‘Yes, Excellency. He had taken a distinct interest in me.
‘ “Smuggling will be the end of you,” he told me. “If you are released from here, give it up.”
‘ “But, Father,” I asked, “how shall I live and keep my poor sister?”
‘ “One of my penitents,” he replied, “esteems me greatly and has asked me to find him a reliable assistant. Would you like the post? I shall send you to him.”
‘ “Father!” I exclaimed. “How good you are to me!”
‘ “Swear to me that I shall never have cause to regret it.”
‘I raised my hand to swear the oath, but he said: “That will not be necessary: I know what you Corsicans are like, and love you for it. Here is my letter of recommendation.”
‘He wrote the few lines that I gave you, as a result of which Your Excellency was good enough to take me into his service. Now, I ask Your Excellency with pride, have you ever had cause to complain of me?’
‘No,’ the count replied. ‘I am pleased to admit it. You are a good servant, Bertuccio, though you have shown too little trust in me.’
‘I, Monsieur le Comte?’
‘Yes, you. How is it that you have a sister-in-law and an adoptive son, yet you have never mentioned either of them to me?’
‘Alas, Excellency, I have still to tell you of the saddest part of my life. I set off for Corsica. As you can imagine, I was in a hurry to see my poor sister again and to console her. But when I arrived at Rogliano, I found the house in mourning. There had been a terrible drama, which the neighbours remember to this day. Benedetto had wanted my poor sister-in-law to give him all the money in the house and she, on my advice, had resisted his demands. One morning he threatened her and vanished for the whole day. She wept, dear Assunta, because she felt like a mother towards the wretch. When evening came, she waited up for him. At eleven o’clock he came back with two of his friends, the usual companions of all his follies, and she held her arms out to him. But they seized her and one of the three – I fear it could have been that infernal child – shouted: “Let’s play at torture; she will soon confess where her money is.”
‘The neighbour, Wasilio, happened to be in Bastia; only his wife had stayed at home and she alone could hear or see what was going on in my sister’s house. Two of them held poor Assunta. She, unable to believe that such a criminal act was possible, smiled at the men who were to become her tormentors. The third went to barricade the doors and windows, then returned, and the three of them, stifling the terrified cries elicited from her by these more serious preparations, dragged Assunta’s feet towards the brazier on which they were relying to make her reveal where our little treasure was hidden. But as she struggled, her clothes caught fire. They let her go, to avoid being burned themselves, and she ran to the door, a mass of flames. However, the door was locked.
‘She turned to the window, but that was barricaded. At this, the neighbour heard frightful screams: Assunta was begging for help. Soon her voice was stifled, the screams became moans. The next day, when Wasilio’s wife, after a night of terror and anxiety, dared to emerge and had the judge open the door of our house, they found Assunta half burned, though still breathing, the cupboards broken into and the money stolen. As for Benedetto, he had left Rogliano, never to return. I have not seen him since that day, or even heard speak of him.
‘It was after hearing this sad news,’ Bertuccio continued, ‘that I came to Your Excellency. I had no further occasion to mention Benedetto to you, since he had vanished, or my sister-in-law, since she was dead.’
‘What did you conclude from all this?’ Monte Cristo asked.
‘That it was a punishment for my crime,’ Bertuccio replied. ‘Ah, those Villeforts are a cursed breed!’
‘I think you are right,’ the count muttered grimly.
‘Now, surely,’ Bertuccio went on, ‘Your Excellency will understand why this house, which I have not seen since that time, this garden in which I suddenly found myself and this spot on which I killed a man, were enough to cause those disturbing emotions which you observed and wanted to know the cause of. Even now I do not know whether Monsieur de Villefort is not there, at my feet, in the grave that he dug for his own child.’
‘Anything is indeed possible,’ Monte Cristo said, rising from the bench where he had been sitting; and he added, under his breath: ‘including that the crown prosecutor may not be dead. Abbé Busoni did well to send you to me. You were right to tell me your story, because I shall not have any suspicions about you. As for Benedetto, that ill-named youth, have you never tried to find him, or to discover what became of him?’
