The baron, followed by the count, crossed a long suite of rooms remarkable for their heavy sumptuousness and their ostentatious bad taste, and arrived at Mme Danglars's boudoir, a small octagonal room hung with pink satin covered with Indian muslin; the armchairs were of old gilded wood and old fabrics; the panels above the doors depicted pastoral scenes in the manner of Boucher; finally, two pretty pastels in medallions, in harmony with the rest of the furnishings, made this little chamber the only one in the hotel that had any character; it is true that it had escaped the general plan agreed upon between M. Danglars and his architect, one of the highest and most eminent celebrities of the Empire, and that it was the baroness and Lucien Debray alone who had reserved its decoration to themselves. Thus M. Danglars, a great admirer of antiquity as understood by the Directory, held this coquettish little retreat in great contempt, where, moreover, he was generally admitted only on condition that he would excuse his presence by bringing someone with him; so it was not really Danglars who presented others, but rather he who was presented and who was well or ill received according to whether the visitor's face was pleasing or displeasing to the baroness.
Mme Danglars, whose beauty might still be cited despite her thirty-six years, was at her piano, a little masterpiece of marquetry, while Lucien Debray, seated before a worktable, was turning over the pages of an album.
Lucien, before his arrival, had already had time to tell the baroness many things concerning the count. We know how much, during the breakfast at Albert's, Monte-Cristo had impressed his guests; this impression, slight as he was capable of being impressed, was not yet effaced in Debray, and the information he had given the baroness about the count had been colored by it. The curiosity of Mme Danglars, excited by the earlier details that had come from Morcerf and the newer details that had come from Lucien, was therefore at its height. Thus this arrangement of piano and album was but one of those little worldly ruses by means of which one veils the strongest precautions. The baroness accordingly received M. Danglars with a smile, which on her part was not habitual. As for the count, in exchange for his bow, he had a ceremonious but at the same time gracious reverence.
Lucien, for his part, exchanged with the count a salute of half-acquaintance, and with Danglars a gesture of intimacy.
"Madame la baronne," said Danglars, "permit me to present to you M. le Comte de Monte-Cristo, who is commended to me by my correspondents in Rome with the most urgent recommendations: I have but one word to say of him, and that word will in an instant make him the darling of all our fair ladies; he comes to Paris with the intention of remaining a year and of spending six millions during that year; that promises a series of balls, dinners, and late suppers, in which I hope M. le Comte will no more forget us than we shall forget him in our little festivities."
Although the presentation was rather coarsely laudatory, it is, generally speaking, a rare thing for a man to come to Paris to spend in one year the fortune of a prince, so that Mme Danglars cast upon the count a glance not devoid of a certain interest.
"And you have arrived, sir?..." asked the baroness.
"Since yesterday morning, madame."
"And you come, according to your custom, as I have been told, from the end of the world?"
"From Cadiz this time, madame, purely and simply."
"Oh! you arrive in a dreadful season. Paris is detestable in summer; there are no longer any balls, or gatherings, or fetes. The Italian Opera is in London, the French Opera is everywhere except in Paris; and as for the Théâtre-Français, you know it is nowhere any longer. There remains for our sole distraction a few unhappy excursions to the Champ-de-Mars and to Satory. Will you race, M. le Comte?"
"I, madame," said Monte-Cristo, "shall do everything that is done in Paris, if I have the happiness of finding someone who will properly instruct me in French customs."
"Are you a lover of horses, M. le Comte?"
"I have spent part of my life in the Orient, madame, and Orientals, as you know, esteem but two things in the world: the nobility of horses and the beauty of women."
"Ah! M. le Comte," said the baroness, "you should have had the gallantry to put the women first."
"You see, madame, that I was right just now in wishing for a tutor who could guide me in French customs."
At this moment the favorite lady's maid of Mme la Baronne Danglars entered, and approaching her mistress, whispered a few words in her ear.
Mme Danglars turned pale.
"Impossible!" said she.
"It is the exact truth, nevertheless, madame," replied the maid.
Mme Danglars turned toward her husband.
"Is it true, sir?"
"What, madame?" asked Danglars, visibly agitated.
