LXXIII. La promesse.
LXXIII
The Promise.
It was indeed Morrel, who since the day before had scarcely been living. With that instinct peculiar to lovers and to mothers, he had guessed that, following upon Mme de Saint-Méran's return and the marquis's death, something was about to happen at Villefort's which would concern his love for Valentine.
As will be seen, his presentiments had been fulfilled, and it was no longer a simple uneasiness that brought him, so wild-eyed and trembling, to the chestnut-tree gate.
But Valentine had not been warned of Morrel's waiting; it was not the hour when he usually came, and it was pure chance, or, if you prefer, a happy sympathy, that led her to the garden. When she appeared, Morrel called to her; she ran to the gate.
"You, at this hour!" said she.
"Yes, poor friend," answered Morrel, "I come to seek and to bring bad news."
"Then this is indeed the house of misfortune," said Valentine. "Speak, Maximilien. But truly, the sum of sorrows is already quite sufficient."
"Dear Valentine," said Morrel, trying to master his own emotion so as to speak fittingly, "listen to me well, I beg you; for all I am about to tell you is solemn. For what time is your marriage planned?"
"Listen," said Valentine in her turn, "I wish to hide nothing from you, Maximilien. This morning my marriage was spoken of, and my grandmother, on whom I had counted as on a support that would not fail, has not only declared herself for this marriage, but desires it to such a degree that only M. d'Épinay's return delays it, and that the day after his arrival the contract will be signed."
A painful sigh heaved the young man's breast, and he looked long and sadly at the girl.
"Alas!" he resumed in a low voice, "it is horrible to hear the woman one loves say calmly: 'The moment of your torment is fixed: it will take place in a few hours; but no matter, it must be so, and for my part I shall offer no opposition.' Well, then, since, as you say, nothing is awaited but M. d'Épinay to sign the contract, since you will be his the day after his arrival, it is tomorrow that you will be pledged to M. d'Épinay, for he arrived in Paris this morning."
Valentine uttered a cry.
"I was at Count Monte Cristo's an hour ago," said Morrel; "we were talking, he of your house's grief and I of yours, when suddenly a carriage rolls into the courtyard. Listen. Until then I did not believe in presentiments, Valentine; but now I must believe in them. At the sound of that carriage a shudder seized me; soon I heard steps on the stair. The resounding steps of the Commander did not more frighten Don Juan than those steps frightened me. At last the door opens; Albert de Morcerf enters first, and I was about to doubt myself, I was about to believe I had been mistaken, when behind him advances another young man and the count cried: 'Ah! Baron Franz d'Épinay!' All the strength and courage I have in my heart I called upon to contain myself. Perhaps I grew pale, perhaps I trembled: but certainly I remained with a smile on my lips. But five minutes later, I went out without having heard a word of what was said during those five minutes; I was overwhelmed."
"Poor Maximilien!" murmured Valentine.
"Here I am, Valentine. Now answer me as to a man whose life or death your answer will give. What do you mean to do?"
Valentine lowered her head; she was crushed.
"Listen," said Morrel, "this is not the first time you have thought of the situation we have come to: it is grave, it is heavy, it is supreme. I do not think this is the moment to abandon oneself to sterile grief: that is well enough for those who wish to suffer at ease and drink their tears at leisure. There are people like that, and God will no doubt credit them in heaven for their resignation on earth; but whoever feels the will to struggle loses no precious time and immediately returns to fortune the blow he has received from it. Is it your will to struggle against ill fortune, Valentine? Speak, for that is what I have come to ask you."
Valentine started and looked at Morrel with wide, frightened eyes. This idea of resisting her father, her grandmother, her whole family in short, had not even occurred to her.
"What are you saying to me, Maximilien?" asked Valentine, "and what do you call a struggle? Oh! call it sacrilege. What! I struggle against my father's order, against my dying grandmother's wish! It is impossible!"
Morrel made a movement.
"You are too noble a heart not to understand me, and you understand me so well, dear Maximilien, that I see you reduced to silence. Struggle, I! God forbid! No, no; I keep all my strength to struggle against myself and to drink my tears, as you say. As for afflicting my father, as for troubling my grandmother's last moments, never!"
"You are quite right," said Morrel phlegmatically.
"How calmly you say that to me, my God!" cried Valentine, hurt.
"I say that to you as a man who admires you, mademoiselle," replied Maximilien.
"Mademoiselle!" cried Valentine, "mademoiselle! Oh, the selfish man! he sees me in despair and feigns not to understand me."
"You are mistaken, and on the contrary I understand you perfectly. You do not wish to cross M. de Villefort, you do not wish to disobey the marchioness, and tomorrow you will sign the contract that is to bind you to your husband."
"But, my God! can I do otherwise?"
"Do not appeal to me, mademoiselle, for I am a bad judge in this cause, and my selfishness will blind me," answered Morrel, whose hollow voice and clenched fists announced his growing exasperation.
"What would you have proposed to me, Morrel, if you had found me disposed to accept your proposal? Come, answer. It is not a matter of saying 'you do wrong,' one must give counsel."
"Is it seriously that you say this to me, Valentine, and am I to give this counsel, tell me?"
"Certainly, dear Maximilien, for if it is good, I shall follow it; you know well that I am devoted to your affections."
"Valentine," said Morrel, finishing the displacing of a plank already loosened, "give me your hand as a pledge that you forgive my anger; it is that my head is in turmoil, you see, and that for an hour the most senseless ideas have in turn crossed my mind. Oh! if you were to refuse my counsel!..."
"Well, this counsel?"
"Here it is, Valentine."
The girl raised her eyes to heaven and sighed.
"I am free," resumed Maximilien, "I am rich enough for us both; I swear to you that you shall be my wife before my lips have rested on your brow."
"You make me tremble," said the girl.
"Follow me," continued Morrel; "I take you to my sister's, who is worthy to be your sister; we shall embark for Algiers, for England, or for America, if you do not prefer that we retire together to some province, where we shall await, to return to Paris, the time when our friends have overcome your family's resistance."
Valentine shook her head.
"I expected it, Maximilien," said she; "it is the counsel of a madman, and I should be even madder than you if I did not stop you at once with this single word: impossible, Morrel, impossible."
