"Yes, as the sun, to rise next day with more splendour. She is rich, the
Countess de Morcerf--she waited two hopeless years for Dantès--and yet I
am sure she is not happy."
"And M. de Villefort?" asked the abbé.
"Some time after having arrested Dantès, he married and left Marseilles;
no doubt but he has been as lucky as the rest."
"God may seem sometimes to forget for a time," said the abbé, "while His
justice reposes, but there always comes a moment when He remembers."
* * * * *
Early in 1838 a certain Count of Monte Cristo became a great figure in
the life of Paris. His name awakened thoughts of romance and dazzling
wealth in the minds of all. It was Albert, the son of the Count de
Morcerf, who first introduced the Count of Monte Cristo to the high
society of Paris. They had become acquainted at Rome, where Monte Cristo
had been able to render a great service to the Viscount Albert de
Morcerf and his friend, the Baron Franz d'Epinay.
All sorts of stories were afloat in Paris as to the history of this
Count of Monte Cristo. When he went to the opera he was accompanied by a
beautiful Greek girl, named Haidée, whose guardian he was.
But nothing ruffled Monte Cristo. Calmness and deliberation marked all
his movements; in some respects he was more like a machine than a human
being. Everything he said he would do was done precisely. And now the
schemes he had long studied in secret he had begun to carry through as
certainly and relentlessly as Fate.
M. de Villefort, now _procureur du roi,_ had a daughter by his first
wife, for he had married a second time. Her name was Valentine, and at
the command of her father, but not by her own wish, she was engaged to
the Baron Franz d'Epinay. She loved a young military officer named
Maximilian Morrel, a son of the Marseilles shipowner. But neither of
them had dared to avow their affection for each other to Valentine's
father.
Meanwhile, the tide of fortune seemed to have turned with Baron
Danglars. His business had suffered many losses, but his greatest loss
of all was due to some false news about the price of shares which had
been telegraphed to Paris by means which Monte Cristo could have
explained.
The baron's daughter was engaged to Albert de Morcerf, but the Count of
Morcerf had now come under a cloud, for his betrayal of Ali Pasha had
been made public; and perhaps the Count of Monte Cristo could have told
how the truth came out at last. So the baron did not hesitate to break
the engagement, and to accept as the suitor for his daughter a dashing
young man known as Count Cavalcanti, who had been introduced to Paris by
Monte Cristo, but concerning whose antecedents nothing seemed to be
known.
The Count de Morcerf was tried for his betrayal of Ali, and seemed
likely to be acquitted, when a veiled woman was brought to the place of
trial, and testified before the committee that she was the daughter of
Ali Pasha, and that Morcerf had not only betrayed her father to the
Turks, but had sold her and her mother into slavery. The veiled woman
was Haidée, the ward of Monte Cristo. The count was now a ruined man,
and when his son Albert discovered the part that Monte Cristo had
played, he publicly insulted the count at the opera.
A duel was averted, for Albert publicly apologised to the count when he
learned the reasons for his actions. Furious that he had not been
avenged by his son, Morcerf rushed to the house of Monte Cristo.
"I came to tell you," said Morcerf, "that as the young people of the
present day will not fight, it remains for us to do it."
"So much the better," said Monte Cristo. "Are you prepared?"
"Yes, sir; and witnesses are unnecessary, as we know each other so
little."
"Truly they are unnecessary," said Monte Cristo, "but for the reason
that we know each other well. Are you not the soldier Fernand who
deserted on the eve of Waterloo? Are you not the Lieutenant Fernand who
served as guide and spy to the French army in Spain? Are you not the
Captain Fernand who betrayed, sold, and murdered his benefactor, Ali?"
"Oh," cried the general, "wretch, to reproach me with my shame! Tell me
your real name that I may pronounce it when I plunge my sword through
your heart."
At this Monte Cristo, bounding to a dressing room near, quickly pulled
off his coat, and waistcoat, and, donning a sailor's jacket and hat, was
back in an instant.
Gazing for a moment in terror at this man who seemed to have risen from
the dead to avenge his wrongs, Morcerf turned, seeking the wall to
support him, and went out by the door uttering the cry--"Edmond Dantès!"
Events marched rapidly now, and Paris had scarcely ceased talking of the
suicide of the Count de Morcerf, when Cavalcanti, identified as a former
galley-slave named Benedetto, was arrested for the murder of a fellow-
convict.
Danglars fled from France, his great business in ruin. With him he took
a large sum of money belonging to Paris hospitals, which, however, was
taken from him near Rome by brigands controlled by Monte Cristo.
_IV.--Vengeance is Complete_
In the household of Villefort, Monte Cristo had done nothing to bring
vengeance on that evil man. He had seen from the first that Villefort's
second wife was studying the art of poisoning, and he felt that revenge
was already at work here. There had already been three mysterious deaths
in the house, and now the beautiful Valentine seemed to be suffering
from the early effects of some slow poison. Maximilian Morrel, in
despair of Valentine's life, rushed to Monte Cristo for his advice and
assistance.
