‘It is things such as these that maintain your people’s superiority over others, Monsieur,’ Monte Cristo replied. ‘You, a nobleman of good family, heir to a large fortune, agreed first of all to make your way up from the ranks, which is very rare. Then, having become a general, a peer of the realm and a Commander of the Legion of Honour, you were willing to undertake a second apprenticeship, with no other expectation and no other reward than that of one day being useful to your fellow men. Monsieur! This is truly fine! I will go further: it is sublime!’
Albert was watching and listening to Monte Cristo with astonishment. He was not accustomed to seeing him fired with such enthusiasm.
‘Alas,’ the foreigner went on, no doubt to lift the hardly perceptible cloud that his words had brought to the elder Morcerf’s brow, ‘we should not behave in that way in Italy. There we grow according to our genus and our species, keeping the same foliage, the same height and often the same inutility all our lives.’
‘But, Monsieur,’ the Comte de Morcerf replied, ‘Italy is not a homeland for a man of your worth and France may not be ungrateful to all: it treats its own children badly, but usually has a magnificent welcome for foreigners.’
‘Oh, father,’ said Albert, smiling, ‘you clearly do not know the Count of Monte Cristo. He finds satisfaction elsewhere than in the things of this world and does not aspire to any honours, taking only those that can fit on his passport.’
‘That is the most accurate description of myself that I have ever heard,’ the stranger said.
‘Monsieur was able to control his own future,’ the Comte de Morcerf said, sighing, ‘and chose a pathway lined with flowers.’
‘Precisely, Monsieur,’ Monte Cristo retorted, with one of those smiles that no painter could ever catch and a physiologist would despair of analysing.
‘If I had not been afraid of tiring the count,’ said the general, clearly charmed by Monte Cristo’s manners, ‘I should have taken him to the Chamber. Today’s sitting will be unusual for anyone who does not know our modern senators.’
‘I should be very grateful to you, Monsieur, if you would be good enough to renew the invitation at some later date; but today I have been flattered that I might be introduced to the countess, so I shall wait.’
‘Here is my mother!’ the vicomte exclaimed.
Monte Cristo, urgently swivelling on his seat, saw Mme de Morcerf at the entrance to the room, in the threshold of the door opposite the one by which her husband had entered: pale and motionless, she let her arm fall, when Monte Cristo turned around, from the gilt door-frame on which, for some unknown reason, she had rested it; she had been there for some minutes, hearing the last words that the southern visitor had spoken.
He got up and bowed deeply to the countess, who formally returned the bow in silence.
‘Heavens above, Madame!’ the Comte de Morcerf exclaimed. ‘What is the matter? Is the heat of the room making you unwell?’
‘Are you ill, mother?’ the viscount asked, hurrying over to Mercédès.
She thanked them both with a smile. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I was moved at seeing for the first time the man without whose help we should now be in tears and in mourning. Monsieur,’ she went on, coming across the room with the bearing of a queen, ‘I owe you my son’s life and I bless you for that. Now I must acknowledge the pleasure that you have brought me, in allowing me this opportunity to thank you as I bless you, namely from the depth of my heart.’
The count bowed again, more profoundly than the first time. He was even paler th
an Mercédès.
‘Madame,’ he said, ‘Monsieur le Comte and you are too generous in rewarding me for a very simple action. To save a man’s life, to spare a father’s torment and to protect a mother’s feelings is not a good deed, it is an act of mere humanity.’
Mme de Morcerf answered these words, which had been spoken with exquisite gentleness and good manners, in tones of profound feeling: ‘Monsieur, my son is very fortunate to have you as a friend and I thank God that He has brought this to pass.’ And Mercédès raised her lovely eyes to heaven with such infinite gratitude that the count thought he could detect a tear rising in each of them.
M. de Morcerf went across to her.
‘Madame,’ he said, ‘I have already made my excuses to the count for being obliged to leave him. I beg you to repeat them. The sitting began at two o’clock, it is now three, I must leave.’
‘Very well, Monsieur, I shall try to make our guest overlook your absence,’ the countess said in the same feeling voice. Then, turning to Monte Cristo: ‘Monsieur le Comte, will you do us the honour of spending the rest of the day with us?’
‘Thank you, Madame. Believe me, I could not be more grateful for your invitation, but I stepped off this morning at your door from my travelling carriage. I have no idea how I am to be lodged in Paris; indeed, I hardly know where. I realize that this is a small cause of anxiety, but an appreciable one, nonetheless.’
‘At least you will promise that we shall have the pleasure some other time?’ asked the countess.
Monte Cristo bowed, without replying; but the gesture could be taken for one of assent.
‘In that case, I shall not detain you, Monsieur, for I should not wish my gratitude to obtrude on your time or to importune you.’
‘My dear Count,’ said Albert, ‘I should like, if you will permit me, to return the favour that you did us in Rome and put my coupé at your disposal until you have had time to arrange a suitable conveyance for yourself.’
‘Thank you a thousand times, Vicomte, you are most considerate; but I presume that Monsieur Bertuccio has been making good use of the four and a half hours that I have accorded him, and that I shall find a fully harnessed coach waiting at the door.’
Albert was used to the count’s ways and knew that, like Nero, he was in pursuit of the impossible, so nothing surprised him. However, he wanted to judge for himself how well the count’s order had been obeyed, so he accompanied him to the door of the house.
Monte Cristo had guessed right. No sooner did he appear in the Comte de Morcerf’s anteroom than a footman (the same who in Rome had brought the two young men the count’s card and announced that he would visit them) rushed out through the colonnade, so that when the illustrious traveller reached the steps he found his carriage waiting.
It was a coupé from the Keller workshops, harnessed to a team for which, as every dandy in Paris knew, Drake had only the day before refused 18,000 francs.
