XCIII. Valentine.

XCIII

Valentine.

One can guess where Morrel had business and whose house held his appointment.

Thus, upon leaving Monte-Cristo, Morrel made his way slowly toward Villefort's house.

We say slowly: that is because Morrel had more than half an hour to spare for five hundred paces; but, despite this more than sufficient time, he had hastened to leave Monte-Cristo, eager to be alone with his thoughts.

He knew his hour well, the hour at which Valentine, attending Noirtier's breakfast, was certain not to be disturbed in that pious duty. Noirtier and Valentine had granted him two visits per week, and he came to claim his right.

He arrived; Valentine was expecting him. Anxious, almost distraught, she seized his hand and led him before her grandfather.

This anxiety, carried, as we say, almost to distraction, came from the noise Morcerf's adventure had made in the world; it was known (the world always knows) the adventure at the Opera. In Villefort's house, no one doubted that a duel would be the forced consequence of that affair; Valentine, with a woman's instinct, had guessed that Morrel would be Monte-Cristo's witness, and knowing the young man's well-known courage, and the deep friendship she knew he bore the count, she feared he might not have the strength to confine himself to the passive role assigned him.

One understands, then, with what avidity the details were asked, given, and received, and Morrel could read an unspeakable joy in his beloved's eyes when she learned that this terrible affair had an ending no less happy than unexpected.

"Now," said Valentine, motioning Morrel to sit beside the old man and seating herself on the stool where his feet rested, "now, let us speak a little of our own affairs. You know, Maximilien, that good papa had for a moment the idea of leaving the house and taking an apartment away from M. de Villefort's hotel?"

"Yes, certainly," said Maximilien, "I remember that plan, and I even applauded it greatly."

"Well," said Valentine, "applaud again, Maximilien, for good papa is returning to it."

"Bravo!" said Maximilien.

"And do you know," said Valentine, "what reason good papa gives for leaving the house?"

Noirtier looked at his daughter to impose silence with his eye; but Valentine looked not at Noirtier; her eyes, her gaze, her smile, all were for Morrel.

"Oh! whatever reason M. Noirtier gives," cried Morrel, "I declare it is a good one."

"Excellent," said Valentine; "he claims the air of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré is no good for me."

"Indeed," said Morrel; "listen, Valentine, M. Noirtier may well be right; for a fortnight I have found your health declining."

"Yes, a little, it is true," answered Valentine; "so good papa has made himself my doctor, and as good papa knows everything, I have the greatest confidence in him."

"But is it really true that you are suffering, Valentine?" asked Morrel eagerly.

"Oh! my God, it is not what one would call suffering: I feel a general unease, that is all; I have lost my appetite, and it seems to me my stomach is waging a struggle to grow accustomed to something."

Noirtier lost not a word of Valentine's.

"And what is the treatment you follow for this unknown illness?"

"Oh! quite simple," said Valentine; "I swallow every morning a spoonful of the potion they bring for my grandfather; when I say a spoonful, I began with one, and now I am up to four. Good papa claims it is a panacea."

Valentine smiled; but there was something sad and suffering in her smile.

Maximilien, drunk with love, gazed at her in silence; she was very beautiful, but her pallor had taken on a duller tone, her eyes shone with a fiercer fire than usual, and her hands, ordinarily of a pearly white, seemed hands of wax that a yellowish tinge was slowly invading.

From Valentine, the young man turned his eyes to Noirtier; the latter was regarding the young girl, absorbed in her love, with that strange and profound intelligence; but he too, like Morrel, followed these traces of a dull suffering, so little visible moreover that it had escaped every eye except the father's and the lover's.

"But," said Morrel, "this potion you have come to four spoonfuls of, I saw it medicated for M. Noirtier?"

"I know it is very bitter," said Valentine, "so bitter that everything I drink afterward seems to me to have the same taste."

Noirtier looked at his daughter with an interrogative air.

"Yes, good papa," said Valentine, "it is like that. Just now, before coming down to you, I drank a glass of sugared water; well, I left half of it, the water seemed so bitter to me."

Noirtier turned pale, and signaled that he wished to speak.

Valentine rose to fetch the dictionary.

Noirtier followed her with his eyes in visible anguish.

Indeed, the blood rushed to the young girl's head, and her cheeks colored.

"Why!" she cried, losing none of her gaiety, "it is singular: a dizziness! Is it the sun that struck me in the eyes?..."

And she leaned against the window casement.