"You will then follow your fortune, such as fate shall make it, without even trying to combat it?" said Morrel, glowering.
"Yes, were I to die of it!"
"Well, Valentine," replied Maximilien, "I shall repeat to you that you are right. Indeed, it is I who am the fool, and you prove to me that passion blinds the justest minds. Thanks, then, to you who reason without passion. So be it, it is a thing understood; tomorrow you will be irrevocably promised to M. Franz d'Épinay, not by that theatrical formality invented to untie comedy plots, and which is called the signing of the contract, but by your own will."
"Again you despair me, Maximilien!" said Valentine; "again you turn the dagger in the wound! What would you do, if your sister listened to counsel such as you give me?"
"Mademoiselle," replied Morrel with a bitter smile, "I am a selfish man, you have said so, and in my quality of selfish man, I do not think of what others would do in my place, but of what I mean to do, myself. I think that I have known you for a year, that from the day I knew you I staked all my chances of happiness on your love, that a day came when you told me you loved me; that from that day I staked all my future chances on possessing you: it was my life. I think nothing now; I only say to myself that the chances have turned, that I thought to have won heaven and that I have lost it. It happens every day that a gamester loses not only what he has, but also what he has not."
Morrel pronounced these words with perfect calm; Valentine looked at him for a moment with her searching eyes, trying not to let Morrel's eyes penetrate to the trouble already whirling in the depths of her heart.
"But finally, what are you going to do?" asked Valentine.
"I am about to have the honor of bidding you farewell, mademoiselle, calling God to witness, who hears my words and reads the bottom of my heart, that I wish you a life calm enough, happy enough, and full enough, that there be no room for the memory of me."
"Oh!" murmured Valentine.
"Farewell, Valentine, farewell!" said Morrel, bowing.
"Where are you going?" cried the girl, stretching her hand through the gate and seizing Maximilien by his coat, who, from her inner agitation, understood that her lover's calm could not be real; "where are you going?"
"I am going to occupy myself with bringing no new disturbance into your family, and to set an example that all honest and devoted men who find themselves in my position may follow."
"Before leaving me, tell me what you are going to do, Maximilien?"
The young man smiled sadly.
"Oh! speak, speak!" said Valentine, "I beg you!"
"Has your resolution changed, Valentine?"
"It cannot change, unhappy man! You know it well!" cried the girl.
"Then farewell, Valentine!"
Valentine shook the gate with a force of which one would have thought her incapable; and as Morrel moved away, she passed her two hands through the gate, and joining them while writhing her arms:
"What are you going to do? I must know!" she cried; "where are you going?"
"Oh! be at ease," said Maximilien, stopping three steps from the door, "my intention is not to make another man responsible for the harshness that fate keeps for me. Another would threaten to go find M. Franz, to provoke him, to fight with him, all that would be senseless. What has M. Franz to do in all this? He saw me this morning for the first time, he has already forgotten that he saw me; he did not even know I existed when agreements made by your two families decided that you should belong to each other. I have therefore no quarrel with M. Franz, and, I swear to you, I shall not take it up with him."
"But with whom will you take it up? with me?"
"With you, Valentine! Oh, God forbid! Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy."
"With yourself then, unhappy man, with yourself?"
"I am the guilty one, am I not?" said Morrel.
"Maximilien," said Valentine, "Maximilien, come here, I wish it!"
Maximilien drew near with his gentle smile, and, but for his pallor, one might have thought him in his ordinary state.
"Listen to me, my dear, my adored Valentine," said he in his melodious and grave voice, "people like us, who have never formed a thought of which they need be ashamed before the world, before their parents, and before God, people like us can read each other's hearts like an open book. I have never made a romance, I am not a melancholy hero, I pose neither as Manfred nor as Antony: but without words, without protests, without oaths, I have placed my life in you; you fail me and you are right to act thus, I told you so and I repeat it to you; but in short you fail me and my life is lost. From the moment you withdraw from me, Valentine, I remain alone in the world. My sister is happy near her husband; her husband is only my brother-in-law, that is to say a man attached to me solely by social conventions; no one on earth therefore has need of my now useless existence. This is what I shall do: I shall wait until the last second that you are married, for I will not lose the shadow of one of those unexpected chances that chance sometimes keeps for us, for after all, until then M. Franz d'Épinay may die, at the moment you approach him, lightning may fall on the altar: all seems credible to the condemned man, and for him miracles re-enter the class of the possible as soon as it is a question of saving his life. I shall wait then, I say, until the last moment, and when my misfortune is certain, without remedy, without hope, I shall write a confidential letter to my brother-in-law, another to the Prefect of Police to give him notice of my design, and in the corner of some wood, on the slope of some ditch, on the bank of some river, I shall blow my brains out, as sure as I am the son of the most honest man who ever lived in France."
A convulsive tremor shook Valentine's limbs; she let go the gate she held with both hands, her arms fell to her sides, and two great tears rolled down her cheeks.
The young man remained before her, somber and resolved.
"Oh! for pity's sake, for pity's sake," said she, "you will live, will you not?"
"No, upon my honor," said Maximilien; "but what matters it to you? you will have done your duty, and your conscience will remain with you."
Valentine fell to her knees, clasping her breaking heart.
"Maximilien," said she, "Maximilien, my friend, my brother on earth, my true husband in heaven, I beg you, do as I do, live with the suffering: a day may perhaps reunite us."
"Farewell, Valentine!" repeated Morrel.
"My God!" said Valentine, raising her two hands to heaven with a sublime expression, "you see it, I have done all I could to remain an obedient daughter: I have prayed, supplicated, implored; he has listened to neither my prayers, nor my supplications, nor my tears. Well," she continued, wiping her tears and regaining her firmness, "well, I will not die of remorse, I prefer to die of shame. You shall live, Maximilien, and I shall belong to no one but you. At what hour? at what moment? is it at once? speak, command, I am ready."
Morrel, who had again taken a few steps to withdraw, had again returned, and, pale with joy, his heart expanded, stretching his two hands through the gate to Valentine:
"Valentine," said he, "dear friend, it is not thus you should speak to me, or else you must let me die. Why should I owe you to violence, if you love me as I love you? Do you force me to live out of humanity, is that all? in that case I had rather die."
