CVIII. Le juge.

CVIII

The Judge.

It will be remembered that Abbé Busoni had remained alone with Noirtier in the death-chamber, and that it was the old man and the priest who had constituted themselves guardians of the young girl's body.

Perhaps the Christian exhortations of the abbé, perhaps his gentle charity, perhaps his persuasive words had restored courage to the old man: for, from the moment he had been able to confer with the priest, instead of the despair that had at first seized him, everything in Noirtier announced a great resignation, a calm most surprising to all who remembered the deep affection he had borne Valentine.

M. de Villefort had not seen the old man since the morning of that death. The whole household had been renewed: another valet had been engaged for him, another servant for Noirtier; two women had entered the service of Mme de Villefort: all, down to the concierge and the coachman, presented new faces which had risen, so to speak, between the different masters of that accursed house and had intercepted the already rather cold relations that existed among them. Besides, the assizes were to open in three days, and Villefort, shut up in his study, was pursuing with feverish activity the proceedings begun against the assassin of Caderousse. This affair, like all those in which the Count of Monte Cristo was involved, had made a great stir in Parisian society. The proofs were not convincing, since they rested upon a few words written by a dying convict, former prison companion of the man he accused, and who might accuse his companion out of hatred or revenge: only the magistrate's own conscience was convinced; the King's attorney had ended by giving himself that terrible conviction that Benedetto was guilty, and he was to draw from this difficult victory one of those pleasures of self-love which alone somewhat revived the fibres of his frozen heart.

The case was therefore being prepared, thanks to Villefort's unceasing labor, who wished to make it the opening of the next assizes; he had also been forced to hide more than ever to avoid answering the prodigious number of requests addressed to him to obtain audience tickets.

And then so little time had elapsed since poor Valentine had been laid in the tomb, the grief of the household was still so fresh, that no one was surprised to see the father so severely absorbed in his duty, that is to say, in the only distraction he could find for his sorrow.

Only once, it was the day after Benedetto had received that second visit from Bertuccio, in which the latter had been obliged to name his father, the day after that day, which was a Sunday, only once, we say, had Villefort caught sight of his father: it was at a moment when the magistrate, worn out with fatigue, had gone down into the garden of his hotel, and, gloomy, bent beneath an implacable thought, like Tarquin striking down with his wand the tallest heads of the poppies, M. de Villefort struck down with his cane the long, dying stalks of the hollyhocks which rose along the paths like the spectres of those flowers so brilliant in the season just past.

Already more than once he had reached the bottom of the garden, that is to say that famous grating opening onto the abandoned enclosure, always returning by the same walk, resuming his stroll with the same step and the same gesture, when his eyes mechanically turned toward the house, in which he heard his son playing noisily, returned from school to spend Sunday and Monday with his mother.

At that moment he saw at one of the open windows M. Noirtier, who had had himself wheeled in his armchair to that window, to enjoy the last rays of a still warm sun that came to salute the dying flowers of the convolvuluses and the reddened leaves of the virgin vines that clothed the balcony.

The old man's eye was riveted, so to speak, upon a point that Villefort perceived only imperfectly. This look of Noirtier's was so hateful, so savage, so ardent with impatience, that the King's attorney, skilled in seizing all the impressions of that face he knew so well, stepped aside from the line he was following to see upon what person that heavy gaze was falling.

Then he saw, beneath a clump of lindens with branches already almost bare, Mme de Villefort, who, seated, a book in her hand, interrupted her reading from time to time to smile at her son or throw back the elastic ball he obstinately launched from the salon into the garden.

Villefort turned pale, for he understood what the old man wanted.

Noirtier still looked at the same object; but suddenly his gaze passed from the wife to the husband, and it was Villefort himself who had to undergo the attack of those lightning eyes which, in changing their object, had also changed their language, without, however, losing anything of their threatening expression.

Mme de Villefort, a stranger to all those passions whose crossed fires passed above her head, was at that moment holding back her son's ball, making signs to him to come for it with a kiss; but Édouard was long entreated; maternal caress did not seem to him a sufficient reward for the trouble he was about to take. At last he decided, jumped from the window into a clump of heliotropes and marguerites, and ran to Mme de Villefort, his forehead covered with sweat. Mme de Villefort wiped his brow, pressed her lips to that moist ivory, and sent the child back with his ball in one hand and a handful of bonbons in the other.

