XCIV. L'aveu.

XCIV

The Confession.

At that same instant, the voice of M. de Villefort was heard, crying from his study:

“What is it?”

Morrel glanced at Noirtier, who had just recovered all his composure, and with a look indicated to him the study into which, on a somewhat similar occasion once before, he had taken refuge.

He had only just time to take his hat and fling himself into it, breathless. The steps of the King’s attorney were heard in the corridor.

Villefort rushed into the room, ran to Valentine, and took her in his arms.

“A doctor! a doctor!… M. d’Avrigny!” cried Villefort, “or rather, I will go myself.”

And he dashed out of the apartment.

By the other door Morrel sprang out.

He had just been struck to the heart by a terrible recollection: that conversation between Villefort and the doctor, which he had overheard on the night Madame de Saint-Méran died, came back to his memory; those symptoms, carried to a less frightful degree, were the same that had preceded the death of Barrois.

At the same time it had seemed to him that he heard Monte-Cristo’s voice ringing in his ear, the voice that had said to him, scarcely two hours before:

“Whatever you may have need of, Morrel, come to me, I can do much.”

Swifter than thought, he sprang from the Faubourg Saint-Honoré into the Rue Matignon, and from the Rue Matignon into the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

Meanwhile M. de Villefort arrived, in a hired cabriolet, at the door of M. d’Avrigny; he rang with such violence that the concierge came to open it with a frightened air. Villefort rushed up the stairs without the strength to say a word. The concierge knew him and let him pass, crying only:

“In his study, Monsieur the King’s attorney, in his study!”

Villefort was already pushing, or rather forcing, open the door.

“Ah!” said the doctor, “it is you!”

“Yes,” said Villefort, closing the door behind him; “yes, doctor, it is I who come in my turn to ask you if we are indeed alone. Doctor, my house is an accursed house!”

“What!” said the latter, cold in appearance, but with deep inward emotion, “have you another sick person?”

“Yes, doctor!” cried Villefort, seizing a handful of his hair with convulsive hand, “yes!”

D’Avrigny’s look signified: “I warned you of it.”

Then his lips slowly accentuated these words:

“Who then is to die in your house, and what new victim is to accuse us of weakness before God?”

A painful sob burst from Villefort’s heart; he approached the doctor, and seizing him by the arm:

“Valentine!” said he; “it is Valentine’s turn!”

“Your daughter!” cried d’Avrigny, seized with grief and surprise.

“You see that you were mistaken,” murmured the magistrate; “come and see her, and on her bed of suffering ask her pardon for having suspected her.”

“Each time you warned me,” said M. d’Avrigny, “it was too late: no matter, I will go; but let us make haste, sir, with the enemies that strike in your house there is no time to lose.”

“Oh! this time, doctor, you will no longer reproach me with weakness. This time, I shall know the assassin and I shall strike.”

“Let us try to save the victim before thinking of vengeance,” said d’Avrigny. “Come.”

And the cabriolet that had brought Villefort bore him back at a brisk trot, accompanied by d’Avrigny, at the very moment when, on his side, Morrel was knocking at Monte-Cristo’s door.

The count was in his study, and, much preoccupied, was reading a note that Bertuccio had just sent him in haste.

On hearing Morrel announced, who had left him scarcely two hours before, the count raised his head.

For him, as for the count, much had no doubt passed during those two hours, for the young man, who had left him with a smile on his lips, returned with a face full of trouble.

He rose and sprang forward to meet Morrel.

“What is the matter, Maximilien?” he asked him; “you are pale, and your brow is streaming with sweat.”

Morrel fell rather than sat down in an armchair.

“Yes,” said he, “I came quickly, I had need to speak with you.”

“Is everyone well in your family?” asked the count, with a tone of affectionate kindness whose sincerity none could have mistaken.

“Thanks, count, thanks,” said the young man, visibly embarrassed to begin the conversation; “yes, in my family everyone is well.”

“So much the better; yet you have something to tell me?” resumed the count, more and more uneasy.

“Yes,” said Morrel, “it is true; I have just left a house where death had just entered, to run to you.”

“Are you then come from M. de Morcerf’s?” asked Monte-Cristo.

“No,” said Morrel; “has someone died at M. de Morcerf’s?”

“The general has just blown his brains out,” answered Monte-Cristo.

