‘Take care, Madame,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘That is not how God should be worshipped. He wants us to understand and debate His power: that is why He gave us free will.’
‘Wretch!’ Mercédès cried. ‘Don’t speak like that to me. If I believed that God had given me free will, what would remain to save me from despair!’
Monte Cristo paled slightly and bowed his head, overwhelmed by the extremity of her suffering.
‘Don’t you want to say goodbye to me?’ he asked, holding out his hand.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Mercédès said, solemnly pointing to heaven. ‘I will say au revoir, to prove to you that I still hope.’
She touched the count’s hand with her own, trembling, then ran up the stairs and vanished from his sight.
Monte Cristo slowly left the house and turned back towards the port. Mercédès did not see him leave, even though she was at the window of the little room that had been his father’s. Her eyes were searching the distant horizon for the ship taking her son across the open sea. But her voice, almost involuntarily, muttered softly: ‘Edmond, Edmond, Edmond!’
CXIII
THE PAST
The count came away heavy-hearted from this house where he was leaving Mercédès, in all probability never to see her again.
Since the death of little Edouard, a great change had overtaken Monte Cristo. Having reached the summit of his vengeance by the slow and tortuous route that he had followed, he had looked over the far side of the mountain and into the abyss of doubt.
There was more than that: the conversation that he had just had with Mercédès had awoken so many memories in his heart that these memories themselves needed to be overcome.
A man of the count’s stamp could not long exist in that state of melancholy which may give life to vulgar souls by endowing them with an appearance of originality, but which destroys superior beings. The count decided that if he had reached the stage where he was blaming himself, then there must be some mistake in his calculations.
‘I think ill of the past,’ he said, ‘and cannot have been mistaken in that way. What! Could the goal that I set myself have been wrong? What, have I been on the wrong road for the past ten years? What, can it be that in a single hour the architect can become convinced that the work into which he has put all his hopes was, if not impossible, then sacrilegious?
‘I cannot accept that idea, because it would drive me mad. What my thinking today lacks is a proper assessment of the past, because I am looking at this past from the other end of the horizon. Indeed, as one goes forward, so the past, like the landscape through which one is walking, is gradually effaced. What is happening to me is what happens to people who are wounded in a dream: they look at their wound and they feel it but cannot remember how it was caused.
‘Come, then, resurrected man; come, extravagant Croesus; come, sleepwalker; come, all-powerful visionary; come, invincible millionaire, and, for an instant, rediscover that dread prospect of a life of poverty and starvation. Go back down the roads where fate drove, where misfortune led and where despair greeted you. Too many diamonds, gold and happiness now shine from the glass of the mirror in which Monte Cristo gazes on Dantès. Hide the diamonds, dull the gold, dampen the rays. Let the rich man rediscover the poor one, the free man the prisoner, and the resurrected man the corpse.’
Even as he was saying this to himself, Monte Cristo went down the Rue de la Caisserie. This was the same street down which, one night twenty-four years before, he had been led by a silent guard. These houses, now bright and full of life, had then been dark, silent and shuttered.
‘Yet they are the same,’ Monte Cristo muttered. ‘The difference is that then it was night and now it is full daylight. It is the sun that brings light and joy to all this.’
He went down on to the quays along the Rue Saint-Laurent and walked towards the Consigne. This was the point on the port from which he had been brought to the ship. A pleasure-boat was going past with its superstructure covered in cotton twill. Monte Cristo called the master, who immediately turned the boat towards him with the eagerness shown in such circumstances by a boatman who senses a good tip in the offing.
The weather was splendid, the journey a delight. The sun was setting on the horizon, blazing red in the waters that caught fire as it descended towards them. The sea was flat as a mirror, but wrinkled from time to time by leaping fish, chased by some unseen enemy, that jumped out of the water to look for safety in another element. Finally, on the horizon could be seen the fishing boats on their way to Les Martigues or the merchant ships bound for Corsica or Spain, passing by as white and elegant as travelling gulls.
Despite the clear sky and the finely shaped ships, despite the golden light flooding the scene, the count, wrapped in his cloak, recalled one by one all the details of the dreadful journey: the lone light burning in Les Catalans, the sight of the Château d’If that told him where he was being taken, the struggle with the gendarmes when he tried to jump into the water, his despair when he felt himself overcome, and the cold touch of the muzzle of the carbine pressed to his temple like a ring of ice.
Little by little, just as the springs that dry up in the summer heat are moistened bit by bit when the autumn clouds gather and begin to well up, drop by drop, so the Count of Monte Cristo also felt rising in his breast the old overflowing gall that had once filled the heart of Edmond Dantès.
From now on there was no more clear sky, or graceful boats, or radiant light for him. The sky was clouded over with a funereal veil and the appearance of the black giant known as the Château d’If made him shudder, as though he had suddenly seen the ghost of a mortal enemy.
They were about to arrive. Instinctively the count shrank to the far end of the boat, even though the master told him in his most unctuous voice: ‘We are about to land, Monsieur.’
