The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated, Alexandre Dumas [ereader with android .TXT] 📗
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
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“Alone in the world!” repeated a voice behind the count, “and why?”
Monte Cristo turned around; Haydée was standing pale, motionless, looking at the count with an expression of fearful amazement.
“Because tomorrow, Haydée, you will be free; you will then assume your proper position in society, for I will not allow my destiny to overshadow yours. Daughter of a prince, I restore to you the riches and name of your father.”
Haydée became pale, and lifting her transparent hands to heaven, exclaimed in a voice stifled with tears, “Then you leave me, my lord?”
“Haydée, Haydée, you are young and beautiful; forget even my name, and be happy.”
“It is well,” said Haydée; “your order shall be executed, my lord; I will forget even your name, and be happy.” And she stepped back to retire.
“Oh, heavens,” exclaimed Valentine, who was supporting the head of Morrel on her shoulder, “do you not see how pale she is? Do you not see how she suffers?”
Haydée answered with a heartrending expression,
“Why should he understand this, my sister? He is my master, and I am his slave; he has the right to notice nothing.”
The count shuddered at the tones of a voice which penetrated the inmost recesses of his heart; his eyes met those of the young girl and he could not bear their brilliancy.
“Oh, heavens,” exclaimed Monte Cristo, “can my suspicions be correct? Haydée, would it please you not to leave me?”
“I am young,” gently replied Haydée; “I love the life you have made so sweet to me, and I should be sorry to die.”
“You mean, then, that if I leave you, Haydée——”
“I should die; yes, my lord.”
“Do you then love me?”
“Oh, Valentine, he asks if I love him. Valentine, tell him if you love Maximilian.”
The count felt his heart dilate and throb; he opened his arms, and Haydée, uttering a cry, sprang into them.
“Oh, yes,” she cried, “I do love you! I love you as one loves a father, brother, husband! I love you as my life, for you are the best, the noblest of created beings!”
“Let it be, then, as you wish, sweet angel; God has sustained me in my struggle with my enemies, and has given me this reward; he will not let me end my triumph in suffering; I wished to punish myself, but he has pardoned me. Love me then, Haydée! Who knows? perhaps your love will make me forget all that I do not wish to remember.”
“What do you mean, my lord?”
“I mean that one word from you has enlightened me more than twenty years of slow experience; I have but you in the world, Haydée; through you I again take hold on life, through you I shall suffer, through you rejoice.”
“Do you hear him, Valentine?” exclaimed Haydée; “he says that through me he will suffer—through me, who would yield my life for his.”
The count withdrew for a moment. “Have I discovered the truth?” he said; “but whether it be for recompense or punishment, I accept my fate. Come, Haydée, come!” and throwing his arm around the young girl’s waist, he pressed the hand of Valentine, and disappeared.
An hour had nearly passed, during which Valentine, breathless and motionless, watched steadfastly over Morrel. At length she felt his heart beat, a faint breath played upon his lips, a slight shudder, announcing the return of life, passed through the young man’s frame. At length his eyes opened, but they were at first fixed and expressionless; then sight returned, and with it feeling and grief.
“Oh,” he cried, in an accent of despair, “the count has deceived me; I am yet living;” and extending his hand towards the table, he seized a knife.
“Dearest,” exclaimed Valentine, with her adorable smile, “awake, and look at me!” Morrel uttered a loud exclamation, and frantic, doubtful, dazzled, as though by a celestial vision, he fell upon his knees.
The next morning at daybreak, Valentine and Morrel were walking arm-in-arm on the seashore, Valentine relating how Monte Cristo had appeared in her room, explained everything, revealed the crime, and, finally, how he had saved her life by enabling her to simulate death.
They had found the door of the grotto opened, and gone forth; on the azure dome of heaven still glittered a few remaining stars.
Morrel soon perceived a man standing among the rocks, apparently awaiting a sign from them to advance, and pointed him out to Valentine.
“Ah, it is Jacopo,” she said, “the captain of the yacht;” and she beckoned him towards them.
“Do you wish to speak to us?” asked Morrel.
“I have a letter to give you from the count.”
“From the count!” murmured the two young people.
“Yes; read it.”
Morrel opened the letter, and read:
“My Dear Maximilian,
“There is a felucca for you at anchor. Jacopo will carry you to Leghorn, where Monsieur Noirtier awaits his granddaughter, whom he wishes to bless before you lead her to the altar. All that is in this grotto, my friend, my house in the Champs-Élysées, and my château at Tréport, are the marriage gifts bestowed by Edmond Dantès upon the son of his old master, Morrel. Mademoiselle de Villefort will share them with you; for I entreat her to give to the poor the immense fortune reverting to her from her father, now a madman, and her brother who died last September with his mother. Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man, who, like Satan, thought himself for an instant equal to God, but who now acknowledges with Christian humility that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom. Perhaps those prayers may soften the remorse he feels in his heart. As for you, Morrel, this is the secret of my conduct towards you. There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living.
“Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,—‘Wait and hope.’—Your friend,
“Edmond Dantès, Count of Monte Cristo.”
During the perusal of this letter, which informed Valentine for the first time of the madness of her father and the death of her brother, she became pale, a heavy sigh escaped from her bosom, and tears, not the less painful because they were silent, ran down her cheeks; her happiness cost her very dear.
Morrel looked around uneasily.
“But,” he said, “the count’s generosity is too overwhelming; Valentine will be satisfied with my humble fortune. Where is the count, friend? Lead me to him.”
Jacopo pointed towards the horizon.
“What do you mean?” asked Valentine. “Where is the count?—where is Haydée?”
“Look!” said Jacopo.
The eyes of both were fixed upon the spot indicated by the sailor, and on the blue line separating the sky from the Mediterranean Sea, they perceived a large white sail.
“Gone,” said Morrel; “gone!—adieu, my friend—adieu, my father!”
“Gone,” murmured Valentine; “adieu, my sweet Haydée—adieu, my sister!”
“Who can say whether we shall ever see them again?” said Morrel with tearful eyes.
“Darling,” replied Valentine, “has not the count just told us that all human wisdom is summed up in two words:
“‘Wait and hope (Fac et spera)!’”
[1] “The wicked are great drinkers of water; As the flood proved once for all.”
[2] $2,600,000 in 1894.
[3] Knocked on the head.
[4] Beheaded.
[5] Scott, of course: “The son of an ill-fated sire, and the father of a yet more unfortunate family, bore in his looks that cast of inauspicious melancholy by which the physiognomists of that time pretended to distinguish those who were predestined to a violent and unhappy death.”—The Abbot, ch. xxii.
[6] Guillotine.
[7] Dr. Guillotin got the idea of his famous machine from witnessing an execution in Italy.
[8] Brucea ferruginea.
[9] ‘Money and sanctity, Each in a moiety.’
[10] Elisabeth de Rossan, Marquise de Ganges, was one of the famous women of the court of Louis XIV. where she was known as “La Belle Provençale.” She was the widow of the Marquis de Castellane when she married de Ganges, and having the misfortune to excite the enmity of her new brothers-in-law, was forced by them to take poison; and they finished her off with pistol and dagger.—Ed.
[11] Magistrate and orator of great eloquence—chancellor of France under Louis XV.
[12] Jacques-Louis David, a famous French painter (1748-1825).
[13] Ali Pasha, “The Lion,” was born at Tepelini, an Albanian village at the foot of the Klissoura Mountains, in 1741. By diplomacy and success in arms he became almost supreme ruler of Albania, Epirus, and adjacent territory. Having aroused the enmity of the Sultan, he was proscribed and put to death by treachery in 1822, at the age of eighty.—Ed.
[14] Greek militiamen in the war for independence.—Ed.
[15] A Turkish pasha in command of the troops of a province.—Ed.
[16] The god of fruitfulness in Grecian mythology. In Crete he was supposed to be slain in winter with the decay of vegetation and to revive in the spring. Haydée’s learned reference is to the behavior of an actor in the Dionysian festivals.—Ed.
[17] The Genoese conspirator.
[18] Lake Maggiore.
[19] In the old Greek legend the Atreidae, or children of Atreus, were doomed to punishment because of the abominable crime of their father. The Agamemnon of Aeschylus is based on this legend.
[20] The performance of the civil marriage.
[21] In Molière’s comedy, Le Misanthrope.
[22] Literally, “the basket,” because wedding gifts were originally brought in such a receptacle.
[23] Germain Pillon was a famous French sculptor (1535-1598). His best known work is “The Three Graces,” now in the Louvre.
[24] Frédérick Lemaître—French actor (1800-1876). Robert Macaire is the hero of two favorite melodramas—“Chien de Montargis” and “Chien d’Aubry”—and the name is applied to bold criminals as a term of derision.
[25] The Spahis are French cavalry reserved for service in Africa.
[26] Savate: an old shoe.
[27] Guilbert de Pixérécourt, French dramatist (1773-1844).
[28] Gaspard Puget, the sculptor-architect, was born at Marseilles in 1615.
[29] The Carolina—not Virginia—jessamine, gelsemium sempervirens (properly speaking not a jessamine at all) has yellow blossoms. The reference is no doubt to the Wistaria frutescens.—Ed.
[30] The miser in Molière’s comedy of L’Avare.—Ed.
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