XXXIX. Les convives.

XXXIX

The Guests.

In that house on the Rue du Helder, where Albert de Morcerf had given a rendezvous, at Rome, to the Count of Monte Cristo, everything was being prepared on the morning of May 21 to honor the young man's word.

Albert de Morcerf occupied a pavilion situated at the angle of a large courtyard and facing another building intended for the outhouses. Only two windows of this pavilion looked out on the street; the others were pierced, three upon the courtyard and two others, returning, upon the garden.

Between this courtyard and this garden rose, built with the bad taste of imperial architecture, the fashionable and vast dwelling of the Count and Countess de Morcerf.

Along the whole width of the property ran, facing the street, a wall surmounted, at intervals, with flower vases, and cut in the middle by a large gate with gilded spikes, which served for state entrances; a small door almost adjoining the concierge's lodge gave passage to the servants or to the masters entering or leaving on foot.

One guessed, in this choice of the pavilion destined for Albert's dwelling, the delicate foresight of a mother who, not wishing to separate from her son, had nevertheless understood that a young man of the viscount's age needed his full freedom. One recognized in it also, on the other hand, we must say, the intelligent selfishness of the young man, smitten with that free and idle life which is that of sons of the family, and which was gilded for him like the cage for the bird.

Through the two windows looking on the street, Albert de Morcerf could make his explorations outward. The view from without is so necessary to young men who always want to see the world cross their horizon, were that horizon only that of the street! Then his exploration made, if this exploration seemed to merit a more thorough examination, Albert de Morcerf could, to give himself up to his researches, go out by a small door corresponding to that which we have indicated near the porter's lodge, and which deserves particular mention.

It was a small door which one would have said forgotten by everyone since the day the house was built, and which one would have thought condemned forever, so discreet and dusty did it seem, but whose lock and hinges, carefully oiled, announced a mysterious and continued use. This sneaking little door competed with the two others and mocked the concierge, escaping his vigilance and jurisdiction, opening like the famous door of the cavern of the Thousand and One Nights, like the enchanted Sesame of Ali Baba, by means of some cabalistic words, or some agreed scratchings, pronounced by the sweetest voices or operated by the slenderest fingers in the world.

At the end of a vast and calm corridor, with which this little door communicated and which served as an anteroom, opened, to the right, Albert's dining room looking on the courtyard, and, to the left, his little salon looking on the garden. Clumps of shrubs, climbing plants spreading out in a fan before the windows, hid from the courtyard and the garden the interior of these two rooms, the only ones placed on the ground floor as they were, where indiscreet glances could penetrate.

On the first floor, these two rooms were repeated, enriched by a third, taken from the anteroom. These three rooms were a salon, a bedroom and a boudoir.

The salon below was but a kind of Algerian divan destined for smokers.

The boudoir above opened into the bedroom, and, by an invisible door, communicated with the staircase. One sees that all measures of precaution were taken.

Above this first floor reigned a vast studio, which had been enlarged by throwing down walls and partitions, a pandemonium which the artist disputed with the dandy. There took refuge and piled up all the successive whims of Albert, hunting horns, double basses, flutes, a complete orchestra, for Albert had had an instant, not the taste, but the fancy for music; easels, palettes, pastels, for the fancy for music had been succeeded by the vanity of painting; finally foils, boxing gloves, small-swords and canes of every kind; for, finally, following the traditions of young men of fashion of the epoch at which we have arrived, Albert de Morcerf cultivated, with infinitely more perseverance than he had shown for music and painting, those three arts which complete the leonine education, that is to say fencing, boxing and the stick, and he received successively in this room, destined for all bodily exercises, Grisier, Cooks and Charles Leboucher.

The rest of the furniture of this privileged room consisted of old presses of the time of François I, presses full of Chinese porcelain, Japanese vases, Luca della Robbia faience and Bernard de Palissy dishes; antique armchairs where perhaps Henri IV or Sully, Louis XIII or Richelieu had sat, for two of these armchairs, adorned with a sculpted escutcheon where shone upon the azure the three fleurs-de-lis of France surmounted by a royal crown, visibly came from the furniture depository of the Louvre, or at least from that of some royal château. Upon these armchairs with dark and severe backs were thrown pell-mell rich fabrics of vivid colors, dyed in the sun of Persia or blossomed under the fingers of the women of Calcutta or Chandernagor. What those fabrics did there, one could not have said; they waited, while delighting the eye, for a destination unknown even to their owner himself, and, meanwhile, they illuminated the apartment with their silky and golden reflections.

In the most conspicuous place stood a piano, cut by Roller and Blanchet out of rosewood, a piano sized for our Lilliputian salons, yet containing an orchestra in its narrow and sonorous cavity, and groaning beneath the masterpieces of Beethoven, Weber, Mozart, Haydn, Grétry and Porpora.

