XCI. La mère et le fils.

XCI

The Mother and the Son.

The Count of Monte Cristo bowed to the five young men with a smile full of melancholy and dignity, and got back into his carriage with Maximilien and Emmanuel.

Albert, Beauchamp, and Château-Renaud remained alone on the field of battle.

The young man fixed upon his two seconds a glance which, without being timid, nevertheless seemed to ask their opinion of what had just taken place.

“Upon my word, my dear friend,” said Beauchamp first, whether because he had more sensibility or because he had less dissimulation, “allow me to congratulate you: here is a most unexpected ending to a very disagreeable affair.”

Albert remained silent and wrapped in his reverie. Château-Renaud contented himself with tapping his boot with his flexible cane.

“Shall we not be going?” he said after this embarrassing silence.

“Whenever you please,” replied Beauchamp; “only let me have time to compliment M. de Morcerf; he has shown today a chevaleresque generosity… so rare!”

“Oh! yes,” said Château-Renaud.

“It is magnificent,” continued Beauchamp, “to be able to preserve such great command over oneself!”

“Assuredly: as for me, I should have been incapable of it,” said Château-Renaud with a most significant coldness.

“Gentlemen,” interrupted Albert, “I believe you have not understood that between M. de Monte Cristo and myself something very grave has occurred…”

“Yes, yes,” said Beauchamp at once, “but all our idlers would not be in a position to understand your heroism, and, sooner or later, you would find yourself forced to explain it to them more energetically than is convenient for the health of your body and the duration of your life. Will you allow me to give you the advice of a friend? Leave for Naples, The Hague, or Saint Petersburg, calm countries where they understand the point of honor better than our hot-headed Parisians. Once there, make plenty of pistol flies, and infinitely many counter-quartes and counter-tierces; render yourself either forgotten enough to return peacefully to France in a few years, or respectable enough, as regards academic exercises, to win your tranquillity. Is it not so, M. de Château-Renaud, that I am right?”

“It is perfectly my opinion,” said the nobleman. “Nothing calls for serious duels like a duel without result.”

“Thank you, gentlemen,” replied Albert with a cold smile; “I shall follow your advice, not because you give it to me, but because it was my intention to leave France. I equally thank you for the service you rendered me in acting as my seconds. It is graven very deeply in my heart, since, after the words I have just heard, I no longer remember anything but that.”

Château-Renaud and Beauchamp looked at each other. The impression was the same on both, and the accent with which Morcerf had just pronounced his thanks was imbued with such resolution, that the position would have become embarrassing for all had the conversation continued.

“Farewell, Albert,” said Beauchamp suddenly, negligently holding out his hand to the young man, without the latter appearing to emerge from his lethargy.

Indeed, he answered nothing to the offer of that hand.

“Farewell,” said Château-Renaud in his turn, keeping his little cane in his left hand, and saluting with his right.

Albert’s lips barely murmured: “Farewell!” His look was more explicit; it contained a whole poem of restrained angers, of proud disdains, of generous indignation.

When his two seconds had got back into the carriage, he kept for some time his immobile and melancholy pose; then suddenly, untying his horse from the small tree around which his servant had fastened the bridle, he lightly sprang into the saddle, and took at a gallop the road to Paris. A quarter of an hour later, he was entering the hotel in the Rue du Helder.

As he dismounted, it seemed to him that, behind the curtain of the count’s bedroom, he caught a glimpse of his father’s pale face; Albert turned away his head with a sigh and went into his little pavilion.

Once there, he cast a last look upon all those riches which had made life so sweet and happy for him since childhood; he looked once more at those pictures, whose figures seemed to smile at him, and whose landscapes appeared to come alive with vivid colors.

Then he removed from its oak frame the portrait of his mother, which he rolled up, leaving empty and black the gold frame that surrounded it.

