DANTES AND HIS DAUGHTER.
Even in the immediate vicinity of the Morcerf mansion, No. 27 Rue du
Helder, no one was aware that its new tenant was M. Dantes, the famous
Deputy from Marseilles. All the neighbors knew was that the palatial
edifice had been purchased by a stranger, who said he was acting for his
master, a man of great wealth lately arrived from the east. No repairs
or alterations had been made, while the Morcerf furniture was bought
with the house, the only new articles making their appearance being
several huge bookcases and a number of large boxes evidently containing
books, together with a host of traveling trunks filled, as was to be
presumed, with the wardrobe of the family. The servants took possession
during the day and were duly noted, but how or when the proprietor came
could not be ascertained, while after his installation glimpses of him
were exceedingly rare.
Occasionally, however, a beautiful girl, with an oriental look
notwithstanding her tasteful and elegant Parisian attire, would be seen
for a moment at the windows, but she invariably vanished on realizing
that she was observed. Sometimes, a handsome young man stood at her
side, but he also seemed anxious to avoid the scrutiny of the curious,
although he evinced less timidity than his companion, always withdrawing
slowly and with great deliberation.
It was after midnight. On the second floor of the pavilion once
inhabited by the Viscount Albert de Morcerf was now a spacious library.
The walls were lined with tall book-shelves, mounting to the lofty
ceiling, and groaning under ponderous piles of volumes, from the huge
black letter folio of the Middle Ages to the lightest duodecimo of the
day; while in all parts of the chamber, on the floor, tables and chairs,
and in the deep embrasures of the windows, were scattered huge masses of
papers, pamphlets, manuscripts and charts. Over the bookcases stood
marble busts of Danton, Mirabeau, Napoleon, Armand Carrel, the Duc de
St. Simon and other great men whose names are identified with France;
between the windows looking out on the garden, shrouded in shrubs and
creeping plants, hung a full-length and magnificent picture of Fourier.
Near the centre of the apartment stood a vast table covered with books,
papers, manuscripts and writing materials, beside which stood one of
those sombre and massive arm-chairs, on the possession of which the
former proprietor had so felicitated himself, bearing on a carved shield
the fleur-de-lis of the Louvre, and in whose sumptuous and antique
embrace had, perhaps, reposed a Richelieu, a Mazarin or a Sully. The
windows were hung with heavy tapestry of ancient pattern and rich dye,
and also the walls, save where covered with books. A soft and summery
atmosphere, the warmth of which emanated from concealed furnaces,
neutralized the chill of an autumnal night, and the mellow chiaro-oscuro
of a vast astral diffused its lunar effulgence on all around.
Within this chamber was a man, who, with arms crossed upon his bosom and
eyes fastened in profound and seemingly mournful contemplation upon the
floor, slowly paced from one extremity of the spacious apartment to the
other.
This man was M. Dantes, representative of Marseilles in the French
Chamber of Deputies.
"At last, at last," he murmured, "the avenging Nemesis ceases to gnaw!
At length the angel Peace begins to smile! The tempest, which, for
nearly thirty years, has raved and swelled in my heart, begins to lull!
At length I commence to live--at length I realize and pursue life's true
end. Let me reflect," he continued, after a pause, "let me review the
past. The past! alas! my past is a painful blank! At twenty, from the
very marriage-feast, from the side of her whom more than life I loved, I
was torn by the envy of one man and the jealousy of another, and then,
by the ambition of a third, to whom nothing was crime if it but
ministered to that unhallowed impulse, I was plunged into a dungeon,
whose counterpart only the vaults of hell can furnish. For fourteen long
years I was the tenant of a sombre tomb. The agony, the despair of
those awful years--oh! God! oh! God!" and he shuddered and clasped his
hands over his head as if to crush the recollection.