Then, everywhere, along the walls, above the doors, at the ceiling, swords, daggers, krisses, maces, axes, complete gilded, damascened, inlaid armors; herbariums, blocks of minerals, birds stuffed with hair, opening for an immobile flight their fire-colored wings and their beaks that never close.

It goes without saying that this room was Albert's favorite room.

However, on the day of the rendezvous, the young man, in morning dress, had established his headquarters in the little ground-floor salon. There, upon a table surrounded at a distance by a wide and soft divan, all known tobaccos, from the yellow tobacco of Petersburg to the black tobacco of Sinai, passing by Maryland, Porto Rico and Latakia, shone in cracked faience pots such as the Dutch adore. Beside them, in cases of odoriferous wood, were ranged, by order of size and quality, the puros, the regalias, the Havanas and the Manillas; finally, in a wholly open cabinet, a collection of German pipes, of chibouques with amber mouthpieces, adorned with coral, and of nargilehs incrusted with gold, with long morocco tubes rolled like serpents, awaited the caprice or the sympathy of the smokers. Albert had presided himself over the arrangement or rather the symmetrical disorder which, after coffee, the guests of a modern breakfast love to contemplate through the vapor escaping from their mouths and rising to the ceiling in long and capricious spirals.

At a quarter to ten, a valet entered. He was a small groom of fifteen, speaking only English and answering to the name of John, Albert's whole domestic. It is well understood that on ordinary days the hotel cook was at his disposal, and that on great occasions the count's huntsman was likewise.

This valet de chambre, who was called Germain and who enjoyed the entire confidence of his young master, held in his hand a bundle of newspapers which he deposited on a table, and a packet of letters which he handed to Albert.

Albert cast a distracted glance over these various missives, chose two with fine handwriting and perfumed envelopes, unsealed them and read them with some attention.

"How did these letters come?" he asked.

"One came by post, the other was brought by Mme Danglars' valet de chambre."

"Tell Mme Danglars that I accept the place she offers me in her box.... Wait though... then, during the day, you will pass by Rosa's; you will tell her that I will go, as she invites me, to sup with her on leaving the Opera, and you will bring her six assorted bottles of wine, from Cyprus, Xeres, Malaga, and a barrel of Ostend oysters.... Get the oysters from Borel, and say above all that they are for me."

"At what time does monsieur wish to be served?"

"What time do we have?"

"A quarter to ten."

"Well, serve at half past ten precisely. Debray may be forced to go to his ministry.... And besides..." (Albert consulted his notebook), "it is well the hour I indicated to the count, May 21, at half past ten in the morning, and although I set little store by his promise, I wish to be exact. By the way, do you know if the countess is up?"

"If monsieur le vicomte desires, I will inquire."

"Yes... you will ask her for one of her liqueur cabinets, mine is incomplete, and you will tell her that I shall have the honor of calling on her about three o'clock, and that I beg permission to present someone to her."

The valet gone, Albert threw himself on the divan, tore the wrapper from two or three newspapers, looked at the plays, made a grimace on recognizing that an opera and not a ballet was being performed, sought vainly in the perfumery advertisements for a tooth opiate of which he had been told, and rejected one after another the three most sought-after sheets of Paris, murmuring in the midst of a prolonged yawn:

"Truly, these newspapers are becoming more and more deadly."

At this moment a light carriage stopped before the door, and an instant after the valet de chambre re-entered to announce M. Lucien Debray. A tall young man, blond, pale, with a gray and assured eye, thin and cold lips, a blue coat with chiseled gold buttons, a white cravat, an tortoise-shell eyeglass suspended by a silk thread, and which, by an effort of the superciliary and zygomatic nerves, he managed from time to time to fix in the cavity of his right eye, entered without smiling, without speaking and with a half-official air.

"Good day, Lucien.... Good day!" said Albert. "Ah! you frighten me, my dear, with your exactitude! What am I saying? exactitude! You whom I expected only last, you arrive at five minutes to ten, when the definite rendezvous is only at half past ten! It is miraculous! Would the ministry be overthrown, by chance?"

"No, very dear," said the young man incrusting himself in the divan; "rest easy, we always totter, but we never fall, and I begin to believe that we are simply passing to inamovibility, not to mention that the affairs of the Peninsula will consolidate us completely."

"Ah! yes, it is true, you are driving Don Carlos out of Spain."

"Not at all, very dear, let us not confuse things, we are bringing him back across the French frontier, and we are offering him a royal hospitality at Bourges."

"At Bourges?"

