Part 8 (2/2)
”Aye! but will he obey such counsel?” exclaimed Chateau-Renaud. ”Will not the result of such enlightenment and excitement prove, as it ever has proved, anarchy, revolution, guilt, blood? Who shall restrain the monster once lashed into madness?”
”But you can surely perceive no such design in this play, and no such effect,” rejoined Beauchamp.
”In the abstract,” replied the Count, ”this production is unexceptionable--most beautiful, yet most powerful. How it could have been the work of an unpracticed pen, embodying as it does pa.s.sages of which the first dramatists of the romantic school might be proud, I cannot imagine. Besides, there seems familiar acquaintance with stage effect and the way in which it is produced. But that might have been, and probably was, the result of some professional player's suggestions.”
”And, then, the profound knowledge of the human heart evinced--its pa.s.sions, motives and principles of action,” added the journalist.
”There seems an individuality, a personality in the production, which compels the idea that the author is himself the hero, that he has himself experienced the evils he so vividly portrays, that the drama is at once the effusion of his own heart and the embodiment of his own history. Can that man be M. Dantes?”
”If it be he,” cried the Secretary, ”there is more reason than ever to call him the most dangerous man in Paris. What with his speeches in the Chamber and his plays at the theatre, all tending to one most unrighteous end, and all aiming to inflame such an explosive ma.s.s as the workmen of Paris, he may be regarded as little less than the very agent of the fiend to accomplish havoc on earth!”
”Yet, strange to say, my dear Secretary,” said the journalist, laughing, ”you have not yet estimated the t.i.the of this man's influence for good, or, as you think, for evil. Rumor proclaims him to be as immensely opulent as appearances would indicate him to be impoverished.
That his whole soul, as you say, is devoted to the people, with all his wonderful powers of mind and person, is undoubted. That he has availed himself of that grand lever, the press, to accomplish his purposes, be they good or bad, seems equally certain. 'La Reforme,' the new daily, is undoubtedly under his control, if not sustained by his pen and his purse, for it has a wider circulation than all the other Parisian papers put together. It goes everywhere--it seeks the alleys, not the boulevards, finds its way to the threshold of all, whether paid for or not.”
”Ah!” cried Debray, in great agitation. ”Is it so?”
”And, then, not only is the public press subsidized by this man, if report is not even falser than usual, but a whole army of pamphleteers, journalists, litterateurs and students await his bidding, as well as some of the most distinguished novelists and dramatists of the nation and age!”
”My G.o.d!” exclaimed the Count. ”Can this be so?”
”Nay--nay,” replied Beauchamp, ”I make no a.s.sertions, I merely retail rumors. But what cannot uncounted wealth achieve, directed by genius and intelligence?”
”But is this man actually so wealthy?” asked Debray, pale with agitation. ”His manners, dress, equipage, residence and mode of life would indicate just the reverse.”
”I know not--no one knows,” said Beauchamp. ”It is only known to myself and to a few others that he dwells in the mansion No. 27 Rue du Helder, formerly the residence of the Count de Morcerf, and that his private apartment is that pavilion at the corner of the court, where at half-past ten, on the morning of the 21st of May, 1838, we breakfasted with our amiable friend Albert, and were met by that remarkable man, the Count of Monte-Cristo.”
”I remember that morning well,” said Chateau-Renaud.
”Everything, it is said, remains in that once splendid mansion precisely as when it was deserted by the Countess and her son, at the time of the suicide of the Count--everything except that glorious picture of the Catalan fisherman by Leopold Robert, in Albert's exquisite chamber, which alone he took with him.”
”It is strange that a man so opulent as you represent M. Dantes to be, should adopt his magnificence at second hand,” observed Debray, coolly.
”But I do not represent him as opulent, my dear Lucien; and he certainly is the last man either to invent magnificence or to adopt it. Why, he is as plain in manners and mode as St. Simon himself. His dress you have seen; as to equipage his only conveyance is a public fiacre; as to diet, household arrangements and everything else of a personal nature, nothing can be more republican and less epicurean than is witnessed at his house. His study, Albert de Morcerf's pavilion, is said to be the only sumptuous apartment in the whole establishment; and that sumptuousness is of a character entirely literary and practical. His retinue consists of three servants, called Baptistin, Bertuccio and Ali, the latter being a Nubian, although fame gives him a perfect army of servitors prompt to execute his bidding. But I will not indulge your skeptical and sarcastic nature, Lucien, with a detail of all that rumor says of this wonderful man. I will only say that all he is, and has or hopes for seems devoted to one single object--the welfare of his race.”
”Has he a wife?” asked Debray.
”He is a widower, with two children, a young girl, called Zuleika, and a youthful son, called Esperance. But my acquaintance with him is wholly of a public character. I have never been in his house, and very few there are who have been. But here we are.”
And the coupe stopped at Very's.
CHAPTER VII.
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