‘And after that?’
‘The one at the Tour de Montlhéry, I think.’
‘Thank you. Farewell! I shall tell you on Saturday what I think of it.’
At the door, the count met the two notaries who had just disinherited Valentine and were leaving, delighted at having completed a piece of business that was bound to do them credit.
LXI
HOW TO RESCUE A GARDENER FROM DORMICE WHO ARE EATING HIS PEACHES
Not the same evening, as he had said, but the following morning, the Count of Monte Cristo left Paris through the gate at Denfert, set off down the Orléans road and drove through the village of Linas without stopping at the telegraph which, at the precise moment when the count went by, was waving its long skeletal arms. Eventually he reached the tower at Montlhéry which, as everyone knows, is situated on the highest point of the plain of that name.
The count dismounted at the foot of the hill and started to climb it by a little winding path, eighteen inches across. When he reached the top, he was confronted by a hedge on which green fruit had come to replace the pink and white flowers. He soon found the gate into the little garden. It was a small wicket, turning on willow hinges and closed with a nail and a piece of string. He lost no time in discovering how it opened.
He was now in a little garden, twenty feet by twelve, enclosed on one side by the part of the hedge in which was set the ingenious mechanism we called a gate; and, on the other, by the old tower wreathed in ivy and strewn with wallflowers and stocks. Seeing it in this way, wrinkled and bedecked with flowers, like an old woman whose grandchildren have just been celebrating her birthday, it was hard to believe that it could have told many awful tales, if its walls had had a voice as well as the ears that an old proverb attributes to them.
The garden was crossed by a path of red sand, bordered with a boxwood hedge, already several years old and forming a contrast of colours that would have delighted the eye of Delacroix,1 our modern Rubens. The path turned back on itself to form a figure ‘8’, in such a way as to make a walk of sixty feet in a garden of twenty. Never had Flora, the youthful and smiling goddess honoured by Roman horticulturalists, been worshipped with such pure and meticulous devotion as she was in this little garden. Not one leaf on any of its twenty rosebushes bore a trace of greenfly and not a twig housed a little cluster of those aphids which gnaw and lay waste plants growing in damp soil. This did not mean, however, that it was dry here. On the contrary, the earth as black as soot and the dense foliage of the trees bore witness to a natural humidity, which could always be supplemented by artificial means from a barrel full of stagnant water at one corner of the garden. Here, on the green surface, a frog and a toad had taken up residence, but always on opposite sides of the circle, with their backs turned to one another, owing no doubt to some incompatibility of temperament. There was not a blade of grass on the path and not the shoot of a weed in the flowerbeds. No modish belle would clean and polish the geraniums, cacti and rhododendrons on her china jardinière with as much care as the person, still invisible, who looked after this little patch.
Monte Cristo stopped, after closing the gate by attaching the string to the nail, and looked all about him.
‘It would seem,’ he said, ‘that the gentleman of the telegraph has at least one full-time gardener, or else is himself passionately fond of gardening.’
Suddenly he stumbled over something behind a wheelbarrow full of leaves. The thing in question stood up with an exclamation of surprise, and Monte Cristo was confronted by a man of around fifty who had been collecting strawberries and placing them on vine leaves. There were twelve leaves and almost as many strawberries. As he got up, the man had almost knocked over the fruit, the leaves and a plate.
‘Harvest time?’ the count asked with a smile.
‘Forgive me, Monsieur,’ the man replied, touching his cap. ‘I am not up there, I know, but I have only just come down.’
‘Please do not bother on my account, my friend,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Gather your strawberries while ye may, if there are still any left.’
‘Ten more,’ said the man. ‘I have eleven here and there were twenty-one in all, five more than last year. It is not surprising. The spring was warm this year, and what strawberries need, Monsieur, is heat. This is why, instead of the sixteen I had last year, I have this year, as you can see, eleven that I have already picked, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen… Oh, my goodness! I am missing two. They were still here yesterday, Monsieur, I know they were here, I counted them. It must be Mère Simon’s son who filched them from me. I saw him lurking around here this morning. Oh, the little devil! Stealing out of someone’s garden! Who knows where he will end up?’
‘I agree,’ Monte Cristo said. ‘It’s serious, but you must allow for the felon’s youth and natural appetite.’
‘Certainly, but that makes it no less irritating. However, I beg your pardon once more, Monsieur: am I perhaps keeping one of my bosses waiting like this?’ And he looked apprehensively at the count’s blue coat.
‘Have no fear, my friend,’ the count said, with that smile of his which he could make, at will, so benevolent or so fearful and which now expressed only benevolence. ‘I am not a superior who has come to inspect you, but a mere traveller, driven by curiosity, who even now is beginning to reproach himself for coming and wasting your time.’
‘Oh, my time is not very valuable,’ the man said with a melancholy smile. ‘However, it is the government’s time and I should not waste it, but I received a signal telling me I could take an hour’s rest…’ (at this, he cast a glance towards the sundial – for there was everything in the garden at the tower of Montlhéry, even a sundial) ‘… and, as you see, I still have ten minutes to go. Moreover, my strawberries were ripe and if I had left them a day longer… Now, truly, Monsieur, would you believe me if I were to say that the dormice eat them?’
