XVIII. Le trésor.

XVIII

The Treasure.

When Dantès returned the next morning to the chamber of his fellow captive, he found Faria seated, his face calm.

Beneath the ray that slipped through the narrow window of his cell, he held open in his left hand—the only one, it will be remembered, whose use remained to him—a piece of paper, which the habit of being rolled into a thin volume had imprinted with the shape of a cylinder rebellious to unfolding.

He showed the paper to Dantès without a word.

“What is that?” asked the latter.

“Look closely,” said the abbé, smiling.

“I am looking with all my eyes,” said Dantès, “and I see nothing but a half-burnt paper, on which gothic characters are traced with a singular ink.”

“That paper, my friend,” said Faria, “is—I may now confess all to you, since I have tested you—that paper is my treasure, of which, beginning today, one half is yours.”

A cold sweat passed over Dantès’s brow. Until that day—and for what a span of time!—he had avoided speaking with Faria of that treasure, the source of the accusation of madness that weighed upon the poor abbé; with his instinctive delicacy, Edmond had preferred not to touch that painfully vibrating string; and, on his side, Faria had been silent. He had taken the old man’s silence for a return to reason; today, these few words, escaped from Faria after so painful a crisis, seemed to announce a grave relapse into mental alienation.

“Your treasure?” stammered Dantès.

Faria smiled.

“Yes,” he said; “in every respect you are a noble heart, Edmond, and I understand, by your pallor and your shudder, what is passing within you at this moment. No, be at ease, I am not mad. That treasure exists, Dantès, and if it was not granted me to possess it, you shall possess it, you: no one would listen to me or believe me because I was judged mad; but you, who must know that I am not, listen to me, and you will believe me afterward if you wish.”

“Alas!” murmured Edmond to himself, “there he falls back! This misfortune was wanting to me.”

Then aloud:

“My friend,” he said to Faria, “your fit may have fatigued you; will you not take a little rest? Tomorrow, if you desire, I will hear your story, but today I wish to care for you, that is all. Besides,” he continued, smiling, “a treasure—is that so pressing for us?”

“Most pressing, Edmond!” answered the old man. “Who knows if tomorrow, perhaps the day after, the third fit may not arrive? Think that all would then be finished! Yes, it is true, often I have thought with a bitter pleasure of those riches, which would make the fortune of ten families, lost to those men who persecuted me: that idea served me as vengeance, and I savored it slowly in the night of my dungeon and in the despair of my captivity. But now that I have pardoned the world for love of you, now that I see you young and full of future, now that I think of all that may result for you of happiness following such a revelation, I tremble at the delay, and I fear not securing to so worthy a proprietor as you are the possession of so many buried riches.”

Edmond turned away his head, sighing.

“You persist in your unbelief, Edmond,” pursued Faria; “my voice has not convinced you? I see that you need proofs. Well, read this paper that I have shown to no one.”

“Tomorrow, my friend,” said Edmond, reluctant to humor the old man’s madness; “I thought it was agreed we would speak of this only tomorrow.”

“We shall speak of it only tomorrow, but read this paper today.”

“Let us not irritate him,” thought Edmond.

And, taking the paper, of which half was missing, consumed doubtless by some accident, he read:

_This treasure which may amount to two_ _of Roman ecus in the farthest angle of_ _the second opening, which_ _declares to belong to him in all pro_ _perty_ _25 April 149_

“Well?” said Faria when the young man had finished reading.

“But,” answered Dantès, “I see there only truncated lines, unconnected words; the characters are interrupted by the action of fire and remain unintelligible.”

“For you, my friend, who read them for the first time, but not for me who have paled over them through many nights, who have reconstructed each phrase, completed each thought.”

“And you believe you have found that suspended meaning?”

“I am certain of it, you shall judge yourself; but first listen to the history of this paper.”

“Silence!” cried Dantès. “Steps!… Someone approaches… I am going… Adieu!”

And Dantès, happy to escape the history and the explanation which would not have failed to confirm to him his friend’s misfortune, glided like a snake through the narrow passage, while Faria, restored to a sort of activity by terror, pushed back with his foot the flagstone which he covered with a mat in order to hide from sight the discontinuity he had not had time to make disappear.

It was the governor, who, having learned from the jailer of Faria’s accident, came to assure himself in person of its gravity.

