The Count of Monte Cristo

  ‘There, my dear Viscount: you are condemned to have music this evening. No sooner have you escaped from Mademoiselle Danglars’ piano than you are entrapped by Haydée’s guzla.’

  ‘Haydée! What a delightful name! Are there really women called Haydée outside the poems of Lord Byron?’1

  ‘Indeed there are. Haydée may be a rare name in France, but it is common enough in Albania and Epirus. It is as though you were to say: chastity, modesty or innocence. It is a kind of baptismal name, as you Parisians call them.’

  ‘That’s utterly charming!’ said Albert. ‘How I should love to see our Frenchwomen called Mademoiselle Silence, Miss Goodness, or Miss Christian Charity! Just suppose that Mademoiselle Danglars, instead of being called Claire-Marie-Eugénie, as she is, was named Miss Chastity-Modesty-Innocence Danglars, dammit… Think how that would sound when they published the banns!’

  ‘Idiot!’ the count said. ‘Don’t joke so loudly; Haydée might hear you.’

  ‘Would it upset her?’

  ‘Not at all,’ the count replied haughtily.

  ‘Good-natured, is she?’ Albert asked.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with goodness, but with duty. A slave does not get upset with her master.’

  ‘Come, come! Don’t joke yourself. Are there still slaves?’

  ‘Of course, since Haydée is mine.’

  ‘I must say, you do nothing and possess nothing as other people do. Slave to Monsieur le Comte de Monte Cristo – that’s a rank in France! The way you shift gold, it must be worth a hundred thousand écus a year.’

  ‘A hundred thousand écus! The poor girl used to own more than that: she came into the world with a fortune beside which those in the Thousand and One Nights are a trifle.’

  ‘She must be truly a princess, then?’

  ‘As you say – and, moreover, one of the greatest in her country.’

  ‘I thought as much; but how did a great princess become a slave?’

  ‘How did Denys the Tyrant2 become a schoolmaster? The fortunes of war, my dear Viscount, and the whims of fate.’

  ‘Is her name a secret?’

  ‘For everyone else, it is, but for you, dear Viscount, since you are a friend and know how to keep quiet, don’t you, if I ask you not to tell anyone… ?’

  ‘On my honour!’

  ‘Do you know the story of the pasha of Janina?’

  ‘Ali Tebelin?3 Certainly, since it was in his service that my father made his fortune.’

  ‘Of course it was; I had forgotten.’

  ‘So what is Haydée to Ali Tebelin?’

  ‘Quite simply his daughter.’

  ‘What! The daughter of Ali Pasha?’

  ‘And the beautiful Vasiliki.’

  ‘And now she is your slave?’

  ‘She most certainly is.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘Why! One day when I was strolling through the market in Constantinople, I bought her.’

  ‘Magnificent! One does not live with you, dear Count, one dreams! Now, listen… But I am going to be very presumptuous…’

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  ‘Since you go out with her and take her to the opera…’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Could I be bold enough as to ask this of you?’

  ‘Be bold enough to ask me whatever you wish.’

  ‘Well, then, Count: will you introduce me to your princess?’

  ‘Certainly, on two conditions.’

  ‘I accept without hearing them.’

  ‘The first is that you never tell anyone that you have met her.’

  ‘Very well.’ Morcerf held out his hand. ‘I swear.’

  ‘The second is that you will not tell her that your father served hers.’

  ‘I swear that, too.’

  ‘Excellent, Viscount; you will remember these two oaths, won’t you?’

  ‘Please!’ said Albert.

  ‘Very well. I know you are a man of honour.’

  The count rang the bell again and Ali reappeared. ‘Tell Haydée,’ the count said, ‘that I shall be taking coffee in her room and inform her that I should like her to permit me to introduce her to one of my friends.’

  Ali bowed and went out.

  ‘Are we agreed then, Viscount? No direct questions. If you wish to know something, ask me and I shall ask her.’

  ‘That’s agreed.’

  Ali reappeared for a third time and kept the door open to indicate to his master and Albert that they could go through.

