XXXIV. Apparition.

XXXIV

Apparition.

Franz had found a middle course whereby Albert might reach the Colosseum without passing before any ancient ruin, and consequently without the gradual preparations detracting a single cubit from the gigantic proportions of the colossus. It was to follow the Via Sistina, cut straight across in front of Santa Maria Maggiore, and arrive by the Via Urbana and San Pietro in Vincoli as far as the Via del Colosseo.

This route offered, moreover, another advantage: that of in no way distracting Franz from the impression produced upon him by the story related by Signor Pastrini, in which his mysterious host of Monte Cristo was mingled. He had therefore leaned in his corner and fallen back into those thousand endless questionings he had put to himself, not one of which had yielded him a satisfactory answer.

One thing, besides, had recalled to him his friend Sinbad the Sailor: those mysterious relations between brigands and sailors. What Signor Pastrini had said of the refuge Vampa found upon the boats of fishermen and smugglers reminded Franz of those two Corsican bandits he had found supping with the crew of the little yacht, which had turned from its course and put in at Porto-Vecchio solely to set them ashore. The name assumed by his host of Monte Cristo, pronounced by his host of the Hotel de Espagne, proved to him that he played the same philanthropic role upon the coasts of Piombino, Civita-Vecchia, Ostia, and Gaeta as upon those of Corsica, Tuscany, and Spain; and as he himself, as far as Franz could recall, had spoken of Tunis and Palermo, it was proof that he embraced a rather extensive circle of connections.

But powerful as all these reflections were upon the young man's mind, they vanished the instant he saw rising before him the dark and gigantic specter of the Colosseum, through whose openings the moon cast those long, pale rays that fall from the eyes of phantoms. The carriage stopped a few paces from the Meta Sudans. The coachman came to open the door; the two young men sprang from the carriage and found themselves face to face with a cicerone who seemed to issue from underground.

As the one from the hotel had followed them, that made two.

Impossible, besides, to avoid at Rome this luxury of guides; beyond the general cicerone who seizes you the moment you set foot on the threshold of the hotel door, and abandons you only on the day you set foot outside the city, there is yet a special cicerone attached to each monument, and I might almost say to each fraction of the monument. Judge then if one can lack ciceroni at the Colosseo, that is to say, the monument par excellence, which made Martial say:

"Let Memphis cease to vaunt to us the barbarous miracles of her pyramids, let the wonders of Babylon be sung no more; all must yield before the immense work of the amphitheater of the Caesars, all the voices of fame must unite to extol this monument."

Franz and Albert did not attempt to escape the ciceronian tyranny. Besides, it would be so much the more difficult since it is the guides alone who have the right to traverse the monument with torches. They therefore made no resistance, and surrendered themselves hand and foot to their conductors.

Franz knew this walk, having already taken it ten times. But as his companion, more of a novice, set foot for the first time in the monument of Flavius Vespasian, I must avow to his praise, despite the ignorant prattle of his guides, he was strongly impressed. For indeed one has no idea, when one has not seen it, of the majesty of such a ruin, all of whose proportions are doubled yet again by the mysterious light of that southern moon whose rays seem a western twilight.

Thus scarcely had Franz the thinker taken a hundred paces beneath the inner porticoes, than, abandoning Albert to his guides, who would not renounce the imprescriptible right of showing him in all their detail the Pit of the Lions, the Loggia of the Gladiators, the Podium of the Caesars, he took a half-ruined staircase and, leaving them to continue their symmetrical route, went simply to seat himself in the shadow of a column, facing an opening that allowed him to embrace the giant of granite in all its majestic extent.

Franz had been there about a quarter of an hour, lost, as I have said, in the shadow of a column, occupied in watching Albert, who, accompanied by his two torch-bearers, had just issued from a vomitorium placed at the other extremity of the Colosseum, and who, like shadows following a will-o'-the-wisp, were descending step by step toward the seats reserved for the vestals, when it seemed to him he heard rolling in the depths of the monument a stone detached from the staircase facing that which he had taken to arrive at the spot where he sat. It is no rare thing, doubtless, for a stone to detach itself beneath the foot of time and roll into the abyss; but this time it seemed to him that it was beneath a man's foot the stone had given way, and that a sound of steps reached him, though he who caused it did all he could to muffle it.

Indeed, at the end of a moment, a man appeared gradually issuing from the shadow as he mounted the staircase, whose mouth, situated opposite Franz, was lit by the moon, but whose steps, as one descended them, sank into obscurity.

This might be a traveler like himself, preferring solitary meditation to the meaningless chatter of his guides, and consequently his appearance had nothing to surprise him; but from the hesitation with which he mounted the last steps, from the way in which, arrived upon the platform, he stopped and seemed to listen, it was evident he had come there for a particular purpose and was awaiting someone.

By an instinctive movement, Franz shrank as far as he could behind the column.

Ten feet above the ground where they both were, the vault was hollowed, and a round opening, like that of a well, permitted a view of the sky all studded with stars.

