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"My dear Count," he said, "you see me prey to an anxiety, which is that the cuisine of the Rue du Helder may not please you as much as that of the Piazza di Spagna. I should have enquired about your taste and had some dishes prepared to suit your fancies."

"If you knew me better, Monsieur," the count replied with a smile, "you would not concern yourself with an attention which is almost humiliating for a traveller who has lived in turn with macaroni in Naples, polenta in Milan, olla podrida in Valencia, pilaff in Constantinople, curry in India and birds' nests in China. There is no such thing as a cuisine for a cosmopolitan like myself. I eat everything, everywhere, but little. And today, when you reproach me with my abstinence, I am in fact indulging my appetite, for I have not eaten since yesterday morning."

It will be remembered that the count was an abstemious guest. Albert made the observation, while expressing a fear that, from the start, Parisian life might not displease the traveller with respect to its least spiritual yet, at the same time, most necessary side.

"Did you not eat in your carriage?" asked Morcerf.

"Do you have a recipe for that?"

"No, I slept, as I am accustomed to do when I am bored but do not have the strength to amuse myself, or when I am hungry without having the desire to eat."

"Yes," said Monte Cristo. "Unfortunately my preparation, while excellent for a man like myself who leads a quite exceptional life, would be very dangerous if given to an army, which would not wake up when it was needed."

"No," Monte Cristo replied. "I was obliged to make a detour and ask for some information near Naples. This delayed me slightly and I did not want to stop."

"Can we know the recipe?" asked Debray.

"It would be invaluable to us Africans, who do not always have anything to eat and seldom have anything to drink," said Morrel.

"An infallible one."

"Indeed, yes," said Monte Cristo. "There's no secret. It is a mixture of excellent opium which I brought myself from Canton so that I could be certain it was pure, and the best hashish harvested in the East, namely that which comes from between the Tigris and the Euphrates. These two ingredients are mixed in equal proportions and shaped into pills which can be taken when needed. The result follows within ten minutes. Ask Baron Franz d'Epinay; I think he tried it once."

"Can you control sleep then, Monsieur?" asked Morrel.

"More or less."

"What! Not since yesterday morning," the guests exclaimed. "You have not eaten for twenty-four hours?"

"Would it be indiscreet to ask you to show us these precious pills?" Beauchamp continued, hoping to catch the stranger out.

"No, Monsieur. I do not entrust my real pleasures to unworthy hands. I am a good enough chemist to prepare the pills myself."

"Yes," Morcerf replied. "He mentioned it to me and has a very pleasant memory of the occasion."

"Not at all, Monsieur," said the count; and he took out of his pocket a wonderful pillbox formed out of a single emerald and closed by a gold screw which, when it was loosened, allowed to emerge a small, greenish ball, about the size of a pea. The ball had a pervasive, acrid smell. There were four or five others like it inside the emerald, which might have been able to contain a dozen of them.

"And do you always carry this drug with you?" asked Beauchamp who, as a journalist, was very incredulous.

"Always," said Monte Cristo.

This pillbox was passed around the table, but this was much more so that the splendid emerald itself could be examined than to see or sniff the pills that the guests passed from one to another.

"Is it your cook who prepares this delicacy?" asked Beauchamp.

"I had three like that," Monte Cristo went on. "I gave one to the sultan, who had it mounted on his sword. I gave the second to our Holy Father the Pope, who had it encrusted into his tiara opposite an emerald that was more or less similar, though not so beautiful, which had been given to his predecessor, Pius VII, by the Emperor Napoleon. I kept the third for myself and had it hollowed out, thus diminishing its value by half, but fitting it better for the use I wished to make of it."

"This is a splendid emerald and the largest I have ever seen, even though my mother has some quite remarkable family jewels," said Château-Renaud.

"The sultan gave me a woman's freedom," the count replied. "His Holiness, the life of a man. In this way, once in my existence, I was as powerful as if God had allowed me to be born on the steps of a throne."

"And what did those two sovereigns give you in exchange for this marvellous present?" asked Debray.

Everyone looked at Monte Cristo with astonishment. He spoke so unaffectedly that it was clear either that he was speaking the truth or that he was mad; but the emerald which had remained in his hands naturally inclined one to the first supposition.

"Perhaps," said Monte Cristo, smiling.

"It was Peppino that you freed, wasn't it?" Morcerf cried. "He was the one who benefited from your pardon?"