Then he put in order his beautiful Turkish arms, his fine English rifles, his Japanese porcelains, his mounted cups, his artistic bronzes, signed Feuchères or Barye, visited the wardrobes and placed the keys at each of them; threw into a drawer of his writing desk, which he left open, all the pocket money he had on him, adding to it the thousand fancy jewels that peopled his cups, his cases, his shelves; made an exact and precise inventory of everything, and placed that inventory in the most conspicuous place on a table, after clearing that table of the books and papers that encumbered it.

At the beginning of this work, his servant, despite the order Albert had given him to leave him alone, had entered his room.

“What do you want?” asked Morcerf in an accent more sad than angry.

“Pardon, sir,” said the valet, “you had indeed forbidden me to disturb you, that is true; but the Count de Morcerf has sent for me.”

“Well?” asked Albert.

“I did not wish to go to the count’s without taking your orders, sir.”

“Why is that?”

“Because the count doubtless knows that I accompanied you to the ground.”

“That is probable,” said Albert.

“And if he sends for me, it is doubtless to question me on what passed there. What am I to answer?”

“The truth.”

“Then I shall say that the meeting did not take place!”

“You will say that I apologized to the Count of Monte Cristo. Go.”

The valet bowed and went out.

Albert then returned to his inventory.

As he was finishing this task, the noise of horses stamping in the courtyard and of a carriage’s wheels shaking the windows attracted his attention; he approached the window, and saw his father get into his calash and depart.

Scarcely was the hotel door closed behind the count, than Albert directed his steps toward his mother’s apartments, and as no one was there to announce him, he penetrated as far as Mercédès’s chamber, and, his heart swollen with what he saw and what he guessed, he stopped on the threshold.

As if the same soul had animated those two bodies, Mercédès was doing in her own rooms what Albert had just done in his. Everything was put in order: the laces, the ornaments, the jewels, the linen, the money, were going to be ranged at the bottom of the drawers, whose keys the countess was carefully gathering together.

Albert saw all these preparations; he understood them, and crying: “My mother!” he went to throw his arms around Mercédès’s neck.

The painter who could have rendered the expression of those two faces would certainly have made a beautiful picture.

Indeed, all that apparatus of an energetic resolution which had not frightened Albert for himself frightened him for his mother.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“What were you doing?” she replied.

“Oh, my mother!” cried Albert, moved to the point of being unable to speak, “it is not with you as with me! No, you cannot have resolved what I have decided, for I came to warn you that I say farewell to your house, and… and to you.”

“I too, Albert,” answered Mercédès; “I too am leaving. I had counted, I confess, that my son would accompany me; was I mistaken?”

“My mother,” said Albert with firmness, “I cannot make you share the fate I destine for myself: I must henceforth live without name and without fortune; I must, to begin the apprenticeship of that rough existence, borrow from a friend the bread I shall eat from now until the moment I earn other. Thus, my good mother, I am going this instant to Franz to beg him to lend me the small sum which I have calculated to be necessary for me.”

“You, my poor child!” cried Mercédès; “you suffer misery, suffer hunger! Oh! do not say that, you will break all my resolutions.”

“But not mine, my mother,” answered Albert. “I am young, I am strong, I believe I am brave, and since yesterday I have learned what the will can do. Alas! my mother, there are those who have suffered so much, and who not only have not died but have moreover built a new fortune upon the ruin of all the promises of happiness that heaven had made them, upon the debris of all the hopes that God had given them! I have learned that, my mother, I have seen those men; I know that from the abyss where their enemy had plunged them, they have risen again with such vigor and glory, that they have dominated their former conqueror and precipitated him in his turn. No, my mother, no; I have broken, from today, with the past, and I accept nothing more from it, not even my name, because, you understand, you, do you not, my mother? your son cannot bear the name of a man who must blush before another man!”