Around this opening, which had perhaps for hundreds of years already given passage to the moon's rays, grew brambles whose green and slender outlines stood out vividly against the mat blue of the firmament, while great creepers and powerful shoots of ivy hung from that upper terrace and swayed beneath the vault, like floating ropes.

The person whose mysterious arrival had attracted Franz's attention was placed in a half-light that did not permit him to distinguish his features, but which was nevertheless not dark enough to prevent his detailing his costume: he was wrapped in a large brown mantle, one fold of which, thrown over his left shoulder, hid the lower part of his face, while his broad-brimmed hat covered the upper. Only the extremity of his garments was lit by the oblique light passing through the opening, and which permitted a view of black trousers coquettishly framing a varnished boot.

This man belonged evidently, if not to the aristocracy, at least to high society.

He had been there some minutes and was beginning to show visible signs of impatience, when a slight noise was heard upon the upper terrace.

At the same instant a shadow seemed to intercept the light, a man appeared at the mouth of the opening, plunged his piercing gaze into the darkness, and perceived the man in the mantle; forthwith he seized a handful of those hanging creepers and floating ivies, let himself slide down, and, arrived within three or four feet of the ground, lightly sprang to earth. This one had the complete costume of a Trasteverine.

"Excuse me, Excellency," said he in the Roman dialect, "I have made you wait. However, I am late only by a few minutes. Ten o'clock has just struck at San Giovanni in Laterano."

"It is I who was early and not you who were late," answered the stranger in the purest Tuscan; "thus no ceremony: besides, had you made me wait, I should have been well convinced it was for some motive independent of your will."

"And you would have been right, Excellency; I come from the Castel Sant'Angelo, and I had all imaginable difficulty in speaking with Beppo."

"Who is Beppo?"

"Beppo is a prison employee, to whom I pay a small annuity to know what passes within the fortress of His Holiness."

"Ah! ah! I see you are a man of precaution, my dear fellow!"

"What would you have, Excellency! one knows not what may happen; perhaps I too shall one day be taken in the net like that poor Peppino; and shall I need a rat to gnaw a few meshes of my prison."

"Briefly, what have you learned?"

"There will be two executions Tuesday at two o'clock as is the custom at Rome upon the openings of the great festivals. One condemned will be mazzolato; he is a wretch who killed a priest who had brought him up, and who merits no interest. The other will be decapitato, and that one is poor Peppino."

"What would you have, my dear, you inspire so great a terror, not only in the pontifical government but in the neighboring kingdoms, that they absolutely wish to make an example."

"But Peppino is not even of my band; he is a poor shepherd who has committed no other crime than furnishing us with provisions."

"Which constitutes him perfectly your accomplice. Also, see how they have regard for him: instead of knocking him on the head, as they will you, if ever they lay hands on you, they will content themselves with guillotining him. Besides, that will vary the people's pleasures, and there will be a spectacle for every taste."

"Not to mention that which I reserve for them and which they do not expect," resumed the Trasteverine.

"My dear friend, permit me to tell you," resumed the man in the mantle, "that you seem quite disposed to do some folly."

"I am disposed to anything to prevent the execution of the poor devil who is in trouble for having served me; by the Madonna! I shall regard myself as a coward if I did not do something for that brave lad."

"And what will you do?"

"I shall place some twenty men around the scaffold, and, at the moment he is brought, at the signal I give, we shall leap, dagger in fist, upon the escort, and carry him off."

"That seems to me very chancy, and I am decidedly of the opinion that my plan is better than yours."

"And what is your plan, Excellency?"

"I shall give ten thousand piastres to someone I know, who will obtain that Peppino's execution be put off until next year; then, in the course of the year, I shall give a thousand more piastres to another someone I also know, and have him escape from prison."

"Are you sure of succeeding?"

"Pardieu!" said the man in the mantle in French.

"What say you?" asked the Trasteverine.

"I say, my dear, that I alone shall do more with my gold than you and all your men with your daggers, your pistols, your carbines, and your blunderbusses. Leave me then to act."

"Excellent; but if you fail, we shall hold ourselves always ready."

"Hold yourselves always ready, if it pleases you; but be certain I shall have his pardon."

"It is the day after tomorrow Tuesday; pay attention. You have no more than tomorrow."

"Well, but the day is composed of twenty-four hours, each hour of sixty minutes, each minute of sixty seconds; in eighty-six thousand four hundred seconds one does many things."

"If you have succeeded, Excellency, how shall we know it?"

"It is very simple. I have hired the three last windows of the Cafe Rospoli; if I have obtained the reprieve, the two corner windows will be draped in yellow damask but the middle one will be draped in white damask with a red cross."

"Excellent. And by whom will you send the pardon?"