“Oh! the dreadful misfortune!” cried Maximilien.

“Not for the countess, not for Albert,” said Monte-Cristo; “better a father and husband dead than a father and husband dishonored; the blood will wash away the shame.”

“Poor countess!” said Maximilien; “it is she whom I pity above all, so noble a woman!”

“Pity Albert also, Maximilien; for, believe me, he is the worthy son of the countess. But let us return to you: you were hurrying to me, you told me; should I have the happiness that you stood in need of me?”

“Yes, I have need of you, that is to say, I believed like a madman that you could bring me aid in a circumstance where God alone can aid me.”

“Speak on,” replied Monte-Cristo.

“Oh!” said Morrel, “I know not indeed if I am permitted to reveal such a secret to human ears; but fate drives me to it, necessity constrains me to it, count.”

Morrel stopped, hesitating.

“Do you believe that I love you?” said Monte-Cristo, taking the young man’s hand affectionately between his own.

“Oh! you encourage me, and then something tells me here” (Morrel laid his hand on his heart) “that I ought to have no secret from you.”

“You are right, Morrel, it is God who speaks to your heart, and it is your heart that speaks to you. Tell me again what your heart says to you.”

“Count, will you permit me to send Baptistin to ask in your name for news of someone you know?”

“I have placed myself at your disposal, still more so my servants.”

“Oh! it is that I shall not live until I have certainty that she is better.”

“Shall I ring for Baptistin?”

“No, I will speak to him myself.”

Morrel went out, called Baptistin, and whispered a few words to him. The valet departed at a run.

“Well, is it done?” asked Monte-Cristo, seeing Morrel reappear.

“Yes, and I shall be a little more tranquil.”

“You know that I am waiting,” said Monte-Cristo, smiling.

“Yes, and I, I speak. Listen: one evening I found myself in a garden; I was hidden by a clump of trees, no one suspected I could be there. Two persons passed near me; allow me provisionally to conceal their names, they were talking in low voices, and yet I had such interest in hearing their words that I lost not one of what they said.

“That promises gloomily, if I may judge by your pallor and your shudder, Morrel.”

“Oh yes! most gloomily, my friend! Someone had just died in the house of the master of the garden where I was; one of the two persons whose conversation I overheard was the master of that garden, and the other was the doctor. Now, the first was confiding his fears and his griefs to the second; for it was the second time in a month that death had fallen, rapid and unforeseen, upon that house, which might be thought designated by some exterminating angel to the wrath of God.

“Ah! ah!” said Monte-Cristo, fixing his eyes steadily on the young man, and turning his armchair by an imperceptible movement so as to place himself in the shadow, while the light struck full on Maximilien’s face.

“Yes,” continued the latter, “death had entered twice into that house in a month.”

“And what did the doctor answer?” asked Monte-Cristo.

“He answered… he answered that this death was not natural, and that it must be attributed…”

“To what?”

“To poison!”

“Indeed!” said Monte-Cristo, with that slight cough which, in moments of supreme emotion, served him to disguise either his flush, or his pallor, or even the attention with which he listened; “indeed, Maximilien, you overheard such things as those?”

“Yes, dear count, I overheard them, and the doctor added that, if such an event were renewed, he should consider himself obliged to appeal to justice.”

Monte-Cristo listened, or appeared to listen, with the greatest calm.

“Well,” said Maximilien, “death has struck a third time, and neither the master of the house nor the doctor has said anything; death is about to strike a fourth time, perhaps. Count, to what do you think the knowledge of this secret binds me?”

“My dear friend,” said Monte-Cristo, “you seem to me to be telling an adventure that each of us knows by heart. The house where you overheard that, I know it, or at least I know one like it; a house where there is a garden, a head of a family, a doctor, a house where there have been three strange and unexpected deaths. Well! look at me, who intercepted no confidence and yet know all that as well as you, do I have scruples of conscience? No, it is no concern of mine. You say that an exterminating angel seems to designate that house to the anger of the Lord; well, who tells you that your supposition is not a reality? Do not see the things that those who have interest in seeing them will not see. If it is justice and not the wrath of God that walks in that house, Maximilien, turn your head away and let the justice of God pass.”

Morrel shuddered. There was something at once gloomy, solemn, and terrible in the count’s accent.

“Besides,” he continued, with so marked a change of voice that one would have said these last words did not come from the same man, “besides, who tells you that it will begin again?”

