XCVI. Le contrat.

XCVI

The Contract.

Three days after the scene we have just related, that is to say, toward five o'clock in the afternoon of the day fixed for the signing of the contract between Mademoiselle Eugénie Danglars and Andrea Cavalcanti, the banker having obstinately persisted in calling him prince, a fresh breeze was making all the leaves of the little garden in front of the Count of Monte Cristo's house tremble, at the moment when the latter was preparing to go out, and while his horses awaited him, stamping their feet, held in by the coachman's hand, who had already been seated on the box for a quarter of an hour, the elegant phaeton with which we have already made acquaintance several times, and notably on the evening at Auteuil, came rapidly rounding the corner of the entrance gate, and rather flung than set down at the steps of the perron Mr. Andrea Cavalcanti, as gilded, as radiant as if, on his side, he were on the point of marrying a princess.

He inquired after the count's health with that familiarity which was habitual to him, and, lightly climbing to the first floor, met the count himself at the head of the staircase.

At the sight of the young man, the count stopped. As for Andrea Cavalcanti, he was launched, and when launched, nothing stopped him.

"Ah! good day, dear Monsieur de Monte Cristo," said he to the count.

"Ah! Monsieur Andrea!" said the latter, in his half-railing voice, "how are you?"

"Admirably, as you see. I come to talk with you of a thousand things; but first, were you going out or coming in?"

"I was going out, sir."

"Then, not to delay you, I will, if you please, mount into your carriage, and Tom shall follow us, driving my phaeton in tow."

"No," said the count, with an imperceptible smile of contempt, who did not care to be seen in the young man's company; "no, I prefer to give you audience here, dear Monsieur Andrea; one talks better in a room, and there is no coachman to catch your words on the wing."

The count therefore re-entered a small salon forming part of the first floor, sat down, and, crossing his legs one over the other, made sign to the young man to seat himself in turn.

Andrea assumed his most beaming air.

"You know, dear count," said he, "that the ceremony takes place this evening; at nine o'clock the contract is signed at the father-in-law's."

"Ah! indeed?" said Monte Cristo.

"What! is it news I am telling you? and had you not been advised of this solemnity by M. Danglars?"

"Yes, indeed," said the count, "I received a letter from him yesterday; but I do not think the hour was indicated in it."

"That is possible; the father-in-law will have reckoned on public notoriety."

"Well," said Monte Cristo, "there you are happy, Monsieur Cavalcanti; it is a most suitable alliance that you are contracting there; and then, Mademoiselle Danglars is pretty."

"But yes," answered Cavalcanti, in a tone full of modesty.

"She is especially very rich, as I believe at least," said Monte Cristo.

"Very rich, you think?" repeated the young man.

"Doubtless; they say that M. Danglars conceals at least half his fortune."

"And he admits fifteen or twenty millions," said Andrea, with a glance sparkling with joy.

"Not to mention," added Monte Cristo, "that he is on the eve of entering into a kind of speculation already somewhat worn out in the United States and in England, but quite new in France."

"Yes, yes, I know what you mean: the railroad of which he has just obtained the contract, is it not?"

"Exactly! he will gain at least, so all think, at least ten millions in this affair."

"Ten millions! you think? it is magnificent," said Cavalcanti, who was getting drunk on this metallic sound of golden words.

"Not to mention," resumed Monte Cristo, "that all this fortune will come to you, and that is but justice, since Mademoiselle Danglars is an only daughter. Besides, your own fortune, your father told me at least, is almost equal to that of your betrothed. But let us leave money matters a little. Do you know, Monsieur Andrea, that you have conducted this whole affair with singular lightness and skill!"

"But not badly, not badly," said the young man; "I was born to be a diplomat."

"Well, they will make you enter the diplomacy; diplomacy, you know, is not learned; it is a thing of instinct... The heart is then taken?"

"In truth, I fear so," answered Andrea in the tone in which he had seen at the Théâtre-Français Dorante or Valère answer Alceste.

"Are you a little loved?"

"It must be," said Andrea, with a victorious smile, "since I am being married. But however, let us not forget a great point."

"Which?"

"It is that I was singularly helped in all this."

"Bah!"

"Certainly."

"By circumstances?"

"No, by you."

"By me? Come, prince," said Monte Cristo, laying stress with affectation on the title, "what could I have done for you? Was not your name, your social position, and your merit enough?"

"No," said Andrea, "no; say what you will, Monsieur le Comte, I maintain, for my part, that the position of a man such as you has done more than my name, my social position, and my merit."

"You are completely mistaken, sir," said Monte Cristo, who felt the perfidious address of the young man, and who understood the drift of his words; "my protection was only accorded you after knowledge taken of the influence and fortune of your father; for, after all, who procured me, who had never seen you, nor the illustrious author of your days, the happiness of your acquaintance? It was two of my good friends, Lord Wilmore and the Abbé Busoni. Who encouraged me, not to be your security, but to patronize you? It is the name of your father, so well known and so honored in Italy; personally, I do not know you."

