LVII. L'enclos à la luzerne.

LVII

The Lucerne Enclosure.

Our readers must allow us to lead them back to that enclosure which borders Monsieur de Villefort's house, and, behind the grating overgrown with horse-chestnut trees, we shall find persons of our acquaintance.

This time Maximilien has arrived first. It is he who has pressed his eye to the partition, and who watches in the deep garden for a shadow among the trees and the creaking of a silk shoe upon the sand of the paths.

At last, the long-desired creaking was heard, and instead of one shadow it was two shadows that approached. Valentine's delay had been caused by a visit from Madame Danglars and Eugénie, a visit that was prolonged beyond the hour at which Valentine was expected. Then, so as not to miss her rendezvous, the young girl had proposed to Mademoiselle Danglars a walk in the garden, wishing to show Maximilien that the delay, of which he no doubt was suffering, was not her fault.

The young man understood everything with that rapidity of intuition peculiar to lovers, and his heart was relieved. Moreover, without coming within earshot, Valentine directed her walk in such a way that Maximilien could see her pass and repass, and each time she passed and repassed, a glance unseen by her companion, but cast from the other side of the grating and caught by the young man, said to him:

"Be patient, friend, you see it is not my fault."

And Maximilien, indeed, was patient, while admiring this contrast between the two young girls: between the blonde with languid eyes and a figure bent like a beautiful willow, and the brunette with proud eyes and an upright figure like a poplar; then it goes without saying that in this comparison between two such opposite natures, all the advantage, in the young man's heart at least, was on Valentine's side.

At the end of half an hour's walk, the two young girls went away. Maximilien understood that the term of Madame Danglars's visit had arrived.

Indeed, a moment later, Valentine reappeared alone. For fear lest an indiscreet glance should follow her return, she came slowly; and, instead of advancing directly toward the grating, she went to sit upon a bench, after having, without affectation, scrutinized every clump of foliage and plunged her gaze into the depths of all the paths.

These precautions taken, she ran to the grating.

"Good day, Valentine," said a voice.

"Good day, Maximilien; I have made you wait, but you saw the cause?"

"Yes, I recognized Mademoiselle Danglars; I did not think you were so intimate with that young person."

"Who told you then that we were intimate, Maximilien?"

"No one; but it seemed to me that it appeared from the way you linked arms, from the way you talked: one would have said two school companions exchanging confidences."

"We were indeed exchanging our confidences," said Valentine, "she was confessing to me her repugnance for a marriage with Monsieur de Morcerf, and I, for my part, was confessing to her that I regarded marrying Monsieur d'Épinay as a misfortune."

"Dear Valentine!"

"That is why, my friend," the young girl continued, "you saw that appearance of abandon between Eugénie and me; it is that, while speaking of the man I cannot love, I was thinking of the man I do love."

"How good you are in all things, Valentine, and how you possess within you something that Mademoiselle Danglars will never have: that indefinable charm which is to woman what perfume is to the flower, what flavor is to the fruit; for it is not enough for a flower to be beautiful, it is not enough for a fruit to be fair."

"It is your love that makes you see things thus, Maximilien."

"No, Valentine, I swear to you. See, I was looking at you both just now, and, upon my honor, while doing justice to Mademoiselle Danglars's beauty, I could not understand that a man should fall in love with her."

"That is because, as you said, Maximilien, I was there, and my presence made you unjust."

"No... but tell me... a question of simple curiosity, and which arises from certain ideas I had formed of Mademoiselle Danglars."

"Oh! quite unjust, without my knowing which ones certainly. When you judge us, we poor women, we must not expect indulgence."

"As if you were very just to one another!"

"Because, almost always, there is passion in our judgments. But return to your question."

"Is it because Mademoiselle Danglars loves someone that she dreads her marriage with Monsieur de Morcerf?"

"Maximilien, I told you I was not Eugénie's friend."

"Eh! my God!" said Morrel, "without being friends, young girls exchange confidences; admit that you asked her some questions on that score. Ah! I see you smile."