‘Goodness, no, I should never have believed it,’ Monte Cristo replied gravely. ‘They are not good neighbours, dormice, for those who do not eat them, as the Romans did.’
‘Oh? Did the Romans eat them?’ the gardener asked. ‘Dormice?’
‘So Petronius tells us,’ said the count.
‘Really? They can’t taste very good, even though people say “plump as a dormouse”. And it’s not surprising that they are fat, since they sleep all day long and only wake up so that they can spend the whole night gnawing. Last year, now, I had four apricots and they took one from me. I also had a nectarine, just one, though admittedly it’s a rare fruit. Well, sir, they ate half of it, on the side nearest the wall – a superb nectarine, with an excellent flavour. I have never eaten a better.’
‘You did eat it, then?’ Monte Cristo asked.
‘The half that remained, you understand. Delicious. Those little robbers don’t choose the worst morsels, any more than MèreSimon’s son chooses the worst strawberries. Huh! But don’t worry,’ the gardener continued, ‘this is the last time it will happen, even if I have to stay awake all night guarding them when they are nearly ripe.’
Monte Cristo had seen enough. Every man has a passion gnawing away at the bottom of his heart, just as every fruit has its worm. The passion of the telegraph man was gardening. He began to break off the vine-leaves that were hiding the bunches of grapes from the sun and immediately won the gardener’s heart.
‘Did Monsieur come to look at the telegraph?’
‘Yes, provided the rules do not forbid it.’
‘Not at all,’ said the gardener. ‘There is no danger, because no one knows or can know what we are saying.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said the count. ‘I have even been told that you repeat signals that you do not understand yourselves.’
‘Indeed we do, Monsieur, and I much prefer that,’ the telegraph man said, laughing.
‘Why do you prefer it?’
‘Because in that way I have no responsibility. I am a machine and nothing more. As long as I work, no one asks
anything more from me.’
‘Confound it!’ Monte Cristo thought to himself. ‘Can I have fallen by chance on one man who has no ambition? Damnation: that would be too unlucky.’
‘Monsieur,’ the gardener said, glancing at his sundial. ‘The ten minutes are almost up and I must go back to my post. Would you like to join me?’
‘You lead the way.’
They went into the tower which was divided into three floors. The ground floor was unfurnished except for some gardening tools leaning against the wall: spades, rakes, watering-cans and so on.
The first floor was the man’s usual – or, rather, nocturnal – home. It contained a few miserable household utensils, a bed, a table, two chairs and an earthenware sink, as well as some plants hanging from the ceiling, which the count understood to be beans and sweet peas, dried in order to preserve the seeds in their pods. They had been labelled with as much care as the work of a master botanist at the Jardin des Plantes.
‘Does it take a long time to learn telegraphy, Monsieur?’ he asked.
‘Not in itself, but the apprenticeship is long.’
‘And how much do you earn?’
‘A thousand francs, Monsieur.’
‘That’s hardly anything.’
‘But, as you can see, one is housed.’
Monte Cristo looked around the room and muttered: ‘As long as one doesn’t mind where one lives.’
They went up to the third floor; this was the telegraph room. Monte Cristo studied each of the two handles which the man used to operate the machine.
‘Very interesting,’ he said. ‘But in the long run, doesn’t this life become rather dull?’
‘Oh, yes. At first you get a stiff neck from looking; but after a year or two you get used to that. Then we have rest days and days off.’
‘Days off?’
‘Yes.’
‘When do you have those?’
‘When it’s foggy.’
‘Ah! Of course.’
‘Those are my holidays. I go down to the garden and plant, cut or prune. In short, time goes by.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Ten years, with five as an apprentice, making fifteen in all.’
‘And you are… ?’
‘Fifty-five.’
‘How long do you have to work to earn a pension?’
‘Oh! Twenty-five years.’
‘And how much does it amount to?’
‘A hundred écus.’
‘Poor creatures!’ Monte Cristo murmured.
‘I beg your pardon, Monsieur?’
‘I said that it was most curious.’
‘What?’
‘All this… that you have shown me. But you understand nothing of your signals?’
‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘And you have never tried to understand?’
‘Never; why should I?’
‘But there must be some signals addressed to you personally?’
‘Those ones are always the same.’
‘What do they say?’
‘ “Nothing to report”, “Take an hour off” or “Good-night”.’
‘That’s perfectly innocuous,’ said the count. ‘But, look! Isn’t your correspondent starting to move?’
‘Oh, yes, that’s right! Thank you, Monsieur.’
‘What is he saying? Is it something you understand?’
‘Yes, he’s asking if I’m ready.’
‘How do you reply?’
‘With a signal that tells the telegraphist to my right that I am ready and at the same time warns the one on my left to get ready in his turn.’
‘Very ingenious,’ said the count.
‘You will see,’ the man said proudly. ‘In five minutes, he will start speaking.’
‘So I have five minutes,’ thought Monte Cristo. ‘More time than I need.’ Then he said aloud: ‘My dear sir, let me ask you a question.’
‘Please do.’
‘Are you fond of gardening?’
