Part 90 (2/2)
”Very well, sir,” said Monte Cristo ”Now all that is settled, do let me see the performance, and tell your friend Albert not to co; he will hurt hio hoo to sleep” Beauchamp left the box, perfectly a towards Morrel, ”I may depend upon you, may I not?”
”Certainly,” said Morrel, ”I am at your service, count; still”-- ”What?”
”It is desirable I should know the real cause”
”That is to say, you would rather not?”
”No”
”The youngblindfolded, and knows not the true cause, which is known only to God and to ive you my word, Morrel, that God, who does know it, will be on our side”
”Enough,” said Morrel; ”who is your second witness?”
”I know no one in Paris, Morrel, on whom I could confer that honor besides you and your brother Ee me?”
”I will answer for him, count”
”Well? that is all I require To-, at seven o'clock, you will be with me, will you not?”
”We will”
”Hush, the curtain is rising Listen! I never lose a note of this opera if I can avoid it; the music of William Tell is so sweet”
Chapter 89
A Nocturnal Interview
Monte Cristo waited, according to his usual custo his famous ”Suivez-moi;” then he rose and went out Morrel took leave of hi his pro at seven o'clock, and to bring E, and was at home in five minutes No one who knew the count couldht the box to his master, who examined the weapons with a solicitude very natural to a man who is about to intrust his life to a little powder and shot These were pistols of an especial pattern, which Monte Cristo had had et practice in his own room A cap was sufficient to drive out the bullet, and fro room no one would have suspected that the count was, as sports one up and looking for the point to aiet, when his study door opened, and Baptistin entered Before he had spoken a word, the count saw in the next room a veiled wo the count with a pistol in his hand and swords on the table, rushed in Baptistin looked at histhe door after him ”Who are you, er cast one look around her, to be certain that they were quite alone; then bending as if she would have knelt, and joining her hands, she said with an accent of despair, ”Edmond, you will not kill ht exclamation, and let fall the pistol he held ”What name did you pronounce then, Mada back her veil,--”yours, which I alone, perhaps, have not forgotten Edmond, it is not Madame de Morcerf who is come to you, it is Mercedes”
”Mercedes is dead, madame,” said Monte Cristo; ”I know no one now of that name”
”Mercedes lives, sir, and she renized you when she saw you, and even before she saw you, by your voice, Edmond,--by the simple sound of your voice; and from that moment she has followed your steps, watched you, feared you, and she needs not to inquire what hand has dealt the blohich now strikes M de Morcerf”
”Fernand, do you mean?” replied Monte Cristo, with bitter irony; ”since we are recalling names, let us remember them all” Monte Cristo had pronounced the name of Fernand with such an expression of hatred that Mercedes felt a thrill of horror run through every vein ”You see, Edmond, I am not mistaken, and have cause to say, 'Spare my son!'”
”And who told you, ainst your son?”
”No one, in truth; but a uessed all; I followed hi to the opera, and, concealed in a parquet box, have seen all”
”If you have seen all, madame, you know that the son of Fernand has publicly insulted me,” said Monte Cristo with awful calmness
”Oh, for pity's sake!”
”You have seen that he would have thrown his glove in my face if Morrel, one of my friends, had not stopped hiuessed who you are,--he attributes his father's misfortunes to you”
”Madame, you are mistaken, they are not misfortunes,--it is a punishment It is not I who strike M de Morcerf; it is providence which punishes him”
”And why do you represent providence?” cried Mercedes ”Why do you reets? What are Yanina and its vizier to you, Ed Ali Tepelini?”
”Ah, madame,” replied Monte Cristo, ”all this is an affair between the French captain and the daughter of Vasiliki It does not concern e myself, it is not on the French captain, or the Count of Morcerf, but on the fisherman Fernand, the husband of Mercedes the Catalane”
”Ah, sir!” cried the countess, ”how terrible a vengeance for a fault which fatality made me come to any one, it is to me, who had not fortitude to bear your absence and my solitude”
”But,” exclaimed Monte Cristo, ”as I absent? And ere you alone?”
”Because you had been arrested, Edmond, and were a prisoner”
”And as I arrested? Why was I a prisoner?”