Monte Cristo recalled that on this same spot, on this same rock, he had been violently dragged by his guards, who had forced him to go up the ramp by digging him in the side with the point of a bayonet.
The journey seemed long then to Dantès. Monte Cristo had found it quite short: every stroke of the oars threw up a million thoughts and memories in the liquid dust of the sea.
Since the July Revolution1 there had been no more prisoners in the Château d’If. Its guardhouse was inhabited only by a detachment of men who were meant to discourage smugglers, and a concierge waited for visitors at the door to show them round this monument of terror which had become a monument of curiosity.
Yet, even though he knew all this, when he passed under the vault, went down the dark staircase and was taken to see the dungeons that he had asked to visit, a cold pallor swept across his brow and its icy sweat flowed back into his heart.
The count asked if any former doorkeeper remained from the time of the Restoration. All had retired or gone on to other work. The concierge who showed him round had been there only since 1830.
He was taken to see his own dungeon.
He saw the pale light seeping through the narrow window; he saw the place where the bed had stood (though it had since been removed); and, behind the bed, now blocked, but still visible because of the newness of the stones, the opening made by Abbé Faria. Monte Cristo felt his legs give way under him. He took a wooden stool and sat down.
‘Do they tell any stories about this castle, apart from those to do with Mirabeau’s imprisonment2 here?’ he asked. ‘Is there any tradition connected with these dismal haunts in which one can hardly believe that men once shut up their fellow creatures?’
‘Yes, Monsieur,’ said the concierge. ‘The doorkeeper Antoine even told me one story about this very cell.’
Monte Cristo shuddered. This doorkeeper Antoine was his doorkeeper. He had almost forgotten the name and the face but, on hearing the name, he saw the face, its features ringed by a beard, and the brown jacket and the bunch of keys: it seemed to him that he could hear them rattle still. He even turned around and thought he could see the man in the corridor, in shadow
s made even darker by the light of the torch that burned in the concierge’s hands.
‘Would the gentleman like me to tell him the story?’ the man asked.
‘I would,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Tell me.’ And he put a hand on his chest to repress the beating of his heart, terrified at hearing his own story.
‘Tell me,’ he repeated.
‘This dungeon,’ the concierge said, ‘was inhabited by a prisoner, a long time ago, who was a very dangerous man and, it appears, all the more dangerous since he was very industrious. Another man was held in the château at the same time as him, but he was not a wicked man, just a poor priest, and mad.’
‘Yes, I see. Mad,’ Monte Cristo repeated. ‘What form did his madness take?’
‘He offered millions to anyone who would give him his freedom.’
Monte Cristo raised his eyes heavenwards but could not see the heavens: there was a veil of stone between him and the firmament. He considered that there had been no less impenetrable a veil between the eyes of those to whom Abbé Faria had offered his treasures and the treasures which he was offering them.
‘Could the prisoners meet one another?’ he asked.
‘Oh, no, Monsieur, that was expressly forbidden. But they got round the prohibition by digging a tunnel between one dungeon and the other.’
‘And which of the two dug this tunnel?’
‘Oh, it must surely have been the young one,’ said the concierge. ‘He was industrious and strong, while the poor abbé was old and weak. In any case, his mind wandered too much for him to concentrate on one idea.’
‘How blind!’ Monte Cristo murmured.
‘So it was,’ the concierge went on, ‘that the young man drove this tunnel – how, no one knows – but he did drive it through, and the proof is that you can still see the marks: there, do you see?’ And he brought his torch up to the wall.
‘Ah, yes, indeed,’ said the count, his voice choked with emotion.
‘The outcome was that the two prisoners could communicate with one another, no one has any idea for how long. Then, one day, the old man fell ill and died. And guess what the young one did?’ he said, interrupting his narrative.
‘Tell me.’
‘He took away the body of the dead man, put him in his own bed with his face turned towards the wall, then returned to the empty dungeon, blocked the hole and slipped into the dead man’s winding-sheet. Can you imagine such a thing?’
Monte Cristo closed his eyes and felt again every sensation that he had undergone when the rough cloth rubbed against his face, still cold from the corpse.
The keeper went on: ‘You see, this was his plan: he thought that they buried dead bodies in the Château d’If and, as he guessed that they would not go to the expense of a coffin for the prisoners, he imagined he would be able to lift up the earth with his shoulders. But unfortunately there was a custom here on the island that upset his plans: the dead weren’t buried, they just had a cannonball fastened around their legs and were thrown into the sea. And that’s what happened. Our man was thrown into the water from the top of the gallery. The next day, they found the real body in his bed and guessed everything, because the burial party said something that they had not dared to admit up to then, which was that at the moment when the body was thrown out into the void, they heard a dreadful cry, instantly smothered beneath the water into which he was thrown.’
The count had difficulty breathing; sweat was pouring down his forehead and his heart was gripped with anguish.
‘No!’ he muttered. ‘No! That doubt which I experienced was the sign that I was starting to forget; but here the heart is mine once more and feels once more a hunger for revenge.
‘And this prisoner,’ he asked, ‘did anyone hear of him again?’
