XLIII. La maison d'Auteuil.

XLIII

The House at Auteuil.

Monte Cristo had noticed that, as he descended the steps, Bertuccio had crossed himself in the Corsican manner—that is, by cutting the air in the shape of a cross with his thumb—and that, upon taking his seat in the carriage, he had muttered a short prayer under his breath. Anyone but a curious man would have pitied the singular reluctance shown by the worthy steward for the excursion beyond the city walls contemplated by the count; but, as it appeared, the latter was too curious to spare Bertuccio this little journey.

In twenty minutes they were at Auteuil. The steward's emotion had been steadily increasing. Upon entering the village, Bertuccio, huddled in the corner of the carriage, began to examine with feverish agitation each of the houses past which they drove.

"You will have them stop at number 28, Rue de la Fontaine," said the count, fixing his pitiless gaze upon the steward, to whom he gave this order.

Sweat broke out on Bertuccio's face; nevertheless he obeyed, and, leaning out of the carriage, cried to the coachman:

"Rue de la Fontaine, number 28."

Number 28 was situated at the end of the village. During the drive, night had fallen, or rather a black cloud, heavy with electricity, had given to those premature shadows the appearance and solemnity of a dramatic episode.

The carriage stopped, and the footman sprang to the door, which he opened.

"Well," said the count, "are you not getting down, Monsieur Bertuccio? You are staying in the carriage then? But what the devil are you thinking of this evening?"

Bertuccio flung himself out through the door and offered his shoulder to the count, who this time leaned upon it and descended, step by step, the three stairs of the footboard.

"Knock," said the count, "and announce me."

Bertuccio knocked; the door opened and the concierge appeared.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It is your new master, good man," said the footman.

And he handed the concierge the acknowledgment given by the notary.

"The house is sold then?" asked the concierge. "And is it monsieur who is coming to live in it?"

"Yes, my friend," said the count, "and I shall try to see that you have no cause to regret your former master."

"Oh! monsieur," said the concierge, "I shall not have much cause to regret him, for we very seldom see him; it is more than five years since he was last here, and, faith! he did well to sell a house that brought him in absolutely nothing."

"And what was your former master's name?" asked Monte Cristo.

"Monsieur the Marquis de Saint-Méran; ah! he did not sell the house for what it cost him, I am sure of that."

"The Marquis de Saint-Méran!" repeated Monte Cristo. "But it seems to me that name is not unknown to me," said the count. "The Marquis de Saint-Méran..."

And he appeared to search his memory.

"An old gentleman," continued the concierge, "a faithful servant of the Bourbons; he had an only daughter whom he married to Monsieur de Villefort, who was king's attorney at Nîmes and afterwards at Versailles."

Monte Cristo cast a glance that met Bertuccio, paler than the wall against which he leaned to keep from falling.

"And is not this daughter dead?" asked Monte Cristo. "It seems to me I heard that said."

"Yes, monsieur, twenty-one years ago, and since that time we have not seen the poor dear marquis three times."

"Thank you, thank you," said Monte Cristo, judging by the steward's prostration that he could not stretch the string further without risk of breaking it; "thank you! Give me a light, good man."

"Shall I accompany monsieur?"

"No, it is unnecessary; Bertuccio will light me."

And Monte Cristo accompanied these words with the gift of two gold pieces, which drew forth an outpouring of blessings and sighs.

"Ah! monsieur," said the concierge, after having sought in vain upon the mantelpiece and the boards adjoining it, "the fact is I have no candles here."

"Take one of the carriage lanterns, Bertuccio, and show me the rooms," said the count.

The steward obeyed without remark, but it was easy to see, from the trembling of the hand that held the lantern, what it cost him to obey.

They traversed a rather spacious ground floor; a first story composed of a salon, a bath chamber, and two bedrooms. By one of these bedrooms one reached a winding staircase whose end gave upon the garden.

"Why, here is a private staircase," said the count; "that is rather convenient. Light me, Monsieur Bertuccio; go before, and let us see where this staircase leads."

"Monsieur," said Bertuccio, "it leads to the garden."

"And how do you know that, pray?"

"That is to say, it ought to."

"Well, let us make sure."

Bertuccio sighed and walked ahead. The staircase did indeed lead to the garden.

At the outer door the steward stopped.

"Come, Monsieur Bertuccio!" said the count.

