LXXXIII. La main de Dieu.

LXXXIII

The Hand of God.

Caderousse continued to cry out in a lamentable voice:

"Monsieur l'abbé, help! help!"

"What is it?" asked Monte Cristo.

"Help me!" repeated Caderousse; "I have been murdered!"

"We are coming! Courage!"

"Ah! it is over. You arrive too late; you arrive to see me die. What blows! so much blood!"

And he fainted.

Ali and his master took up the wounded man and carried him into a room. There, Monte Cristo signed to Ali to undress him, and he recognized the three terrible wounds with which he was afflicted.

"My God!" said he, "thy vengeance is sometimes slow in coming; but I believe that then it descends from heaven only the more complete."

Ali looked at his master as if to ask what was to be done.

"Go and fetch M. Villefort, the king's attorney, who lives in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and bring him here. As you pass, wake the concierge, and tell him to go for a surgeon."

Ali obeyed, and left the false abbé alone with Caderousse, who still lay insensible. When the unhappy man reopened his eyes, the count, seated a few paces from him, was gazing at him with a gloomy expression of pity, and his lips, which moved, seemed to murmur a prayer.

"A surgeon, Monsieur l'abbé, a surgeon!" said Caderousse.

"One has been sent for," replied the abbé.

"I know well that it is useless as regards life, but he may perhaps give me strength, and I wish to have time to make my deposition."

"Upon what?"

"Upon my assassin."

"Then you know him?"

"Know him! yes, I know him; it is Benedetto."

"That young Corsican?"

"Himself."

"Your companion?"

"Yes. After giving me the plan of the count's house, hoping, no doubt, that I should kill him and thus become his heir, or that he should kill me and thus be rid of me, he waited for me in the street and assassinated me."

"At the same time that I sent for the surgeon, I sent for the king's attorney."

"He will arrive too late, he will arrive too late," said Caderousse; "I feel all my blood flowing away."

"Wait," said Monte Cristo.

He went out, and returned five minutes after with a phial.

The eyes of the dying man, frightful in their fixedness, had not, during his absence, quitted the door through which he instinctively divined that help would come to him.

"Make haste, Monsieur l'abbé, make haste!" said he; "I feel that I am fainting again."

Monte Cristo approached, and poured upon the violet lips of the wounded man three or four drops of the liquid contained in the phial.

Caderousse sighed.

"Oh!" said he, "it is life that you are pouring into me; again—again—"

"Two drops more would kill you," replied the abbé.

"Oh! let some one come to whom I can denounce the wretch."

"Will you have me write your deposition? You shall sign it."

"Yes—yes," said Caderousse, whose eyes brightened at the idea of this posthumous vengeance.

Monte Cristo wrote:

"I die assassinated by the Corsican Benedetto, my fellow-prisoner at Toulon, No. 59."

"Make haste! make haste!" said Caderousse; "I could no longer sign."

Monte Cristo presented the pen to Caderousse, who collected his strength, signed, and fell back on his bed, saying:

"You will relate the rest, Monsieur l'abbé; you will say that he calls himself Andrea Cavalcanti, that he lodges at the Hôtel des Princes, that—Ah! ah! my God! my God! see, I am dying!"

And Caderousse fainted for the second time.

The abbé made him inhale the scent of the phial; the wounded man reopened his eyes.

His desire for vengeance had not left him during his swoon.

"Ah! you will tell all that, will you not, Monsieur l'abbé?"

"All that, yes, and many other things besides."

"What will you say?"

"I will say that he had no doubt given you the plan of this house in the hope that the count would kill you. I will say that he had warned the count by a note; I will say that, the count being absent, it was I who received that note and who watched to await you."

"And he will be guillotined, will he not?" said Caderousse; "he will be guillotined, you promise me? I die with that hope; it will help me to die."

"I will say," continued the count, "that he came behind you, that he watched you all the time; that when he saw you come out, he ran to the corner of the wall and hid himself."

"Then you saw all that, did you?"