“Albert, my child,” said Mercédès, “if I had had a stronger heart, that is the counsel I should have given you; your conscience spoke when my extinguished voice was silent; listen to your conscience, my son. You had friends, Albert, break with them for a time, but do not despair, in your mother’s name! Life is still beautiful at your age, my dear Albert, for you are scarce twenty-two; and as a heart as pure as yours needs a spotless name, take that of my father: he was called Herrera. I know you, my Albert; whatever career you follow, you will in a little while render that name illustrious. Then, my friend, reappear in the world more brilliant still for your past misfortunes; and if it is not to be thus, despite all my presentiments, leave me at least that hope, me who shall have no other thought, me who have no future, and for whom the tomb begins at the threshold of this house.”

“I shall do as you wish, my mother,” said the young man; “yes, I share your hope: the anger of heaven will not pursue us, you so pure, me so innocent. But since we are resolved, let us act promptly. M. de Morcerf left the hotel about half an hour ago; the opportunity, as you see, is favorable for avoiding noise and explanation.”

“I await you, my son,” said Mercédès.

Albert ran at once to the boulevard, whence he brought back a hackney coach which was to convey them out of the hotel; he remembered a certain furnished little house in the Rue des Saints-Pères, where his mother would find a modest but decent lodging; he therefore returned to fetch the countess.

At the moment when the hackney stopped before the door, and as Albert was getting down from it, a man approached him and handed him a letter.

Albert recognized the steward.

“From the count,” said Bertuccio.

Albert took the letter, opened it, read it.

Having read it, he sought Bertuccio with his eyes, but, while the young man read, Bertuccio had disappeared.

Then Albert, tears in his eyes, his breast quite swollen with emotion, went back to Mercédès, and, without uttering a word, presented the letter to her.

Mercédès read:

“Albert,

“In showing you that I have penetrated the project to which you are about to abandon yourself, I believe I also show you that I understand your delicacy. You are free, you are leaving the count’s hotel, and you are going to withdraw your mother to your own home, free as you; but, reflect upon it, Albert, you owe her more than you can pay her, poor noble heart that you are. Keep the struggle for yourself, claim the suffering for yourself, but spare her that first misery which will inevitably accompany your first efforts; for she does not even deserve the reflection of the misfortune that strikes her today, and Providence wills not that the innocent pay for the guilty.

“I know that you are both about to leave the house in the Rue du Helder taking nothing with you. How I learned it, seek not to discover. I know it: that is all.

“Listen, Albert.

“Twenty-four years ago, I was returning right joyous and proud to my country. I had a betrothed, Albert, a holy young girl whom I adored, and I was bringing my betrothed a hundred and fifty louis painfully amassed by unceasing toil. That money was for her, I destined it to her, and knowing how perfidious the sea is, I had buried our treasure in the little garden of the house my father inhabited at Marseille, on the Allées de Meilhan.

“Your mother, Albert, knows well that poor dear house.

“Lately, coming to Paris, I passed through Marseille. I went to see that house of sorrowful memories; and in the evening, a spade in hand, I sounded the corner where I had hidden my treasure. The iron casket was still in the same place, no one had touched it; it is in the angle which a fine fig tree, planted by my father on the day of my birth, covers with its shade.

“Well, Albert, that money which formerly was to aid the life and tranquillity of that woman I adored, behold that today, by a strange and sorrowful chance, it has found the same use. Oh! understand well my thought, I who could offer millions to that poor woman, and who restores to her only the piece of black bread forgotten under my poor roof since the day I was separated from her I loved.

“You are a generous man, Albert, but perhaps you are nevertheless blinded by pride or by resentment; if you refuse me, if you ask of another what I have the right to offer you, I shall say that it is little generous of you to refuse the life of your mother offered by a man whose father your father caused to die in the horrors of hunger and despair.”

This reading finished, Albert remained pale and motionless, awaiting what his mother would decide.

Mercédès raised to heaven a look of ineffable expression.

“I accept,” she said; “he has the right to pay the dowry I shall bring to a convent!”

And, placing the letter on her heart, she took her son’s arm, and with a step firmer than perhaps she herself expected, she took the way of the staircase.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”