”I do not know,” said Mercedes ”You do not, madame; at least, I hope not But I will tell you I was arrested and became a prisoner because, under the arbor of La Reserve, the day before I was to lars wrote this letter, which the fisherman Fernand himself posted” Monte Cristo went to a secretary, opened a drawer by a spring, froinal color, and the ink of which had become of a rusty hue--this he placed in the hands of Mercedes It was Danglars' letter to the king's attorney, which the Count of Monte Cristo, disguised as a clerk froainst Edmond Dantes, on the day he had paid the two hundred thousand francs to M de Boville Mercedes read with terror the following lines:-- ”The king's attorney is inforion that one Edmond Dantes, second in command on board the Pharaon, this day arrived fro touched at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, is the bearer of a letter from Murat to the usurper, and of another letter from the usurper to the Bonapartist club in Paris Ample corroboration of this state the above-mentioned Edmond Dantes, who either carries the letter for Paris about with him, or has it at his father's abode Should it not be found in possession of either father or son, then it will assuredly be discovered in the cabin belonging to the said Dantes on board the Pharaon”
”How dreadful!” said Mercedes, passing her hand across her brow, ht it for two hundred thousand francs, madame,” said Monte Cristo; ”but that is a trifle, since it enables me to justify myself to you”
”And the result of that letter”-- ”You well know,that arrest lasted You do not know that I reue of you, in a dungeon in the Chateau d'If You do not know that every day of those fourteen years I renewed the vow of vengeance which I had made the first day; and yet I was not aware that you had married Fernand, er!”
”Can it be?” cried Mercedes, shuddering
”That is what I heard on leaving my prison fourteen years after I had entered it; and that is why, on account of the living Mercedes and e ed myself”
”And you are sure the unhappy Fernand did that?”
”I am satisfied, madame, that he did what I have told you; besides, that is not much more odious than that a Frenchlish; that a Spaniard by birth should have fought against the Spaniards; that a stipendiary of Ali should have betrayed and s, what is the letter you have just read?--a lover's deception, which the woive; but not so the lover as to have e themselves on the traitor, the Spaniards did not shoot the traitor, Ali in his tomb left the traitor unpunished; but I, betrayed, sacrificed, buried, have risen frorace of God, to punish that man He sends me for that purpose, and here I as bent under her, and she fell on her knees ”Forgive, Ednity of the wife checked the fervor of the lover and the mother Her forehead al forward and raised her Then seated on a chair, she looked at the rief and hatred still i expression ”Not crush that accursed race?” murmured he; ”abandon my purpose at the moment of its accomplishment? Impossible, madame, impossible!”
”Edmond,” said the poor mother, who tried every means, ”when I call you Edmond, why do you not call me Mercedes?”
”Mercedes!” repeated Monte Cristo; ”Mercedes! Well yes, you are right; that na period that I have pronounced it so distinctly Oh, Mercedes, I have uttered your naroan of sorroith the last effort of despair; I have uttered it when frozen with cold, crouched on the straw inon the stone floor of e myself, for I suffered fourteen years,--fourteen years I wept, I cursed; now I tell you, Mercedes, Ito yield to the entreaties of her he had so ardently loved, called his sufferings to the assistance of his hatred ”Revenge yourself, then, Edeance fall on the culprits,--on hiood book,” said Monte Cristo, ”that the sins of the fathers shall fall upon their children to the third and fourth generation Since God himself dictated those words to his prophet, why should I seek to make myself better than God?”
”Edmond,” continued Mercedes, with her arms extended towards the count, ”since I first knew you, I have adored your name, have respected your memory Edmond, my friend, do not coe reflected incessantly on the mirror of my heart Edmond, if you knew all the prayers I have addressed to God for you while I thought you were living and since I have thought you ined your dead body buried at the foot of soloomy tower, or cast to the bottom of a pit by hateful jailers, and I wept! What could I do for you, Edmond, besides pray and weep? Listen; for ten years I dreaht the same dream I had been told that you had endeavored to escape; that you had taken the place of another prisoner; that you had slipped into the winding sheet of a dead body; that you had been thrown alive from the top of the Chateau d'If, and that the cry you uttered as you dashed upon the rocks first revealed to your jailers that they were your murderers Well, Edmond, I swear to you, by the head of that son for whoht every detail of that frightful tragedy, and for ten years I heard every night the cry which awoke uilty as I was--oh, yes, I, too, have suffered much!”
”Have you knohat it is to have your father starve to death in your absence?” cried Monte Cristo, thrusting his hands into his hair; ”have you seen the wo her hand to your rival, while you were perishi+ng at the bottoeon?”
”No,” interrupted Mercedes, ”but I have seen hi uish, with an accent of such intense despair, that Monte Cristo could not restrain a sob The lion was daunted; the avenger was conquered ”What do you ask of me?” said he,--”your son's life? Well, he shall live!” Mercedes uttered a cry which made the tears start from Monte Cristo's eyes; but these tears disappeared alel to collect them--far more precious were they in his eyes than the richest pearls of Guzerat and Ophir
”Oh,” said she, seizing the count's hand and raising it to her lips; ”oh, thank you, thank you, Edmond! Now you are exactly what I dreamt you were,--the man I always loved Oh, now I may say so!”