XLI. La présentation.

XLI

The Introduction.

When Albert found himself alone with Monte Cristo:

“Count,” he said to him, “allow me to begin my duties as cicerone by giving you a specimen of a bachelor’s apartment. Accustomed to the palaces of Italy, it will be a study for you to calculate in how many square feet one of the young men of Paris—who are not accounted the worst lodged—can live. As we pass from one room to another, we will open the windows so that you may breathe.”

Monte Cristo already knew the dining room and the ground-floor salon. Albert first led him to his study; it was, as the reader will recall, his favorite room.

Monte Cristo was a worthy appraiser of all the things Albert had heaped in that room: old chests, Japanese porcelain, Oriental fabrics, Venetian glassware, weapons from every country in the world—all were familiar to him, and at first glance he recognized the century, the country, and the origin.

Morcerf had thought to be the explainer, and instead it was he who, under the count’s direction, gave a course in archaeology, mineralogy, and natural history. They went down to the first floor. Albert introduced his guest into the salon. This salon was hung with the works of modern painters; there were landscapes by Dupré, with their tall reeds, slender trees, lowing cows, and marvelous skies; there were Arab horsemen by Delacroix, in long white burnouses, with glittering sashes and damascened weapons, whose horses bit at one another furiously while the men tore each other apart with masses of iron; watercolors by Boulanger, representing all of *Notre-Dame de Paris* with that vigor which makes the painter the rival of the poet; there were canvases by Diaz, who paints flowers more beautiful than flowers, and the sun more brilliant than the sun; drawings by Decamps, as colorful as those of Salvator Rosa, but more poetic; pastels by Giraud and Muller, representing children with angel faces and women with virgin features; sketches torn from the album of Dauzats’s voyage to the East, dashed off in a few seconds on the saddle of a camel or beneath the dome of a mosque; in short, all that modern art can give in exchange and compensation for the art that is lost and flown with the centuries past.

Albert expected, this time at least, to show something new to the strange traveler; but to his great astonishment, the latter, without needing to seek out the signatures—some of which, moreover, were present only as initials—instantly applied the name of each author to his work, so that it was easy to see that not only was each of those names known to him, but that each of those talents had been appreciated and studied by him.

From the salon they passed into the bedroom. It was at once a model of elegance and of severe taste: there, a single portrait, but signed Léopold Robert, shone in its matte-gold frame.

This portrait first attracted the eyes of the Count of Monte Cristo, for he took three rapid steps into the room and suddenly stopped before it.

It was that of a young woman of twenty-five or twenty-six, with a brown complexion and eyes of fire, veiled beneath a languid eyelid; she wore the picturesque costume of Catalan fisherwomen, with her red-and-black bodice and her gold pins stuck in her hair; she was looking at the sea, and her elegant silhouette stood out against the double azure of the waves and the sky.

It was dim in the bedroom, or else Albert might have seen the livid pallor that spread over the count’s cheeks, and surprised the nervous shudder that flitted across his shoulders and chest.

There was a moment of silence, during which Monte Cristo remained with his eye obstinately fixed on the painting.

“You have there a beautiful mistress, viscount,” said Monte Cristo in a perfectly calm voice, “and this costume—a ball costume, no doubt—suits her truly to ravishment.”

“Ah! sir,” said Albert, “that is a mistake I would not forgive you, if beside this portrait you had seen any other. You do not know my mother, sir; it is she whom you see in that frame; she had herself painted thus, six or eight years ago. This costume is a fancy dress, it appears, and the likeness is so great that I still think I see my mother as she was in 1830. The countess had this portrait made during the count’s absence; no doubt she thought to prepare for him, on his return, a graceful surprise; but, strangely enough, this portrait displeased my father, and the value of the painting, which is, as you see, one of the fine canvases of Léopold Robert, could not overcome the antipathy he had conceived for it. It must be said between us, my dear count, that M. de Morcerf is one of the most assiduous peers at the Luxembourg, a general renowned in theory, but an amateur of art of the most mediocre; it is not so with my mother, who paints in a remarkable way, and who, esteeming such a work too highly to part with it entirely, gave it to me so that in my rooms it might be less exposed to displeasing M. de Morcerf, whose portrait, painted by Gros, I will show you in turn. Pardon me if I speak to you thus of household and family, but as I am about to have the honor of conducting you to the count, I tell you this so that it may not escape you to praise this portrait before him. Besides, it has a fatal influence; for it is rare indeed that my mother comes to my rooms without looking at it, and rarer still that she looks at it without weeping. The cloud brought by the appearance of this painting in the hôtel is, moreover, the only one that has risen between the count and the countess, who, though married more than twenty years, are still united as on the first day.”

