LX. Le télégraphe.

LX

The Telegraph.

M. and Mme de Villefort, on returning home, learned that the Count de Monte-Cristo, who had come to pay them a visit, had been shown into the salon, where he was awaiting them; Mme de Villefort, too much agitated to enter thus abruptly, passed through her bedroom, while the king's attorney, more master of himself, advanced directly toward the salon.

But however much he was master of his feelings, however well he knew how to compose his features, M. de Villefort could not so well dispel the cloud from his brow that the count, whose smile shone radiant, did not notice that gloomy and dreamy air.

“Oh! my God!” said Monte-Cristo after the first compliments, “what is the matter with you, M. de Villefort? and have I arrived at the moment when you were drawing up some rather too capital indictment?”

Villefort tried to smile.

“No, Count,” he said, “there is no other victim here but myself. It is I who lose my case, and it is chance, obstinacy, madness that has launched the prosecution.”

“What do you mean?” asked Monte-Cristo with perfectly feigned interest. “Has some grave misfortune, in reality, befallen you?”

“Oh! Count,” said Villefort with a calm full of bitterness, “it is not worth speaking of; almost nothing, a simple loss of money.”

“Indeed,” replied Monte-Cristo, “a loss of money is little with a fortune such as yours and with a philosophical and elevated mind such as yours.”

“Also,” answered Villefort, “it is not the question of money that preoccupies me, although, after all, nine hundred thousand francs are well worth a regret, or at least a movement of vexation. But I am especially wounded by this disposition of fate, of chance, of fatality—I know not how to name the power that directs the blow which strikes me and overturns my hopes of fortune and perhaps destroys my daughter’s future by the caprice of an old man fallen into second childhood.”

“Eh! my God! what is it?” cried the count. “Nine hundred thousand francs, did you say? But, truly, as you say, the sum deserves to be regretted, even by a philosopher. And who gives you this sorrow?”

“My father, of whom I spoke to you.”

“M. Noirtier; really! But you had told me, it seems, that he was in complete paralysis, and that all his faculties were annihilated?”

“Yes, his physical faculties, for he cannot move, he cannot speak, and with all that, however, he thinks, he wills, he acts as you see. I left him five minutes ago, and at this moment he is occupied in dictating a will to two notaries.”

“But then he has spoken?”

“He has done better, he has made himself understood.”

“How so?”

“By means of his glance; his eyes have continued to live, and you see, they kill.”

“My friend,” said Mme de Villefort, who had just entered in her turn, “perhaps you are exaggerating the situation?”

“Madame…” said the count, bowing.

Mme de Villefort saluted with her most gracious smile.

“But what is M. de Villefort telling me there?” asked Monte-Cristo. “And what incomprehensible misfortune?…”

“Incomprehensible, that is the word!” resumed the king’s attorney, shrugging his shoulders. “A whim of an old man!”

“And is there no way to bring him back from this decision?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mme de Villefort; “and it even depends on my husband that this will, instead of being made to the detriment of Valentine, be made, on the contrary, in her favor.”

The count, seeing that the two spouses were beginning to speak in parables, assumed a distracted air, and looked with the deepest attention and most marked approval at Édouard, who was pouring ink into the birds’ drinking trough.

“My dear,” said Villefort, answering his wife, “you know that I little like to pose at home as a patriarch, and that I have never believed the fate of the universe depended on a sign of my head. However, it is important that my decisions be respected in my family, and that the folly of an old man and the caprice of a child not overturn a project settled in my mind for many years. The Baron d’Épinay was my friend, you know, and an alliance with his son was most fitting.

“You believe,” said Mme de Villefort, “that Valentine is in agreement with him?… Indeed, she has always been opposed to this marriage, and I should not be astonished if all that we have just seen and heard were the execution of a plan concerted between them.”

“Madame,” said Villefort, “one does not thus renounce, believe me, a fortune of nine hundred thousand francs.”

“She would renounce the world, sir, since a year ago she wished to enter a convent.”

“No matter,” resumed Villefort, “I say that this marriage must take place, madame!”

“Despite the will of your father?” said Mme de Villefort, striking another chord: “that is very grave!”

Monte-Cristo pretended not to listen, and lost not a word of what was said.

