LXI. Le moyen de délivrer un jardinier des loirs qui mangent ses pêches.

LXI

How to rid a gardener of the dormice that eat his peaches.

Not that same evening, as he had said, but the next morning, the Count of Monte Cristo went out by the Barrière d'Enfer, took the Orléans road, passed the village of Linas without stopping at the telegraph, which, just as the count was going by, was moving its long, fleshless arms, and reached the tower of Montlhéry, situated, as everyone knows, on the highest point of the plain of that name.

At the foot of the hill, the count dismounted, and by a circular path ten inches wide began to climb the mountain; having reached the top, he found himself stopped by a hedge on which green fruit had succeeded the pink and white blossoms.

Monte Cristo sought the gate of the little enclosure, and was not long in finding it. It was a small wooden hurdle, rolling on osier hinges and fastened with a nail and a string. In an instant the count understood the mechanism and the gate opened.

The count then found himself in a little garden twenty feet long by twelve wide, bounded on one side by the part of the hedge in which was framed the ingenious machine we have described under the name of gate, and on the other by the old tower girt with ivy, all strewn with wallflowers and gillyflowers.

One would not have said, seeing it thus wrinkled and flowered like a grandmother to whom her grandchildren have just wished many happy returns, that it could tell of many terrible dramas, if it joined a voice to the threatening ears which an old proverb gives to walls.

One walked through this garden by following an alley strewn with red sand, on which bit, with tones that would have rejoiced the eye of Delacroix, our modern Rubens, a border of large box, several years old. This alley was in the shape of an 8, and wound as it rose, so as to make in a garden of twenty feet a walk of sixty. Never was Flora, the smiling and fresh goddess of good Latin gardeners, honored with a worship so minute and so pure as that rendered to her in this little enclosure.

Indeed, of the twenty rosebushes that composed the parterre, not a leaf bore the trace of the fly, not a thread the little cluster of green aphids that desolate and gnaw plants growing on damp soil. Yet it was not moisture that was lacking in this garden: the earth black as soot, the opaque foliage of the trees, said so enough; besides, artificial moisture would promptly have supplied natural moisture, thanks to the barrel full of stagnant water that hollowed out one of the angles of the garden, and in which rested, on a green sheet, a frog and a toad who, by incompatibility of humor, no doubt, always kept, turning their backs to each other, at the two opposite points of the circle.

Moreover, not a weed in the paths, not a parasitic shoot in the beds; a young lady polishes and prunes with less care the geraniums, cactuses and rhododendrons of her porcelain flower-stand than did the until then invisible master of the little enclosure.

Monte Cristo stopped after having closed the gate again by hooking the string to its nail, and embraced the whole property with a glance.

"It appears," said he, "that the man of the telegraph has gardeners by the year, or gives himself passionately to agriculture."

All at once he ran against something, crouched behind a wheelbarrow loaded with foliage: this something straightened up letting escape an exclamation that painted its astonishment, and Monte Cristo found himself face to face with a goodman of some fifty years who was gathering strawberries which he placed on vine leaves.

There were twelve vine leaves and almost as many strawberries.

The goodman, in rising, nearly let fall strawberries, leaves and plate.

"You are gathering your crop, sir?" said Monte Cristo smiling.

"Pardon, sir," replied the goodman, carrying his hand to his cap, "I am not up there, it is true, but I have just come down this very moment."

"That I may not hinder you in anything, my friend," said the count; "gather your strawberries, if however there are any left to you."

"I have still ten," said the man, "for here are eleven, and I had twenty-one, five more than last year. But it is not surprising, the spring has been warm this year, and what strawberries need, you see, sir, is heat. That is why, instead of sixteen that I had last year, I have this year, you see, eleven already gathered, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Oh! my God! two are missing, they were still there yesterday, sir, they were there, I am sure, I counted them. It must be mother Simon's son who slipped them from me, I saw him prowling about here this morning. Ah! the little rogue, to steal in an enclosure! he does not know where that may lead him."

