The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (108 page)

‘That explains everything,’ Andrea said. ‘That’s perfect. It is the same Englishman I met in… Yes, very good! Monsieur le Comte, at your service!’

‘If what you do me the honour to say is true,’ the count replied with a smile, ‘I hope that you will be good enough to let me have some details about yourself and your family.’

‘Happily, Monsieur le Comte,’ the young man said, with a volubility that demonstrated how reliable his memory was. ‘As you said, I am Viscount Andrea Cavalcanti, son of Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, a descendant of the Cavalcantis whose name is written in the golden book of Florence. Our family, though still very rich, since my father possesses an income of half a million, has suffered greatly down the years and even I, Monsieur, was carried off at the age of five or six by a treacherous tutor, so that it is now fifteen years since I saw my parents. Since reaching the age of reason, and being free and my own master, I have been looking for him, but in vain. Finally, a letter from your friend Sinbad informed me that he was in Paris, and suggested that I address myself to you for news.’

‘Well, well, Monsieur, everything you tell me is most interesting,’ said the count, looking with sombre satisfaction at the man’s relaxed features, which were stamped with a beauty similar to that of the fallen angel. ‘You have done well to follow my friend Sinbad’s suggestion precisely, because your father is here and looking for you.’

Since coming into the room, the count had not taken his eyes off the young man. He had admired the self-assurance in his look and the firmness of his voice; but at these quite natural words: ‘your father is here and looking for you’, young Andrea started violently and exclaimed: ‘My father? My father… here?’

‘Of course,’ Monte Cristo replied. ‘Your father, Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti.’

Almost at once, the look of terror that had spread across the young man’s features disappeared. ‘Oh… oh, yes. Of course,’ he said. ‘Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti. And, Monsieur le Comte, you tell me he is here, my dear father?’

‘Yes, Monsieur. I might add that I have just left him, and that the story he told me, about his dear long-lost son, moved me deeply. In truth, there is a most touching poem in his agonies, his fears and his hopes on the subject. Finally, one day, he received news that his child’s abductors had offered to return him, or to state where he was, for a rather large sum of money. But nothing was too much for the good father. The money was dispatched to the frontier of Piedmont, with a passport and visas for Italy. You were in the south of France, I believe?’

‘Yes, Monsieur,’ Andrea replied, with a slightly uneasy air. ‘Yes, I was in the south of France.’

‘A carriage was to wait for you in Nice?’

‘That’s right, Monsieur. It took me from Nice to Genoa, from Genoa to Turin, from Turin to Chambéry, from Chambéry to Pont-de-Beauvoisin, and from Pont-de-Beauvoisin to Paris.’

‘Perfectly! He kept hoping to meet you on the way, because he followed the same route himself; that is why you were given the same itinerary.’

‘But if he had met me,’ said Andrea, ‘this dear father of mine, I doubt whether he would have recognized me. I have changed somewhat since I lost touch with him.’

‘Ah, but the call of blood!’ said Monte Cristo.

‘Yes, that’s true. I didn’t think of the call of blood.’

‘Now,’ said Monte Cristo, ‘there is just one last thing troubling the Marquis Cavalcanti, which is what you did while you were separated from him, how you were treated by your persecutors, whether they treated you with all the consideration due to your noble birth and, finally, whether the moral torments to which you have been subjected, torments which are a hundred times worse
than those caused by physical suffering, have not left you with some weakening of the faculties with which you were so generously endowed by nature, and if you yourself feel ready to take up the rank in society that belongs to you and to maintain it worthily.’

‘Monsieur,’ the young man stammered, stupefied, ‘I hope that no false rumour…’

‘I insist that I heard speak of you for the first time by my friend Wilmore, the philanthropist. I learned that he had discovered you in difficult circumstances, I don’t know what precisely, and I did not question him about it. I am not curious. Your misfortunes interested him, so you were interesting. He told me that he wanted to restore you to the position in society that you had lost, that he was looking for your father and that he would find him. He looked, and apparently he found, since he is here. Finally, he advised me yesterday of your arrival, giving me some other instructions concerning your fortune. That’s all. I know that my friend Wilmore is an eccentric, but at the same time, as he is a reliable man, rich as a gold mine and, consequently, one who had indulged his eccentricities without ruining himself, I promised to follow his instructions. Now, Monsieur, please do not be offended if I ask you one question: as I shall be obliged to sponsor you to some extent, I should like to know if the misfortunes you have suffered – misfortunes for which you were not responsible and which in no way diminish my respect for you – have not made you something of an outsider in this world where your fortune and your name should entitle you to shine?’

‘Monsieur,’ said the young man, who had been regaining his composure as the count spoke, ‘have no worries on that score. The abductors who took me away from my father – and who, no doubt, intended eventually to sell me back to him, as they have done – judged that, if they were to profit by me, they must conserve all the value of my person and even, if possible, enhance it. I consequently received quite a good education and I was treated by the robbers more or less as slaves were in Asia Minor, whose masters turned them into grammarians, doctors and philosophers, so that they might get a better price for them in the market in Rome.’

Monte Cristo smiled. He had not expected so much, apparently, of M. Andrea Cavalcanti.

‘In any event,’ the young man continued, ‘if my education – or, rather, my familiarity with the ways of society – were deficient in
some respects, I suppose people would be good enough to forgive it, in view of the misfortunes surrounding my birth and my youth.’

‘Ah, now,’ the count said casually, ‘you must do as you wish, Viscount, because this is your business and you are in charge; but I must say that in your place I should say nothing of all these adventures. Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels bound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum, even when they are as gilded as you are capable of being. Allow me to point out this difficulty to you, Monsieur le Vicomte, which is that no sooner will you have told your touching story to someone, than it will travel all round society, completely distorted. You will have to play the part of Antony,
¹
and Antony’s day has passed somewhat. You might perhaps enjoy the reputation of a curiosity, but not everyone likes to be the centre of attention and the butt of comment. It might possibly fatigue you.’