But he whom he addressed was dumbfounded, stupefied, overwhelmed. His wandering eyes sought all around him like traces of a terrible past, and his clenched hands seemed to try to thrust back frightful memories.

"Well?" insisted the count.

"No! no!" cried Bertuccio, placing his hand against the inner corner of the wall; "no, monsieur, I will go no further, it is impossible!"

"What do you mean?" articulated the irresistible voice of Monte Cristo.

"But you see plainly, monsieur," cried the steward, "that this is not natural; that, having a house to buy in Paris, you should buy it just at Auteuil, and that, buying it at Auteuil, this house should be number 28, Rue de la Fontaine! Ah! why did I not tell you all there, my lord. You would certainly not have required me to come. I hoped that the count's house would be some other house than this one. As if there were no other house at Auteuil than the one where the murder was done!"

"Oh! oh!" said Monte Cristo, stopping short, "what ugly word have you just uttered there! Confounded fellow! Inveterate Corsican! always mysteries or superstitions! Come, take that lantern and let us inspect the garden; with me you will have nothing to fear, I hope!"

Bertuccio picked up the lantern and obeyed.

The door, as it opened, disclosed a wan sky in which the moon strove vainly to struggle against a sea of clouds that covered her with their dark waves, which she illuminated for an instant, and which then went to lose themselves, darker still, in the depths of the infinite.

The steward would have turned to the left.

"Not so, monsieur," said Monte Cristo; "what is the use of following the paths? Here is a fine lawn; let us go straight ahead."

Bertuccio wiped the sweat that streamed from his brow, but obeyed; nevertheless, he continued to keep to the left. Monte Cristo, on the contrary, kept to the right. Arriving near a clump of trees, he stopped.

The steward could contain himself no longer.

"Move away, monsieur!" he cried. "Move away, I beg you; you are exactly on the spot!"

"On what spot?"

"On the very spot where he fell."

"My dear Monsieur Bertuccio," said Monte Cristo, laughing, "compose yourself, I advise you to; we are not here at Sartène or at Corte. This is not a maquis, but an English garden, ill kept, I grant, but which should not be slandered for that."

"Monsieur, do not stay there! do not stay there! I implore you."

"I believe you are going mad, Master Bertuccio," said the count coldly. "If that is so, warn me, for I shall have you confined in some sanatorium before any mischief occurs."

"Alas! Excellency," said Bertuccio, shaking his head and joining his hands with an attitude that would have made the count laugh, had not thoughts of a superior interest captivated him at that moment and rendered him most attentive to the slightest outpourings of that timorous conscience. "Alas! Excellency, the mischief has occurred."

"Monsieur Bertuccio," said the count, "I am very glad to tell you that, while gesticulating, you are wringing your arms, and rolling your eyes like one possessed from whose body the devil will not come out; now, I have almost always observed that the devil most stubborn in keeping his post is a secret. I knew you were a Corsican, I knew you were gloomy and always brooding over some old tale of vendetta, and I overlooked that in Italy, because in Italy such things are in order; but in France the murder is generally found in very bad taste: there are gendarmes who look into it, judges who condemn it, and scaffolds who avenge it."

Bertuccio joined his hands, and, as in performing these various evolutions he did not quit his lantern, the light fell upon his distraught face.

Monte Cristo examined him with the same eye with which at Rome he had examined the execution of Andrea; then, in a tone of voice that sent a fresh shudder through the poor steward's frame:

"The Abbé Busoni, then, lied to me," he said, "when, after his journey to France in 1829, he sent you to me with a letter of recommendation in which he commended your precious qualities. Well, I shall write to the abbé; I shall hold him responsible for his protégé, and I shall doubtless learn what this whole murder business is about. Only, I warn you, Monsieur Bertuccio, that when I live in a country I have the habit of conforming to its laws, and that I have no mind to fall out with the French justice on your account."

"Oh! do not do that, Excellency; have I not served you faithfully?" cried Bertuccio in despair. "I have always been an honest man, and I have even, as much as I could, done good deeds."

"I do not say no," replied the count; "but why the devil are you agitated thus? It is a bad sign: a clear conscience brings not so much pallor to a man's cheeks, so much fever to his hands..."

