XXV. L'inconnu.

XXV

The Unknown.

Day came. Dantès had long awaited it, his eyes open. At its first rays, he rose, climbed, as on the eve, to the highest rock of the island, to scan the surroundings; as on the eve, all was deserted.

Edmond went down, lifted the stone, filled his pockets with jewels, replaced as best he could the boards and ironwork of the chest, covered it with earth, trampled that earth, threw sand over it, so as to make the freshly turned spot like the rest of the ground; left the cave, replaced the flagstone, heaped upon the flagstone stones of different sizes; introduced earth into the intervals, planted in those intervals myrtles and heather, watered the new plantings so that they might seem old; effaced the traces of his footsteps gathered about that place, and waited with impatience for the return of his companions. Indeed, it was no longer a question now of passing his time gazing at that gold and those diamonds and remaining at Monte-Cristo like a dragon watching useless treasures. Now, he must return into life, among men, and take in society the rank, the influence and the power that wealth gives in this world, the first and greatest of the forces at the disposal of the human creature.

The smugglers returned on the sixth day. Dantès recognized from afar the port and the gait of the Young Amelia; he dragged himself to the harbor like the wounded Philoctetes, and when his companions landed, he announced to them, still complaining, a sensible improvement; then in his turn he listened to the adventurers' tale. They had succeeded, it is true; but scarcely had the cargo been landed than they had word that a brig on surveillance at Toulon had just left port and was heading their way. They had then fled with all speed, regretting that Dantès, who knew how to give the vessel so superior a velocity, was not there to command her. Indeed, soon they had sighted the pursuing craft; but by help of the night, and doubling the Cape Corse, they had escaped her.

On the whole, this voyage had not been bad; and all, and especially Jacopo, regretted that Dantès had not been of it, so that he might have his share of the profits it had brought, a share that amounted to fifty piastres.

Edmond remained impenetrable; he did not even smile at the enumeration of the advantages he would have shared had he left the island; and, as the Young Amelia had come to Monte-Cristo only to fetch him, he re-embarked that same evening and followed the patron to Leghorn.

At Leghorn, he went to a Jew and sold four of his smallest diamonds at five thousand francs each. The Jew might have inquired how a sailor came to be possessed of such objects; but he took good care not to, for he made a thousand francs on each.

The next day, he bought a brand-new boat, which he gave to Jacopo, adding to this gift a hundred piastres so that he might engage a crew; and that, on condition that Jacopo should go to Marseille to ask news of an old man named Louis Dantès who lived in the Allées de Meilhan, and of a young girl who lived in the village of the Catalans and who was named Mercédès.

It was Jacopo's turn to think he was dreaming: Edmond then told him that he had become a sailor on a whim, and because his family refused him the money needful for his keep; but that on arriving at Leghorn he had come into the inheritance of an uncle who had made him his sole heir. Dantès' lofty education gave such verisimilitude to this story that Jacopo did not for an instant doubt his former companion had told him the truth.

On the other side, as Edmond's engagement aboard the Young Amelia was expired, he took leave of the sailor, who at first tried to detain him, but who, having learned like Jacopo the tale of the inheritance, thenceforth gave up all hope of overcoming his former sailor's resolution.

The next day, Jacopo set sail for Marseille; he was to rejoin Edmond at Monte-Cristo.

The same day, Dantès departed without saying where he was going, taking leave of the crew of the Young Amelia with a splendid gratuity, and of the patron with the promise of giving him news of himself one day or another.

Dantès went to Genoa.

At the moment he arrived, they were trying out a little yacht commanded by an Englishman who, having heard that the Genoese were the best builders of the Mediterranean, had wished to have a yacht built at Genoa; the Englishman had agreed on a price of forty thousand francs: Dantès offered sixty thousand, on condition that the vessel be delivered him that very day. The Englishman had gone for a tour in Switzerland, awaiting the completion of his vessel. He was not to return for three weeks or a month: the builder thought he would have time to put another on the stocks. Dantès took the builder to a Jew, passed with him into the back shop, and the Jew counted out sixty thousand francs to the builder.

The builder offered Dantès his services to compose him a crew; but Dantès thanked him, saying he was used to sailing alone, and that the only thing he desired was that there be executed in the cabin, at the head of the bed, a secret closet, in which should be three secret compartments also. He gave the measurements of these compartments, which were executed the next day.

Two hours later, Dantès left the port of Genoa, escorted by the glances of a crowd of curious folk who wished to see the Spanish lord who was used to sailing alone.

Dantès acquitted himself marvelously; with the help of the helm, and without needing to quit it, he made his vessel perform all the evolutions desired; she seemed an intelligent being ready to obey the least impulse given, and Dantès agreed with himself that the Genoese deserved their reputation as the first builders in the world.

The curious followed the little vessel with their eyes until they had lost sight of her, and then discussions arose as to where she was going: some inclined for Corsica, others for the island of Elba; these offered to wager she was going to Spain, those maintained she was going to Africa; none thought to name the island of Monte-Cristo.

It was nevertheless to Monte-Cristo that Dantès was bound.

He arrived there toward the end of the second day: the ship was an excellent sailer and had covered the distance in thirty-five hours. Dantès had perfectly recognized the bearing of the coast; and, instead of landing at the usual port, he dropped anchor in the little creek.

The island was deserted; no one seemed to have landed there since Dantès had left it; he went to his treasure: all was in the same state he had left it.

The next day, his immense fortune was transported aboard the yacht and locked in the three compartments of the secret closet.

