VI. Le substitut du procureur du roi.

VI

The Deputy of the King's Attorney.

In the Rue du Grand-Cours, opposite the Fountain of the Medusae, in one of those old aristocratically designed houses built by Puget, an engagement feast was also being celebrated on that same day, at that same hour.

Only, instead of the actors in this other scene being common folk, sailors and soldiers, they belonged to the head of Marseilles society. They were former magistrates who had resigned their offices under the Usurper; old officers who had deserted our ranks to join those of the Army of Condé; young men raised by families still ill reassured as to their existence, despite the four or five substitutes they had paid for, in hatred of that man whom five years of exile were to make a martyr, and fifteen years of Restoration a god.

They were at table, and the conversation ran, aflame with all the passions—the passions of the time, passions all the more terrible, living and relentless in the South in that for five hundred years religious hatreds had lent aid to political hatreds.

The Emperor, king of the Isle of Elba after having been sovereign of part of the world, reigning over a population of five or six thousand souls, after having heard "Long live Napoleon!" cried by a hundred and twenty million subjects in ten different tongues, was treated there as a man lost forever to France and to the throne. The magistrates pointed out his political blunders; the military men spoke of Moscow and Leipzig; the women, of his divorce from Josephine. It seemed to that royalist world, all joyous and all triumphant not at the fall of the man but at the annihilation of the principle, that life was beginning anew for it, and that it was awakening from a painful dream.

An old man, decorated with the Cross of Saint-Louis, rose and proposed the health of King Louis XVIII to his guests; he was the Marquis de Saint-Méran.

At this toast, which recalled at once the exile of Hartwell and the pacificator king of France, the murmur was great, the glasses were raised in the English manner, the women detached their bouquets and strewed them upon the cloth. It was an almost poetic enthusiasm.

"They would agree to it if they were here," said the Marquise de Saint-Méran, a woman with a dry eye, thin lips, an aristocratic bearing still elegant despite her fifty years, "all those revolutionaries who drove us out and whom we in turn leave quite tranquilly to conspire in our old châteaux which they bought for a crust of bread under the Terror: they would agree that true devotion was on our side, since we attached ourselves to the crumbling monarchy, while they, on the contrary, saluted the rising sun and made their fortunes, while we lost ours; they would agree that our king was veritably Louis the Well-Beloved, while their usurper was never aught but Napoleon the Accursed; is it not so, de Villefort?"

"What were you saying, madame la marquise?... Forgive me, I was not following the conversation."

"Eh! leave the children alone, marquise," resumed the old man who had proposed the toast; "these children are to be married, and naturally they have something other than politics to talk of."

"I beg your pardon, mother," said a young and beautiful person with blond hair, a velvet eye swimming in a pearly fluid; "I restore M. de Villefort to you, whom I had monopolized for a moment. Monsieur de Villefort, my mother is speaking to you."

"I am ready to answer madame if she will be so good as to repeat her question, which I heard ill," said M. de Villefort.

"You are forgiven, Renée," said the marquise with a smile of tenderness which one was astonished to see bloom upon that dry countenance; "but the heart of a woman is so made, that however arid it may become beneath the breath of prejudice and the demands of etiquette, there is always a fertile and smiling corner: it is that which God has consecrated to maternal love. You are forgiven.... Now I was saying, Villefort, that the Bonapartists had neither our conviction, nor our enthusiasm, nor our devotion."

"Oh! madame, they have at least something which replaces all that: it is fanaticism. Napoleon is the Mahomet of the West; he is for all those vulgar men, but of supreme ambitions, not only a lawgiver and a master, but further a type, the type of equality."

"Of equality!" cried the marquise. "Napoleon, the type of equality! And what will you do then with M. de Robespierre? It seems to me you are stealing his place to give it to the Corsican; yet one usurpation is surely enough, it seems to me."

"No, madame," said Villefort, "I leave each upon his pedestal: Robespierre, Place Louis XV, upon his scaffold; Napoleon, Place Vendôme, upon his column; only the one made an equality that lowers, and the other an equality that raises; the one brought kings down to the level of the guillotine, the other raised the people to the level of the throne. That is not to say," added Villefort, laughing, "that both are not infamous revolutionaries, and that the 9th Thermidor and the 4th of April 1814 are not two happy days for France, and worthy to be equally celebrated by the friends of order and of monarchy; but that also explains how, fallen though he is never to rise again, I hope, Napoleon has kept his followers. What would you have, marquise? Cromwell, who was but half of all that Napoleon was, had his own well enough!"