Villefort, attracted by an invisible attraction, as the bird is attracted by the serpent, Villefort approached the house; as he drew near, Noirtier's gaze followed him downward, and the fire of his pupils seemed to reach such a degree of incandescence that Villefort felt himself devoured to the very bottom of his heart. Indeed, there could be read in that look a bloody reproach together with a terrible threat. Then Noirtier's eyelids and eyes rose to heaven, as if recalling to his son a forgotten oath.

"Very well! sir," replied Villefort at the foot of the courtyard, "very well! have patience one day more; what I have said is said."

Noirtier appeared calmed by these words, and his eyes turned with indifference to another side.

Villefort violently unbuttoned his redingote, which was stifling him, passed a livid hand over his brow, and re-entered his study.

The night passed cold and tranquil; everyone went to bed and slept as usual in that house. Alone, as was also usual, Villefort did not go to bed at the same time as the others, and worked until five in the morning revising the last examinations made the day before by the examining magistrates, collating the depositions of the witnesses and throwing clearness into his indictment, one of the most energetic and most skillfully conceived he had yet drawn up.

It was the next day, Monday, that the first session of the assizes was to be held. That day, Villefort saw it dawn pale and sinister, and its bluish light came to make the lines traced in red ink shine upon the paper. The magistrate had fallen asleep for a moment while his lamp was breathing its last: he awoke at its sputtering, his fingers damp and red as if he had dipped them in blood.

He opened his window: a great orange band crossed the sky afar and cut in two the slender poplars that stood out black against the horizon. In the field of lucerne, beyond the chestnut-tree grating, a lark rose toward the sky, uttering its clear, matinal song.

The humid air of dawn flooded Villefort's head and refreshed his memory.

"It will be for today," he said with effort; "today the man who is to hold the sword of justice must strike wherever the guilty are."

His gaze then, in spite of himself, sought Noirtier's window, which jutted out in return, the window where he had seen the old man the evening before.

The curtain was drawn.

And yet the image of his father was so present to him that he addressed that closed window as if it were open, and as if through that opening he still saw the threatening old man.

"Yes," he murmured, "yes, be at ease!"

His head fell upon his breast, and, his head thus inclined, he took a few turns in his study, then at last threw himself, fully dressed, upon a sofa, less to sleep than to supple his limbs stiffened by fatigue and the cold of work that penetrates to the marrow of the bones.

By degrees everyone awoke. Villefort, from his study, heard the successive noises which constitute, so to speak, the life of the house: doors set in motion, the tinkling of Mme de Villefort's bell calling her maid, the first cries of the child, who rose joyous as one rises at that age.

Villefort rang in his turn. His new valet entered and brought him the newspapers.

At the same time as the newspapers, he brought a cup of chocolate.

"What do you bring me there?" asked Villefort.

"A cup of chocolate."

"I did not ask for it. Who then takes that care of me?"

"Madame; she told me that monsieur would no doubt speak much today in this assassination affair and that he needed to take strength."

And the valet set upon the table placed near the sofa, a table, like all the others, loaded with papers, the vermeil cup.

The valet went out.

Villefort looked for an instant at the cup with a somber air, then, suddenly, he took it with a nervous movement, and swallowed at a single draught the beverage it contained. One would have said he hoped that this beverage was mortal and that he called upon death to deliver him from a duty which commanded him a thing far more difficult than to die. Then he rose and walked in his study with a kind of smile that would have been terrible to see had anyone looked at him.

The chocolate was innocuous, and M. de Villefort felt nothing.

The breakfast hour having arrived, M. de Villefort did not appear at table. The valet re-entered the study.

"Madame sends word to monsieur," said he, "that it has just struck eleven and that the court sits at noon."

"Well," said Villefort, "after?"

"Madame has made her toilet: she is quite ready, and asks if she will accompany monsieur?"

"Where?"

"To the Palais."

"For what?"

"Madame says that she greatly desires to attend this session."

"Ah!" said Villefort with an almost frightful accent, "she desires that!"

The servant stepped back a pace and said:

"If monsieur wishes to go out alone, I will tell it to madame."

Villefort remained silent an instant; he dug his nails into his pale cheek, upon which his ebony-black beard stood out.