‘Passionately.’
‘So what if, instead of a patch twenty feet long, you could have a garden of two acres?’
‘I should make it into an earthly paradise.’
‘And you don’t live well on your thousand francs?’
‘Not very well; but I can survive.’
‘Yes, but you only have a tiny garden.’
‘That’s true: the garden is not very large.’
‘And it is full of dormice who eat everything.’
‘They are the bane of my life.’
‘Tell me, suppose you were unfortunate enough to turn your head away when the telegraphist to your right started operating?’
‘Then I wouldn’t see his signals.’
‘What would happen?’
‘I couldn’t repeat them.’
‘And then?’
‘What would happen is that, if I neglected to repeat them, I would be fined.’
‘How much?’
‘A hundred francs.’
‘A tenth of your income! That’s nice!’
‘Ah, well…’ the telegraphist said.
‘Has that happened to you?’
‘Once, Monsieur, once… when I was grafting a rose-bush.’
‘Very well. Now suppose you were to change something in the signal or to send a different one?’
‘That’s another matter. I should be dismissed and lose my pension.’
‘Three hundred francs?’
‘Yes, a hundred écus, Monsieur. So you understand, I would never do that.’
‘Not even for fifteen years’ salary? Come, it’s worth considering, I think?’
‘For fifteen thousand francs?’
‘Yes.’
‘Monsieur, you are frightening me.’
‘Huh!’
‘Monsieur, are you trying to tempt me?’
‘Exactly! Fifteen thousand francs, you understand?’
‘Please, Monsieur, let me look at my correspondent to the right.’
‘No, don’t look at him. Look at this.’
‘What is it?’
‘Do you mean you don’t recognize this paper?’
‘Banknotes!’
‘Square ones, fifteen of them.’
‘Whose are they?’
‘Yours, if you wish.’
‘Mine!’ the man cried, in a strangled voice.
‘Undoubtedly! Yours and no one else’s.’
‘But look, Monsieur, my correspondent to the right has started up.’
‘Let him carry on.’
‘You have distracted me, I’m going to be fined.’
‘It will cost you a hundred francs. So, you see, it is in your interest to take my fifteen banknotes.’
‘Monsieur, my correspondent on the right is getting impatient. He is repeating his signals.’
‘Let him. Take the notes.’ And the count put the packet into the telegraphist’s hand. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘that’s not all. You won’t be able to live on fifteen thousand francs.’
‘I shall still have my job.’
‘No, you’ll lose it, because you are going to send a different signal from the one you receive.’
‘But, Monsieur, what are you suggesting?’
‘Child’s play.’
‘Monsieur, only if I were forced to…’
‘That is precisely what I intend.’ He took another packet out of his pocket and said: ‘Here are ten thousand more francs; with the fifteen thousand you already have, that makes twenty-five thousand. Five thousand is enough to buy a pretty little house and two acres of land; with the remainder, you can have an income of a thousand francs.’
‘A garden of two acres?’
‘And an income of a thousand francs.’
‘Good Lord! Oh, Lord!’
‘Take it, then!’ And Monte Cristo forced the ten thousand francs into the telegraphist’s hands.
‘What do I have to do?’
‘Nothing very hard.’
‘W
hat, then?’
‘Repeat these signals.’
Monte Cristo took a sheet of paper out of his pocket on which there were three ready-prepared signals and numbers showing the order in which they were to be sent.
‘As you see, it will not take long.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘And for this, you will have nectarines and to spare.’
This was the telling blow. Feverish, red, pouring with sweat, the man sent the three signals he had been given by the count, despite the wild gesticulations transmitted by the telegraphist to his right, who was quite unable to understand the reason for the alteration and had begun to think that the nectarine man was mad. Meanwhile the man to the left conscientiously transmitted the new signals, which finally made their way to the Ministry of the Interior.
‘Now you are rich,’ Monte Cristo said.
‘Yes,’ said the telegraphist. ‘But at what price!’
‘Listen, my friend,’ Monte Cristo said. ‘I do not want your conscience to suffer. So believe me, I swear to you that you have done no harm to anyone and that you have served God’s will.’
The telegraphist looked at the banknotes, felt them, counted them. He went pale, then red. Finally he hurried into his room to drink a glass of water, but he was unable to reach the sink and fainted among the dry beans.
Five minutes after the telegraphic signal had reached the ministry, Debray harnessed his coupé and hurried round to Danglars’.
‘Does your husband have Spanish government bonds?’ he asked the baroness.
‘Yes, indeed he does. Six millions’ worth.’
‘Tell him to sell them at any price.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Don Carlos has escaped from Burgos and returned to Spain.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I have my sources,’ said Debray, with a shrug of the shoulders.
The baroness did not need to be told twice. She hastened to tell her husband, and he in turn ran round to his stockbroker and ordered him to sell at any price. When people saw that M. Danglars was selling, Spanish bonds at once began to fall. Danglars lost 500,000 francs, but he liquidated all his stock.
That evening, you could read in Le Messager: ‘King Don Carlos has escaped from house arrest in Burgos and has crossed the Catalonian border into Spain. Barcelona has risen to support him.’