Literary Love

by Gabrielle Vigot

  At nine o’clock next morning she arose, and without ringing for her maid or giving the least sign of her activity, she dressed herself in the same simple style as on the previous night; then running downstairs, she left the hotel, walked to the Rue de Provence, called a cab, and drove to M. de Villefort’s house. For the last month this wretched house had presented the gloomy appearance of a lazaretto infected with the plague. Some of the apartments were closed within and without; the shutters were only opened to admit a minute’s air, showing the scared face of a footman, and immediately afterwards the window would be closed, like a gravestone falling on a sepulchre, and the neighbors would say to each other in a low voice, “Will there be another funeral to-day at the procureur’s house?” Madame Danglars involuntarily shuddered at the desolate aspect of the mansion; descending from the cab, she approached the door with trembling knees, and rang the bell. Three times did the bell ring with a dull, heavy sound, seeming to participate, in the general sadness, before the concierge appeared and peeped through the door, which he opened just wide enough to allow his words to be heard. He saw a lady, a fashionable, elegantly dressed lady, and yet the door remained almost closed.

  “Do you intend opening the door?” said the baroness.

  “First, madame, who are you?”

  “Who am I? You know me well enough.”

  “We no longer know any one, madame.”

  “You must be mad, my friend,” said the baroness.

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Oh, this is too much!”

  “Madame, these are my orders; excuse me. Your name?”

  “The baroness Danglars; you have seen me twenty times.”

  “Possibly, madame. And now, what do you want?”

  “Oh, how extraordinary! I shall complain to M. de Villefort of the impertinence of his servants.”

  “Madame, this is precaution, not impertinence; no one enters here without an order from M. d’Avrigny, or without speaking to the procureur.”

  “Well, I have business with the procureur.”

  “Is it pressing business?”

  “You can imagine so, since I have not even brought my carriage out yet. But enough of this—here is my card, take it to your master.”

  “Madame will await my return?”

  “Yes; go.” The concierge closed the door, leaving Madame Danglars in the street. She had not long to wait; directly afterwards the door was opened wide enough to admit her, and when she had passed through, it was again shut. Without losing sight of her for an instant, the concierge took a whistle from his pocket as soon as they entered the court, and blew it. The valet de chambre appeared on the doorsteps. “You will excuse this poor fellow, madame,” he said, as he preceded the baroness, “but his orders are precise, and M. de Villefort begged me to tell you that he could not act otherwise.”

  In the court showing his merchandise, was a tradesman who had been admitted with the same precautions. The baroness ascended the steps; she felt herself strongly infected with the sadness which seemed to magnify her own, and still guided by the valet de chambre, who never lost sight of her for an instant, she was introduced to the magistrate’s study. Preoccupied as Madame Danglars had been with the object of her visit, the treatment she had received from these underlings appeared to her so insulting, that she began by complaining of it. But Villefort, raising his head, bowed down by grief, looked up at her with so sad a smile that her complaints died upon her lips. “Forgive my servants,” he said, “for a terror I cannot blame them for; from being suspected they have become suspicious.”

  Madame Danglars had often heard of the terror to which the magistrate alluded, but without the evidence of her own eyesight she could never have believed that the sentiment had been carried so far. “You too, then, are unhappy?” she said. “Yes, madame,” replied the magistrate.

  “Then you pity me!”

  “Sincerely, madame.”

  “And you understand what brings me here?”

  “You wish to speak to me about the circumstance which has just happened?”

  “Yes, sir,—a fearful misfortune.”

  “You mean a mischance.”

  “A mischance?” repeated the baroness.

  “Alas, madame,” said the procureur with his imperturbable calmness of manner, “I consider those alone misfortunes which are irreparable.”

  “And do you suppose this will be forgotten?”

  “Everything will be forgotten, madame,” said Villefort. “Your daughter will be married tomorrow, if not to-day—in a week, if not tomorrow; and I do not think you can regret the intended husband of your daughter.”

  Madame Danglars gazed on Villefort, stupefied to find him so almost insultingly calm. “Am I come to a friend?” she asked in a tone full of mournful dignity. “You know that you are, madame,” said Villefort, whose pale cheeks became slightly flushed as he gave her the assurance. And truly this assurance carried him back to different events from those now occupying the baroness and him. “Well, then, be more affectionate, my dear Villefort,” said the baroness. “Speak to me not as a magistrate, but as a friend; and when I am in bitter anguish of spirit, do not tell me that I ought to be gay.” Villefort bowed. “When I hear misfortunes named, madame,” he said, “I have within the last few months contracted the bad habit of thinking of my own, and then I cannot help drawing up an egotistical parallel in my mind. That is the reason that by the side of my misfortunes yours appear to me mere mischances; that is why my dreadful position makes yours appear enviable. But this annoys you; let us change the subject. You were saying, madame”—

  “I came to ask you, my friend,” said the baroness, “what will be done with this impostor?”

  “Impostor,” repeated Villefort; “certainly, madame, you appear to extenuate some cases, and exaggerate others. Impostor, indeed!—M. Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather M. Benedetto, is nothing more nor less than an assassin!”