"Must I let one of the accursed race escape?" Monte Cristo asked
himself, but decided, for Maxmilian's sake, that he would save
Valentine. He had bought the house adjoining that of Villefort, and,
clearing out the tenants, had engaged workmen to remove so much of the
old wall between the two houses that it was a simple matter for him to
take out the remaining stones and pass into a large cupboard in
Valentine's room. Here the count watched while Valentine was asleep, and
saw Madame de Villefort creep into the room and substitute for the
medicine in Valentine's glass a dose of poison.
He then entered the room and threw half the draught into the fireplace,
leaving the rest in the glass. When Valentine awoke he gave her a pellet
of hashish, which made her sink into a deathlike sleep.
Next morning the doctor declared that Valentine was dead. In the glass
he discovered poison, and as the same poison was found in madame's
laboratory, there was no doubt of her guilt. She admitted all, and
confessed that her object had been to make her own son sole heir to
Villefort's fortune.
Madame de Villefort fell at her husband's feet. He addressed her with
passionate words of reproach as he turned to leave her.
"Think of it, madame," he said; "if on my return justice has not been
satisfied, I will denounce you with my own mouth, and arrest you with my
own hands! I am going to the court to pronounce sentence of death on a
murderer. If I find you alive on my return, you shall sleep to-night in
gaol."
Madame sighed, her nerves gave way, and she sank on the carpet.
But Villefort little knew at the moment he spoke these burning words to
the woman who was his wife that he himself was not going out to condemn
a fellow-sinner, but to be himself condemned. For the man to whom he
referred as a murderer was the so-called Count Cavalcanti, really
Benedetto, who now turned out to be an illegitimate son of Villefort's
whom he had endeavoured to bury alive as an infant in the garden of a
house at Auteuil. The night before the criminal had had a long interview
with Monte Cristo's steward, who had disclosed to the prisoner the
secret of his birth, and in court he declared his father was Villefort,
the public prosecutor! This statement made a great commotion in the
court, and all eyes were on Villefort, while Benedetto continued to
answer the questions of the president, and proved that he was the child
whom Villefort would have buried alive years before. The public
prosecutor himself confirmed the prisoner's story by admitting his
guilt, and staggering from the court.
When Villefort arrived at his own house he found everything in
confusion. Making his way to his wife's apartments, he had the horror of
meeting her while she still lived, just at the very instant when the
poison she had taken did its work, and of finding a moment or two after
that she had poisoned his little son Edward.
This was more than the brain of man could endure, and Villefort turned
from the tragic scene a raving madman, rushing wildly to the garden, and
beginning to dig with a spade.
The vengeance of Edmond Dantès, so long delayed, so carefully and
laboriously planned, was now complete, and it only remained for him to
perform the last of his marvels, at the same time giving proof of his
boundless generosity. Valentine de Villefort had been buried, and
Maximilian was in despair; but Monte Cristo urged the young man to have
patience and hope.
It seemed a strange thing to ask a lover whose sweetheart had been
placed within the tomb to have hope and to come to Monte Cristo in one
month. But this was the bargain they made.
When the month had passed, Maximilian came to the isle of Monte Cristo.
"I have your word," he said to the count, "that you would help me die or
give me Valentine!"
"Ah! A miracle alone can save you--the resurrection of Valentine! Thus
do I fulfil my promise!"
Monte Cristo turned to a jewelled cabinet, and took from it a tube of
greenish paste. Maximilian swallowed some of the mysterious substance,
which was but hashish. He sat down and waited.
"Monte Cristo," he said, "I feel that I am dying--good-bye!"
Meanwhile, Monte Cristo had opened a door from which a great light
streamed. Maximilian opened his eyes, looked towards the light; and
then--he saw Valentine!
Then Monte Cristo spoke. "He calls you, Valentine, even as he thinks he
dies by his own will. But even as I saved you from the tomb, so have I
saved him. I feared for his reason if he saw you, except in a trance--
from his trance he will wake to happiness!"
Next morning Valentine and Maximilian were walking on the beach, when
Jacopo, the captain of Monte Cristo's yacht, gave them a letter. As they
looked on the superscription they cried, simultaneously, "Gone!"
In his letter, Monte Cristo, said: "All that is in this grotto, my
friend, my house in the Champs Elysées, and my château at Tréport, are
the marriage gifts bestowed by Edmond Dantès upon the son of his old
master, Morrel. Mademoiselle de Villefort will share them with you; for
I entreat her to give to the poor the immense fortune reverting to her
from her father, now a madman, and her brother, who died last September
with his mother."
"But where is the count?" asked Morrel eagerly. Jacopo pointed towards
the horizon, where a white sail was visible.
"And where is Haidée?" asked Valentine. Jacopo still pointed towards the
sail.
* * * * *