LXXII. Madame de Saint-Méran.

LXXII

Madame de Saint-Méran.

A gloomy scene had indeed just taken place in M. de Villefort's house.

After the two ladies had left for the ball, whither all Mme de Villefort's entreaties had failed to persuade her husband to accompany them, the king's attorney had, according to his custom, shut himself up in his study with a pile of dossiers that would have frightened anyone else, but which, in the ordinary course of his life, scarcely sufficed to satisfy his robust worker's appetite.

But this time the dossiers were a mere formality. Villefort did not shut himself in to work, but to reflect; and, his door locked, the order given that he was to be disturbed only on matters of importance, he sat down in his armchair and began once more to run through his memory all that, for the past seven or eight days, had caused the cup of his dark sorrows and bitter recollections to overflow.

Then, instead of attacking the dossiers heaped before him, he opened a drawer of his desk, sprang a secret lock, and drew out the bundle of his personal notes, precious manuscripts, among which he had classified and labelled with figures known to himself alone the names of all those who, in his political career, in his financial affairs, in his forensic pursuits, or in his mysterious loves, had become his enemies.

Their number was so formidable today that he had begun to tremble; and yet, powerful and formidable as those names were, they had made him smile many a time, as the traveller smiles who, from the culminating peak of the mountain, looks down at his feet at the sharp crags, the impassable paths, and the edges of the precipices near which he has, to arrive, so long and so painfully crawled.

When he had well run over all those names in his memory, when he had well reread them, well studied them, well commented on them in his lists, he shook his head.

"No," he murmured, "none of those enemies would have waited patiently and laboriously until the day we are in, to come and crush me now with this secret. Sometimes, as Hamlet says, the noise of things most deeply buried rises from the earth, and, like the fires of phosphorus, runs wildly through the air, but those are flames that light up a moment only to mislead. The story will have been told by the Corsican to some priest, who will have told it in his turn. M. de Monte-Cristo will have known it, and to clear himself..."

"But what use clearing himself?" Villefort resumed after a moment of reflection. "What interest can M. de Monte-Cristo, M. Zaccone, son of a Malta shipowner, exploiter of a silver mine in Thessaly, come to France for the first time, have in clearing himself of a dark, mysterious, and useless fact like that? Amid the incoherent information given me by that Abbé Busoni and that Lord Wilmore, by that friend and that enemy, one thing alone stands out clear, precise, patent to my eyes: it is that at no time, in no case, in no circumstance, can there have been the slightest contact between him and me."

But Villefort said these words without himself believing what he said. The most terrible thing for him was not yet the revelation, for he could deny, or even answer; he cared little for that *Mane, Thecel, Phares* which suddenly appeared in letters of blood upon the wall, but what troubled him was knowing the body to which belonged the hand that had traced them.

At the moment when he was trying to reassure himself, and when, instead of that political future which, in his ambitious dreams, he had sometimes glimpsed, he was composing for himself, in fear of awakening that enemy asleep so long, a future restricted to the joys of the hearth, a noise of carriage wheels rang out in the courtyard; then he heard upon his staircase the step of an elderly person, then sobs and alases! such as servants find when they want to become interesting through their masters' grief.

He hastened to draw the bolt of his study, and soon, without being announced, an old lady entered, her shawl on her arm and her hat in her hand. Her whitened hair disclosed a brow dull as yellowed ivory, and her eyes, at the corners of which age had dug deep wrinkles, almost disappeared beneath the swelling of tears.

"Oh! sir," she said, "ah! sir, what a misfortune! I too shall die of it! oh! yes, most certainly I shall die of it!"

And, falling upon the armchair nearest the door, she burst into sobs.

The servants, standing on the threshold, and not daring to go further, looked at the old servant of Noirtier, who, having heard this noise from his master's room, had likewise run up and stood behind the others. Villefort rose and ran to his mother-in-law, for it was she herself.

"Eh! my God, madame," he asked, "what has happened? who has upset you thus? and does not M. de Saint-Méran accompany you?"

"M. de Saint-Méran is dead," said the old marquise, without preamble, without expression, and with a sort of stupor.

Villefort recoiled a step and clapped his hands one against the other.

"Dead!..." he stammered; "dead thus... suddenly?"