Faria received him seated, avoided any compromising gesture, and managed to hide from the governor the paralysis which had already struck with death half of his person. His fear was that the governor, touched with pity for him, might wish to put him in a healthier prison and thus separate him from his young companion; but happily it was not so, and the governor withdrew convinced that his poor madman, for whom he felt in the bottom of his heart a certain affection, was affected only with a slight indisposition.

During this time, Edmond, seated on his bed with his head in his hands, tried to gather his thoughts; all had been so reasoned, so great and so logical in Faria since he had known him, that he could not understand this supreme wisdom on all points allied to derangement on a single one: was it Faria who was mistaken about his treasure, was it all the world that was mistaken about Faria?

Dantès remained in his room all day, not daring to return to his friend. He tried thus to put off the moment when he should acquire the certainty that the abbé was mad. That conviction was to be frightful for him.

But toward evening, after the hour of the ordinary visit, Faria, not seeing the young man return, tried to cross the space that separated him from him. Edmond shuddered hearing the painful efforts the old man made to drag himself: his leg was inert, and he could no longer help himself with his arm. Edmond was obliged to draw him to him, for he could never have come out alone through the narrow opening that led into Dantès’s chamber.

“Here I am relentlessly bent upon pursuing you,” he said with a smile radiant with benevolence. “You thought to escape my magnificence, but it shall not be so. Listen then.”

Edmond saw he could not retreat; he seated the old man on his bed, and placed himself near him on his stool.

“You know,” said the abbé, “that I was the secretary, the familiar, the friend of Cardinal Spada, the last of the princes of that name. I owe to that worthy lord all the happiness I have tasted in this life. He was not rich though the riches of his family were proverbial and though I have often heard it said: Rich as a Spada. But he, like public rumor, lived upon that reputation of opulence. His palace was my paradise. I instructed his nephews, who are dead, and when he was alone in the world, I rendered him, by an absolute devotion to his will, all that he had done for me for ten years.

“The cardinal’s house soon had no secrets for me; I had often seen Monseigneur labor to compile ancient books and dig avidly in the dust of family manuscripts. One day that I reproached him for his useless vigils and the sort of dejection that followed them, he looked at me smiling bitterly and opened a book which is the history of the city of Rome. There, in the twentieth chapter of the Life of Pope Alexander VI, were the following lines, which I have never been able to forget:

“The great wars of the Romagna were terminated. Caesar Borgia, who had achieved his conquest, needed money to buy all Italy entire. The pope equally needed money to finish with Louis XII, king of France, still terrible despite his late reverses. It was therefore a question of making a good speculation, which became difficult in that poor exhausted Italy.

“His Holiness had an idea. He resolved to make two cardinals.

“By choosing two of the great personages of Rome, two rich ones especially, here is what came to the Holy Father from the speculation: first, he had to sell the great offices and the magnificent employments of which these two cardinals were in possession; moreover, he could count on a very brilliant price from the sale of these two hats.

“There remained a third part of the speculation, which will soon appear.

“The pope and Caesar Borgia first found the two future cardinals: it was John Rospigliosi, who held alone four of the highest dignities of the Holy See, then Caesar Spada, one of the noblest and richest Romans. Both felt the price of such a favor from the pope. They were ambitious. Those found, Caesar soon found purchasers for their offices.

“It resulted that Rospigliosi and Spada paid to be cardinals, and that eight others paid to be what the two new cardinals had been before. Eight hundred thousand ecus entered the coffers of the speculators.

“Let us pass to the last part of the speculation, it is time. The pope, having overwhelmed Rospigliosi and Spada with caresses, having conferred upon them the insignia of the cardinalate, sure that they had, to acquit the non-fictitious debt of their gratitude, drawn together and realized their fortune to settle at Rome, the pope and Caesar Borgia invited these two cardinals to dinner.

“This was the subject of a dispute between the Holy Father and his son: Caesar thought one might use one of those means he always held at the disposition of his intimate friends, namely: first, the famous key with which certain persons were requested to go open a certain cupboard. This key was fitted with a small iron point, negligence of the workman. When one forced to open the cupboard, whose lock was difficult, one pricked oneself with this small point, and died the next day of it. There was also the ring with a lion’s head, which Caesar passed onto his finger when giving certain handshakes. The lion bit the epidermis of those favored hands, and the bite was mortal at the end of twenty-four hours.

