LXII. Les fantômes.

LXII

The ghosts.

At first sight, and viewed from the outside, the house at Auteuil had nothing splendid about it, nothing of what one might expect from a dwelling intended for the magnificent Count of Monte Cristo: but this simplicity was due to the master's wish, who had positively ordered that nothing should be altered on the exterior; it needed but to consider the interior to be convinced of this. Indeed, scarcely was the door opened than the scene changed.

M. Bertuccio had surpassed himself in taste of furnishing and rapidity of execution: as formerly the Duc d'Antin had caused an avenue of trees to be felled in a single night because it obstructed the view of Louis XIV, so in three days M. Bertuccio had planted an entirely bare courtyard, and fine poplars, sycamores brought with their enormous blocks of roots, shaded the principal facade of the house, before which, instead of pavement half hidden by grass, stretched a lawn of turf, the sods of which had been laid that very morning and which formed a vast carpet still pearled with the water wherewith it had been sprinkled.

Moreover, the orders came from the count; he himself had given Bertuccio a plan wherein were indicated the number and position of the trees to be planted, the shape and extent of the lawn that was to replace the pavement.

Seen thus, the house had become unrecognizable, and Bertuccio himself protested that he no longer knew it, so encased was it in its framework of verdure.

The steward would not have been sorry, while he was about it, to make some alterations in the garden; but the count had positively forbidden that anything should be touched there. Bertuccio compensated himself by crowding flowers into the antechambers, the staircases and the chimneys.

What proclaimed the extreme skill of the steward and the profound science of the master, the one to serve, the other to be served, was that this house, deserted for twenty years, still so gloomy and sad the day before, though thoroughly impregnated with that faint odor one might call the smell of time, had taken on in a single day, with the aspect of life, the perfumes the master preferred, and even to the degree of his favorite light; that the count, on arriving, had there, at hand, his books and his arms; before his eyes his favorite pictures; in the antechambers the dogs whose caresses he loved, the birds whose song he loved; that all this house, awakened from its long sleep, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, lived, sang, blossomed forth, like those houses we have long cherished, and in which, when unhappily we leave them, we involuntarily leave a part of our soul.

Servants went to and fro joyfully in that fine courtyard: some masters of the kitchens, and gliding as if they had always lived in that house through staircases restored but the day before, others peopling the coach-houses, where the carriages, numbered and stowed away, seemed installed for fifty years; and the stables, where the horses at the rack answered with neighs to the grooms, who spoke to them with infinitely more respect than many servants show their masters.

The library was arranged in two bodies, on the two sides of the wall, and contained about two thousand volumes; a whole compartment was devoted to modern novels, and the one that had appeared the day before was already in its place, strutting in its red and gold binding.

On the other side of the house, corresponding to the library, was the conservatory, filled with rare plants blooming in large Japanese jars, and in the middle of the conservatory, a marvel to the eyes and the smell alike, a billiard table that one would have said abandoned at most an hour before by the players, who had let the balls die upon the cloth.

One chamber alone had been respected by the magnificent Bertuccio. Before this chamber, situated at the left angle of the first floor, to which one could ascend by the grand staircase, and from which one could depart by the private stair, the servants passed with curiosity and Bertuccio with terror.

At five o'clock precisely, the count arrived, followed by Ali, before the house at Auteuil. Bertuccio awaited this arrival with an impatience mingled with uneasiness; he hoped for some compliments, while dreading a frown.

Monte Cristo descended into the courtyard, went through the whole house and round the garden, silent and giving no sign whatever of approval or discontent.

Only, on entering his bedroom, situated on the side opposite the closed chamber, he stretched his hand toward the drawer of a small rosewood piece of furniture, which he had already noticed on his first visit.

"That can serve only to hold gloves," said he.

"Indeed, Excellency," replied Bertuccio, delighted, "open it, and you will find gloves."

In the other pieces of furniture, the count found again what he expected to find there, flasks, cigars, jewels.