"Indeed," said Monte Cristo, "it is serious, but you will make allowance for the youth of the offender and his greediness."

"Certainly," said the gardener; "that does not make it any the less very disagreeable. But, again, pardon, sir: is it perhaps a chief that I am making wait thus?"

And he questioned with a fearful glance the count and his blue coat.

"Reassure yourself, my friend," said the count with that smile which he made, at will, so terrible and so kindly, and which this time expressed only kindness, "I am not a chief come to inspect you, but a simple traveler led by curiosity and who even begins to reproach himself for his visit in seeing that he makes you lose your time."

"Oh! my time is not dear," replied the goodman with a melancholy smile. "However it is the government's time, and I ought not to lose it, but I had received the signal which told me I might rest an hour" (he cast his eyes on the sundial, for there was everything in the enclosure of the tower of Montlhéry, even a sundial), "and, you see, I still had ten minutes before me, then my strawberries were ripe, and one day more.... Besides, would you believe, sir, that the dormice eat them?"

"Faith, no, I should not have believed it," answered Monte Cristo gravely; "it is a bad neighborhood, sir, that of the dormice, for us who do not eat them preserved in honey as the Romans did."

"Ah! the Romans ate them?" said the gardener; "they ate the dormice?"

"I read that in Petronius," said the count.

"Really? It cannot be good, whatever they say: Fat as a dormouse. And it is not surprising, sir, that the dormice are fat, seeing that they sleep the whole blessed day, and wake only to gnaw all night. See here, last year, I had four apricots; they nibbled one of them. I had a nectarine, only one, it is true that it is a rare fruit; well, sir, they half devoured it on the side of the wall; a superb nectarine and which was excellent. I never ate a better one."

"You ate it?" asked Monte Cristo.

"That is to say the half that remained, you understand well. It was exquisite, sir. Ah! well, those gentlemen do not choose the worst morsels. It is like mother Simon's son, he did not choose the worst strawberries, go along! But, this year," continued the horticulturist, "be easy, that will not happen to me, were I, when the fruits are near ripening, to spend the night to watch them."

Monte Cristo had seen enough. Every man has his passion that bites him at the bottom of the heart, as every fruit its worm; that of the man of the telegraph was horticulture. He began to gather the vine leaves that hid the clusters from the sun, and thereby won the heart of the gardener.

"Sir had come to see the telegraph?" said he.

"Yes, sir, if however that is not forbidden by the regulations."

"Oh! not forbidden in the least," said the gardener, "seeing that there is nothing dangerous in it, since no one knows or can know what we say."

"I have been told, indeed," replied the count, "that you repeat signals that you do not understand yourself."

"Certainly, sir, and I like that much better," said the man of the telegraph, laughing.

"Why do you like that better?"

"Because, that way, I have no responsibility. I am a machine, I, and nothing else, and provided I function, no more is asked of me."

"The devil!" said Monte Cristo to himself; "should I by chance have fallen upon a man who has no ambition! Zounds! that would be ill luck."

"Sir," said the gardener, casting a glance at his sundial, "the ten minutes are about to expire, I return to my post. Will you please to come up with me?"

"I follow you."

Monte Cristo entered, indeed, into the tower divided into three stories; the lower one contained some agricultural instruments, such as spades, rakes, watering-pots, set against the wall: that was all the furniture.

The second was the ordinary or rather nocturnal dwelling of the employee; it contained some poor household utensils, a bed, a table, two chairs, a stone fountain, besides some dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, and which the count recognized for sweet peas and Spanish beans of which the goodman kept the seed in its pod; he had labeled all that with the care of a master botanist of the Jardin des Plantes.

"Does it take much time to study telegraphy, sir?" asked Monte Cristo.

"It is not the study that is long, it is the supernumeraryship."

"And how much salary does one receive?"

"A thousand francs, sir."

"That is scarce."

"No; but one is lodged, as you see."

Monte Cristo looked at the room.

"Provided he does not go and get attached to his lodging," he murmured.