Monte Cristo cast a rapid glance at Albert, as if to seek a hidden intention in his words; but it was evident that the young man had spoken them in all the simplicity of his soul.

“Now,” said Albert, “you have seen all my riches, Count; allow me to offer them to you, unworthy as they are; consider yourself at home here, and, to put you even more at your ease, please accompany me to M. de Morcerf, to whom I wrote from Rome of the service you rendered me, to whom I announced the visit you had promised me; and, I may say, the count and countess were awaiting with impatience the permission to thank you. You are a little blasé on all things, I know, Count; and scenes of family life have not much effect on Sinbad the Sailor: you have seen other scenes! However, accept that I propose to you, as an initiation into Parisian life, the life of politeness, of visits, and of introductions.”

Monte Cristo bowed in reply; he accepted the proposal without enthusiasm and without regret, as one of the social conventions of which every gentleman makes a duty. Albert called his valet, and ordered him to go warn M. and Mme de Morcerf of the imminent arrival of the Count of Monte Cristo.

Albert followed him with the count.

On arriving in the antechamber of the count, one saw above the door opening into the salon a coat of arms which, by its rich surround and its harmony with the ornamentation of the room, indicated the importance the owner of the hôtel attached to this blazon.

Monte Cristo stopped before this coat of arms, which he examined with attention.

“Azure, seven martlets or in bend. Is that, no doubt, the arms of your family, sir?” he asked. “Apart from a knowledge of the pieces of the blazon which allows me to decipher it, I am very ignorant in matters of heraldry, I, a count by chance, fabricated by Tuscany with the aid of a commandery of Saint Stephen, and who would have dispensed with being a great lord if I had not been repeatedly told that, when one travels much, it is absolutely necessary. For, after all, one must, if only so the customs officers do not search you, have something on the panels of one’s carriage. Excuse me, then, if I put such a question to you.”

“It is in no way indiscreet, sir,” said Morcerf with the simplicity of conviction, “and you had guessed rightly: these are our arms, that is to say those of my father’s line; but they are, as you see, accolé to an escutcheon which is gules, a tower argent, and which is from my mother’s line; on the maternal side I am Spanish, but the house of Morcerf is French, and, as I have heard said, even one of the oldest of the South of France.”

“Yes,” resumed Monte Cristo, “that is what the martlets indicate. Almost all the armed pilgrims who attempted or who made the conquest of the Holy Land took for arms either crosses, sign of the mission to which they had vowed themselves, or traveling birds, symbol of the long voyage they were about to undertake and which they hoped to accomplish on the wings of faith. One of your paternal ancestors will have been of one of your crusades, and, supposing it were only that of Saint Louis, that already takes us back to the thirteenth century, which is still very fine.”

“It is possible,” said Morcerf; “there is somewhere in my father’s study a genealogical tree which would tell us that, and on which I formerly had commentaries that would have much edified d’Hozier and Jaucourt. At present I think of it no more; however, I will tell you, Count, and this falls within my duties as cicerone, that one begins to occupy oneself much with these things under our popular government.”

“Well, then, your government might have chosen, in its past, something better than those two placards I noticed on your monuments, and which have no heraldic sense. As for you, viscount,” resumed Monte Cristo, returning to Morcerf, “you are happier than your government, for your arms are truly beautiful and speak to the imagination. Yes, that is it, you are at once of Provence and of Spain; that explains, if the portrait you showed me is likeness, that beautiful brown coloring which I so much admired on the face of the noble Catalan.”