"If that is so, Maximilien, it is not worth our having this wooden partition between us."

"Come, what did she tell you?"

"She told me she loved no one," said Valentine; "that she had marriage in horror; that her greatest joy would have been to lead a free and independent life, and that she almost wished her father would lose his fortune so as to become an artist like her friend, Mademoiselle Louise d'Armilly."

"Ah! you see!"

"Well, what does that prove?" asked Valentine.

"Nothing," answered Maximilien with a smile.

"Then," said Valentine, "why do you smile in your turn?"

"Ah!" said Maximilien, "you see well that you too are looking, Valentine."

"Do you wish me to go away?"

"Oh! no! not that! But let us return to you."

"Ah! yes, it is true, for we have scarcely ten minutes to spend together."

"My God!" cried Maximilien, dismayed.

"Yes, Maximilien, you are right," said Valentine with melancholy, "and you have there a poor friend. What an existence I make you lead, poor Maximilien, you who are so well made to be happy! I bitterly reproach myself for it, believe me."

"Well, what does it matter to you, Valentine: if I find myself happy thus; if this eternal waiting seems to me paid, for my part, by five minutes of seeing you, by two words from your lips, and by that deep, eternal conviction that God created no two hearts so in harmony as ours, and did not bring them together, almost miraculously, especially to separate them."

"Good, thank you, hope for us both, Maximilien: that makes me half happy."

"What is happening to you then, Valentine, that you leave me so soon?"

"I do not know; Madame de Villefort has sent to ask me to come to her for a communication upon which, I was told, a portion of my fortune depends. Eh! my God, let them take my fortune, I am too rich, and if, after taking it, they would leave me quiet and free; you would love me just as much poor, would you not, Morrel?"

"Oh! I should always love you, I; what matters wealth or poverty to me, if my Valentine were near me and I were sure no one could take her from me! But this communication, Valentine, do you not fear it may be some news relating to your marriage?"

"I do not believe so."

"However, listen to me, Valentine, and do not be alarmed, for as long as I live I shall not belong to another."

"You think to reassure me by telling me that, Maximilien?"

"Pardon! you are right, I am a brute. Well, I wished to tell you that the other day I met Monsieur de Morcerf."

"Well?"

"Monsieur Franz is his friend, as you know."

"Yes; well?"

"Well, he has received a letter from Franz, who announces his imminent return."

Valentine grew pale and leaned her hand against the grating.

"Ah! my God!" said she, "if that were it! But no, the communication would not come from Madame de Villefort."

"Why not?"

"Why... I know not... but it seems to me that Madame de Villefort, while not openly opposing it, is not sympathetic to this marriage."

"Why, but, Valentine, it seems to me I am going to adore Madame de Villefort."

"Oh! do not be hasty, Maximilien," said Valentine with a sad smile.

"In short, if she is antipathetic to this marriage, were it only to break it off, perhaps she would lend an ear to some other proposition."

"Do not believe that, Maximilien; it is not husbands that Madame de Villefort repels, it is marriage."

"How? marriage! If she so detests marriage, why did she marry herself?"

"You do not understand me, Maximilien; thus, when a year ago I spoke of retiring to a convent, she had, despite the observations she thought she ought to make, adopted my proposition with joy; my father himself consented to it, at her instigation, I am sure; there was only my poor grandfather who held me back. You cannot imagine, Maximilien, what expression there is in the eyes of that poor old man, who loves no one in the world but me, and who, God forgive me if it is blasphemy, and who is loved in the world only by me. If you knew, when he learned my resolution, how he looked at me, what reproach there was in that look and what despair in the tears that rolled, without complaint, without sigh, down his motionless cheeks! Ah! Maximilien, I felt something like remorse, I threw myself at his feet crying: 'Pardon! pardon, my father! They may do with me what they will, but I shall never leave you.' Then he raised his eyes to heaven!... Maximilien, I can suffer much, that look from my old grandfather paid me in advance for what I shall suffer."