This calm, this perfect ease, made Andrea understand that he was for the moment gripped by a hand more muscular than his own, and that the grip could not be easily broken.

"Ah, but," said he, "my father then really has a very great fortune, Monsieur le Comte?"

"He appears to have, sir," answered Monte Cristo.

"Do you know if the dowry he promised me has arrived?"

"I have received the letter advising me of it."

"But the three millions?"

"The three millions are on the way, in all probability."

"I shall really touch them then?"

"Why, bless me!" resumed the count, "it seems to me that hitherto, sir, money has not failed you!"

Andrea was so surprised that he could not help dreaming for a moment.

"Then," said he, coming out of his reverie, "it remains for me, sir, to address a request to you, and that one you will understand, even should it be disagreeable to you."

"Speak," said Monte Cristo.

"I have, thanks to my fortune, entered into relation with many distinguished people, and I have even, for the moment at least, a host of friends. But in marrying as I do, in face of all Parisian society, I must be supported by an illustrious name, and failing the paternal hand, it is a powerful hand that must lead me to the altar; now, my father is not coming to Paris, is he?"

"He is old, covered with wounds, and he suffers, he says, unto death, every time he travels."

"I understand. Well, I come to make a request of you."

"Of me?"

"Yes, of you."

"And what is it? Good heavens!"

"Why, it is to replace him."

"Ah! my dear sir! what! after the numerous relations I have had the happiness to have with you, you know me so little as to make such a request?"

"Ask me half a million to borrow, and, though such a loan is rather rare, on my word of honor! you would be less embarrassing. Know then, I thought I had already told you, that in his participation, moral especially, in the things of this world, the Count of Monte Cristo has never ceased to bring the scruples, I would say more, the superstitions of a man of the East.

"I, who have a harem at Cairo, one at Smyrna, and one at Constantinople, preside at a marriage! never."

"So you refuse me?"

"Flatly; and were you my son, were you my brother, I would refuse you likewise."

"Ah! upon my word!" cried Andrea, disappointed, "but how to manage then?"

"You have a hundred friends, you said so yourself."

"Granted, but it was you who presented me at M. Danglars's."

"Not at all! Let us re-establish facts in all their truth: it was I who made you dine with him at Auteuil, and it is you who presented yourself; the devil! it is quite different."

"Yes, but my marriage: you aided..."

"I! in nothing, I beg you to believe it; but recall what I answered you when you came to beg me to make the request: Oh! I never make marriages, I, my dear prince, it is a fixed principle with me."

Andrea bit his lips.

"But at last," said he, "you will be there at least?"

"All Paris will be there?"

"Oh! certainly."

"Well, I shall be there like all Paris," said the count.

"You will sign the contract?"

"Oh! I see no objection to it, and my scruples do not go so far."

"Finally, since you will not grant me more, I must content myself with what you give me. But one last word, count."

"By all means."

"A piece of advice."

"Beware; a piece of advice is worse than a service."

"Oh! this one you may give me without compromising yourself."

"Say on."

"My wife's dowry is five hundred thousand livres."

"It is the sum M. Danglars announced to me myself."

"Ought I to receive it or leave it in the notary's hands?"

"Here is, generally, how things pass when one wishes them to pass gallantly: your two notaries make an appointment at the contract for the next day or the day after; the next day or the day after, they exchange the two dowries, for which they mutually give receipt, then, the marriage celebrated, they place the millions at your disposal, as head of the community."

"It is that," said Andrea, with a certain ill-dissembled uneasiness, "I thought I had heard my father-in-law say he had the intention of investing our funds in that famous railroad affair you were speaking to me of just now."

"Well, but," resumed Monte Cristo, "it is, as all the world asserts, a means for your capital to be tripled in the year. Baron Danglars is a good father and knows how to count."

"Come then," said Andrea, "all goes well, save your refusal, however, which pierces my heart."

"Attribute it only to scruples very natural in such a circumstance."

"Come," said Andrea, "let it then be done as you wish; till this evening, nine o'clock."

"Till this evening."

And despite a slight resistance from Monte Cristo, whose lips grew pale, but who nevertheless preserved his ceremonial smile, Andrea seized the count's hand, pressed it, sprang into his phaeton, and disappeared.

The four or five hours that remained to him until nine o'clock, Andrea employed in drives, in visits intended to interest those friends of whom he had spoken, to appear at the banker's with all the luxury of their equipages, dazzling them by those promises of shares which, since, have turned all heads, and of which Danglars, at that moment, had the initiative.

In fact, at half-past eight in the evening, the great salon of Danglars, the gallery adjoining that salon, and the three other salons of the floor were full of a perfumed crowd attracted very little by sympathy, but much by that irresistible need of being where one knows there is something new.