"Good!" said he again.

And M. Bertuccio withdrew, his soul in raptures, so great, powerful and real was the influence of this man over all around him.

At six o'clock precisely, the sound of a horse's hoofs was heard before the entrance door. It was our captain of spahis arriving upon Medeah.

Monte Cristo awaited him on the steps, a smile upon his lips.

"Here I am first, I am sure of it!" Morrel cried to him. "I did it on purpose, to have you to myself a moment before everyone else. Julie and Emmanuel send you a million messages. Ah! but, do you know this is magnificent here! Tell me, count, will your people take good care of my horse?"

"Be easy, my dear Maximilien, they know their business."

"It is that he needs rubbing down. If you knew at what pace he came! A regular whirlwind!"

"Bless me, I should think so, a horse worth five thousand francs!" said Monte Cristo in the tone a father would use in speaking to his son.

"Do you regret them?" said Morrel with his frank smile.

"I! Heaven forbid!" answered the count. "No. I should only regret that the horse was not good."

"He is so good, my dear count, that M. de Château-Renaud, the best judge in France, and M. Debray, who rides the ministry's Arabs, are racing after me at this moment, and are a little distanced, as you see, and still they are being pressed by the Baroness Danglars' horses, which go at a trot that simply covers six leagues an hour."

"Then they are following you?" asked Monte Cristo.

"Look, there they are."

Indeed, at that very moment, a cabriolet with smoking team and two saddle-horses out of breath arrived before the gate of the house, which opened before them. Immediately the cabriolet described its circle, and came to stop at the steps, followed by two horsemen.

In an instant Debray had alighted, and stood at the carriage door. He offered his hand to the baroness, who, as she descended, made him a gesture imperceptible to all but Monte Cristo. But the count lost nothing, and in that gesture he saw gleam a little white note as imperceptible as the gesture, and which passed, with an ease that indicated habit in the maneuver, from the hand of Mme Danglars into that of the minister's secretary.

Behind his wife descended the banker, pale as if he had issued from the sepulcher instead of from his cabriolet.

Mme Danglars cast around her a rapid and searching glance that Monte Cristo alone could understand, and in which she embraced the courtyard, the peristyle, the facade of the house; then, repressing a slight emotion, which would certainly have shown upon her face, had her face been permitted to grow pale, she mounted the steps, saying to Morrel as she did so:

"Monsieur, if you were among my friends, I would ask you if your horse is for sale."

Morrel made a smile that closely resembled a grimace, and turned toward Monte Cristo, as if to beg him to extricate him from the embarrassment in which he found himself.

The count understood.

"Ah! madame," he answered, "why is this request not addressed to me?"

"With you, monsieur," said the baroness, "one has no right to desire anything, for one is too sure of obtaining it. It was to M. Morrel, therefore."

"Unfortunately," resumed the count, "I am witness that M. Morrel cannot part with his horse, his honor being engaged to keep it."

"How so?"

"He has wagered to break in Medeah within six months. You understand now, baroness, that if he disposed of him before the time fixed by the wager, not only would he lose it, but moreover they would say he had been afraid; and a captain of spahis, even to gratify the whim of a pretty woman, which is, in my opinion, one of the most sacred things in the world, cannot let such a report get about."

"You see, madame..." said Morrel, at the same time addressing a grateful smile to Monte Cristo.

"It seems to me, besides," said Danglars with a surly tone ill disguised by his fat smile, "that you have horses enough as it is."

It was not the habit of Mme Danglars to let such attacks pass without retort, and yet, to the great astonishment of the young men, she pretended not to hear and answered nothing.

Monte Cristo smiled at this silence, which betrayed an unwonted humility, while showing the baroness two immense pots of Chinese porcelain, up which marine growths serpentined with a size and workmanship such that nature alone can have that richness, that sap, that spirit.

The baroness was amazed.