"Indeed," murmured Valentine, "who loves me in the world? he. Who has consoled me for all my sorrows? he. On whom do my hopes rest, on whom does my wandering gaze pause, on whom does my bleeding heart lean? on him, him, always him. Well, you are right in your turn; Maximilien, I will follow you, I will leave my father's house, everything. Oh, ungrateful that I am!" cried Valentine, sobbing, "everything!... even my good grandfather whom I forgot!"
"No," said Maximilien, "you shall not leave him. M. Noirtier, you say, appeared to feel sympathy for me: well, before fleeing you shall tell him all; you shall make of his consent a shield before God; then, once married, he shall come with us: instead of one child, he shall have two. You told me how he spoke to you and how you answered him; I shall soon learn that touching language of signs, come, Valentine. Oh! I swear to you, instead of the despair that awaits us, it is happiness I promise you!"
"Oh! see, Maximilien, see what power you have over me, you almost make me believe what you tell me, and yet what you tell me is senseless, for my father will curse me, he; for I know him, the inflexible heart, never will he forgive. So listen to me, Maximilien, if by artifice, by prayer, by accident, who knows? if finally by some means or other I can delay the marriage, you will wait, will you not?"
"Yes, I swear it, as you swear to me, you, that this dreadful marriage shall never take place, and that, were you dragged before the magistrate, before the priest, you would say no."
"I swear it to you, Maximilien, by what is most sacred to me in the world, by my mother!"
"Then let us wait," said Morrel.
"Yes, let us wait," replied Valentine, who breathed at this word; "there are so many things that can save unfortunates like us."
"I trust you, Valentine," said Morrel, "all you do will be well done; only, if they override your prayers, if your father, if Mme de Saint-Méran require that M. Franz d'Épinay be called tomorrow to sign the contract...."
"Then, you have my word, Morrel."
"Instead of signing...."
"I come to join you and we flee: but until then, let us not tempt God, Morrel; let us not see each other: it is a miracle, it is a providence that we have not yet been surprised; if we were surprised, if it were known how we see each other, we should have no resource left."
"You are right, Valentine; but how to know...."
"By the notary, M. Deschamps."
"I know him."
"And by myself. I shall write to you, be assured of it. My God! this marriage, Maximilien, is as hateful to me as to you!"
"Good, good! thanks, my adored Valentine," replied Morrel. "Then all is said, once I know the hour, I run here, you cross this wall in my arms: the thing will be easy for you, a carriage shall await you at the enclosure gate, you get into it with me, I take you to my sister's, there, unknown if it suits you, making a stir if you wish, we shall have the consciousness of our strength and our will, and we shall not let ourselves be slaughtered like the lamb that defends itself only with sighs."
"Be it so," said Valentine; "in my turn I say to you: Maximilien, what you do will be well done."
"Oh!"
"Well, are you content with your wife?" said the girl sadly.
"My adored Valentine, to say yes is to say far too little."
"Say it always."
Valentine had drawn near, or rather had drawn her lips near the gate, and her words glided, with her perfumed breath, to Morrel's lips, who pressed his mouth on the other side of the cold and inexorable enclosure.
"Farewell," said Valentine, tearing herself from this happiness, "farewell!"
"Shall I have a letter from you?"
"Yes."
"Thanks, dear wife! farewell."
The sound of an innocent and lost kiss rang out, and Valentine fled beneath the linden trees.
Morrel listened to the last sounds of her dress brushing the hedges, of her feet crunching the sand, raised his eyes to heaven with an ineffable smile to thank heaven for permitting him to be loved thus, and disappeared in his turn.
The young man went home and waited through the rest of the evening and through the whole of the next day without receiving anything. Finally, it was only the day after next, toward ten in the morning, as he was about to set out for M. Deschamps, notary, that he received by post a little note which he recognized as being Valentine's, though he had never seen her writing.
It was conceived in these terms:
"Tears, supplications, prayers, have done nothing. Yesterday, for two hours, I was at the church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, and for two hours I prayed to God from the bottom of my soul; God is as insensible as men, and the signing of the contract is fixed for this evening, nine o'clock.
"I have but one word as I have but one heart, Morrel, and that word is pledged to you: this heart is yours!
"This evening then, at a quarter to nine, at the gate.
"Your wife, Valentine de Villefort.
P.S. "My poor grandmother goes from bad to worse; yesterday, her excitement became delirium: today her delirium is almost madness.
"You will love me well, will you not, Morrel, to make me forget that I shall have left her in this state?
"I believe they are hiding from grandfather Noirtier that the signing of the contract is to take place this evening."
Morrel did not confine himself to the information Valentine gave him; he went to the notary's, who confirmed to him the news that the signing of the contract was for nine o'clock in the evening.
Then he passed by Monte Cristo's; it was there again that he learned the most: Franz had come to announce this solemnity to him; for her part, Mme de Villefort had written to the count to beg him to excuse her if she did not invite him; but the death of M. de Saint-Méran and the state in which his widow was threw over this gathering a veil of sadness which she did not wish to darken the count's brow, to whom she wished every kind of happiness.
The evening before, Franz had been presented to Mme de Saint-Méran, who had left her bed for this presentation, and had returned to it immediately after.
Morrel, as is easily understood, was in a state of agitation that could not escape an eye as sharp as the count's was; so Monte Cristo was more affectionate to him than ever; so affectionate, that two or three times Maximilien was on the point of telling him all. But he recalled the formal promise given to Valentine, and his secret remained at the bottom of his heart.
The young man reread Valentine's letter twenty times in the course of the day. It was the first time she had written to him, and on what an occasion! Each time he reread this letter, Maximilien renewed to himself the oath to make Valentine happy. Indeed, what authority has not the young girl who takes so courageous a resolution! what devotion does she not deserve from him to whom she has sacrificed all! How she must truly be for her lover the first and most worthy object of his worship! She is at once queen and woman, and one has not enough of a soul to thank and love her.
Morrel thought with an inexpressible agitation of the moment when Valentine would arrive saying:
"Here I am, Maximilien; take me."
