英语小说网

Let us leave the banker's horses trotting smartly home with him and follow Mme Danglars on her morning excursion. We said that at half-past twelve she had called for her carriage and gone out.

She set off towards the Faubourg Saint-Germain, went down the Rue Mazarine and called for the driver to halt at the Passage du Pont-Neuf. Here she got down and crossed the street. She was very simply dressed, appropriately for a woman of taste at this time of day. At the Rue Guénégaud, she got into a cab and asked to be driven to the Rue du Harlay.

The cab drove across the Pont Neuf and through the Place Dauphine into the courtyard at Rue du Harlay. Mme Danglars paid the driver as he opened the door and swept towards the stairway, which she lightly mounted, soon reaching the Salle des Pas-Perdus.

No sooner was she inside the cab than she took a thick black veil out of her pocket and pinned it on her straw hat. Then she put the hat back on her head and was pleased to see, looking in her little pocket-mirror, that only her white skin and the shining pupils of her eyes were visible.

There was a crowd in M. de Villefort's antechamber, but Mme Danglars did not even have to mention his name. As soon as she appeared, an usher got up, came across to her and asked whether she were not the person who had an appointment with the crown prosecutor. When she replied that she was, he led her along a private corridor into M. de Villefort's study.

In the morning there is lots of business and still more busy people in the Palais de Justice. Busy people do not bother much with women, so Mme Danglars crossed the Salle des Pas-Perdus without attracting any more notice than ten other women waiting to see their lawyers.

The magistrate was sitting in his armchair, writing, with his back towards the door. He heard it open and the usher say: "This way, Madame!", then the door close, all without moving; but as soon as he heard the usher's footsteps going away along the corridor, he leapt up, went to draw the curtains, lock the doors and inspect every corner of the study. Only when his mind was at rest and he was certain of not being seen or heard, did he say: "Madame, thank you for your punctuality," and he offered Mme Danglars a seat, which she accepted, because her heart was beating so hard that she felt as though she was suffocating.

"Despite that, Monsieur, you see that I have come as soon as you asked, even though the topic must be still more disagreeable for me than for you."

Villefort gave a bitter smile and said, in response more to his own thoughts than to Mme Danglars' words: "So it is true that every one of our actions leaves some trace on our past, either dark or bright. So it is true that every step we take is more like a reptile's progress across the sand, leaving a track behind it. And often, alas, the track is the mark of our tears!"

The crown prosecutor also sat down and turned his chair around to face Mme Danglars. "Madame," he said, "it is a long time since I had the pleasure of speaking to you alone, and I deeply regret that we should be meeting to discuss something so disagreeable."

"Monsieur," said Mme Danglars, "you must understand my feelings. I beg you to spare me as much as possible. This room, through which so many guilty men and women have passed, trembling and ashamed… this chair on which I, in my turn, sit trembling and ashamed… It takes all the strength of my reason to persuade me that I am not a guilty woman and you a threatening judge."

Villefort shook his head and sighed: "I tell myself that my place is not on the judge's bench, but in the dock with the accused."

"You?" Mme Danglars said in astonishment.

"Yes, I."

"I think that, so far as you are concerned, Monsieur," said Mme Danglars, her lovely eyes briefly lighting up, "you are overscrupulous and exaggerating the situation. The tracks that you mentioned have been made by all hot-blooded youths. Beneath passion and beyond pleasure, there is always a trace of remorse; and that is why the Gospel, that everlasting succour to the unfortunate, has given us poor women as a prop the excellent parable of the sinner and the woman taken in adultery. So, when I consider the follies of my youth, I sometimes think that God will forgive them, because some compensation for them (though not an excuse) is to be found in my sufferings. But what do you have to fear from all this, you men whom everyone excuses and who are elevated by scandal?"

