XII. Le père et le fils.

XII

The Father and the Son.

M. Noirtier—for it was indeed he who had just entered—followed the servant with his eyes until the man had closed the door behind him; then, fearing no doubt that he might be listening in the antechamber, he went and opened it again after him: the precaution was not useless, and the rapidity with which Master Germain withdrew proved that he was not exempt from the sin that ruined our first parents. M. Noirtier then took the trouble to go and close the antechamber door himself, came back to close the bedroom door, shot the bolts, and returned to hold out his hand to Villefort, who had followed all these movements with a surprise from which he had not yet recovered.

“Come now, do you know, my dear Gérard,” said he to the young man, looking at him with a smile whose expression was rather difficult to define, “that you do not look overjoyed to see me?”

“But indeed I am, father,” said Villefort, “I am delighted; but I was so far from expecting your visit that it has somewhat bewildered me.”

“But, my dear friend,” resumed M. Noirtier, seating himself, “it seems to me that I might say as much to you. What! you announce your betrothal at Marseille for the 28th of February, and on the 3rd of March you are in Paris?”

“If I am here, father,” said Gérard, drawing nearer to M. Noirtier, “do not complain of it, for it was on your account that I came, and this journey may perhaps save your life.”

“Ah! indeed,” said M. Noirtier, stretching himself lazily in the armchair where he sat, “indeed! tell me about it then, Monsieur the Magistrate, it must be curious.”

“Father, you have heard speak of a certain Bonapartist club that meets in the Rue Saint-Jacques?”

“No. 53? Yes, I am its vice-president.”

“Father, your composure makes me shudder.”

“What would you have, my dear? when one has been proscribed by the Montagnards, has left Paris in a haycart, has been hunted across the moors of Bordeaux by Robespierre’s bloodhounds, that hardens one to many things. Go on, then. Well, what happened at that club in the Rue Saint-Jacques?”

“What happened was that General Quesnel was brought there, and that the general, having left his home at nine in the evening, was found two days later in the Seine.”

“And who told you that pretty story?”

“The king himself, sir.”

“Well, I, in exchange for your story,” continued Noirtier, “will tell you some news.”

“Father, I believe I already know what you are going to tell me.”

“Ah! you know of His Majesty the Emperor’s landing?”

“Silence, father, I beg of you, for your sake first, and then for mine. Yes, I knew that news, and indeed I knew it before you, for these three days I have been burning the pavement from Marseille to Paris, with the rage of not being able to fling two hundred leagues ahead of me the thought that is scorching my brain.”

“Three days ago! are you mad? Three days ago, the Emperor was not yet embarked.”

“No matter, I knew the plan.”

“And how so?”

“By a letter addressed to you from the island of Elba.”

“To me?”

“To you, and which I intercepted in the messenger’s portfolio. If that letter had fallen into other hands, at this hour, father, you would be shot, perhaps.”

Villefort’s father began to laugh.

“Come, come,” said he, “it seems the Restoration has learned from the Empire the way of despatching affairs promptly.... Shot! my dear, how you go at it! and that letter, where is it? I know you too well to fear you may have left it lying about.”

“I burned it, for fear a single fragment might remain: for that letter was your condemnation.”

“And the ruin of your future,” answered Noirtier coldly; “yes, I understand that; but I have nothing to fear since you protect me.”

“I do better than that, sir; I save you.”

“Ah! the devil! this grows more dramatic; explain yourself.”

“Sir, I return to that club in the Rue Saint-Jacques.”

“It seems that club lies near the heart of the police gentlemen. Why did they not search better? they would have found it.”

“They did not find it, but they are on the track.”

“That is the consecrated phrase, I know it well: when the police is at fault, it says it is on the track, and the government waits tranquilly for the day when it comes to say, ear lowered, that the track is lost.”

“Yes, but a corpse was found: General Quesnel was killed, and in all countries of the world that is called a murder.”

“A murder, do you say? but nothing proves the general was the victim of a murder: every day people are found in the Seine who threw themselves in from despair, who drowned themselves not knowing how to swim.”

“Father, you know very well the general did not drown from despair, and that one does not bathe in the Seine in the month of January. No, no, do not deceive yourself, this death is rightly termed a murder.”