‘Never, not a word. You see, there are only two possibilities. Either he fell flat and, since he was falling from fifty feet, he would have been killed instantly…’
‘You said that they tied a cannonball to his feet: in that case, he would have fallen standing up.’
‘Or else he fell standing up,’ the concierge went on, ‘and in that case the weight on his feet would have dragged him to the bottom, and there he stayed, poor fellow.’
‘Do you pity him?’
‘Good heavens, yes, even though he was in his element.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘The rumour was that the poor man had once been a naval officer, arrested for Bonapartism.’
‘Ah, Truth,’ the count muttered, ‘God made you to float above the waves and the flames. So the poor sailor does live in the memory of some storytellers; they retell his dreadful tale at the fireside and shudder at the moment when he flew through the air and was swallowed up by the sea.
‘Did they ever know his name?’ he asked aloud.
‘What?’ said the keeper. ‘Oh, yes. He was only known as number thirty-four.’
‘Villefort, Villefort!’ Monte Cristo muttered. ‘That is what you must often have told yourself when my spectre haunted your sleepless nights.’
‘Would the gentleman like to continue the tour?’ the concierge asked.
‘Yes, and I’d particularly like to see the poor abbé’s room.’
‘Ah, number twenty-seven?’
‘Yes, number twenty-seven.’ It seemed he could still hear Abbé Faria’s voice when he asked him his name, and the abbé called back that number through the wall.
‘Come.’
‘Wait,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Let me cast a final glance over every aspect of this dungeon.’
‘Just as well,’ said the guide. ‘I forgot to bring the key to the other.’
‘Then go and fetch it.’
‘I’ll leave you the torch.’
‘No, take it with you.’
‘But you will have to stay here without a light.’
‘I can see in the dark.’
‘Why, just like him!’
‘Like whom?’
‘Number thirty-four. They say he was so used to the dark that he could have seen a pin in the darkest corner of his cell.’
‘It took him ten years to reach that point,’ the count muttered as the guide went off, carrying the torch.
The count was right. He had hardly been a few moments in the dark before he could see everything as if in broad daylight. So he looked all round him and truly recognized his dungeons.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is the stone on which I used to sit. There is the trace of my shoulders where they have worn their imprint in the wall. There is the mark of the blood that flowed from my forehead, the day when I tried to dash out my brains against the wall. Oh, those figures! I remember! I made them one day when I was calculating the age of my father to know if I would find him alive, and the age of Mercédès to know if I should find her free… I had a moment’s hope after doing those sums… I had not counted on starvation and infidelity.’
A bitter laugh escaped him. As if in a dream, he had just seen his father being taken to the tomb and Mercédès walking to the altar!
He was struck by an inscription on the far wall. Still white, it stood out against the greenish stones: ‘My God!’ he read. ‘Let me not forget!’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘That was my only prayer in my last years. I no longer asked for freedom, I asked for memory, and was afraid I should become mad and forget. My God, you did preserve my memory and I have not forgotten. Thank you, God, thank you.’
At that moment the light of the torch was reflected off the walls: the guide had returned.
Monte Cristo went to meet him. ‘Follow me,’ the man said; and, without needing to return to the daylight, he took him down an underground corridor which led to another entrance.
Here, too, Monte Cristo was overwhelmed with a host of thoughts. The first thing that struck him was the meridian on the wall by which Abbé Faria counted the hours. Then there were the remains of the bed on which the poor prisoner died.
At the sight of this, instead of the anguish
he had felt in his own dungeon, a sweet and tender feeling, a feeling of gratitude, filled his heart, and two tears rolled down his cheeks.
‘Here,’ said the guide, ‘is where they kept the mad priest. And there is the place through which the young man came to join him.’ And he showed Monte Cristo the opening to the tunnel which, on this side, had been left uncovered. ‘By the colour of the stone,’ he went on, ‘a scientist realized that they must have been in communication with each other for about ten years. Poor folk, how miserable they must have been, those ten years!’
Dantès took a few louis from his pocket and handed them to the man who, for the second time, had felt sorry for him without knowing who he was.
The concierge accepted the money, thinking that it must be a few small coins; then, in the light of the torch, he realized how much the visitor had given him.
‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘you’ve made a mistake.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You have given me gold.’
‘I know that.’
‘What! You know?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you intended to give me this gold?’
‘Yes.’
‘So I can keep it in all conscience?’
‘Yes.’
The concierge looked at Monte Cristo in amazement.
‘And honesty,’ the count said, like Hamlet.3
‘Monsieur,’ the concierge said, not daring to believe in his good fortune, ‘I do not understand your generosity.’
‘It’s simple enough, my friend,’ said the count. ‘I used to be a sailor, and your story touched me more than it might another person.’
‘So, Monsieur,’ the guide said, ‘as you are so generous, you deserve a present.’
‘What can you give me, friend? Seashells, straw dolls? No thank you.’
‘Not at all, Monsieur; something that has to do with the story I just told you.’
‘Really?’ the count exclaimed. ‘What is it?’