"Send me one of your men disguised as a penitent and I will give it to him. Thanks to his costume, he will arrive at the foot of the scaffold and hand the brief to the chief of the brotherhood, who will hand it to the executioner. Meanwhile, let Peppino know this news; let him not die of fright or go mad, which would be the cause that we had made for him a useless expense."

"Listen, Excellency," said the peasant, "I am very devoted to you, and you are convinced of it, are you not?"

"I hope so, at least."

"Well, if you save Peppino it will be more than devotion for the future, it will be obedience."

"Take care what you say there, my dear! I may perhaps remind you of it one day, for perhaps one day I too shall have need of you...."

"Well then, Excellency, you will find me at the hour of need as I shall have found you at this same hour; then, were you at the other end of the world, you need but write to me: 'Do this,' and I will do it, faith of...."

"Hush!" said the unknown, "I hear a noise."

"They are travelers visiting the Colosseum with torches."

"It is useless that they find us together. These spy guides might recognize you; and, honorable as is your friendship, my dear friend, if it were known we are linked as we are, this connection, I much fear, would make me lose somewhat of my credit."

"Thus, if you have the reprieve?"

"The middle window draped in damask with a red cross."

"If you have it not?..."

"Three yellow hangings."

"And then?..."

"Then, my dear friend, play the dagger to your heart's content, I permit you, and I shall be there to see you do it."

"Farewell, Excellency; I count on you, count on me."

At these words the Trasteverine disappeared by the staircase, while the unknown, covering his face more than ever with his mantle, passed within two paces of Franz and descended into the arena by the outer steps.

A second later, Franz heard his name resound beneath the vaults: it was Albert calling him.

He waited to answer until the two men were distant, having no wish to let them learn that they had had a witness who, if he had not seen their faces, had not lost a word of their conversation.

Ten minutes later, Franz was rolling toward the Hotel de Espagne, listening with a very impertinent distraction to the learned dissertation Albert was making, from Pliny and Calpurnius, upon the nets garnished with iron points that prevented the wild beasts from leaping upon the spectators.

He let him go on without contradicting him; he was eager to find himself alone to think without distraction of what had just passed before him.

Of these two men, one was certainly a stranger to him, and it was the first time he saw and heard him, but it was not so with the other; and, though Franz had not distinguished his face constantly buried in shadow or hidden by his mantle, the accents of that voice had struck him too forcibly the first time he heard them for them ever to resound before him without his recognizing them.

There was above all in the raillery of its intonations something strident and metallic that had made him start in the ruins of the Colosseum as in the grotto of Monte Cristo.

He was therefore well convinced that this man was none other than Sinbad the Sailor.

Also, in any other circumstance, the curiosity this man had inspired in him would have been so great that he would have made himself known to him, but in this occasion, the conversation he had just overheard was too intimate for him not to be restrained by the very sensible fear that his appearance would be unwelcome. He had therefore let him go away, as has been seen, but promising himself, if he met him again, not to let slip this second opportunity as he had the first.

Franz was too preoccupied to sleep well. His night was spent in turning over in his mind all the circumstances connected with the man of the grotto and the unknown of the Colosseum, and tending to make of these two personages the same individual; and the more Franz thought of it, the more he strengthened in this opinion.

He fell asleep at daybreak, and this it was that made him wake very late. Albert, a true Parisian, had already taken his precautions for the evening. He had sent to secure a box at the Argentina theater.

Franz had several letters to write in France, he therefore abandoned the carriage for the whole day to Albert.

At five o'clock Albert returned; he had delivered his letters of recommendation, had invitations for all his evenings, and had seen Rome.

A single day had sufficed Albert to do all that.

And moreover he had had time to inquire as to the piece being played and the actors who would play it.

The piece was entitled: Parisiana; the actors were named: Coselli, Moriani, and la Spech.

Our two young men were not so unhappy, as may be seen: they were going to attend the performance of one of the best operas of the author of Lucia di Lammermoor, played by three of the most renowned artists of Italy.

Albert had never been able to accustom himself to the ultramontane theaters, whose orchestra one does not frequent, and which have neither balconies nor open boxes; it was hard for a man who had his stall at the Bouffes and his share of the infernal box at the Opera.

Which did not prevent Albert from making flaming toilets every time he went to the Opera with Franz; lost toilets; for, it must be avowed to the shame of one of the worthiest representatives of our fashion, for four months that he had been crisscrossing Italy in every direction, Albert had not had a single adventure.

Albert sometimes tried to jest on this point; but at bottom he was singularly mortified, he, Albert de Morcerf, one of the most sought-after young men, to be still out of pocket. The thing was the more painful that, according to the modest habit of our dear compatriots, Albert had left Paris with the conviction that he was going to have the greatest success in Italy, and that he would come to delight the boulevard de Gand with the account of his good fortunes.

Alas! nothing of the kind had happened: the charming Genoese, Florentine, and Neapolitan countesses had kept, not to their husbands, but to their lovers, and Albert had acquired the cruel conviction that the Italians have at least this advantage over the Frenchwomen, of being faithful to their infidelity.