Dantès waited eight days more. For eight days he maneuvered his yacht about the island, studying her as a horseman studies a horse: at the end of that time, he knew all her qualities and all her defects; Dantès promised himself to increase the one and to remedy the other.

On the eighth day, Dantès saw a small vessel coming upon the island with all sails set, and recognized Jacopo's boat; he made a signal to which Jacopo answered, and two hours after, the boat was near the yacht.

There was a sad answer to each of the two questions put by Edmond.

Old Dantès was dead.

Mercédès had disappeared.

Edmond listened to these two pieces of news with a calm face; but immediately he went ashore, forbidding any to follow him there.

Two hours later, he returned; two men from Jacopo's boat passed onto his yacht to help with the maneuvering, and he gave the order to set course for Marseille. He had foreseen his father's death; but Mercédès, what had become of her?

Without divulging his secret, Edmond could not give sufficient instructions to an agent; besides, there were other particulars he wished to learn, and for which he trusted only himself. His mirror had taught him at Leghorn that he ran no danger of being recognized; moreover he now had at his disposal all the means of disguising himself. One morning then, the yacht, followed by the little boat, boldly entered the port of Marseille and stopped just opposite the spot where, on that evening of fatal memory, they had embarked him for the Château d'If.

It was not without a certain shudder that, in the skiff, Dantès saw a gendarme coming toward him. But Dantès, with that perfect assurance he had acquired, presented him an English passport which he had bought at Leghorn; and by means of this foreign permit, much more respected in France than our own, he landed without difficulty.

The first thing Dantès beheld, on setting foot on the Canebière, was one of the sailors of the Pharaoh. This man had served under his orders, and was there as a means of reassuring Dantès as to the changes that had taken place in him. He went straight to the man and put several questions to him, which the latter answered, without even letting it be suspected, either by his words or by his countenance, that he recalled ever having seen him who addressed him.

Dantès gave the sailor a coin to thank him for his information; an instant after, he heard the worthy man running after him.

Dantès turned round.

"Beg pardon, sir," said the sailor, "but you must have made a mistake; you will have thought to give me a forty-sous piece, and you have given me a double napoleon."

"Indeed, my friend," said Dantès, "I was mistaken; but, as your honesty deserves a reward, here is a second which I beg you to accept to drink to my health with your comrades."

The sailor looked at Edmond with so much astonishment that he did not even think to thank him; and he watched him go away, saying:

"It is some nabob just arrived from India."

Dantès continued on his way; every step he took oppressed his heart with a new emotion: all his childhood memories, indelible memories, eternally present to the mind, were there, rising at every corner of a square, at every angle of a street, at every boundary-stone of a crossing. On arriving at the end of the Rue de Noailles, and catching sight of the Allées de Meilhan, he felt his knees give way, and he all but fell beneath the wheels of a carriage. At last, he reached the house his father had lived in. The aristolochias and the nasturtiums had disappeared from the garret, where of old the goodman had trellised them with such care. He leaned against a tree, and remained some time thoughtful, looking at the top floors of that poor little house; at length he advanced toward the door, crossed the threshold, asked if there were not a vacant lodging, and, though it was occupied, insisted so long to visit that of the fifth floor, that the concierge went up and asked, on behalf of a stranger, the persons who occupied it, permission to see the two rooms of which it was composed. The persons who inhabited that little lodging were a young man and a young woman who had been married only a week.

On seeing these two young people, Dantès heaved a deep sigh.

For the rest, nothing recalled to Dantès his father's apartment: it was no longer the same paper; all the old furniture, those friends of childhood of Edmond's, present to his memory in all their details, had disappeared. Only the walls were the same.

Dantès turned toward the bed; it was there in the same place as that of the former lodger; in spite of himself, Edmond's eyes filled with tears: it was in that place the old man must have expired, naming his son.

The two young people looked with astonishment at this man of severe brow, down whose cheeks flowed two great tears without his face contracting. But, as all grief carries its religion with it, the young people put no question to the unknown; only, they drew back to let him weep at his ease, and when he withdrew they accompanied him, telling him he might come back when he would and that their poor house would always be hospitable to him.

In passing to the floor below, Edmond stopped before another door and asked if it was still the tailor Caderousse who lived there. But the concierge answered him that the man of whom he spoke had failed in business and now kept a small inn on the road from Bellegarde to Beaucaire.

Dantès went down, asked the address of the owner of the house in the Allées de Meilhan, went to him, had himself announced under the name of Lord Wilmore (it was the name and title borne on his passport), and bought him that little house for the sum of twenty-five thousand francs. It was at least ten thousand francs more than it was worth. But Dantès, had he made it half a million, would have paid that price.

That same day, the young people of the fifth floor were informed by the notary who had drawn the deed that the new owner gave them the choice of an apartment anywhere in the house, without any increase whatever of their rent, on condition that they cede to him the two rooms they occupied.

This strange event occupied for more than eight days all the habitués of the Allées de Meilhan, and gave rise to a thousand conjectures of which not one proved exact.

But what above all muddled every brain and troubled every mind, was that they saw that very evening the same man they had seen enter the house in the Allées de Meilhan walking in the little village of the Catalans, and entering a poor fisherman's dwelling where he remained more than an hour asking news of several persons who were dead or had disappeared for more than fifteen or sixteen years.

The next day, the people at whose house he had entered to put all these questions received as a gift a brand-new Catalan boat, furnished with two seines and a trawl.

These worthy folk would gladly have thanked the generous questioner; but on leaving them he had been seen, after giving some orders to a sailor, mounting a horse and leaving Marseille by the Aix gate.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”