"Dear Valentine! you are an angel, and I truly do not know how I deserved, in sabering Bedouins right and left, unless God considered that they are infidels, I do not know how I deserved that you should be revealed to me. But finally, let us see, Valentine, what then is Madame de Villefort's interest in your not marrying?"

"Did you not hear just now me telling you that I was rich, Maximilien, too rich? I have, from my mother's estate, nearly fifty thousand livres in income; my grandfather and grandmother, the Marquis and Marquise de Saint-Méran, must leave me as much; Monsieur Noirtier has quite visibly the intention of making me his sole heiress. It results therefore that, compared to me, my brother Édouard, who expects, on Madame de Villefort's side, no fortune, is poor. Now, Madame de Villefort loves that child with adoration, and if I had entered religion, all my fortune, concentrated upon my father, who inherited from the marquis, the marquise and me, would have returned to her son."

"Oh! how strange this cupidity is in a young and beautiful woman!"

"Observe that it is not for herself, Maximilien, but for her son, and that what you reproach her with as a fault, from the point of view of maternal love, is almost a virtue."

"But come, Valentine," said Morrel, "if you were to abandon a portion of that fortune to that son."

"The means to make such a proposition," said Valentine, "and above all to a woman who has constantly on her lips the word disinterestedness?"

"Valentine, my love has always remained sacred to me, and like all sacred things, I have covered it with the veil of my respect and locked it in my heart; no one in the world, not even my sister, suspects this love that I have confided to no one in the world. Valentine, do you permit me to speak of this love to a friend?"

Valentine shuddered.

"To a friend?" said she. "Oh! my God! Maximilien, I shiver merely hearing you speak thus! To a friend? and who then is this friend?"

"Listen, Valentine: have you ever felt for someone one of those irresistible sympathies which make that, while seeing that person for the first time, you believe you have known her a long while, and you ask yourself where and when you saw her, so well that, unable to recall either the place or the time, you come to believe it was in a world prior to ours, and that this sympathy is but a memory awakening?"

"Yes."

"Well, that is what I felt the first time I saw that extraordinary man."

"An extraordinary man?"

"Yes."

"Whom you have known a long while then?"

"For scarcely eight or ten days."

"And you call your friend a man you have known for eight days? Oh! Maximilien, I thought you more sparing of that beautiful name of friend."

"You are right in logic, Valentine; but say what you will, nothing will make me go back on that instinctive feeling. I believe that this man will be mixed up with all that happens to me of good in the future, that sometimes his profound gaze seems to know and his powerful hand to direct."

"He is a diviner then?" said Valentine smiling.

"Upon my faith," said Maximilien, "I am often tempted to believe he guesses... good things especially."

"Oh!" said Valentine sadly, "make me know this man, Maximilien, that I may learn from him if I shall be loved enough to be compensated for all I have suffered."

"Poor friend! but you know him!"

"I?"

"Yes. It is he who saved your stepmother's life and her son's."

"The Count of Monte Cristo?"

"Himself."

"Oh!" cried Valentine, "he can never be my friend, he is too much my stepmother's."

"The count, the friend of your stepmother, Valentine? my instinct would not fail to that degree; I am sure you are mistaken."

"Oh! if you knew, Maximilien! but it is no longer Édouard who reigns in the house, it is the count: sought after by Madame de Villefort, who sees in him the sum of human knowledge; admired, do you hear, admired by my father, who says he has never heard more elevated ideas formulated with more eloquence; idolized by Édouard, who, despite his fear of the count's great black eyes, runs to him as soon as he sees him arrive, and opens his hand, where he always finds some admirable toy: Monsieur de Monte-Cristo is not here at my father's; Monsieur de Monte-Cristo is not here at Madame de Villefort's: Monsieur de Monte-Cristo is at his own home."