"Yes, he has no cause to complain, the devil! Bourges is the capital of King Charles VII. How! you did not know that? It has been known since yesterday by all Paris, and the day before yesterday the thing had already transpired at the Bourse, for M. Danglars (I know not by what means this man knows the news at the same time as we), for M. Danglars played the rise and won a million."

"And you, a new ribbon, it appears; for I see a blue edging added to your bunch of orders?"

"Hem! they sent me the badge of Charles III," replied Debray negligently.

"Come, do not play the indifferent, and confess that the thing pleased you to receive."

"Upon my word, yes, as a complement to dress, a badge looks well on a buttoned black coat, it is elegant."

"And," said Morcerf smiling, "one has the air of the Prince of Wales or of the Duke of Reichstadt."

"That is why you see me so early, very dear."

"Because you have the badge of Charles III and wished to announce this good news to me?"

"No; because I spent the night dispatching letters: twenty-five diplomatic dispatches. Returning home this morning at daybreak, I wished to sleep; but a headache seized me, and I got up again to ride for an hour. At Boulogne, boredom and hunger took hold of me, two enemies that rarely go together, and which nevertheless leagued against me: a sort of Carlist-republican alliance; I then remembered that one was feasting at your house this morning, and here I am: I am hungry, feed me; I am bored, amuse me."

"It is my duty as amphitryon, dear friend," said Albert ringing the valet de chambre, while Lucien flipped, with the tip of his gold-knobbed riding whip incrusted with turquoise, the unfolded newspapers. "Germain, a glass of Xeres and a biscuit. Meanwhile, my dear Lucien, here are some smuggled cigars, of course; I urge you to taste them and to invite your minister to sell us similar ones, instead of those sorts of walnut leaves he condemns good citizens to smoke."

"Pest! I would guard myself well from it. From the moment they came to you from the government you would want no more and would find them execrable. Besides, that concerns not the interior, that concerns finances: address yourself to M. Humann, indirect contributions section, corridor A, No. 26."

"Truly," said Albert, "you astonish me by the extent of your knowledge. But take a cigar!"

"Ah! dear viscount," said Lucien lighting a Manilla at a rose-colored candle burning in a vermeil candlestick and throwing himself back on the divan, "ah! dear viscount, how happy you are to have nothing to do! Truly, you do not know your happiness!"

"And what would you do then, my dear pacificator of kingdoms," resumed Morcerf with slight irony, "if you did nothing? How! private secretary to a minister, launched at once into the great European cabal and into the little intrigues of Paris; having kings, and, better than that, queens to protect, parties to unite, elections to direct; doing more from your cabinet with your pen and your telegraph than Napoleon did from his battlefields with his sword and his victories; possessing twenty-five thousand livres of income outside your place; a horse for which Château-Renaud offered you four hundred louis, and which you would not give; a tailor who never misses you a pair of trousers; having the Opera, the Jockey-Club and the Variétés theater, do you not find in all that means to divert yourself? Well, be it, I will divert you."

"How?"

"By having you make a new acquaintance."

"Man or woman?"

"Man."

"Oh! I already know many!"

"But you do not know any like the one of whom I speak to you."

"Where does he come from then? from the end of the world?"

"From farther perhaps."

"Ah, devil! I hope he does not bring our breakfast?"

"No, be tranquil, our breakfast is being made in the maternal kitchens. But are you hungry then?"

"Yes, I confess it, however humiliating it is to say. But I dined yesterday at M. de Villefort's; and have you noticed that, dear friend? one dines very badly at all those people of the bench; one would say they always have remorse."

"Ah! by God, decry the dinners of others, with that you dine well at your ministers'."

"Yes, but we do not invite people of fashion, at least; and if we were not obliged to do the honors of our table to some clowns who think and above all who vote well, we would keep as from the plague from dining at home, believe me if you please."

"Then, my dear, take a second glass of Xeres and another biscuit."

"Willingly, your Spanish wine is excellent; you see well that we were quite right to pacify that country."

"Yes, but Don Carlos?"

"Well, Don Carlos will drink Bordeaux wine and in ten years we will marry his son to the little queen."

"Which will win you the Golden Fleece, if you are still in the ministry."

"I believe, Albert, that you have adopted for system this morning to feed me on smoke."

"Eh! it is still what amuses the stomach best, admit it; but, see, just now I hear Beauchamp's voice in the anteroom, you will quarrel, that will make you patient."

"About what?"

"About newspapers."

"Oh! dear friend," said Lucien with sovereign contempt, "do I read the newspapers!"

"All the more reason, then you will quarrel all the more."

"M. Beauchamp!" announced the valet de chambre.

"Enter, enter! terrible pen!" said Albert rising and going toward the young man. "See, here is Debray who detests you without reading you, at least so he says."