‘Never! Had I known where he was, instead of going to find him, I should have fled him like a monster. No, fortunately, I have never heard anyone mention him. I hope he is dead.’
‘Don’t hope too much, Bertuccio,’ said the count. ‘The wicked do not die in that way: God seems to take them under his protection to use them as the instruments of his vengeance.’
‘Indeed,’ said Bertuccio. ‘All I ask Heaven is that I shall never see him again. Now,’ the steward said, bowing his head, ‘you know everything, Monsieur le Comte. You are my judge here below as God will be there above. Will you not say a few words to console me?’
‘Yes, indeed: I can tell you what Abbé Busoni would tell you. The man you struck down, that Villefort, deserved punishment for what he had done to you and perhaps for other things as well. Benedetto, if he is still alive, will (as I told you) serve the purpose of some divine vengeance, then be punished in his turn. As for you, you have in truth only one thing to reproach yourself with: ask yourself why, having saved that child from death, you did not return it to its mother. That was the crime, Bertuccio.’
‘Yes, Monsieur. That was the crime, and a true crime, for I was a coward in this. Once I had revived the child, there was only one thing for me to do, as you say, which was to send it back to its mother. But to do that I should have had to make enquiries, attract attention and perhaps give myself away. I did not want to die: I was attached to life because of my sister-in-law and because of that innate vanity which makes us want to remain whole and victorious after a vendetta; and, then, perhaps I was attached to life simply for the love of it. Oh, I am not a brave man like my poor brother!’
Bertuccio hid his face in both hands and Monte Cristo stared long and enigmatically at him. Then, after a moment’s silence that was made more solemn by the hour and the place, he said with an unusual accent of melancholy: ‘Monsieur Bertuccio, to bring this conversation to a worthy end – because it will be the last we shall have about these events – listen to me carefully, because I have often heard these words from Abbé Busoni himself. There are two medicines for all ills: time and silence. Now, Monsieur Bertuccio, let me walk awhile in this garden. The feelings that are so powerful for you, who took part in the drama, will be for me almost a sweet sensation and one that will add to the value of my property. You understand, Monsieur Bertuccio: trees only give us pleasure because they give shade, and shade itself only pleases us because it is full of reveries and visions. I bought a garden, imagining that I was purchasing a simple space enclosed in walls; but it was not so at all: suddenly the space has become a garden full of ghosts, which were nowhere mentioned in the deed of sale. I like ghosts. I have heard it said that the dead have never done, in six thousand years, as much evil as the living do in a single day. So go back inside, Monsieur Bertuccio, and sleep in peace. If the confessor who gives you the last rites is less compassionate towards you than Abbé Busoni, fetch me, if I am still of this world, and I shall find the words that will gently soothe your soul as it prepares to start out on that rough voyage that they call eternity.’
Bertuccio bowed respectfully to the count and went off, sighing. Monte Cristo remained alone and, taking four steps forward, said: ‘Here, beside this plane-tree, is the grave where the child was placed. Over there, the little gate by which one might enter the garden. In that corner, the back stairway that led to th
e bedroom. I don’t think I need to take all that down in my notebook. Here before my eyes, around me, beneath my feet, in relief, is the living map of it.’
After a last walk round the garden, the count went to look for his carriage. Bertuccio, seeing that he was preoccupied with his thoughts, got up on the seat beside the coachman without saying anything, and the carriage set off for Paris.
That same evening, on arriving at the house on the Champs-Elysées, the Count of Monte Cristo inspected the whole residence as a man might have done who had been familiar with it for many years. Not once, even though he went ahead, did he open one door in mistake for another, or go up a staircase or down a corridor which did not lead directly to where he wanted it to take him. Ali accompanied him in this night-time inspection. The count gave Bertuccio several orders for the embellishment or rearrangement of the apartments and, taking out his watch, told his assiduous Nubian: ‘It is half-past eleven. Haydée will soon be here. Have the Frenchwomen been told?’
