‘You know that I got this notion of going to Africa.’
‘Your ancestors had already shown you the way, my dear Château-Renaud,’ Morcerf remarked elegantly.
‘Yes, but I doubt if your purpose was, like theirs, to liberate the tomb of Our Saviour.’
‘You are quite right, Beauchamp,’ said the young aristocrat. ‘It was quite simply to get some amateur pistol-shooting. As you know, I hate duels, since the time when two witnesses, whom I had chosen to settle some dispute, obliged me to break an arm of one of my best friends. Yes, by heaven! It was poor Franz d’Epinay, whom you all know.’
‘Of course! That’s right,’ said Debray. ‘You did have a duel once. What was it about?’
‘The devil only knows: I can’t remember!’ said Château-Renaud. ‘What I clearly recall is that I felt ashamed at letting a talent like mine go to waste, and, as I had been given some new pistols, I thought I’d try them out on the Arabs. So I set sail for Oran, and from Oran I went on to Constantine4, where I arrived in time to witness the end of the siege. Like the rest, I joined the retreat. For the first forty-eight hours I was able to put up with the rain by day and the snow by night well enough; then, at last, on the third morning, my horse froze to death. Poor animal! It was used to a blanket and the stove in its stables – an Arab horse, which just happened to find itself a little out of place in Arabia when the temperature dropped to minus ten.’
‘That’s why you wanted to buy my English horse,’ said Debray. ‘You thought he would stand the cold better than your Arab.’
‘No, you’re wrong there, because I have sworn never to go back to Africa again.’
‘So you had a really bad fright?’ asked Beauchamp.
‘Yes, I confess I did,’ Château-Renaud replied, ‘and I was right to be scared. As I said, my horse died, so I was continuing my retreat on foot when six Arabs bore down on me at a gallop, intending to cut off my head. I shot two with the two barrels of my gun, and another two with my two pistols, all right on target. But there were still two left and I had no other weapons. One of them seized me by the hair (which is why I have it cut short nowadays, because you never know what might happen), and the other put his yataghan5 against my throat so that I could already feel the cold steel, when this gentleman here charged at them, shot dead with his pistol the one who was holding my hair and used his sabre to crack open the skull of the one who was about to cut my throat. He had taken it upon himself to save a man that day and, as luck would have it, I was the one. When I am rich, I shall have a statue of Luck made by Klagmann or Marochetti.’6
‘Yes,’ Morrel said, smiling. ‘It was the fifth of September, which is the anniversary of a day on which my father’s life was miraculously saved. So, whenever possible, I celebrate that day with some… With some action…’
‘Some heroic deed, you mean,’ Château-Renaud interrupted. ‘In short, I was the lucky man. But that is not all. After having saved me from the cold steel, he saved me from the cold itself, not by giving me half of his cloak, as Saint Martin did, but by giving me the whole of it. And then he saved me from hunger, by sharing… guess what?’
‘A pâté from Chez Félix?’ suggested Beauchamp.
‘Not so. His horse: we each ate a piece of it with great relish. It was tough.’
‘The horse?’ Morcerf asked, laughing.
‘No, sacrificing it,’ Château-Renaud replied. ‘Ask Debray if he would sacrifice his English horse for a stranger.’
‘Not for a stranger,’ said Debray. ‘For a friend, perhaps.’
‘I guessed that you would become mine, Baron,’ said Morrel. ‘In any case, as I already told you, heroism or not, sacrifice or not, on that particular day I owed an offering to ill-fortune as a reward for the favour that good fortune once did for us.’
‘The story that Monsieur Morrel refers to,’ Château-Renaud continued, ‘is a quite admirable one which he will tell you one day, when you know him better. For the present, let’s line our stomachs instead of plundering our memories. When do we breakfast, Albert?’
‘At half-past ten.’
‘On the dot?’ Debray asked, taking out his watch.
‘Oh, you must allow me the usual five minutes’ grace,’ said Morcerf, ‘for I too am awaiting a saviour.’
‘Whose?’
‘Why, my own!’ Morcerf replied. ‘Do you think me incapable of being saved like anyone else? It is not only Arabs who cut off heads, you know. Ours is to be a philanthropic breakfast, and I sincerely hope that we shall have two benefactors of mankind at our table.’