"What this girl tells me...."
"And what does she tell you?"
"She tells me that at the moment when my coachman was about to put my horses to my carriage, he did not find them in the stable; what does that mean, I ask you?"
"Madame," said Danglars, "listen to me."
"Oh! I am listening, sir, for I am curious to know what you are going to say; I shall make these gentlemen judges between us, and I shall begin by telling them what it is about. Gentlemen," continued the baroness, "M. le Baron Danglars has ten horses in his stable; among those ten horses, there are two that are mine, charming horses, the finest horses in Paris; you know them, M. Debray, my dappled greys! Well, at the moment when Mme de Villefort borrows my carriage, which I promise her for tomorrow to go to the Bois, here are the two horses that are no longer to be found! M. Danglars will have found a way to make a few thousand francs on them, and he will have sold them. Oh! the vile race, good heavens, that of speculators!"
"Madame," replied Danglars, "the horses were too spirited, they were scarcely four years old, they gave me horrible frights on your account."
"Why, sir," said the baroness, "you know well that for a month I have had in my service the best coachman in Paris, unless, however, you have sold him along with the horses."
"Dear friend, I shall find you the like, even finer, if there be such; but gentle, calm horses, that no longer inspire me with such terror."
The baroness shrugged her shoulders with an air of profound contempt. Danglars did not appear to notice this more than conjugal gesture, and turning toward Monte-Cristo:
"Indeed, I regret not having known you earlier, M. le Comte," said he; "you are setting up your establishment?"
"Why yes," said the count.
"I should have offered them to you. Imagine that I gave them away for nothing, but, as I told you, I wished to be rid of them: they are young men's horses."
"Sir," said the count, "I thank you; I bought some pretty good ones this morning, and not too dear. See here, M. Debray, you are a connoisseur, I believe?"
While Debray approached the window, Danglars approached his wife.
"Imagine, madame," said he in a low voice, "that someone came to offer me an exorbitant price for those horses. I know not what madman bent on ruining himself sent me his steward this morning, but the fact is that I made sixteen thousand francs on them; do not sulk with me, and I shall give you four thousand of it, and two thousand to Eugénie."
Mme Danglars let fall upon her husband a crushing glance.
"Oh! my God!" cried Debray.
"What is it?" asked the baroness.
"But I am not mistaken, those are your horses, your very own horses harnessed to the count's carriage."
"My dappled greys!" cried Mme Danglars.
And she sprang toward the window.
"Indeed, they are they," said she.
Danglars was stupefied.
"Is it possible?" said Monte-Cristo, feigning astonishment.
"It is incredible!" murmured the banker.
The baroness said two words in Debray's ear, who in his turn approached Monte-Cristo.
"The baroness asks you how much her husband sold you the equipage for."
"But I hardly know," said the count; "it is a surprise my steward made me, and... which cost me thirty thousand francs, I believe."
Debray went to carry the answer to the baroness.
Danglars was so pale and so disconcerted that the count seemed to take pity on him.
"See," said he to him, "how ungrateful women are: this attention of yours did not touch the baroness for an instant; ungrateful is not the word, it is mad I should say. But what would you have, one always loves what harms one; also, the shortest way, believe me, dear baron, is always to let them have their own way; if they break their necks, at least, faith! they can blame no one but themselves."
Danglars answered nothing; he foresaw in the near future a disastrous scene; already Mme la Baroness's brow had furrowed, and like that of Olympian Jupiter, presaged a storm; Debray, who felt it swelling, pleaded an engagement and departed. Monte-Cristo, who did not wish to spoil the position he meant to conquer by remaining longer, bowed to Mme Danglars and withdrew, leaving the baron to his wife's anger.
"Good!" thought Monte-Cristo as he withdrew; "I have arrived where I wished to arrive; here I hold in my hands the peace of the household, and I am going to win at a single stroke the heart of the husband and the heart of the wife; what happiness! But," he added, "in all this, I have not been presented to Mlle Eugénie Danglars, whom yet I should have been glad to know. But," he resumed with that smile peculiar to him, "we are in Paris, and we have time before us.... That shall be for later!..."
Upon this reflection, the count got into his carriage and went home.