  ‘Come in,’ said Monte Cristo. Albert ran a hand through his hair and curled his moustache, while the count took his hat, put on his gloves and preceded his guest into the apartment that was guarded by Ali like an advance sentry, and protected by the three French maids, under Myrto.

  Haydée was waiting in the first room, the drawing-room, her eyes wide with astonishment: this was the first time that any man other than Monte Cristo had come into her quarters. She was seated on a sofa, in a corner of the room, her legs crossed under her, having built as it were a nest for herself in the richest striped and embroidered materials of the East. Near her was the instrument, the sound of which had betrayed her presence. It was a delightful picture.4

  When she saw Monte Cristo, she raised herself up with a smile that was at once that of a daughter and a lover, unique to herself. Monte Cristo went over and offered his hand, to which as usual she pressed her lips. Albert had stayed by the door, enraptured by this strange beauty, impossible to imagine in France, which he was seeing for the first time.

  ‘Whom have you brought me?’ the young woman asked Monte Cristo in Romaic. ‘A brother, a friend, a mere acquaintance or an enemy?’

  ‘A friend,’ Monte Cristo replied, in the same language.

  ‘Called?’

  ‘Count Albert. He is the one I rescued from the bandits in Rome.’

  ‘In what language would you like me to address him?’

  Monte Cristo turned to Albert. ‘Do you know modern Greek?’ he asked.

  ‘Alas, no!’ said Albert. ‘Not even ancient Greek, my dear Count. Never have Homer and Plato had such a poor – I might even say such a disdainful student as I was.’

  ‘In that case,’ Haydée said, showing that she had understood Monte Cristo’s question and Albert’s reply, ‘I shall speak French or Italian – if my master wishes me to speak, of course.’

  Monte Cristo thought for a moment. ‘Speak Italian,’ he said. Then, turning to Albert: ‘It’s a pity you don’t understand either modern or ancient Greek, both of which Haydée speaks exceptionally well. The poor child will have to talk to you in Italian, and this may give you a wrong idea of her.’ And he motioned to Haydée.

  ‘Welcome, friend, since you come with my lord and master,’ the young woman said, in excellent Tuscan, with that gentle Roman accent that gives the language of Dante a richer sound than that of Homer. ‘Ali, bring us coffee and pipes.’ She gestured to Albert to come over, while Ali left to carry out his young mistress’s orders.

  Monte Cristo showed Albert two folding stools, and each of them went to take one and draw it up to a kind of pedestal table, with a hookah as its centrepiece, surrounded by natural flowers, drawings and albums of music.

  Ali returned, bringing the coffee and the chibouks. As for M. Baptistin, this part of the house was off limits to him. Albert declined the pipe that the Nubian offered him.

  ‘Take it, do,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Haydée is almost as civilized as a Parisian woman. She dislikes havana tobacco, because she is not fond of foul odours, but Oriental tobacco, as you know, is a perfume.’

  Ali went out. The cups of coffee were standing ready with, for Albert, a bowl of sugar. Monte Cristo and Haydée took their mocha in the Arabic manner, that is, unsweetened.

  Haydée reached out and took the Japanese porcelain cup in the tips of her long, pink fingers, raising it to her lips with the innocent pleasure of a child drinking or eating something that she likes. At the same time two wome
n came in carrying more trays, laden with ices and sorbets, which they set down on two small tables waiting there especially for that purpose.

  ‘My dear host,’ said Albert in Italian, ‘and you, Signora, forgive my astonishment. I am naturally amazed: here in the heart of Paris I find the Orient, the true Orient, not unfortunately as I have experienced it, but as I have dreamed it; and only a moment ago I could hear the sound of a passing omnibus and the lemonade-sellers ringing their bells. Oh, Signora! If only I could understand Greek; your conversation, in these enchanted surroundings, would make this an evening that I would always remember.’

  ‘I speak Italian well enough to converse with you, Monsieur,’ Haydée said calmly. ‘I shall do my best, if you like the East, to help you discover it here.’

  ‘What can I talk about?’ Albert whispered to Monte Cristo.

  ‘Whatever you wish: about her country, her childhood, her memories. Then, if you prefer, about Rome, Naples or Florence.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Albert said. ‘There is no point in meeting a Greek if one is merely going to talk to her about all the things one would discuss with a Parisienne. Let me ask her about the East.’