"Do you know that what you are saying there, Villefort, smells of revolution a league off? But I forgive you: one cannot be the son of a Girondin and not keep a taste of the soil."

A vivid redness passed over Villefort's brow.

"My father was a Girondin, madame, that is true; but my father did not vote the death of the king; my father was proscribed by that same Terror which proscribed you, and it was a near thing that he did not carry his head upon the same scaffold that had seen the head of your father fall."

"Yes," said the marquise, without this bloody memory bringing the least alteration to her features; "only it was for diametrically opposed principles that they both mounted it, and the proof is that all my family remained attached to the exiled princes, while your father hastened to rally to the new government, and that after citizen Noirtier had been a Girondin, Count Noirtier became a senator."

"Mother, mother," said Renée, "you know it was agreed that we would speak no more of these bad memories."

"Madame," answered Villefort, "I shall join Mlle de Saint-Méran in humbly begging you to forget the past. What is the use of recriminating upon things wherein the will of God Himself is powerless? God can change the future; He cannot even modify the past. What we men can do is, if not disown it, at least cast a veil over it. Well, I have separated myself not only from my father's opinion, but also from his name. My father has been or is perhaps even still a Bonapartist and is called Noirtier; I am a royalist and am called de Villefort. Let a remnant of revolutionary sap die in the old trunk, and see, madame, only the shoot which diverges from that trunk, without being able, and I would almost say without wishing, to detach itself from it entirely."

"Bravo, Villefort," said the marquis, "bravo, well answered! I too have always preached to the marquise the forgetting of the past, never having been able to obtain it from her; you will be happier, I hope."

"Yes, that is well," said the marquise, "let us forget the past, I ask nothing better, and it is agreed; but at least let Villefort be inflexible for the future. Do not forget, Villefort, that we have answered for you to His Majesty: that His Majesty, too, has been pleased to forget, at our recommendation"—she held out her hand—"as I forget at your prayer. Only if some conspirator falls into your hands, think that eyes are the more upon you in that it is known you are of a family which perhaps is in relation with those conspirators."

"Alas! madame," said Villefort, "my profession and above all the times in which we live command me to be severe. I shall be so. I have already had some political accusations to uphold, and, in that regard, I have proved myself. Unfortunately, we are not at the end."

"You think so?" said the marquise.

"I fear it. Napoleon at the Isle of Elba is very near France; his presence almost in sight of our coasts keeps alive the hope of his partisans. Marseilles is full of half-pay officers who, every day, under a frivolous pretext, seek quarrel with the royalists; hence duels among the upper classes, hence assassinations among the people."

"Yes," said the Count de Salvieux, old friend of M. de Saint-Méran and chamberlain to M. the Count d'Artois, "yes, but you know the Holy Alliance is dislodging him."

"Yes, there was question of that at our departure from Paris," said M. de Saint-Méran. "And where are they sending him?"

"To Saint Helena."

"To Saint Helena! What is that?" asked the marquise.

"An island situated two thousand leagues from here, beyond the equator," answered the count.

"That is well! As Villefort says, it is great folly to have left such a man between Corsica, where he was born, and Naples, where his brother-in-law still reigns, and facing that Italy of which he wished to make a kingdom for his son."

"Unfortunately," said Villefort, "we have the treaties of 1814, and one cannot touch Napoleon without failing in those treaties."

"Well, they will fail in them," said M. de Salvieux. "Did he look so closely, he, when it was a question of having the unhappy Duke d'Enghien shot?"

"Yes," said the marquise, "it is agreed, the Holy Alliance rids Europe of Napoleon, and Villefort rids Marseilles of his partisans. The king reigns or does not reign: if he reigns, his government must be strong and his agents inflexible; that is the way to prevent evil."

"Unfortunately, madame," said Villefort smiling, "a deputy of the king's attorney always arrives when the evil is done."

"Then it is for him to repair it."

"I might yet tell you, madame, that we do not repair the evil, but that we avenge it: that is all."

"Oh! Monsieur de Villefort," said a young and pretty person, daughter of the Count de Salvieux and friend of Mlle de Saint-Méran, "do try to have a fine case, while we are at Marseilles. I have never seen an assize court, and they say it is very curious."

"Very curious indeed, mademoiselle," said the deputy; "for instead of an artificial tragedy, it is a true drama; instead of feigned sorrows they are real sorrows. That man one sees there, instead, the curtain fallen, of returning home, supping with his family and going quietly to bed to begin again the next day, returns to the prison where he finds the executioner. You see well that, for nervous persons who seek emotions, there is no spectacle equal to that. Be at ease, mademoiselle, if the circumstance presents itself I shall procure you one."