"Recall my words: 'If you return home safe and sound, I shall believe that God has pardoned you, and I will pardon you too.'"

"And you did not warn me?" cried Caderousse, endeavoring to raise himself on his elbow; "you knew that I was going to be killed on leaving this place, and you did not warn me!"

"No, for in the hand of Benedetto I saw the justice of God, and I should have thought it sacrilege to oppose the intentions of Providence."

"The justice of God! do not speak to me of it, Monsieur l'abbé: if there were a justice of God, you know better than any one that there are people who would be punished and who are not."

"Patience," said the abbé, in a tone that made the dying man shudder; "patience!"

Caderousse looked at him with astonishment.

"And then," said the abbé, "God is full of mercy toward all, as he has been toward thee: he is father before he is judge."

"Ah! then you do believe in God, do you?" said Caderousse.

"If I had the misfortune not to have believed in him until now," said Monte Cristo, "I should believe in him in seeing thee."

Caderousse raised his clenched fists to heaven.

"Listen," said the abbé, extending his hand over the wounded man as if to command him to faith; "this is what he has done for thee, this God whom thou refusest to acknowledge at thy last moment: he gave thee health, strength, a sure employment, friends even, life, in short, such as it should present itself to man to be sweet with the calm of conscience and the satisfaction of natural desires; instead of improving these gifts of the Lord, so rarely bestowed in their fullness, this is what thou hast done, thou: thou hast given thyself up to idleness, to drunkenness, and in drunkenness thou hast betrayed one of thy best friends."

"Help!" cried Caderousse; "I have no need of a priest, but of a surgeon; perhaps I am not wounded to death, perhaps I am not going to die yet, perhaps I may be saved!"

"Thou art so surely wounded to death that, without the three drops of liquid I gave thee just now, thou wouldst have already expired. Then listen!"

"Ah!" murmured Caderousse, "what a strange priest you make, who despair the dying instead of consoling them."

"Listen," continued the abbé: "when thou hadst betrayed thy friend, God began, not to strike thee, but to warn thee; thou didst fall into misery and thou wast hungry; thou hadst come to envy the half of a life which thou mightest have spent in acquiring, and already thou wast thinking of crime, giving thyself the excuse of necessity, when God wrought for thee a miracle, when God, by my hands, sent into the midst of thy misery a fortune, brilliant for thee, unhappy man, who hadst never possessed anything. But this unexpected, unhoped-for, unheard-of fortune no longer sufficed thee from the moment thou didst possess it; thou wouldst double it: by what means? by a murder. Thou didst double it, and then God tore it from thee, leading thee before human justice."

"It was not I," said Caderousse, "who wished to kill the Jew; it was La Carconte."

"Yes," said Monte Cristo; "also God—always, I will not say just this time, for his justice would have given thee death, but God, always merciful, permitted that thy judges should be touched by thy words and should leave thee life."

"By Jove! to send me to the galleys for life: a fine mercy!"

"That mercy, wretch! thou didst nevertheless regard as mercy when it was granted thee; thy coward heart, which trembled before death, bounded with joy at the announcement of perpetual shame, for thou saidst to thyself, as all convicts say: 'There is a door to the galleys, there is none to the tomb.' And thou wast right, for that door of the galleys opened for thee in an unhoped-for manner: an Englishman visits Toulon, he had made a vow to draw two men from infamy: his choice falls upon thee and thy companion; a second fortune descends for thee from heaven, thou findest again at once money and tranquillity, thou canst begin to live the life of all men, thou who hadst been condemned to live that of the convicts; then, wretch, then thou dost tempt God a third time. 'I have not enough,' sayest thou, when thou hadst more than thou hadst ever possessed, and thou committest a third crime, without reason, without excuse. God grew weary. God hath punished thee."

Caderousse was visibly growing weaker.

"To drink," said he; "I am thirsty—I burn!"

Monte Cristo gave him a glass of water.

"Scoundrel Benedetto," said Caderousse, returning the glass; "he will escape, nevertheless, he!"