Two hours later, Mme Danglars received a charming letter from the Comte de Monte-Cristo, in which he declared to her that, not wishing to begin his debut in Parisian society by despairing a pretty woman, he besought her to take back her horses.
They had the same harness she had seen them with that morning; only at the center of each rosette they wore on the ear, the count had had a diamond sewn.
Danglars, too, had his letter.
The count asked his permission to pass off to the baroness this millionaire's whim, praying him to excuse the Oriental manners with which the return of the horses was accompanied.
During the evening, Monte-Cristo set out for Auteuil, accompanied by Ali.
The next day toward three o'clock, Ali, summoned by a ring of the bell, entered the count's study.
"Ali," said he to him, "you have often spoken to me of your skill in throwing the lasso?"
Ali signified yes, and drew himself up proudly.
"Good!... Thus, with the lasso, you would stop an ox?"
Ali nodded yes.
"A tiger?"
Ali made the same sign.
"A lion?"
Ali made the gesture of a man throwing the lasso, and imitated a strangled roar.
"Good, I understand," said Monte-Cristo; "you have hunted the lion?"
Ali gave a proud nod.
"But would you stop, in their course, two horses?"
Ali smiled.
"Well, listen," said Monte-Cristo. "Presently a carriage will pass, borne along by two dappled grey horses, the same I had yesterday. Though you should be crushed, you must stop that carriage before my door."
Ali went down into the street and traced a line on the pavement before the door: then he came in again and showed the line to the count, who had followed him with his eyes.
The count lightly touched his shoulder: it was his way of thanking Ali. Then the Nubian went to smoke his chibouque on the stone post forming the corner of the house and the street, while Monte-Cristo went in again, troubling himself no further about anything.
However, toward five o'clock, that is to say the hour at which the count expected the carriage, might be seen arising in him the almost imperceptible signs of a slight impatience: he walked in a room overlooking the street, lending ear at intervals, and from time to time drawing near the window, through which he perceived Ali puffing out tobacco with a regularity indicating that the Nubian was wholly given up to this important occupation.
Suddenly a distant rumbling was heard, but which drew near with the rapidity of lightning; then a calash appeared, whose coachman tried in vain to hold in the horses, who advanced furious, bristling, bounding with senseless leaps.
In the calash, a young woman and a child of seven or eight years, clasped in each other's arms, had lost, through excess of terror, even the strength to cry out; it would have sufficed for a stone under the wheel or a tree caught fast to shatter entirely the carriage, which creaked. The carriage held the middle of the pavement, and in the street were heard the terrified cries of those who saw it coming.
Suddenly Ali sets down his chibouque, draws the lasso from his pocket, casts it, wraps in a triple coil the forelegs of the left-hand horse, and lets himself be dragged three or four paces by the violence of the impulse; but, at the end of three or four paces, the fettered horse falls, drops upon the shaft, which it breaks, and paralyzes the efforts the standing horse makes to continue its course. The coachman seizes this moment of respite to jump down from his seat; but already Ali has seized the nostrils of the second horse with his iron fingers, and the animal, neighing with pain, has stretched convulsively near its companion.
All this required the time the ball takes to strike the mark.
However, it sufficed for a man to have sprung from the house opposite which the accident happened, followed by several servants. At the moment the coachman opens the door, he lifts from the calash the lady, who with one hand clutches the cushion, while with the other she presses against her breast her fainting son. Monte-Cristo bore them both into the salon, and depositing them on a sofa:
"Fear nothing more, madame," said he; "you are saved."
The woman recovered herself, and in answer presented him her son, with a glance more eloquent than all prayers.
Indeed, the child was still fainting.
"Yes, madame, I understand," said the count, examining the child; "but, be tranquil, no harm has come to him, and it is fright alone that has put him in this state."
"Oh! sir," cried the mother, "do you not tell me that to reassure me? See how pale he is! My son, my child! my Édouard! answer your mother! Ah! sir! send for a doctor. My fortune to him who restores my son to me!"
Monte-Cristo made with his hand a gesture to calm the weeping mother; and, opening a casket, he drew from it a Bohemian flask, incrusted with gold, containing a liquor red as blood, and from which he let fall a single drop upon the child's lips.