He had organized all this flight; two ladders had been hidden in the lucerne of the enclosure; a cabriolet, which Maximilien himself was to drive, awaited; no servant, no light; at the turning of the first street they would light lanterns, for one must not, by an excess of precautions, fall into the hands of the police.
From time to time shudders passed through Morrel's whole body; he thought of the moment when, from the top of that wall, he would protect Valentine's descent, and when he would feel trembling and abandoned in his arms her whose hand alone he had pressed and whose fingertip alone he had kissed.
But when the afternoon came, when Morrel felt the hour approaching, he felt the need to be alone; his blood boiled, the mere questions, the mere voice of a friend would have irritated him; he shut himself up at home, trying to read; but his gaze slipped over the pages without understanding anything, and he ended by throwing his book aside, to return to drawing, for the second time, his plan, his ladders and his enclosure.
At last the hour approached.
Never does the man truly in love let the clocks pursue their peaceful course; Morrel so tormented his that they ended by marking half past eight at six o'clock. He then told himself it was time to leave, that nine o'clock was indeed the hour of the signing of the contract, but that, according to all probability, Valentine would not wait for that useless signing; accordingly, Morrel, having left the rue Meslay at half past eight by his clock, entered the enclosure as eight o'clock struck at Saint-Philippe-du-Roule.
The horse and the cabriolet were hidden behind a little ruined hovel in which Morrel was accustomed to hide.
Little by little the day fell, and the garden foliage massed itself into great clumps of opaque black.
Then Morrel came out of his hiding place and came to look, his heart palpitating, at the gap in the gate: there was no one yet.
Half past eight struck.
Half an hour passed in waiting; Morrel walked back and forth, then, at ever closer intervals, came to apply his eye to the planks. The garden grew ever darker; but in the darkness one sought in vain the white dress; in the silence one listened uselessly for the sound of steps.
The house visible through the foliage remained somber, and presented none of the characteristics of a house that opens for an event as important as the signing of a marriage contract.
Morrel consulted his watch, which struck a quarter to ten; but almost immediately that same voice of the clock, already heard two or three times, corrected the watch's error by striking half past nine.
It was already half an hour more of waiting than Valentine herself had fixed; she had said nine o'clock, even rather before than after.
It was the most terrible moment for the young man's heart, on which each second fell like a leaden hammer.
The faintest rustle of the leaves, the slightest cry of the wind summoned his ear and brought the sweat to his brow; then, all a-tremble, he secured his ladder and, so as not to lose time, set his foot on the first rung.
Amid these alternations of fear and hope, amid these dilations and contractions of the heart, ten o'clock struck at the church.
"Oh!" murmured Maximilien in terror, "it is impossible that the signing of a contract should last so long, unless unforeseen events have occurred; I have weighed all the chances, calculated the time all the formalities take, something has happened."
And then, now he walked agitated before the gate, now he came back to press his burning brow against the icy iron. Had Valentine fainted after the contract, or had Valentine been stopped in her flight? Those were the only two hypotheses on which the young man could dwell, both despairing.
The idea he settled on was that in the midst of her very flight strength had failed Valentine, and that she had fallen fainting in some alley.
"Oh! if it is so," he cried, springing to the top of the ladder, "I should lose her, and through my fault!"
The demon who had whispered this thought to him left him no more, and buzzed in his ear with that persistence whereby certain doubts, after a moment, by force of reasoning become convictions. His eyes, which sought to pierce the growing darkness, believed they glimpsed, beneath the dark alley, a prostrate object; Morrel ventured so far as to call out, and it seemed to him that the wind bore to him an inarticulate plaint.
At last the half hour struck in its turn; it was impossible to confine oneself longer, everything was supposable; Maximilien's temples beat strongly, clouds passed before his eyes; he straddled the wall and jumped to the other side.
He was at Villefort's, he had just entered by scaling the wall; he thought of the consequences such an action might have, but he had not come so far to draw back.
In an instant he was at the end of the thicket. From the point he had reached one overlooked the house.
Then Morrel assured himself of a thing he had already suspected in trying to slip his gaze through the trees: that instead of the lights which he thought to see shining at every window, as is natural on ceremonial days, he saw nothing but the gray mass still veiled by a great curtain of shadow cast by an immense cloud spread over the moon.
A light ran from time to time as if bewildered, and passed before three windows of the first floor. Those three windows were those of Mme de Saint-Méran's apartment.
Another light remained motionless behind red curtains. Those curtains were those of Mme de Villefort's bedroom.
Morrel guessed all this. So many times, to follow Valentine in thought at every hour of the day, so many times, we say, had he had the plan of this house made for him, that, without having seen it, he knew it.
The young man was even more terrified by this obscurity and this silence than he had been by Valentine's absence.
Distracted, mad with grief, resolved to brave all to see Valentine again and assure himself of the misfortune he foresaw, whatever it might be, Morrel gained the edge of the thicket, and was about to cross as rapidly as possible the completely open parterre, when a sound of voices still rather distant, but which the wind brought to him, reached his ears.
At this noise, he stepped back, already half out of the foliage, he plunged completely into it and remained motionless and mute, buried in his darkness.
His resolution was taken: if it were Valentine alone, he would warn her by a word as she passed; if Valentine were accompanied, he would at least see her and assure himself that no misfortune had befallen her; if they were strangers, he would seize a few words of their conversation and arrive at understanding this mystery, incomprehensible until then.
The moon then came out of the cloud that hid it, and, on the door of the perron, Morrel saw Villefort appear, followed by a man dressed in black. They descended the steps and advanced toward the thicket. They had not taken four steps before, in that man dressed in black, Morrel had recognized Dr. d'Avrigny.
The young man, seeing them come toward him, recoiled mechanically before them until he met the trunk of a sycamore which formed the center of the thicket; there he was forced to stop.
Soon the sand ceased to crunch under the walkers' steps.
"Ah! dear doctor," said the King's attorney, "here is Heaven which is decidedly declaring itself against my house. What a horrible death! what a thunderbolt! Do not try to console me; alas! the wound is too keen and too deep! Dead, dead!"
A cold sweat froze the young man's brow and made his teeth chatter. Who then was dead in that house which Villefort himself called accursed?