  ‘Go on, then, my dear Albert. She likes nothing better than to talk of that.’

  Albert turned to Haydée. ‘At what age did the signora leave Greece?’ he asked.

  ‘At the age of five,’ Haydée replied.

  ‘And do you recollect your homeland?’ Albert asked.

  ‘When I close my eyes, I can again see everything that I used to see. There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body’s sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers for ever.’

  ‘What is your earliest memory?’

  ‘I could hardly walk. My mother, who is called Vasiliki – in Greek, Vasiliki means “royal”,’ the young woman added, tossing back her head, ‘… my mother took my hand and, both covered in a veil, after putting all the gold we had into the bottom of a purse, we went to beg for alms for prisoners, saying: “He that hath pity upon the poor, lendeth unto the Lord”.5 Then, when the purse was full, we went back to the palace and, saying nothing to my father, we sent all the money that people had given us, thinking we were poor women, to the hegumenos6 of the monastery, who divided it among the prisoners.’

  ‘How old were you at that time?’

  ‘Three,’ said Haydée.

  ‘So you can remember everything that happened around you since the time when you were three?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Count,’ Morcerf whispered to Monte Cristo, ‘please allow the signora to tell us something about her history. You forbade me to talk to her about my father, but perhaps she would say something about him, and you cannot imagine how happy I should be to hear his name on such lovely lips.’

  Monte Cristo turned to Haydée and, furrowing his brow in a way that warned her to pay the closest attention to what he was about to tell her, said in Greek: ‘, , .’ [Literally: ‘Tell us your father’s fate, but not the traitor’s name or his treachery.’]

  Haydée gave a deep sigh and a dark cloud passed across her pure brow.

  ‘What did you tell her?’ Morcerf asked, under his breath.

  ‘I repeated that you are a friend and that she has no cause to hide anything from you.’

  ‘So,’ Albert went on, ‘this distant pilgrimage on behalf of the prisoners was your first memory. What is the next?’

  ‘The next? I see myself in the shade of some sycamore-trees, near a lake whose shimmering reflection I still glimpse between the branches. My father was sitting on cushions against the oldest and most leafy of them, and my mother lying at his feet, while I, a weak child, am playing with the white beard that falls upon his chest and the cangiar7 with the diamond hilt that hung in his belt. Then, from time to time, an Albanian would come to him and say a few words, which I ignored; and he would reply, without any alteration in his voice, either “Kill!” or “Spare”.’

  ‘It’s strange,’ Albert said, ‘to hear such things from the lips of a young woman, other than in the theatre, and to tell oneself: “This is not an invention.” With such a poetic horizon, such a wondrous past, how do you find France?’

  ‘I think that it’s a beautiful country,’ Haydée said. ‘But I see France as it is, because I see it with the eyes of a grown woman, while I have only ever seen my own country with the eyes of a child, so that it seems to me always enwrapped in a mist that is either luminous or dark, depending on whether my eyes perceive it as a sweet homeland or a place of bitter suffering.’

  ‘How can someone as young as you, Signora, have known suffering?’ Albert asked, succumbing despite himself to the force of banality.

  Haydée turned to Monte Cristo who, with a barely perceptible gesture, murmured: ‘’ [‘Speak.’]

  ‘More than anything else, it is one’s first memories that furnish the depths of the soul and, apart from the two that I have just told you, all my childhood memories are sad.’

  ‘I beg you to continue, Signora,’ said Albert. ‘I assure you that I am quite enchanted to listen to you.’

  Haydée smiled sadly. ‘Would you like me to recall my other memories?’ she said.

  ‘Please do,’ said Albert.

  ‘I was four years old when, one evening, I was woken by my mother. We were in the palace at Janina. She lifted me off the cushions where I was lying and, when I opened my eyes, I saw that hers were full of large tears.

  ‘She took me away, saying nothing. But when I saw her cry, I started to do the same. “Silence, child!” she said.

  ‘Often, capricious like all children, I would carry on crying despite my mother’s consolation or her threats; but this time there was such a note of terror in her voice that I instantly fell silent.