"He makes us shudder... and he laughs!" said Renée, quite pale.

"What would you have... it is a duel.... I have already demanded the death penalty five or six times against political or other accused.... Well, who knows how many poignards at this hour are being sharpened in the shadow, or are already directed against me?"

"Oh! my God!" said Renée, growing darker and darker, "are you speaking seriously, Monsieur de Villefort?"

"More seriously than possible, mademoiselle," resumed the young magistrate, a smile upon his lips. "And with these fine cases that mademoiselle desires to satisfy her curiosity, and that I desire, I, to satisfy my ambition, the situation will but grow worse. All those soldiers of Napoleon, accustomed to go blindly at the enemy, do you think they reflect in firing a cartridge or in marching with the bayonet? Well, will they reflect more to kill a man they believe their personal enemy, than to kill a Russian, an Austrian or a Hungarian they have never seen? Besides, that is needful, you see; otherwise our trade would have no excuse. Myself, when I see gleam in the eye of the accused the luminous flash of rage, I feel all encouraged, I exalt myself: it is no longer a case, it is a combat; I struggle with him, he retorts, I redouble, and the combat ends, like all combats, by a victory or a defeat. That is what pleading is! it is danger that makes eloquence. An accused who smiled at me after my reply would make me believe I had spoken ill, that what I had said was pale, without vigor, insufficient. Think then of the sentiment of pride felt by a king's attorney, convinced of the guilt of the accused, when he sees blanch and bow his guilty one beneath the weight of proofs and beneath the thunders of his eloquence! That head bends, it will fall."

Renée uttered a slight cry.

"That is speaking," said one of the guests.

"That is the man for times like ours!" said a second.

"Also," said a third, "in your last affair you were superb, my dear Villefort. You know, that man who had assassinated his father; well, literally, you had killed him before the executioner touched him."

"Oh! for parricides," said Renée, "oh! I care not, there is no punishment too great for such men; but for the poor political accused!..."

"But it is worse still, Renée, for the king is the father of the nation, and to wish to overthrow or kill the king is to wish to kill the father of thirty-two million men."

"Oh! all the same, Monsieur de Villefort," said Renée, "you promise me you will be indulgent for those I recommend to you?"

"Be at ease," said Villefort with his most charming smile, "we shall make my indictments together."

"My dear," said the marquise, "concern yourself with your hummingbirds, your spaniels and your trifles, and leave your future husband to do his office. Today, arms rest and the gown is in credit; there is upon that subject a Latin saying of great depth."

"_Cedant arma togae_," said Villefort, bowing.

"I dared not speak Latin," answered the marquise.

"I think I should prefer you were a physician," resumed Renée; "the exterminating angel, angel though he be, has always greatly frightened me."

"Good Renée!" murmured Villefort, covering the young girl with a look of love.

"My daughter," said the marquis, "M. de Villefort will be the moral and political physician of this province; believe me, it is a fine role to play."

"And it will be a means of making forgotten the one his father played," resumed the incorrigible marquise.

"Madame," resumed Villefort with a sad smile, "I have already had the honor to tell you that my father had, I hope at least, abjured the errors of his past; that he had become a zealous friend of religion and of order, a better royalist than I perhaps; for him, it was with repentance, and, me, I am one only with passion."

And after this rounded phrase, Villefort, to judge the effect of his eloquence, looked at the guests, as, after an equivalent phrase, he would have looked at the audience at the bar.

"Well, my dear Villefort," resumed the Count de Salvieux, "that is exactly what at the Tuileries I was answering day before yesterday to the minister of the king's household, who asked me a little account of this singular alliance between the son of a Girondin and the daughter of an officer of the Army of Condé; and the minister understood very well. This system of fusion is that of Louis XVIII. Also the king, who, without our suspecting it, was listening to our conversation, interrupted us saying: 'Villefort, note that the king did not pronounce the name of Noirtier, and on the contrary stressed that of Villefort; Villefort, then, said the king, will make good way; he is a young man already mature, and who is of my world. I saw with pleasure that the Marquis and Marquise de Saint-Méran took him for a son-in-law, and I should have advised this alliance had they not come first to ask my permission to contract it.'"

"The king said that, count?" cried Villefort, delighted.

"I repeat his very words to you, and if the marquis wishes to be frank, he will avow that what I now repeat to you agrees perfectly with what the king himself said to him when he spoke to him, six months ago, of a marriage project between his daughter and you."

