She saw the count with a pistol in his hand, she had seen two swords on the table and she ran forward.
Baptistin looked enquiringly at his master. The count gestured to dismiss him and Baptistin left, closing the door behind him.
‘Who are you, Madame?’ the count asked the veiled woman.
The stranger looked all around her to make sure that she was quite alone then, bending forward as if she wanted to kneel down and clasping her hands, she said in a desperate voice: ‘Edmond! You must not kill my son!’
The count took one pace backwards, gave a faint cry and dropped the pistol he was holding.
‘What name did you say, Madame de Morcerf?’ he asked.
‘Yours!’ she cried, throwing back her veil. ‘Yours, which perhaps I alone have not forgotten. Edmond, it is not Madame de Morcerf who has come to you, it is Mercédès.’
‘Mercédès is dead, Madame,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘I do not know anyone of that name.’
‘Mercédès is alive, Monsieur, and Mercédès remembers, for she alone recognized you when she saw you, and even without seeing you, by your voice, Edmond, by the mere sound of your voice. Since that time she has followed you step by step, she has watched you and been wary of you, because she did not need to wonder whose was the hand that has struck down Monsieur de Morcerf.’
‘Fernand, you mean, Madame,’ Monte Cristo said, with bitter irony in his voice. ‘Since we are remembering one another’s names, let’s remember all of them.’
Monte Cristo had spoken Fernand’s name with such hatred that Mercédès felt a shudder of fear run through her whole body.
‘You see, Edmond, I was not mistaken!’ she cried. ‘I was right to say to you: spare my son!’
‘Whoever told you, Madame, that I had any quarrel with your son?’
‘No one! A mother has second sight. I guessed everything. I followed him to the opera this evening and, from the ground-floor box where I was hiding, I saw everything.’
‘If you saw everything, Madame, then you will have seen that Fernand’s son insulted me publicly,’ Monte Cristo said with dreadful impassivity.
‘Oh, have pity!’
‘You saw,’ he went on, ‘that he would have thrown his glove in my face if one of my friends, Monsieur Morrel, had not stayed his arm.’
‘Listen to me. My son also guessed what is going on and attributes his father’s misfortunes to you.’
‘You are confused, Madame,’ Monte Cristo said. ‘These are not misfortunes, they are a punishment. I am not the one who has struck Monsieur de Morcerf: Providence is punishing him.’
‘So why do you take the place of Providence?’ Mercédès cried. ‘Why do you remember, when it has forgotten? What do they matter to you, Edmond – Janina and its vizier? What wrong did Fernand Mondego do to you by betraying Ali Tebelin?’
‘So, Madame,’ Monte Cristo replied, ‘all this is an affair between the Frankish captain and Vasiliki’s daughter. You are right, it does not concern me, and, if I have sworn to take my revenge, it is not on the Frankish captain or on the Count of Morcerf, but on the fisherman Fernand, husband of Mercédès the Catalan.’
‘Oh, Monsieur!’ the countess exclaimed. ‘What a dreadful revenge for a sin which fate drove me to commit – because I am the guilty party, Edmond! If you must take revenge on anyone, let it be on me, because I did not have the strength to withstand your absence and my loneliness.’
‘And why was I absent? Why were you all alone?’ Monte Cristo cried.
‘Because you were arrested, Edmond, and taken prisoner.’
‘Why was I arrested? Why was I imprisoned?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mercédès.
‘Yes. You do not know, Madame, or at least I hope you do not. Well, I will tell you. I was arrested and imprisoned because in the café of La Réserve, the very day before I was due to marry you, a man called Danglars wrote this letter which the fisherman Fernand personally took it upon himself to post.’ And, going to his bureau, Monte Cristo took out a faded piece of paper, written on in ink the colour of rust, which he handed to Mercédès.
It was the letter from Danglars to the crown prosecutor which the Count of Monte Cristo had removed from the dossier of Edmond Dantès on the day when, disguised as an agent of the house of Thomson and French, he had paid the 200,000 francs to M. de Boville.