I do not mean that in Italy, as everywhere, there are no exceptions.

And yet Albert was not only a perfectly elegant cavalier, but also a man of much wit; moreover he was a viscount: of new nobility, it is true; but today that one no longer proves one's descent, what matters it whether one dates from 1399 or 1815! Above all that he had fifty thousand livres of income. That was more than enough, as may be seen, to be in fashion at Paris. It was therefore somewhat humiliating not yet to have been seriously remarked by anyone in any of the cities he had passed through.

But he counted on making up for it at Rome, the carnival being, in all the countries of the earth that celebrate this estimable institution, a time of liberty wherein the most severe let themselves be drawn into some act of folly. Now, as the carnival opened the next day, it was very important that Albert launch his prospectus before this opening.

Albert had therefore, with this intention, hired one of the most conspicuous boxes in the theater, and made, to go there, an irreproachable toilet. It was in the first tier, which with us replaces the gallery. Besides, the first three tiers are as aristocratic as one another, and they are called for this reason the noble rows.

Moreover this box, where one could hold twelve without being crowded, had cost the two friends a little less than a box for four persons at the Ambigu.

Albert had yet another hope, which was that if he managed to take a place in the heart of a beautiful Roman woman, that would naturally lead him to conquer a posto in the carriage, and consequently to see the carnival from atop an aristocratic vehicle or a princely balcony.

All these considerations rendered Albert more sprightly than he had ever been. He turned his back to the actors, leaning half out of the box and ogling all the pretty women with an opera glass six inches long.

Which brought not a single pretty woman to reward with so much as a curious glance all the fuss Albert was making.

Indeed, each was talking of his affairs, his loves, his pleasures, of the carnival which opened the day after next week's holy week, without paying attention for a single instant either to the actors or to the piece, except at the indicated moments, when each then turned round, whether to hear a portion of Coselli's recitative, or to applaud some brilliant trait of Moriani's, or to cry bravo to la Spech; then the private conversations resumed their habitual course.

Toward the end of the first act, the door of a box that had remained empty until then opened, and Franz saw enter a person to whom he had had the honor of being presented in Paris and whom he believed still in France. Albert saw the movement his friend made at this apparition, and turning toward him:

"Do you know that woman?" said he.

"Yes; how do you find her?"

"Charming, my dear, and blonde. Oh! the adorable hair! Is she a Frenchwoman?"

"She is a Venetian."

"And you call her?"

"The Countess G..."

"Oh! I know her by name," cried Albert; "they say she is as witty as she is pretty. Pardieu, when I think that I might have had myself presented to her at the last ball of Madame de Villefort, where she was, and that I neglected it: I am a great booby!"

"Will you have me repair that wrong?" asked Franz.

"What! you know her well enough to take me into her box?"

"I have had the honor of speaking to her three or four times in my life; but, as you know, that is strictly enough not to commit an impropriety."

At this moment the countess perceived Franz and made him a gracious sign with her hand, to which he replied with a respectful inclination of the head.

"Ah, but it seems to me you are on the best of terms with her?" said Albert.

"Well, that is what deceives you and what will continually make us, we Frenchmen, commit a thousand follies abroad: it is of submitting everything to our Parisian points of view; in Spain, and in Italy especially, never judge of people's intimacy by the freedom of their intercourse. We found ourselves in sympathy with the countess, that is all."

"In sympathy of heart?" asked Albert laughing.

"No, of spirit, that is all," answered Franz seriously.

"And on what occasion?"

"On the occasion of a walk in the Colosseum similar to the one we took together."

"By moonlight?"

"Yes."

"Alone?"

"Nearly!"

"And you spoke..."

"Of the dead."

"Ah!" cried Albert, "that was in truth vastly recreative. Well, I promise you that if I have the happiness to be the cavalier of the beautiful countess in a like walk, I will speak to her only of the living."

"And you will perhaps be wrong."

"Meanwhile, you are going to present me to her as you promised?"

"As soon as the curtain falls."

"How long this devil of a first act is!"

"Listen to the finale, it is very beautiful, and Coselli sings it admirably."

"Yes, but what a figure!"

"La Spech is nothing if not dramatic in it."

"You understand that when one has heard Sontag and Malibran...."

"Do you not find Moriani's method excellent?"

"I do not like brunets who sing blond."

"Ah! my dear," said Franz turning round, while Albert continued to ogle, "truly you are too difficult!"

At length the curtain fell to the great satisfaction of the Viscount de Morcerf, who took his hat, gave a rapid pass to his hair, his cravat, and his ruffles, and observed to Franz that he awaited him.

As for her part, the countess, whom Franz interrogated with his eyes, made him understand by a sign that he would be welcome, Franz made no delay in satisfying Albert's eagerness, and, making—followed by his companion who profited by the trip to rectify the false folds that movements might have impressed upon his shirt collar and the lapel of his coat—the tour of the hemicycle, he came to knock at box No. 4, which was that occupied by the countess.