"But, Monsieur le Comte," resumed Bertuccio hesitatingly, "did you not yourself tell me that Monsieur the Abbé Busoni, who heard my confession in the prisons of Nîmes, warned you, when sending me to you, that I had a heavy reproach to make to myself?"

"Yes, but as he recommended you to me saying you would make an excellent steward, I thought you had stolen, that was all!"

"Oh! Monsieur le Comte!" said Bertuccio with contempt.

"Or that, being a Corsican, you could not resist the desire to make a skin—as they say in the country by antiphrasis, when on the contrary one undoes one."

"Well, yes, my lord, yes, my good lord, that is it!" cried Bertuccio, throwing himself at the count's knees. "Yes, it is a vengeance, I swear, a simple vengeance."

"I understand, but what I do not understand is that it should be this house, precisely, that galvanizes you to such a degree."

"But, my lord, is it not very natural," replied Bertuccio, "since it is in this house that the vengeance was accomplished?"

"What! my house!"

"Oh! my lord, it was not yet yours," answered Bertuccio naively.

"But whose was it then? The Marquis de Saint-Méran's, the concierge told us, I believe. What the devil had you to avenge upon the Marquis de Saint-Méran?"

"Oh! it was not of him, my lord, it was of another."

"Here is a strange coincidence," said Monte Cristo, seeming to yield to his reflections, "that you should thus find yourself by chance, without any preparation, in a house where a scene took place that gives you such dreadful remorse."

"My lord," said the steward, "it is fate that brings all this about, I am quite sure: first, you buy a house just at Auteuil; this house is the one where I committed a murder; you go down to the garden just by the stair he went down; you stop just at the spot where he received the blow; a few steps off, under this plane tree, was the pit where he had just buried the child: all this is not chance, no, for in that case chance would too much resemble Providence."

"Well, see here, Monsieur the Corsican, suppose it is Providence; I always suppose whatever one likes, I do; besides, one must make concessions to sick minds. Come, collect yourself and tell me about it."

"I have never told it but once, and that was to the Abbé Busoni. Such things," added Bertuccio, shaking his head, "are only told under the seal of confession."

"Then, my dear Bertuccio," said the count, "you will excuse my sending you back to your confessor; you will make yourself a Carthusian or a Bernardine with him, and you will talk of your secrets. But, as for me, I am afraid of a guest frightened by such phantoms; I do not like my people to dare not walk in my garden of an evening. Then, I confess, I should be little curious for some visit from a police commissioner; for learn this, Master Bertuccio: in Italy one pays justice only if she is silent, but in France one pays her, on the contrary, only when she speaks. Pshaw! I took you for a bit of a Corsican, a good deal of a smuggler, a very clever steward, but I see you have other strings to your bow. You are no longer in my service, Monsieur Bertuccio."

"Oh! my lord! my lord!" cried the steward, struck with terror at this threat; "oh! if it depends only on that for me to remain in your service, I will speak, I will tell all; and if I leave you, well, then it will be to march to the scaffold."

"That is different then," said Monte Cristo; "but if you mean to lie, reflect upon it: better you should not speak at all."

"No, monsieur, I swear to you on the salvation of my soul, I will tell you all! for the Abbé Busoni himself knew but part of my secret. But first, I beg you, move away from that plane tree; see, the moon is about to whiten that cloud, and there, placed as you are, wrapped in that cloak that hides your figure from me and that resembles Monsieur de Villefort's!..."

"What!" cried Monte Cristo, "is it Monsieur de Villefort..."

"Does your excellency know him?"

"The former king's attorney at Nîmes?"

"Yes."

"Who had married the daughter of the Marquis de Saint-Méran?"

"Yes."

"And who had in the bar the reputation of the most honest, the most severe, the most rigid magistrate."

"Well, monsieur," cried Bertuccio, "that man of irreproachable reputation..."

"Yes."

"Was an infamous wretch."

"Bah!" said Monte Cristo, "impossible."

"It is nevertheless as I tell you."

"Ah! indeed!" said Monte Cristo; "and you have proof of it?"

"I had at least."

"And you have lost it, you blunderer?"

"Yes; but by searching well it may be found again."

"Truly!" said the count. "Tell me that, Monsieur Bertuccio, for it is beginning veritably to interest me."

And the count, humming a little air from Lucia, went to seat himself on a bench, while Bertuccio followed him, recalling his memories.

Bertuccio remained standing before him.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”