"There is no sun," said Morrel, even more troubled by the expression on Noirtier's face than by Valentine's indisposition.

And he ran to Valentine.

The young girl smiled.

"Be calm, good father," she said to Noirtier; "be reassured, Maximilien, it is nothing, and it is already past: but, listen! is that not the sound of a carriage I hear in the courtyard?"

She opened Noirtier's door, ran to a window in the corridor, and came back precipitately.

"Yes," she said, "it is Mme Danglars and her daughter coming to visit us. Farewell, I am escaping, for they would come looking for me here; or rather, au revoir, stay near good papa, M. Maximilien, I promise not to keep them long."

Morrel followed her with his eyes, saw her close the door, and heard her mount the little staircase leading both to Mme de Villefort's rooms and her own.

As soon as she had disappeared, Noirtier signaled Morrel to take the dictionary. Morrel obeyed; guided by Valentine, he had quickly grown accustomed to understanding the old man.

However, accustomed as he was, and as it was necessary to run through a part of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, and find each word in the dictionary, it was only at the end of ten minutes that the old man's thought was translated by these words:

"Look for the glass of water and the carafe that are in Valentine's room."

Morrel immediately rang for the servant who had replaced Barrois, and in Noirtier's name gave this order.

The servant returned a moment later.

The carafe and glass were entirely empty.

Noirtier signaled that he wished to speak.

"Why are the glass and carafe empty?" he asked. "Valentine said she drank only half the glass."

The translation of this new request took another five minutes.

"I do not know," said the servant; "but the chambermaid is in Mlle Valentine's apartment: perhaps it was she who emptied them."

"Ask her," said Morrel, translating Noirtier's thought this time by his glance.

The servant went out, and almost immediately returned.

"Mlle Valentine passed through her room to go to Mme de Villefort's," he said; "and, passing, as she was thirsty, she drank what remained in the glass; as for the carafe, M. Édouard emptied it to make a pond for his ducks."

Noirtier raised his eyes to heaven like a gambler who stakes all he possesses on a single throw.

Thenceforth, the old man's eyes fixed upon the door and left that direction no more.

It was, in fact, Mme Danglars and her daughter that Valentine had seen; they had been shown to Mme de Villefort's room, who had said she would receive them there; that is why Valentine had passed through her apartment: her room being on the same floor as her stepmother's, and the two rooms separated only by Édouard's.

The two women entered the salon with that sort of official stiffness that forebodes a communication.

Among people of the same world, a nuance is soon seized. Mme de Villefort answered this solemnity with solemnity.

At that moment Valentine entered, and the curtsies began again.

"Dear friend," said the baroness, while the two young girls took each other's hands, "I came with Eugénie to announce to you first the very near marriage of my daughter with Prince Cavalcanti."

Danglars had maintained the title of prince. The popular banker had found it sounded better than count.

"Then allow me to offer you my sincere congratulations," answered Mme de Villefort. "The Prince Cavalcanti appears a young man full of rare qualities."

"Listen," said the baroness smiling; "if we speak as two friends, I must tell you the prince does not yet seem to us to be what he will be. There is in him a bit of that strangeness which makes us, we French, recognize at first glance an Italian or German gentleman. However, he shows a very good heart, much subtlety of mind, and as for proprieties, M. Danglars claims the fortune is majestic; that is his word."

"And then," said Eugénie, leafing through Mme de Villefort's album, "add, madame, that you have a very particular inclination for this young man."

"And," said Mme de Villefort, "I need not ask if you share this inclination?"

"I!" answered Eugénie with her usual composure, "oh! not in the least, madame; my vocation was not to chain myself to the cares of a household or the caprices of a man, whoever he might be. My vocation was to be an artist and free, consequently, of my heart, my person, and my thought."

Eugénie pronounced these words with so vibrant and firm an accent that the red rose to Valentine's face. The timid young girl could not understand this vigorous nature that seemed to have none of a woman's shyness.

"Besides," she continued, "since I am destined to be married, willing or not, I must thank Providence which has at least procured me the disdain of M. Albert de Morcerf; without this Providence, I would today be the wife of a dishonored man."

"That is true, though," said the baroness with that strange naïveté sometimes found in great ladies, and which vulgar acquaintances cannot make them entirely lose, "that is true, though; without this hesitation of the Morcerfs, my daughter would have married this M. Albert: the general was very set on it, he had even come to force M. Danglars's hand; we had a narrow escape."