"Tell madame," he answered at last, "that I desire to speak with her, and that I beg her to wait for me in her apartment."

"Yes, monsieur."

"Then come back to shave me and dress me."

"Instantly."

The valet disappeared indeed, to reappear, shaved Villefort and solemnly dressed him in black.

Then when he had finished:

"Madame said that she awaits monsieur as soon as his toilet is done," said he.

"I am going."

And Villefort, the dossiers under his arm, his hat in his hand, directed his steps toward his wife's apartment.

At the door, he stopped an instant and wiped with his handkerchief the sweat that flowed upon his livid brow.

Then he pushed the door.

Mme de Villefort was seated upon an ottoman, impatiently turning over newspapers and pamphlets which young Édouard amused himself with tearing to pieces even before his mother had had time to finish reading them. She was completely dressed to go out; her hat awaited her upon an armchair; she had put on her gloves.

"Ah! here you are, monsieur," said she in her natural, calm voice; "my God! are you pale enough, monsieur! Have you then worked all night again? Why did you not come and breakfast with us? Well, are you taking me, or shall I go alone with Édouard?"

Mme de Villefort had, as may be seen, multiplied her questions to obtain an answer; but to all these questions M. de Villefort had remained cold and mute as a statue.

"Édouard," said Villefort, fixing upon the child an imperious gaze, "go and play in the salon, my friend; I must speak with your mother."

Mme de Villefort, seeing this cold composure, this resolute tone, these strange preliminary preparations, trembled.

Édouard had raised his head, had looked at his mother, then, seeing that she did not confirm M. de Villefort's order, had gone back to cutting off the heads of his lead soldiers.

"Édouard!" cried M. de Villefort so roughly that the child bounded upon the carpet, "do you hear me? go!"

The child, to whom this treatment was little habitual, rose to his feet and turned pale; it would have been difficult to say whether it was from anger or fear.

His father went to him, took him by the arm, and kissed him on the brow.

"Go," said he, "my child, go!"

Édouard went out.

M. de Villefort went to the door and locked it behind him.

"O my God!" said the young woman, looking into her husband's soul to the bottom and sketching a smile frozen by Villefort's impassibility, "what is the matter, then?"

"Madame, where do you keep the poison you usually employ?" articulated clearly and without preamble the magistrate, placed between his wife and the door.

Mme de Villefort felt what the lark must feel when it sees the kite tighten above its head its murderous circles.

A raucous, broken sound, which was neither a cry nor a sigh, escaped from Mme de Villefort's breast, who paled to lividity.

"Monsieur," said she, "I... I do not understand."

And as she had raised herself in a paroxysm of terror, in a second paroxysm stronger no doubt than the first, she let herself fall back upon the cushions of the sofa.

"I was asking you," continued Villefort in a perfectly calm voice, "in what place you hide the poison by means of which you have killed my father-in-law M. de Saint-Méran, my mother-in-law, Barrois and my daughter Valentine."

"Ah! monsieur," cried Mme de Villefort, joining her hands, "what are you saying?"

"It is not for you to interrogate me, but to answer."

"Is it the husband or the judge who speaks?" stammered Mme de Villefort.

"The judge, madame! the judge!"

It was a frightful spectacle, that woman's pallor, the anguish of her gaze, the trembling of her whole body.

"Ah! monsieur!" she murmured, "ah! monsieur!..." and that was all.

"You do not answer, madame!" cried the terrible interrogator.

Then he added, with a smile more frightful still than his anger:

"It is true that you do not deny!"

She made a movement.

"And you could not deny," added Villefort, extending his hand toward her as if to seize her in the name of justice; "you have accomplished these different crimes with an impudent skill, but which, however, could deceive only those disposed by their affection to blind themselves concerning you. From the death of Mme de Saint-Méran, I knew that there was a poisoner in my house: M. d'Avrigny had warned me of it; after the death of Barrois, God forgive me! my suspicions fell upon someone, upon an angel! my suspicions which, even where there is no crime, watch ever alight at the bottom of my heart; but after the death of Valentine there was no longer any doubt for me, madame, and not only for me, but for others also; thus your crime, known now to two persons, suspected by several, is about to become public; and, as I told you just now, madame, it is no longer a husband who speaks to you, it is a judge!"

The young woman hid her face in her two hands.

"O monsieur!" she stammered, "I beseech you, do not believe appearances!"