"Why, one might plant a Tuileries chestnut-tree in those!" said she. "How ever could such enormous things be baked?"

"Ah! madame," said Monte Cristo, "you must not ask us, we makers of statuettes and muslin glass, that; it is the work of another age, a kind of labor of the genii of earth and sea."

"How so, and of what epoch can it be?"

"I do not know; only I have heard tell that an emperor of China had a furnace built expressly; that in this furnace, one after another, twelve pots like these were baked. Two broke under the heat of the fire; the ten others were lowered three hundred fathoms to the bottom of the sea. The sea, who knew what was asked of her, cast her creepers upon them, twisted her corals, incrusted her shells; the whole was cemented by two hundred years beneath her unheard-of depths, for a revolution swept away the emperor who had wished to make the trial, and left only the report which attested the baking of the vases and their descent to the bottom of the sea. At the end of two hundred years the report was found again, and they thought of recovering the vases. Divers went, with machines made for the purpose, to explore the bay where they had been thrown; but of the ten, only three were found again, the others had been scattered and broken by the waves. I love these vases, at the bottom of which I sometimes fancy that shapeless, frightful, mysterious monsters, such as only divers see, have fixed with astonishment their dull and cold gaze, and in which have slept myriads of fish that took refuge there to flee the pursuit of their enemies."

Meanwhile Danglars, little a lover of curiosities, was mechanically plucking, one after another, the flowers of a magnificent orange-tree; when he had done with the orange-tree, he addressed himself to a cactus, but then the cactus, of a less easy character than the orange-tree, pricked him outrageously.

Then he started and rubbed his eyes as if he were waking from a dream.

"Monsieur," said Monte Cristo, smiling, "you who are a lover of pictures and who have such magnificent things, I do not recommend mine to you. However, here are two Hobbemas, a Paul Potter, a Mieris, two Gérard Dows, a Raphael, a Van Dyck, a Zurbaran and two or three Murillos, who are worthy to be presented to you."

"Why," said Debray, "here is a Hobbema I recognize."

"Ah! indeed!"

"Yes, it was offered to the Museum."

"Which has not got it, I believe?" ventured Monte Cristo.

"No, and which nevertheless refused to buy it."

"Why so?" asked Château-Renaud.

"You are charming, you are; because the government is not rich enough."

"Ah! pardon!" said Château-Renaud. "I hear such things said every day for eight years, and I cannot yet grow used to them."

"It will come," said Debray.

"I do not think so," answered Château-Renaud.

"M. the Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti! M. the Viscount Andrea Cavalcanti!" announced Baptistin.

A black satin collar emerging from the maker's hands, a fresh beard, gray moustaches, a confident eye, a major's coat adorned with three plaques and five crosses, in short, an irreproachable bearing of an old soldier, such appeared the Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, that tender father whom we know.

Near him, covered with brand-new clothes, advanced, a smile upon his lips, the Viscount Andrea Cavalcanti, that respectful son whom we also know.

The three young men were talking together; their glances passed from father to son, and naturally rested longer upon the latter, whom they scrutinized.

"Cavalcanti!" said Debray.

"A fine name, egad!" said Morrel.

"Yes," said Château-Renaud, "it is true, these Italians are well named, but they dress ill."

"You are hard to please, Château-Renaud," replied Debray; "these clothes are of an excellent maker, and quite new."

"That is just what I reproach them with. This gentleman looks as if he were dressing for the first time today."

"What are these gentlemen?" asked Danglars of the Count of Monte Cristo.

"You have heard, Cavalcantis."

"That tells me their name, that is all."

"Ah! it is true, you are not up in our Italian nobilities; to say Cavalcanti is to say a race of princes."

"Fine fortune?" asked the banker.

"Fabulous."

"What do they do?"

"They try to eat it up without being able to get to the end of it. They have moreover credits on you, as they told me when they came to see me the day before yesterday. I even invited them on your account. I will present them to you."

"But it seems to me they speak French very purely," said Danglars.

