CI. Locuste.

CI

Locuste.

Valentine was left alone; two other clocks, behind that of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, struck midnight again at different intervals.

Then, save for the murmur of a few distant carriages, all fell back into silence.

Thereupon all Valentine's attention concentrated upon the clock in her room, whose pendulum marked the seconds.

She began to count those seconds and noticed that they were twice as slow as the beating of her heart. And yet she still doubted; the harmless Valentine could not imagine that anyone should desire her death; why? to what end? what ill had she done that could have raised her up an enemy?

There was no fear of her falling asleep.

A single idea, a terrible idea, kept her mind on the stretch: that there existed a person in the world who had tried to assassinate her and who was about to try again.

If this time that person, weary of seeing the inefficacy of poison, were to have recourse, as Monte Cristo had said, to steel! if the count should not have time to come to her aid! if she were at her last moment! if she were never to see Morrel again!

At this thought, which covered her at once with a livid pallor and a icy sweat, Valentine was on the point of seizing the bell-cord and crying for help.

But it seemed to her, through the door of the library, that she saw the count's eye gleaming, that eye which weighed upon her memory, and which, when she thought of it, crushed her with such shame, that she asked herself whether gratitude would ever succeed in effacing this painful effect of the count's indiscreet friendship.

Twenty minutes, twenty eternities, passed thus, then ten more minutes; at length the clock, striking a second too soon, ended by sounding a stroke upon its sonorous bell.

At that very moment, an imperceptible scratching of a nail upon the wood of the library told Valentine that the count was watching and bidding her watch.

Indeed, on the opposite side, that is to say toward Edward's room, it seemed to Valentine that she heard the floorboards cry out; she lent an ear, holding back her almost stifled breath; the latch clicked and the door turned upon its hinges.

Valentine had raised herself upon her elbow; she had but time to let herself fall back upon her bed and hide her eyes beneath her arm.

Then, trembling, agitated, her heart gripped by an unspeakable dread, she waited.

Someone approached the bed and brushed the curtains.

Valentine gathered all her strength and let escape that regular murmur of breathing which announces a tranquil sleep.

"Valentine!" said a voice in a low tone.

The young girl shuddered to the bottom of her heart, but answered not.

"Valentine!" repeated the same voice.

Same silence: Valentine had promised not to wake.

Then all remained motionless.

Only Valentine heard the almost insensible noise of a liquid falling into the glass she had just emptied.

Then she dared, beneath the rampart of her outstretched arm, to half-open her eyelid.

She then saw a woman in a white dressing-gown, who was emptying into her glass a liquor prepared beforehand in a phial.

During this brief instant, Valentine perhaps held her breath or no doubt made some movement, for the woman, uneasy, stopped and bent over her bed to see better whether she was really asleep: it was Madame de Villefort.

Valentine, in recognizing her stepmother, was seized with a sharp shudder which imparted a movement to her bed.

Madame de Villefort at once drew back along the wall, and there, sheltered behind the bed-curtain, mute, attentive, she spied even the least movement of Valentine.

The latter recalled the terrible words of Monte Cristo; it had seemed to her, in the hand that did not hold the phial, to see gleaming a kind of long, sharp knife. Then Valentine, calling all the power of her will to her aid, strove to close her eyes; but this function of our most timorous sense, this function, so simple ordinarily, became at that moment almost impossible to perform, so great were the efforts of avid curiosity to push back that eyelid and draw forth the truth.

However, assured, by the silence in which the equal noise of Valentine's breathing had begun again to be heard, that the latter was asleep, Madame de Villefort stretched out her arm once more, and, remaining half-hidden by the curtains gathered at the head of the bed, finished emptying into Valentine's glass the contents of her phial.

Then she withdrew, without the least noise warning Valentine that she was gone.

She had seen the arm disappear, that was all; that fresh and rounded arm of a woman of five-and-twenty, young and beautiful, and who was pouring out death.

It is impossible to express what Valentine had felt during that minute and a half that Madame de Villefort remained in her room.

The scratching of the nail upon the library roused the young girl from that state of torpor in which she lay buried, and which resembled numbness.

She raised her head with effort.

The door, still silent, rolled a second time upon its hinges, and the Count of Monte Cristo reappeared.

"Well," asked the count, "do you still doubt?"

"Oh my God!" murmured the young girl.

"You have seen?"

"Alas!"

"You have recognized?"

Valentine uttered a groan.

"Yes," said she, "but I cannot believe it."

"You would rather die then, and let Maximilien die!..."

"My God, my God!" repeated the young girl, almost beside herself, "but can I not leave the house, flee?..."

"Valentine, the hand that pursues you will reach you everywhere: by dint of gold, your servants will be seduced, and death will offer itself to you, disguised under every aspect, in the water you drink at the spring, in the fruit you pluck from the tree."

"But did you not say that my good papa's precaution had guarded me against poison?"

"Against one poison, and even then not if used in a strong dose; they will change the poison or increase the dose."

He took the glass and dipped his lips in it.

