Followed by the count, the baron led the way through a long succession of apartments characterized by tedious ostentation and expensive bad taste, until they reached Mme Danglars' boudoir, a small octagonal room hung with red satin and trimmed with Indian muslin. The chairs were in antique gilded wood and covered in old fabrics. Above the doors were paintings of shepherds and shepherdesses in the style of Boucher. Two pretty pastels, in oval frames, complementing the rest of the décor, made this little room the only one in the house with some individuality. Admittedly, it had been overlooked in the general design agreed between M. Danglars and his architect, one of the most famous and eminent members of his profession under the empire, so only the baroness and Lucien Debray were involved in doing it up. Danglars, a great admirer of Antiquity -- as interpreted by the Directoire -- consequently had nothing but contempt for this charming little cubbyhole to which, in any case, he was usually admitted only on condition that he brought someone with him to excuse his presence. So in reality it was not Danglars who introduced visitors, but he himself who was introduced, to be received well or ill, depending on how much the visitor's face pleased or displeased the baroness.
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Mme Danglars, who could still be described as beautiful despite her thirty-six years, was at the piano, a little masterpiece of cabinet-making, while Lucien Debray was sitting at an embroidery table, leafing through an album.
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Before their arrival, Lucien had had time to tell the baroness several things about the count. The reader knows what an impression Monte Cristo made on Albert's guests over luncheon; though Debray was not easily susceptible to such impressions, this one had not yet faded, but left its mark on the details he gave to the baroness. Mme Danglars' curiosity, excited some time before by what she had learned from Morcerf, and now by Lucien, was consequently at its apogee. The tableau with the piano and the album was just one of those little social ruses which help to disguise one's preparations, and the baroness greeted M. Danglars with a smile, which was unusual on her part. As for the count, he received a solemn but graceful curtsey in exchange for his bow, while Lucien gave him a nod, acknowledging the brevity of their acquaintanceship, greeting Danglars in more intimate fashion.
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"Baroness," Danglars said. "Allow me to introduce the Count of Monte Cristo, who has been highly recommended to me by my business associates in Rome. I have only one thing to say about him, but it is one that will instantly make him the darling of all our lovely ladies: he has come to Paris, intending to stay here for a year, and in that time to spend six million francs, so we can expect a series of balls, dinners and feasts, in which I hope the count will not forget us, any more than we shall forget him in our own humble entertainments."
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"And you have come, as I am told is your custom, from the ends of the earth?"
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The flattery in this introduction was fairly gross; however, it is so rare for a man to come to Paris, meaning to spend a prince's fortune in a single year, that Mme Danglars cast a glance at the count which was not devoid of interest. "When did you arrive, Monsieur?" she asked.
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"Yesterday, Madame."
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"This time quite simply from Cadiz, Madame."
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"You find us at an abominable season. Paris is frightful in summer: there are no more balls, no gatherings, no parties. The Italian opera is in London, the French opera is everywhere except in Paris and, as for the Théâtre Français, I suppose you know that it is no longer anywhere. So we have nothing to entertain us except a few miserable races at the Champ-de-Mars and Satory. Will you be racing your horses at all, Monsieur le Comte?"
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"What this girl has just told me…"
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"It is the plain truth, Madame, for all that," the chambermaid replied.
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"What, Madame?" asked Danglars, visibly uneasy.
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"I have spent part of my life in the East, Madame, and, as you know, Orientals prize only two things in the world: the nobility of horses and the beauty of women."
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"She tells me that when my coachman went to harness my horses, they were not in the stable. I ask you, what can this mean?"
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"Do you like horses, Monsieur?"
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At this, Mme Danglars' favourite chambermaid came in, went over to her mistress and whispered a few words in her ear. The baroness paled. "Impossible!" she exclaimed.
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Mme Danglars turned to her husband. "Is this true, Monsieur?"
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"You see, Madame: I was right a moment ago when I said that I needed a tutor to guide me in the ways of the country."
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"My dear Count," said the baroness, "you might have been gallant enough to put women first."
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"Which is?"
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"I shall be doing everything, Madame," the count said, "that is done in Paris, if I am fortunate enough to find someone who can reliably inform me on the customs of the country."