“It is beginning again, count!” cried Morrel; “and that is why I hasten to you.”

“Well, what would you have me do there, Morrel? Would you, by chance, that I should warn Monsieur the King’s attorney?”

Monte-Cristo articulated these last words with such clearness and with so vibrating an accent, that Morrel, rising suddenly, cried:

“Count! Count! You know of whom I speak, do you not?”

“Why, perfectly, my good friend, and I am going to prove it to you by dotting the i’s, or rather by putting names to the men. You were walking one evening in M. de Villefort’s garden; from what you have told me, I presume it was the evening of Madame de Saint-Méran’s death. You heard M. de Villefort talking with M. d’Avrigny of the death of M. de Saint-Méran and of that no less astonishing of the marchioness. M. d’Avrigny said that he believed in a poisoning, and even in two poisonings; and there you are, you paragon of honest men, you have been since that moment occupied in feeling your heart, in sounding your conscience to know whether you ought to reveal this secret or keep it. We are no longer in the Middle Ages, dear friend, and there is no longer a Vehme, there are no longer free judges; what the devil would you ask of those people? Conscience, what wouldst thou of me? as Sterne says. Eh! my dear fellow, let them sleep if they sleep, let them grow pale in their sleeplessness, and, for the love of God, sleep you, who have no remorse to keep you from sleeping.”

A frightful grief painted itself on Morrel’s features; he seized Monte-Cristo’s hand.

“But it is beginning again! I tell you.”

“Well,” said the count, astonished at this insistence which he could not understand, and looking attentively at Maximilien, “let it begin again: it is a family of Atreus; God has condemned them, and they will undergo the sentence; they are all about to disappear like those monks children make with folded cards, and who fall one after another under the breath of their creator, were there two hundred of them. It was M. de Saint-Méran three months ago, it was Madame de Saint-Méran two months ago; it was Barrois the other day; today it is old Noirtier or young Valentine.”

“You knew it?” cried Morrel in such a paroxysm of terror that Monte-Cristo trembled, he whom the fall of the sky would have found impassive; “you knew it and said nothing!”

“Eh! what is it to me?” resumed Monte-Cristo, shrugging his shoulders; “do I know those people, and must I lose one to save the other? Upon my word, no, for, between the guilty and the victim, I have no preference.”

“But I, but I!” cried Morrel, howling with grief; “I love her!”

“Whom do you love?” cried Monte-Cristo, bounding to his feet and seizing the two hands that Morrel raised, writhing, toward heaven.

“I love distractedly, I love like a madman, I love like a man who would give all his blood to spare her a tear; I love Valentine de Villefort, who is being assassinated at this moment, do you understand me well! I love her, and I ask of God and of you how I may save her!”

Monte-Cristo uttered a savage cry such as only those can conceive who have heard the roar of the wounded lion.

“Wretched man!” he cried, wringing his hands in his turn; “wretched man! you love Valentine! you love that daughter of an accursed race!”

Never had Morrel seen such an expression; never had so terrible an eye flamed before his face, never had the genius of terror, which he had so often seen appear, whether on battlefields or in the murderous nights of Algeria, shaken around him fires more sinister.

He drew back in horror.

As for Monte-Cristo, after this outburst and this noise, he closed his eyes for a moment, as if dazzled by inward lightnings: during that moment he collected himself with such power, that one saw by degrees subside the undulating movement of his breast swollen with tempests, as after the cloud one sees the turbulent and foaming waves melt under the sun.

This silence, this self-collection, this struggle, lasted about twenty seconds.

Then the count raised his pale brow.

“See,” he said in an altered voice, “see, dear friend, how God knows how to punish with their indifference the most boastful and coldest of men before the terrible spectacles he gives them. I who looked on, impassive and curious spectator, I who watched the development of this gloomy tragedy, I who, like the evil angel, laughed at the evil men do, sheltered behind secrecy (and secrecy is easy to keep for the rich and powerful), behold! in my turn I feel myself bitten by that serpent whose tortuous course I watched, and bitten to the heart!”

Morrel uttered a hollow groan.

“Come, come,” continued the count, “enough of complaining thus; be a man, be strong, be full of hope, for I am here, for I watch over you.”

Morrel sadly shook his head.