"He is quite right," said Beauchamp, "it is like me, I criticize him without knowing what he does. Good day, commander."

"Ah! you already know that," replied the private secretary exchanging with the journalist a handshake and a smile.

"By God!" resumed Beauchamp.

"And what is said of it in the world?"

"In what world? We have many worlds in the year of grace 1838."

"Eh! in the critico-political world, of which you are one of the lions."

"But they say it is a very just thing, and that you sow enough red for a little blue to grow."

"Come, come, not bad," said Lucien: "why are you not of us, my dear Beauchamp? Having wit as you have, you would make a fortune in three or four years."

"Also, I await but one thing to follow your counsel: a ministry assured for six months. Now, a single word, my dear Albert, for also I must let poor Lucien breathe. Do we breakfast or dine? I have the Chamber, I. All is not rose, as you see, in our trade."

"We shall only breakfast; we await but two persons more, and we will sit down to table as soon as they have arrived."

"And what sort of persons do you await to breakfast?" said Beauchamp.

"A gentleman and a diplomat," replied Albert.

"Then it is the affair of two little hours for the gentleman and of two great hours for the diplomat. I will return at dessert. Keep me some strawberries, coffee and cigars. I will eat a cutlet at the Chamber."

"Do nothing of the kind, Beauchamp, for though the gentleman be a Montmorency, and the diplomat a Metternich, we shall breakfast at half past ten precisely; meanwhile do as Debray, taste my Xeres and my biscuits."

"Come then, so be it, I stay. It is absolutely necessary that I divert myself this morning."

"Good, you are like Debray! It seems to me however that when the ministry is sad the opposition should be gay."

"Ah! see you, dear friend, it is that you know not what threatens me. I shall hear this morning a speech of M. Danglars at the Chamber of Deputies, and this evening, at his wife's, a tragedy by a peer of France. The devil take the constitutional government! and since we had the choice, as they say, how did we choose that one?"

"I understand; you need to lay in a provision of hilarity."

"Do not speak ill of M. Danglars' speeches," said Debray: "he votes for you, he makes opposition."

"That is, by God, quite the evil! also I await that you send him to discourse at the Luxembourg to laugh at my ease."

"My dear," said Albert to Beauchamp, "one sees well that the affairs of Spain are arranged, you are this morning of a revolting sourness. Recall then that the Parisian chronicle speaks of a marriage between me and Mlle Eugénie Danglars. I cannot then, in conscience, let you speak ill of the eloquence of a man who must one day say to me: 'Monsieur le vicomte, you know that I give two millions to my daughter.'"

"Come now!" said Beauchamp, "this marriage will never take place. The king may have made him baron, he may make him peer, but he will not make him gentleman, and the Count de Morcerf is too aristocratic a sword to consent, for two poor millions, to a misalliance. The Viscount de Morcerf should marry only a marchioness."

"Two millions! that is however pretty!" resumed Morcerf.

"It is the capital stock of a boulevard theater or of a railroad from the Jardin des Plantes to the Râpée."

"Let him talk, Morcerf," replied nonchalantly Debray, "and marry. You marry the label of a bag, is it not? well, what does it matter to you! better then on that label one blazon less and one zero more; you have seven merlettes in your arms, you will give three to your wife and there will still remain four to you. That is one more than M. de Guise had, who nearly was king of France, and whose first cousin was emperor of Germany."

"My faith, I believe you are right, Lucien," answered Albert distractedly.

"And certainly! Besides every millionaire is noble like a bastard, that is to say he may be so."

"Hush! do not say that, Debray," replied laughing Beauchamp, "for here is Château-Renaud who, to cure you of your mania for paradoxing, will pass through your body the sword of Renaud de Montauban, his ancestor."

"He would then derogate," replied Lucien, "for I am base-born and very base-born."

"Good!" cried Beauchamp, "there is the ministry singing Béranger, where are we going, my God?"

"M. de Château-Renaud! M. Maximilien Morrel!" said the valet de chambre, announcing two new guests.

"Complete then!" said Beauchamp, "and we are going to breakfast; for, if I am not mistaken, you awaited but two persons, Albert?"

"Morrel!" murmured Albert surprised; "Morrel! what is that?"

But before he had finished, M. de Château-Renaud, a handsome young man of thirty, a gentleman from head to foot, that is to say with the face of a Guiche and the wit of a Mortemart, had taken Albert by the hand:

"Permit me, my dear," said he to him, "to present to you M. the captain of spahis Maximilien Morrel, my friend, and moreover my savior. For the rest, the man presents himself well enough alone. Salute my hero, viscount."