"Madame," Villefort replied, "you know me. I am not a hypocrite -- or, at least, I never dissemble without some purpose. My brow may be forbidding, but that is because it is darkened by many misfortunes; my heart may be stone, but it needs must be to withstand the blows that have assailed it. I was not like this in my youth, I was not like this at the betrothal feast in Marseille when we all sat at a table in the Rue du Cours. Since then, much has changed, both around me and within me. My life has been worn away in the pursuit of difficult things and in breaking down those who, voluntarily or otherwise, of their own free will or as a result of chance, stood in my way and raised such obstacles. It is rare to feel an ardent desire for something and not find that it is ardently defended by those from whom one would like to take it or seize it. So, most ill deeds present themselves to their perpetrators in the specious guise of necessity; then, when the deed has been committed -- in a moment of passion, fear or delirium -- one realizes that it might have been avoided. Blind as you were, you did not see the correct course of action, which now appears plainly and simply before you. You think: how can I have done that, instead of this? You ladies, on the other hand, are rarely tormented by remorse, because the decision rarely comes from you. Your misfortunes are almost always imposed on you and your errors almost always another's crime."

"Well?"

"Well, I must tell you… Be brave, Madame, we are not yet at an end."

"In any event, Monsieur, you must agree," Mme Danglars replied, "if I did make a mistake, I was severely punished for it yesterday."

"My God!" Mme Danglars exclaimed in terror. "What is there still to come?"

"Poor woman!" said Villefort, pressing her hand. "Too severely, since your strength twice nearly gave way; and yet…"

The baroness knew Villefort's usual restraint and was so horrified by this lurid outburst that she opened her mouth to scream, but the cry was stifled in her throat.

"How has this terrible past been resurrected?" Villefort asked. "How has it arisen from its sleep in the depths of the tomb and the depths of our hearts, like a ghost draining the blood from our cheeks and making the pulse beat in our temples?"

"You can only see the past, and it is grim, I confess. But imagine a still grimmer future, a future that is sure to be frightful… and perhaps stained with blood!"

"Alas!" said Hermine. "By chance, no doubt."

"Of course there is. Was it not chance, admittedly a fatal one, but chance none the less that was behind all this? Was it not chance that the Count of Monte Cristo bought that house? That he had the earth dug? And, finally, that the unhappy child was dug up from under the trees? That poor innocent creature, flesh of my flesh, to whom I never gave a kiss, but only tears. Oh, my heart fluttered when I heard the count speak of those cherished remains that were found among the flowers."

"Chance!" said Villefort. "No, no, Madame, there is no chance."

"I mean that Monsieur Monte Cristo, had he dug under those trees, would not have found either a child's skeleton or the iron of a box, because neither was there to be found."

"What can you mean?" Mme Danglars exclaimed with a shudder.

"And yet it is not so, Madame. This is the frightful thing that I must tell you," Villefort replied, in a stifled voice. "There were no remains discovered among the flowers, no child unearthed. No! You should not be weeping, you should not moan! You should be trembling with fear!"

"No," said Villefort, burying his face in his hands. "A hundred times no!"

"Neither was there!" Mme Danglars repeated, looking at the prosecutor with eyes of sheer terror, their pupils horribly dilated. Then, like someone trying, in the sound of the words or the voice, to grasp an idea that is about to elude them, she repeated: "Neither was there!"

"My God! You terrify me! No matter, I am listening."

"It was there. But listen to me, Madame; hear me out and you will sympathize with me, I who have borne for twenty years the burden of sorrow that I am about to tell you, without shuffling the smallest part of it off on to you."

"But was it not there that you put the poor child, Monsieur? Why deceive me? Tell me, why should you want to do such a thing?"

"You know the events of that unhappy night when you lay gasping on your bed in that room with the red damask, while I waited for you to be delivered, almost as exhausted as you. The child came and was handed to me, motionless, not breathing or crying. We thought it was dead."

Mme Danglars made a sudden movement, as though to leap from the chair, but Villefort stopped her, clasping his hands as though begging her to listen.