"Monsieur le Comte, you have no idea how much pleasure I feel in hearing you say that!" said Morcerf. "I had already let my friends know in advance that you were a fabulous being, like an enchanter from the Thousand and One Nights, or a sorcerer of the Middle Ages; but Parisians are people whose wits are so used to paradoxes that they mistake the most undeniable truths for mere figments of the imagination if these truths do not conform in every respect to the conditions of their daily lives. For example, Debray here reads and Beauchamp prints day by day that a late-returning member of the Jockey Club has been stopped and robbed on the boulevards; that four people have been murdered in the Rue Saint-Denis or the Faubourg Saint-Germain; and that ten, fifteen or twenty thieves have been arrested in a café on the Boulevard du Temple, or in the Thermes de Julien; yet they still deny the existence of bandits in the Maremma, the Roman Campagna or the Pontine marshes. So tell them yourself, I beg you, Monsieur le Comte, how I was captured by those bandits and that, in all probability, without your generous intervention I should today be awaiting my eternal resurrection in the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian, instead of giving them dinner in my unworthy little house in the Rue du Helder."

"Will you promise me," said Morcerf, "that if I tell you all that I know, you will tell me, in turn, everything that I do not know?"

"Puh!" said Monte Cristo. "You promised me never to speak of that trifle."

"Not I, Monsieur le Comte!" cried Morcerf. "That was someone else to whom you must have rendered the same service and whom you are confusing with me. Let us, on the contrary, speak of it, I beg you; for if you decide to talk about the circumstances of this affair, perhaps you will not only tell me again a little of what I know, but also a good deal that I do not."

The count smiled. "It seems to me that you played a large enough part in the business to know as well as I do what happened."

"More than fair," Monte Cristo replied.

"Well, then, even at the expense of my vanity," Morcerf proceeded, "for three days I thought myself to be the object of the coquetry of a masked lady whom I took for some descendant of Tullia or Poppaea, when in fact I was purely and simply the victim of the provocative manoeuvres of a contadina -- and note that I say contadina, to avoid calling her a peasant. All that I do know is that, naïve as I was -- still more naïve than the person I just mentioned -- I mistook for this same peasant girl a young bandit of fifteen or sixteen, beardless, narrow waisted, who at the very moment when I wanted to take the liberty of planting a kiss on his chaste shoulder put a pistol to my throat and, with the help of seven or eight of his companions, led me, or dragged me, into the depths of the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian, where I met a very cultured chief bandit who, dammit, was reading Caesar's Commentaries, but deigned to interrupt his reading to tell me that if, on the following morning at six o'clock, I had not put four thousand écus into his coffers, then on the same day at a quarter past six I should quite simply have ceased to exist. There is a letter to prove it, in the possession of Franz, signed by me with a postscript by Luigi Vampa. If you doubt my word, I can write to Franz, who will verify the signatures. That is all I know. Now, what I do not know is how you, Monsieur le Comte, managed to inspire so much respect in these Roman bandits who respect so little else. I must admit to you that Franz and I were totally overcome with admiration."

"On condition that they sinned no more," said the journalist, laughing. "I am pleased to see that they scrupulously kept their word."

"Nothing could be simpler, Monsieur," the count replied. "I had known the celebrated Vampa for more than ten years. One day, when he was quite young and still a shepherd, I gave him some gold coin or other because he had shown me the way and, so that he would not be indebted to me, he gave me in return a dagger which he had carved and which you must have seen in my collection of weapons. Later, either because he had forgotten this small exchange of presents between us or because he did not recognize me, he tried to arrest me, but I turned the tables on him and captured him myself with a dozen of his men. I might have delivered him to the justice of Rome, which is swift and would have been even more expeditious in his case, but I did not. Instead I let him and his followers go."

"No, Monsieur," Monte Cristo replied. "On the simple condition that they would always respect me and mine. Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbour, I never try to protect society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbour are in my debt."

"How did I act contrary to those principles, Monsieur?" asked Monte Cristo, who had been unable to prevent himself looking from time to time at Maximilien so attentively that the bold young man had already had to lower his eyes before the clear and penetrating gaze of the count.

"… of which he is the finest ornament," Beauchamp said gravely, emptying a glass of champagne in a single gulp.

"Monsieur le Comte!" Morcerf exclaimed. "Here you are, caught in a logical argument -- you, possessor of one of the most rigidly logical minds I have ever encountered; and you will see what is about to be clearly demonstrated to you, namely that, far from being an egoist, you are on the contrary a philanthropist. Oh, Count! You call yourself an Oriental, a Levantine, a Malay, an Indian, a Chinese, a Savage; you use Monte Cristo as your family name and Sinbad the Sailor as your Christian name; and yet, look what happens on the very day you set foot in Paris: instinctively you possess the finest and the worst quality of us eccentric Parisians, which is to lay claim to the vices that you do not have and to hide the virtues that you do!"