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"Oh, I am listening, Monsieur, because I am curious to know what you have to tell me. I shall let these gentlemen judge between us, and I am going to start by explaining the situation to them. Gentlemen," she said, turning to them, "Baron Danglars has ten horses in his stables. Among these ten, there were two which belong to me, delightful creatures, the finest horses in Paris. You know them, Monsieur Debray: my dappled greys. Well, just when Madame de Villefort is to borrow my carriage, which I promised to her so that she could go in it tomorrow to the Bois, the two horses suddenly cannot be found! I presume that Monsieur Danglars saw the opportunity to make a few thousand francs, and sold them. Oh, God! What a vile breed they are, these speculators!"
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"So, Monsieur?" said the baroness. "You very well know that for the past month I have had the services of the finest coachman in Paris -- unless, that is, you sold him with the horses."
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"Madame," said Danglars, "please listen to me…"
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"Madame," Danglars replied, "those horses were too lively. They were barely four years old and I was constantly afraid for your safety."
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"Indeed, I am," said the count.
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"My dear friend, I shall find a pair for you that are precisely the same, or even finer, if that is possible; but this time they will be mild-mannered and calm, and not make me so worried for you."
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The baroness shrugged her shoulders with a look of profound contempt. Danglars appeared not to notice these less than wifely manners and turned to Monte Cristo, saying: "Sincerely, I am sorry that we did not meet earlier, Monsieur le Comte. Are you setting up your house?"
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"I should have offered them to you. Believe me, I gave them away for nearly nothing; but, as I said, I wanted to be rid of them. They are a young man's horses."
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"Thank you," said the count. "But I bought some this morning which are serviceable and not too expensive. Come, Monsieur Debray, you are a connoisseur, I think? Take a look."
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While Debray was going over to the window, Danglars went to his wife. "You'll never guess," he whispered to her. "Someone came and offered me a ridiculous price for the horses. I don't know who the madman can be who is determined to ruin himself by sending his steward to me this morning, but the fact is that I made sixteen thousand francs on the deal. So don't sulk. I'll give you four thousand and two to Eugénie."
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"Is it possible?" said Monte Cristo, feigning astonishment.
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"I really don't know," said the count. "My steward meant it as a surprise to me… which cost me, I believe, thirty thousand francs."
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"Incredible!" the banker muttered.
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"If I am not mistaken, those are your horses -- your very own -- harnessed to the count's carriage."
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Danglars was so pale and disconcerted that the count pretended to try to console him. "You see how ungrateful women are," he said. "The baroness is not in the slightest touched by your consideration for her safety. Indeed, the word is not ungrateful, but mad. Then, what do you expect? They always like what is harmful to them. So, the simplest answer, my dear Baron, believe me, is to let them have their heads; then, if they break them, they have only themselves to blame."
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Danglars was astonished.
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"My dappled greys?" Mme Danglars cried, running over to the window. "Yes, undoubtedly!"
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"Bless my soul!" Debray exclaimed.
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Debray conveyed this reply to the baroness.
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The baroness whispered something to Debray, who came across to Monte Cristo. "The baroness would like to ask you for how much her husband sold you the team."
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"What is it?" asked the baroness.
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Mme Danglars gave him a withering look.
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"Very well, then!" he thought as he left. "I have achieved my aim. I now hold the domestic bliss of this household in my hands, and I am simultaneously about to win the heart of the baron and that of his wife. How fortunate! But, in the meantime," he added, "I have not yet been introduced to Mademoiselle Eugénie Danglars, whom I should have been very pleased to meet. However," he continued, with a little smile that was all his own, "we are in Paris, and we have lots of time before us… It can wait!" And, at this, he stepped into his carriage and returned home.
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Danglars did not answer. He could foresee a disastrous quarrel looming on the horizon: already the baroness's eyebrow was raised and, like that of Olympian Jove, it presaged a storm. Hearing the first rumble, Debray made some excuse and left. Monte Cristo, not wanting to compromise the position that he hoped to gain by staying any longer, bowed to Mme Danglars and retired, leaving the baron to his wife's rage.