"We thought he was dead," he repeated. "I put him in a box that would serve as a coffin and went down to the garden, where I dug a grave and hastily buried it. I had just finished covering it with earth when the Corsican struck me. I saw a shape rise up and the flash of a blade. I felt a stab of pain and tried to cry out, but an icy shudder ran through my body and stifled the cry in my throat. I fell, dying; I thought I was dead. I shall never forget your sublime courage when, regaining my senses, I dragged myself with one final effort to the foot of the staircase where you, though you were yourself on the brink of death, came over to me. We had to hush up this awful catastrophe. You bravely returned home, supported by your nurse, while I used a duel as an excuse for my wound. Astonishingly, we both managed to keep the secret. I was carried to Versailles and, for three months, fought against death. Finally, when I seemed to be over the worst, I was prescribed the sun and air of the south. Four men carried me from Paris to Chalon, at a rate of six leagues a day. Madame de Villefort followed the stretcher in her carriage. In Chalon, I was put on the Saône, then on the Rhône and, carried by the current, I went down to Arles, where I once more took to my stretcher and continued to Marseille. My convalescence lasted six months. I heard nothing of you and did not dare ask after you. When I returned to Paris, I learned that Monsieur de Nargonne had died and you had married Monsieur Danglars.

"What had been constantly on my mind from the moment I regained consciousness? Always the same thing: the child's body which, every night in my dreams, rose up out of the earth and hovered over the grave, threatening me with its look and gesture. So, no sooner had I returned to Paris than I asked about the house. It had not been inhabited since we left, but it had just been leased for nine years. I went to find the tenant and pretended that I was most anxious that this house, which belonged to my wife's parents, should not fall into the hands of strangers. I offered them compensation in exchange for the lease. They asked for six thousand francs; I would have given ten thousand or twenty thousand. I had the money on me and, there and then, got them to sign the papers. As soon as the lease was in my hands, I set off at a gallop for Auteuil. Since I had last been there, no one had entered the house.

"It was five o'clock in the afternoon. I went up to the red room and waited for nightfall. While I was waiting, everything that I had thought during the past agonizing year rose up in my mind, more threatening than ever.

"The Corsican who had declared a vendetta against me, who had followed me from Nîmes to Paris, who had hidden in the garden and struck me: this man had seen me dig the grave and bury the child. He might discover who you were, perhaps he knew it already. Would he not one day make you pay for his silence in this terrible business? Would that not be a sweet revenge for him, when he learned that I had not died from my wound? So it was urgent for me, first and foremost, to get rid of all traces of the past and destroy any material evidence. The reality was clearly enough present in my mind.

"Night fell and I waited until it was quite dark. I had no light in the room, and gusts of wind shook the doors, behind which I constantly thought I could see someone hiding. From time to time I shuddered, thinking that I could hear your groans behind me from the bed, and I dared not turn around to look. My heart beat so fast in the silence that I thought my wound would re-open. Then, finally, I heard all the noises of the country cease, one by one. I realized that I had nothing more to fear, that I could neither be seen nor heard, and I decided to go downstairs.

"This is why I had bought the lease, why I had come here, why I was waiting.

"I reached the door at the bottom; beyond it there was a spade leaning against the wall. I had a covered lantern and stopped in the middle of the lawn to light it, then went on.

"At last I managed to control myself. I went down, step by step. The only thing that I was unable to master was a strange trembling in my knees. I clasped the stair-rail: if I had let it go for a moment, I should have fallen.

"Believe me, Hermine, I consider myself as brave as the next man, but when I went to the chain around my neck and took out the little key to the staircase -- which was so dear to both of us and which you had attached to a gold ring -- when I opened the door and saw a pale moon through the windows casting a long streak of light across the spiralling steps, I had to lean against the wall and I almost cried out. I thought I was going mad.

"It was now the end of November and all the greenery of the garden had vanished. The trees were nothing but skeletons with long, bony arms, and the dead leaves crackled like the gravel under my feet. I was so terrified that as I came close to the bushes I took a pistol out of my pocket and primed it. I still expected to see the Corsican emerging from among the branches.

"With the covered lantern, I lit up the cluster of bushes; there was no one there. I looked around and saw that I was indeed alone. No noise broke the silence of night except the sharp, lugubrious cry of an owl, calling up the ghosts of night.