  “Sir, I do not deny the justice of your correction, but the more severely you arm yourself against that unfortunate man, the more deeply will you strike our family. Come, forget him for a moment, and instead of pursuing him let him go.”

  “You are too late, madame; the orders are issued.”

  “Well, should he be arrested—do they think they will arrest him?”

  “I hope so.”

  “If they should arrest him (I know that sometimes prisoners afford means of escape), will you leave him in prison?”—The procureur shook his head. “At least keep him there till my daughter be married.”

  “Impossible, madame; justice has its formalities.”

  “What, even for me?” said the baroness, half jesting, half in earnest, “For all, even for myself among the rest,” replied Villefort.

  “Ah,” exclaimed the baroness, without expressing the ideas which the exclamation betrayed. Villefort looked at her with that piercing glance which reads the secrets of the heart. “Yes, I know what you mean,” he said; “you refer to the terrible rumors spread abroad in the world, that the deaths which have kept me in mourning for the last three months, and from which Valentine has only escaped by a miracle, have not happened by natural means.”

  “I was not thinking of that,” replied Madame Danglars quickly. “Yes, you were thinking of it, and with justice. You could not help thinking of it, and saying to yourself, ‘you, who pursue crime so vindictively, answer now, why are there unpunished crimes in your dwelling?’” The baroness became pale. “You were saying this, were you not?”

  “Well, I own it.”

  “I will answer you.”

  Villefort drew his armchair nearer to Madame Danglars; then resting both hands upon his desk he said in a voice more hollow than usual: “There are crimes which remain unpunished because the criminals are unknown, and we might strike the innocent instead of the guilty; but when the culprits are discovered” (Villefort here extended his hand toward a large crucifix placed opposite to his desk)—”when they are discovered, I swear to
you, by all I hold most sacred, that whoever they may be they shall die. Now, after the oath I have just taken, and which I will keep, madame, dare you ask for mercy for that wretch!”

  “But, sir, are you sure he is as guilty as they say?”

  “Listen; this is his description: ‘Benedetto, condemned, at the age of sixteen, for five years to the galleys for forgery.’ He promised well, as you see—first a runaway, then an assassin.”

  “And who is this wretch?”

  “Who can tell?—a vagabond, a Corsican.”

  “Has no one owned him?”

  “No one; his parents are unknown.”

  “But who was the man who brought him from Lucca?”

  “Another rascal like himself, perhaps his accomplice.” The baroness clasped her hands. “Villefort,” she exclaimed in her softest and most captivating manner.

  “For heaven’s sake, madame,” said Villefort, with a firmness of expression not altogether free from harshness—”for heaven’s sake, do not ask pardon of me for a guilty wretch! What am I?—the law. Has the law any eyes to witness your grief? Has the law ears to be melted by your sweet voice? Has the law a memory for all those soft recollections you endeavor to recall? No, madame; the law has commanded, and when it commands it strikes. You will tell me that I am a living being, and not a code—a man, and not a volume. Look at me, madame—look around me. Have mankind treated me as a brother? Have they loved me? Have they spared me? Has any one shown the mercy towards me that you now ask at my hands? No, madame, they struck me, always struck me!

  “Woman, siren that you are, do you persist in fixing on me that fascinating eye, which reminds me that I ought to blush? Well, be it so; let me blush for the faults you know, and perhaps—perhaps for even more than those! But having sinned myself,—it may be more deeply than others,—I never rest till I have torn the disguises from my fellow-creatures, and found out their weaknesses. I have always found them; and more,—I repeat it with joy, with triumph,—I have always found some proof of human perversity or error. Every criminal I condemn seems to me living evidence that I am not a hideous exception to the rest. Alas, alas, alas; all the world is wicked; let us therefore strike at wickedness!”

  Villefort pronounced these last words with a feverish rage, which gave a ferocious eloquence to his words.

  “But”‘ said Madame Danglars, resolving to make a last effort, “this young man, though a murderer, is an orphan, abandoned by everybody.”

  “So much the worse, or rather, so much the better; it has been so ordained that he may have none to weep his fate.”

  “But this is trampling on the weak, sir.”

  “The weakness of a murderer!”

  “His dishonor reflects upon us.”

  “Is not death in my house?”

  “Oh, sir,” exclaimed the baroness, “you are without pity for others, well, then, I tell you they will have no mercy on you!”

  “Be it so!” said Villefort, raising his arms to heaven.

  “At least, delay the trial till the next assizes; we shall then have six months before us.”

  “No, madame,” said Villefort; “instructions have been given. There are yet five days left; five days are more than I require. Do you not think that I also long for forgetfulness? While working night and day, I sometimes lose all recollection of the past, and then I experience the same sort of happiness I can imagine the dead feel; still, it is better than suffering.”

  “But, sir, he has fled; let him escape—inaction is a pardonable offence.”