The child, though still pale, at once reopened his eyes.
At this sight, the mother's joy was almost a delirium.
"Where am I?" cried she; "and to whom do I owe so much happiness after so cruel a trial?"
"You are, madame," answered Monte-Cristo, "in the house of the man happiest in having been able to spare you a grief."
"Oh! accursed curiosity!" said the lady. "All Paris spoke of those magnificent horses of Mme Danglars, and I had the folly to wish to try them."
"What!" cried the count with admirably feigned surprise; "those horses are the baroness's?"
"Yes, sir; do you know her?"
"Mme Danglars?... I have that honor, and my joy is doubled at seeing you saved from the peril those horses put you in; for this peril, you might have attributed it to me: I bought those horses yesterday of the baron; but the baroness seemed so to regret them, that I sent them back to her yesterday, praying her to accept them from my hand."
"But then you are the Comte de Monte-Cristo of whom Hermine spoke to me so much yesterday?"
"Yes, madame," said the count.
"I, sir, am Mme Héloïse de Villefort."
The count bowed as to a man before whom one pronounces a perfectly unknown name.
"Oh! how grateful M. de Villefort will be!" resumed Héloïse; "for in short he will owe you us both: you have restored him his wife and his son. Assuredly, without your generous servant, this dear child and I were killed."
"Alas! madame! I still shudder at the peril you have run."
"Oh! I hope you will permit me to worthily reward the devotion of that man."
"Madame," replied Monte-Cristo, "do not spoil Ali for me, I pray you, neither by praises nor by rewards: those are habits I do not wish him to contract. Ali is my slave; in saving your life he serves me, and it is his duty to serve me."
"But he risked his life," said Mme de Villefort, to whom this master's tone singularly imposed.
"I saved that life, madame," answered Monte-Cristo; "consequently it belongs to me."
Mme de Villefort was silent: perhaps she was reflecting upon this man who, at first sight, made so profound an impression on minds.
During this instant of silence, the count could consider at his ease the child whom his mother covered with kisses. He was small, slender, white-skinned like red-haired children, and yet a forest of black hair, rebellious to all curling, covered his bulging brow, and, falling upon his shoulders and framing his face, redoubled the liveliness of his eyes full of stealthy mischief and juvenile spite; his mouth, scarcely grown vermilion again, was fine of lip and wide of opening; the features of this child of eight years already announced at least twelve. His first movement was to free himself by a brusque shake from his mother's arms, and to go open the casket from which the count had drawn the flask of elixir; then at once, without asking anyone's permission, and like a child accustomed to satisfy all his caprices, he began to uncork the phials.
"Do not touch that, my friend," said the count quickly; "some of those liquors are dangerous, not only to drink, but even to breathe."
Mme de Villefort turned pale and arrested her son's arm, which she drew back to her; but, her fear calmed, she at once cast upon the casket a short but expressive glance which the count caught in passing.
At this moment Ali entered.
Mme de Villefort made a movement of joy, and drew the child nearer to her still:
"Édouard," said she, "see you this good servant: he has been very brave, for he exposed his life to stop the horses that were carrying us away and the carriage that was about to be shattered. Thank him then, for probably without him, at this hour, we should both be dead."
The child thrust out his lips and turned his head disdainfully.
"He is too ugly," said he.
The count smiled as if the child had just fulfilled one of his expectations; as for Mme de Villefort, she scolded her son with a moderation that would certainly not have pleased Jean-Jacques Rousseau had little Édouard been called Émile.
"See you," said the count in Arabic to Ali, "this lady prays her son to thank you for the life you saved them both, and the child answers that you are too ugly."
Ali turned aside his intelligent head for an instant and looked at the child without apparent expression; but a simple quiver of his nostril revealed to Monte-Cristo that the Arab had just been wounded to the heart.
"Sir," asked Mme de Villefort, rising to take leave, "is this house your customary dwelling?"