"My dear M. de Villefort," answered the physician with an accent that redoubled the young man's terror, "I have not brought you here to console you, quite the contrary."
"What do you mean?" asked the King's attorney, frightened.
"I mean that behind the misfortune which has just befallen you, there is another perhaps even greater."
"Oh! my God!" murmured Villefort, joining his hands, "what are you going to tell me yet?"
"Are we quite alone, my friend?"
"Oh! yes, quite alone. But what do all these precautions mean?"
"They mean that I have a terrible confidence to impart to you," said the doctor; "let us sit down."
Villefort fell rather than sat on a bench. The doctor remained standing before him, a hand resting on his shoulder. Morrel, frozen with fright, held his brow with one hand, with the other compressed his heart, whose beating he feared might be heard.
"Dead, dead!" he repeated in his thought with the voice of his heart.
And he himself felt himself dying.
"Speak, doctor, I listen," said Villefort; "strike, I am prepared for all."
"Mme de Saint-Méran was very old indeed, but she enjoyed excellent health."
Morrel breathed for the first time in ten minutes.
"Grief killed her," said Villefort, "yes, grief, doctor! This habit of living for forty years near the marquis!..."
"It is not grief, my dear Villefort," said the doctor. "Grief can kill, though cases are rare, but it does not kill in a day, but it does not kill in an hour, but it does not kill in ten minutes."
Villefort answered nothing; only he raised the head he had kept lowered until then, and looked at the doctor with frightened eyes.
"You remained there during the agony?" asked M. d'Avrigny.
"Certainly," answered the King's attorney; "you told me in a low voice not to go far."
"Did you notice the symptoms of the illness to which Mme de Saint-Méran succumbed?"
"Certainly; Mme de Saint-Méran had three successive attacks at a few minutes from one another, and each time closer and more grave. When you arrived, for some minutes already Mme de Saint-Méran was gasping; she then had a crisis which I took for a simple nervous attack; but I did not begin really to be frightened until I saw her raise herself on her bed, her limbs and neck stretched. Then, from your face, I understood the thing was graver than I thought. The crisis past, I sought your eyes, but I did not meet them. You held the pulse, you counted the beats, and the second crisis appeared, you had not yet turned back to my side. This second crisis was more terrible than the first: the same nervous movements reproduced themselves, and the mouth contracted and became violet.
"At the third she expired.
"Already, since the end of the first, I had recognized tetanus; you confirmed me in this opinion."
"Yes, before everyone," resumed the doctor; "but now we are alone."
"What are you going to tell me, my God?"
"That the symptoms of tetanus and of poisoning by vegetable matters are absolutely the same."
M. de Villefort rose to his feet; then, after an instant of immobility and silence, he fell back on his bench.
"Oh! my God! doctor," said he, "do you well consider what you are telling me there?"
Morrel did not know if he was dreaming or waking.
"Listen," said the doctor, "I know the importance of my declaration and the character of the man to whom I make it.
"Is it to the magistrate or to the friend that you speak?" asked Villefort.
"To the friend, to the friend alone at this moment; the relations between the symptoms of tetanus and the symptoms of poisoning by vegetable substances are so identical, that if I had to sign what I say there, I declare to you I should hesitate. Also, I repeat to you, it is not to the magistrate that I address myself, it is to the friend. Well, to the friend I say: During the three quarters of an hour it lasted, I studied the agony, the convulsions, the death of Mme de Saint-Méran; well, in my conviction, not only did Mme de Saint-Méran die poisoned, but further I would say, yes, I would say what poison killed her.
"Sir! sir!"
"All is there, you see: drowsiness interrupted by nervous crises, overexcitement of the brain, torpor of the centers. Mme de Saint-Méran succumbed to a violent dose of brucine or strychnine, which by chance no doubt, which perhaps by error, was administered to her."
Villefort seized the doctor's hand.
"Oh! it is impossible!" said he; "I dream, my God! I dream! It is frightful to hear such things said to a man like you! In the name of Heaven, I beseech you, dear doctor, tell me you may be mistaken!"
"Doubtless, I may be, but...."
"But?..."
"But, I do not believe it."
"Doctor, take pity on me; for some days such unheard-of things have been happening to me, that I believe in the possibility of going mad."
"Has anyone but me seen Mme de Saint-Méran?"
"No one."
"Has any prescription been sent to the chemist which was not submitted to me?"
"None."
"Had Mme de Saint-Méran any enemies?"
"I know none for her."
"Had anyone interest in her death?"
"But no, my God! but no; my daughter is her only heiress, Valentine alone.... Oh! if such a thought could come to me, I would stab myself to punish my heart for having been able for a single instant to shelter such a thought."
"Oh!" cried M. d'Avrigny in his turn, "dear friend, God forbid that I accuse anyone, I speak only of an accident, do you understand well, of an error. But accident or error, the fact is there which speaks low to my conscience, and which wills that my conscience speak aloud to you. Inform yourself."
"Whom of? how? of what?"
"Let us see: Barrois, the old servant, would he not have been mistaken, and would he not have given Mme de Saint-Méran some potion prepared for his master?"
"For my father?"
"Yes."
"But how can a potion prepared for M. Noirtier poison Mme de Saint-Méran?"
"Nothing simpler: you know that in certain illnesses poisons become a remedy; paralysis is one of those illnesses. For about three months, after having tried everything to restore movement and speech to M. Noirtier, I decided to attempt a last means; for about three months, I say, I have been treating him with brucine; thus, in the last potion I ordered for him there entered six centigrams; six centigrams without action on the paralyzed organs of M. Noirtier, to whom moreover he has accustomed himself by successive doses, six centigrams suffice to kill anyone but him."
"My dear doctor, there is no communication between M. Noirtier's apartment and that of Mme de Saint-Méran, and never did Barrois enter my mother-in-law's. Finally, shall I tell you, doctor, though I know you for the most skillful man and above all the most conscientious in the world, though in every circumstance your word is for me a torch that guides me equally with the light of the sun, well! doctor, well! I need, despite this conviction, to lean on this axiom, errare humanum est."
"Listen, Villefort," said the doctor, "is there one of my colleagues in whom you have as much confidence as in me?"
"Why that, say? where do you mean to come out?"