“I tell you to hope! do you understand me?” cried Monte-Cristo. “Know well that I never lie, that I never deceive myself. It is noon, Maximilien, render thanks to heaven that you came at noon instead of coming this evening, instead of coming tomorrow morning. Listen then to what I am going to tell you, Morrel: it is noon; if Valentine is not dead at this hour, she will not die.”

“Oh! my God! my God!” cried Morrel, “I who left her dying!”

Monte-Cristo pressed a hand to his brow.

What passed in that head so heavy with frightful secrets?

What said to that spirit, implacable and human at once, the luminous angel or the angel of darkness?

God alone knows!

Monte-Cristo raised his brow once more, and this time he was calm as the child that awakes.

“Maximilien,” said he, “return quietly home; I command you to make not a step, to attempt no move, to let float upon your face not the shadow of a care; I will give you news; go.”

“My God! my God!” said Morrel, “you frighten me, count, with that coldness. Can you then do aught against death? Are you more than a man? Are you an angel? Are you a God?”

And the young man, whom no danger had made recoil a step, recoiled before Monte-Cristo, seized with an unspeakable terror.

But Monte-Cristo looked at him with a smile at once so melancholy and so sweet, that Maximilien felt the tears start to his eyes.

“I can much, my friend,” answered the count. “Go; I need to be alone.”

Morrel, subdued by that prodigious ascendancy which Monte-Cristo exercised over all around him, did not even try to withdraw from it. He pressed the count’s hand and went out.

Only, at the door, he stopped to wait for Baptistin, whom he had seen appear at the corner of the Rue Matignon, and who was returning at a run.

Meanwhile, Villefort and d’Avrigny had made haste. On their return, Valentine was still fainting, and the doctor had examined the patient with the care the circumstance commanded and with a depth doubled by his knowledge of the secret.

Villefort, hanging on his look and on his lips, awaited the result of the examination. Noirtier, paler than the young girl, more eager for a solution than Villefort himself, awaited also, and in him all became intelligence and sensibility.

At length d’Avrigny let fall slowly:

“She still lives.”

“Still!” cried Villefort, “oh! doctor, what a terrible word you have pronounced there!”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “I repeat my phrase: she still lives, and I am much surprised at it.”

“But she is saved?” asked the father.

“Yes, since she lives.”

At this moment d’Avrigny’s glance met Noirtier’s eye; it sparkled with so extraordinary a joy, with a thought so rich and fertile, that the doctor was struck by it.

He let the young girl fall back into the armchair, whose lips were scarcely traced, so pale and white were they, in unison with the rest of the face, and remained motionless, looking at Noirtier, by whom every movement of the doctor was awaited and commented on.

“Sir,” then said d’Avrigny to Villefort, “call Mademoiselle Valentine’s maid, if you please.”

Villefort left the head of his daughter, which he was supporting, and ran himself to call the maid.

As soon as Villefort had closed the door, d’Avrigny approached Noirtier.

“You have something to tell me?” he asked.

The old man winked expressively; it was, it will be remembered, the only affirmative sign at his disposal.

“To me alone?”

“Yes,” said Noirtier.

“Good, I will remain with you.”

At this moment Villefort re-entered, followed by the maid; behind the maid walked Madame de Villefort.

“But what has this dear child done?” she cried; “she left my room and complained much of being unwell, but I had not thought it serious.”

And the young woman, tears in her eyes, and with all the marks of affection of a true mother, approached Valentine, whose hand she took.

D’Avrigny continued to look at Noirtier; he saw the old man’s eyes dilate and round, his cheeks grow livid and tremble; sweat pearled on his brow.

“Ah!” he said involuntarily, following the direction of Noirtier’s gaze, that is to say, fixing his eyes on Madame de Villefort, who repeated:

“This poor child will be better in her bed. Come, Fanny, we will put her to bed.”

M. d’Avrigny, who saw in this proposal a means of remaining alone with Noirtier, signified with a nod that it was indeed the best thing to do, but he forbade that she should take anything in the world but what he should order.

They carried off Valentine, who had returned to consciousness, but who was incapable of acting and almost of speaking, so broken were her limbs by the shock she had just experienced. Yet she had strength to salute with a glance her grandfather, from whom it seemed as if they were tearing his soul in carrying her away.

D’Avrigny followed the patient, finished his prescriptions, ordered Villefort to take a cabriolet, to go in person to the chemist’s to have the ordered potions prepared before him, to bring them back himself, and to await him in his daughter’s room.