An academician would say that the evenings of the world are collections of flowers which attract inconstant butterflies, famished bees, and humming hornets.

It goes without saying that the salons were resplendent with candles, the light rolled in floods from the gold moldings upon the silk hangings, and all the bad taste of that furniture, which had only wealth to recommend it, shone with all its splendor.

Mademoiselle Eugénie was dressed with the most elegant simplicity: a white silk gown brocaded with white, a white rose half lost in her jet-black hair, composed all her adornment, which was enriched by no smallest jewel.

Only one could read in her eyes that perfect assurance destined to give the lie to what that candid toilet had of vulgarly virginal in her own eyes.

Madame Danglars, thirty paces from her, was talking with Debray, Beauchamp, and Château-Renaud. Debray had made his re-entry into that house for this great solemnity, but like everybody else and with no particular privilege.

M. Danglars, surrounded by deputies, men of finance, was explaining a theory of new contributions which he counted on putting in practice when the force of circumstances should have constrained the government to call him to the ministry.

Andrea, holding under his arm one of the smartest dandies of the Opera, was explaining to him, rather impertinently, as he needed to be bold to appear at ease, his projects of future life, and the progress of luxury he counted on making the Parisian fashion attain with his hundred and seventy-five thousand livres of income.

The general crowd rolled in those salons like a flux and reflux of turquoises, rubies, emeralds, opals, and diamonds.

As everywhere, it was remarked that it was the oldest women who were the most adorned, and the ugliest who showed themselves with the most obstinacy.

If there were some fair white lily, some suave and perfumed rose, it must be sought and discovered hidden in some corner by a turbaned mother, or by a bird-of-paradise aunt.

Every instant, amid that throng, that humming, those laughs, the voice of the ushers launched a known name in finance, respected in the army, or illustrious in letters; then a faint movement of the groups greeted that name.

But for one who had the privilege of making that ocean of human waves tremble, how many passed greeted by the indifference or the sneer of disdain!

At the moment when the hand of the massive clock, of the clock representing the sleeping Endymion, marked nine o'clock upon a gold dial, and when the bell, faithful reproducer of the mechanical thought, sounded nine times, the name of the Count of Monte Cristo sounded in its turn, and, as pushed by the electric flame, the whole assembly turned toward the door.

The count was dressed in black and with his habitual simplicity; his white waistcoat outlined his vast and noble chest; his black collar seemed of a singular freshness, so much did it stand out upon the manly pallor of his complexion; for all jewel, he wore a waistcoat chain so fine that scarcely did the thin thread of gold show upon the white quilting.

Instantly a circle was made around the door.

The count, with a single glance, perceived Madame Danglars at one end of the salon, M. Danglars at the other, and Mademoiselle Eugénie before him.

He approached first the baroness, who was talking with Madame de Villefort, who had come alone, Valentine being still indisposed; and without deviating, so much did the way open before him, he passed from the baroness to Eugénie, whom he complimented in terms so rapid and so reserved that the proud artiste was struck by it.

Near her was Mademoiselle Louise d'Armilly, who thanked the count for the letters of recommendation he had so graciously given her for Italy, and which she counted, she told him, on making use of forthwith.

In leaving these ladies, he turned and found himself near Danglars, who had approached to give him his hand.

These three social duties accomplished, Monte Cristo stopped, casting around him that assured look imprinted with that expression peculiar to people of a certain world and above all of a certain reach, a look which seems to say:

"I have done what I ought; now let others do what they owe me."

Andrea, who was in an adjoining salon, felt that sort of shudder which Monte Cristo had impressed upon the crowd, and he ran up to salute the count.

He found him completely surrounded; they disputed for his words, as always happens for those who speak little and never say a word without value.

The notaries entered at that moment, and came to install their scrawled placards upon the gold-embroidered velvet which covered the table prepared for the signature, a table of gilded wood.

One of the notaries sat down, the other remained standing.

They were about to proceed to the reading of the contract which half Paris, present at this solemnity, was to sign.

Each took place, or rather the women made a circle, while the men, more indifferent to the spot of the _energetic style_, as Boileau says, made their comments on the febrile agitation of Andrea, on the attention of M. Danglars, on the impassibility of Eugénie, and on the brisk and gay manner in which the baroness treated this important affair.

The contract was read amid a profound silence. But, as soon as the reading was finished, the murmur recommenced in the salons, double what it was before: those brilliant sums, those millions rolling in the future of the two young people and which came to complete the exposition that had been made, in a chamber exclusively consecrated to that object, of the bride's trousseau and the young woman's diamonds, had resounded with all their prestige in the jealous assembly.

The charms of Mademoiselle Danglars were doubled in the eyes of the young men, and for the moment they eclipsed the splendor of the sun.