Ali pointed towards the suite intended for the beautiful Greek, which was so separate from the rest that, when the door was concealed behind a tapestry, one could visit the whole house without realizing that anyone was living here in a drawing-room and two bedrooms. Ali, as we said, pointed to the suite, indicated the number three with the fingers of his left hand and, opening the same hand out flat, put his head on it and closed his eyes as if asleep.
‘Very well,’ Monte Cristo said, used to this sign-language. ‘There are three of them in the bedroom, then?’
‘Yes,’ Ali indicated, nodding his head.
‘Madame will be tired this evening,’ Monte Cristo continued. ‘She will no doubt want to sleep. She should not be obliged to talk. The French servants must simply greet their new mistress and then retire. Make sure that the Greek servant does not communicate with the French ones.’
Ali bowed. Shortly afterwards there was the sound of someone calling to the concierge. The outer gate opened, a carriage drove along the path and stopped beneath the steps. The count came down to find the carriage door already open. He offered his hand to a young woman wrapped in a green silk mantle embroidered in gold and covering her head. She took his hand, kissed it with a degree of love mingled with respect. A few words were exchanged, tenderly on the part of the young woman and with gentle gravity on that of the count, in that sonorous language which antique Homer put into the mouths of his gods.
Then, following Ali, who was carrying a torch of pink wax, the young woman, who was none other than the beautiful Greek who habitually accompanied Monte Cristo when he was in Italy, was shown into her apartments and the count retired to the wing that he had reserved for himself. At half-past midnight, all the lights in the house went out, and you might have thought that all its inhabitants were asleep.
XLVI
UNLIMITED CREDIT
The next day at about two in the afternoon, a barouche drawn by two splendid horses pulled up in front of Monte Cristo’s door and a man in a blue jacket, with silk buttons of the same colour, a white waistcoat crossed by a huge gold chain and hazel-coloured trousers, with a head of such black hair, worn so low above the eyebrows that it seemed hardly natural, being so inconsistent with those wrinkles on the forehead that it was unable to disguise; in short, a man of between fifty and fifty-five, trying to look forty, put his head out of the window of a coupé with a baron’s crown painted on its door, and sent his groom to enquire of the concierge whether the Count of Monte Cristo was at home.
As he waited, the man examined the exterior of the house, what could be seen of the garden and the livery of a few servants who might be observed coming and going – and did so with such close attention as to amount almost to impertinence. His eye was sharp, but with more cunning in it than wit or irony. His lips were so thin that they vanished inside the mouth instead of protruding from it. Finally, the breadth and prominence of the cheekbones (an infallible sign of shrewdness), the retreating forehead, the bulging occiput which extended well beyond his wide and not in the least aristocratic ears, all contributed to give this gentleman (whom any ordinary person would have thought very respectable in view of his magnificent horses, the enormous diamond he wore in his shirt and the red ribbon that stretched from one buttonhole to another on his coat), a face which to a trained physiognomist betrayed an almost repulsive character.
The groom hammered on the concierge’s window and asked: ‘Does the Count of Monte Cristo live here?’
‘His Excellency does live here,’ the concierge replied, ‘but…’ And he looked at Ali, who nodded in reply.
‘But?’ asked the groom.
‘But His Excellency is not receiving guests,’ the concierge said.
‘In that case, here is the card of my master, Baron Danglars. You will give it to the Count of Monte Cristo and tell him that my master made a detour while on his way to the House, in order to have the honour of seeing him.’
‘I don’t talk to His Excellency,’ said the concierge. ‘The valet de chambre will take the message.’
The groom went back to the carriage.
‘Well?’ said Danglars.
The boy, somewhat crestfallen at the lesson he had just been given, delivered the concierge’s reply to his master.
‘Huh!’ the latter remarked. ‘The gentleman is a prince, is he, calling himself Excellency and only allowing his valet de chambre to speak to him. No matter. Since he has a credit on me, he will have to see me when he wants money.’ And he slumped back into his carriage, shouting to the coachman in a voice that could be heard on the far side of the street: ‘To the Chambre des Députés!’
