The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (195 page)

‘I’ve just thought: Monte Cristo can’t be here,’ said Beauchamp.

‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s part of the case.’

‘Has he killed someone?’ Debray asked.

‘No. On the contrary, he’s the one somebody tried to kill. You know that it was while he was coming out of Monte Cristo’s that that fine fellow Caderousse was murdered by young Benedetto. Moreover it was in the count’s house that they found the famous waistcoat in which there was the letter that interrupted the signing of the marriage contract. Can you see the famous waistcoat? There it is, all bloody, on the desk, as evidence.’

‘Oh, wonderful!’

‘Hush! Gentlemen, the court is in session. Take your places.’

There was some commotion in the court. The sergeant-at-arms called his two protégés with a loud
hem
! And the usher, appearing on the threshold of the counsel chamber, cried out – in that yelping voice that ushers had already acquired in Beaumarchais’ time: ‘Gentlemen! All rise!’

The judges took their seats in the midst of utter silence. The jury filed into their places. M. de Villefort, in his ceremonial headgear, the object of general attention and, one might almost say, admiration, sat down in his chair, looking around him imperturbably.

Everyone was astonished to see this grave and severe face, which seemed immune in its impassivity to a father’s grief, and there was a sort of awe as they considered this man who was a stranger to human emotions.

‘Gendarmes!’ said the presiding judge. ‘Bring up the accused.’

At this, the public became more alert and all eyes turned towards the door through which Benedetto would enter. Soon the door opened and the accused appeared. The impression was the same on everyone, and no one mistook the look on his face.

His features bore no sign of that deep emotion that drives the blood back to the heart and discolours the forehead and cheeks. His hands, elegantly posed, one on his hat, the other in the opening of his white quilted waistcoat, did not shake; his eyes were calm and even bright. Hardly was he in the chamber than the young man began to examine the ranks of the judges and the rest of the crowd in court, pausing longer on the presiding judge and longer still on the crown prosecutor.

Beside Andrea was his lawyer, who had been appointed by the court, since Andrea had not bothered to concern himself with such details, apparently attaching no importance to them. This lawyer was a young man with lustreless blond hair, his face reddened with an inner turmoil that was a hundred times more evident than the defendant’s.

The presiding judge asked for the indictment to be read; as we know, it had been composed by M. de Villefort’s adroit and implacable pen.

The reading lasted a long time. The effect on anyone else would have been devastating, and, throughout, every eye was on Andrea, who bore the weight of the charges against him with the merry indifference of a Spartan warrior.

Never, perhaps, had Villefort been more pithy or more eloquent. The crime was described in the liveliest colours, while the accused man’s antecedents, his transformation and his progress, step by step, since quite an early age were deduced with all the talent that experience of life and a knowledge of the human heart could supply in a mind as elevated as that of the crown prosecutor.

This indictment itself was enough to damn Benedetto for ever in public opinion, leaving nothing for the law except to punish him in a more tangible way.

Andrea did not pay the slightest attention to the succession of charges raised, then laid on his head. M. de Villefort, who frequently studied his reaction, no doubt continuing the psychological analyses that he had so often had the opportunity to make of men in the dock, could not once persuade him to lower his eyes, however fixedly and penetratingly he stared at him.

Finally the reading was concluded. ‘Defendant,’ the presiding judge said, ‘what is your name?’

Andrea rose to his feet. ‘Forgive me, Monsieur le Président,’ he said, in the purest and clearest of tones, ‘but I see that you are going to pursue an order of questioning which I shall not be able to follow. I claim that it is up to me, later, to justify being considered an exception to the general run of accused persons; so I beg you to let me reply to your questions in a different order, though I shall in fact answer all of them.’

The presiding judge looked in astonishment at the jury, who looked at the crown prosecutor. A wave of surprise ran through the whole assembly; but Andrea did not seem in the slightest bit concerned.

‘How old are you?’ the presiding judge asked. ‘Will you answer that question?’

‘Like the rest, I shall, Monsieur, but in its turn.’

‘How old are you?’ the judge repeated.

‘Twenty-one; or, rather, I shall be in just a few days, since I was born on the night of September the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth, 1817.’

M. de Villefort, who was taking notes, looked up on hearing the date.

‘Where were you born?’ the presiding judge continued.

‘In Auteuil, near Paris,’ Benedetto answered.

M. de Villefort looked up again and gave Benedetto the sort of
look he might have given the head of Medusa. The colour drained from his face.

As for Benedetto, he passed the embroidered corner of a fine lawn handkerchief across his lips with an elegant gesture.

‘What is your profession?’ the judge asked.

‘Firstly, I was a counterfeiter,’ Andrea said, as cool as a cucumber. ‘Then I took up the profession of thief and quite recently I have become a murderer.’

A murmur, in fact a storm of indignation and astonishment, erupted from every corner of the room. Even the judges exchanged looks of amazement, while the jury exhibited the most profound disgust for such cynicism, which was not what it expected from a well-turned-out man.

M. de Villefort put a hand to his forehead which, having been pale, was now red and feverish. He leapt abruptly to his feet and looked around him like a man who had lost his way. He was gasping for breath.

‘Are you looking for something, prosecutor?’ Benedetto asked, with his most obliging smile.

M. de Villefort said nothing but sat down – or, rather, fell back into his chair.

‘Prisoner, will you now agree to tell us your name?’ asked the presiding judge. ‘The brutal manner in which you have enumerated your various crimes which you describe as professions, making it as it were a point of honour, something for which, in the name of morality and respect for humankind, the court must severely reprimand you, all these may well be the reason why you have so far declined to give us your name. You wish to enhance the name by first giving your titles.’