"At least it is honest," said Morrel. "But I am sure that Monsieur le Comte does not regret once at least having acted contrary to the principles that he has just described to us in such a positive manner."

"At last!" Château-Renaud exclaimed. "Here is the first brave man whom I have heard frankly and unashamedly preaching egoism. This is excellent! Bravo, Monsieur le Comte!"

"It seems to me," said Morrel, "that by delivering Monsieur de Morcerf, who is unknown to you, you served both your neighbour and society."

"I shall keep it," said Morcerf. "But I am afraid that you will be very disappointed, my dear Count, accustomed as you are to mountainous terrain, picturesque events and fabulous horizons. Here, you will encounter not the slightest excitement of the kind to which your adventurous life has accustomed you. Our Chimborazzo is Montmartre, our Himalayas, the Mont Valérien, and our Great Desert, the Plaine de Grenelle: indeed, they are digging an artesian well there, for the caravans to have water. We do have thieves, quite a few as it happens, though not as many as people say; but these thieves fear the meanest copper's nark infinitely more than they do the greatest peer of the realm. Finally, France is such a prosaic country and Paris such a highly civilized city that in all our eighty-five départements -- I say eighty-five, because of course I do not count Corsica as a part of France -- in all our eighty-five départements you will not find the smallest mountain without its telegraph or a single cave with the least blackness inside it, in which some police commissioner has not put a gaslight. So, my dear Count, there is only one service that I can perform for you, and I am entirely at your disposal: it goes without saying that I shall introduce you everywhere, or have you introduced by my friends. In any case, you have no need of that: your name, your fortune and your wit" (Monte Cristo bowed with a faintly ironic smile) "will mean that you can present yourself anywhere with no further introduction, and be well received. In reality, there is only one way in which I can serve you. If my experience of Parisian life and its comforts, or my acquaintance with the market, may recommend me to you, then I am at your disposal to find you a suitable house. I would not dare to offer to let you share my lodgings as I shared yours in Rome -- I who do not profess egoism but am a perfect egoist; for here there is no room to house even a shadow apart from myself, unless it were the shadow of a woman."

"My dear Vicomte," said Monte Cristo, "I can see not a single word in all that I have said or done to merit the supposed praise that I have just received from you and from these gentlemen. You were not a stranger to me: I knew you, for I had relinquished two rooms to you, I had given you lunch, I had lent you one of my carriages, we had watched the masks go past together in the Corso and we watched out of a window in the Piazza del Popolo that execution which had such a strong effect on you that you were almost taken ill by it. I appeal to all these gentlemen: could I leave my guest in the hands of those frightful bandits, as you call them? In any case, I had, as you know, a personal interest in saving you, which was to use you to introduce me into polite society in Paris when I came to France. At one time you may have considered that intention as merely a vague and fleeting project; but today, as you see, it is entirely real and you must submit, or else fail to keep your word."

"Which means 'perhaps'," said Debray.

"Yes," said Morcerf, "but recently created baron."

"The matter is under consideration, Monsieur le Comte."

"Ah! That is a very conjugal exception," said the count. "And indeed, Monsieur, I believe you said something to me in Rome about a projected marriage. Should I congratulate you on your future happiness?"

"Not at all," Morcerf replied. "My father is anxious for it to take place and I shortly expect to introduce you, if not to my wife, at least to my fiancée, Mademoiselle Eugénie Danglars."

"What does that matter," Monte Cristo replied, "if he has rendered the state some service that deserved the distinction?"

"Eugénie Danglars!" the count exclaimed. "One moment: isn't her father Baron Danglars?"

"He did, indeed," said Beauchamp. "Although a Liberal by instinct, he arranged a loan of six million francs in 1829 for King Charles X, who made him a baron, no less, and knight of the Legion of Honour, which means that he wears the ribbon, not, as you might think, in the buttonhole of his waistcoat, but quite plainly on his coat itself."

"They are my bankers in the Eternal City," the count replied calmly. "Can I be of service to you regarding them?"

Morcerf laughed: "Come now, Beauchamp, my good fellow, keep that for Le Corsaire, and Le Charivari but, in my presence at least, spare my future father-in-law." Then he turned back to Monte Cristo: "But you mentioned him a moment ago as if you knew him?"

