Part 16 (1/2)
”Messieurs, do you remember the fair Valentine de Villefort, whose untimely and mysterious demise all the young people of Paris so much bewailed, some two or three years ago, and whose lovely remains, we, with our own eyes, saw deposited in the Saint-Meran and de Villefort vault at Pere Lachaise, one bitter cold autumn evening, and there listened most patiently and piously to a whole breviary of mournful speeches, declarative of the said Valentine's most superlative excellence?”
”Undoubtedly, we remember it well,” was the reply.
”Then behold, and never dare to doubt the reappearance of the dead again to the ocular organs of humanity.”
”Valentine de Villefort!” exclaimed the Count, after a careful and scrutinizing survey, ”by all that's supernatural; and more exquisitely lovely than ever!”
”Then it was true, after all, the strange story we heard,” said Beauchamp, ”of the young lady's resurrection and marriage to Maximilian Morrel, somewhere far away in parts unknown?”
”No doubt,” replied the Count, ”for, if I mistake not--and I'm sure I don't mistake, now that I look more closely--that stalwart, splendid fellow, with the broad forehead, black eyes and moustache, and the order of the Legion of Honor on his breast, to set off his rich uniform of the Spahis, and on whose arm the fair apparition is leaning, is no other than Maximilian Morrel himself--the identical man who saved my worthless neck from a yataghan in Algeria.”
”How dark he's grown!” said Debray.
”No more so than all these African heroes--for instance, Cavaignac and Lamoriciere.”
”But what a splendid contrast there is between the young Colonel of the Spahis and his lovely bride, if such she be! He, dark as a Corsican; she, fair as an Englishwoman--he, upright as a poplar; she, drooping like a willow--his hair and eyes black as midnight, while her soft, languis.h.i.+ng orbs are as blue as the summer sky, and her glossy ringlets as brown as a chestnut!”
”On my word,” said Beauchamp, ”the Count grows poetical! Morrel had better keep his beautiful wife out of the way! But have you discovered who are the other couple in the box?” he added to the Secretary, who had his lorgnette in most vigilant requisition. ”Any more discoveries, Debray?”
A sigh might have been heard as the Secretary took his gla.s.s from his eye, and replied simply:
”Yes.”
”And who now?” asked Chateau-Renaud. ”There seems no end to discoveries to-night.”
”The young man who, by his decorations, seems a chef de bataillon of the Spahis,” replied Debray, ”I cannot make out. But, be he whom he may, he is effectually disguised from his most intimate friends by his luxuriant beard and moustache. As for the lady--there is but one woman in the world I have ever had the good fortune to behold who could be mistaken for her.”
”And that is?” said Beauchamp.
”Herself.”
”And who is herself, Lucien?” asked Chateau-Renaud.
”Have you forgotten the Countess de Morcerf?”
”The Countess de Morcerf?--the wife of the general who was convicted by the peers of felony, treason and outrage in the matter of Ali Tebelen, Pacha of Yanina?” said Beauchamp.
”And who blew his brains out in despair?” added the Count.
”The same,” said Debray. ”She returned to Ma.r.s.eilles with her son Albert. You remember Albert and his strange conduct in the duel with the Count of Monte-Cristo?”
”One could hardly forget such chivalric generosity, such magnificent magnanimity and such sublime self-control as were exhibited by the young man on that occasion!” said Beauchamp. ”It is to be hoped he was not equally forbearing toward the Arabs in his African campaigns, although, as his name has never been seen or heard since he entered the army, in all probability he was.”
”Well, well,” cried the Secretary, impatiently, ”the Countess retired to Ma.r.s.eilles, and there she is said to have resided in utter seclusion, in company only with Morrel's beautiful wife, devoting the vast wealth of the deceased Count to philanthropic objects, having received it, as his widow, only with the understanding it should be thus bestowed.”
”But the rumor was,” said Beauchamp, ”and indeed I was so a.s.sured by M.
de Boville himself, Receiver-General of the Hospitals, at the time, that the Countess gave all the Count's fortune to the hospitals, and that he himself registered the deed of gift.”
”Oh! that was only some twelve or thirteen hundred thousand francs,”