‘How shall we manage?’ asked Debray. ‘There is only one Prix Montyon.’7
‘Well, we shall just have to give it to someone who has done nothing to deserve it,’ said Beauchamp. ‘That’s how the Academy usually solves the dilemma.’
‘Where will he be coming from?’ Debray asked. ‘Forgive my insisting; I know that you have already answered the question, but so vaguely that I feel entitled to ask it again.’
‘To tell the truth,’ Albert said, ‘I don’t know. When I invited him, three months ago, he was in Rome, but, since then, who can tell where he may have been.’
‘Do you think he is capable of being punctual?’ asked Debray.
‘I think he is capable of anything,’ Morcerf replied.
‘Note that, with the five minutes’ grace, we have now only ten minutes left.’
‘Then I’ll take advantage of it to tell you something about my guest.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Beauchamp, ‘but is there the material for an article in what you are going to tell us?’
‘Certainly there is, and a very unusual one.’
‘Then carry on. I can see that I won’t get to the House, so I must make up for it in some way.’
‘I was in Rome for the last carnival.’
‘We know that much,’ said Beauchamp.
‘But what you don’t know is that I was kidnapped by bandits.’
‘There’s no such thing as bandits,’ said Debray.
‘Yes, there are, and some very ugly ones, which means they were good bandits, because I found them pretty terrifying.’
‘Come now, my dear Albert,’ said Debray. ‘Admit it: your cook is late, the oysters have not arrived from Marennes or Ostend, and, like Madame de Maintenon, you want to make up for one course with a story. Carry on with it, old man, we are good enough guests to indulge you and listen to your tale, however incredible it may be.’
‘I tell you, incredible though it may be, it is true from beginning to end. The bandits captured me and took me to a very melancholy spot called the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian.’
‘I know them,’ said Château-Renaud. ‘I nearly caught a fever there.’
‘I did better than that,’ said Morcerf. ‘I really caught something. They told me that I was a hostage for a ransom of the trifling amount of four thousand Roman écus or twenty-six thousand livres. Unfortunately, I had only fifteen hundred left; I was at the end of my journey and my credit was exhausted. I wrote to Franz… But of course! Listen, Franz was there, you can ask him if I am not telling the absolute truth. I wrote to Franz that if he did not come before six in the morning with the four thousand écus, by ten past six I should have joined the blessed saints and glorious martyrs in whose company I had the honour to find myself. And I can assure you that Monsieur Luigi Vampa – that was the name of my chief bandit – would have kept his word to the letter.’
‘So Franz arrived with the four thousand écus?’ Château-Renaud said. ‘Of course he did! You are not short of four thousand écus when your name is Franz d’Epinay or Albert de Morcerf.’
‘No, he arrived, but accompanied purely and simply by the guest I have promised you and to whom I hope to introduce you.’
‘He must be a Hercules killing Cacus, this gentleman, or a Perseus delivering Andromeda?’
‘No. He’s a man of about my height.’
‘Armed to the teeth?’
‘He did
not have so much as a knitting needle.’
‘But he did pay your ransom?’
‘He whispered two words to the chief bandit and I was free.’
‘They even apologized to him for arresting you,’ said Beauchamp.
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, I never! Was he Ariosto, this man?’
‘No, just the Count of Monte Cristo.’
‘No one is called Count of Monte Cristo,’ said Debray.
‘I think not,’ Château-Renaud added, in the unruffled tones of a man who has the entire nobility of Europe at his fingertips. ‘Does anyone know of a Count of Monte Cristo anywhere?’
‘Perhaps he comes from the Holy Land,’ said Beauchamp. ‘One of his ancestors might have owned Calvary, just as the Mortemarts did the Dead Sea.’
‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said Maximilien, ‘but I think I can solve the problem for you. Monte Cristo is a tiny island about which I often heard speak from the sailors who were employed by my father: it is a grain of sand in the midst of the Mediterranean, an atom in infinity.’
‘Just so, Monsieur,’ said Albert. ‘And the person I am telling you about is the lord and king of this grain of sand, of this atom. He must have bought his deeds to the title of count somewhere in Tuscany.’