Then, after renewing the injunction to let Valentine take nothing, he went down again to Noirtier, carefully closed the doors, and, having assured himself that no one was listening:

“Come,” said he, “you know something of this illness of your granddaughter?”

“Yes,” said the old man.

“Listen, we have no time to lose, I am going to question you and you will answer me.”

Noirtier signified that he was ready to answer.

“Did you foresee the accident that happened to Valentine today?”

“Yes.”

D’Avrigny reflected an instant, then drew near Noirtier:

“Pardon me for what I am about to say,” he added, “but no indication must be neglected in the terrible situation we are in. You saw poor Barrois die?”

Noirtier raised his eyes to heaven.

“Do you know of what he died?” asked d’Avrigny, laying his hand on Noirtier’s shoulder.

“Yes,” answered the old man.

“Do you think his death was natural?”

Something like a smile sketched itself on Noirtier’s inert lips.

“Then the idea that Barrois had been poisoned came to you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that the poison of which he was the victim was intended for him?”

“No.”

“Now do you think it is the same hand that struck Barrois, in wishing to strike another, that strikes Valentine today?”

“Yes.”

“She is then to succumb also?” asked d’Avrigny, fixing his deep gaze on Noirtier.

And he awaited the effect of this phrase on the old man.

“No,” he replied, with an air of triumph that might have baffled all the conjectures of the most skilful diviner.

“Then you hope?” said d’Avrigny with surprise.

“Yes.”

“What do you hope?”

The old man made it understood with his eyes that he could not answer.

“Ah! yes, it is true,” murmured d’Avrigny.

Then, returning to Noirtier:

“You hope,” said he, “that the assassin will weary?”

“No.”

“Then, you hope that the poison will have no effect on Valentine?”

“Yes.”

“For I tell you nothing new, do I, in telling you that they have just tried to poison her?”

The old man signified with his eyes that he retained no doubt on that head.

“Then, how do you hope that Valentine will escape?”

Noirtier kept his eyes obstinately fixed in the same direction; d’Avrigny followed the direction of his eyes, and saw that they were fastened on a bottle containing the potion that was brought to him every morning.

“Ah! ah!” said d’Avrigny, struck with a sudden idea, “would you have had the idea…”

Noirtier let him not finish.

“Yes,” said he.

“Of guarding her against poison…”

“Yes.”

“By gradually accustoming her…”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Noirtier, enchanted to be understood.

“Indeed, you heard me say that there entered some brucine into the potions I give you?”

“Yes.”

“And by accustoming her to this poison, you wished to neutralize the effects of a poison?”

Same triumphant joy of Noirtier.

“And you have succeeded indeed!” cried d’Avrigny. “Without this precaution, Valentine was killed today, killed without possible help, killed without mercy; the shock has been violent, but she has only been shaken, and this time at least Valentine will not die.”

A superhuman joy lit up the old man’s eyes, raised to heaven with an expression of infinite gratitude.

At this moment Villefort re-entered.

“See, doctor,” said he, “here is what you asked for.”

“This potion was prepared before you?”

“Yes,” answered the King’s attorney.

“It has not left your hands?”

“No.”

D’Avrigny took the bottle, poured a few drops of the draught it contained into the hollow of his hand, and swallowed them.

“Good,” said he; “let us go up to Valentine, I will there give my instructions to everyone, and you will yourself watch, Monsieur de Villefort, that no one departs from them.”

At the moment when d’Avrigny re-entered Valentine’s room, accompanied by Villefort, an Italian priest, of severe gait, of calm and decided speech, was hiring for his use the house adjoining the hotel occupied by M. de Villefort.

It could not be known by virtue of what transaction the three tenants of that house moved out two hours later: but the report that ran generally through the quarter was that the house was not solidly seated on its foundations and threatened ruin; which did not prevent the new tenant from establishing himself there with his modest furniture the same day, toward five o’clock.

This lease was made for three, six, or nine years by the new tenant, who, according to the custom established by proprietors, paid six months in advance; this new tenant, who, as we have said, was Italian, was he called Signor Giacomo Busoni.

Workmen were immediately sent for, and that very night the rare belated passers-by at the top of the faubourg saw with surprise the carpenters and masons occupied in underpinning the tottering house.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”