One would have needed to be Oedipus or the Sphinx himself to divine the irony the count put into these words, outwardly imprinted with the greatest politeness; so Morcerf thanked him with a smile, and, passing first to show him the way, pushed open the door which opened beneath his arms, and which, as we have said, gave into the salon.

In the most conspicuous place of this salon was also seen a portrait; it was that of a man of thirty-five to thirty-eight years, clad in the uniform of a general officer, wearing those twisted double epaulettes, sign of the higher ranks, the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at the neck, which indicated he was a commander, and on the chest, to the right, the plaque of grand officer of the Order of the Savior, and, to the left, that of grand cross of Charles III, which indicated that the person represented by this portrait must have made the wars of Greece and Spain, or, what amounts absolutely to the same as regards ribbons, have fulfilled some diplomatic mission in the two countries.

Monte Cristo was occupied in detailing this portrait with no less care than he had the other, when a side door opened, and he found himself face to face with the Count of Morcerf himself.

He was a man of forty to forty-five years, but who appeared at least fifty, and whose black mustache and eyebrows contrasted strangely with hair almost white, cut en brosse in the military fashion; he was dressed as a civilian and wore in his buttonhole a ribbon whose different borders recalled the different orders of which he was decorated. This man entered with a rather noble step and a sort of eagerness. Monte Cristo saw him come toward him without taking a single step; one would have said his feet were nailed to the parquet as his eyes were to the face of the Count of Morcerf.

“My father,” said the young man, “I have the honor to present to you the Count of Monte Cristo, that generous friend whom I had the happiness to meet in the difficult circumstances you know.”

“Sir is welcome among us,” said the Count of Morcerf, saluting Monte Cristo with a smile, “and he has rendered our house, in preserving its sole heir, a service which will eternally solicit our gratitude.”

And in saying these words the Count of Morcerf indicated an armchair to Monte Cristo, at the same time that he himself sat facing the window.

As for Monte Cristo, while taking the armchair designated by the Count of Morcerf, he arranged himself so as to remain hidden in the shadow of the great velvet curtains, and from there to read, upon the features imprinted with fatigue and care of the count, a whole history of secret sorrows written in each of the wrinkles come with time.

“Madame la Comtesse,” said Morcerf, “was at her toilette when the viscount had her warned of the visit she was about to have the happiness to receive; she will come down, and in ten minutes she will be in the salon.”

“It is much honor for me,” said Monte Cristo, “to be thus, on the very day of my arrival in Paris, brought into relation with a man whose merit equals his reputation, and for whom fortune, just this once, has made no error; but has she not still, in the plains of the Mitidja or in the mountains of the Atlas, a marshal’s baton to offer you?”

“Oh!” replied Morcerf, reddening a little, “I have left the service, sir. Named peer under the Restoration, I was of the first campaign, and served under the orders of Marshal de Bourmont; I could thus pretend to a superior command, and who knows what would have happened if the elder branch had remained on the throne! But the Revolution of July was, it appears, glorious enough to permit itself to be ungrateful; it was so toward all service not dating from the imperial period; I therefore gave my resignation, for, when one has won one’s epaulettes on the battlefield, one knows ill how to maneuver on the slippery terrain of salons; I left the sword, I threw myself into politics, I devote myself to industry, I study the useful arts. During the twenty years I had remained in service, I had indeed had the desire, but I had not had the time.”

“It is such things which maintain the superiority of your nation over other countries, sir,” replied Monte Cristo; “gentleman issued from a great house, possessing a fine fortune, you first consented to win the first grades as an obscure soldier, which is very rare; then, become general, peer of France, commander of the Legion of Honor, you consent to begin a second apprenticeship, without other hope, without other reward than that of being one day useful to your fellow men.... Ah! sir, that is truly beautiful; I will say more, that is sublime.”

Albert looked and listened to Monte Cristo with astonishment; he was not accustomed to seeing him rise to such ideas of enthusiasm.

“Alas!” continued the stranger, no doubt to make disappear the imperceptible cloud which these words had just passed over the brow of Morcerf, “we do not do thus in Italy; we grow according to our race and our species, and we keep the same foliage, the same height, and often even the same uselessness all our life.”

