The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (194 page)

‘You are a poisoner.’

‘In heaven’s name… !’

‘No!’

‘In the name of the love you once had for me!’

‘No! No!’

‘In the name of our child! Oh, for our child’s sake, let me live!’

‘No, no, no, I tell you! One day, if I should let you live, you might kill him as you did the others.’

‘I! Kill my son!’ the mother cried, wildly hurling herself on Villefort. ‘I, kill my Edouard! Oh, oh!’ And the sentence ended in a terrible laugh, a demonic laugh, the laugh of a madwoman, and was drowned by a bloody croak. Mme de Villefort had fallen at her husband’s feet.

Villefort went over to her. ‘Consider this, Madame,’ he said. ‘If, on my return, justice has not been done, I shall denounce you with my own lips and arrest you with my own hands.’

She listened, panting, exhausted, crushed. Only her eye still lived, smouldering with an awful fire.

‘Do you hear me?’ Villefort asked. ‘I am going there to demand the death penalty against a murderer… If I come back to find you still alive, you will sleep in the conciergerie this evening.’

Mme de Villefort gave a sigh, her nerves gave way and she fell, a broken woman, on the carpet.

The crown prosecutor seemed to feel a pang of pity. He looked at her less severely and, bending gently over her, said slowly: ‘Adieu, Madame! Adieu!’

This last farewell fell like the fatal blade on Mme de Villefort. She fainted. The crown prosecutor left the room and, after doing so, double-locked the door.

The Benedetto Affair, as it was called in the courts and in society, had created an enormous sensation. A frequenter of the Café de Paris, the Boulevard de Gand and the Bois de Boulogne, the pseudo-Cavalcanti,
while he had been in Paris and for the two or three months that his glory had lasted, had met a host of people. The newspapers had described the accused in his different incarnations, in society and in prison, so there was tremendous curiosity on the part of everyone who had personally been acquainted with Prince Andrea Cavalcanti. It was these above all who had decided to risk anything to get a glimpse of M. Benedetto, murderer of his fellow-convict, while he stood in the dock.

To many people, Benedetto was, if not a victim of the law, at least of a judicial error. M. Cavalcanti, the father, had been seen in Paris and they expected him to appear once more to claim his illustrious offspring. Several people, who had never heard speak of the famous Polishwoman with whom he arrived at the Count of Monte Cristo’s, had been struck by the imposing air, perfect good manners and urbanity shown by the old nobleman who, it must be admitted, appeared a flawless aristocrat, provided he was not doing his sums or talking about them.

As for the accused man himself, many people remembered him as so pleasant, so handsome and so generous that they preferred to believe in some machination by an enemy of the kind that is found in that portion of society where great wealth increases the means to do ill or to do good to such a fabulous extent, and the power to do these things to an unheard-of degree.

So everyone was hastening to the assizes, some to enjoy the spectacle, others to comment on it. A queue started to form outside the gates at seven o’clock in the morning and, one hour before the session began, the courtroom was already full of those who had some leverage there.

Before the judge enters, and often even afterwards, a courtroom on the day of some great trial resembles a drawing-room in which a lot of people recognize one another, meet when they are close enough not to lose their seats or make gestures at each other when they are separated by too many spectators, lawyers or gendarmes.

It was one of those splendid autumn days that sometimes compensate for the lack of the preceding summer, or its brevity. The clouds that M. de Villefort had seen passing in front of the sun had dispersed as though by magic and allowed one of the last and sweetest September days to shine in all its purity.

Beauchamp was one of the kings of the press and consequently
had his throne everywhere. Eyeing the crowd to right and left, he noticed Château-Renaud and Debray, who had just won the favour of a sergeant-at-arms, who had decided to stand behind them instead of blocking their view, as was his right. The good fellow had scented the presence of a secretary at the ministry and a millionaire, and was showing himself full of consideration for his fine neighbours, even allowing them to go and see Beauchamp, while promising to keep their places.

‘Well, then,’ Beauchamp said, ‘have we come to see our friend?’