"I hung the lantern on a forked branch that I had already noticed a year earlier, at the very place where I had stopped to dig the grave. During the summer, the grass had grown thickly on the spot and there had been no one there in the autumn to mow it. However, one place where the grass was thinner attracted my attention. This was clearly where I had dug the ground. I set to work. I had at last reached the moment I had been waiting for for over a year!

"So, how I hoped, how I worked and how I sounded out each tuft of grass, expecting to feel something solid beneath my spade. But, nothing! Yet the hole I made was twice as large as the first. I thought I must have been wrong and had mistaken the spot. I took my bearings, looked at the trees, tried to recognize the details that had struck me. A sharp, cold breeze was whining through the naked branches, yet my brow was covered in sweat. I remembered that the dagger had struck me just as I was stamping on the ground to cover the grave. As I did so, I leant against a laburnum-tree, and behind me was an artificial rock intended to serve as a bench, because, when I fell, my hand had gone from the laburnum to the cold of the stone. On my right was this same laburnum and behind me the rock. I fell in the same way, got up and began to dig again, enlarging the hole. Nothing! Still nothing! The box had vanished."

"The box had vanished?" Mme Danglars muttered, barely able to speak for horror.

"Don't think that I left it at that," Villefort went on. "No. I looked all around. I thought that the assassin might have dug the box up and, thinking it was a treasure, wanted to steal it and had carried it off; then, realizing his mistake, had dug another hole and put it inside. But no: nothing. Then I had the idea that he would not have taken such precautions, but purely and simply thrown the box away somewhere. If that was right, I would have to wait for daylight to look for it, so I went back up to the room and waited."

"Oh, my God!"

"Consequently I set about looking for the box, on my earlier assumption that it had been discarded somewhere. It would have to be on the path leading to the way out, but this new search was as fruitless as the first and, with a heavy heart, I returned to the shrubbery, though I no longer had any hope even there."

"When daylight came, I went down again. I walked directly across to the shrubbery, hoping to find some sign that I might have missed in the darkness. I had dug the earth over an area of more than twenty square feet and to a depth of more than two feet. A hired labourer would have taken at least a day to do what I had done in an hour. Nothing: there was nothing to be seen.

"That was enough to drive you mad!" Mme Danglars cried.

"I did hope as much for a time," said Villefort, "but I did not have that good fortune. However, gathering my strength and my thoughts, I began to wonder why the man should have taken away a body."

Mme Danglars gave a fearful cry and grasped Villefort's hands: "My child was alive!" she said. "You buried my child alive! Monsieur, you were not sure that my child was dead, and yet you buried it… Ah!" She was now standing in almost a threatening way before the crown prosecutor, grasping his wrists in her delicate hands.

"But you said it yourself: to have proof."

"No, Madame, that could no longer be it! A person does not keep a corpse for a year. He shows it to a magistrate and makes a statement. But nothing like that had happened."

"Then something more awful, more deadly and more terrifying for us, which is that the child may perhaps have been alive and the murderer saved it."

"How can I tell? I am telling you this as I might anything else," Villefort replied, staring in a manner that suggested this powerful man was nearing the limits of madness and despair.

"So? Then what?" Hermine asked, trembling all over.

"My child! Oh, my poor child!" the baroness cried, collapsing back into her chair and stifling her sobs in a handkerchief.

Villefort recovered his senses and realized that the maternal tempest gathering about his head could only be warded off by letting Mme Danglars share his own terror. He got up and went over to the baroness so that he could whisper to her: "Don't you understand that if this is the case, we are lost. The child is alive, and someone knows he is alive, someone shares our secret. And since Monte Cristo was speaking to us about a child dug up at the spot where that child vanished, then he is the one who shares our secret."

"Oh, God! Just and vengeful God!" Mme Danglars muttered; to which Villefort replied only with a sort of roar.