Informed of his arrival, Monte Cristo had seen the baron and been able to study him through the shutters of his house, thanks to a fine lorgnette, with as much attention as M. Danglars himself had given to the house, the garden and the servants.
‘Undoubtedly,’ he said, with a gesture of disgust as he closed the binoculars in their ivory case, ‘undoubtedly that man is an unprepossessing creature. How can anyone fail at first sight to recognize in him the serpent with its flattened head, the vulture with its bulging skull and the buzzard with its rapacious beak?
‘Ali!’ he cried, then struck the copper gong. Ali appeared. ‘Call Bertuccio.’
At the same moment, Bertuccio entered. ‘Your Excellency called for me?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the count. ‘Did you see the horses that just drew up at my door?’
‘Indeed, Excellency. I might say they were very fine.’
‘How is it,’ Monte Cristo said quizzically, ‘when I asked you for the two finest horses in Paris, that there still remain in Paris two other horses equally as good which are not in my stables?’
At the sharp tone of voice and the raised eyebrow, Ali bent his head.
‘It is not your fault, my dear Ali,’ the count said in Arabic, with a softness that one would never have thought to hear in that voice. ‘You are no expert when it comes to English horses.’
Ali’s features resumed their accustomed serenity.
‘Monsieur le Comte,’ said Bertuccio, ‘the horses that you refer to were not for sale.’
Monte Cristo shrugged his shoulders. ‘Bertuccio, everything is always for sale when you know the price to put on it.’
‘Monsieur Danglars paid sixteen thousand francs for them, Monsieur le Comte.’
‘Then you should have offered him thirty-two thousand. He is a banker, and a banker never misses an opportunity to double his money.’
‘Is Monsieur le Comte serious?’ Bertuccio asked.
Monte Cristo looked at his steward like a man astonished that anyone should dare to question his seriousness. ‘This evening,’ he said, ‘I have a visit to make. I wish to have those two horses draw my carriage, with a new harness.’
Bertuccio retired, bowing. Reaching the door, he paused and said: ‘At what time does His Excellency intend to pay this visit?’
‘At five o’clock.’
‘I might ventur
e to point out to Your Excellency that it is now two o’clock,’ the steward said, gingerly.
‘I know,’ was Monte Cristo’s only reply. Then, turning to Ali, he said: ‘Have all the horses paraded in front of Madame, so that she can choose the team that suits her best; and ask her to let me know if she will dine with me. In that case, we shall be served in her apartments. Now, go and as you do, send me the valet de chambre.’
Ali had hardly disappeared when the valet de chambre entered.
‘Monsieur Baptistin,’ said the count, ‘you have been in my service for a year. This is the probationary period that I usually give to my servants. You suit me.’
Baptistin bowed.
‘It remains for you to say if I suit you.’
‘Oh! Monsieur le Comte!’ Baptistin said unhesitatingly.
‘Hear me out. You earn fifteen hundred francs a year, which is the stipend of a fine, brave army officer who risks his life every day. You enjoy meals that many a head clerk, a poor slave who is far busier than you, would envy. Though a servant, you yourself have servants who take care of your laundry and your belongings. Over and above your fifteen hundred francs in wages, you are taking a cut on the toiletries and similar purchases that you make for me, and stealing nearly an additional fifteen hundred francs every year.’
‘Oh! Excellency!’
‘I am not complaining, Monsieur Baptistin, it’s a reasonable amount. However, I wish it to stop forthwith. Nowhere will you find a position comparable to the one that good fortune has given you here. I never beat my servants, I never swear, I never lose my temper, I always forgive a fault, but never negligence or forgetfulness. My orders are usually brief, but clear and precise: I prefer to repeat them twice or even three times, rather than for them to be carried out incorrectly. I am rich enough to know everything that I wish to know and – be warned – I am very curious. So if I were ever to learn that you had spoken either good or ill of me, that you had commented on my actions or watched over what I do, you would leave my house immediately. I never give my servants more than one warning. You have had yours. You may go!’
The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics eBook) Page 67
