LIV. La hausse et la baisse.

LIV

Rise and Fall.

A few days after this meeting, Albert de Morcerf came to pay a visit to the Count of Monte Cristo at his house on the Champs-Élysées, which had already taken on the air of a palace, such as the count, thanks to his immense fortune, gave to his dwellings even the most transient.

He came to renew to him the thanks of Madame Danglars, which had already been brought by a letter signed Baroness Danglars, born Herminie de Servieux.

Albert was accompanied by Lucien Debray, who added to his friend's words some compliments which were not official, no doubt, but the source of which, thanks to the keenness of his glance, the count could not suspect.

It even seemed to him that Lucien came to see him, moved by a double feeling of curiosity, and that half of this feeling emanated from the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin. Indeed, he could suppose, without fear of being mistaken, that Madame Danglars, unable to know with her own eyes the interior of a man who gave horses worth thirty thousand francs, and who went to the Opera with a Greek slave wearing a million in diamonds, had charged the eyes with which she was accustomed to see to give her information about this interior.

But the count did not appear to suspect the least connection between Lucien's visit and the baroness's curiosity.

"You are in almost continual relations with Baron Danglars?" he asked Albert de Morcerf.

"Why yes, Monsieur le Comte; you know what I told you."

"So that still holds?"

"More than ever," said Lucien; "it is an arranged affair."

And Lucien, judging no doubt that this word mingled in the conversation gave him the right to remain a stranger to it, placed his tortoiseshell eyeglass in his eye, and biting the gold knob of his cane, began to walk around the room examining the weapons and the pictures.

"Ah!" said Monte Cristo; "but, to hear you, I had not believed in so prompt a solution."

"What would you have? Things move without one suspecting it; while you are not thinking of them, they are thinking of you; and when you turn around you are astonished at the ground they have covered. My father and M. Danglars served together in Spain, my father in the army, M. Danglars in the commissary. It is there that my father, ruined by the Revolution, and M. Danglars, who for his part never had any patrimony, laid the foundations, my father of his political and military fortune, which is fine, M. Danglars of his political and financial fortune, which is admirable."

"Yes, indeed," said Monte Cristo, "I believe that, during the visit I paid him, M. Danglars spoke to me of that; and," he continued, casting a glance at Lucien, who was turning over an album, "is she pretty, Mlle Eugénie? for I think I recall that that is her name."

"Very pretty, or rather very beautiful," answered Albert, "but of a beauty that I do not appreciate. I am unworthy!"

"You already speak of her as if you were her husband!"

"Oh!" said Albert, looking around him in his turn to see what Lucien was doing.

"Do you know," said Monte Cristo, lowering his voice, "that you do not seem to me enthusiastic about this marriage!"

"Mlle Danglars is too rich for me," said Morcerf; "that frightens me."

"Bah!" said Monte Cristo, "there is a fine reason; are you not rich yourself?"

"My father has something like fifty thousand livres in income, and will perhaps give me ten or twelve on my marriage."

"The fact is that it is modest," said the count, "especially in Paris; but all is not in fortune in this world, and a fine name and a high social position are something too. Your name is famous, your position magnificent, and then the Count of Morcerf is a soldier, and one likes to see that integrity of Bayard allied to the poverty of Duguesclin; disinterestedness is the finest ray of sunlight in which a noble sword can shine. I, quite the contrary, find this union more than suitable: Mlle Danglars will enrich you and you will ennoble her!"

Albert shook his head and remained thoughtful.

"There is something else," said he.

"I confess," resumed Monte Cristo, "that I have difficulty understanding this repugnance for a rich and beautiful young girl."

"Oh! my God!" said Morcerf, "this repugnance, if repugnance there is, does not come wholly from my side."

"But from what side then? for you told me that your father desired this marriage."

"From my mother's side, and my mother is a prudent and sure eye. Well, she does not smile upon this union; she has I know not what prejudice against the Danglars."

"Oh!" said the count with a somewhat forced tone, "that is understandable; the Countess of Morcerf, who is distinction, aristocracy, refinement in person, hesitates a little to touch a plebeian, thick and brutal hand: that is natural."

"I do not know if that is it indeed," said Albert; "but what I know is that it seems to me that this marriage, if it takes place, will make her unhappy. Already they were to assemble to speak of business six weeks ago but I was so taken with migraines...."

"Real ones?" said the count smiling.

"Oh! quite real, the fear no doubt... that the meeting was put off for two months. Nothing presses, you understand; I am not yet twenty-one, and Eugénie is only seventeen; but the two months expire next week. I shall have to carry it through. You cannot imagine, my dear count, how embarrassed I am... Ah! how happy you are to be free!"

"Well, but be free also; who prevents you, may I ask?"