“But, sir,” replied the Count of Morcerf, “for a man of your merit, Italy is not a country, and France will perhaps not be ungrateful to everyone; she treats her children ill, but usually she receives strangers grandly.”

“Ah! my father,” said Albert with a smile, “one sees well that you do not know the Count of Monte Cristo. His satisfactions are outside this world; he aspires to no honors, and takes only what can lie upon a passport.”

“There, as regards me, is the most just expression I have ever heard,” replied the stranger.

“Sir has been master of his future,” said the Count of Morcerf with a sigh, “and he has chosen the path of flowers.”

“Exactly, sir,” replied Monte Cristo with one of those smiles which a painter will never render, and which a physiologist always despairs of analyzing.

“If I had not feared to fatigue the Count,” said the general, evidently charmed with the manners of Monte Cristo, “I would have taken him to the Chamber; there is a curious session today for whoever does not know our modern senators.”

“I shall be very grateful to you, sir, if you will renew this offer another time; but today I have been flattered with the hope of being presented to Madame la Comtesse, and I will wait.”

“Ah! here is my mother!” cried the viscount.

Indeed, Monte Cristo, turning quickly, saw Mme de Morcerf at the entrance of the salon, on the threshold of the door opposite that by which her husband had entered: motionless and pale, she let, when Monte Cristo turned toward her, fall her arm which, no one knows why, had leaned on the gilded doorframe; she had been there some seconds, and had heard the last words pronounced by the ultramontane visitor.

The latter rose and bowed profoundly to the countess, who inclined in her turn, mute and ceremonious.

“Eh, my God! madame,” asked the count, “what is the matter with you? would it by chance be the heat of this salon that harms you?”

“Do you suffer, my mother?” cried the viscount, springing toward Mercédès.

She thanked them both with a smile.

“No,” she said, “but I experienced some emotion on seeing for the first time him without whose intervention we should at this moment be in tears and in mourning. Sir,” continued the countess, advancing with the majesty of a queen, “I owe you the life of my son, and for this benefit I bless you. Now I thank you for the pleasure you do me in procuring me the occasion to thank you as I have blessed you, that is to say from the bottom of my heart.”

The count bowed again, but more profoundly than the first time; he was paler still than Mercédès.

“Madame,” he said, “M. le Comte and you over-reward me for a very simple action. To save a man, to spare a father’s torment, to spare a woman’s sensibility, is not to do a good work, it is to act with humanity.”

At these words, pronounced with an exquisite gentleness and politeness, Mme de Morcerf replied with a profound accent:

“It is very happy for my son, sir, to have you for a friend, and I thank God who made things thus.”

And Mercédès raised her beautiful eyes to heaven with so infinite a gratitude, that the count thought he saw two tears tremble there.

M. de Morcerf approached her.

“Madame,” he said, “I have already made my excuses to the Count for being obliged to leave him, and you will renew them to him, I pray you. The session opens at two, it is three, and I must speak.”

“Go, sir, I will try to make our guest forget your absence,” said the countess with the same accent of sensibility. “Will the Count do us the honor of spending the rest of the day with us?”

“Thank you, madame, and believe me truly most grateful for your offer; but I descended this morning at your door, from my traveling carriage. How I am installed in Paris, I know not; where I am, I scarce know. It is a slight unease, I know, but appreciable nonetheless.”

“We shall have this pleasure another time, at least you promise it us?” asked the countess.

Monte Cristo bowed without answering, but the gesture could pass for assent.

“Then I do not detain you, sir,” said the countess, “for I would not have my gratitude become either an indiscretion or an importunity.”

“My dear count,” said Albert, “if you will, I am going to try to return to you in Paris your gracious politeness of Rome, and put my coupé at your disposal until you have had time to set up your equipages.”

“A thousand thanks for your kindness, viscount,” said Monte Cristo, “but I presume that M. Bertuccio will have conveniently employed the four hours and a half I have just left him, and that I shall find at the door some sort of carriage all harnessed.”

Albert was accustomed to such ways on the part of the count: he knew he was, like Nero, in search of the impossible, and he was astonished at nothing; only, he wished to judge for himself how his orders had been executed, so he accompanied him to the door of the hôtel.