"Call him, I shall tell him what I have seen, what I have noticed, we shall perform the autopsy."
"And you will find traces of poison?"
"No, not of the poison, I did not say that, but we shall establish the exasperation of the nervous system, we shall recognize the patent, incontestable asphyxia, and we shall say to you: Dear Villefort, if it is through negligence that the thing happened, watch over your servants; if it is through hate, watch over your enemies."
"Oh! my God! what are you proposing to me there, d'Avrigny?" answered Villefort, cast down; "from the moment there is another than you in the secret, an inquiry will become necessary, and an inquiry in my house, impossible! Yet," continued the King's attorney, recovering himself and looking at the physician with uneasiness, "yet if you wish it, if you absolutely require it, I shall do it. Indeed, perhaps I ought to follow up this affair; my character commands it me. But doctor, you see me already penetrated with sadness: to introduce into my house so much scandal after so much grief! Oh! my wife and my daughter will die of it; and I, I, doctor, you know it, a man does not arrive where I have arrived, a man has not been King's attorney for twenty-five years without having amassed a good number of enemies; mine are numerous. This affair noised abroad will be for them a triumph which will make them thrill with joy, and will cover me with shame. Doctor, pardon me these worldly ideas. If you were a priest, I should not dare tell you that; but you are a man, but you know other men; doctor, doctor, you have told me nothing, have you not?"
"My dear M. de Villefort," answered the doctor, moved, "my first duty is humanity. I should have saved Mme de Saint-Méran if science had had the power to do so, but she is dead, I owe myself to the living. Let us bury in the deepest of our hearts this terrible secret. I shall permit, if some eyes open upon this, that my ignorance be charged with the silence I shall have kept. However, sir, seek still, seek actively, for perhaps this will not stop there.... And when you have found the guilty, if you find him, it is I who shall say to you: You are a magistrate, do as you will!"
"Oh! thanks, thanks, doctor!" said Villefort with an unutterable joy; "I have never had a better friend than you."
And as if he had feared that Dr. d'Avrigny might go back on this concession, he rose and drew the doctor toward the house.
They moved away.
Morrel, as if he needed to breathe, drew his head from the thicket, and the moon lit this face so pale that one might have taken it for a phantom.
"God protects me in a manifest but terrible manner," said he. "But Valentine, Valentine! poor friend! will she resist so many sorrows?"
Saying these words he looked alternately at the window with red curtains and the three windows with white curtains.
The light had almost completely disappeared from the window with red curtains. No doubt Mme de Villefort had just extinguished her lamp, and the night-light alone sent its reflection to the panes.
At the end of the building, on the contrary, he saw one of the three windows with white curtains open. A candle placed on the chimney threw abroad a few rays of its pale light, and a shadow came for an instant to lean on the balcony.
Morrel shuddered; it seemed to him he had heard a sob.
It was not astonishing that this soul ordinarily so courageous and so strong, now troubled and exalted by the two strongest of human passions, love and fear, should have weakened to the point of submitting to superstitious hallucinations.
Though it was impossible, hidden as he was, that Valentine's eye should distinguish him, he believed himself called by the shadow of the window; his troubled spirit told him so, his ardent heart repeated it to him. This double error became an irresistible reality, and, by one of those incomprehensible impulses of youth, he bounded from his hiding place, and in two strides, at the risk of being seen, at the risk of frightening Valentine, at the risk of giving the alarm by some involuntary cry escaping the young girl, he crossed that parterre which the moon made broad and white like a lake, and, gaining the row of orange tubs which extended before the house, he reached the perron steps, which he mounted rapidly, and pushed the door, which opened without resistance before him.
Valentine had not seen him; her eyes raised to heaven followed a silver cloud gliding over the azure, and whose form was that of a shade mounting to heaven; her poetic and exalted spirit told her it was her grandmother's soul.
Meanwhile, Morrel had crossed the antechamber and found the banister of the stair; carpets spread on the steps deadened his step; moreover Morrel had arrived at that point of exaltation that the presence of M. de Villefort himself would not have frightened him. If M. de Villefort had presented himself to his view, his resolution was taken: he approached him and confessed all, praying him to excuse and approve this love which united him to his daughter, and his daughter to him; Morrel was mad.
Happily he saw no one.
It was then above all that this knowledge he had acquired through Valentine of the interior plan of the house served him; he arrived without accident at the top of the stair, and as, arrived there, he oriented himself, a sob whose expression he recognized indicated to him the path he had to follow; he turned; a half-open door let reach him the reflection of a light and the sound of the lamenting voice. He pushed this door and entered.
At the bottom of an alcove, under the white cloth which covered her head and traced her form, lay the dead woman, more frightful still to Morrel's eyes since the revelation of the secret of which chance had made him possessor.
Beside the bed, on her knees, her head buried in the cushions of a large armchair, Valentine, trembling and lifted by sobs, extended above her head, which was not seen, her two joined and rigid hands.
She had left the window, left open, and prayed aloud with accents that would have touched the most insensible heart, the word escaped her lips, rapid, incoherent, unintelligible, so tightly did grief clasp her throat with its burning grasp.
The moon, sliding through the opening of the shutters, paled the gleam of the candle, and azured with its funereal tints this picture of desolation.
Morrel could not resist this spectacle; he was not of exemplary piety, he was not easily impressed, but Valentine suffering, weeping, writhing her arms before his eyes, was more than he could bear in silence. He uttered a sigh, murmured a name, and the head drowned in tears and marbled on the velvet of the armchair, a head of a Magdalen by Correggio, rose and remained turned toward him.
Valentine saw him and testified no astonishment. There are no longer intermediate emotions in a heart swollen by a supreme despair.
Morrel stretched his hand to his friend. Valentine, by way of excuse for not having come to him, showed him the corpse lying under the funeral cloth and began to sob again.
Neither one nor the other dared speak in this chamber. Each hesitated to break this silence which Death seemed to command standing in some corner and finger on lips.
At last Valentine dared first.
"Friend," said she, "how are you here? Alas! I should say to you: welcome, if it were not Death who had opened the door of this house to you."
"Valentine," said Morrel in a trembling voice and with joined hands, "I have been there since half past eight; I saw you not come, anxiety seized me, I jumped over the wall, I penetrated into the garden; then voices conversing of the fatal accident...."