"Oh! it would be too great a disappointment for my father if I did not marry Mlle Danglars."

"Marry her then," said the count with a singular shrug of the shoulders.

"Yes," said Morcerf; "but for my mother it will not be disappointment, but grief."

"Then do not marry her," said the count.

"I shall see, I shall try, you will give me counsel, will you not? and, if you can, you will get me out of this embarrassment. Oh! to avoid grieving my excellent mother, I would quarrel with the count, I believe."

Monte Cristo turned away; he seemed moved.

"Eh!" said he to Debray, seated in a deep armchair at the end of the salon, and who held in his right hand a pencil and in his left a notebook, "what are you doing then, a sketch after Poussin?"

"I?" said he tranquilly; "oh! yes indeed! a sketch, I love painting too much for that! No, I am doing the very opposite of painting, I am making figures."

"Figures?"

"Yes, I am calculating; this concerns you indirectly, vicomte; I am calculating what the house of Danglars gained on the last rise of Haiti: from two hundred six the stock rose to four hundred nine in three days, and the prudent banker had bought a great deal at two hundred six. He must have made three hundred thousand livres."

"That is not his best stroke," said Morcerf; "did he not make a million this year with the Spanish bonds?"

"Listen, my dear," said Lucien, "here is M. le Comte de Monte Cristo who will tell you like the Italians:

_Danaro e santità_ _Metà della metà_[2]

[Note 2: Money and holiness, Half of the half.]

And that is still a great deal. So, when they tell me such stories, I shrug my shoulders.

"But you were speaking of Haiti?" said Monte Cristo.

"Oh! Haiti is something else; Haiti is the écarté of French stock-jobbing. One may love bouillotte, cherish whist, be wild about boston, and yet tire of all that; but one always comes back to écarté: it is a side-dish. Thus M. Danglars sold yesterday at four hundred six and pocketed three hundred thousand francs; if he had waited until today, the stock had fallen back to two hundred five, and instead of gaining three hundred thousand francs, he would have lost twenty or twenty-five thousand."

"And why has the stock fallen from four hundred nine to two hundred five?" asked Monte Cristo. "I beg your pardon, I am very ignorant of all these Stock Exchange intrigues."

"Because," answered Albert laughing, "news follows news and they are not alike."

"Ah! the devil," said the count, "M. Danglars plays to gain or lose three hundred thousand francs in a day. Why, then, he must be enormously rich?"

"It is not he who plays!" cried Lucien eagerly; "it is Madame Danglars; she is truly intrepid."

"But you who are reasonable, Lucien, and who know the little stability of news, since you are at the source, you should prevent her," said Morcerf with a smile.

"How could I, if her husband does not succeed?" asked Lucien. "You know the baroness's character, no one has influence over her, and she does absolutely only what she wishes."

"Oh! if I were in your place!" said Albert.

"Well!"

"I would cure her, I; it would be a service rendered to her future son-in-law."

"How so?"

"Ah, pardieu! it is quite easy, I would give her a lesson."

"A lesson?"

"Yes. Your position as secretary to the minister gives you great authority over the news; you do not open your mouth but the stockbrokers stenograph your words as fast as possible; announce to her one fine morning something unheard of, a telegraphic news that you alone could know; that Henri IV, for example, was seen yesterday at Gabrielle's; that will make the stocks rise, she will base her stroke of business upon it, and she will certainly lose when Beauchamp writes the next day in his paper: 'It is wrongly that well-informed people pretend that King Henri IV was seen the day before yesterday at Gabrielle's, this fact is completely inaccurate; King Henri IV has not left the Pont Neuf.'"

Lucien began to laugh with the tip of his lips. Monte Cristo, though apparently indifferent, had not lost a word of this conversation, and his piercing eye had even thought to read a secret in the embarrassment of the private secretary.

It resulted from this embarrassment of Lucien, which had completely escaped Albert, that Lucien shortened his visit.

He evidently felt ill at ease. The count said to him in seeing him out a few words in a low voice to which he answered:

"Willingly, Monsieur le Comte, I accept."

The count returned to the young de Morcerf.

"Do you not think, on reflection," said he to him, "that you were wrong to speak as you did of your future mother-in-law before M. Debray?"

"Come, count," said Morcerf, "I beg you, do not say that word in advance."

"Truly, and without exaggeration, the countess is so contrary to this marriage?"

"To such a point that the baroness rarely comes to the house, and that my mother, I believe, has not been twice in her life at Madame Danglars's."