"Would you be cowardly?" cried Villefort in a contemptuous voice. "Indeed, I have always remarked that poisoners are cowards. Would you be cowardly, you who had the horrible courage to see expire before you two old men and a young girl assassinated alike?"

"Monsieur! monsieur!"

"Would you be cowardly," continued Villefort with growing exaltation, "you who have counted one by one the minutes of four death-agonies, you who have combined your infernal plans and stirred your infamous brews with a skill and precision so miraculous? You who have so well combined everything, would you then have forgotten to calculate a single thing, that is to say, where your crimes might lead you? Oh! that is impossible, and you have kept some poison sweeter, subtler and more deadly than the others to escape the punishment due to you... You have done that, I hope at least?"

Mme de Villefort wrung her hands and fell to her knees.

"I know well... I know well," said he, "you confess; but confession made to judges, confession made at the last moment, confession made when one can no longer deny, that confession in no way diminishes the punishment they inflict upon the guilty."

"Punishment!" cried Mme de Villefort, "punishment! monsieur, that is the second time you pronounce that word?"

"Doubtless. Is it because you were four times guilty that you thought to escape it? Is it because you are the wife of him who demands that punishment, that you thought that punishment would turn aside? No, madame, no! Whatever she be, the scaffold awaits the poisoner, if especially, as I told you just now, the poisoner has not taken care to keep for herself a few drops of her surest poison."

Mme de Villefort uttered a savage cry, and hideous, untamable terror invaded her decomposed features.

"Oh! fear not the scaffold, madame," said the magistrate, "I do not wish to dishonor you, for that would be to dishonor myself; no, on the contrary, if you have understood me well, you must comprehend that you cannot die upon the scaffold."

"No, I have not understood; what do you mean?" stammered the unhappy woman completely prostrated.

"I mean that the wife of the first magistrate of the capital will not burden with her infamy a name remained without stain, and will not at the same blow dishonor her husband and her child."

"No! oh! no."

"Well, madame! that will be a good deed on your part, and for that good deed I thank you."

"You thank me! and for what?"

"For what you have just said."

"What have I said! I have lost my head; I understand nothing more, my God! my God!"

And she rose, her hair disheveled, her lips foaming.

"You have answered, madame, that question which I put to you on entering here: Where is the poison you usually employ, madame?"

Mme de Villefort raised her arms to heaven and convulsively pressed her hands one against the other.

"No, no," she vociferated, "no, you do not wish that!"

"What I do not wish, madame, is that you perish upon a scaffold, do you hear?" replied Villefort.

"Oh! monsieur, mercy!"

"What I wish is that justice be done. I am upon earth to punish, madame," added he with a flaming look; "to any other woman, were it a queen, I would send the executioner; but to you I shall be merciful. To you I say: is it not so, madame, that you have kept a few drops of your sweetest, promptest and surest poison?"

"Oh! pardon me, monsieur, let me live!"

"She is cowardly!" said Villefort.

"Think that I am your wife!"

"You are a poisoner!"

"In the name of Heaven!..."

"No!"

"In the name of the love you have borne me!..."

"No! no!"

"In the name of our child! Ah! for our child, let me live!"

"No, no, no! I tell you; one day, if I let you live, you might kill him too like the others."

"I! kill my son!" cried that savage mother, springing toward Villefort; "I! kill my Édouard!... ah! ah!"

And a frightful laugh, a demon's laugh, a madwoman's laugh finished the phrase and was lost in a bloody rattle.

Mme de Villefort had fallen at her husband's feet.

Villefort approached her.

"Think of it, madame," said he, "if at my return justice is not done, I denounce you with my own mouth and arrest you with my own hands."

She listened, panting, beaten down, crushed; her eye alone lived in her and brooded a terrible fire.

"You hear me," said Villefort; "I am going yonder to demand the death penalty against an assassin... If I find you alive, you will lie tonight in the Conciergerie."

Mme de Villefort uttered a sigh, her nerves relaxed, she collapsed broken upon the carpet.

The King's attorney seemed to feel a movement of pity, he looked at her less severely, and, slightly inclining himself before her:

"Farewell, madame," said he slowly, "farewell!"

That farewell fell like the mortal knife upon Mme de Villefort. She fainted.

The King's attorney went out, and, on going out, double-locked the door.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”