After a pause he resumed: "And then those daily vows of vengeance! oh!
vain and impotent vows as then they seemed! vows of awful agony, of
fiendish retribution, though at that time I knew not all! I knew not
that a venerable father had pined and died of starvation through the
wrong done to me! I knew not that the woman I loved had become the bride
of my destroyer! Yet those vows, awful and blasphemous as they were,
those vows of vengeance have been terribly, dreadfully fulfilled! As the
destroying angel of God's retributive providence, I was endowed with
superhuman powers to walk the earth, to administer His justice and to
execute His decrees. For fourteen years was that vengeance prepared, yet
delayed. At last, it fell--it fell. All who had wronged me met their
dreadful doom. Ambition was changed to madness. Avarice was tortured
with bankruptcy. Falsehood sought refuge in self destruction; and
all--all--all--even the meanest of those who had contributed to blight
my life--perished miserably at my will! And did the guilty suffer alone?
Alas! impious, remorseless, horrible revenge! The innocent and the
criminal suffered alike. A might approaching omnipotence was vouchsafed
me, but no power of omniscience to direct my hand or stay its effects.
Blind and mad I knew not what I did. Those I most loved fell beneath the
blow which crushed those I most abhorred, and shared the same fate. The
terrible agencies I had summoned as my slaves became my masters. The
fiends which, as ministers of God's justice, garbed in the guise of
angels of light, I had, by hideous necromancy, evoked to aid me in
righteous retribution, proved the dark demons of hell and derided all
orders to accomplish my bidding. The awful engines I had set in motion I
found myself powerless to arrest or control. Effects ceased not with the
causes in which they had their origin. The stroke of vengeance, aimed at
foes, recoiled on friends--recoiled on myself. And when I fain would
stop, when I would arrest the awful havoc which my will had commenced,
the dark ministers I had called up howled in my ears, 'On! on! on!
vengeance is thine! vengeance is thine!' They mocked my terror and
laughed at my apprehensions.
"At last there seemed a pause. Fate appeared to have done her worst, to
have executed her decrees. The blind agencies of vengeance blasted no
more, because there seemed no more to blast. The misery I had caused I
strove to alleviate, the innocent hearts I had crushed I endeavored to
heal; rejoicing in the joy I had created and the affection I gratified,
once more I loved--loved, but, oh! not as I first had loved--not with
that deep, adoring, delirious passion of my youth, and yet with a
subdued, fraternal feeling I loved; in the calm and sweet seclusion of a
favored clime, parted from the world with all its miseries and its
crimes, environed by all that man or nature could contribute to human
bliss, I began to dream of happiness, in the happiness I had created.
But, alas! I forgot that man's happiness lies not in his own hand, but
in the hand of his Maker. I forgot that an omniscient eye pursued me,
that a blasphemed and omnipotent Power was over me. The blow
paused--hovered--fell, not upon me, not on the guilty, but again it fell
on the innocent; and she, who was my only hope, my beloved Haydee, my
wife, was snatched from my heart, ruthlessly murdered by that fiend,
Benedetto!"
The unhappy man pressed his hand to his forehead, and for some time
paced the chamber in silence; then, approaching a small alcove at one
extremity of the apartment, he raised the heavy and sumptuous hangings
and revealed a small silver casket of exquisite workmanship and
appointments, that sparkled as the mellow light poured in upon it. M.
Dantes knelt beside the ebony table on which this casket rested, and for
some moments seemed absorbed in prayer; then, rising and taking the
casket in his hands, he touched a spring, when the lid flew open,
disclosing a miniature portrait of Haydee, set in a frame of gold,
ornamented with flashing diamonds and emeralds; he gazed long and
lovingly at this portrait, that seemed designed to show how exquisitely
fair God's creatures may be, after which he kissed it reverently, closed
the casket, restored it to the table, and slowly dropped the hangings to
their place. Resuming his walk, he said, mournfully: "But the deepest
wound will close; the heaviest grief, the bitterest woe, becomes
assuaged. Time, the comforter, soothes and consoles. From this stroke of
bereavement I at length awoke, and, at the same moment, awoke to the
conviction that my whole past had been an error; that my life had been a
lie; that the years which had succeeded my imprisonment had been more
utterly lost than those passed within my dungeon itself; and there came
to me the conviction that time, talent, power and wealth had been worse
than wasted--that the wondrous riches, undreamed of save in the wildest
flights of oriental fiction, and by a miracle bestowed upon me, were
designed for nobler, holier purposes than to subserve a fiendish and
blasphemous vengeance for even unutterable wrongs, or to minister to the
gratification of pride, and the satisfaction of selfish tastes and
appetites, however refined and sublimated.