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Two hours later, Mme Danglars received a charming letter from the Count of Monte Cristo, in which he told her that he did not wish to make his entry into Parisian society by upsetting a beautiful woman, and so begged her to accept her horses. They came in the same harness that she had seen on them that morning, except that the count had had a diamond sewn into the centre of each of the rosettes that they wore on their ears.
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Again, Ali nodded.
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"Yes, I understand," said Monte Cristo. "Have you ever hunted a lion?"
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Ali nodded and proudly drew himself up to his full height. "Very well! With a lasso, could you bring down a bull?"
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Danglars also had a letter. In it, the count asked his permission to convey this millionaire's whim to the baroness and begged him to excuse the Oriental gesture that accompanied their return.
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Ali imitated the motions of a man throwing a lasso and produced a strangled roar.
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"But could you stop two horses in their tracks?"
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That evening, Monte Cristo left for Auteuil, accompanied by Ali.
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Ali smiled.
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The next day, at around three o'clock, Ali was summoned by a ringing of the bell. He came into the count's study.
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Ali nodded proudly.
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"Good. Then listen to me. In a short while, a carriage will go by, drawn by two dapple-grey horses, the same ones that I had yesterday. Even at the risk of being run over, you must stop that carriage in front of my door."
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"Ali, you have often told me of your prowess with a lasso."
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Ali nodded.
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"A lion?"
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"A tiger?"
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Ali went down into the street and drew a line on the cobbles. Then he came back and showed the line to the count, who had been watching him. The count tapped him gently on the shoulder, which was his way of expressing his thanks. Then the Nubian went to smoke his chibouk on the corner-stone between the house and the street, while Monte Cristo paid no further heed to the matter.
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Suddenly there was a distant sound of rumbling, which approached at thunderous speed, then a barouche appeared, drawn by horses which the coachman was vainly trying to restrain as they dashed wildly forward, bristling and lunging madly this way and that.
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However, at about five o'clock, which was the time when the count expected the carriage to arrive, one might have observed in him some almost imperceptible signs of impatience. He walked up and down in a room overlooking the street, listening out from time to time and occasionally going across to the window, through which he could see Ali expelling puffs of smoke with a regularity that showed he was entirely absorbed in the important business of smoking his chibouk.
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Suddenly Ali put down his chibouk, took the lasso out of his pocket, threw it and wrapped it three times round the front legs of the left-hand horse. He was pulled three or four yards by the shock but, after these few yards, the lassoed horse came down, falling against the shaft, which it broke, thwarting the efforts of its companion to continue racing forward. The coachman took advantage of the momentary pause to leap off his box, but Ali had already grasped the nostrils of the second horse in his iron fingers and the animal, whinnying in pain, had dropped, shuddering, to the ground beside its fellow.
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In the barouche was a young woman, clasping a child of seven or eight years old in such an excess of terror that she had even lost the strength to cry out. A stone under the wheel or the branch of a tree would have been enough to smash the coach to pieces. It was already disintegrating as it drove down the middle of the street, and you could hear the terrified shouts of the onlookers as it approached.
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All this was accomplished in the time that it takes a bullet to find its mark.
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The woman recovered her senses and, in reply, indicated her son, with a look more eloquent than any entreaty. The boy was still unconscious.
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The interval was enough, however, for a man to rush out of the house opposite which the accident happened, followed by several servants. Just as the coachman was opening the door of the coach, the man lifted out the lady, one of whose hands was grasping the upholstery of the seat while the other clasped her son, who was senseless with fear. Monte Cristo carried both of them into the drawing-room and set them down on a sofa, saying: "Have no fear, Madame. You are safe."
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"Oh, Monsieur!" the mother cried. "Perhaps you are just saying this to reassure me? Look how pale he is. Edouard, my son, my child! Answer your mother! Oh, please, Monsieur, send for a doctor. My fortune to the man who can save my son!"
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"Madame, I understand you," the count said, examining the child, "but rest assured, he is unhurt, and fear alone has left him in this state."