‘Heavens, yes, we have!’ Debray replied. ‘A fine prince he was! Devil take these Italian princes!’

‘A man who had Dante for his genealogist and could trace his line back to the
Divine Comedy
.’

‘The nobility of the rope,’ Château-Renaud said coolly.

‘He will be condemned, I suppose?’ Debray asked Beauchamp.

‘My dear fellow,’ the journalist replied, ‘I should think you were the person one should ask about that. You know the political climate better than we do. Did you see the president at the last soirée in your ministry?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Something that will surprise you.’

‘Well, then, do tell me, quickly, my dear chap. It’s so long since I heard anything that did that.’

‘Well, he told me that Benedetto, who’s considered a firebird of subtlety and a giant of cunning, is only a very subordinate, very naïve rogue, quite undeserving of the experiments which will be made on his phrenological organs once he is dead.’

‘Pooh!’ Beauchamp said. ‘He played the prince well enough for all that.’

‘For you, perhaps, Beauchamp: you hate those poor princes so much that you are delighted if they misbehave. But I can sniff out a true gentleman straight away and spring an aristocratic family, whatever it may be, like a heraldic bloodhound.’

‘So, you never believed in his principality?’

‘In his principality, yes; but in his princedom? No.’

‘Not bad,’ said Debray. ‘But I assure you that he could get by with anyone else… I saw him with the ministers.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Château-Renaud. ‘For all that your ministers know about princes!’

‘There are some good things in what you have just said,’ Beauchamp answered, bursting into laughter. ‘The phrase is short, but rather fine. I ask your permission to use it in my report.’

‘Take it, my dear Monsieur Beauchamp,’ said Château-Renaud. ‘You can have my phrase, for what it’s worth.’

‘But if I spoke to the president,’ Debray said to Beauchamp, ‘you must have spoken to the crown prosecutor.’

‘Impossible: Monsieur de Villefort has locked himself away for the past week; it’s quite natural, after that odd series of domestic misfortunes, culminating in the strange death of his daughter.’

‘The strange death! What do you mean, Beauchamp?’

‘Oh, yes, pretend to know nothing, on the grounds that all this is taking place among the peerage,’ Beauchamp said, putting his pince-nez to his eye and forcing it to stay up by itself.

‘My dear sir,’ said Château-Renaud, ‘let me tell you that, as far as the pince-nez is concerned, you cannot hold a candle to Debray. Debray, do give Monsieur Beauchamp a lesson.’

‘Look,’ Beauchamp said. ‘I’m sure I’m not mistaken.’

‘What about?’

‘It’s her.’

‘Her, who?’

‘They said she had gone.’

‘Mademoiselle Eugénie?’ Château-Renaud asked. ‘Is she back already?’

‘No, not her; her mother.’

‘Madame Danglars?’

‘Come, come!’ said Château-Renaud. ‘It can’t be. Ten days after her daughter has run off and three days after her husband’s bankruptcy?’

Debray blushed slightly and followed Beauchamp’s eyes. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘That’s a veiled woman, a stranger, some foreign princess, perhaps Prince Cavalcanti’s mother. But you were saying, or rather about to say, something really interesting, I think, Beauchamp.’

‘I was?’

‘Yes, you were talking about Valentine’s strange death.’

‘Yes, so I was. But why isn’t Madame de Villefort here?’

‘Poor woman!’ said Debray. ‘No doubt she is making balm for the hospitals and inventing cosmetics for herself and her friends. You know she spends two or three thousand
écus
at that game, so
they assure me. And you’re right: why isn’t she here? I should have been very pleased to see her. I like her very much.’

‘And I hate her,’ said Château-Renaud.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Why does one love or hate? I hate her for reasons of antipathy.’

‘Or instinctively, of course…’

‘Perhaps. But let’s get back to what you were saying, Beauchamp.’

‘Well, are you not curious to know, gentlemen, why they are dying so repetitiously in the Villefort family?’

‘I like that “repetitiously”,’ said Château-Renaud.