Monte Cristo had not been mistaken: as soon as he had appeared in the antechamber of the Count of Morcerf, a footman, the same who at Rome had come to bring the count’s card to the two young men and announce his visit, had sprung out of the peristyle, so that on arriving at the perron the illustrious traveler indeed found his carriage waiting for him.

It was a coupé from the workshops of Keller, and a team for which Drake, to the knowledge of all the lions of Paris, had the evening before still refused eighteen thousand francs.

“Sir,” said the count to Albert, “I do not propose that you accompany me to my home, and I could show you only an improvised house, and I have, you know, as regards improvisations, a reputation to safeguard. Grant me a day and allow me then to invite you. I shall be more sure of not failing in the laws of hospitality.”

“If you ask me for a day, Count, I am tranquil; it will no longer be a house that you show me, it will be a palace. Decidedly, you have some genius at your disposal.”

“Upon my faith, let them believe it,” said Monte Cristo, placing his foot on the velvet-covered steps of his splendid equipage, “that will do me some good with the ladies.”

And he sprang into his carriage, which closed behind him, and set off at a gallop, but not so rapidly that the count did not perceive the imperceptible movement which made the curtain of the salon where he had left Mme de Morcerf tremble.

When Albert re-entered his mother’s rooms, he found the countess in the boudoir, sunk in a great velvet armchair: all the chamber, drowned in shadow, let appear only the sparkling spangle attached here and there to the belly of some porcelain vase or to the angle of some gilded frame.

Albert could not see the face of the countess lost in a cloud of gauze which she had rolled around her hair like a halo of vapor; but it seemed to him that her voice was altered: he also distinguished, amid the perfumes of the roses and heliotropes of the jardinière, the harsh and biting trace of smelling salts; on one of the chiseled cups of the chimneypiece indeed, the countess’s flask, out of its shagreen case, attracted the anxious attention of the young man.

“Do you suffer, my mother?” he cried on entering; “would you have been taken ill during my absence?”

“I? no, Albert; but, you understand, these roses, these tuberoses and these orange blossoms give off, during these first heats, to which one is not accustomed, such violent perfumes.”

“Then, my mother,” said Morcerf, laying his hand on the bell, “they must be carried into your antechamber. You are truly indisposed; already earlier, when you entered, you were very pale.”

“I was pale, you say, Albert?”

“Pale to wonder, my mother, but which notwithstanding alarmed us, my father and me.”

“Did your father speak to you of it?” asked Mercédès quickly.

“No, madame, but it is to you yourself, remember, that he made that observation.”

“I do not remember,” said the countess.

A valet entered: he came at the sound of the bell pulled by Albert.

“Carry these flowers into the antechamber or into the dressing room,” said the viscount; “they harm Madame la Comtesse.”

The valet obeyed.

There was a rather long silence, which lasted during all the time the removal took.

“What is this name of Monte Cristo?” asked the countess when the servant was gone, carrying the last vase of flowers; “is it a family name, a name of land, a simple title?”

“It is, I believe, a title, my mother, and that is all. The count has bought an island in the Tuscan archipelago, and has, according to what he said himself this morning, founded a commandery. You know that is done thus for Saint Stephen of Florence, for Saint-George-Constantinian of Parma, and even for the Order of Malta. Besides, he has no pretension to nobility and calls himself a count by chance, though the general opinion of Rome is that the count is a very great lord.”

“His manners are excellent,” said the countess, “at least according to what I could judge in the short instants he remained here.”

“Oh! perfect, my mother, so perfect even that they surpass much all I have known of most aristocratic in the three proudest nobilities of Europe, that is to say in the English nobility, in the Spanish nobility, and in the German nobility.”

The countess reflected an instant, then after this short hesitation she resumed:

“You have seen, my dear Albert—it is a mother’s question I address to you there, you understand—you have seen M. de Monte Cristo in his interior; you have perspicacity, you have the habit of the world, more tact than one ordinarily has at your age; do you believe the count is what he appears really to be?”

“And what does he appear?”

“You said it yourself just now, a great lord.”

“I told you, my mother, that he is held to be such.”

“But what do you think of it, you, Albert?”