"A week ago," continued Mme de Saint-Méran, "we got into the carriage together after dinner. M. de Saint-Méran had been unwell for some days: however, the idea of seeing our dear Valentine again made him brave, and despite his pains he had wished to set out, when, six leagues from Marseille, after eating his usual pastilles, he was seized with so deep a sleep that it did not seem natural to me; yet I hesitated to wake him, when it seemed to me that his face reddened and the veins of his temples beat more violently than usual. But however, as night had come and I could see no more, I let him sleep; soon he gave a dull and tearing cry like a man who suffers in a dream, and threw his head abruptly backward. I called the valet, I had the postilion stop, I called M. de Saint-Méran, I made him smell my smelling salts, all was over, he was dead, and it was side by side with his corpse that I arrived at Aix."

Villefort remained stupefied and open-mouthed.

"And you called a doctor, no doubt?"

"Instantly; but, as I told you, it was too late."

"No doubt; but at least he could recognize of what disease the poor marquis had died."

"My God! yes, sir, he told me; it appears it was a sudden stroke."

"And what did you do then?"

"M. de Saint-Méran had always said that, if he died far from Paris, he wished his body to be brought back to the family vault. I had him placed in a lead coffin, and I precede him by a few days."

"Oh! my God, poor mother!" said Villefort, "such cares after such a blow, and at your age!"

"God gave me strength to the end; besides, that dear marquis would certainly have done for me what I have done for him. It is true that since I left him back there, I think I am mad. I can weep no more; it is true they say that at my age one has no more tears; yet it seems to me that as long as one suffers one ought to be able to weep. Where is Valentine, sir? it was for her we were returning, I wish to see Valentine."

Villefort thought it would be awful to reply that Valentine was at the ball; he said only to the marquise that her granddaughter was out with her stepmother and that she would be informed.

"At once, sir, at once, I beg you," said the old lady.

Villefort slipped Mme de Saint-Méran's arm under his own and led her to her apartment.

"Rest," he said, "my mother."

The marquise raised her head at this word, and seeing this man who recalled to her that so-regretted daughter who lived again for her in Valentine, she felt struck by that name of mother, began to melt into tears, and fell on her knees in an armchair where she buried her venerable head.

Villefort commended her to the care of the women, while old Barrois went back quite bewildered to his master's room; for nothing frightens old people so much as when death leaves their side a moment to go strike another old person. Then, while Mme de Saint-Méran, still on her knees, prayed from the depths of her heart, he sent for a hackney carriage and came himself to fetch his wife and daughter from Mme de Morcerf's to bring them home. He was so pale when he appeared at the door of the salon that Valentine ran to him crying:

"Oh! my father! some misfortune has happened!"

"Your good grandmother has just arrived, Valentine," said M. de Villefort.

"And my grandfather?" asked the young girl, all trembling.

M. de Villefort answered only by offering his arm to his daughter.

It was time: Valentine, seized with a vertigo, staggered; Mme de Villefort hastened to support her, and helped her husband drag her toward the carriage, saying:

"This is strange! who could have suspected that? Oh! yes, this is strange!"

And all that afflicted family fled thus, casting its sadness, like a black crepe, over the rest of the evening.

At the foot of the staircase, Valentine found Barrois waiting for her:

"M. Noirtier wishes to see you this evening," he said in a low voice.

"Tell him I will go as I come from my good grandmother's," said Valentine.

In the delicacy of her soul, the young girl had understood that she who most needed her at that hour was Mme de Saint-Méran.

Valentine found her grandmother in bed; mute caresses, such sorrowful swelling of the heart, broken sighs, burning tears, such were the only recountable details of that interview, at which Mme de Villefort assisted, on her husband's arm, full of respect, apparent at least, for the poor widow.

After a moment, she bent to her husband's ear:

"With your permission," she said, "it is better that I withdraw, for my sight seems still to afflict your mother-in-law."

Mme de Saint-Méran heard her.

"Yes, yes," she said in Valentine's ear, "let her go; but you, stay."

Mme de Villefort went out, and Valentine remained alone near her grandmother's bed, for the king's attorney, dismayed at this unforeseen death, followed his wife.