"Well, dear Valentine, if things are as you say, you must already feel or will soon feel the effects of his presence. He meets Albert de Morcerf in Italy, it is to draw him from the hands of bandits; he catches sight of Madame Danglars, it is to make her a royal gift; your stepmother and your brother pass before his door, it is for his Nubian to save their lives. This man has evidently received the power to influence events. I have never seen tastes more simple allied to a high magnificence. His smile is so gentle, when he addresses it to me, that I forget how bitter others find his smile. Oh! tell me, Valentine, has he smiled at you thus? If he has, you will be happy."

"I!" said the young girl, "oh! my God! Maximilien, he does not even look at me, or rather, if I pass by chance, he turns his gaze from me. Oh! he is not generous, I assure you! or he has not that profound gaze which reads to the bottom of hearts, and which you wrongly suppose in him; for if he were generous, seeing me alone and sad in the midst of all that household, he would have protected me with that influence he exerts; and since he plays, as you claim, the role of sun, he would have warmed my heart with one of his rays. You say he loves you, Maximilien; eh! my God, what do you know of it? Men put on a gracious face for an officer of five feet six inches like you, who has a long mustache and a great sabre, but they believe they can crush without fear a poor girl who weeps."

"Oh! Valentine! you are mistaken, I swear to you."

"If it were otherwise, come, Maximilien, if he treated me diplomatically, that is to say like a man who, one way or another, wishes to ingratiate himself in the house, he would have, were it but a single time, honored me with that smile you praise so highly, but no, he has seen me unhappy, he understands that I can be of no use to him, and he does not even pay attention to me. Who knows even if, to court my father, Madame de Villefort or my brother, he will not persecute me also as far as lies in his power to do so? Come, frankly, I am not a woman one should thus despise without reason; you have told me so. Ah! pardon me," continued the young girl, seeing the impression these words produced on Maximilien, "I am wicked, and I say to you of this man things I did not even know were in my heart. See, I do not deny that this influence of which you speak exists, and that he exerts it even upon me; but if he exerts it, it is in a harmful and corrupting manner, as you see, of good thoughts."

"Very well, Valentine," said Morrel with a sigh, "let us speak of it no more; I shall say nothing to him."

"Alas! my friend," said Valentine, "I afflict you, I see it. Oh! that I could press your hand to ask your pardon! But finally I ask nothing better than to be convinced; tell me, what then has this Count of Monte Cristo done for you?"

"You embarrass me greatly, I confess, Valentine, in asking me what the count has done for me: nothing ostensible, I know well. Also, as I have already told you, is my affection for him wholly instinctive and has nothing reasoned about it. Has the sun done anything for me? No; he warms me, and by his light I see you, that is all. Has this or that perfume done anything for me? No; its odor pleasantly recreates one of my senses. I have nothing else to say when one asks me why I praise that perfume; my friendship for him is strange as his for me. A secret voice warned me that there is more than chance in this unforeseen and reciprocal friendship. I find correlation even in his simplest actions, even in his most secret thoughts, between my actions and my thoughts. You will laugh at me again, Valentine, but since I have known this man, the absurd idea has come to me that all the good that happens to me emanates from him. Yet, I lived thirty years without needing this protector, did I not? no matter, see, an example: he has invited me to dinner for Saturday, that is natural given how far we have come, is it not? Well, what have I learned since? Your father is invited to that dinner, your mother will come. I shall meet with them, and who knows what will result in the future from that meeting? There are circumstances quite simple in appearance; however, I, I see something astonishing in that; I draw from it a strange confidence. I tell myself that the count, that singular man who guesses all, wished to make me find myself with Monsieur and Madame de Villefort, and sometimes I seek, I swear to you, to read in his eyes whether he has guessed my love."

"My good friend," said Valentine, "I should take you for a visionary, and I should truly fear for your good sense, if I heard from you only such reasoning. What! you see something other than chance in that meeting? Really, reflect. My father, who never goes out, was on the point ten times of refusing this invitation to Madame de Villefort, who, on the contrary, burns with desire to see at his home this extraordinary nabob, and it was with great difficulty that she obtained that he would accompany her. No, no, believe me, I have, apart from you, Maximilien, no other help to ask in this world than my grandfather, a corpse! no other support to seek than in my poor mother, a shadow!"