And he stepped aside to unveil that tall and noble young man with broad brow, piercing eye, black mustaches, whom our readers remember having seen at Marseilles, in a circumstance sufficiently dramatic for them not yet to have forgotten him. A rich uniform, half-French, half-Oriental, admirably worn, set off his broad chest decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor, and brought out the bold camber of his waist. The young officer bowed with an elegant politeness; Morrel was gracious in each of his movements, because he was strong.

"Monsieur," said Albert with an affectionate courtesy, "M. le baron de Château-Renaud knew beforehand all the pleasure he procured me in making me acquainted with you; you are of his friends, monsieur, be of ours."

"Very well," said Château-Renaud, "and wish, my dear vicomte, that, should the case arise, he do for you what he has done for me."

"And what has he done then?" asked Albert.

"Oh!" said Morrel, "it is not worth speaking of, and monsieur exaggerates."

"How!" said Château-Renaud, "it is not worth speaking of! Life is not worth speaking of!... Truly, that is too philosophical what you say there, my dear M. Morrel.... Good for you who expose your life every day, but for me who expose it once by chance...."

"What I see most clearly in all that, baron, is that M. the captain Morrel has saved your life."

"Oh! my God, yes, simply," replied Château-Renaud.

"And on what occasion?" asked Beauchamp.

"Beauchamp, my friend, you know that I am dying of hunger," said Debray, "so do not go into stories."

"Eh well, but," said Beauchamp, "I do not prevent one from sitting down to table, I.... Château-Renaud will tell us that at table."

"Gentlemen," said Morcerf, "it is yet but a quarter past ten, note that well, and we await a last guest."

"Ah! it is true, a diplomat," replied Debray.

"A diplomat, or something else, I know nothing of it, what I know is that for my part I charged him with an embassy which he terminated so much to my satisfaction, that if I had been king, I would have made him at once knight of all my orders, had I had at once the disposal of the Golden Fleece and of the Garter."

"Then, since we are not yet sitting down to table," said Debray, "pour yourself a glass of Xeres as we have done, and tell us that, baron."

"You all know that the idea had come to me to go to Africa."

"It is a path your ancestors traced for you, my dear Château-Renaud," replied gallantly Morcerf.

"Yes, but I doubt that it was, like them, to deliver the tomb of Christ."

"And you are right, Beauchamp," said the young aristocrat; "it was simply to make the pistol shot as an amateur. Dueling repugns me, as you know, since two witnesses, whom I had chosen to accommodate an affair, forced me to break the arm of one of my best friends... eh by God! that poor Franz d'Épinay, whom you all know."

"Ah yes! it is true," said Debray, "you fought once upon a time... On what pretext?"

"The devil take me if I remember!" said Château-Renaud; "but what I recall perfectly is that, ashamed to let a talent like mine sleep, I wished to try on the Arabs the new pistols of which one had just made me a gift. In consequence I embarked for Oran; from Oran I gained Constantine, and I arrived just in time to see the siege raised. I retreated like the others. For forty-eight hours I bore fairly well the rain by day, the snow by night; finally, on the third morning, my horse died of cold. Poor beast! accustomed to the blankets and the stove of the stable... an Arab horse who only found himself a little out of his element in meeting ten degrees of cold in Arabia."

"That is why you wish to buy my English horse," said Debray; "you suppose he will support the cold better than your Arab."

"You are mistaken, for I have vowed never to return to Africa."

"Were you then very frightened?" asked Beauchamp.

"My faith, yes, I confess," replied Château-Renaud; "and there was reason! My horse was then dead; I made my retreat on foot; six Arabs came at a gallop to cut off my head, I brought down two with my two rifle shots, two with my two pistol shots, bull's-eyes; but there remained two, and I was unarmed. One took me by the hair, that is why I wear it short now, one does not know what may happen, the other wrapped my neck with his yatagan, and I already felt the keen cold of the steel, when monsieur, whom you see, charged in his turn upon them, killed him who held me by the hair with a pistol shot, and split the head of him who prepared to cut my throat with a saber stroke. Monsieur had given himself for task to save a man that day, chance willed that it should be me; when I am rich, I will have Klagmann or Marochetti make a statue of Chance."

"Yes," said Morrel smiling, "it was September 5, that is to say the anniversary of a day when my father was miraculously saved; also, as far as lies in my power, I celebrate every year that day by some action...."

"Heroic, is it not?" interrupted Château-Renaud; "brief, I was the chosen one, but that is not all. After having saved me from the steel, he saved me from the cold, by giving me, not half his cloak, as Saint Martin did, but by giving it to me entirely; then from hunger, by sharing with me, guess what?"

"A pie from Félix?" asked Beauchamp.