Appalled, Mercédès read the following lines:
The crown prosecutor is advised, by a friend of the monarchy and the faith, that one Edmond Dantès, first mate of the Pharaon, arriving this morning from Smyrna, after putting in at Naples and Porto Ferrajo, was entrusted by Murat with a letter for the usurper and by the usurper with a letter to the Bonapartist committee in Paris.
Proof of his guilt will be found when he is arrested, since the letter will be discovered either on his person, or at the house of his father, or in his cabin on board the Pharaon.
‘Oh, God!’ said Mercédès, wiping the sweat from her forehead. ‘And this letter…’
‘It cost me two hundred thousand francs to obtain it, Madame,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘But it was cheap at the price, since it has allowed me today to exonerate myself in your sight.’
‘What was the outcome of this letter?’
‘That, as you know, was my arrest; what you do not know is how long my imprisonment lasted. What you do not know is that I stayed for fourteen years a quarter of a league away from you, in a dungeon in the Château d’If. What you do not know is that every day during those fourteen years, I repeated the vow of revenge that I made on the first day, even though I did not know that you had married Fernand, the man who denounced me, and that my father was dead, starved to death!’
‘By God’s law!’ Mercédès exclaimed, staggering.
‘That, I learned when I left prison, fourteen years after I went in, and this is why I swore, on the living Mercédès and on my dead father, to be avenged on Fernand and… I am avenged…’
‘Are you sure that the unhappy Fernand did this?’
‘By my soul, Madame, and in the way I told you. In any case it is not much more disgraceful than having gone over to the English, when he was a Frenchman by adoption; having fought against the Spaniards, when he was one by birth; having betrayed and killed Ali, when he was in Ali’s pay. What was the letter that you have just read, compared with such things? An amorous ploy which, I confess and I can understand, might be forgiven by the woman who married the man, but which cannot be forgiven by the lover who was to marry her. Well, now: the French have not had vengeance on the traitor, the Spaniards did not shoot the traitor; and Ali, lying in his tomb, left the traitor unpunished; but I, who have also been betrayed, assassinated and cast into a tomb, I have emerged from that tomb by the grace of God and I owe it to God to take my revenge. He has sent me for that purpose. Here I am.’
The poor woman let her head fall into her hands, her legs gave way beneath her and she fell to her knees.
‘Forgive, Edmond,’ she said. ‘For my sake, forgive, for I love you still.’
The dignity of the wife reined back the impulse of the lover and the mother. Her forehead was bent nearly to the carpet. The count ran over to her and raised her up.
Then, seated on a chair, through her tears, she was able to look at Monte Cristo’s masculine features, still imprinted by sorrow and hatred with a threatening look.
‘Not crush this accursed race?’ he muttered. ‘Disobey God, who roused me up to punish it! Impossible, Madame, impossible!’
‘Edmond,’ the poor mother said, trying everything in her power. ‘My God, when I call you Edmond, why do you not call me Mercédès?’
‘Mercédès,’ Monte Cristo repeated. ‘Mercédès! Ah, yes, you are right, this name is still sweet to me when I speak it, and this is the first time for many years that it has sounded so clear as it left my lips. Oh, Mercédès, I have spoken your name with sighs of melancholy, with groans of pain and with the croak of despair. I have spoken it frozen with cold, huddled on the stra
w of my dungeon. I have spoken it raging with heat and rolling around on the stone floor of my prison. Mercédès, I must have my revenge, because for fourteen years I suffered, fourteen years I wept and cursed. Now, I say to you, Mercédès, I must have my revenge!’ And, fearful that he might give way to the prayers of the woman whom he had loved so much, the count summoned up his memories in the service of his hatred.
‘Take your revenge, Edmond,’ the poor woman said. ‘But take it on those who are guilty. Be avenged on him, on me, but not on my son!’
‘It is written in the Holy Book that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation,’ Monte Cristo replied. ‘Since God dictated those very words to his prophet, why should I be better than God?’ And he gave a sigh that was like a roar, and clasped his fine hair in his hands.