‘Monsieur,’ the count said to Albert, ‘I will not invite you to accompany me, because I could only show you improvised lodgings – and, as you know, I have my reputation to keep up where improvisation is concerned. Grant me a day and then let me invite you: I shall be more certain that I am not breaching the laws of hospitality.’
‘If you are asking me for a day, Monsieur le Comte, then I feel certain that it will not be a house that you show me, but a palace. There’s no doubt about it: you have some genie at your command.’
‘Please, please, put it around!’ said the count, with one foot on the velvet-covered steps of his magnificent carriage. ‘It will do me no harm with the ladies.’ At this, he leapt into his coach, slamming the door behind him, and set off at a gallop, though not so fast that he failed to notice the barely perceptible movement of the curtains in the drawing-room where he had left Mme de Morcerf.
When Albert rejoined his mother indoors, he found her in the boudoir, slumped in a large velvet armchair. The whole room was deep in shadow, concealing everything except the highlights sparkling on some oriental vase or in the corner of a gilded picture-frame.
Albert could not see the countess’s face, which was hidden by a cloud of gauze that she had wrapped around her head like a halo of vapour, but he thought that her voice sounded odd and, above the scent of rose and heliotrope rising from the bowl of flowers, he could distinguish the sharp and bitter smell of sal volatile. Indeed, the young man could observe the countess’s phial of smelling-salts, out of its shagreen case, resting on one of the mouldings of the mantelpiece.
‘Are you well, mother?’ he cried as he came in. ‘Did you feel faint while I was away?’
‘I? No, Albert. But, you know, in this early heat, before we have had time to become accustomed to it, all these roses, tuberoses and orange flowers give off such a powerful scent…’
‘In that case, mother,’ Morcerf said, reaching for the bell, ‘we must have them taken into your dressing-room. You are really unwell: you were already very pale a short while ago when you came in.’
‘Do you think I was pale, Albert?’
‘A pale complexion suits you wonderfully, mother, but, even so, my father and I were concerned.’
‘Did your father remark on it?’ Mercédès asked urgently.
‘Not to me: you remember, he made the observation to you, yourself.’
‘I don’t recall,’ said the countess.
A valet entered in answer to Albert’s summons.
‘Take these flowers into the antechamber or the dressing-room,’ the viscount said. ‘The countess is incommoded by them.’
The valet obeyed. There was quite a long silence, which lasted as long as it took him to complete the task.
‘What is this title of Monte Cristo?’ the countess asked, when the servant had left with the last vase of flowers. ‘Is it the name of a family, a place, or simply a title?’
‘I believe it is simply a title, mother, nothing more. The count bought an island in the Tuscan archipelago and, as he told me only this morning, founded a chivalric commandership. You know that the same was done for Saint Stephen of Florence, for Saint George Constantinian of Parma and even for the Knights of Malta. In any case, he has no pretension to nobility and calls himself an accidental count, though the general opinion in Rome is that he is a very noble aristocrat.’
‘His manners are excellent,’ the countess said. ‘At least, as far as one can tell from the short while he stayed here.’
‘They are perfect, mother; even so perfect as greatly to surpass those I have found among the noblest members of the three proudest aristocracies in Europe, that is the nobility of England, Spain and Germany.’
The countess thought for a moment, then continued:
‘My dear Albert, you have seen… You understand, this is a mother’s question that I am asking… You have seen Monsieur de Monte Cristo at home. You are perspicacious, you know the world and you have more tact than is usual at your age. Do you think that the count is really all that he appears to be?’
‘What does he appear to be?’
‘You said it yourself a moment ago: a great nobleman.’
‘I said, mother, that he was thought to be one.’
‘And what do you think, Albert?’
‘I must admit that I have no definite view on the matter. I think he is a Maltese.’
‘I am not asking about his nationality, I am asking you about the man himself.’
‘Ah, that’s quite a different matter. I have seen so many strange things to do with him that, if you ask what I think, I would say that I am inclined to consider him as some kind of Byronic figure, branded by Fate’s dread seal: some Manfred, some Lara, some Werner… In short, one of those rejects of an old aristocratic family, cut off from the paternal inheritance, who made a fortune for themselves by the force of a daring and a genius that put them above the laws of society…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that Monte Cristo is an island in the Mediterranean, uninhabited, unguarded, the
haunt of smugglers of all nations and pirates from every shore. Who knows whether these industrious workers may not pay their lord for giving them asylum?’
‘Possibly,’ the countess said distractedly.
‘No matter,’ the young man went on. ‘Smuggler or not, you must admit, having seen him, mother, that the Count of Monte Cristo is a remarkable man and one who will be a great success in the drawing-rooms of Paris. Why, this very morning, at my house, he began his progress in high society by astonishing even Château-Renaud.’
‘How old do you think the count is?’ Mercédès asked, clearly attaching great importance to the question.
‘Between thirty-five and thirty-six, mother.’
‘So young! It’s impossible,’ Mercédès exclaimed, replying at once to what Albert was saying and to her own thoughts.
‘It is true, even so. Three or four times he said to me, assuredly without any premeditation: at that time I was five; at this other, I was ten; and at another, twelve. I was so curious about the smallest detail that I compared the dates and never found any discrepancy. This remarkable man is ageless, but I can assure you that he is thirty-five. In any case, mother, remember the brightness of his eye, the darkness of his hair and how his brow, though pale, is unfurrowed. This is someone who is not only active, but still young.’
The countess lowered her head as if bowed under a mass of ideas that completely absorbed her.
‘And this man has conceived a liking for you, Albert? He wants to be your friend?’ she asked, with a nervous shudder.
‘I believe so, mother.’
‘Do you also like him?’
‘I do, in spite of Franz d’Epinay trying to make me believe he was a spectre returning from the Beyond.’
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