"But," said Valentine timidly, "does all this shame of the father fall upon the son? M. Albert seems to me quite innocent of all the general's treacheries."

"Pardon, dear friend," said the implacable young girl; "M. Albert claims and deserves his share: it appears that after having challenged M. de Monte-Cristo at the Opera yesterday, he made him apologies on the field today."

"Impossible!" said Mme de Villefort.

"Ah! dear friend," said Mme Danglars with that same naïveté we have already noted, "the thing is certain; I know it from M. Debray, who was present at the explanation."

Valentine also knew the truth, but she did not answer. Pushed back into her memories by a word, she found herself in thought in Noirtier's room, where Morrel awaited her.

Plunged into this sort of inward contemplation, Valentine had for a moment ceased to take part in the conversation; it would even have been impossible for her to repeat what had been said for some minutes, when suddenly Mme Danglars's hand, leaning on her arm, drew her from her reverie.

"What is it, madame?" said Valentine, starting at the touch of Mme Danglars's fingers, as she would have started at an electric contact.

"It is, my dear Valentine," said the baroness, "that you are suffering, no doubt?"

"I?" said the young girl, passing her hand over her burning brow.

"Yes; look at yourself in that mirror; you have blushed and paled successively three or four times in the space of a minute."

"Indeed," cried Eugénie, "you are very pale!"

"Oh! do not worry, Eugénie; I am like this for some days."

And simple as she was, the young girl understood it was an occasion to leave. Besides, Mme de Villefort came to her aid.

"Withdraw, Valentine," she said; "you are really suffering and these ladies will kindly excuse you; drink a glass of pure water and that will restore you."

Valentine kissed Eugénie, bowed to Mme Danglars already risen to depart, and went out.

"This poor child," said Mme de Villefort when Valentine had disappeared, "she seriously worries me, and I would not be surprised if some grave accident befell her."

Meanwhile Valentine, in a sort of exaltation she did not account for, had crossed Édouard's room without answering some piece of mischief from the child, and by way of her own rooms had reached the little staircase. She had climbed all the steps but the last three; she already heard Morrel's voice, when suddenly a cloud passed before her eyes, her stiffened foot missed the step, her hands no longer had strength to hold the rail, and bruising the partition, she rolled down the last three steps rather than descended them.

Morrel made but one bound; he opened the door, and found Valentine stretched on the landing.

Swift as lightning, he lifted her in his arms and seated her in an armchair. Valentine reopened her eyes.

"Oh! clumsy that I am," she said with a feverish volubility; "I no longer know how to hold myself? I forget there are three steps before the landing!"

"You have hurt yourself perhaps, Valentine?" cried Morrel. "Oh! my God! my God!"

Valentine looked around her: she saw the deepest terror painted in Noirtier's eyes.

"Be calm, good father," she said, trying to smile; "it is nothing, it is nothing... my head turned, that is all."

"Another fainting fit!" said Morrel, joining his hands. "Oh! pay attention to it, Valentine, I beg you."

"But no," said Valentine, "but no, I tell you all is past and it was nothing. Now, let me tell you some news: in eight days Eugénie is to be married, and in three days there is a kind of grand feast, a betrothal meal. We are all invited, my father, Mme de Villefort and I... as I understood at least."

"When shall it be our turn to attend to such details? Oh! Valentine, you who can do so much with our good papa, try to make him answer you: _soon_!"

"So," asked Valentine, "you count on me to spur the slowness and awaken the memory of good papa?"

"Yes," cried Morrel. "My God! my God! make haste. As long as you are not mine, Valentine, it will always seem to me you are about to escape me."

"Oh!" answered Valentine with a convulsive movement, "oh! truly, Maximilien, you are too fearful, for an officer, for a soldier who, they say, never knew fear. Ha! ha! ha!"

And she burst into a strident and painful laugh; her arms stiffened and twisted, her head fell back on the armchair, and she remained motionless.

The cry of terror that God chained to Noirtier's lips sprang from his gaze.

Morrel understood; it was a matter of calling for help.

The young man clung to the bell; the chambermaid who was in Valentine's apartment and the servant who had replaced Barrois ran up simultaneously.

Valentine was so pale, so cold, so lifeless, that, without listening to what was told them, the fear that ever watched in that accursed house seized them, and they rushed through the corridors crying for help.

Mme Danglars and Eugénie were just then leaving; they were still able to learn the cause of all that uproar.

"I told you so!" cried Mme de Villefort. "Poor little one."

“Stories of the world, in your language.”