“Caesar therefore proposed to his father, either to send the cardinals to open the cupboard, or to give each a cordial handshake; but Alexander VI answered him:

“—Let us not look at a dinner when it is a question of those excellent cardinals Spada and Rospigliosi. Something tells me we shall win that money back. Besides, you forget, Caesar, that an indigestion declares itself at once, while a prick or a bite only culminates after a day or two.

“Caesar yielded to this reasoning. That is why the cardinals were invited to that dinner.

“The table was set in the vineyard which the pope possessed near Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens, a charming dwelling which the cardinals knew well by reputation.

“Rospigliosi, quite dizzy with his new dignity, prepared his stomach and his best countenance. Spada, a prudent man who loved only his nephew, a young captain of the fairest hope, took paper, a pen, and made his will.

“He then sent word to this nephew to wait for him in the environs of the vineyard, but it appears the servant did not find him.

“Spada knew the custom of invitations. Since Christianity, eminently civilizing, had brought its progress into Rome, it was no longer a centurion who arrived on behalf of the tyrant to tell you: ‘Caesar wishes you to die’; but a legate a latere, who came, his mouth smiling, to tell you on behalf of the pope: ‘His Holiness wishes you to dine with her.’

“Spada set out toward two o’clock for the vineyard of Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens; the pope awaited him there. The first face that struck Spada’s eyes was that of his nephew all adorned, all gracious, upon whom Caesar Borgia lavished caresses. Spada grew pale; and Caesar, who shot at him a look full of irony, let it be seen that he had foreseen all, that the trap was well laid.

“They dined. Spada had only been able to ask his nephew: ‘Did you receive my message?’ The nephew answered no, and perfectly understood the value of that question: it was too late, for he had just drunk a glass of excellent wine set apart for him by the pope’s sommelier. Spada at the same moment saw approach another bottle of which he was liberally offered. An hour after, a physician declared them both poisoned by venomous morels; Spada died on the threshold of the vineyard, the nephew expired at his door making a sign his wife did not understand.

“Immediately Caesar and the pope hastened to invade the inheritance, under pretext of searching the papers of the deceased. But the inheritance consisted in this: a piece of paper on which Spada had written:

“I bequeath to my beloved nephew my coffers, my books, among which my beautiful breviary with gold corners, desiring that he keep this memory of his affectionate uncle.

“The heirs searched everywhere, admired the breviary, laid hands on the furniture and wondered that Spada, the rich man, was effectively the most miserable of uncles; of treasures, none: unless it were treasures of science enclosed in the library and laboratories.

“That was all. Caesar and his father searched, dug, and spied, nothing was found, or at least very little: for a thousand ecus, perhaps, of goldsmith’s work, and for about as much in coined money; but the nephew had had time to say on re-entering his wife:

“Search among my uncle’s papers, there is a real will.

“They searched more actively still, perhaps, than the august heirs had done. It was in vain: there remained two palaces and a vineyard behind the Palatine. But at that epoch real property had a mediocre value; the two palaces and the vineyard remained to the family, as unworthy of the rapacity of the pope and his son.

“Months and years elapsed. Alexander VI died poisoned, you know by what mistake; Caesar, poisoned at the same time as he, got off with changing his skin like a serpent, and assuming a new envelope where the poison had left stains like those one sees on the fur of the tiger; finally, forced to quit Rome, he went to be killed obscurely in a nocturnal skirmish almost forgotten by history.

“After the death of the pope, after the exile of his son, it was generally expected to see the family resume the princely train it had led in the time of Cardinal Spada; but it was not so. The Spadas remained in a doubtful ease, an eternal mystery weighed upon that dark affair, and public rumor was that Caesar, a better politician than his father, had carried off from the pope the fortune of the two cardinals; I say the two, because Cardinal Rospigliosi, who had taken no precaution, was completely stripped.

“Until now,” interrupted Faria, smiling, “this does not seem to you too senseless, does it?”

“O my friend,” said Dantès, “it seems to me, on the contrary, that I am reading a chronicle full of interest. Continue, I pray you.”

“I continue:

“The family grew accustomed to that obscurity. Years elapsed; among the descendants some were soldiers, others diplomats; these men of the Church, those bankers; some enriched themselves, others completed their ruin. I come to the last of the family, to him whose secretary I was, Count Spada.

“I had often heard him complain of the disproportion of his fortune with his rank, and I had therefore given him the counsel to place the little property remaining to him in life annuities; he followed this counsel, and thus doubled his income.