Immediately the young man who was seated beside her on the front of the box rose, yielding his place, according to Italian custom, to the new arrival, who must yield it in turn when another visit arrives.

Franz presented Albert to the countess as one of our young men most distinguished by his social position and his wit; which, besides, was true; for at Paris, and in the milieu where Albert lived, he was an irreproachable cavalier. He added that, despairing not to have known how to profit by the countess's stay in Paris to have himself presented to her, he had charged him to repair this fault, a mission of which he acquitted himself by praying the countess, near whom he himself should have needed an introducer, to excuse his indiscretion.

The countess answered by making a charming salute to Albert and extending her hand to Franz.

Albert, invited by her, took the vacant place on the front, and Franz sat in the second row behind the countess.

Albert had found an excellent subject of conversation: it was Paris; he spoke to the countess of their mutual acquaintances. Franz understood that he was on safe ground. He let him go on, and, asking her for her gigantic opera glass, he set himself in turn to explore the hall.

Alone on the front of a box, placed in the third tier opposite them, was a woman admirably beautiful, clad in a Greek costume, which she wore with such ease that it was evident it was her natural attire.

Behind her, in the shadow, was outlined the form of a man whose face it was impossible to distinguish.

Franz interrupted the conversation of Albert and the countess to ask the latter if she knew the beautiful Albanian who was so worthy of attracting not only the attention of men, but even of women.

"No," said she; "all I know is that she has been at Rome since the beginning of the season; for, at the opening of the theater, I saw her where she is, and for a month she has not missed a single performance, sometimes accompanied by the man who is with her at this moment, sometimes followed simply by a black servant."

"How do you find her, countess?"

"Extremely beautiful. Medora must have resembled this woman."

Franz and the countess exchanged a smile. She resumed talking with Albert, and Franz with ogling his Albanian.

The curtain rose upon the ballet. It was one of those good Italian ballets staged by the famous Henri who had made himself, as choreographer, in Italy a colossal reputation, which the unhappy man came to lose at the nautical theater; one of those ballets where everyone, from the first subject to the last super, takes so active a part in the action, that a hundred and fifty persons make at once the same gesture and lift together either the same arm or the same leg.

They called this ballet Poliska.

Franz was too preoccupied by his beautiful Greek to concern himself with the ballet, interesting though it were. As for her, she took a visible pleasure in this spectacle, a pleasure which made a supreme opposition with the profound unconcern of him who accompanied her, and who, as long as the choreographic masterpiece lasted, did not make a movement, seeming, despite the infernal noise made by the trumpets, the cymbals, and the Chinese hats in the orchestra, to taste the celestial sweets of a peaceful and radiant slumber.

At length the ballet ended, and the curtain fell amid the frenetic applause of an intoxicated pit.

Thanks to this habit of cutting the opera with a ballet, the intervals are very short in Italy, the singers having time to rest and change costume while the dancers execute their pirouettes and fashion their entrechats.

The overture of the second act began; at the first strokes of the bow, Franz saw the sleeper slowly raise himself and draw near the Greek, who turned round to address him a few words, and leaned again on the front of the box.

The face of his interlocutor was still in shadow, and Franz could distinguish none of his features.

The curtain rose, Franz's attention was necessarily attracted by the actors, and his eyes left for an instant the box of the beautiful Greek to turn toward the stage.

The act opens, as is known, with the dream duet: Parisina, lying down, lets escape before Azzo the secret of her love for Ugo; the betrayed husband passes through all the furies of jealousy, until, convinced that his wife is unfaithful to him, he awakens her to announce her impending vengeance.

This duet is one of the most beautiful, most expressive, and most terrible to have issued from the fertile pen of Donizetti. Franz heard it for the third time, and though he did not pass for a raging melomaniac, it produced upon him a profound effect. He was accordingly about to join his applause to that of the house, when his hands, ready to meet, remained apart, and the bravo escaping his mouth expired on his lips.

The man of the box had risen full height, and, his head being in the light, Franz had just rediscovered the mysterious inhabitant of Monte Cristo, he whose stature and voice he had thought he so well recognized the eve before in the ruins of the Colosseum.

There was no longer any doubt, the strange traveler dwelt at Rome.

Doubtless the expression of Franz's face was in harmony with the trouble this apparition cast into his mind, for the countess looked at him, burst out laughing, and asked him what was the matter.

"Madame la Comtesse," answered Franz, "I asked you just now if you knew this Albanian woman: now I shall ask you if you know her husband."

"No more than her," answered the countess.

"Have you never remarked him?"

"There is a question truly French! You know well that, for us Italian women, there is no other man in the world than the one we love!"

"That is just," answered Franz.

"In any case," said she, applying Albert's glasses to her eyes and directing them toward the box, "this must be some newly disinterred one, some deceased issuing from the tomb with the sexton's permission, for he seems to me frightfully pale."