"Then," said the count, "here I am emboldened to speak to you openly: M. Danglars is my banker, M. de Villefort overwhelmed me with politeness in thanks for a service that a happy chance enabled me to render him. I guess beneath all this an avalanche of dinners and routs. Now, not to seem to botch magnificently upon the whole, and even to have the merit of taking the lead, if you will, I had projected to gather at my country house at Auteuil M. and Mme Danglars, M. and Mme de Villefort. If I invite you to this dinner, as well as M. le Comte and Mme la Comtesse de Morcerf, will that not look like a kind of matrimonial meeting, or at least will not the Countess of Morcerf view the thing thus, especially if M. le Baron Danglars does me the honor of bringing his daughter? Then your mother will take a horror of me, and I do not want that at all, I; on the contrary, and tell her so whenever the occasion presents itself, I am bent upon remaining in her good graces."

"Upon my word, count," said Morcerf, "I thank you for this frankness with me, and I accept the exclusion you propose to me. You say that you are bent upon remaining in my mother's good graces, where you already are wonderfully."

"You think so?" said Monte Cristo with interest.

"Oh! I am sure of it. When you left us the other day, we talked an hour of you but I come back to what we were saying. Well, if my mother could know this attention of yours, and I shall venture to tell her, I am sure she would be more than grateful to you for it. It is true that on his side, my father would be furious."

The count began to laugh.

"Well," said he to Morcerf, "there you are warned. But I think of it, it will not be only your father who will be furious; M. and Mme Danglars will consider me a man of very bad form. They know that I see you with a certain intimacy, that you are even my oldest Parisian acquaintance and they will not find you at my house; they will ask me why I did not invite you. Think at least to provide yourself with a prior engagement that has some appearance of probability, and of which you will apprise me by means of a little note. You know it, with bankers only writings are valid."

"I shall do better than that, Monsieur le Comte," said Albert. "My mother wishes to go breathe the sea air. For what day is your dinner fixed?"

"For Saturday."

"We are Tuesday, good; tomorrow evening we leave; the day after tomorrow we shall be at Le Tréport. Do you know, Monsieur le Comte, that you are a charming man thus to put people at their ease!"

"I! indeed you hold me for more than I am worth; I merely wish to be agreeable to you, that is all."

"What day did you make your invitations?"

"Today itself."

"Good! I run to M. Danglars, I announce to him that we leave Paris tomorrow, my mother and I. I have not seen you; consequently I know nothing of your dinner."

"Fool that you are! and M. Debray, who has just seen you at my house, him!"

"Ah! that is true."

"On the contrary, I saw you and invited you here without ceremony, and you naively answered me that you could not be my guest, because you were leaving for Le Tréport."

"Well, there it is settled. But you, will you come see my mother before tomorrow?"

"Before tomorrow, that is difficult; then I would fall in the middle of your departure preparations."

"Well, do better than that; you were only a charming man, you will be an adorable man."

"What must I do to arrive at that sublimity?"

"What you must do?"

"I ask."

"You are free as the air today; come dine with me: we shall be in a small committee, you, my mother and I only. You have barely glimpsed my mother; but you will see her closely. She is a very remarkable woman, and I regret only one thing: that her like does not exist with twenty years less; there would soon be, I swear to you, a countess and a viscountess of Morcerf. As for my father, you will not find him: he is on a committee this evening and dines with the grand referendary. Come, we will talk travels. You who have seen the whole world, you will tell us your adventures; you will tell us the history of that beautiful Greek who was the other evening with you at the Opera, whom you call your slave and whom you treat like a princess. We will speak Italian, Spanish. Come, accept; my mother will thank you."

"A thousand thanks," said the count; "the invitation is most gracious, and I deeply regret being unable to accept it. I am not free as you thought, and I have on the contrary a most important engagement."

"Ah! take care; you taught me just now how, in matter of dinner, one gets rid of an unpleasant thing. I must have proof. I am happily not a banker like M. Danglars; but I am, I warn you, as incredulous as he."

"So I am going to give it to you," said the count.

And he rang.

"Hum!" said Morcerf, "that is already twice that you refuse to dine with my mother. It is a settled purpose, count."

Monte Cristo started.

"Oh! you do not believe it," said he; "besides here is my proof coming."

Baptistin entered and stood at the door, upright and waiting.

"I was not warned of your visit, was I?"

"Why! you are such an extraordinary man that I would not answer for it."

"I could not guess that you would invite me to dine, at least."

"Oh! as for that, it is probable."

"Well, listen, Baptistin... what did I tell you this morning when I called you into my study?"

"To have the count's door closed once five o'clock had struck."

"Then?"

"Oh! Monsieur le Comte..." said Albert.

"No, no, I absolutely wish to rid myself of that mysterious reputation you have made for me, my dear vicomte. It is too difficult to play Manfred eternally. I wish to live in a house of glass. Then.... Continue, Baptistin."