Meanwhile Barrois had gone up the first time to old Noirtier; the latter had heard all the noise that was being made in the house, and he had sent, as we have said, the old servant to inquire.

On his return, that eye so lively and above all so intelligent questioned the messenger:

"Alas! sir," said Barrois, "a great misfortune has happened: Mme de Saint-Méran is here, and her husband is dead."

M. de Saint-Méran and Noirtier had never been bound by any very deep friendship; however, one knows the effect always produced upon an old man by the announcement of the death of another old man.

Noirtier let his head fall upon his chest, like a man overwhelmed or like a man who thinks, then he closed one eye alone.

"Mlle Valentine?" said Barrois.

Noirtier signified yes.

"She is at the ball, sir knows well, since she came to bid him farewell in full dress."

Noirtier closed the left eye again.

"Yes, you wish to see her?"

The old man signified that that was what he desired.

"Well, they are no doubt going to fetch her from Mme de Morcerf's; I will wait for her return, and I will tell her to come up to you. Is that it?"

"Yes," answered the paralytic.

Barrois therefore watched for Valentine's return, and as we have seen, on her return he expounded to her his grandfather's wish.

In virtue of that wish, Valentine went up to Noirtier on leaving Mme de Saint-Méran, who, agitated as she was, had ended by succumbing to fatigue and slept a feverish sleep.

They had placed within reach of her hand a small table on which were a carafe of orangeade, her habitual drink, and a glass.

Then, as we have said, the young girl had left the marquise's bed to go up to Noirtier.

Valentine came to embrace the old man, who looked at her so tenderly that the young girl felt anew spring from her eyes tears whose source she thought dried up.

The old man insisted with his gaze.

"Yes, yes," said Valentine, "you mean I still have a good grandfather, don't you?"

The old man signified that indeed that was what his gaze meant.

"Alas! happily," Valentine resumed, "otherwise, what would become of me, my God?"

It was one in the morning. Barrois, who wished himself to go to bed, observed that after so painful an evening everyone needed rest. The old man would not say that his rest was to see his child. He dismissed Valentine, to whom indeed grief and fatigue gave a suffering air.

The next morning, on entering her grandmother's room, Valentine found her in bed; the fever had not calmed, on the contrary, a dark fire shone in the old marquise's eyes, and she appeared prey to a violent nervous irritation.

"Oh! my God! good grandmother, are you suffering more?" cried Valentine on perceiving all those symptoms of agitation.

"No, my child, no," said Mme de Saint-Méran, "but I was waiting impatiently for you to arrive to send for your father."

"My father?" asked Valentine uneasily.

"Yes, I wish to speak to him."

Valentine dared not oppose her grandmother's wish, whose cause she ignored besides, and an instant later Villefort entered.

"Sir," said Mme de Saint-Méran, without employing any circumlocution, and as if she had seemed to fear she might lack time, "you wrote to me that there is question of a marriage for this child?"

"Yes, madame," answered Villefort, "it is even more than a project, it is a convention."

"Your son-in-law is called M. Franz d'Épinay?"

"Yes, madame."

"He is the son of General d'Épinay, who was one of us, and who was assassinated a few days before the usurper returned from the island of Elba?"

"That is exactly it."

"This alliance with the granddaughter of a Jacobin does not repel him?"

"Our civil dissensions are happily extinct, my mother," said Villefort, "M. d'Épinay was almost a child at his father's death; he knows M. Noirtier very little, and will see him, if not with pleasure, at least with indifference."

"He is a suitable match?"

"In every respect."

"The young man...?"

"Enjoys general consideration."

"Is he proper?"

"He is one of the most distinguished men I know."

During all this conversation Valentine had remained silent.

"Well, sir," said Mme de Saint-Méran after a few seconds of reflection, "you must hasten, for I have little time to live."

"You, madame! you, good grandmother!" cried M. de Villefort and Valentine.

"I know what I say," resumed the marquise, "you must therefore hasten, so that, having no longer a mother, she may at least have her grandmother to bless her marriage. I am the only one left to her on the side of my poor Renée, whom you so quickly forgot, sir."

"Ah! madame," said Villefort, "you forget that a mother had to be given to that poor child who no longer had one."

"A stepmother is never a mother, sir! But that is not what is at issue, it is a question of Valentine; let us leave the dead in peace."