"I looked around me--the world was full of misery--and the same
disposition which had plunged me into a dungeon was crushing the hearts
and hopes of millions of my race. My bosom softened by bereavement
yearned toward my suffering fellows, and the path of duty, peace and
happiness seemed open to my desolate and despairing heart. Resolution
followed conviction; the world was my field; liberty, equality and
fraternity were my objects. Not France alone, with her miserable
millions, but Russia with her serfs, Poland with her wrongs, the
enslaved Italian, the oppressed German, the starving son of Erin, the
squalid operative of England, the priest-ridden slave of Jesuit Spain,
and the oppressed but free-born Switzer. Great men and good men I found
had already, with superhuman skill, constructed a system, a machine for
the amelioration of mankind's condition, which needed only the
co-operation of boundless wealth to set it in motion. That wealth was
mine! The common house for the laborer, the asylum for the insane, for
the orphan, the Magdalen, the destitute, the sick, the friendless, the
deserted, the bereaved, or the asylum for the victim of his own vices,
or the vices of others, for the depravity which originates in misery,
ignorance or fate--all these my riches could sustain. Around me, in the
accomplishment of this design, the uncounted wealth intrusted to my
stewardship has already gathered the mightiest minds in every department
of intellect, and the best hearts; and if but a few years are vouchsafed
us to carry out the system we have adopted, all Europe, despite her
throned and sceptred tyrants, impiously claiming the right to oppress by
the will of God, shall be free! Silently but surely, the principle of
human liberty is ceaselessly at work, undermining thrones and
overthrowing dynasties. The hush that precedes the tornado even now
broods over Europe; nations slumber the heavy sleep that preludes the
earthquake. The hour of revolution is at hand--of social regeneration,
disenthrallment, redemption, over all the world. In every capital of
Europe the mine is prepared--the train laid to be lighted, and from this
solitary chamber the free thought on the lightning's pinion flies to
Vienna, St. Petersburg, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, London, over mountain and
plain--over sea and land--through the forest wilderness and the thronged
city; taken up by the press, it makes thrones totter and tyrants
tremble--tremble at an influence which emanates they know not whence and
contemplates a purpose they know not what--an influence whose mystery
they are impotent to penetrate, and whose shadowy but awful right they
are powerless to resist!"
At that instant the silvery tinkle of a bell was heard at the table, and
a low and continuous whizzing as of clockwork at once commenced. The
Deputy advanced hastily to the table. The register of the electric
telegraph like a living thing was unfolding the secrets of events at
that moment transpiring at the furthest extremity of the Kingdom!
Eagerly seizing the slip of paper which was gliding through the machine,
he glanced over the cabalistic cipher there traced.
"Lyons--Marseilles--Rome--Algeria," he murmured. "All goes well." And
while the wonderful register, like a thing of life, still whizzed,
clicked and delivered its magic scroll, covered with characters
unintelligible to all but him for whose eye they were designed, he
touched a spring, and a row of ivory keys resembling those of a
piano-forte was revealed. Then rapidly touching them with the fingers of
one hand, while he held up before him the endless slip of paper in the
other as it was evolved, he transferred its cabalistic contents,
character by character, to their distant destination.
And when the day dawned on Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Madrid, the
intelligence thus concentrated, and thus distributed in that solitary
chamber, was laid by the press before a hundred thousand eyes, in a
language which each could comprehend, for in every capital of Europe
unbounded wealth had established a press which groaned in unceasing
parturition for human rights, causing princes to tremble and ministers
to wonder and grow pale; over each press, thus set in motion as if
literally by an electric touch a thousand miles away, presided men of
the greatest powers and most varied attainments which philanthropy or
covetousness could enlist, while the result of their labors was sown
broadcast among the poorest and humblest, without price or compensation,
pouring light upon their darkened understandings and giving them
knowledge of their rights.