“I have not, I avow to you, any very fixed opinion on him; I believe him Maltese.”

“I do not question you on his origin; I question you on his person.”

“Ah! on his person, that is another thing; and I have seen such strange things of him, that if you want me to tell you what I think, I will answer that I would willingly regard him as one of the men of Byron, marked by misfortune with a fatal seal; some Manfred, some Lara, some Werner; in short, one of those wrecks of some old family who, disinherited of their paternal fortune, have found one by the force of their adventurous genius which has placed them above the laws of society.”

“You say?...”

“I say that Monte Cristo is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, without inhabitants, without garrison, haunt of smugglers of all nations, of pirates of all countries. Who knows if these worthy industrialists do not pay their lord a right of asylum?”

“It is possible,” said the countess dreamily.

“But no matter,” resumed the young man, “smuggler or not, you will agree, my mother, since you have seen him, that M. le Comte de Monte Cristo is a remarkable man and who will have the greatest successes in the salons of Paris. And see, this very morning, at my home, he began his entry into the world by striking even Château-Renaud with stupefaction.”

“And what age can the count be?” asked Mercédès, attaching visibly great importance to this question.

“He is thirty-five to thirty-six years old, my mother.”

“So young! it is impossible,” said Mercédès, answering at once to what Albert told her and to what her own thought told her.

“It is the truth, however. Three or four times he has told me, and certainly without premeditation, at such epoch I was five years old, at such other ten, at such other twelve; I, whom curiosity kept awake on these details, brought the dates together, and never have I found him at fault. The age of this singular man, who has no age, is thus, I am sure, thirty-five years. Moreover, recall, my mother, how lively his eye is, how black his hair is, and how his brow, though pale, is free of wrinkles; it is a nature not only vigorous, but still young.”

The countess lowered her head as beneath too heavy a flood of bitter thoughts.

“And this man has taken a friendship for you, Albert?” she asked with a nervous shudder.

“I believe so, madame.”

“And you... do you love him also?”

“He pleases me, madame, whatever Franz d’Épinay says, who wanted to pass him off to my eyes as a man returned from the other world.”

The countess made a movement of terror.

“Albert,” she said in an altered voice, “I have always warned you against new acquaintances. Now you are a man, and you could give me counsel myself; nevertheless I repeat to you: Be prudent, Albert.”

“Yet it would need, dear mother, for the counsel to be profitable to me, that I know beforehand what to mistrust. The count never gambles, the count drinks only water gilded by a drop of Spanish wine; the count announced himself so rich that, without being laughed in the face, he could not borrow money from me: what would you have me fear on the part of the count?”

“You are right,” said the countess; “and my terrors are foolish, having for object especially a man who saved your life. By the way, did your father receive him well, Albert? It is important that we be more than proper with the count. M. de Morcerf is sometimes occupied, his affairs render him anxious, and it could be that, without wishing it....”

“My father was perfect, madame,” interrupted Albert; “I will say more: he appeared infinitely flattered by two or three of the most adroit compliments the count slipped to him with as much happiness as aptness, as if he had known him thirty years. Each of these little laudatory arrows must have tickled my father,” added Albert, laughing, “so that they parted the best friends in the world, and M. de Morcerf even wanted to take him to the Chamber to make him hear his speech.”

The countess did not reply; she was absorbed in a reverie so deep that her eyes had gradually closed. The young man, standing before her, looked at her with that filial love more tender and more affectionate in children whose mothers are still young and beautiful; then, after having seen her eyes close, he listened to her breathe an instant in her sweet immobility, and, believing her asleep, he withdrew on tiptoe, carefully pushing the door of the chamber where he left his mother.

“This devil of a man,” he murmured, shaking his head, “I well predicted to him there that he would make a sensation in the world: I measure his effect by an infallible thermometer. My mother noticed him, therefore he must be truly remarkable.”

And he went down to his stables, not without a secret spite that, without even having thought of it, the Count of Monte Cristo had laid hand on a team which relegated his bays to number two in the minds of connoisseurs.

“Decidedly,” he said, “men are not equal; I shall have to beg my father to develop that theorem in the Upper Chamber.”

“Stories of the world, in your language.”