"The son was brought up in a college in the South, at Marseilles or thereabouts, I believe. You will find him in ecstasies."

"With what?" asked the baroness.

"With the Frenchwomen, madame. He absolutely wishes to take a wife in Paris."

"A fine idea he has there!" said Danglars, shrugging his shoulders.

Mme Danglars looked at her husband with an expression which, at any other time, would have presaged a storm, but for the second time she was silent.

"The baron seems very gloomy today," said Monte Cristo to Mme Danglars; "is he by chance to be made a minister?"

"No, not yet, that I know of. I believe rather he has played the Exchange, lost, and knows not on whom to vent himself."

"M. and Mme de Villefort!" cried Baptistin.

The two persons announced entered. M. de Villefort, despite his command over himself, was visibly moved. In touching his hand, Monte Cristo felt it tremble.

"Decidedly, women alone know how to dissemble," said Monte Cristo to himself, looking at Mme Danglars, who was smiling at the king's attorney and embracing his wife.

After the first compliments, the count saw Bertuccio, who, occupied until then on the side of the offices, was slipping into a small salon adjoining the one in which they were.

"What do you want, M. Bertuccio?" said he.

"His Excellency did not tell me the number of his guests."

"Ah! it is true."

"How many covers?"

"Count them yourself."

"Is everyone arrived, Excellency?"

"Yes."

Bertuccio slipped his glance through the half-open door. Monte Cristo watched him with his eyes.

"Ah! my God!" he cried.

"What now?" asked the count.

"That woman!... that woman!..."

"Which?"

"The one in the white dress and so many diamonds!... the blonde!..."

"Mme Danglars?"

"I know not what she is called. But it is she, monsieur, it is she!"

"Who, she?"

"The woman of the garden! the one who was with child! the one who walked about waiting!... waiting!..."

Bertuccio remained with open mouth, pale and hair on end.

"Waiting for whom?"

Bertuccio, without answering, pointed to Villefort with his finger, much as Macbeth pointed to Banquo.

"Oh!... oh!..." he murmured at last, "do you see?"

"What? whom?"

"Him!... M. the king's attorney Villefort? No doubt, that I see."

"But I did not kill him then?"

"Come, come, I believe you are going mad, my good Bertuccio," said the count.

"But he is not dead then?"

"Why no! he is not dead, you see plainly; instead of striking him between the sixth and seventh left rib, as is the custom of your compatriots, you must have struck higher or lower; and those men of law, they have their soul pegged into their body; or rather nothing of what you told me is true, it is a dream of your imagination, a hallucination of your mind; you must have fallen asleep having ill digested your vengeance; it lay heavy on your stomach; you had the nightmare, that is all. Come, recover your calm, and count: M. and Mme de Villefort, two; M. and Mme Danglars, four; M. de Château-Renaud, M. Debray, M. Morrel, seven; M. the Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, eight."

"Eight!" repeated Bertuccio.

"Wait, wait! you are in a great hurry to be off, the devil! you forget one of my guests. Lean a little to the left... there... M. Andrea Cavalcanti, that young man in black who is looking at the Virgin of Murillo, who is turning round."

This time Bertuccio began a cry which the glance of Monte Cristo extinguished upon his lips.

"Benedetto!" he murmured very low, "fatality!"

"Half-past six is striking, M. Bertuccio," said the count severely; "that is the hour at which I ordered that we should sit down to table; you know I do not like to wait."

And Monte Cristo entered the salon where his guests awaited him, while Bertuccio regained the dining-room leaning against the walls.

Five minutes after, the two doors of the salon opened. Bertuccio appeared, and, like Vatel at Chantilly, making a last and heroic effort:

"Monsieur le Comte is served," said he.

Monte Cristo offered his arm to Mme de Villefort.

"M. de Villefort," said he, "pray be the cavalier of the Baroness Danglars."

Villefort obeyed, and they passed into the dining-room.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”