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Monte Cristo made a reassuring gesture to calm her and, opening a chest, took out a flask of Bohemian glass, encrusted with gold. It contained a blood-red liquid, a single drop of which he put on the child's lips. Although still pale, the boy immediately opened his eyes.
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"Madame, you are in the house of a man who could not be more delighted to have relieved you of your woe," the count replied.
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"Accursed curiosity!" the lady said. "All Paris was speaking about those magnificent horses of Madame Danglars, and I was crazy enough to wish to try them out."
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At this, the mother became almost delirious with joy. "Where am I?" she cried. "To whom do I owe such happiness after so frightful an ordeal?"
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"What!" the count exclaimed, making a splendid appearance of surprise. "Are those the baroness's horses?"
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"Madame Danglars? Yes, I have had the honour; and I am all the more delighted at seeing you safe from the danger in which these horses put you, since you might have blamed me for it. I bought them yesterday from the baron, but the baroness seemed to regret losing them so much that I sent them back to her the same day, begging her to accept them as a present from me."
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"This means that you must be that Count of Monte Cristo about whom Hermine spoke so much to me yesterday?"
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"Yes, Monsieur. Do you know her?"
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"Yes, Madame," said the count.
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"And I, Monsieur, am Madame Héloïse de Villefort."
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The count bowed, like a man on hearing a name that was completely unknown to him.
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"Oh, how grateful Monisieur de Villefort will be to you!" Héloïse continued. "He owes you the lives of both of us: you have given him his wife and his son. Assuredly, without your noble-hearted servant, both this dear child and myself would have been killed."
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"Please, Madame," said Monte Cristo, "don't spoil Ali for me, either with praise or with gifts. I don't want him to learn bad ways. Ali is my slave. In saving your life, he was merely serving me, which it is his duty to do."
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"I do hope you will allow me to give a suitable reward to the man for his determined action."
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"He owes me that life," the count replied. "I saved it, so it belongs to me."
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"But he risked his own life," said Mme de Villefort, much impressed by the count's masterful tone.
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"Alas, Madame, I still shudder to think of the danger you were in."
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Mme de Villefort said nothing. Perhaps she was thinking about this man who made such a strong first impression.
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Mme de Villefort paled and clasped her son's arm, pulling him back to her. Yet the count noticed that, once relieved of her fear, she cast a brief but significant glance at the chest. At that moment, Ali came in.
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In the momentary silence, the count had time to look at the child, whom the mother was smothering in kisses. He was small and lanky, with a whiteness of skin more common in redheads. However, an unruly forest of black hair covered his domed forehead and, falling across his shoulders on each side of his face, doubled the light of juvenile cunning and spitefulness that shone from his eyes. His broad mouth and slender lips were just recovering their colour; this eight-year-old's features were those of a child of twelve, at least. His first movement was brusquely to shake himself free of his mother's arms and to go across to the chest from which the count had taken the phial of elixir. Immediately he opened it and, without asking permission, like a child used to having his every whim satisfied, began to take the stoppers off the bottles.
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"Don't do that, my young friend," the count said sharply. "Some of those liquids are dangerous, not only to drink, but even to breathe in."
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For a moment Ali's intelligent head turned away and he looked blankly at the boy, but a slight trembling of his nostril told Monte Cristo that the Arab had suffered a mortal wound.
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The child pouted and scornfully turned away. "He's too ugly," he said.
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Mme de Villefort made a gesture of joy and drew her son even closer to her. "Edouard," she said. "Look at this good servant. He is most brave, because he risked his own life to stop the horses that were bolting with us and the carriage, which was about to crash. So, thank him, because it is probable that without him we should both be dead at this moment."
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"You see, now," the count said in Arabic to Ali. "This lady asked her son to thank you for saving both their lives, and the child answered that you were too ugly."
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The count smiled as if the child had just done precisely what he hoped. As for Mme de Villefort, she rebuked her son with a moderation that would surely not have pleased Jean-Jacques Rousseau, if little Edouard had been called Emile.
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"Tell me, Monsieur," said Mme de Villefort, getting up to leave, "is this house your usual home?"