"I don't," Monte Cristo said in an offhand manner, "but it seems likely that I shall shortly make his acquaintance, since I have a credit opened on him by the firms of Richard and Blount of London, Arnstein and Eskeles in Vienna and Thomson and French in Rome."

As he spoke the last two names, Monte Cristo looked out of the corner of his eye at Maximilien Morrel. Perhaps he expected to produce some effect on the young man and, if so, he was not disappointed. Maximilien shuddered as though he had received an electric shock. "Thomson and French?" he asked. "Do you know that firm, Monsieur?"

"Monsieur le Comte! Perhaps you might help us to solve a problem that has so far proved insoluble. That firm once did our own a great service and yet, I don't know why, always denies having done so."

"I shall look into it, Monsieur," said the count, bowing.

"In the Faubourg Saint-Germain," said Château-Renaud. "There the count will find a charming, secluded little private house."

"But the subject of Monsieur Danglars has taken us a long way," Morcerf said, "from the matter in hand, which was to find suitable accommodation for the Count of Monte Cristo. Come, now, gentlemen; let's put our heads together. Where shall we house this newly arrived guest of our great city?"

"The Boulevard de l'Opéra," said Beauchamp. "On the first floor, an apartment with a balcony. There, the count can have them bring his cushions embroidered in silver thread and, while he smokes his chibouk or swallows his pills, he can watch the whole city pass before his eyes."

"Puf! Château-Renaud," said Debray, "you know nothing beyond that gloomy and melancholy Faubourg Saint-Germain of yours. Don't listen to him, Monsieur le Comte; find somewhere in the Chaussée d"Antin -- that's the true centre of Paris."

"Morrel, don't you have any suggestions?" asked Château-Renaud. "Have you no ideas?"

"Yes, Count. The most excellent sister."

"Married?"

"Do you have a sister?" Monte Cristo asked.

"Yes, certainly I do," the young man said, smiling. "But I was waiting to see if Monsieur was tempted by any of the fine offers that he has just been made. Now, since he has not replied, I think I might venture to offer him an apartment in a charming little house, in Pompadour style, which my sister has been renting for the past year in the Rue Meslay."

"For the past nine years."

"Is she happy?" the Count continued.

"I am staying there while I am on leave," Maximilien continued, "and, with that same brother-in-law Emmanuel, I shall be at the count's disposal for any information he might require."

"As happy as any human creature may be," Maximilien replied. "She married the man whom she loved, the man who had remained loyal to us in our times of misfortune: Emmanuel Herbault."

Monte Cristo gave a faint smile.

"One moment," Albert exclaimed, before Monte Cristo had time to reply. "Be careful, Monsieur Morrel: you are trying to cage a traveller, Sinbad the Sailor, in the prison of family life. Here is a man who came to see Paris, and you want to make him a patriarch."

"Not at all," Morrel replied with a smile. "My sister is twenty-five and my brother-in-law thirty: they are young, merry and contented. In any case, the count will be free to do as he wishes; he will only meet his hosts when he chooses to come down and do so."

"What!" Morcerf exclaimed. "You are going to stay in a hotel? That would be very gloomy indeed for you."

"Was I so ill-housed in Rome?" Monte Cristo asked.

"It was not the expense that deterred me," Monte Cristo replied. "But I was resolved to have a house in Paris -- a house of my own, you understand. I sent my valet on ahead of me and he must have bought me this house and had it furnished."

"Thank you, Monsieur, thank you," said Monte Cristo. "It will be enough for me to be introduced to your sister and your brother-in-law, if you wish to do me that honour. But the reason I did not accept the offers of any of these gentlemen is that I have already arranged for somewhere to live."

"Huh! In Rome," Morcerf said, "you spent fifty thousand piastres in furnishing an apartment for yourself, but I don't suppose you are prepared to spend that every day."

"Certainly, I recall him very well," Morcerf replied. "But why did you make a Nubian responsible for buying you a house in Paris and a dumb man for furnishing it? He will have got everything back to front, the poor fellow."

At this, there was general surprise. "So, it must be Ali?" Albert ventured.

"Are you telling us that you have a valet who knows Paris!" Beauchamp exclaimed.

"Like me, he is visiting France for the first time. He is black, and cannot speak," Monte Cristo replied.

"Yes, Monsieur, Ali himself, my Nubian, my dumb fellow, whom I believe you saw in Rome."