“The famous breviary had remained in the family, and it was Count Spada who possessed it: they had preserved it from father to son, for the bizarre clause of the only will that had been found had made of it a veritable relic guarded with a superstitious veneration in the family; it was a book illuminated with the finest gothic figures, and so heavy with gold, that a domestic carried it always before the cardinal on days of great solemnity.

“At the sight of the papers of all sorts, titles, contracts, parchments, kept in the archives of the family and which all came from the poisoned cardinal, I set myself in turn, like twenty servants, twenty stewards, twenty secretaries who had preceded me, to compile the formidable bundles: despite the activity and the diligence of my researches, I found absolutely nothing. Yet I had read, I had even written an exact and almost ephemeridic history of the family of the Borgias, with the sole aim of assuring myself if a supplement of fortune had accrued to those princes at the death of my cardinal Caesar Spada, and I had remarked there only the addition of the goods of Cardinal Rospigliosi, his companion in misfortune.

“I was therefore almost certain that the inheritance had profited neither the Borgias nor the family, but had remained without a master, like those treasures of Arabian tales which sleep in the bosom of the earth under the gaze of a genie. I dug, I counted, I calculated a thousand and a thousand times the revenues and expenses of the family for three hundred years: all was useless, I remained in my ignorance, and Count Spada in his misery.

“My patron died. From his life annuity he had excepted his family papers, his library, composed of five thousand volumes, and his famous breviary. He bequeathed all that to me, with a thousand Roman ecus which he possessed in ready money, on condition that I should have anniversary masses said and that I should draw up a genealogical tree and a history of his house, which I did very exactly….

“Reassure yourself, my dear Edmond, we are approaching the end.

“In 1807, a month before my arrest and fifteen days after the death of Count Spada, the 25th of the month of December—you will understand presently how the date of that memorable day remained in my memory—I reread for the thousandth time those papers which I was coordinating, for, the palace henceforth belonging to a stranger, I was about to leave Rome to establish myself at Florence, carrying with me some twelve thousand livres that I possessed, my library and my famous breviary, when, fatigued by that assiduous study, indisposed by a rather heavy dinner which I had eaten, I let my head fall upon my two hands and fell asleep: it was three o’clock in the afternoon.

“I awoke as the clock struck six.

“I raised my head, I was in the deepest obscurity. I rang for someone to bring me light, no one came; I resolved then to serve myself. It was besides a philosopher’s habit that I was going to need to take. I took in one hand a candle all prepared, and in the other I sought, for lack of matches absent from their box, a paper which I counted upon lighting at a last remnant of flame above the hearth; but, fearing in the darkness to take a precious paper in place of a useless one, I hesitated, when I recalled having seen, in the famous breviary which was placed on the table beside me, an old paper all yellow at the top, which seemed to serve as a bookmark, and which had traversed the centuries maintained in its place by the veneration of the heirs. I sought, groping, this useless leaf, I found it, I twisted it, and, presenting it to the dying flame, I lit it.

“But, beneath my fingers, as if by magic, as the fire rose, I saw yellowish characters come out of the white paper and appear upon the leaf; then terror took me: I pressed the paper in my hands, I smothered the fire, I lit the candle directly at the hearth, I reopened with an unspeakable emotion the crumpled letter, and I recognized that a mysterious and sympathetic ink had traced those letters apparent only at the contact of vivid heat. A little more than a third of the paper had been consumed by the flame: it is that paper which you read this morning; reread it, Dantès; then when you have reread it, I will complete for you the interrupted phrases and the incomplete sense.”

And Faria, interrupting, offered the paper to Dantès who, this time, reread avidly the following words traced with a russet ink, like rust:

_Today 25 April 1498, hav_ _Alexander VI, and fearing that, not_ _he may wish to inherit from me and not_ _and Bentivoglio, dead poisoned,_ _my universal legatee, that I have en_ _for having visited it with me, that is to say in_ _isle of Monte-Cristo, all that I pos_ _eries, diamonds, jewels; that alone_ _may amount to about two mil_ _shall find having raised the twentieth rock_ _creek of the East in a straight line. Two openin_ _in these grottoes: the treasure is in the farthest angle of_ _which treasure I bequeath and assign to him in all_ _sole heir_. _25 April 1498_ _CES_

“Now,” resumed the abbé, “read this other paper.” And he presented to Dantès a second leaf with other fragments of lines. Dantès took and read:

_ing been invited to dinner by His Holiness_ _content at having made me pay for the hat,_ _serve the lot of cardinals Crapara_ _I declare to my nephew Guido Spada,_ _in a place he knows_ _the grottoes of the little_ _sed of ingots, of coined gold, of sto_ _I know the existence of this treasure, which_ _lions of Roman ecus, and that he_ _e, starting from the little_ _gs have been made_ _far from the second,_ _te property as to my_ AR-SPADA

Faria followed him with an ardent eye.