‘It’s extraordinary, Monsieur le Président,’ Benedetto said, in the most condescending tone of voice and with the politest of manners, ‘how clearly you have read my mind. That was indeed precisely why I asked you to change round the order of questions.’

The amazement was at its height. The accused’s words showed no trace of boasting or cynicism, and a stunned audience sensed that there was some burst of lightning gathering in the depths of this dark cloud.

‘Very well,’ said the judge. ‘What is your name?’

‘I cannot tell you my name, because I do not know it; but I know the name of my father and I can tell you that.’

Villefort was blinded by a flash of pain. Bitter drops of sweat could be seen falling rapidly from his cheeks on to the papers which he was shuffling with distraught and convulsive hands.

‘Then tell us the name of your father,’ the judge said.

Not a breath or a sigh broke the silence: the whole of this vast assembly was hushed and waiting.

‘My father is a crown prosecutor,’ Andrea replied calmly.

‘A crown prosecutor!’ the judge said in astonishment, without noticing the shocked expression on Villefort’s face. ‘A crown prosecutor!’

‘Yes, and since you ask me his name, I shall tell you. His name is de Villefort.’

The outburst that had for so long been contained by the respect that is paid to the law while a court is in session erupted, like a peal of thunder, from every breast. The court itself did not even consider trying to repress this movement in the crowd. There were interjections, insults shouted at Benedetto (who remained impassive), violent gestures, commotion among the gendarmes and the sniggering of that baser element which in any crowd rises to the surface in times of disturbance or scandal. All this lasted five minutes, before the judges and ushers could manage to restore calm.

In the middle of all this noise, the presiding judge’s voice could be heard shouting: ‘Prisoner! Are you making fun of the law? Do you dare to give your fellow citizens the spectacle of a degree of corruption which is hitherto unequalled even in an age which has had more than its fair share of the same?’

Ten people flocked round the crown prosecutor, who was sitting, completely overwhelmed, and offered him consolation, encouragement and assurances of their entire sympathy.

Order was finally restored, except at one place in the room where a fairly large group continued to call out and agitate. It appeared that a woman had fainted. She was offered smelling salts and came back to her senses.

Throughout all this commotion, Andrea had turned a smiling face on the crowd. Then, at last resting one hand on the oak handle of his bench, in the most elegant posture, he said: ‘Gentlemen, God forbid that I should try to insult the court or, before such an august company, try to cause any unnecessary scandal. I was asked what age I am, and I answered; I was asked where I was born, and I replied; I was asked my name, and I cannot say it, because my
parents abandoned me. But, even without saying my name, since I have none, I can say that of my father; so, I repeat, my father is called Monsieur de Villefort and I am ready to prove it.’

The young man’s voice carried a certainty, a conviction and a power that reduced everyone to silence. For a moment every eye turned towards the crown prosecutor who remained as motionless in his seat as a man who had just been struck dead by lightning.

‘Gentlemen,’ Andrea said, with a tone and a gesture that demanded silence, ‘I owe you proof of my words and an explanation for them.’

‘But,’ snapped the presiding judge, ‘you declared in the preliminary hearings that you were called Benedetto and that you were an orphan, describing Corsica as your homeland.’

‘I said at that hearing what was convenient for me to say then, because I did not want anyone to weaken or even prevent the solemn repercussions of my words – and this would surely have been done.

‘I now repeat that I was born in Auteuil, in the night of September the twenty-seventh to the twenty-eighth, 1817, and that I am the son of Crown Prosecutor de Villefort. Now, do you want some details? Here they are.

‘I was born on the first floor of Number twenty-eight, Rue de la Fontaine, in a room hung with red damask. My father took me in his arms, telling my mother that I was dead, wrapped me in a towel marked with an “H” and an “N”, and carried me down to the garden, where he buried me alive.’

A shudder went through the whole room when they saw that the prisoner’s confidence was growing, to keep pace with M. de Villefort’s horror.

‘But how do you know all these details?’ the judge asked.

‘I shall tell you, Monsieur le Président. That very same night, in the garden where my father had just buried me, a man who was his mortal enemy had entered, having long waited and watched in order to carry out an act of Corsican vengeance against him. The man had hidden himself in a clump of bushes. He saw my father bury something in the ground and struck him with a knife while he was still engaged in the operation. Then, thinking that the object must be some treasure, he dug up the hole and found me, still alive. The man took me to the orphanage, where I was admitted under the number fifty-seven. Three months later, his sister travelled from
Rogliano to Paris to fetch me, claimed me as her son and took me away. This is how, even though I was born in Auteuil, I was brought up in Corsica.’

There was a moment’s silence, but a silence so profound that, had it not been for the tension that seemed to be exhaled from a thousand breasts, you would have thought the room empty.

‘Continue,’ said the presiding judge.

‘No doubt,’ Benedetto went on, ‘I could have been happy with these good people who adored me; but my perverse nature gained the upper hand over all the virtues that my adoptive mother tried to instil in my heart. I grew up badly and turned to crime. One day, when I was cursing God for making me so wicked and giving me such a dreadful fate, my adoptive father said: “Don’t blaspheme, you wretch! God was generous in giving you life. The evil comes not from you but from your father – the father who doomed you to hell should you die, and to misery if some miracle should give you life!”

‘From then on, I ceased to blaspheme God, but I cursed my father. That is why I have come here and spoken the words for which you have reproached me, Monsieur le Président. That is why I caused the commotion from which this gathering has still not recovered. If that is a further crime, punish me for it. But if I have convinced you that from the day of my birth my fate has been mortal, tormented, bitter and lamentable, then pity me!’

‘And what about your mother?’ the judge asked.