  “I tell you it is too late; early this morning the telegraph was employed, and at this very minute”—

  “Sir,” said the valet de chambre, entering the room, “a dragoon has brought this despatch from the minister of the interior.” Villefort seized the letter, and hastily broke the seal. Madame Danglars trembled with fear; Villefort started with joy. “Arrested!” he exclaimed; “he was taken at Compiegne, and all is over.” Madame Danglars rose from her seat, pale and cold. “Adieu, sir,” she said. “Adieu, madame,” replied the king’s attorney, as in an almost joyful manner he conducted her to the door. Then, turning to his desk, he said, striking the letter with the back of his right hand, “Come, I had a forgery, three robberies, and two cases of arson, I only wanted a murder, and here it is. It will be a splendid session!”

  Chapter 12. The Apparition.

  As the procureur had told Madame Danglars, Valentine was not yet recovered. Bowed down with fatigue, she was indeed confined to her bed; and it was in her own room, and from the lips of Madame de Villefort, that she heard all the strange events we have related,—we mean the flight of Eugenie and the arrest of Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather Benedetto, together with the accusation of murder pronounced against him. But Valentine was so weak that this recital scarcely produced the same effect it would have done had she been in her usual state of health. Indeed, her brain was only the seat of vague ideas, and confused forms, mingled with strange fancies, alone presented themselves before her eyes.

  During the daytime Valentine’s perceptions remained tolerably clear, owing to the constant presence of M. Noirtier, who caused himself to be carried to his granddaughter’s room, and watched her with his paternal tenderness; Villefort also, on his return from the law courts, frequently passed an hour or two with his father and child. At six o’clock Villefort retired to his study, at eight M. d’Avrigny himself arrived, bringing the night draught prepared for the young girl, and then M. Noirtier was carried away. A nurse of the doctor’s choice succeeded them, and never left till about ten or eleven o’clock, when Valentine was asleep. As she went downstairs she gave the keys of Valentine’s room to M. de Villefort, so that no one could reach the sick-room excepting through that of Madame de Villefort and little Edward.

  Every morning Morrel called on Noirtier to receive news of Valentine, and, extraordinary as it seemed, each day found him less uneasy. Certainly, though Valentine still labored under dreadful nervous excitement, she was better; and moreover, Monte Cristo had told him when, half distracted, he had rushed to the count’s house, that if she were not dead in two hours she would be saved. Now four days had elapsed, and Valentine still lived.

  The nervous excitement of which we speak pursued Valentine even in her sleep, or rather in that state of somnolence which succeeded her waking hours; it was then, in the silence of night, in the dim light shed from the alabaster lamp on the chimney-piece, that she saw the shadows pass and repass which hover over the bed of sickness, and fan the fever with their trembling wings. First she fancied she saw her stepmother threatening her, then Morrel stretched his arms towards her; sometimes mere strangers, like the Count of Monte Cristo came to visit her; even the very furniture, in these moments of delirium, seemed to move, and this state lasted till about three o’clock in the morning, when a deep, heavy slumber overcame the young girl, from which she did not awake till daylight. On the evening of the day on which Valentine had learned of the flight of Eugenie and the arrest of Benedetto,—Villefort having retired as well as Noirtier and d’Avrigny,—her thoughts wandered in a confused maze, alternately reviewing her own situation and the events she had just heard.

  Eleven o’clock had struck. The nurse, having placed the beverage prepared by the doctor within reach of the patient, and locked the door, was listening with terror to the comments of the servants in the kitchen, and storing her memory with all the horrible stories which had for some months past amused the occupants of the antechambers in the house of the king’s attorney. Meanwhile an unexpected scene was passing in the room which had been so carefully locked. Ten minutes had elapsed since the nurse had left; Valentine, who for the last hour had been suffering from the fever which returned nightly, incapable of controlling her ideas, was forced to yield to the excitement which exhausted itself in producing and reproducing a succession and recurrence of the same fancies and images. The night-lamp threw out countless rays, each resolving itself into some strange form to her disordered imagination, whe
n suddenly by its flickering light Valentine thought she saw the door of her library, which was in the recess by the chimney-piece, open slowly, though she in vain listened for the sound of the hinges on which it turned.

  At any other time Valentine would have seized the silken bellpull and summoned assistance, but nothing astonished her in her present situation. Her reason told her that all the visions she beheld were but the children of her imagination, and the conviction was strengthened by the fact that in the morning no traces remained of the nocturnal phantoms, who disappeared with the coming of daylight. From behind the door a human figure appeared, but the girl was too familiar with such apparitions to be alarmed, and therefore only stared, hoping to recognize Morrel. The figure advanced towards the bed and appeared to listen with profound attention. At this moment a ray of light glanced across the face of the midnight visitor.

  “It is not he,” she murmured, and waited, in the assurance that this was but a dream, for the man to disappear or assume some other form. Still, she felt her pulse, and finding it throb violently she remembered that the best method of dispelling such illusions was to drink, for a draught of the beverage prepared by the doctor to allay her fever seemed to cause a reaction of the brain, and for a short time she suffered less. Valentine therefore reached her hand towards the glass, but as soon as her trembling arm left the bed the apparition advanced more quickly towards her, and approached the young girl so closely that she fancied she heard his breath, and felt the pressure of his hand.