"He is always thus," answered Franz.

"You know him then?" asked the countess; "then it is I who shall ask you who he is."

"I think I have already seen him, and it seems to me I recognize him."

"Indeed," said she, making a movement of her beautiful shoulders as if a shiver passed through her veins, "I understand that when one has once seen such a man one never forgets him."

The effect Franz had experienced was therefore not a particular impression, since another person felt it as he did.

"Well," asked Franz of the countess after she had taken upon herself to ogle him a second time, "what think you of this man?"

"That this seems to me to be Lord Ruthwen in flesh and blood."

Indeed, this new remembrance of Byron struck Franz: if any man could make him believe in the existence of vampires, it was this man.

"I must know who he is," said Franz rising.

"Oh! no," cried the countess; "no, do not leave me, I count on you to take me home, and I keep you."

"How! truly," said he to Franz leaning to her ear, "you are afraid?"

"Listen," said she to him, "Byron swore to me he believed in vampires, he told me he had seen them, he depicted their face to me, well! it is absolutely that: this black hair, these great eyes shining with a strange flame, this deathly pallor; then, remark that he is not with a woman like all women, he is with a stranger... a Greek, a schismatic... doubtless some sorceress like himself. I pray you, do not go there. Tomorrow seek him out if you think fit, but today I declare I keep you."

Franz insisted.

"Listen," said she rising, "I am going; I cannot stay until the end of the spectacle, I have company at home: will you be so little gallant as to refuse me your company?"

There was no other answer to make than to take his hat, open the door, and present his arm to the countess.

Which he did.

The countess was truly much moved; and Franz himself could not escape a certain superstitious terror, the more natural that what was in the countess the product of an instinctive sensation, was in him the result of a remembrance.

He felt her tremble as she stepped into the carriage.

He saw her home: there was no one there, and she was in no way expected; he reproached her for it.

"Truly," said she to him, "I do not feel well, and I need to be alone; the sight of that man has quite upset me."

Franz tried to laugh.

"Do not laugh," said she to him; "besides you have no wish to. Then promise me one thing."

"Which?"

"Promise it me."

"Anything you wish, except to renounce discovering who this man is. I have reasons I cannot tell you for desiring to know who he is, whence he comes, and where he goes."

"Whence he comes, I know not; but where he goes, I can tell you: he goes to hell assuredly."

"Let us return to the promise you wished to exact of me, countess," said Franz.

"Ah! it is to return directly to the hotel and not seek tonight to see this man. There are certain affinities between the persons one leaves and the persons one rejoins. Do not serve as conductor between this man and me. Tomorrow run after him if you think fit, but never present him to me, if you do not wish to make me die of fright. Thereupon, good evening; try to sleep, I, I know well who shall not sleep."

And with these words the countess left Franz, leaving him undecided whether she had amused herself at his expense or had truly felt the fear she had expressed.

On returning to the hotel, Franz found Albert in a dressing gown, in ankle trousers, voluptuously stretched in an armchair and smoking his cigar.

"Ah! it is you!" said he to him; "faith, I expected you only tomorrow."

"My dear Albert," answered Franz, "I am happy to find the occasion to tell you once for all that you have the falsest idea of Italian women; it seems to me however that your amorous disappointments should have made you lose it."

"What would you have! these she-devils of women, it is beyond comprehension! They give you their hand, they press it; they speak to you low, they have themselves seen home: with a quarter of these ways, a Parisian would lose her reputation."

"Eh! precisely, it is because they have nothing to hide, it is because they live in the broad daylight, that the women put so little ceremony in the beautiful country where resounds the si, as Dante says. Besides, you saw well that the countess was truly afraid."

"Afraid of what? of that honest gentleman who was opposite us with that pretty Greek? But I wished to have the heart of it when they went out, and I crossed them in the corridor. I know not where the devil you got all your other-world ideas! He is a very fine fellow who is very well dressed, and who has all the air of being fitted out in France at Blin's or at Humann's; a little pale, it is true, but you know pallor is a mark of distinction."

Franz smiled, Albert had great pretensions to being pale.

"Also," said Franz to him, "I am convinced that the countess's ideas on this man have no common sense. Did he speak near you, and did you hear some of his words?"

"He spoke, but in Romaic. I recognized the idiom by some deformed Greek words. I must tell you, my dear, that at college I was very strong in Greek."

"Thus he spoke Romaic?"

"It is probable."

"No doubt," murmured Franz, "it is he."

"You say?..."

"Nothing. What were you doing there then?"

"I was reserving you a surprise."

"Which?"

"You know that it is impossible to procure a carriage?"

"Pardieu! since we have uselessly done all that was humanly possible to do so."

"Well, I had a marvelous idea."

Franz looked at Albert as a man who had little confidence in his imagination.

"My dear," said Albert, "you honor me there with a glance that would well merit my demanding satisfaction."

"I am ready to give it you, dear friend, if the idea is as ingenious as you say."