"No one shall escape; it is I who tell thee, Caderousse—Benedetto shall be punished!"

"Then you shall be punished too," said Caderousse; "for you did not do your duty as a priest—you ought to have prevented Benedetto from killing me."

"I!" said the count, with a smile that froze the dying man with terror; "I prevent Benedetto from killing thee, at the moment when thou hadst just broken thy knife against the coat of mail that covered my breast!—Yes, perhaps if I had found thee humble and repentant, I had prevented Benedetto from killing thee, but I found thee proud and bloodthirsty, and I let the will of God be accomplished!"

"I do not believe in God!" howled Caderousse; "thou dost not believe in him either—thou liest—thou liest!"

"Be silent," said the abbé; "for thou art making the last drops of thy blood spring from thy body.—Ah! thou believest not in God, and thou diest stricken by God!—Ah! thou believest not in God, and God, who nevertheless asks but a prayer, a word, a tear to forgive—God, who could have directed the assassin's dagger so that thou shouldst expire on the instant—God gave thee a quarter of an hour to repent. Then look into thyself, unhappy man, and repent!"

"No," said Caderousse; "no, I do not repent; there is no God, there is no Providence, there is only chance."

"There is a Providence, there is a God," said Monte Cristo; "and the proof is, that thou liest there, in despair, denying God, and that I stand before thee, rich, happy, safe and sound, and joining my hands before the God whom thou triest not to believe in, and in whom nevertheless thou believest in the depths of thy heart."

"But who then are you?" asked Caderousse, fixing his dying eyes upon the count.

"Look well at me," said Monte Cristo, taking the candle and bringing it near his face.

"Well, the abbé—the abbé Busoni—"

Monte Cristo removed the wig that disfigured him, and let fall the beautiful black hair which framed so harmoniously his pale face.

"Oh!" said Caderousse, terrified; "if it were not for that black hair, I should say you were the Englishman, I should say you were Lord Wilmore."

"I am neither the abbé Busoni nor Lord Wilmore," said Monte Cristo; "look better, look further, look into thy earliest recollections."

There was in that word of the count a magnetic vibration by which the exhausted senses of the wretch were revived for the last time.

"Oh! indeed," said he, "it seems to me that I have seen you, that I have known you formerly."

"Yes, Caderousse, yes, thou hast seen me, yes, thou hast known me."

"But who then are you, and why, if you have seen me, if you have known me, why do you let me die?"

"Because nothing can save thee, Caderousse, because thy wounds are mortal. If thou couldst have been saved, I should have seen there a last mercy of the Lord, and I would have—I swear it by the tomb of my father—again tried to restore thee to life and to repentance."

"By the tomb of thy father!" said Caderousse, revived by a supreme spark, and raising himself to see more closely the man who had just made him that oath sacred to all men: "Eh! who then art thou?"

The count had not ceased to follow the progress of the agony. He understood that this impulse of life was the last; he approached the dying man, and, covering him with a look at once calm and sad:

"I am—" said he in his ear; "I am—"

And his lips, scarcely opened, gave passage to a name pronounced so low that the count seemed to fear to hear it himself.

Caderousse, who had raised himself on his knees, stretched out his arms, made an effort to recoil, then, joining his hands and raising them with a supreme exertion:

"O my God, my God!" said he, "pardon me for having denied thee; thou dost indeed exist, thou art indeed the father of men in heaven and the judge of men upon earth. My God, Lord, I have long misknown thee! my God, Lord, forgive me! my God, Lord, receive me!"

And Caderousse, closing his eyes, fell backward with a last cry and a last sigh.

The blood instantly ceased to flow from the lips of his wide wounds.

He was dead.

"One!" said the count mysteriously, his eyes fixed upon the corpse already disfigured by that horrible death.

Ten minutes after, the surgeon and the king's attorney arrived, brought, the one by the concierge, the other by Ali, and were received by the abbé Busoni, who was praying by the dead.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”