"Not at all, his horse, of which we each ate a piece with great appetite: it was tough."

"The horse?" asked laughing Morcerf.

"No, the sacrifice," replied Château-Renaud. "Ask Debray if he would sacrifice his English horse for a stranger?"

"For a stranger, no," said Debray "but for a friend, perhaps."

"I guessed you would become mine, M. le baron," said Morrel; "besides, I have already had the honor to tell you, heroism or not, sacrifice or not, that day I owed an offering to ill fortune in reward for the favor that good fortune had formerly done us."

"The history to which M. Morrel alludes," continued Château-Renaud, "is a whole admirable history which he will tell you one day, when you have made more ample acquaintance with him; for today, let us garnish the stomach and not the memory. At what hour do you breakfast, Albert."

"At half past ten."

"Precisely?" asked Debray drawing his watch.

"Oh! you will grant me the five minutes of grace," said Morcerf, "for, I too, await a savior."

"For whom?"

"For me, by Jove!" replied Morcerf. "Do you believe then that one cannot be saved like another and that only Arabs cut off heads! Our breakfast is a philanthropic breakfast, and we shall have at our table, I hope at least, two benefactors of humanity."

"How shall we do?" said Debray, "we have but one Montyon prize?"

"Well, but one gives it to someone who has done nothing to deserve it," said Beauchamp. "That is the way the Academy usually gets out of embarrassment."

"And where does he come from?" asked Debray; "excuse the insistence; you have already, I know well, answered this question, but vaguely enough for me to permit myself to put it a second time."

"Truly," said Albert, "I know nothing of it. When I invited him, three months ago that was, he was at Rome; but since that time, who can tell the road he has traveled!"

"And do you believe him capable of being exact?" asked Debray.

"I believe him capable of all things," answered Morcerf.

"Note that with the five minutes of grace, we have but ten minutes left."

"Well, I will profit by them to tell you a word of my guest."

"Pardon," said Beauchamp, "is there matter for a feuilleton in what you are going to tell us?"

"Yes, certainly," said Morcerf, "and of the most curious, even."

"Then say it, for I see well that I shall miss the Chamber; it must be that I make it up somehow."

"I was at Rome last carnival."

"We know that," said Beauchamp.

"Yes, but what you do not know is that I had been carried off by brigands."

"There are no brigands," said Debray.

"Yes there are, and hideous even, that is to say admirable, for I found them handsome enough to frighten."

"Come, my dear Albert," said Debray, "confess that your cook is late, that the oysters have not arrived from Marennes or Ostend, and that, after the example of Mme de Maintenon, you wish to replace the dish by a count. Say it, my dear, we are of sufficiently good company to pardon you and to listen to your story, fabulous as it promises to be."

"And, I, I tell you, fabulous as it is, that I give it to you for true from one end to the other. The brigands had then carried me off and conducted me to a very sad place called the catacombs of Saint-Sebastian."

"I know that," said Château-Renaud, "I nearly caught the fever there."

"And, I, I did better than that," said Morcerf, "I had it really. They had announced to me that I was prisoner save ransom, a trifle, four thousand Roman crowns, twenty-six thousand livres tournois. Unfortunately I had but fifteen hundred left; I was at the end of my travel and my credit was exhausted. I wrote to Franz. And, by God! see, Franz was there, and you can ask him if I lie by a comma; I wrote to Franz that if he did not arrive by six o'clock in the morning with the four thousand crowns, at six ten I should have rejoined the blessed saints and the glorious martyrs in the company of whom I had had the honor to find myself. And M. Luigi Vampa, that is the name of my chief of brigands, would, believe me if you please, have scrupulously kept his word."

"But Franz arrived with the four thousand crowns?" said Château-Renaud. "The devil! one is not embarrassed for four thousand crowns when one is called Franz d'Épinay or Albert de Morcerf."

"No, he arrived purely and simply accompanied by the guest whom I announce to you and whom I hope to present to you."

"Ah! but is this then a Hercules killing Cacus, this monsieur, a Perseus delivering Andromeda?"

"No, it is a man about my size."

"Armed to the teeth?"

"He had not even a knitting needle."

"But he treated for your ransom?"

"He said two words in the chief's ear, and I was free."

"They even made excuses for having arrested you," said Beauchamp.

"Exactly," said Morcerf.

"Ah! but was this man then the Ariosto?"

"No, it was simply the Count of Monte Cristo."

"One is not called Count of Monte Cristo," said Debray.

"I do not believe so," added Château-Renaud with the coolness of a man who knows on the tip of his finger his European nobility; "who knows anywhere a Count of Monte Cristo?"

"He comes perhaps from the Holy Land," said Beauchamp; "one of his ancestors will have possessed Calvary, as the Mortemarts the Dead Sea."

