The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (books to read to improve english txt) đ
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
- Performer: 0140449264
Book online «The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (books to read to improve english txt) đ». Author Alexandre Dumas
âSure to gain!â repeated Beauchamp, looking with amazement at the count.
âCertainly,â said Monte Cristo, slightly shrugging his shoulders; âotherwise I would not fight with M. de Morcerf. I shall kill himâI cannot help it. Only by a single line this evening at my house let me know the arms and the hour; I do not like to be kept waiting.â
âPistols, then, at eight oâclock, in the Bois de Vincennes,â said Beauchamp, quite disconcerted, not knowing if he was dealing with an arrogant braggadocio or a supernatural being.
âVery well, sir,â said Monte Cristo. âNow all that is settled, do let me see the performance, and tell your friend Albert not to come any more this evening; he will hurt himself with all his ill-chosen barbarisms: let him go home and go to sleep.â
Beauchamp left the box, perfectly amazed.
âNow,â said Monte Cristo, turning towards Morrel, âI may depend upon you, may I not?â
âCertainly,â said Morrel, âI am at your service, count; stillâââ
âWhat?â
âIt is desirable I should know the real cause.â
âThat is to say, you would rather not?â
âNo.â
âThe young man himself is acting blindfolded, and knows not the true cause, which is known only to God and to me; but I give you my word, Morrel, that God, who does know it, will be on our side.â
âEnough,â said Morrel; âwho is your second witness?â
âI know no one in Paris, Morrel, on whom I could confer that honor besides you and your brother Emmanuel. Do you think Emmanuel would oblige me?â
âI will answer for him, count.â
âWell? that is all I require. Tomorrow morning, at seven oâclock, you will be with me, will you not?â
âWe will.â
âHush, the curtain is rising. Listen! I never lose a note of this opera if I can avoid it; the music of William Tell is so sweet.â
Chapter 89. The Night
Monte Cristo waited, according to his usual custom, until Duprez had sung his famous âSuivez-moi!â then he rose and went out. Morrel took leave of him at the door, renewing his promise to be with him the next morning at seven oâclock, and to bring Emmanuel. Then he stepped into his coupĂ©, calm and smiling, and was at home in five minutes. No one who knew the count could mistake his expression when, on entering, he said:
âAli, bring me my pistols with the ivory cross.â
Ali brought the box to his master, who examined the weapons with a solicitude very natural to a man who is about to intrust his life to a little powder and shot. These were pistols of an especial pattern, which Monte Cristo had had made for target practice in his own room. A cap was sufficient to drive out the bullet, and from the adjoining room no one would have suspected that the count was, as sportsmen would say, keeping his hand in.
He was just taking one up and looking for the point to aim at on a little iron plate which served him as a target, when his study door opened, and Baptistin entered. Before he had spoken a word, the count saw in the next room a veiled woman, who had followed closely after Baptistin, and now, seeing the count with a pistol in his hand and swords on the table, rushed in. Baptistin looked at his master, who made a sign to him, and he went out, closing the door after him.
âWho are you, madame?â said the count to the veiled woman.
The stranger cast one look around her, to be certain that they were quite alone; then bending as if she would have knelt, and joining her hands, she said with an accent of despair:
âEdmond, you will not kill my son!â
The count retreated a step, uttered a slight exclamation, and let fall the pistol he held.
âWhat name did you pronounce then, Madame de Morcerf?â said he.
âYours!â cried she, throwing back her veil,ââyours, which I alone, perhaps, have not forgotten. Edmond, it is not Madame de Morcerf who is come to you, it is MercĂ©dĂšs.â
âMercĂ©dĂšs is dead, madame,â said Monte Cristo; âI know no one now of that name.â
âMercĂ©dĂšs lives, sir, and she remembers, for she alone recognized you when she saw you, and even before she saw you, by your voice, Edmond,âby the simple sound of your voice; and from that moment she has followed your steps, watched you, feared you, and she needs not to inquire what hand has dealt the blow which now strikes M. de Morcerf.â
âFernand, do you mean?â replied Monte Cristo, with bitter irony; âsince we are recalling names, let us remember them all.â Monte Cristo had pronounced the name of Fernand with such an expression of hatred that MercĂ©dĂšs felt a thrill of horror run through every vein.
âYou see, Edmond, I am not mistaken, and have cause to say, âSpare my son!ââ
âAnd who told you, madame, that I have any hostile intentions against your son?â
âNo one, in truth; but a mother has twofold sight. I guessed all; I followed him this evening to the Opera, and, concealed in a parquet box, have seen all.â
âIf you have seen all, madame, you know that the son of Fernand has publicly insulted me,â said Monte Cristo with awful calmness.