‘Edmond,’ Mercédès went on, holding out her hands to him. ‘As long as I have known you, I have worshipped your name and respected your memory. My friend, do not ask me to tarnish that noble and pure image which is constantly reflected in the mirror of my heart. Edmond, if you knew all the prayers that I have offered up to God on your behalf, as long as I hoped you were still living and since I believed you were dead; yes, alas, dead! I thought that your corpse was buried beneath some dark tower or cast into one of those depths into which jailers throw the bodies of dead prisoners; and I wept! But what could I do for you, Edmond, except pray or weep? Listen to me. Every night for ten years, I had the same dream. They said that you had tried to escape, that you had taken the place of another prisoner, that you had climbed into a dead man’s shroud and that then they had flung the living corpse from the top to the bottom of the Château d’If, and that only the cry which you gave on crashing against the rocks revealed the substitution to your burial party, who had become your executioners. Well, Edmond, I swear on the head of the son on whose behalf I now beseech you, Edmond: for ten years every night I saw men throwing something shapeless and nameless from the top of a rock; and every night, for ten years, I heard a dreadful cry that woke me up, shivering and icy cold. Oh, believe me, Edmond, I too, wrongdoer though I was, I too have suffered!’
‘Did you experience your father’s death in your absence? Did you see the woman you loved hold out her hand to your rival, while you were croaking in the depths of the abyss?’ Monte Cristo plunged his hands deeper into his hair.
‘No,’ Mercédès said, interrupting him. ‘But I have seen the man I loved preparing to become the murderer of my son!’
She said these words with such overwhelming grief, in such a desperate voice, that when he heard it a sob rose in the count’s throat. The lion was tamed, the avenging angel overcome.
‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘Your son’s life? Well, then: he shall live.’
Mercédès gave a cry that brought two tears to Monte Cristo’s eyes, but these two tears disappeared almost immediately, God doubtless having sent some angel to gather them as being more precious in His eyes than the richest pearls of Gujarat or Ophir.
She clasped the count’s hand and raised it to her lips. ‘Oh, Edmond!’ she cried, ‘Thank you, thank you! You are as I have never ceased to think of you, as I have never ceased to love you. Oh, now I can say it!’
‘So much the better,’ Monte Cristo replied, ‘that poor Edmond will not have long to be loved by you. The corpse is about to return to its tomb and the ghost into the darkness.’
‘What are you saying, Edmond?’
‘I am saying that, since you command me to do so, Mercédès, I must die.’
‘Die! Whoever said such a thing? Who speaks of dying? Where do you get such ideas?’
‘Surely you don’t imagine that, having been publicly insulted, in front of a theatre full of people, in the presence of your friends and those of your son, provoked by a child who will boast of my forgiveness as a victory… you do not imagine, I say, that I have any desire to live for a moment longer. What I have loved most after you, Mercédès, is myself, that is to say my dignity, that is to say the strength that made me superior to other men. That strength was my life. You have shattered it with a word. I die.’
‘But the duel will not take place, Edmond, since you have forgiven him.’
‘It shall take place, Madame,’ Monte Cristo said solemnly. ‘But my blood will slake the earth instead of your son’s.’
Mercédès gave a great cry and rose to her feet. Then suddenly she stopped.
‘Edmond,’ she said. ‘There is a God above us, since you are alive and I have seen you again, and I trust in Him in the very depths of my heart. In expectation of His aid, I shall rely on your word. You said that my son will live: this is true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, he shall, Madame,’ Monte Cristo said, astonished that, without any further exclamation or other sign of surprise, Mercédès had accepted the heroic sacrifice he was making for her.
She offered him her hand. ‘Edmond,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears as she looked at the man before her, ‘how fine it is of you, how great what you have just done, how sublime to have had pity on a poor woman who put herself at your mercy, when everything seemed to be contrary to her hopes. Alas, I have been aged more by sorrow than by the years and I can no longer recall to my Edmond’s memory, even by a look or a smile, that Mercédès whom he once gazed on for so many hours on end. Believe me, Edmond, I told you that I too have suffered much. I repeat, it is dreary indeed to see one’s life pass without recalling a single joy or retaining a single hope; but this proves that all is not finished on this earth. No! All is not finished: I feel it from what still remains in my heart. Oh, Edmond, I say again: it is fine, it is great, it is sublime to forgive as you have just done!’