"Pardon," said Maximilien, "but I believe I am going to draw you out of embarrassment, gentlemen; Monte Cristo is a small island of which I have often heard speak by the sailors my father employed: a grain of sand in the middle of the Mediterranean, an atom in the infinite."

"That is perfectly that, monsieur!" said Albert. "Well, of this grain of sand, of this atom, is lord and king he of whom I speak to you; he will have bought this count's patent somewhere in Tuscany."

"He is then rich, your count?"

"My faith, I believe so."

"But that should be seen, it seems to me?"

"That is what deceives you, Debray."

"I no longer understand you."

"Have you read the Thousand and One Nights?"

"By Jove! fine question!"

"Well, do you then know if the people one sees there are rich or poor? if their grains of wheat are not rubies or diamonds? They have the air of miserable fishermen, do they not? you treat them as such, and suddenly they open you some mysterious cavern, where you find a treasure to buy India."

"After?"

"After, my Count of Monte Cristo is one of those fishermen. He even has a name drawn from the thing, he calls himself Sindbad the sailor and possesses a cavern full of gold."

"And you have seen this cavern, Morcerf?" asked Beauchamp.

"No, not I, Franz. But, hush! not a word of that before him. Franz went down into it with bandaged eyes, and was served by mutes and by women beside whom, it appears, Cleopatra is but a lorette. Only of women he is not quite sure, seeing they entered only after he had eaten hashish; so that it might well be that what he took for women was simply a quadrille of statues."

The young men looked at Morcerf with an eye that meant:

"Ah! my dear, are you becoming insane, or are you mocking us?"

"Indeed," said Morrel thoughtfully, "I have heard told yet by an old sailor named Penelon something like what M. de Morcerf says there."

"Ah!" made Albert, "it is well lucky that M. Morrel comes to my aid. That annoys you, does it not, that he thus throws a ball of thread into my labyrinth?"

"Pardon, dear friend," said Debray, "it is that you tell us such improbable things...."

"Ah by Jove! because your ambassadors, your consuls do not speak to you of them! They have not the time, they must molest their traveling compatriots."

"Ah! good, there is you getting angry, and falling upon our poor agents. Eh! my God! with what would you have them protect you? the Chamber every day cuts their salaries; to the point that one finds no more. Do you wish to be ambassador, Albert? I will have you named at Constantinople."

"Not I! so that the sultan, at the first demonstration I make in favor of Méhémet-Ali, sends me the cord and my secretaries strangle me."

"You see well," said Debray.

"Yes, but all that does not prevent my Count of Monte Cristo from existing!"

"By God! everybody exists, fine miracle!"

"Everybody exists, doubtless, but not in like conditions. Everybody has not black slaves, princely galleries, arms like at the arsenal, horses at six thousand francs apiece, Greek mistresses!"

"Have you seen her, the Greek mistress?"

"Yes, I saw and heard her. Seen at the Valle theater, heard one day that I breakfasted at the count's."

"Does he then eat, your extraordinary man?"

"My faith, if he eats, it is so little, that it is not worth speaking of."

"You will see that it is a vampire."

"Laugh if you will. That was the opinion of the Countess G..., who, as you know, knew Lord Ruthwen."

"Ah! pretty!" said Beauchamp, "there is for a non-journalist man the counterpart of the famous sea-serpent of the Constitutionnel; a vampire, that is perfect!"

"Fawn eye whose pupil diminishes and dilates at will," said Debray; "developed facial angle, magnificent brow, livid complexion, black beard, white and sharp teeth, politeness all alike."

"Well, that is exactly that, Lucien," said Morcerf, "and the signalement is traced feature for feature. Yes, acute and incisive politeness. This man has often given me the shivers; one day among others, that we were looking together at an execution, I thought I was going to feel ill, much more from seeing and hearing him talk coldly of all the tortures on earth, than from seeing the executioner fulfill his office and than from hearing the cries of the patient."

"Did he not conduct you a little into the ruins of the Coliseum to suck your blood, Morcerf?" asked Beauchamp.

"Or, after having delivered you, did he not make you sign some parchment fire-colored, by which you ceded him your soul, as Esau his birthright?"

"Rail! rail as much as you will, gentlemen!" said Morcerf a little piqued. "When I look at you, you fine Parisians, habitués of the Boulevard de Gand, walkers of the Bois de Boulogne, and I recall this man, eh well, it seems to me that we are not of the same species."

"I flatter myself for it!" said Beauchamp.

"Still it is," added Château-Renaud, "that your Count of Monte Cristo is a gallant man in his lost moments, save however his little arrangements with the Italian bandits."