"And see," said he, "it is already done. It is no longer with brucine that you are being poisoned, it is with a simple narcotic. I recognize the taste of the alcohol in which it has been dissolved. If you had drunk what Madame de Villefort has just poured into this glass, Valentine, you were lost."

"But, my God!" cried the young girl, "why does she pursue me thus?"

"How! you are so gentle, so good, so little believing in evil that you have not understood, Valentine?"

"No," said the young girl, "I have never done her any harm."

"But you are rich, Valentine; but you have two hundred thousand livres of income, and those two hundred thousand francs of income, you take them from her son."

"How so? My fortune is not his and comes to me from my parents."

"No doubt, and that is why Monsieur and Madame de Saint-Méran died: it was that you might inherit from your parents; that is why from the day he made you his heir, Monsieur Noirtier was condemned; that is why, in your turn, you must die, Valentine, so that your father may inherit from you, and your brother, become only son, may inherit from your father."

"Edward! poor child, and it is for him that all these crimes are committed?"

"Ah! you understand, at last."

"Ah! my God! so long as none of it falls back upon him!"

"You are an angel, Valentine."

"But my grandfather, they have then given up killing him, he?"

"They reflected that you being dead, short of disinheritance, the fortune would naturally return to your brother, and they thought that the crime, after all, being useless, it was doubly dangerous to commit it."

"And it is in a woman's mind that such a combination was born! Oh my God! my God!"

"Recall Perugia, the trellis of the Post inn, the man in the brown cloak, whom your stepmother was questioning about aqua tofana; well, from that time, all this infernal plot was ripening in her brain."

"Oh! sir," cried the sweet young girl, bursting into tears, "I see well, if it be so, that I am condemned to die."

"No, Valentine, no, for I have foreseen all the plots; no, for our enemy is vanquished, since she is divined; no, you shall live, Valentine, you shall live to love and be loved, you shall live to be happy and make a noble heart happy; but to live, Valentine, you must have great confidence in me."

"Command, sir, what must be done?"

"You must take blindly what I shall give you."

"Oh! God is my witness," cried Valentine, "that if I were alone, I would rather let myself die!"

"You will confide in no one, not even your father."

"My father is not of this dreadful plot, is he not, sir?" said Valentine, joining her hands.

"No, and yet your father, the man accustomed to legal accusations, your father must suspect that all these deaths falling upon his house are not natural. Your father, it is he who should have watched over you, it is he who should be at this hour in the place I occupy; it is he who should already have emptied this glass; it is he who should already have risen against the assassin. Spectre against spectre," murmured he, finishing his sentence aloud.

"Sir," said Valentine, "I will do all to live, for there are two beings in the world who love me to the point of dying if I die: my grandfather and Maximilien."

"I will watch over them as I have watched over you."

"Well, sir, dispose of me," said Valentine. Then in a low voice: "My God! my God!" said she, "what is to happen to me?"

"Let nothing that happens to you, Valentine, terrify you; if you suffer, if you lose sight, hearing, touch, fear nothing; if you wake not knowing where you are, be not afraid, even should you, on waking, find yourself in some sepulchral vault or nailed in some coffin; recall your spirit suddenly, and say to yourself: At this moment, a friend, a father, a man who wills my happiness and that of Maximilien, that man watches over me."

"Alas! alas! what a terrible extremity!"

"Valentine, would you rather denounce your stepmother?"

"I would rather die a hundred times! oh! yes, die!"

"No, you shall not die, and whatever happens to you, you promise me, you will not complain, you will hope?"

"I shall think of Maximilien."

"You are my well-beloved daughter, Valentine; alone, I can save you, and I will save you."

Valentine, at the height of terror, joined her hands (for she felt that the moment was come to ask of God courage) and raised herself to pray, murmuring disconnected words, and forgetting that her white shoulders had no other veil than her long hair and that one saw her heart beat beneath the fine lace of her night-dress.

The count gently laid his hand upon the young girl's arm, drew the velvet counterpane up to her neck, and, with a paternal smile:

"My daughter," said he, "believe in my devotion, as you believe in the goodness of God and in the love of Maximilien."

Valentine fixed upon him a glance full of gratitude, and remained docile as a child beneath her veils.

Then the count drew from the pocket of his waistcoat the emerald bonbon-box, lifted its golden cover, and poured into Valentine's right hand a little round lozenge the size of a pea.

Valentine took it with the other hand, and looked attentively at the count: there was upon the features of this intrepid protector a reflection of divine majesty and power. It was evident that Valentine questioned him with her eyes.

"Yes," answered he.

Valentine carried the lozenge to her mouth and swallowed it.

"And now, farewell, my child," said he, "I am going to try to sleep, for you are saved."

"Go," said Valentine, "whatever happens to me, I promise you not to be afraid."

Monte Cristo kept his eyes long fixed upon the young girl, who by degrees fell asleep, overcome by the power of the narcotic the count had just given her.

Then he took the glass, emptied three quarters of it into the chimney, that it might be believed Valentine had drunk what was missing from it, set it back upon the night-table; then, regaining the library door, he disappeared after casting a last glance toward Valentine, who fell asleep with the confidence and candor of an angel lying at the feet of the Lord.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”