"Believe me, I have looked for him," Villefort said, wringing his hands. "How many times have I called him in the long sleepless nights. How many times have I wanted a princely fortune to purchase a million secrets from a million men, so that I might discover mine in theirs. So finally, when day came and I picked up the spade for the hundredth time, I asked myself for the hundredth time what the Corsican could have done with the child. A child is burdensome for a fugitive. Perhaps, seeing that it was still living, he threw it in the river."

"But the child, Monsieur, what about the child?" the mother asked obstinately.

"So perhaps," Villefort went on, "he put it in the foundling hospital."

"Impossible!" Mme Danglars exclaimed. "One may murder a man for revenge, but not drown an infant in cold blood."

"Yes, yes! Monsieur, my child is there," the baroness cried.

"I went to the hospital and learned that that very night, the twentieth of September, a child was placed in the tower, wrapped in half a cloth of fine linen, deliberately torn. This piece of cloth bore half a baron's coronet and the letter 'H'."

"That's it, that's it!" Mme Danglars exclaimed. "All my linen has that mark. Monsieur de Nargonne was a baron and my name is Hermine. Oh, God, thank you! My child did not die!"

"No, he didn't die."

"And you can tell me this. You tell me this without fearing that I shall die of happiness! Where is he? Where is my child?"

Villefort shrugged his shoulders and said: "How do I know? Do you think that, if I did, I would lead you to the answer inch by inch, like a dramatist or a novelist? No, alas, I can't tell you. About six months before, a woman had come to claim that child with the other half of the cloth. She gave all the guarantees demanded by law, and they handed the child over to her."

"But you should have enquired after this woman, you should have found her."

"What do you think I did, Madame? I pretended it was for a criminal investigation and put all the finest sleuths and cleverest bloodhounds in the police force to look for her. She was followed as far as Chalon, then they lost trace of her."

"Oh, no," said Villefort. "I have never stopped looking, enquiring, investigating, except that, for the past two or three years, I have relaxed my efforts slightly. From today, I shall resume the hunt with more persistence and determination than ever and I shall succeed, because it is no longer my conscience that drives me, it is fear."

"Yes, lost; lost for ever."

Mme Danglars had heaved a sigh, let fall a tear or given a cry for every detail of this story. "Is that all?" she asked. "Did you stop there?"

"The wickedness of men runs very deep," said Villefort, "since it is deeper than the kindness of God. Did you notice the man's eyes while he was talking to us?"

"Lost trace?"

"But it seems to me that the Count of Monte Cristo can know nothing, or he would not seek our company in the way he does."

"But you would have been wrong, as you can see."

"No."

"But have you ever looked closely at him?"

"Of course. He is odd, that's all. I did, however, notice one thing which is that, throughout the whole of that exquisite meal which he gave us, he himself touched nothing from any dish."

"Yes, I too noticed that. If I had known what I know now, I should not have eaten anything myself. I should have thought he wanted to poison us."

"You will understand," Villefort said affectionately, "if I repeat: no one -- forgive me for insisting -- no one in the world?"

"Never, not a soul."

"Certainly, but that man, believe me, has some other plans. This is why I wanted to see you, why I asked to speak to you and why I wanted to warn you against everyone, but especially against him. Tell me," he said, staring harder at the baroness than ever, "have you mentioned our affair to anyone?"

"Yes, I do fully understand," the baroness said, blushing. "Never, I swear."

"You don't write down every evening what has happened during the day: you don't keep a diary?"

"And, as far as you know, you don't talk in your sleep?"

"No. Alas, my life is spent in frivolous trifles, which I even forget myself."

"I sleep like a baby. Don't you remember?" The blood rushed to her face and out of Villefort's. "That's true," he said in a barely audible voice.

"Well, then?" asked the baroness.

"Well, then, I know what has to be done. Within a week, I shall know what this Monte Cristo is, where he comes from, where he is going and why he tells us about children dug up from his garden."

Villefort spoke these words in a tone of voice that would have made the count shudder if he could have heard them. Then he shook the hand which the baroness reluctantly gave him and respectfully showed her to the door. Mme Danglars hailed another cab, which took her back to the passage, at the far end of which she found her own carriage and her coachman who had been sleeping peacefully on his seat while waiting for her return.