"No, madame," replied the count; "it is a kind of pied-à-terre that I have bought: I live in the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, No. 30. But I see that you are quite recovered, and that you wish to retire. I have just ordered those same horses to be harnessed to my carriage, and Ali, that boy so ugly," said he, smiling at the child, "will have the honor of escorting you home, while your coachman remains here to have the calash repaired. As soon as this indispensable task is done, one of my equipages will convey it directly to Mme Danglars."
"But," said Mme de Villefort, "with those same horses I shall never dare to go."
"Oh! you shall see, madame," said Monte-Cristo; "under Ali's hand they will become gentle as lambs."
Indeed, Ali had approached the horses, which had been put back on their legs with much difficulty. He held in his hand a small sponge soaked in aromatic vinegar; he rubbed the nostrils and temples of the horses, covered with sweat and foam, and almost immediately they began to breathe loudly and to shudder through all their bodies for some seconds.
Then, amid a numerous crowd that the debris of the carriage and the noise of the event had attracted before the house, Ali had the horses harnessed to the count's coupé, gathered up the reins, mounted the seat, and, to the great astonishment of the bystanders who had seen those horses borne along like a whirlwind, he was obliged to use the whip vigorously to make them start, and still could obtain from the famous dappled greys, now stupid, petrified, dead, only so unsure and languishing a trot that it took nearly two hours for Mme de Villefort to regain the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where she lived.
Scarcely arrived at home, and the first family emotions appeased, she wrote the following note to Mme Danglars:
"Dear Hermine,
"I have just been miraculously saved, with my son, by that same Comte de Monte-Cristo of whom we spoke so much last evening, and whom I was far from suspecting I should see today. Yesterday you spoke of him with an enthusiasm I could not help railing at with all the force of my poor little wit, but today I find that enthusiasm far below the man who inspired it. Your horses ran away at the Ranelagh as if seized with frenzy, and we were probably going to be dashed to pieces, my poor Édouard and I, against the first tree of the road or the first boundary-stone of the village, when an Arab, a Negro, a Nubian, a black man in short, in the count's service, at a sign from him, I believe, arrested the horses' career, at the risk of being himself dashed to pieces, and it is truly a miracle that he was not. Then the count ran up, bore us away to his house, Édouard and I, and there recalled my son to life. It is in his own carriage that I was brought back to the hotel; yours will be sent back to you tomorrow. You will find your horses much weakened since the accident; they are as if stupefied; one would say they cannot forgive themselves for having let themselves be tamed by a man. The count charged me to tell you that two days of rest on the litter and barley for all nourishment will restore them to as flourishing a state, which means as frightful as yesterday.
"Farewell! I do not thank you for my drive, and, when I reflect, it is yet ingratitude to bear you a grudge for the caprices of your equipage; for it is to one of those caprices that I owe having seen the Comte de Monte-Cristo, and the illustrious stranger seems to me, apart from the millions he disposes of, a problem so curious and so interesting, that I mean to study him at any cost, were I to begin again a drive in the Bois with your own horses.
"Édouard bore the accident with miraculous courage. He fainted, but he uttered not a cry beforehand and shed not a tear afterward. You will again tell me that my maternal love blinds me; but there is a soul of iron in that poor little body so frail and so delicate.
"Our dear Valentine sends many things to your dear Eugénie; as for me, I embrace you with all my heart.
"HÉLOÏSE DE VILLEFORT."
"P.S. Do contrive somehow for me to meet this Comte de Monte-Cristo at your house; I absolutely must see him again. Moreover, I have just obtained from M. de Villefort that he pay him a visit; I hope well that he will return it."
In the evening, the event at Auteuil was the subject of all conversations: Albert related it to his mother, Château-Renaud at the Jockey-Club, Debray in the minister's salon; Beauchamp himself did the count the courtesy, in his journal, of a twenty-line paragraph, which established the noble stranger as a hero in the eyes of all the women of the aristocracy.
Many people went to have themselves put down on Mme de Villefort's list, in order to have the right to renew their visit in due time and then to hear from her own mouth all the details of that picturesque adventure.
As for M. de Villefort, as Héloïse had said, he took a black coat, white gloves, his finest livery, and mounted his carriage, which came, that same evening, to stop at the door of No. 30 in the Champs-Élysées.