‘You’ll find the word in Saint-Simon.’
¹

‘And the thing in Monsieur de Villefort’s house; so tell us about it.’

‘Good Lord!’ Debray said. ‘I must confess I have not taken my eyes off that house which has been dressed in mourning for three whole months, and only the day before yesterday, on the subject of Valentine, Madame was saying…’

‘Madame is who precisely?’ Château-Renaud asked.

‘Why, the minister’s wife, of course!’

‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said Château-Renaud. ‘I do not frequent ministers. I leave that to princes.’

‘You used merely to be handsome, but now you are starting to blaze with glory. Have pity on us, Baron, or you will burn us like a second Jupiter.’

‘I shall not say another word,’ said Château-Renaud. ‘But for God’s sake, have pity on me. Don’t cap every remark I make.’

‘Come, come, let’s try to finish what we were saying, Beauchamp. Now I was telling you that Madame asked me about the matter the day before yesterday. You tell me, I’ll tell her.’

‘Well, gentlemen, if people are dying in the Villefort family so repetitiously – and I stick by the word – that means there is a murderer in the house!’

The two young men shuddered, because the same idea had struck them more than once.

‘And who is the murderer?’ they asked.

‘Young Edouard.’

The speaker was not at all put out by a burst of laughter from his audience, but went on: ‘Yes, gentlemen, young Edouard, an infant phenomenon, who is already killing as well as his parents ever did.’

‘This is a joke?’

‘Not in the slightest. Yesterday I took on a servant who has just left the Villeforts’. And listen to this…’

‘We’re listening.’

‘I shall sack him tomorrow, because he eats a vast quantity to make up for the terrified abstinence that he imposed on himself while he was there. Well, it appears that the dear child got his hands on some flask of a drug which he uses from time to time against those who displease him. Firstly, it was grandpa and grandma Saint-Méran who annoyed him and he poured them three drops of his elixir. Three were enough. Then it was good old Barrois, grandpa Noirtier’s old servant, who would occasionally scold the dear little imp, so the little imp gave him three drops of the elixir. The same was the fate of poor Valentine, not because she scolded him – she didn’t – but because he was jealous of her. He gave her three drops of his elixir and her day was done, as it was for the rest.’

‘What fairy story is this you are telling us?’ Château-Renaud asked.

‘Yes,’ Beauchamp said. ‘A tale of the Beyond.’

‘It’s absurd,’ said Debray.

‘There!’ Beauchamp said. ‘You see? You’re already playing for time. Dammit! Ask my servant; or, rather, the man who won’t be my servant tomorrow. Everyone in the family talked about it.’

‘But where is this elixir? What is it?’

‘Of course, the child hides it.’

‘Where did he get it?’

‘In his mother’s laboratory.’

‘Does his mother have poisons in her laboratory?’

‘How do I know! You’re interrogating me like the crown prosecutor. All I can say is what I’ve been told, and I’m giving you my source: I can’t do better than that. The poor devil was too terrified to eat.’

‘Incredible!’

‘No, my good chap, not incredible at all. You saw that child in the Rue Richelieu last year who entertained himself by killing his brothers and sisters by sticking a pin in their ears while they were asleep. The generation after our own is very precocious, old boy.’

‘I am prepared to bet that you don’t believe a word of it,’
Château-Renaud said. ‘But I don’t see the Count of Monte Cristo. How can he not be here?’

‘He’s blasé,’ Debray said. ‘He wouldn’t want to appear here in front of everyone, after he’d been taken in by all these Cavalcantis who came to him, apparently, with false letters of credit, with the result that he has a mortgage of a hundred thousand francs on the principality.’

‘By the way, Monsieur de Château-Renaud,’ Beauchamp asked, ‘how is Morrel?’

‘Do you know,’ he answered, ‘I’ve been round to his house three times, and found neither hide nor hair of Morrel. But his sister didn’t seem too worried about it and told me, quite calmly, that she had not seen him for two or three days either, but that she was sure he was well.’