"I feel that you are right, Valentine, and that logic is on your side," said Maximilien; "but your sweet voice, always so powerful over me, today does not convince me."

"Nor yours either," said Valentine, "and I admit that if you have no other example to cite to me...."

"I have one," said Maximilien hesitating; "but indeed, Valentine, I am forced to confess myself that it is even more absurd than the first."

"So much the worse," said Valentine smiling.

"And yet," continued Morrel, "it is no less conclusive for me, a man all of inspiration and feeling, and who have sometimes, in the ten years I have served, owed my life to one of those inward flashes which dictate to you a movement forward or backward, so that the ball which was to kill you passes beside you."

"Dear Maximilien, why not give the credit for that deflection of the balls to my prayers? When you are over there, it is no longer for me that I pray to God and my mother, it is for you."

"Yes, since I have known you," said Morrel smiling; "but before I knew you, Valentine?"

"Come, since you will owe me nothing, wicked one, return then to that example you yourself admit is absurd."

"Well, look through the boards, and see yonder, at that tree, the new horse with which I came."

"Oh! the admirable beast!" cried Valentine, "why did you not bring him near the grating? I should have spoken to him and he would have heard me."

"It is indeed, as you see, a beast of rather great price," said Maximilien. "Well, you know my fortune is limited, Valentine, and that I am what is called a reasonable man. Well, I had seen at a horse dealer's this magnificent Médéah, that is what I name him. I asked what his price was: I was answered four thousand five hundred francs; I had to abstain, as you well understand, from finding him beautiful any longer, and I left, I confess, with rather a heavy heart, for the horse had tenderly looked at me, had caressed me with his head and had caracoled beneath me in the most coquettish and charming fashion. That same evening I had some friends at home: Monsieur de Château-Renaud, Monsieur Debray and five or six other bad subjects whom you have the happiness not to know, even by name. A bouillotte was proposed; I never play, for I am not rich enough to be able to lose, nor poor enough to wish to win. But I was at home, you understand, I had nothing else to do but send for cards, and that is what I did.

"As they were sitting down to table, Monsieur de Monte-Cristo arrived. He took his place, they played, and, as for me, I won; I scarce dare confess it to you, Valentine, I won five thousand francs. We parted at midnight. I could not contain myself, I took a cabriolet and had myself driven to my horse dealer's. All palpitating, all feverish, I rang; he who came to open must have taken me for a madman. I sprang to the other side of the door scarcely opened. I entered the stable, I looked at the rack. Oh! happiness! Médéah was nibbling his hay. I leap upon a saddle; I myself apply it to his back, I pass the bridle, Médéah submits with the best grace in the world to this operation! Then, depositing the four thousand five hundred francs in the hands of the stupefied dealer, I return or rather I spend the night promenading in the Champs-Élysées. Well, I saw a light at the count's window, it seemed to me I caught sight of his shadow behind the curtains. Now, Valentine, I would swear the count knew I desired that horse, and that he lost on purpose to make me win it."

"My dear Maximilien," said Valentine, "you are too fantastic, in truth... you will not love me long.... A man who thus makes poetry could not pine at will in a monotone passion like ours.... But, great God! see, they are calling me... do you hear?"

"Oh! Valentine," said Maximilien, "by the little daylight of the partition... your smallest finger, that I may kiss it."

"Maximilien, we had said we would be to each other two voices, two shadows!"

"As you please, Valentine."

"Will you be happy if I do what you wish?"

"Oh! yes."

Valentine mounted a bench and passed, not her little finger through the opening, but her whole hand over the partition.

Maximilien gave a cry, and springing in his turn upon the boundary stone, seized that adored hand and applied his ardent lips to it; but immediately the little hand slipped between his, and the young man heard Valentine flee, frightened perhaps by the sensation she had just experienced!

“Stories of the world, in your language.”