‘I think you are right, Count,’ the young man said, going pale in spite of himself under Monte Cristo’s unwavering gaze. ‘It would be very inconvenient.’

‘Oh, but not to be exaggerated, either,’ said the count. ‘For, to avoid a folly, one might commit an error. No, there is just a simple plan of conduct to be settled on and, for a man as intelligent as you are, the plan will be all the easier to follow since it is in your own interests. You must do all you can, through the evidence of witnesses and through cultivating honourable friends, to overcome everything that may seem obscure in your past.’

Andrea was visibly unsettled by this.

‘I should willingly offer myself as your guarantor,’ said Monte Cristo, ‘but it is an ingrained habit with me to doubt my best friends and a necessity for me to try to instil doubt in others. So I should be playing a role outside my range, as tragic actors say, and risk being booed, which is pointless.’

‘However, Monsieur le Comte,’ Andrea said boldly, ‘considering that Lord Wilmore recommended me to you…’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘But Lord Wilmore did not disguise from me, my dear Monsieur Andrea, that you had had a somewhat tempestuous youth. Oh!’ he exclaimed, seeing Andrea’s reaction to this. ‘I am not asking you for a confession. In any case it was to ensure that you had no need of anyone that we brought your father, the Marquis Cavalcanti, from Lucca. You will see: he
is a little formal, a bit starchy; but that is a matter of the uniform and, when people know that he served in the Austrian army for eighteen years, everything will be forgiven. In short, he is a very adequate father, I assure you.’

‘You are indeed reassuring me, Monsieur. It is so long since I last saw him that I have no memory of him.’

‘And, you know, a large fortune excuses a lot of things.’

‘Is my father really very rich, Monsieur?’

‘A millionaire… an income of five hundred thousand
livres
.’

‘So,’ the young man asked anxiously, ‘I shall find myself… comfortably off?’

‘Very comfortably, my dear sir. He will give you an income of fifty thousand
livres
just as long as you stay in Paris.’

‘In that case, I shall always stay here.’

‘Ah, but who can ever know what may happen, my dear fellow? Man proposes, God disposes…’

Andrea sighed and said: ‘But as long as I remain in Paris and nothing forces me to leave, this money that you just mentioned is guaranteed?’

‘Oh, yes, absolutely.’

‘By my father?’ Andrea asked uneasily.

‘Guaranteed by Lord Wilmore who, at your father’s request, has just opened a credit of five thousand francs a month for you with Monsieur Danglars, one of the most reliable bankers in Paris.’

‘And does my father intend to stay in Paris long?’ Andrea asked, still uneasy.

‘Only a few days,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘His obligations will not allow him to be absent for more than two or three weeks.’

‘Oh, the dear man,’ said Andrea, visibly delighted at this early departure.

‘Which being the case,’ Monte Cristo said, pretending to mistake the tone in which these words were uttered, ‘I do not wish to delay your reunion for a moment longer. Are you ready to embrace the worthy Monsieur Cavalcanti?’

‘I hope you do not doubt that I am.’

‘Very well, then: come into the drawing-room, my dear friend, and you will find your father waiting for you.’

Andrea bowed deeply to the count and went into the drawing-room. The count looked after him and, seeing him disappear,
pressed a catch next to one of the pictures which, opening away from the frame, allowed one to look through a cleverly designed crack in the panelling, into the drawing-room. Andrea had shut the door behind him and was walking over to the major, who got up immediately he heard the sound of footsteps.

‘Monsieur! My dear father!’ Andrea said loudly, so that the count could hear him through the closed door. ‘Is it really you?’

‘Greetings, my dear son,’ the major said gravely.

‘After so many years’ separation,’ Andrea said, still looking back towards the door, ‘what happiness to meet again!’

‘The separation was indeed long.’

‘Should we not embrace, Monsieur?’ Andrea asked.

‘As you wish, my son,’ said the major.

The two men embraced as people embrace in the Théâtre Français; that is to say, each putting his head over the other’s shoulder.

‘We are reunited again!’ said Andrea.

‘Reunited,’ said the major.

‘Never again to separate?’

‘Indeed so! I think, dear son, that you now consider France a second home?’

‘The fact is,’ the young man said, ‘that I should despair were I to leave Paris.’

‘And I, you understand, could not live outside Lucca. So I shall return to Italy as soon as I can.’

‘But before you leave, my dearest father, you will no doubt give me the papers I need to prove my origins.’

‘Of course; this is the very reason I have come; and I had too much trouble in finding you, in order to give you these papers, for us to start looking for one another again. It would take the last part of my life.’

‘So, the papers?’

‘Here they are.’

Andrea avidly grasped his father’s marriage certificate and his own baptismal certificate and, after opening the packet with the eagerness natural in a good son, perused the two documents with a speed and facility that suggested both a lively interest and a highly practised eye.

When he had finished, an indefinable expression of joy crossed his face and, looking at the major with a strange smile, he said: ‘Well, I’ll be damned! Are there no galleys in Italy?’

The major drew himself up. ‘Why do you ask?’ he said.

‘Can one manufacture such documents with impunity? For half such an offence in France, my dearest father, they would send us on holiday to Toulon for five years.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ the Luccan said, trying to manage a dignified look.

‘My dear Monsieur Cavalcanti,’ Andrea said, grasping the major’s arm, ‘how much are they giving you to be my father?’

The major tried to reply.

‘Hush!’ Andrea said, lowering his voice. ‘Let me set you an example by showing my trust in you. They are giving me fifty thousand francs a year to be your son, so you understand that I am hardly likely to deny that you are my father.’