"Not at all, Monsieur. I am certain, on the contrary, that he will have chosen everything in accordance with my tastes; because, you know, my tastes are not shared by everyone. He got here a week ago, and he will have criss-crossed the town with the instincts of a good hunting-dog, hunting alone. He knows my whims, my caprices, my needs. He will have arranged everything as I want it. He knew that I would be arriving today at ten o'clock, and since nine he has been waiting for me at the Fontainebleau gate. He handed me this paper, with my new address on it. Here, read it!"

Monte Cristo passed the paper across to Albert, who read: "Number thirty, Champs-Elysées."

"And very princely," Château-Renaud added.

"No," said Monte Cristo. "As I told you, I did not want to miss our appointment. I shaved and dressed in the carriage and got out at the viscount's door."

The young men exchanged glances. They did not know whether Monte Cristo was play-acting, but everything that this man said, despite his eccentricity, was delivered in such a simple tone that it was impossible to suspect him of lying. And, for that matter, why should he lie?

"That's really novel!" Beauchamp exclaimed involuntarily.

"What! You truly don't know your house?" Debray asked.

"So we must make do," Beauchamp said, "with ensuring that the count has all the other little things that we are able to give him. For my part, as a journalist, I offer him all the theatres of Paris."

"Is your butler also a dumb Nubian?" Debray asked.

"I thank you, Monsieur," said Monte Cristo, with a smile, "but my butler has already been ordered to rent me a box in each of them."

"No, sir, merely one of your compatriots, if a Corsican can be said to be anyone's compatriot; but you know him, Monsieur de Morcerf…"

"And you chose this honest citizen of the world as your butler, Count?" Debray said. "How much does he steal from you every year?"

"Not by any chance the good Signor Bertuccio who is so expert at hiring windows?"

"The very same: you met him at my house on the day when I had the honour to invite you to luncheon. He is an excellent fellow who was something of a soldier, something of a smuggler and, in short, a little of all that one can be. I would not swear to it that he has not been in trouble with the police over some trifle -- like a knifing, say."

"Well, then," said Château-Renaud, "you have a household all ready: a mansion on the Champs-Elysées, servants, a butler; the only thing lacking is a mistress."

"You have my word on it, no more than any other, I am sure. He is just what I need, he never takes no for an answer and I am keeping him."

Albert smiled, thinking of the beautiful Greek woman whom he had seen in the count's box at the Teatro Valle and the Argentina.

"Who will tell her?" asked Monte Cristo.

"I have something better than that," Monte Cristo replied. "I have a slave. You hire your mistresses at the Théâtre de l'Opéra, at the Vaudeville, at the Variétés. I bought mine in Constantinople. She was more expensive, but I have no further worries on that score."

"Shall we see her, at least?" asked Beauchamp. "Or, having already one dumb servant, do you also have eunuchs?"

Debray laughed. "You are forgetting that here, as King Charles said, we are Franks by name and frank by nature. As soon as she set foot in France, your slave became free."

"No, certainly not," said Monte Cristo. "I do not take my orientalism that far. All those around me are free to leave, and will have no further need of me or of anyone else. Perhaps that is why they do not leave me."

"She only speaks Romaic."

"Heavens, anybody who comes along."

"Ah, that's another matter."

They had long since moved on to the dessert and the cigars.

"My dear fellow," Debray said, getting up, "it is half-past two and your guest is charming, but there is no company so good as that one leaves, even sometimes for worse. I must go back to my Ministry. I shall speak of the count to the minister and we must find out who he is."

"And when you know who he is, you will tell me?"

"Take care," said Morcerf. "Cleverer men have given up the search."

"Huh! We have a budget of three million for intelligence. Admittedly it is almost always spent in advance; but, no matter, there will still be fifty thousand for this."

"I promise. Au revoir, Albert. Gentlemen, your most humble servant."

"Very well," Beauchamp told Albert. "I shall not go to the House, but offer my readers something better than a speech by Monsieur Danglars."

"Better than that," replied Château-Renaud. "One of the most extraordinary men I have ever seen. Morrel, are you coming?"

As he left, Debray cried out loudly in the antechamber: "Bring my carriage."

"I must just give my card to Monsieur le Comte, who has kindly promised to visit us at fourteen, Rue Meslay."

"You may be sure that I shall not fail to do so, Monsieur," the count said with a bow. And Maximilien Morrel went out with the Baron de Château-Renaud, leaving Monte Cristo alone with Morcerf.

"I beg you, Beauchamp," Morcerf said. "Not a word, I pray. Don't deprive me of the credit for introducing him and explaining him. Isn't he an odd fellow?"