âOh, for pityâs sake!â
âYou have seen that he would have thrown his glove in my face if Morrel, one of my friends, had not stopped him.â
âListen to me, my son has also guessed who you are,âhe attributes his fatherâs misfortunes to you.â
âMadame, you are mistaken, they are not misfortunes,âit is a punishment. It is not I who strike M. de Morcerf; it is Providence which punishes him.â
âAnd why do you represent Providence?â cried MercĂ©dĂšs. âWhy do you remember when it forgets? What are Yanina and its vizier to you, Edmond? What injury has Fernand Mondego done you in betraying Ali Tepelini?â
âAh, madame,â replied Monte Cristo, âall this is an affair between the French captain and the daughter of Vasiliki. It does not concern me, you are right; and if I have sworn to revenge myself, it is not on the French captain, or the Count of Morcerf, but on the fisherman Fernand, the husband of MercĂ©dĂšs the Catalane.â
âAh, sir!â cried the countess, âhow terrible a vengeance for a fault which fatality made me commit!âfor I am the only culprit, Edmond, and if you owe revenge to anyone, it is to me, who had not fortitude to bear your absence and my solitude.â
âBut,â exclaimed Monte Cristo, âwhy was I absent? And why were you alone?â
âBecause you had been arrested, Edmond, and were a prisoner.â
âAnd why was I arrested? Why was I a prisoner?â
âI do not know,â said MercĂ©dĂšs.
âYou do not, madame; at least, I hope not. But I will tell you. I was arrested and became a prisoner because, under the arbor of La RĂ©serve, the day before I was to marry you, a man named Danglars wrote this letter, which the fisherman Fernand himself posted.â
Monte Cristo went to a secretaire, opened a drawer by a spring, from which he took a paper which had lost its original color, and the ink of which had become of a rusty hueâthis he placed in the hands of MercĂ©dĂšs. It was Danglarsâ letter to the kingâs attorney, which the Count of Monte Cristo, disguised as a clerk from the house of Thomson & French, had taken from the file against Edmond DantĂšs, on the day he had paid the two hundred thousand francs to M. de Boville. MercĂ©dĂšs read with terror the following lines:
âThe kingâs attorney is informed by a friend to the throne and religion that one Edmond DantĂšs, second in command on board the Pharaon, this day arrived from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, is the bearer of a letter from Murat to the usurper, and of another letter from the usurper to the Bonapartist club in Paris. Ample corroboration of this statement may be obtained by arresting the above-mentioned Edmond DantĂšs, who either carries the letter for Paris about with him, or has it at his fatherâs abode. Should it not be found in possession of either father or son, then it will assuredly be discovered in the cabin belonging to the said DantĂšs on board the Pharaon.â
âHow dreadful!â said MercĂ©dĂšs, passing her hand across her brow, moist with perspiration; âand that letterâââ
âI bought it for two hundred thousand francs, madame,â said Monte Cristo; âbut that is a trifle, since it enables me to justify myself to you.â
âAnd the result of that letterâââ
âYou well know, madame, was my arrest; but you do not know how long that arrest lasted. You do not know that I remained for fourteen years within a quarter of a league of you, in a dungeon in the ChĂąteau dâIf. You do not know that every day of those fourteen years I renewed the vow of vengeance which I had made the first day; and yet I was not aware that you had married Fernand, my calumniator, and that my father had died of hunger!â
âCan it be?â cried MercĂ©dĂšs, shuddering.
âThat is what I heard on leaving my prison fourteen years after I had entered it; and that is why, on account of the living MercĂ©dĂšs and my deceased father, I have sworn to revenge myself on Fernand, andâI have revenged myself.â
âAnd you are sure the unhappy Fernand did that?â
âI am satisfied, madame, that he did what I have told you; besides, that is not much more odious than that a Frenchman by adoption should pass over to the English; that a Spaniard by birth should have fought against the Spaniards; that a stipendiary of Ali should have betrayed and murdered Ali. Compared with such things, what is the letter you have just read?âa loverâs deception, which the woman who has married that man ought certainly to forgive; but not so the lover who was to have married her. Well, the French did not avenge themselves on the traitor, the Spaniards did not shoot the traitor, Ali in his tomb left the traitor unpunished; but I, betrayed, sacrificed, buried, have risen from my tomb, by the grace of God, to punish that man. He sends me for that purpose, and here I am.â
The poor womanâs head and arms fell; her legs bent under her, and she fell on her knees.
âForgive, Edmond, forgive for my sake, who love you still!â
The dignity of the wife checked the fervor of the lover and the mother. Her forehead almost touched the carpet, when the count sprang forward and raised her. Then seated on a chair, she looked at the manly countenance of Monte Cristo, on which grief and hatred still impressed a threatening expression.
âNot crush that accursed race?â murmured he; âabandon my purpose at the moment of its accomplishment? Impossible, madame, impossible!â
âEdmond,â said the poor mother, who tried every means, âwhen I call you Edmond, why do you not call me MercĂ©dĂšs?â
âMercĂ©dĂšs!â repeated Monte Cristo; âMercĂ©dĂšs! Well yes, you are right; that name has still its charms, and this is the first time for a long period that I have pronounced it so distinctly. Oh, MercĂ©dĂšs, I have uttered your name with the sigh of melancholy, with the groan of sorrow, with the last effort of despair; I have uttered it when frozen with cold, crouched on the straw in my dungeon; I have uttered it, consumed with heat, rolling on the stone floor of my prison. MercĂ©dĂšs, I must revenge myself, for I suffered fourteen years,âfourteen years I wept, I cursed; now I tell you, MercĂ©dĂšs, I must revenge myself.â
The count, fearing to yield to the entreaties of her he had so
Comments (0)