As for the women, it goes without saying that, while envying those millions, they did not believe themselves in need of them to be beautiful.

Andrea, pressed by his friends, complimented, adulated, beginning to believe in the reality of the dream he was making, Andrea was on the point of losing his head.

The notary solemnly took the pen, raised it above his head, and said:

"Gentlemen, the contract is about to be signed."

The baron was to sign first, then the proxy of M. Cavalcanti senior, then the baroness, then the future spouses, as it is called in that abominable style which prevails on stamped paper.

The baron took the pen and signed, then the proxy.

The baroness approached, on the arm of Madame de Villefort.

"My friend," said she, taking the pen, "is it not a desperate thing? An unexpected incident, arising in that assassination and robbery affair of which the Count of Monte Cristo nearly was the victim, deprives us of having M. de Villefort."

"Oh! my God!" said Danglars, in the same tone he would have said: My faith, the thing is quite indifferent to me!

"My God!" said Monte Cristo, approaching, "I am much afraid of being the involuntary cause of that absence."

"How! you, count?" said Madame Danglars, signing. "If so, take care, I shall never forgive you."

Andrea pricked up his ears.

"There would however be no fault of mine," said the count; "so I am anxious to establish it."

They listened eagerly: Monte Cristo, who so rarely unclosed his lips, was about to speak.

"You remember," said the count amid the deepest silence, "that it was at my house that unhappy man died who had come to rob me, and who, on leaving my house, was killed, as is believed, by his accomplice?

"Yes," said Danglars.

"Well, to bring him aid, he had been undressed and his clothes thrown into a corner where justice picked them up; but justice, in taking the coat and the trousers to deposit them in the records office, had forgotten the waistcoat."

Andrea grew visibly pale and drew gently toward the door; he saw a cloud appearing on the horizon, and that cloud seemed to him to enclose the storm in its bosom.

"Well, that unhappy waistcoat was found today all covered with blood and pierced at the heart."

The ladies uttered a cry, and two or three prepared to faint.

"It was brought to me. No one could guess whence came that rag; I alone thought it was probably the waistcoat of the victim. Suddenly my valet de chambre, in searching with disgust and precaution that funereal relic, felt a paper in the pocket and drew it out: it was a letter addressed to whom? to you, baron."

"To me?" cried Danglars.

"Oh! my God! yes, to you; I managed to read your name under the blood with which the note was stained," answered Monte Cristo amid general bursts of surprise.

"But," asked Madame Danglars, looking at her husband with uneasiness, "how does that prevent M. de Villefort?"

"It is quite simple, madame," answered Monte Cristo; "that waistcoat and that letter were what is called pieces of conviction; letter and waistcoat, I sent the whole to the King's Attorney. You understand, my dear baron, the legal way is the surest in criminal matters: it was perhaps some plot against you."

Andrea looked fixedly at Monte Cristo and disappeared into the second salon.

"That is possible," said Danglars; "was not that assassinated man an old convict?"

"Yes," answered the count, "an old convict named Caderousse."

Danglars grew slightly pale; Andrea left the second salon and gained the antechamber.

"But sign, sign!" said Monte Cristo; "I perceive that my story has put every one in commotion and I humbly beg pardon of you, Madame la Baronne and Mademoiselle Danglars."

The baroness, who had just signed, handed the pen to the notary.

"Monsieur le Prince Cavalcanti," said the notary, "Monsieur le Prince Cavalcanti, where are you?"

"Andrea! Andrea!" repeated several young men's voices, who had already arrived, with the noble Italian, at that degree of intimacy of calling him by his Christian name.

"Call the prince, warn him it is for him to sign!" cried Danglars to an usher.

But at the same instant the crowd of guests recoiled, terrified, into the main salon, as if some frightful monster had entered the apartments, _quaerens quem devoret_.

There was indeed cause to recoil, to be alarmed, to cry out.

An officer of gendarmerie placed two gendarmes at the door of each salon, and advanced toward Danglars, preceded by a police commissioner girt with his scarf.

Madame Danglars uttered a cry and fainted.

Danglars, who believed himself threatened (certain consciences are never calm), Danglars offered to the eyes of his guests a face decomposed by terror.

"What is the matter, sir?" asked Monte Cristo, advancing toward the commissioner.

"Which of you, gentlemen," asked the magistrate, without answering the count, "is called Andrea Cavalcanti?"

A cry of stupor burst from all corners of the salon. They sought; they questioned.

"But who is this Andrea Cavalcanti?" asked Danglars, almost beside himself.

"An old convict escaped from the galleys of Toulon."

"And what crime has he committed?"

"He is charged," said the commissioner in his impassive voice, "with having assassinated the named Caderousse, his former chain-companion, at the moment he was leaving the house of the Count of Monte Cristo."

Monte Cristo cast a rapid glance around him.

Andrea had disappeared.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”