"Then, to receive only M. le Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti and his son."

"You hear, M. le Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, a man of the oldest nobility of Italy and of whom Dante took the trouble to be the d'Hozier.... You recall or you do not recall, in the tenth canto of the Inferno; moreover, his son, a charming young man of about your age, vicomte, bearing the same title as you, and who makes his entry into Parisian society with his father's millions. The major brings me this evening his son Andrea, the contino, as we say in Italy. He confides him to me. I shall push him forward if he has any merit. You will help me, will you not?"

"Certainly! Is this Major Cavalcanti then an old friend of yours?" asked Albert.

"Not at all, he is a worthy lord, very polite, very modest, very discreet, such as there are a great many in Italy, very descended descendants of old families. I have seen him several times, whether at Florence, or at Bologna, or at Lucca, and he warned me of his arrival. Traveling acquaintances are exacting: they claim from you, in every place, the friendship you once showed them by chance; as if the civilized man, who knows how to live an hour with anyone, did not always have his afterthought! This good Major Cavalcanti is going to see Paris again, which he saw only in passing, under the Empire, on his way to get frozen at Moscow. I shall give him a good dinner, he will leave me his son; I shall promise him to watch over him; I shall let him commit all the follies it may please him to commit, and we shall be quits."

"Admirable!" said Albert, "and I see that you are a precious mentor. Farewell then, we shall be back Sunday. By the way, I have had news of Franz."

"Ah! indeed!" said Monte Cristo; "and is he still pleased in Italy?"

"I think so; however he regrets you there. He says that you were the sun of Rome, and that without you it is gray there. I do not even know if he does not go so far as to say that it rains."

"He has then come round about me, your friend Franz?"

"On the contrary, he persists in believing you fantastic in the highest degree; that is why he regrets you."

"Charming young man!" said Monte Cristo, "and for whom I felt a lively sympathy the first evening I saw him looking for some supper, and he was good enough to accept mine. He is, I believe, the son of General d'Épinay?"

"Exactly."

"The same who was so miserably assassinated in 1815?"

"By the Bonapartists."

"That is it! Upon my word, I like him! Is there not also some marriage project for him?"

"Yes, he is to marry Mlle de Villefort."

"Is it true?"

"As I am to marry Mlle Danglars," replied Albert laughing.

"You laugh...."

"Yes."

"Why do you laugh?"

"I laugh because it seems to me that on that side there is as much sympathy for marriage as there is on the other side between Mlle Danglars and me. But really, my dear count, we are talking of women like women talk of men; it is unpardonable!"

Albert rose.

"You are going?"

"The question is good! I have been boring you for two hours, and you have the politeness to ask me if I am going! Truly, count, you are the most polite man on earth! And your servants, how well trained they are! M. Baptistin especially! I never could have one like that. Mine all seem to take example from those of the Théâtre-Français, who precisely because they have but one word to say, always come to say it on the ramp. So, if you part with M. Baptistin, I ask preference."

"It is agreed, vicomte."

"That is not all, wait: give my compliments to your discreet Luccan, to the lord Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti; and if by chance he were bent on establishing his son, find him a wife very rich, very noble, on the mother's side at least, and very baroness on the father's side. I will help you in that."

"Oh! oh!" answered Monte Cristo, "indeed, are you there?"

"Yes."

"Upon my word, one must swear nothing."

"Ah! count," cried Morcerf, "what a service you would render me, and how I would love you a hundred times more still if, thanks to you, I remained a bachelor, were it but ten years."

"All is possible," answered Monte Cristo gravely.

And taking leave of Albert, he went back into his house and struck three times upon his bell.

Bertuccio appeared.

"Monsieur Bertuccio," said he, "you will know that I receive Saturday at my house at Auteuil."

Bertuccio gave a slight shiver.

"Very well, monsieur," said he.

"I need you," continued the count, "so that everything may be properly prepared. That house is very fine, or at least can be very fine."

"Everything would have to be changed to arrive at that, Monsieur le Comte, for the hangings have grown old."

"Change everything then, except one alone, that of the red damask bedroom: you will leave it even absolutely as it is."

Bertuccio bowed.

"You will not touch the garden either; but the courtyard, for example, do with it what you will; it will even be agreeable to me that it not be recognizable."

"I will do my possible so that Monsieur le Comte may be satisfied: I should be more reassured however if Monsieur le Comte would tell me his intentions for the dinner."

"In truth, my dear Monsieur Bertuccio," said the count, "since you are in Paris I find you out of your element, trembling; but do you no longer know me?"

"But finally His Excellency might tell me whom he receives!"

"I do not yet know, and you need not know either. Lucullus dines with Lucullus, that is all."

Bertuccio bowed and withdrew.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”