“And who termed it so?”

“The king himself.”

“The king! I thought him philosopher enough to understand that there is no murder in politics. In politics, my dear, you know as well as I, there are no men, but ideas; no feelings, but interests; in politics, one does not kill a man: one removes an obstacle, that is all. Do you wish to know how things passed? well, I will tell you. They believed they could count on General Quesnel: he had been recommended to us from the island of Elba; one of us goes to his house, invites him to come to the Rue Saint-Jacques to an assembly where he will find friends; he comes, and there they unfold the whole plan to him, the departure from Elba, the projected landing; then, when he has heard and understood all, when there is nothing left to tell him, he answers that he is a royalist: then each looks at the other; they make him swear, he does so, but with such ill grace truly that it was tempting God to swear thus; well, despite all that, they let the general leave free, perfectly free. He did not return home, what would you have, my dear? He left our place: he must have mistaken his way, that is all. A murder! truly you surprise me, Villefort, you, deputy of the king’s attorney, to build an accusation on such poor proofs. Did I ever take it into my head to say to you, when you exercised your trade of royalist, and had one of mine beheaded: ‘My son, you have committed a murder!’ No, I said: ‘Very well, sir, you have fought victoriously; tomorrow the revenge.’”

“But, father, take care, that revenge will be terrible when we take it.”

“I do not understand you.”

“You count on the return of the usurper?”

“I confess it.”

“You are mistaken, father; he will not make ten leagues into the interior of France without being pursued, hunted, taken like a wild beast.”

“My dear friend, the Emperor is, at this moment, on the road to Grenoble; on the 10th or 12th he will be at Lyon, and on the 20th or 25th at Paris.”

“The populations will rise up....”

“To go and meet him.”

“He has but a few men with him, and armies will be sent against him.”

“Which will escort him back into the capital. Truly, my dear Gérard, you are still but a child; you think yourself well informed because a telegraph tells you, three days after the landing: ‘The usurper has landed at Cannes with a few men; he is being pursued.’ But where is he? what is he doing? you know nothing of it: he is being pursued, that is all you know. Well, he will be pursued thus to Paris, without a single cartridge being fired.”

“Grenoble and Lyon are faithful cities, and will oppose him an impassable barrier.”

“Grenoble will open its gates to him with enthusiasm; all Lyon will go to meet him. Believe me, we are as well informed as you, and our police is worth yours: would you like proof? it is that you meant to hide your journey from me, and yet I knew of your arrival half an hour after you had passed the barrier; you gave your address to no one but your postilion, well, I know your address, and the proof is that I arrive at your house just as you are about to sit down to table; ring then, and ask for a second cover; we will dine together.”

“Indeed,” answered Villefort, looking at his father with astonishment, “indeed, you seem to me very well informed.”

“Eh! my God, the thing is quite simple; you who hold power have only the means that money gives; we who await it have those that devotion gives.”

“Devotion?” said Villefort, laughing.

“Yes, devotion; that is what one calls, in honest terms, the ambition that hopes.”

And Villefort’s father stretched out his hand himself toward the bell-cord to call the servant his son did not call. Villefort stopped his arm.

“Wait, father,” said the young man, “one more word.”

“Speak.”

“Poorly made as the royalist police is, it nevertheless knows one terrible thing.”

“Which?”

“It is the description of the man who, on the morning of the day General Quesnel disappeared, presented himself at his house.”

“Ah! it knows that, does it, the good police? and this description, what is it?”

“Dark complexion, black hair, whiskers and eyes, blue frock-coat buttoned to the chin, rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honor in the buttonhole, broad-brimmed hat and rattan cane.”

“Ah! ah! it knows that?” said Noirtier, “and why then has it not laid hands on the man?”

“Because it lost him, yesterday or the day before, at the corner of the Rue Coq-Héron.”

“When I told you your police was a fool?”

“Yes, but from one moment to the other it may find him.”

“Yes,” said Noirtier, looking around him carelessly, “yes, if that man is not warned, but he is; and,” added he, smiling, “he is going to change face and costume.”