Nor was the newspaper press alone active. The feuilleton press was also
at work; and magazines, reviews, pamphlets, whole libraries of volumes,
were flung like Sibylline leaves on the four winds of heaven. Fiction,
the drama, religion, art, literature, moral and mechanical science--all
departments of intellect--silently, unseen, yet surely exerted their
omnipotent influence for the attainment of one single glorious end--the
happiness, rights, freedom of man; all this was under the guidance of
one powerful mind and benevolent heart, wielding the resistless
necromancy of countless and exhaustless treasure! Not a point in all
Europe whence influence could radiate and be distributed was there at
which this man, in one brief year, had not set in motion the press and
the telegraph, those tremendous levers of the age to move the world, and
all the more powerfully to move it because oft unseen. Not a court was
there of emperor or prince, czar or kaiser, king, duke or potentate in
which dwelt not his emissary, who suspected, least of all, knew
everything that occurred, and, on the lightning's wing, dispatched it to
its destination, so that the most important decrees of the
cabinet-council of Vienna were exposed to the whole world by the
Parisian press long before they had been communicated by Metternich to
his sovereign. And thus, often, the ruler first learned the purposes of
the Minister. Not a city or village was there in all Europe which
nourished not in its bosom the germ of reform and revolution, while the
great principle of association combined, embodied, and concentrated into
a focus energies and influences which would otherwise have proved
comparatively powerless.
The click and buzz of the register ceased--the engine had revealed its
secret--the shadowy tale had been caught up as it fell and given to the
press of all Europe, thence to be laid before men's minds.
Exhausted by the severe mental toil, and by the lateness of the hour,
the Deputy sank back into his arm-chair and clasped his hands.
"Glorious, omnipotent science!" he exclaimed in low and trembling, yet
eager and enthusiastic tones. "Wealth must yield in power to thee, for
what wealth can rival thy achievements or secure thy results? Thou hast
girt the earth with web-work, forced the lightning to syllable the
unspoken thought and made man's mind ubiquitous like God's; ere long,
thou wilt have knit together with thy magic spells a world of mankind
into one vast brotherhood!"
M. Dantes ceased and, closing his eyes wearily, continued to think over
the possibilities of the future. As he sat there motionless and
seemingly asleep, a light footfall was heard in the apartment and his
daughter stood before him. Zuleika was now sixteen, tall and matured
beyond her years; she greatly resembled her dead mother, Haydee, the
beautiful Greek, and the half-oriental costume she wore helped to render
the resemblance still more striking; her abundant hair was the hue of
the raven's wing, her feet and hands were those of a fairy, while her
large and expressive eyes flashed like diamonds, and her parted lips, as
red as rubies, disclosed perfect teeth of the whiteness of pearls. A
shade of anxiety settled upon her handsome countenance as she bent over
her weary father. The Deputy opened his eyes and glanced at her.
"Why are you up so late, my child?" he asked, fondly. "I thought you
were sleeping soundly long ere this."
"I was waiting for you, papa," replied Zuleika, in a low, musical voice,
that sounded like a chime of tiny bells; "I could not retire to my
couch while you were toiling."
M. Dantes pointed to a stool; the young girl brought it and seated
herself at his feet; he drew her to his knee, smoothing her tresses
gently and affectionately.
"So you would not desert me, darling?" he said, with a glad smile.
"No, indeed, dear papa," answered she, nestling closer to him.
"Will you always love me as you do now, Zuleika?" asked the father,
looking down into the liquid depths of her eyes.
"Oh! papa, what a question, what a singular question!" said the girl,
springing to her feet, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissing
him again and again.
"But love of another kind and for another will come along after awhile,"
said the Deputy sadly, "and then you will forget your father."
Zuleika blushed and hung her head in maidenly modesty; then she
exclaimed:
"No, no, papa; never will I forget you whatever may happen!"
"Ah! my darling, you know not what you are saying; it is only natural
for a woman to cast her father aside and cleave unto her husband."