"Eh! there are no Italian bandits!" said Debray.

"No vampires!" added Beauchamp.

"No Count of Monte Cristo," added Debray. "See, dear Albert, there is half past ten striking."

"Confess that you had the nightmare, and let us breakfast," said Beauchamp.

But the vibration of the pendulum had not yet died away, when the door opened, and Germain announced:

"His Excellency the Count of Monte Cristo!"

All the listeners made in spite of themselves a start which denoted the preoccupation that Morcerf's tale had infused into their souls. Albert himself could not defend against a sudden emotion.

One had heard neither carriage in the street, nor step in the anteroom; the door itself had opened without noise.

The count appeared on the threshold, clothed with the greatest simplicity, but the most exacting lion would have found nothing to reproach in his toilette. All was of exquisite taste, all came from the hands of the most elegant suppliers, clothes, hat and linen.

He appeared aged scarcely thirty-five years, and, what struck everyone, was his extreme resemblance to the portrait Debray had drawn of him.

The count advanced smiling into the middle of the salon, and came straight to Albert, who, walking toward him, offered him his hand with eagerness.

"Exactitude," said Monte Cristo, "is the politeness of kings, as one of our sovereigns has pretended, I believe. But whatever their good will, it is not always that of travelers. However I hope, my dear vicomte, that you will excuse, in favor of my good will, the two or three seconds of delay which I believe I put to appearing at the rendezvous. Five hundred leagues are not made without some contrariety, especially in France, where it is forbidden, it appears, to beat the postilions."

"Monsieur le comte," replied Albert, "I was in the act of announcing your visit to some of my friends whom I have gathered on occasion of the promise you were good enough to make me, and whom I have the honor to present to you. They are M. le comte de Château-Renaud, whose nobility goes back to the Twelve Peers, and whose ancestors had their place at the Round Table; M. Lucien Debray, private secretary to the minister of the interior; M. Beauchamp, terrible journalist, the dread of the French government, but of whom perhaps, despite his national celebrity, you have never heard speak in Italy, seeing that his journal does not enter there; finally M. Maximilien Morrel, captain of spahis."

At this name, the count, who had until then saluted courteously, but with an English coldness and impassibility, made in spite of himself a step forward, and a slight vermilion tint passed like lightning over his pale cheeks.

"Monsieur wears the uniform of the new French conquerors," said he; "it is a fine uniform."

One could not have said what was the sentiment which gave to the count's voice so profound a vibration and which made shine, as in spite of himself, his eye so beautiful, so calm and so limpid, when he had no certain motive to veil it.

"You had never seen our Africans, monsieur?" said Albert.

"Never," replied the count, become perfectly free of himself again.

"Well, monsieur, beneath this uniform beats one of the bravest and noblest hearts of the army."

"Oh! monsieur le comte," interrupted Morrel.

"Let me speak, captain.... And we have just learned from monsieur a fact so heroic, that, although I saw him today for the first time, I claim of him the favor of presenting him to you as my friend."

And one could again, at these words, remark in Monte Cristo that strange gaze of fixity, that furtive redness and that slight trembling of the eyelid which, in him, betrayed emotion.

"Ah! Monsieur is a noble heart," said the count, "so much the better!"

This sort of exclamation, which answered to the count's own thought rather than to what Albert had just said, surprised everyone and especially Morrel, who looked at Monte Cristo with astonishment. But at the same time the intonation was so soft and so to say so suave, that, strange as was this exclamation, there was no means of getting angry at it.

"Why would he doubt it?" said Beauchamp to Château-Renaud.

"Truly," replied the latter, who, with his habit of the world and the clearness of his aristocratic eye, had penetrated of Monte Cristo all that was penetrable in him, "truly Albert has not deceived us, and it is a singular personage, the count; what say you of it, Morrel?"

"My faith," said the latter, "he has the frank eye and the sympathetic voice, so that he pleases me, despite the bizarre reflection he has just made on my account."

"Gentlemen," said Albert, "Germain announces to me that you are served. My dear count, permit me to show you the way."

They passed silently into the dining room. Each took his place.

"Gentlemen," said the count sitting down, "permit me an avowal which will be my excuse for all the improprieties I may commit: I am a foreigner, but so foreign that this is the first time I come to Paris. French life is then perfectly unknown to me, and I have hitherto scarce practiced but oriental life, the most antipathetic to Parisian good traditions. I pray you then to excuse me if you find in me something too Turkish, too Neapolitan or too Arab. That said, gentlemen, let us breakfast."

"How he says all that!" murmured Beauchamp; "it is decidedly a great lord."

"A great lord," added Debray.

"A great lord of all countries, M. Debray," said Château-Renaud.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”