"It is true," said the marquis.

"Oh! but I shall owe him everything then, to that worthy prince. Also what would I not do to serve him!"

"That is right," said the marquise, "that is how I love you: let a conspirator come this moment, and he shall be welcome."

"And I, mother," said Renée, "pray God that He hear you not, and that He send M. de Villefort only little thieves, weak bankrupts and timid swindlers; on those terms, I shall sleep in peace."

"It is as if," said Villefort laughing, "you wished the physician migraines, measles and wasp stings, all things which compromise but the epidermis. If you wish to see me king's attorney, on the contrary, wish me those terrible maladies whose cure does honor to the physician."

At that moment, and as if chance had waited only for the utterance of Villefort's wish that that wish be granted, a valet de chambre entered and said a few words in his ear. Villefort then left the table excusing himself, and returned some instants after, his face open and his lips smiling.

Renée looked at him with love; for, seen thus, with his blue eyes, his matte complexion and his black side-whiskers framing his face, he was truly an elegant and handsome young man; also the whole mind of the young girl seemed suspended upon his lips, awaiting that he explain the cause of his momentary disappearance.

"Well," said Villefort, "you were ambitious just now, mademoiselle, to have for husband a physician, I have at least this resemblance with the disciples of Aesculapius (one still spoke thus in 1815), that the present hour is never mine, and that I am come disturb even beside you, even at the feast of my betrothal."

"And for what cause are you disturbed, monsieur?" asked the beautiful young girl with a slight uneasiness.

"Alas! for a patient who would be, if one is to believe what I have been told, at the last extremity: this time it is a grave case, and the malady borders on the scaffold."

"O my God!" cried Renée, paling.

"Indeed!" said the whole assembly with one voice.

"It appears that one has just discovered a little Bonapartist plot."

"Is it possible?" said the marquise.

"Here is the letter of denunciation."

And Villefort read:

"_Monsieur the King's Attorney is informed, by a friend of the throne and of religion, that the named Edmond Dantès, mate of the vessel the_ Pharaon, _arrived this morning from Smyrna, after touching at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, was charged, by Murat, with a letter for the Usurper, and, by the Usurper, with a letter for the Bonapartist committee of Paris_.

_One will have proof of his crime in arresting him, for one will find this letter either upon him, or at his father's, or in his cabin aboard the_ Pharaon."

"But," said Renée, "this letter, which is but an anonymous letter moreover, is addressed to Monsieur the King's Attorney, and not to you."

"Yes, but the king's attorney is absent; in his absence, the epistle reached his secretary, who had mission to open the letters; he therefore opened this one, had me sought, and, not finding me, gave orders for the arrest."

"Thus, the guilty is arrested," said the marquise.

"That is to say the accused," resumed Renée.

"Yes, madame," said Villefort, "and, as I had the honor of saying just now to Mlle Renée, if the letter in question is found, the patient is very ill."

"And where is this unhappy man?" asked Renée.

"He is at my house."

"Go, my friend," said the marquis, "fail not in your duties to remain with us, when the service of the king awaits you elsewhere; go then where the service of the king awaits you."

"Oh! Monsieur de Villefort," said Renée, joining her hands, "be indulgent, it is the day of your betrothal!"

Villefort made the round of the table, and, approaching the young girl's chair, on the back of which he leaned:

"To spare you an uneasiness," he said, "I shall do all I can, dear Renée; but, if the indications are sure, if the accusation is true, it will be necessary to cut this bad Bonapartist weed."

Renée shuddered at that word _cut_, for this weed it was a question of cutting had a head.

"Bah! bah!" said the marquise, "do not listen to that little girl, Villefort, she will get used to it."

And the marquise held out to Villefort a dry hand which he kissed, all the while looking at Renée and saying to her with his eyes:

"It is your hand that I kiss, or at least that I should wish to kiss at this moment."

"Sad omens!" murmured Renée.

"Indeed, mademoiselle," said the marquise, "you are of a despairing childishness: I ask you what the destiny of the State can have to do with your fancies of sentiment and your sensibilities of heart."

"Oh! mother!" murmured Renée.

"Grace for the bad royalist, madame la marquise," said de Villefort, "I promise you to do my office of deputy of the king's attorney in conscience, that is to say to be horribly severe."

But, at the same time that the magistrate addressed these words to the marquise, the fiancé threw a furtive glance at his fiancée, and that glance said:

"Be at ease, Renée: in favor of your love, I shall be indulgent."

Renée answered that glance with her sweetest smile, and Villefort went out with paradise in his heart.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”