"But, papa, I have not even a lover yet, and, besides, I am not a woman;
I am merely a little girl and your own, true, loving daughter."
"Yes, yes, but you must remember that last year, young as you were
then, you attracted marked attention from several youthful Romans of the
best families in the Eternal City, and that one of them, the Viscount
Giovanni Massetti, went so far as to ask me for your hand."
At the mention of Massetti's name the blush upon Zuleika's cheek
deepened. She trembled slightly, but said nothing; her heart fluttered
painfully, but the pain was not altogether disagreeable. The young
Viscount was evidently not unpleasing to her.
M. Dantes resumed, looking at her fixedly the while:
"My daughter, as you were then attending the convent school I felt it my
duty to deny Giovanni Massetti's solicitation, nay, his ardent,
impetuous prayer, but I did not deprive him of all hope; I gave him
permission to urge his suit with you personally after a year from that
time had elapsed. Did I do right?"
Zuleika maintained silence, but blushed and trembled more than ever,
while her heart fluttered so that she placed her hand upon her breast to
still it.
"Come, come, my daughter, answer me," said the Deputy, kindly, "did I do
right? Tell me what your little heart says."
"I do not know, oh! I do not know!" cried Zuleika, bursting into tears.
"There, there now," said her father, soothingly; "I did not mean either
to frighten or wound you. If the Viscount is displeasing to you I will
answer his letter to-morrow and tell him as gently as possible that he
has no hope of winning your hand."
"What! have you received a letter from Giovanni?" exclaimed Zuleika,
with sudden interest, her tears vanishing instantly and her pretty face
brightening up.
"Ho! ho!" said M. Dantes to himself, "Mademoiselle has waked up in
earnest now." Then he added aloud: "Yes, one came this afternoon. The
Viscount is in Paris, and has claimed the privilege I accorded him a
year ago, provided you interposed no objection. However, the matter can
speedily be settled. Young Massetti is a man of honor, and will not for
an instant think of troubling with his attentions a lady to whom they
cannot prove acceptable."
"Oh! papa, papa, don't tell him that; he wouldn't come here if you did;
besides, did--did--did I ever tell you that Giovanni's attentions would
prove unacceptable to me?"
"No, not in so many words," answered M. Dantes, archly, "but I inferred
as much from your manner and tears just now. So I am to understand that
you do not want me to reply to the Viscount's letter, am I?"
"Oh! yes, I want you to reply to his letter, but--but----"
"But what, darling?"
"I do not wish you to tell him there is no hope!"
"You think there is hope, then?"
"I--I--am afraid so, dear papa!"
"Yet a moment ago you told me you had no lover, and were merely a little
girl!"
"I did not know then that Giovanni was in Paris, and I--I--thought he
had forgotten all about me."
M. Dantes smiled as he said:
"That makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes," answered Zuleika, innocently; then she added in a tone of great
earnestness: "Write to Giovanni in the morning, and--and tell him I
shall be delighted to see him."
"I will write and inform him that, so far as I have been able to
discover, my daughter does not object to receiving a visit from him."
"Oh! that would be too cold and formal, and Giovanni is such an old
friend."
"Well, well," said M. Dantes, "I will so frame my reply as to give
entire satisfaction both to you and him. Now, my child, kiss me and
retire to your couch, for it is very, very late."
Zuleika embraced her father and kissed him repeatedly; then, with
beaming eyes and a countenance overflowing with happiness she ran
lightly from the apartment.
As she tripped joyously away, M. Dantes arose from his arm-chair and
gazed after her with a look of the utmost sadness.
"Oh! my daughter, my daughter," he murmured, "soon will you also quit
me, and then I shall be alone, indeed! True, Esperance will remain,
but, generous, manly and heroic as he is, he can never fill the void
Zuleika will leave. Oh! Haydee, Haydee, my beloved wife, why were you
torn so ruthlessly from your husband's heart!"
Zuleika's dreams that night were rose-hued and delicious, and in all of
them the central figure was the youthful Roman Viscount.
When day dawned M. Dantes was still pacing his library.