  ‘She hurried away with me. I saw that we were going down a wide staircase. In front of us, all my mother’s maidservants were going or, rather, rushing down the same staircase, carrying boxes, bags, ornaments, jewels and purses of gold. Behind them came a guard of twenty men, armed with long rifles and pistols, dressed in a costume that has become familiar to you in France since Greece regained its nationhood.

  ‘I assure you,’ Haydée said, shaking her head and paling at the mere memory, ‘there was something sinister in this long procession of slaves and women half drugged with sleep – or so I thought at least, perhaps believing that others were sleeping because I was only partly awake myself. Gigantic shapes hurried down the stairway, their shadows cast on the ceiling by pine torches.

  ‘ “Hurry!” cried a voice at the end of the gallery. At the sound, every head was bent, as the wind blowing over the plains bends a field of corn. But I shuddered to hear it, because it was the voice of my father. He was walking behind us all, dressed in his finest attire, holding a carbine that your emperor gave him; and, his free hand resting on his favourite, Selim, he drove us before him like a shepherd with a frightened flock.

  ‘My father,’ Haydée said, looking up, ‘was an illustrious man, known in Europe as Ali Tebelin, Pasha of Janina, who made the Turks tremble before him.’

  Without knowing why, Albert shuddered on hearing these words spoken in tones of such pride and dignity. It seemed to him that something dark and fearful shone from the young woman’s eyes when, like a pythoness8 calling up a ghost, she re-awoke the memory of this bloodstained figure whose awful death made him loom gigantic in the eyes of modern Europe.

  ‘Shortly afterwards,’ Haydée continued, ‘the procession halted. We were at the foot of the steps on the edge of a lake. My mother pressed me to her beating breast and, two paces behind us, I saw my father who was casting anxious glances to all sides.

  ‘In front of us were four marble steps, with a boat bobbing at the last of them. From where we were we could see a black shape in the middle of the lake: this was the pavilion for which we were heading. Perhaps because of the darkness, it seemed a long way away to me.

  ‘We stepped down into the boat. I remember that the oars
made no noise as they touched the water. I looked over the side at them: they were wrapped in the belts of our Palicares.9 In the boat, apart from the oarsmen, there were only some women, my father, my mother, Selim and I. The Palicares had stayed at the edge of the lake, kneeling on the bottom step and using the other three as a rampart, in case they had been followed. Our boat was flying like the wind.

  ‘ “Why is the boat going so fast?” I asked my mother.

  ‘ “Hush, child!” she said. “We are fleeing.”

  ‘I could not understand. Why was my father fleeing – my father, the all-powerful, before whom others normally would flee, my father whose motto was: “They hate me, and that is why they fear me”? Yet he was indeed fleeing across the lake. He has since told me that the garrison of the castle at Janina, tired of long service…’

  Here Haydée turned meaningfully towards Monte Cristo, whose eyes did not leave hers. Consequently, she continued slowly, like someone inventing or disguising the details of the story.

  ‘You were saying, Signora,’ Albert said, paying close attention to her account, ‘that the garrison at Janina, tired of long service…’

  ‘Had negotiated with the seraskier Kurchid,10 who was sent by the sultan to kidnap my father. At this, my father decided to retire into a hiding-place that he had long kept prepared for himself (called kataphygion, which means “refuge”), after sending the sultan a Frankish officer, in whom he trusted utterly.’

  ‘Do you remember the name of this officer, Signora?’ Albert asked.

  Unseen by Morcerf, Monte Cristo exchanged a look with the young woman.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I cannot remember it but I may do so later, and then I shall tell you.’

  Albert was about to mention his father’s name when Monte Cristo quietly raised his finger to call for his silence. The young man remembered his vow and said nothing.

  ‘We were rowing towards this pavilion. It had a ground floor with arabesque ornamentation, and a first floor overlooking the lake. As far as could be seen, that was all. But beneath the ground floor was an underground passage extending beneath the island – a vast cavern into which I, my mother and her women were led. Here, piled into a single heap, were sixty thousand purses and two hundred barrels. In the purses were twenty-five million in gold coin and in the barrels thirty thousand pounds of powder.