"What voices?" said Valentine.
Morrel shuddered, for the whole conversation of the doctor and M. de Villefort came back to his mind, and, through the cloth, he thought he saw those twisted arms, that stiffened neck, those violet lips.
"The voices of your servants," said he, "told me all."
"But to come thus far is to ruin us, my friend," said Valentine, without fear and without anger.
"Pardon me," answered Morrel in the same tone, "I am going to withdraw."
"No," said Valentine, "you would be met, stay."
"But if someone came?"
The young girl shook her head.
"No one will come," said she; "be at ease, there is our safeguard."
And she showed the form of the corpse molded by the cloth.
"But what has happened to M. d'Épinay? tell me, I beg you," resumed Morrel.
"M. Franz arrived to sign the contract at the moment when my good grandmother was breathing her last."
"Alas!" said Morrel with a feeling of selfish joy, for he thought to himself that this death indefinitely delayed Valentine's marriage.
"But what redoubles my grief," continued the young girl, as if this feeling were to receive its punishment at once, "is that this poor dear grandmother, dying, ordered that the marriage be concluded as soon as possible; she too, my God! believing to protect me, she too acted against me."
"Listen!" said Morrel.
The two young people fell silent.
They heard the door open, and steps creaked the parquet of the corridor and the stairs.
"It is my father leaving his study," said Valentine.
"And seeing the doctor out," added Morrel.
"How do you know it is the doctor?" asked Valentine, astonished.
"I presume it," said Morrel.
Valentine looked at the young man.
Meanwhile, they heard the street door close. M. de Villefort went moreover to turn a key in that of the garden, then he remounted the stair.
Arrived in the antechamber, he stopped an instant, as if he hesitated whether he should enter his own rooms or Mme de Saint-Méran's. Morrel threw himself behind a curtain. Valentine made no movement; one would have said a supreme grief placed her above ordinary fears.
M. de Villefort went into his own rooms.
"Now," said Valentine, "you can no longer go out either by the garden door or by the street door."
Morrel looked at the young girl with astonishment.
"Now," said she, "there is but one permitted and sure issue, that of my grandfather's apartment."
She rose.
"Come," said she.
"Where?" asked Maximilien.
"To my grandfather's."
"I, at M. Noirtier's?"
"Yes."
"Do you think of it, Valentine?"
"I think of it, and have for a long time. I have no one left in the world but this friend, and we both have need of him.... Come."
"Take care, Valentine," said Morrel, hesitating to do what the young girl ordered him; "take care, the bandage has fallen from my eyes: in coming here, I committed an act of madness. Have you yourself all your reason, dear friend?"
"Yes," said Valentine; "and I have no scruple in the world, save to leave alone the remains of my poor grandmother, which I had charged myself to watch."
"Valentine," said Morrel, "death is sacred in itself."
"Yes," answered the young girl; "besides it will be short, come."
Valentine crossed the corridor and descended a little stair which led to Noirtier's. Morrel followed her on tiptoe. Arrived on the landing of the apartment, they found the old servant.
"Barrois," said Valentine, "close the door and let no one enter."
She passed first.
Noirtier, still in his armchair, attentive to the slightest noise, informed by his old servant of all that passed, fixed eager looks on the entrance of the chamber; he saw Valentine, and his eye shone.
There was in the young girl's bearing and attitude something grave and solemn which struck the old man. Also, from shining as it did, his eye became interrogative.
"Dear father," said she in a brief voice, "listen well to me: you know that good grandmother Saint-Méran died an hour ago, and that now, except you, I have no one left who loves me in the world?"
An expression of infinite tenderness passed into the old man's eyes.
"It is then to you alone, is it not, that I must confide my griefs or my hopes?"
The paralytic made sign that yes.
Valentine took Maximilien by the hand.
"Then," said she to him, "look well at the gentleman."
The old man fixed his scrutinizing and slightly astonished eye on Morrel.
"This is M. Maximilien Morrel," said she, "the son of that merchant of Marseilles of whom you have no doubt heard speak?"
"Yes," said the old man.
"It is an irreproachable name, which Maximilien is making glorious, for, at thirty, he is captain of spahis, officer of the Legion of Honor."
The old man signified that he recalled it.
"Well, good papa," said Valentine, kneeling before the old man and showing Maximilien with one hand, "I love him and shall belong to none but him! If I am forced to marry another, I shall let myself die or I shall kill myself."
The paralytic's eyes expressed a whole world of tumultuous thoughts.
"You love M. Maximilien Morrel, do you not, good papa?" asked the young girl.
"Yes," said the old man, motionless.
"And you can well protect us, who are also your children, against my father's will?"
Noirtier attached his intelligent gaze on Morrel, as if to say to him:
"That depends."
Maximilien understood.
"Mademoiselle," said he, "you have a sacred duty to fulfill in your grandmother's chamber; will you permit me to have the honor of conversing an instant with M. Noirtier?"
"Yes, yes, that is it," said the old man's eye.
Then he looked at Valentine with uneasiness.
"How he will manage to understand you, do you mean, good father?"
"Yes."
"Oh! be at ease; we have so often spoken of you, that he knows well how I speak to you."
Then, turning toward Maximilien with an adorable smile, though that smile was veiled by a deep sadness:
"He knows all that I know," said she.
Valentine rose, drew a chair for Morrel, recommended to Barrois to let no one enter; and after having tenderly kissed her grandfather and sadly said farewell to Morrel, she departed. Then Morrel, to prove to Noirtier that he had Valentine's confidence and knew all their secrets, took the dictionary, the pen and the paper, and placed all on a table where there was a lamp.
"But first," said Morrel, "permit me, sir, to tell you who I am, how I love Mlle Valentine, and what my designs are toward her."
"I listen," said Noirtier.
It was a rather imposing spectacle, this old man, apparently a useless burden, and who had become the sole protector, the sole support, the sole judge of two lovers young, beautiful, strong, and entering into life.
His face, stamped with a remarkable nobility and austerity, imposed on Morrel, who began his account trembling.