All this was said with such volubility and such accent, that there was something in this conversation resembling a beginning of delirium.

"It shall be done according to your wish, madame," said Villefort, "and that the better since your wish agrees with mine; and, as soon as M. d'Épinay arrives in Paris..."

"My good mother," said Valentine, "conventions, the so recent mourning... would you then make a marriage under such sad auspices?"

"My daughter," the grandmother interrupted briskly, "none of those banal reasons that keep weak minds from solidly building their future. I too was married at my mother's deathbed, and was certainly not unhappy for that."

"Again that idea of death, madame," resumed Villefort.

"Again! always!... I tell you I am going to die, do you hear! Well, before dying, I wish to have seen my son-in-law; I wish to order him to make my granddaughter happy; I wish to read in his eyes whether he counts on obeying me; I wish to know him at last, I!" continued the grandmother with a frightful expression, "to come find him from the depths of my tomb if he were not what he ought to be, if he were not what he must be."

"Madame," said Villefort, "you must put away from you these exalted ideas, which touch almost upon madness. The dead, once laid in their tomb, sleep there without ever rising again."

"Oh! yes, yes, good mother, calm yourself!" said Valentine.

"And I, sir, tell you that it is not as you believe. This night I slept a terrible sleep; for I saw myself, as it were, sleeping as if my soul had already hovered above my body: my eyes, which I strove to open, closed despite me; and yet I know well this will seem impossible to you, sir, above all to you; well, my eyes closed, I saw, in the very spot where you are, coming from that corner where there is a door leading to Mme de Villefort's dressing room, I saw enter without noise a white shape."

Valentine gave a cry.

"It was the fever agitating you, madame," said Villefort.

"Doubt if you will, but I am sure of what I say: I saw a white shape; and as if God had feared I might reject the testimony of but one of my senses, I heard my glass move, look, look, that very one which is here, there, on the table."

"Oh! good mother, it was a dream."

"It was so little a dream, that I stretched my hand toward the bell, and at that gesture the shadow disappeared. The chambermaid then entered with a light. Ghosts show themselves only to those who are to see them: it was the soul of my husband. Well, if my husband's soul returns to call me, why should my soul, mine, not return to defend my daughter? The link is even more direct, it seems to me."

"Oh! madame," said Villefort, moved in spite of himself to the very depths of his entrails, "give no scope to these gloomy ideas; you will live with us, you will live long, happy, loved, honored, and we will make you forget..."

"Never! never! never!" said the marquise. "When does M. d'Épinay return?"

"We expect him from moment to moment."

"That is well; as soon as he has arrived, let me know. Let us hasten, let us hasten. Then, I should also like to see a notary, to assure myself that all our property reverts to Valentine."

"Oh! my mother," murmured Valentine, pressing her lips to the grandmother's burning brow, "you wish then to make me die? My God! you have the fever. It is not a notary that should be called, it is a doctor!"

"A doctor?" said she, shrugging her shoulders, "I do not suffer; I am thirsty, that is all."

"What do you drink, good mama?"

"As always, you know well, my orangeade. My glass is there on that table, pass it to me, Valentine."

Valentine poured the orangeade from the carafe into the glass and took it with a certain fright to give to her grandmother, for it was that same glass which, she claimed, had been touched by the shadow.

The marquise emptied the glass at a single draught.

Then she turned back on her pillow repeating:

"The notary! the notary!"

M. de Villefort went out. Valentine sat down near her grandmother's bed. The poor child seemed herself to stand greatly in need of that doctor she had recommended to her grandmother. A redness like a flame burned the apple of her cheeks, her breathing was short and panting, and her pulse beat as if she had the fever.

It was that she was thinking, the poor child, of Maximilien's despair when he should learn that Mme de Saint-Méran, instead of being an ally to him, acted without knowing him, as if she were his enemy.

More than once Valentine had thought to tell all to her grandmother, and she would not have hesitated a single instant if Maximilien Morrel had been called Albert de Morcerf or Raoul de Château-Renaud; but Morrel was of plebeian extraction, and Valentine knew the contempt that the proud Marquise de Saint-Méran had for all that was not of noble blood. Her secret had therefore always, at the moment when it was about to come to light, been thrust back into her heart by that sad certainty that she would deliver it uselessly, and that once that secret known to her father and stepmother, all would be lost.