“Madame,” resumed Villefort, “I may say that I have always respected my father, because to the natural sentiment of descent was joined in me the consciousness of his moral superiority; because, in short, a father is sacred on two titles, sacred as our creator, sacred as our master; but today I must renounce recognizing an intelligence in the old man who, on a simple memory of hatred for the father, thus pursues the son; it would therefore be ridiculous of me to conform my conduct to his caprices. I shall continue to have the greatest respect for M. Noirtier; I shall submit without complaint to the pecuniary punishment he inflicts on me, but I shall remain immovable in my will, and the world will appreciate on which side sound reason lay. Accordingly, I shall marry my daughter to the Baron Franz d’Épinay, because this marriage is, in my sense, good and honorable, and because, in short, I wish to marry my daughter to whomsoever pleases me.”

“What! said the count, whose glance the king’s attorney had constantly solicited, “what! M. Noirtier disinherits, you say, Mlle Valentine, because she is going to marry M. the Baron Franz d’Épinay?”

“Eh! my God! yes! yes, sir; that is the reason,” said Villefort, shrugging his shoulders.

“The visible reason, at least,” added Mme de Villefort.

“The real reason, madame. Believe me, I know my father.”

“Can one conceive that?” replied the young woman; “in what, I ask you, does M. d’Épinay displease M. Noirtier more than another?”

“Indeed,” said the count, “I have known M. Franz d’Épinay, the son of General de Quesnel, is it not, who was made Baron d’Épinay by King Charles X?”

“Exactly,” replied Villefort.

“Well, but he is a charming young man, it seems to me!”

“Also it is but a pretext, I am certain of it,” said Mme de Villefort; “old men are tyrants of their affections; M. Noirtier does not wish his granddaughter to marry.”

“But,” said Monte-Cristo, “do you not know a cause for this hatred?”

“Eh! my God! who can know?”

“Some political antipathy, perhaps?”

“Indeed, my father and M. d’Épinay’s father lived in stormy times of which I saw only the last days,” said Villefort.

“Was not your father a Bonapartist? I think I recall you told me something like that.”

“My father was a Jacobin before all else,” resumed Villefort, carried by his emotion beyond the bounds of prudence, “and the senator’s robe that Napoleon had thrown over his shoulders only disguised the old man, without having changed him. When my father conspired, it was not for the Emperor, it was against the Bourbons; for my father had this terrible thing in him, that he never fought for unrealizable utopias, but for possible things, and that he applied to the success of these possible things those terrible theories of the Mountain which recoiled before no means.”

“Well,” said Monte-Cristo, “you see, that is it; M. Noirtier and M. d’Épinay must have met on the ground of politics. M. the General d’Épinay, although having served under Napoleon, had he not kept royalist sentiments at the bottom of his heart, and is it not the same man who was assassinated one evening on leaving a Napoleonic club, where he had been drawn in the hope of finding in him a brother?”

Villefort looked at the count almost with terror.

“Am I mistaken?” said Monte-Cristo.

“No, sir,” said Mme de Villefort; “and that is indeed it, on the contrary; and it is precisely because of what you have just said that, to see old hatreds extinguished, M. de Villefort had the idea of making two children love each other whose fathers had hated each other.”

“Sublime idea!” said Monte-Cristo; “an idea full of charity and which the world should applaud. Indeed, it was beautiful to see Mlle Noirtier de Villefort called Mme Franz d’Épinay.”

Villefort started and looked at Monte-Cristo as if he would read to the bottom of his heart the intention that had dictated the words he had just pronounced.

But the count kept the stereotyped benevolent smile upon his lips; and this time again, despite the depth of his glance, the king’s attorney saw nothing beyond the epidermis.

“Also,” resumed Villefort, “although it is a great misfortune for Valentine to lose her grandfather’s fortune, I do not believe, however, that the marriage fails on that account; I do not believe that M. d’Épinay will recoil before this pecuniary setback; he will see that I am perhaps worth more than the sum, I who sacrifice it to the desire of keeping my word to him; he will calculate that Valentine, besides, is rich from her mother’s estate, administered by M. and Mme de Saint-Méran, her maternal grandparents, who both tenderly cherish her.”

“And who are well worth being loved and cared for as Valentine has done for M. Noirtier,” said Mme de Villefort; “besides, they are coming to Paris within a month at most, and Valentine, after such an affront, will be dispensed from burying herself as she has done until now beside M. Noirtier.”