He then related how he had known, how he had loved Valentine, and how Valentine, in her isolation and her misfortune, had welcomed the offer of his devotion. He told him what were his birth, his position, his fortune; and more than once, when he questioned the paralytic's gaze, that gaze answered him:
"It is well, continue."
"Now," said Morrel when he had finished this first part of his account, "now that I have told you, sir, my love and my hopes, should I tell you our plans?"
"Yes," said the old man.
"Well, this is what we had resolved."
And then he told Noirtier everything: how a cabriolet awaited in the enclosure, how he counted on carrying off Valentine, taking her to his sister's, marrying her, and in a respectful waiting hoping for M. de Villefort's pardon.
"No," said Noirtier.
"No?" resumed Morrel, "it is not thus that it must be done?"
"No."
"Thus this plan has not your assent?"
"No."
"Well, there is another means," said Morrel.
The old man's interrogative gaze asked:
"Which?"
"I shall go," continued Maximilien, "I shall go find M. Franz d'Épinay, I am happy to be able to tell you that in Mlle de Villefort's absence, and I shall conduct myself with him in a manner to force him to be a gentleman."
The old man's gaze continued to interrogate.
"What I shall do?
"Yes."
"Here it is. I shall go to him, as I was telling you, I shall tell him the ties that unite me to Mlle Valentine; if he is a delicate man, he will prove his delicacy by renouncing of his own accord the hand of his betrothed, and my friendship and my devotion are from this hour acquired to him unto death; if he refuses, whether interest drives him, or a ridiculous pride makes him persist, after having proved to him that he would constrain my wife, that Valentine loves me and can love no other than me, I shall fight with him, giving him every advantage, and I shall kill him or he shall kill me; if I kill him, he will not marry Valentine; if he kills me, I shall be quite sure that Valentine will not marry him."
Noirtier considered with an ineffable pleasure this noble and sincere physiognomy on which were painted all the sentiments his tongue expressed, adding thereto by the expression of a handsome face all that color adds to a solid and true design.
However, when Morrel had finished speaking, Noirtier closed his eyes several times, which was, as we know, his manner of saying no.
"No?" said Morrel. "Thus you disapprove this second plan, as you had already disapproved the first?"
"Yes, I disapprove it," said the old man.
"But what to do then, sir?" asked Morrel. "The last words of Mme de Saint-Méran were that her granddaughter's marriage should not be delayed: am I to let things accomplish themselves?"
Noirtier remained motionless.
"Yes, I understand," said Morrel, "I must wait."
"Yes."
"But all delay will ruin us, sir," resumed the young man. "Alone, Valentine is without strength, and they will constrain her like a child. Entered here miraculously to know what passes therein, admitted miraculously before you, I cannot reasonably hope that these good chances will renew themselves. Believe me, there is but one or the other of the two courses I propose to you, pardon this vanity in my youth, which is the right one; tell me which of the two you prefer: do you authorize Mlle Valentine to trust herself to my honor?"
"No."
"Do you prefer that I go find M. d'Épinay?"
"No."
"But, my God! from whom shall come the help we await from Heaven?"
The old man smiled with his eyes as he was accustomed to smile when one spoke to him of heaven. There had remained always a little atheism in the old Jacobin's ideas.
"From chance?" resumed Morrel.
"No."
"From you?"
"Yes."
"From you?"
"Yes," repeated the old man.
"You understand well what I ask you, sir? Excuse my insistence, for my life is in your answer: our salvation shall come from you?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure of it?"
"Yes."
"You answer for it?"
"Yes."
And there was in the gaze which gave this affirmation such a firmness, that there was no means of doubting the will, if not the power.
"Oh! thanks, sir, thanks a hundred times! But how, unless a miracle of the Lord restore to you speech, gesture, movement, how will you, you chained in that armchair, you mute and immobile, how will you oppose this marriage?"
A smile lit the old man's face, a strange smile of the eyes on an immobile face.
"Thus, I must wait?" asked the young man.
"Yes. But the contract?"
The same smile reappeared.
"Do you then mean to tell me it will not be signed?"
"Yes," said Noirtier.
"Thus the contract will not even be signed!" cried Morrel. "Oh! pardon me, sir! at the announcement of a great happiness, one may well doubt; the contract will not be signed?"
"No," said the paralytic.
Despite this assurance, Morrel hesitated to believe. This promise of an impotent old man was so strange, that instead of coming from a force of will, it might emanate from a weakening of the organs; is it not natural that the madman who ignores his madness pretends to realize things beyond his power? The weak speaks of burdens he lifts, the timid of giants he faces, the poor of treasures he handles, the humblest peasant, to the account of his pride, calls himself Jupiter.
Whether Noirtier had understood the young man's indecision, or whether he did not fully trust the docility he had shown, he looked at him fixedly.
"What do you wish, sir?" asked Morrel; "that I renew to you my promise to do nothing?"
Noirtier's gaze remained fixed and firm, as if to say a promise was not enough for him; then it passed from the face to the hand.
"Do you wish me to swear, sir?" asked Maximilien.
"Yes," said the paralytic with the same solemnity, "I wish it."
Morrel understood that the old man attached great importance to this oath.
He stretched out his hand.
"Upon my honor," said he, "I swear to you to wait for what you shall have decided before acting against M. d'Épinay."
"Good," said the old man's eyes.
"Now, sir," asked Morrel, "do you order that I withdraw?"
"Yes."
"Without seeing Mlle Valentine?"
"Yes."
Morrel signified he was ready to obey.
"Now," continued Morrel, "do you permit me, sir, that your son embrace you as your daughter did just now?"
There was no mistaking the expression of Noirtier's eyes.
The young man placed on the old man's brow his lips at the same spot where the young girl had placed hers.
Then he saluted the old man a second time and went out.
On the square he found the old servant, warned by Valentine; he awaited Morrel, and guided him by the windings of a dark corridor which led to a little door opening on the garden.
Arrived there, Morrel gained the gate, by the hedge, he was in an instant at the top of the wall, and by his ladder in a second, he was in the enclosure at the lucerne, where his cabriolet still awaited him.
He remounted it, and broken by so many emotions, but with a freer heart, he returned toward midnight to the rue Meslay, threw himself on his bed and slept as if plunged in a deep intoxication.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”