At these words, he rose, took off his frock-coat and cravat, went to a table on which were laid out all the pieces of his son’s toilet articles, took a razor, lathered his face, and with a perfectly steady hand cut away those compromising whiskers which gave the police so precious a document.

Villefort watched him do it with a terror not unmixed with admiration.

His whiskers cut, Noirtier gave another turn to his hair: took, instead of his black cravat, a colored one that lay on the surface of an open trunk; donned, instead of his blue buttoned frock-coat, a chestnut-colored frock-coat of Villefort’s, of flared shape; tried before the glass the young man’s turned-up brim hat, seemed satisfied with how it became him, and, leaving the rattan cane in the chimney corner where he had placed it, he made whistle in his nervous hand a little bamboo switch with which the elegant deputy gave his walk the ease that was one of its chief qualities.

“Well,” said he, turning toward his stupefied son, when this sort of change-at-sight was accomplished, “well, do you think your police would know me now?”

“No, father,” stammered Villefort, “I hope so, at least.”

“Now, my dear Gérard,” continued Noirtier, “I leave it to your prudence to make disappear all the objects I leave in your care.”

“Oh! be easy, father,” said Villefort.

“Yes, yes! and now I think you were right, and that you may indeed have saved my life; but, be easy, I will return the favor shortly.”

Villefort shook his head.

“You are not convinced?”

“I hope, at least, that you are mistaken.”

“Will you see the king again?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you wish to pass in his eyes for a prophet?”

“Prophets of ill are ill received at court, father.”

“Yes, but, one day or another, justice is done them; and suppose a second Restoration, then you will pass for a great man.”

“In short, what am I to say to the king?”

“Say this to him: ‘Sire, you are deceived as to the dispositions of France, as to the opinion of the cities, as to the spirit of the army; him whom you call at Paris the ogre of Corsica, who is still called the usurper at Nevers, is already called Bonaparte at Lyon, and the Emperor at Grenoble. You believe him hunted, pursued, in flight; he marches, swift as the eagle he evokes. The soldiers, whom you believe dying of hunger, crushed with fatigue, ready to desert, multiply like the atoms of snow around the ball that precipitates itself. Sire, depart; abandon France to her true master, to him who bought her not, but conquered her; depart, Sire, not that you run any danger, your adversary is strong enough to grant pardon, but because it would be humiliating for a grandson of Saint Louis to owe his life to the man of Arcole, of Marengo and of Austerlitz.’ Say him that, Gérard; or rather, go, tell him nothing; conceal your journey; do not boast of what you came to do and what you have done in Paris; take the post again; if you burned the road to come, devour space to return; re-enter Marseille by night; penetrate to your house by a back door, and there remain very mild, very humble, very secret, very inoffensive above all, for this time, I swear to you, we shall act as vigorous men who know their enemies. Go, my son, go, my dear Gérard, and by this obedience to paternal orders, or, if you prefer, this deference to a friend’s counsels, we shall maintain you in your place. It will be,” added Noirtier, smiling, “a means for you to save me a second time, if the political seesaw one day puts you on top and me below. Farewell, my dear Gérard; at your next journey, lodge at my house.”

And Noirtier went out at these words, with the tranquillity that had not left him an instant during the course of this so difficult interview.

Villefort, pale and agitated, ran to the window, opened the curtain a little, and saw him pass, calm and impassive, amid two or three men of evil aspect, ambushed at the corner of the posts and at the angle of the streets, who were perhaps there to arrest the man with black whiskers, blue frock-coat and broad-brimmed hat.

Villefort remained thus, standing and breathless, until his father had disappeared at the Bussy crossroads. Then he rushed to the objects abandoned by him, put the black cravat and blue frock-coat at the bottom of his trunk, twisted the hat which he thrust into the lower part of a wardrobe, broke the rattan cane in three pieces which he threw into the fire, put on a travelling cap, called his valet, forbade him with a look the thousand questions he was inclined to ask, settled his account with the hotel, sprang into his carriage which awaited him all harnessed, learned at Lyon that Bonaparte had just entered Grenoble, and, amid the agitation that reigned all along the road, arrived at Marseille, prey to all the throes that enter a man’s heart with ambition and first honors.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”