"Listen."

"I listen."

"There is no means of procuring a carriage, is there?"

"No."

"Nor horses?"

"Nor that either."

"But one can procure a cart?"

"Perhaps."

"A pair of oxen?"

"It is probable."

"Well, my dear! there is our affair. I am going to have the cart decorated, we dress as Neapolitan reapers, and we represent to the life the magnificent picture of Leopold Robert. If, for greater resemblance, the countess will take the costume of a woman of Pozzuoli or of Sorrento, that will complete the masquerade, and she is pretty enough to be taken for the original of the Woman with the Child."

"Pardieu!" cried Franz, "this time you are right, Monsieur Albert, and that is a truly happy idea."

"And wholly national, renewed from the idle kings, my dear, nothing less! Ah! gentlemen Romans, you think one will run on foot through your streets like lazzaroni, and that because you lack carriages and horses; well! one will invent them."

"And have you already imparted to anyone this triumphant imagination?"

"To our host. On returning, I had him come up and exposed my desires to him. He assured me nothing was easier; I wished to have the oxen's horns gilded, but he told me that would take three days: we must therefore dispense with this superfluity."

"And where is he?"

"Who?"

"Our host?"

"In quest of the thing. Tomorrow it would perhaps already be a little late."

"So that he will bring us an answer this very evening?"

"I await him."

At this moment the door opened, and Signor Pastrini put in his head.

"Permesso?" said he.

"Certainly it is permitted!" cried Franz.

"Well," said Albert, "have you found us the required cart and the demanded oxen?"

"I have found better than that," answered he with an air perfectly satisfied with himself.

"Ah! my dear host, take care," said Albert, "the better is the enemy of the good."

"Let Your Excellencies trust to me," said Signor Pastrini in a capable tone.

"But what is there then?" asked Franz in his turn.

"You know," said the innkeeper, "that the Count of Monte Cristo lodges on the same square as you?"

"I should think so," said Albert, "since it is thanks to him that we are lodged like two students of the Rue Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet."

"Well, he knows the embarrassment in which you find yourselves, and offers you two places in his carriage and two places at his windows of the Palazzo Rospoli."

Albert and Franz looked at each other.

"But," asked Albert, "are we to accept the offer of this stranger, of a man we do not know?"

"What sort of man is this Count of Monte Cristo?" asked Franz of his host.

"A very great Sicilian or Maltese nobleman, I know not exactly, noble as a Borghese and rich as a gold mine."

"It seems to me," said Franz to Albert, "that, if this man were of as good manners as our host says, he would have had to convey his invitation to us in another way, either by writing to us, or...."

At this moment there was a knock at the door.

"Come in," said Franz.

A servant, clad in a perfectly elegant livery, appeared on the threshold of the room.

"From the Count of Monte Cristo, for Monsieur Franz d'Epinay and for Monsieur le Vicomte Albert de Morcerf," said he.

And he presented to the host two cards, which the latter handed to the young men.

"Monsieur le Comte de Monte Cristo," continued the servant, "begs these gentlemen the permission to present himself as neighbor at their rooms tomorrow morning; he will have the honor of inquiring of these gentlemen at what hour they will be visible."

"Faith," said Albert to Franz, "there is nothing to find fault with, all is there."

"Tell the count," answered Franz, "that it is we who will have the honor of paying him our visit."

The servant withdrew.

"That is what is called making a contest of elegance," said Albert; "come, decidedly you were right, Signor Pastrini, and it is a perfectly well-bred man your Count of Monte Cristo."

"Then you accept his offer?" said the host.

"Faith, yes," answered Albert. "However, I avow it to you, I regret our cart and the reapers; and, if it were not for the window of the Palazzo Rospoli to compensate for what we lose, I believe I should return to my first idea: what say you, Franz?"

"I say that it is also the windows of the Palazzo Rospoli that decide me," answered Franz to Albert.

Indeed, this offer of two places at a window of the Palazzo Rospoli had recalled to Franz the conversation he had overheard in the ruins of the Colosseum between his unknown and his Trasteverine, a conversation in which the engagement had been taken by the man in the mantle to obtain the pardon of the condemned. Now, if the man in the mantle was, as everything led Franz to believe, the same as he whose apparition in the Argentina hall had so preoccupied him, he would recognize him without any doubt, and then nothing would prevent him from satisfying his curiosity concerning him.

Franz passed part of the night dreaming of his two apparitions and desiring the morrow. Indeed, the morrow all must be cleared up; and this time, unless his host of Monte Cristo possessed the ring of Gyges and, thanks to that ring, the faculty of rendering himself invisible, it was evident he would not escape him. He was therefore awake before eight o'clock.

As for Albert, as he had not the same motives as Franz to be early, he was still sleeping his best.

Franz had his host called, who presented himself with his usual obsequiousness.

"Signor Pastrini," said he to him, "is there not to be an execution today?"

"Yes, Excellency; but if you ask me that to have a window, you go about it very late."