‘Is your count rich, then?’
‘By gad, I think he is.’
‘But it must show, surely?’
‘There’s where you are wrong, Debray.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Have you read the Thousand and One Nights?’
‘Heavens! What an extraordinary question!’
‘Well then: can you tell if the people in it are rich or poor? If their grains of wheat are not rubies and diamonds? They look like penniless fishermen, don’t they? That’s how you treat them, and suddenly they open up before you a mysterious cavern in which you find a treasure vast enough to purchase the Indies.’
‘So?’
‘So my Count of Monte Cristo is one of those fishermen. He even has an appropriate name: he calls himself Sinbad the Sailor and he owns a cavern full of gold.’
‘Have you seen this cavern, Morcerf?’ asked Beauchamp.
‘No, I haven’t; it was Franz who saw it. But, hush! Don’t say a word about this in front of him. Franz was taken there blindfolded and served by dumb men and women beside whom, it appears, Cleopatra was nothing but a strumpet. However, he is not quite sure about the women, since they only appeared after he had consumed some hashish, so that it could well be that what he took for women were in fact quite simply a group of statues.’
The young men looked at Morcerf as if to say: ‘My good fellow, have you lost your wits, or are you teasing us?’
‘It’s true,’ Morrel said pensively, ‘that I did hear something similar to what Monsieur de Morcerf is telling us from an old sailor called Penelon.’
‘Ah!’ Albert exclaimed. ‘It’s a good thing that Monsieur Morrel has come to my support. You’re not pleased, are you, that he has trailed this ball of thread through my labyrinth?’
‘Forgive us, dear fellow,’ said Debray, ‘but what you are saying just seems too improbable…’
‘Damnation! Just because your ambassadors and your consuls don’t tell you anything about it! They don’t have time, they’re too busy molesting their compatriots whenever they go abroad.’
‘Now, now! You’re getting angry and taking it out on our poor emissaries. Heavens above, how do you expect them to protect us? Every day the House nibbles away at their salaries, to the point where it is getting impossible to find anyone. Would you like to be an ambassador, Albert? I’ll have you appointed to Constantinople.’
‘No, thank you! Just so the sultan, the first time I put in a good word for Mehmet Ali,8 can send round a rope for my secretaries to strangle me.’
‘You see,’ said Debray.
‘But that does not mean that my Count of Monte Cristo does not exist!’
‘Everybody exists! What a miracle!’
‘No doubt everybody does exist, but not as he does. Not everybody has black slaves, princely galleries, weapons like those in the Casauba,9 horses worth six thousand francs apiece, and Greek mistresses!’
‘Did you see this Greek mistress?’
‘Certainly: saw and heard. I saw her at the Teatro Valle and heard her one day when I dined with the count.’
‘So he does eat then, your extraordinary man?’
‘If he does eat, it is too little to be worth mentioning.’
‘You see: he’s a vampire.’
‘Laugh if you wish. That was precisely the opinion of Countess G—, who, as you know, was acquainted with Lord Ruthwen.’
‘Oh, that’s fine!’ said Beauchamp. ‘For a man who is not a journalist, this is the answer to the Constitutionnel’s famous sea-serpent: a vampire! The very thing!’
‘A savage eye, with a pupil that is dilated or contracted at will,’ said Debray. ‘Highly developed facial angle, splendid forehead, livid colouring, black beard, teeth white and pointed, manners the same.’
‘That’s it precisely, Lucien,’ said Morcerf. ‘You have described him to a “t”. Yes: sharp and pointed manners. The man often made me shudder; for example, one day when we were together watching an execution, I thought I would faint, much more from seeing him and hearing him discourse coldly about all the sufferings imaginable than from seeing the executioner carry out his task and hearing the cries of the condemned man.’
‘Didn’t he take you for a stroll through the ruins of the Colosseum to suck your blood, Morcerf?’ asked Beauchamp.
‘And after setting you free, didn’t he make you sign some fiery coloured parchment, by which you ceded him your soul, like Esau his birthright?’