They passed to the third story: it was the telegraph room. Monte Cristo looked by turns at the two iron handles by means of which the employee made the machine play.

"It is very interesting," said he; "but in the long run it is a life that must seem to you a little insipid?"

"Yes, at the beginning that gives the stiff neck from looking so much; but at the end of a year or two one gets used to it; then we have our hours of recreation and our days off."

"Your days off?"

"Yes."

"Which?"

"Those when there is fog."

"Ah! that is fair."

"Those are my feast days, I; I go down into the garden those days, and I plant, I prune, I clip, I worm: in short, time passes."

"How long have you been here?"

"Ten years and five of supernumeraryship, fifteen."

"You are?..."

"Fifty-five years."

"How much time of service do you need to have the pension?"

"Oh! sir, twenty-five years."

"And how much is this pension?"

"Of a hundred crowns."

"Poor humanity!" murmured Monte Cristo.

"You say, sir?..." asked the employee.

"I say that it is very interesting."

"What?"

"All that you show me.... And you understand absolutely nothing of your signals?"

"Nothing absolutely."

"You have never tried to understand?"

"Never; what for?"

"However, there are signals that are addressed to you directly."

"No doubt."

"And those you understand?"

"They are always the same."

"And they say?"

"_Nothing new... you have an hour... or until tomorrow..._"

"That is perfectly innocent," said the count; "but look, is not that your correspondent who is setting in motion?"

"Ah! it is true; thank you, sir."

"And what does he say to you? is it something you understand?"

"Yes; he asks me if I am ready."

"And you answer him?..."

"By a sign which at the same time tells my correspondent on the right that I am ready, while it invites my correspondent on the left to prepare in his turn."

"That is very ingenious," said the count.

"You are going to see," resumed the goodman with pride; "in five minutes he will speak."

"I have five minutes then," said Monte Cristo; "that is more time than I need. My dear sir," said he, "allow me to ask you a question."

"Ask."

"You love gardening?"

"With passion."

"And you would be happy, instead of having a terrace of twenty feet, to have an enclosure of two acres?"

"Sir, I would make of it an earthly paradise."

"With your thousand francs, you live badly?"

"Rather badly; but still I live."

"Yes; but you have only a miserable garden."

"Ah! it is true, the garden is not large."

"And still, such as it is, it is peopled with dormice that devour everything."

"That, that is my scourge."

"Tell me, if you had the misfortune to turn your head when the correspondent on the right is about to move?"

"I should not see him."

"Then what would happen?"

"That I could not repeat his signals."

"And after?"

"It would happen that, not having repeated them through negligence, I should be fined."

"How much?"

"A hundred francs."

"The tenth of your income, that is pretty!"

"Ah!" said the employee.

"Has that happened to you?" said Monte Cristo.

"Once, sir, once when I was grafting a noisette rose."

"Good. Now, if you took it into your head to change something in the signal, or to transmit another?"

"Then, it is different, I should be dismissed and lose my pension."

"Three hundred francs?"

"A hundred crowns, yes, sir; so you understand that never will I do anything of all that."

"Not even for fifteen years of your salary? Come, this deserves reflection, eh?"

"For fifteen thousand francs?"

"Yes."

"Sir, you frighten me."

"Bah!"

"Sir, you want to tempt me?"

"Exactly! Fifteen thousand francs, understand?"

"Sir, let me look at my correspondent on the right!"

"On the contrary, do not look at him and look at this."

"What is that?"

"How? you do not know those little papers there?"

"Bank notes!"

"Square; there are fifteen of them."

"And whose are they?"

"Yours, if you will."

"Mine!" cried the employee, suffocated.

"Oh! my God, yes! yours, in full property."

"Sir, there is my correspondent on the right who is moving."

"Let him move."

"Sir, you have distracted me, and I am going to be fined."

"That will cost you a hundred francs; you see well that you have every interest in taking my fifteen bank notes."

"Sir, the correspondent on the right is impatient, he redoubles his signals."

"Let him do it and take."