"No," resumed Franz; "besides, if I absolutely wished to see this spectacle, I should find a place, I think, on the Monte Pincio."

"Oh! I presumed that Your Excellency would not wish to compromise yourself with all the rabble, for whom it is in some sort the natural amphitheater."

"It is probable I shall not go," said Franz; "but I should like to have some details."

"Which?"

"I should like to know the number of the condemned, their names, and the manner of their punishment."

"That falls marvellously, Excellency! they have just brought me the tavoletta."

"What is the tavoletta?"

"The tavoletta are wooden tablets that are hung at all street corners on the eve of executions, and upon which are pasted the names of the condemned, the cause of their condemnation, and the mode of their punishment. This notice has for its object to invite the faithful to pray God to grant the culprits a sincere repentance."

"And they bring you these tavoletta so that you may join your prayers to those of the faithful?" asked Franz with an air of doubt.

"No, Excellency; I have an understanding with the bill-sticker, and he brings me this as he brings me the playbills, so that if some of my travelers desire to attend the execution, they may be warned."

"Ah! but that is a perfectly delicate attention!" cried Franz.

"Oh!" said Signor Pastrini smiling, "I may boast of doing all that is in my power to satisfy the noble foreigners who honor me with their confidence."

"That is what I see, my host! and that is what I shall repeat to whoever wishes to hear it, be very certain. Meanwhile, I should like to read one of these tavoletta."

"That is very easy," said the host opening the door, "I have had one put up on the square."

He went out, detached the tavoletta, and presented it to Franz.

Here is the literal translation of the gibbet placard:

"Notice is given to all that on Tuesday, February 22, the first day of carnival, will be, by sentence of the Tribunal of the Rota, executed, on the Piazza del Popolo, the named Andrea Rondolo, guilty of assassination upon the very respectable and venerable person of Don Cesare Terlini, canon of the church of San Giovanni in Laterano, and the named Peppino, called Rocca Priori, convicted of complicity with the detestable bandit Luigi Vampa and the men of his troop.

"The first will be mazzolato.

"And the second decapitato.

"Charitable souls are prayed to ask of God a sincere repentance for these two unhappy condemned."

It was indeed what Franz had heard the eve before, in the ruins of the Colosseum, and nothing was changed in the program: the names of the condemned, the cause of their punishment, and the manner of their execution were exactly the same.

Thus, according to all probability, the Trasteverine was none other than the bandit Luigi Vampa, and the man in the mantle Sinbad the Sailor, who, at Rome as at Porto-Vecchio, and at Tunis, pursued the course of his philanthropic expeditions.

Meanwhile time was slipping by, it was nine o'clock, and Franz was about to awaken Albert, when to his great astonishment he saw him issue all dressed from his room. The carnival had trotted through his head, and awakened him earlier than his friend expected.

"Well," said Franz to his host, "now that we are both ready, do you think, my dear Monsieur Pastrini, that we may present ourselves at the Count of Monte Cristo's?"

"Oh! certainly!" answered he; "the Count of Monte Cristo has the habit of being very early, and I am sure he has been up more than two hours already."

"And you think there is no indiscretion in presenting ourselves at his rooms now?"

"None."

"In that case, Albert, if you are ready...."

"Entirely ready," said Albert.

"Let us go thank our neighbor for his courtesy."

"Let us go!"

Franz and Albert had only the square to cross, the innkeeper went before them and rang for them; a servant came to open.

"I Signori Francesi," said the host.

The servant bowed and made them a sign to enter.

They traversed two rooms furnished with a luxury they did not believe to find in Signor Pastrini's hotel, and they arrived at length in a salon of perfect elegance. A Turkey carpet was spread upon the floor, and the most comfortable furniture offered its springy cushions and reclining backs. Magnificent pictures by masters, intermingled with splendid trophies of arms, were suspended on the walls, and great tapestry portieres floated before the doors.

"If Their Excellencies will be seated," said the servant, "I will inform the count."

And he disappeared through one of the doors.

At the moment this door opened, the sound of a guzla reached the two friends, but was extinguished immediately: the door, closed almost as soon as opened, had as it were let into the salon but a puff of harmony.

Franz and Albert exchanged a glance and turned their eyes again upon the furniture, the pictures, and the arms. All that, at second view, seemed to them yet more magnificent than at first.

"Well," asked Franz of his friend, "what say you of this?"

"Faith, my dear, I say that our neighbor must be some stockbroker who played the bear on Spanish funds, or some prince traveling incognito."

"Hush!" said Franz to him; "that is what we are going to know, for there he is."

Indeed, the noise of a door turning on its hinges had just reached the visitors; and almost immediately the tapestry, lifting, gave passage to the proprietor of all these riches.

Albert advanced toward him, but Franz remained nailed to his place.

He who had just entered was none other than the man in the mantle of the Colosseum, the unknown of the box, the mysterious host of Monte Cristo.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”