Some two hours passed thus. Mme de Saint-Méran slept a burning and agitated sleep. The notary was announced.

Although this announcement had been made very low, Mme de Saint-Méran raised herself on her pillow.

"The notary?" said she; "let him come, let him come!"

The notary was at the door, he entered.

"Go away, Valentine," said Mme de Saint-Méran, "and leave me with the gentleman."

"But, my mother..."

"Go, go."

The young girl kissed her grandmother on the brow and went out, handkerchief to her eyes. At the door she found the valet, who told her the doctor was waiting in the salon. Valentine went rapidly down. The doctor was a friend of the family, and at the same time one of the most skillful men of the time: he greatly loved Valentine, whom he had seen come into the world. He had a daughter about the age of Mlle de Villefort, but born of a consumptive mother; his life was a continual fear regarding his child.

"Oh!" said Valentine, "dear M. d'Avrigny, we were expecting you with much impatience. But before all else, how are Madeleine and Antoinette?"

Madeleine was M. d'Avrigny's daughter, and Antoinette his niece.

M. d'Avrigny smiled sadly.

"Antoinette very well," said he; "Madeleine tolerably well. But you sent for me, dear child?" said he. "It is neither your father nor Mme de Villefort who is ill? As for us, though it is visible that we cannot rid ourselves of our nerves, I do not presume you need me otherwise than to recommend you not to let our imagination roam too freely?"

Valentine blushed; M. d'Avrigny pushed the science of divination almost to the miracle, for he was one of those doctors who always treat the physical through the moral.

"No," she said, "it is for my poor grandmother. You know the misfortune that has befallen us, do you not?"

"I know nothing," said d'Avrigny.

"Alas!" said Valentine, repressing her sobs, "my grandfather is dead."

"M. de Saint-Méran?"

"Yes."

"Suddenly?"

"Of a sudden stroke."

"Of a stroke?" repeated the doctor.

"Yes. So that my poor grandmother is struck with the idea that her husband, whom she had never left, is calling her, and that she is going to join him. Oh! M. d'Avrigny, I commend my poor grandmother to you!"

"Where is she?"

"In her room with the notary."

"And M. Noirtier?"

"Always the same, a perfect lucidity of mind, but the same immobility, the same muteness."

"And the same love for you, is it not, my dear child?"

"Yes," said Valentine sighing, "he loves me well, he."

"Who would not love you?"

Valentine smiled sadly.

"And what does your grandmother feel?"

"A singular nervous excitement, an agitated and strange sleep; she claimed this morning that, during her sleep, her soul hovered above her body which she saw sleeping: that is delirium; she claims to have seen a ghost enter her room and to have heard the noise made by the supposed ghost in touching her glass."

"That is singular," said the doctor, "I did not know Mme de Saint-Méran subject to such hallucinations."

"It is the first time I have seen her thus," said Valentine, "and this morning she greatly frightened me, I thought her mad; and my father, certainly, M. d'Avrigny, you know my father for a serious mind, well, my father himself seemed much impressed."

"We shall see," said M. d'Avrigny; "what you tell me seems strange to me."

The notary was coming down; they came to warn Valentine that her grandmother was alone.

"Go up," she said to the doctor.

"And you?"

"Oh! as for me, I dare not, she had forbidden me to send for you; then, as you say, I myself am agitated, feverish, unwell, I am going to take a turn in the garden to recover."

The doctor pressed Valentine's hand, and while he went up to her grandmother, the young girl descended the steps.

We need not say which portion of the garden was Valentine's favorite walk. After making two or three turns in the parterre that surrounded the house, after having gathered a rose to put at her waist or in her hair, she would plunge into the dark alley that led to the bench, then from the bench she would go to the gate.

This time, Valentine made, according to her habit, two or three turns amid her flowers, but without gathering any: the mourning of her heart, which had not yet had time to spread over her person, rejected that simple ornament, then she made her way toward her alley. As she advanced, it seemed to her she heard a voice pronouncing her name. She stopped astonished.

Then that voice came more distinct to her ear, and she recognized the voice of Maximilien.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”