‘Mock, mock as much as you wish, gentlemen!’ said Morcerf, a trifle irritated. ‘When I look at you fine Parisians, regulars on the Boulevard de Gand, strollers through the Bois de Boulogne, and then remember that man – well, it strikes me that we are not of the same race.’
‘Flattered!’ said Beauchamp.
‘The fact remains,’ Château-Renaud added, ‘that your Count of Monte Cristo is a gentleman in his spare time, except for his little understandings with Italian bandits.’
‘Huh! There are no Italian bandits!’ said Debray.
‘No vampires!’ Beauchamp added.
‘And no Count of Monte Cristo,’ concluded Debray. ‘Listen, my dear Albert: half-past ten is striking.’
‘Admit that you had a nightmare, and let’s start breakfast,’ said Beauchamp.
But the echo of the striking clock had not yet died away when the door opened and Germain announced: ‘His Excellency, the Count of Monte Cristo!’
All those present started despite themselves, in a way indicating that Morcerf’s story had touched something deep inside them. Even Albert could not avoid feeling faintly shocked. They had heard no sound of a vehicle in the street or a step in the antechamber, and even the door had opened silently.
The count was framed in it, dressed with the greatest simplicity; but the most demanding of dandies would not have found anything to criticize in his appearance. Everything – clothes, hat, linen – was in perfect taste and came from the finest suppliers.
He seemed to be barely thirty-five years of age; and what struck everybody was how closely he resembled the portrait that Debray had sketched of him.
He came forward, smiling, into the middle of the drawing-room, going directly towards Albert who was advancing to meet him and affably holding out his hand.
‘Punctuality,’ said Monte Cristo, ‘is the politeness of kings, or so I believe one of your sovereigns claimed.10 However, it is not always that of travellers, despite their good intentions. I hope, dear Vicomte, that you will take my good intentions into consideration and forgive me if, as I think, I am two or three seconds late for our rendez-vous. It is impossible to cover five hundred leagues without some small accidents, especially in France, where it appears that it is forbidden to
whip a postilion.’
‘Monsieur le Comte,’ Albert replied, ‘I was just announcing your imminent arrival to a few of my friends, whom I invited to join us, in view of the promise that you were kind enough to make me, and whom I should like to introduce to you. They are Monsieur le Comte de Château-Renaud, who traces his noble lineage back to the paladins of Charlemagne and whose ancestors sat at the Round Table; Monsieur Lucien Debray, private secretary to the Minister of the Interior; Monsieur Beauchamp, a fearful journalist and the scourge of the French government – of whom, despite his celebrity here, you may never have heard tell in Italy, since his newspaper is not distributed there; and finally Monsieur Maximilien Morrel, a captain in the regiment of spahis.’
Up to this point the count had bowed courteously, but with a certain English coldness and impassivity; but at the last name he involuntarily stepped forward and a faint touch of red passed like a flash across his pale cheeks.
‘Monsieur wears the uniform of the recent French victors,’ he said, ‘and it is a fine one.’
It was impossible to tell what emotion gave the count’s voice such a profoundly vibrant tone and made his eye shine, as if against his will – that eye which was so fine, so calm and so clear when he had no reason to shade it.
‘You have never seen our African soldiers, Monsieur?’ said Albert.
‘Never,’ the count replied, entirely regaining control of himself.
‘Well, Monsieur, under this uniform beats one of the bravest and noblest hearts in the army.’
‘Oh, Monsieur le Comte…’ said Morrel, interrupting.
‘Let me continue, Captain,’ Albert said. ‘We have just been hearing of such a heroic deed by this gentleman that, even though I met him today for the first time, I would ask him the favour of introducing him to you as my friend.’
Again, at these words, one could detect in Monte Cristo that strangely intense look, that slight blush and barely perceptible trembling of the eyelid that signalled some deep feeling in him.
‘Ah, Monsieur has a noble heart,’ he said. ‘So much the better!’
This sort of exclamation, which responded to the count’s own thoughts rather than to what Albert had just said, surprised everyone, most of all Morrel, who looked at Monte Cristo with astonishment. But at the same time the tone was so soft and – for want of a better word – so soothing that, strange though the exclamation was, it would be impossible to be annoyed by it.
The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) Page 58