‘You say that, Mercédès. What would you say if you knew the extent of the sacrifice I am making for you? Suppose that the Lord God, after creating the world, after fertilizing the void, had stopped one-third of the way through His creation to spare an angel the tears that our crimes would one day bring to His immortal eyes. Suppose that, having prepared everything, kneaded everything, seeded everything, at the moment when He was about to admire his work, God had extinguished the sun and with His foot dashed the world into eternal night, then you will have some idea… Or, rather, no… No, even then you cannot have any idea of what I am losing by losing my life at this moment.’
Mercédès looked at the count with an expression that showed her combined astonishment, admiration and gratitude.
Monte Cristo put his head into his burning hands, as if no longer able to support the weight of his thoughts.
‘Edmond,’ said Mercédès, ‘I have only one more word to say to you.’
The count gave a bitter smile.
‘Edmond,’ she went on, ‘you will see that even though my brow has paled, my eyes have lost their sparkle, my beauty is gone and, in short, Mercédès no longer looks like herself, as far as her face is concerned… you will see that her heart is still the same! Farewell, then, Edmond. I have nothing further to ask of God… I have rediscovered you as noble and as great as ever. Adieu, Edmond, thank you and farewell!’
The count did not reply.
Mercédès opened the door of the study, and had vanished before he emerged from the deep and painful reverie into which his lost vengeance had plunged him. One o’clock was striking on the clock on the Invalides when the carriage bearing away Madame de Morcerf, as it rolled across the paving-stones of the Champs-Elysées, made Monte Cristo look up. ‘Senseless!’ he said. ‘The day when I resolved to take my revenge… senseless, not to have torn out my heart!’
XC
THE ENCOUNTER
After the departure of Mercédès, everything in Monte Cristo’s house lapsed into darkness. Around him and within him his thoughts ceased, and his energetic mind slumbered as the body does after a supreme effort.
‘What!’ he thought, while the lamp and the candles burned sadly away and the servants waited impatiently in the antechamber. ‘What! The structure
that was so long in building, which demanded so much anxious toil, has been demolished at a single blow, a single word, a breath of air! What, this “I” that I thought was something; this “I”, of which I was so proud; this “I” that I saw so small in the dungeons of the Château d’If and managed to make so great, will be, tomorrow, a speck of dust! Alas, it is not the death of the body that I mourn: is not that destruction of the vital spark the point of rest towards which everything tends, for which every unfortunate yearns, that material calm which I have so long sighed for and towards which I was proceeding by the painful road of hunger when Faria appeared in my cell? What is death? One step further into calm and two perhaps into silence. No, it is not life that I regret, but the ruin of my plans, which were so long in devising and so laborious to construct. Providence, which I thought favoured them, was apparently against them. God did not want them to come to fruition!
‘This burden which I took on, almost as heavy as a world, and which I thought I could carry to the end, was measured according to my desire and not my strength. I shall have to put it down when my task is barely half completed. Ah, I shall have to become a fatalist, after fourteen years of despair and ten years of hope had made me a believer in Providence!
‘And all this, good Lord, because my heart, which I thought was dead, was only numbed; because it awoke, it beat; because I gave way to the pain of that beating which had been aroused in my breast by the voice of a woman!
‘And yet,’ the count went on, lapsing more and more into anticipation of the dreadful future that Mercédès had made him accept, ‘and yet it is impossible that that woman, with such a noble heart, could for purely selfish reasons have agreed to let me be killed, when I am so full of life and strength! It is not possible that she should take her maternal love or, rather, her maternal delirium, that far! Some virtues, when taken to the extreme, become crimes. No, she will have imagined some touching scene in which she will come and throw herself between our swords, and what was sublime here will become ridiculous in the field.’ And a blush of pride rose to his cheeks.