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"No, Madame," the count replied. "This is a sort of pied-à-terre that I have bought. I live at number thirty, Avenue des Champs-Elysées. But I see that you have entirely recovered and would like to leave. I have just ordered these same horses to be harnessed to my carriage. This ugly boy, Ali," he said, smiling at the child, "will have the honour of driving you back home, while your coachman will stay here to arrange for the repairs to your barouche. As soon as the necessary work has been done, one of my own teams will take it back to Madame Danglars."
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"But I shall never dare to set off with those same horses," said Mme de Villefort.
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Ali had indeed gone over to the horses, which had with great difficulty been helped back to their feet. In his hand he carried a little sponge dipped in aromatic vinegar, and with this he rubbed the nostrils and temples of the horses, which were covered in sweat and foam. Almost at once they began to snort loudly and for a few seconds trembled in all their limbs.
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"Oh, wait and see, Madame," Monte Cristo said. "In Ali's hands they will be as mild as a pair of lambs."
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DEAR HERMINE, I have just been miraculously saved, together with my son, by that same Count of Monte Cristo about whom we spoke so much yesterday evening, but whom I never thought I should see today. Yesterday you spoke to me of him with such enthusiasm that it took all the strength of my feeble spirit to refrain from mockery, but today I find your enthusiasm falls well below the man who inspired it. On reaching the Ranelagh, your horses bolted as if touched by madness and we should probably have been dashed to pieces, poor Edouard and I, against the first tree on the road or the first village signpost, when an Arab, a Negro, a Nubian, in short, a black man, one of the count's servants, I believe, at a sign from the count, stopped the horses in their tracks, though at the risk of being run down himself; indeed, it is a miracle that he was not. The count ran out and had us carried into his house, Edouard and me, where he brought my son back to life. I returned home in his own carriage; yours will be sent back to you tomorrow. You will find your horses much enfeebled after the accident. It is as though they were stunned: one would think they could not forgive themselves for having been tamed by a man. The count asks me to tell you that two days' rest on straw and no food except barley will restore them to as healthy -- that is to say, as terrifying -- a state as before.
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Then, in the midst of a large crowd, attracted to the street outside the house by the remains of the carriage and the rumour of what had happened, Ali had the horses harnessed to the count's coupé, took up the reins, got on the box and, to the great astonishment of those present who had seen these same horses rushing forward as though driven by a tornado, was obliged to make good use of the whip before they would set off. Even then, the best he could obtain from these famous dappled greys, now stunned and petrified, was such a listless and uncertain trot that it took Mme de Villefort nearly two hours to return to her home in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Hardly had she arrived and reassured her family than she sat down to write the following letter to Mme Danglars:
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Dear Valentine sends her best wishes to your dear Eugénie. I embrace you with all my heart.
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Edouard bore the ordeal with extraordinary courage. He fainted, but before that did not make a sound and afterwards not a tear. You will tell me again that I am blinded by maternal love, but there is an iron will in that frail and delicate little body.
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As for M. de Villefort, as Héloïse said, he took a black frock-coat, white gloves and his finest livery, then got into his coach which, that same evening, drew up in front of the door of number thirty, Avenue des Champs-Elysées.
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Farewell! I do not thank you for my ride; yet, on reflection, it is ungrateful of me to blame you for the capriciousness of your horses, because I owe them the opportunity of meeting the Count of Monte Cristo and, apart from his millions, this illustrious foreigner seems to me so odd and so interesting an enigma that I intend to study him at any price, even if it means another ride in the Bois with your horses.
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HÉLOÏSE DE VILLEFORT
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P. S. Arrange it so that I can meet the Count of Monte Cristo at your house. I am determined to see him again. In any case, I have just got M. de Villefort to agree to pay a visit to him; I do hope it will be returned.
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That evening, the accident at Auteuil was the subject of every conversation. Albert spoke of it to his mother, Château-Renaud at the Jockey-Club and Debray in the minister's drawing-room. Even Beauchamp paid the count the tribute, in his paper, of a twenty-line news item which presented the noble foreigner as a hero to all the women of the aristocracy. Several people went to leave their cards at Mme de Villefort's so that they would be able to pay a second visit at the appropriate time and hear the details of this exotic event from her own lips.
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