“And now,” said he, when he saw Dantès had arrived at the last line, “bring the two fragments together, and judge for yourself.”

Dantès obeyed; the two fragments brought together gave the following whole:

“Today 25 April 1498, hav… ing been invited to dinner by His Holiness Alexander VI, and fearing that, not… content at having made me pay for the hat, he may wish to inherit from me and not… serve the lot of cardinals Crapara and Bentivoglio, dead poisoned,… I declare to my nephew Guido Spada, my universal legatee, that I have en… tombed in a place he knows for having visited it with me, that is to say in… the grottoes of the little isle of Monte-Cristo, all that I pos… sessed of ingots, of coined gold, stones, diamonds, jewels; that alone… I know the existence of this treasure which may amount to about two mil… lions of Roman ecus, and that he shall find having raised the twentieth rock… e starting from the little creek of the East in a straight line. Two openin… gs have been made in these grottoes: the treasure is in the farthest angle of… far from the second, which treasure I bequeath and assign to him in all… te property, as to my sole heir.

“25 April 1498

“CESAR… SPADA.”

“Well, do you understand at last?” said Faria.

“It was the declaration of Cardinal Spada and the will that has been sought so long?” said Edmond, still incredulous.

“Yes, a thousand times yes.”

“Who reconstructed it thus?”

“I, who, by aid of the remaining fragment, guessed the rest by measuring the length of the lines by that of the paper and penetrating the hidden sense by means of the visible sense, as one guides oneself in a subterranean passage by a remnant of light coming from above.”

“And what did you do when you believed you had acquired that conviction?”

“I wished to depart and I departed at the instant, carrying with me the beginning of my great work on the unity of a kingdom of Italy; but for long the imperial police, which, in that time, contrary to what Napoleon has since wished when a son was born to him, wanted the division of the provinces, had its eyes upon me: my precipitate departure, of which it was far from divining the cause, aroused its suspicions, and at the moment I embarked at Piombino I was arrested.

“Now,” continued Faria, looking at Dantès with an almost paternal expression, “now, my friend, you know as much as I; if we ever escape together, half of my treasure is yours; and if I die here and you escape alone, it belongs to you entirely.”

“But,” asked Dantès hesitating, “has this treasure in this world no more legitimate possessor than we?”

“But no, reassure yourself, the family is completely extinct; the last Count of Spada, besides, made me his heir; in bequeathing me that symbolic breviary he bequeathed me what it contained; no, no, reassure yourself; if we lay hands on that fortune, we may enjoy it without remorse.”

“And you say this treasure contains….”

“Two millions of Roman ecus, about thirteen millions of our money.”

“Impossible!” said Dantès, frightened by the enormity of the sum.

“Impossible! and why?” resumed the old man. “The Spada family was one of the oldest and most powerful families of the fifteenth century. Besides, in those times when all speculation and all industry were absent, these agglomerations of gold and jewels are not rare; there are still today Roman families who die of hunger near a million in diamonds and precious stones transmitted by entail, and to which they cannot touch.”

Edmond thought he dreamed: he floated between incredulity and joy.

“I kept the secret so long with you,” continued Faria, “first to test you, and next to surprise you; if we had escaped before my fit of catalepsy, I would have led you to Monte-Cristo; now,” he added with a sigh, “it is you who will lead me there. Well, Dantès, you do not thank me?”

“That treasure belongs to you, my friend,” said Dantès, “it belongs to you alone, and I have no right to it: I am not your kinsman.”

“You are my son, Dantès!” cried the old man, “you are the child of my captivity; my state condemned me to celibacy: God sent you to me to console at once the man who could not be a father and the prisoner who could not be free.”

And Faria stretched out the arm that remained to him to the young man, who threw himself upon his neck weeping.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”