The count listened with complaisance to the discordant voice of these wounded vanities and bruised interests.

“But it seems to me,” said Monte-Cristo after a moment of silence, and I ask your pardon in advance for what I am about to say, “it seems to me that if M. Noirtier disinherits Mlle de Villefort, guilty of wishing to marry a young man whose father he detested, he has not the same fault to reproach to this dear Édouard.”

“Is it not so, sir?” cried Mme de Villefort with an intonation impossible to describe: “is it not that it is unjust, odiously unjust? This poor Édouard, he is as much the grandson of M. Noirtier as Valentine, and yet if Valentine had not been to marry M. Franz, M. Noirtier would have left him all his property; and besides, in short, Édouard bears the family name, which does not prevent that, even supposing Valentine were effectively disinherited by her grandfather, she would still be three times richer than he.”

This blow struck, the count listened and spoke no more.

“See here,” resumed Villefort, “see here, Count, let us cease, I beg you, to speak to us of these family miseries; yes it is true, my fortune will swell the revenue of the poor, who are today the true rich. Yes, my father will have frustrated me of a legitimate hope, and that without reason; but, I, I shall have acted like a man of sense, like a man of heart. M. d’Épinay, to whom I had promised the revenue of that sum, shall receive it, were I to impose on myself the cruellest privations.”

“However,” resumed Mme de Villefort, returning to the only idea that murmured ceaselessly at the bottom of her heart, “perhaps it would be better that this misadventure be confided to M. d’Épinay, and that he himself release his word.”

“Oh! that would be a great misfortune!” cried Villefort.

“A great misfortune?” repeated Monte-Cristo.

“Certainly,” resumed Villefort, softening; “a broken marriage, even for reasons of money, throws discredit on a young girl; then, old rumors, which I wished to extinguish, would regain consistency. But no, it shall be nothing. M. d’Épinay, if he is an honest man, will feel himself even more engaged by Valentine’s disinheritance than before; otherwise he would be acting from a simple motive of avarice: no, that is impossible.”

“I think as M. de Villefort,” said Monte-Cristo, fixing his glance on Mme de Villefort; “and if I were enough his friend to permit myself to give him counsel, I would invite him, since M. d’Épinay is to return, as I have at least been told, to tie this affair so firmly that it cannot be untied; I would engage, in short, in a party whose issue must be so honorable for M. de Villefort.”

The latter rose, transported with visible joy, while his wife paled slightly.

“Good,” he said, “that is all I asked, and I shall avail myself of the opinion of a counselor such as you,” said he, extending his hand to Monte-Cristo. “Thus let everyone here consider what happens today as not having happened; nothing is changed in our plans.”

“Sir,” said the count, “the world, unjust as it is, will, I assure you, give you credit for your resolution; your friends will be proud of it, and M. d’Épinay, though he take Mlle de Villefort without a dowry, which cannot be, will be charmed to enter a family where one knows how to rise to the height of such sacrifices to keep one’s word and fulfill one’s duty.”

In saying these words, the count had risen and was preparing to leave.

“You are leaving us, Count?” said Mme de Villefort.

“I am forced to, madame; I came only to remind you of your promise for Saturday.”

“Did you fear we should forget?”

“You are too good, madame; but M. de Villefort has such grave and sometimes such urgent occupations….”

“My husband has given his word, sir,” said Mme de Villefort; “you have just seen that he keeps it when he has all to lose, all the more when he has all to gain.”

“And,” asked Villefort, “is it at your house in the Champs-Élysées that the gathering takes place?”

“No,” said Monte-Cristo, “and that is what makes your devotion the more meritorious: it is in the country.”

“In the country?”

“Yes.”

“And where? near Paris, is it not?”

“At the gates, half an hour from the barrier, at Auteuil.”

“At Auteuil!” cried Villefort. “Ah! it is true, madame told me you were living at Auteuil, since it is to your house she was carried. And in what part of Auteuil?”

“Rue de la Fontaine!”

“Rue de la Fontaine!” resumed Villefort in a strangled voice; “and at what number?”

“Number 28.”

“But,” cried Villefort, “it is then to you that the house of M. de Saint-Méran was sold?”

“M. de Saint-Méran?” asked Monte-Cristo. “Did this house then belong to M. de Saint-Méran?”

“Yes,” resumed Mme de Villefort, “and do you believe a thing, Count?”