The count put the packet into the employee's hand.

"Now," said he, "that is not all: with your fifteen thousand francs you will not live."

"I shall always have my place."

"No, you will lose it; for you are going to make another sign than that of your correspondent."

"Oh! sir, what are you proposing to me there?"

"A childishness."

"Sir, unless forced to...."

"I count upon forcing you effectively, indeed."

And Monte Cristo drew from his pocket another packet.

"Here are ten other thousand francs," said he; "with the fifteen that are in your pocket, that will make twenty-five thousand. With five thousand francs, you will buy a pretty little house and two acres of land; with the other twenty thousand, you will make yourself a thousand francs of income."

"A garden of two acres?"

"And a thousand francs of income."

"My God! my God!"

"But take then!"

And Monte Cristo forced the ten thousand francs into the employee's hand.

"What must I do?"

"Nothing very difficult."

"But still?"

"To repeat the signs here."

Monte Cristo drew from his pocket a paper on which there were three signs all traced, with numbers indicating the order in which they were to be made.

"It will not be long, as you see."

"Yes, but...."

"It is for the stroke that you will have nectarines, and to spare."

The stroke told; red with fever and sweating in great drops, the goodman executed one after the other the three signs given by the count, despite the frightful dislocations of the correspondent on the right, who, understanding nothing of this change, began to believe that the man of the nectarines had gone mad.

As for the correspondent on the left, he conscientiously repeated the same signals which were definitively collected at the Ministry of the Interior.

"Now, you are rich," said Monte Cristo.

"Yes," replied the employee, "but at what a price!"

"Listen, my friend," said Monte Cristo, "I do not wish you to have remorse; believe me then, for, I swear to you, you have done hurt to no one, and you have served the designs of God."

The employee looked at the bank notes, felt them, counted them; he was pale, he was red; at last, he precipitated himself toward his room to drink a glass of water; but he had not time to reach the fountain, and he fainted amid his dry beans.

Five minutes after the telegraphic news had arrived at the ministry, Debray had horses put to his coupé, and ran to Danglars's.

"Your husband has coupons of the Spanish loan?" said he to the baroness.

"I should think so! he has six millions' worth."

"Let him sell them at whatever price."

"Why that?"

"Because don Carlos has escaped from Bourges and returned to Spain."

"How do you know that?"

"Pardieu," said Debray, shrugging his shoulders, "as I know the news."

The baroness did not have it repeated twice: she ran to her husband, who ran in his turn to his stockbroker and ordered him to sell at any price.

When it was seen that M. Danglars was selling, the Spanish funds fell immediately. Danglars lost five hundred thousand francs thereby, but he got rid of all his coupons.

In the evening one read in the _Messager_:

_Telegraphic Dispatch_.

"The king don Carlos has escaped the surveillance exercised over him at Bourges, and has re-entered Spain by the frontier of Catalonia. Barcelona has risen in his favor."

During the whole evening there was nothing spoken of but the foresight of Danglars, who had sold his coupons, and the luck of the speculator, who lost only five hundred thousand francs on such a stroke.

Those who had kept their coupons or bought those of Danglars looked upon themselves as ruined and passed a very bad night.

The next day one read in the _Moniteur_:

"It is without any foundation that the _Messager_ announced yesterday the flight of don Carlos and the revolt of Barcelona.

"The king don Carlos has not left Bourges, and the Peninsula enjoys the most profound tranquillity.

"A telegraphic sign, misinterpreted because of the fog, gave rise to this error."

The funds rose to a figure double that at which they had fallen.

That made, in loss and in missed gain, a difference of a million for Danglars.

"Good!" said Monte Cristo to Morrel, who was at his house at the moment when the strange turn of the Bourse of which Danglars had been victim was announced; "I have just made for twenty-five thousand francs a discovery that I would have paid a hundred thousand for."

"What have you just discovered?" asked Maximilien.

"I have just discovered the means of ridding a gardener of the dormice that ate his peaches."

“Stories of the world, in your language.”