“Which?”

“You find this house pretty, do you not?”

“Charming.”

“Well, my husband has never wished to live in it.”

“Oh!” resumed Monte-Cristo, “truly, sir, that is a prejudice of which I cannot account.”

“I do not like Auteuil, sir,” answered the king’s attorney, making an effort upon himself.

“But I shall not be so unhappy, I hope,” said Monte-Cristo with uneasiness, “that this antipathy deprives me of the happiness of receiving you?”

“No, Count… I hope well… believe that I shall do all I can,” stammered Villefort.

“Oh!” replied Monte-Cristo, “I admit no excuse. Saturday, at six o’clock, I expect you, and if you did not come, I should believe, who knows, that there is upon this house uninhabited for more than twenty years some lugubrious tradition, some bloody legend.”

“I shall come, Count, I shall come,” said Villefort quickly.

“Thank you,” said Monte-Cristo. “Now you must permit me to take my leave.”

“Indeed, you said you were forced to leave us, Count,” said Mme de Villefort, “and you were even, I think, about to tell us why, when you interrupted yourself to pass to another idea.”

“Truly, madame,” said Monte-Cristo, “I know not if I shall dare tell you where I am going.”

“Bah! speak anyway.”

“I am going, as a true idler that I am, to visit a thing that has often made me dream whole hours.”

“Which?”

“A telegraph. My faith, too bad, there is the word out.”

“A telegraph!” repeated Mme de Villefort.

“Eh! my God, yes, a telegraph. I have sometimes seen at the end of a road, on a hillock, in a fine sun, rise those black and folding arms like the legs of an immense beetle, and never was it without emotion, I assure you, for I thought that those bizarre signs cleaving the air with precision, and carrying to three hundred leagues the unknown will of a man seated before a table, to another man seated at the end of the line before another table, were traced upon the gray of the cloud or the azure of the sky, by the sole force of the will of that all-powerful chief: I then believed in genies, in sylphs, in gnomes, in occult powers in short, and I laughed. Now, never had the wish come to me to see close those big insects with white bellies and thin black legs, for I feared to find beneath their stone wings the little human genius, very prim, very pedantic, very stuffed with science, with cabal or with sorcery. But behold, one fine morning I learned that the motor of each telegraph was a poor devil of an employee at twelve hundred francs a year, occupied all day in looking, not at the sky like the astronomer, not at the water like the fisherman, not at the landscape like an empty brain, but at the insect with the white belly, the black legs, his correspondent, placed some four or five leagues from him. Then I felt seized with a curious desire to see close this living chrysalis and to assist at the comedy that from the bottom of its shell it gives to that other chrysalis, pulling one after another some bits of string.”

“And you are going there?”

“I am going there.”

“To what telegraph? To that of the Ministry of the Interior or of the Observatory?”

“Oh! no, I should find there people who would wish to force me to understand things I wish to ignore, and who would explain to me in spite of myself a mystery they do not know. Pshaw! I wish to keep the illusions I still have about insects; it is quite enough to have already lost those I had about men. I shall go then neither to the telegraph of the Ministry of the Interior, nor to the telegraph of the Observatory. What I need is the telegraph in open field, to find there the pure goodman petrified in his tower.”

“You are a singular great lord,” said Villefort.

“What line do you advise me to study?”

“Why, the busiest at this hour.”

“Good! that of Spain, then?”

“Exactly. Do you wish a letter from the minister so that one may explain to you….”

“But no,” said Monte-Cristo, “since I tell you, on the contrary, that I wish to understand nothing there. From the moment I understand something there, there will be no more telegraph, there will be only a sign of M. Duchâtel or of M. de Montalivet, transmitted to the prefect of Bayonne and travestied into two Greek words:

[Greek] It is the beast with black legs and the frightful word that I wish to preserve in all their purity and in all my veneration.”

“Go then, for in two hours it will be night, and you will see nothing more.”

“The devil, you frighten me. Which is the nearest? On the Bayonne road?”

“Yes, go for the Bayonne road. It is that of Châtillon.”

“And after that of Châtillon?”

“That of the tower of Montlhéry, I think.”

“Thanks, farewell! Saturday I shall tell you my impressions.”

At the door, the count found the two notaries who had just disinherited Valentine, and who were retiring enchanted at having performed an act which could not fail to do them great honor.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”