counsellor such as you are," said he, extending his hand to Monte
Cristo. "Therefore let every one here look upon what has passed to-day
as if it had not happened, and as though we had never thought of such a
thing as a change in our original plans."
"Sir," said the count, "the world, unjust as it is, will be pleased with
your resolution; your friends will be proud of you, and M. d'Epinay,
even if he took Mademoiselle de Villefort without any dowry, which he
will not do, would be delighted with the idea of entering a family
which could make such sacrifices in order to keep a promise and fulfil a
duty." At the conclusion of these words, the count rose to depart. "Are
you going to leave us, count?" said Madame de Villefort.
"I am sorry to say I must do so, madame, I only came to remind you of
your promise for Saturday."
"Did you fear that we should forget it?"
"You are very good, madame, but M. de Villefort has so many important
and urgent occupations."
"My husband has given me his word, sir," said Madame de Villefort; "you
have just seen him resolve to keep it when he has everything to lose,
and surely there is more reason for his doing so where he has everything
to gain."
"And," said Villefort, "is it at your house in the Champs-Elysees that
you receive your visitors?"
"No," said Monte Cristo, "which is precisely the reason which renders
your kindness more meritorious,--it is in the country."
"In the country?"
"Yes."
"Where is it, then? Near Paris, is it not?"
"Very near, only half a league from the Barriers,--it is at Auteuil."
"At Auteuil?" said Villefort; "true, Madame de Villefort told me you
lived at Auteuil, since it was to your house that she was taken. And in
what part of Auteuil do you reside?"
"Rue de la Fontaine."
"Rue de la Fontaine!" exclaimed Villefort in an agitated tone; "at what
number?"
"No. 28."
"Then," cried Villefort, "was it you who bought M. de Saint-Meran's
house!"
"Did it belong to M. de Saint-Meran?" demanded Monte Cristo.
"Yes," replied Madame de Villefort; "and, would you believe it, count"--
"Believe what?"
"You think this house pretty, do you not?"
"I think it charming."
"Well, my husband would never live in it."
"Indeed?" returned Monte Cristo, "that is a prejudice on your part, M.
de Villefort, for which I am quite at a loss to account."
"I do not like Auteuil, sir," said the procureur, making an evident
effort to appear calm.
"But I hope you will not carry your antipathy so far as to deprive me of
the pleasure of your company, sir," said Monte Cristo.
"No, count,--I hope--I assure you I shall do my best," stammered
Villefort.
"Oh," said Monte Cristo, "I allow of no excuse. On Saturday, at six
o'clock. I shall be expecting you, and if you fail to come, I shall
think--for how do I know to the contrary?--that this house, which his
remained uninhabited for twenty years, must have some gloomy tradition
or dreadful legend connected with it."
"I will come, count,--I will be sure to come," said Villefort eagerly.
"Thank you," said Monte Cristo; "now you must permit me to take my leave
of you."
"You said before that you were obliged to leave us, monsieur," said
Madame de Villefort, "and you were about to tell us why when your
attention was called to some other subject."
"Indeed madame," said Monte Cristo: "I scarcely know if I dare tell you
where I am going."
"Nonsense; say on."
"Well, then, it is to see a thing on which I have sometimes mused for
hours together."
"What is it?"
"A telegraph. So now I have told my secret."
"A telegraph?" repeated Madame de Villefort.
"Yes, a telegraph. I had often seen one placed at the end of a road on
a hillock, and in the light of the sun its black arms, bending in every
direction, always reminded me of the claws of an immense beetle, and I
assure you it was never without emotion that I gazed on it, for I could
not help thinking how wonderful it was that these various signs should
be made to cleave the air with such precision as to convey to the
distance of three hundred leagues the ideas and wishes of a man sitting
at a table at one end of the line to another man similarly placed at the
opposite extremity, and all this effected by a simple act of volition
on the part of the sender of the message. I began to think of genii,
sylphs, gnomes, in short, of all the ministers of the occult sciences,
until I laughed aloud at the freaks of my own imagination. Now, it never
occurred to me to wish for a nearer inspection of these large insects,
with their long black claws, for I always feared to find under their
stone wings some little human genius fagged to death with cabals,
factions, and government intrigues. But one fine day I learned that the
mover of this telegraph was only a poor wretch, hired for twelve hundred
francs a year, and employed all day, not in studying the heavens like
an astronomer, or in gazing on the water like an angler, or even in
enjoying the privilege of observing the country around him, but all his
monotonous life was passed in watching his white-bellied, black-clawed
fellow insect, four or five leagues distant from him. At length I felt
a desire to study this living chrysalis more closely, and to endeavor
to understand the secret part played by these insect-actors when they
occupy themselves simply with pulling different pieces of string."
"And are you going there?"
"I am."
"What telegraph do you intend visiting? that of the home department, or
of the observatory?"
"Oh, no; I should find there people who would force me to understand
things of which I would prefer to remain ignorant, and who would try
to explain to me, in spite of myself, a mystery which even they do
not understand. Ma foi, I should wish to keep my illusions concerning
insects unimpaired; it is quite enough to have those dissipated which I
had formed of my fellow-creatures. I shall, therefore, not visit either
of these telegraphs, but one in the open country where I shall find
a good-natured simpleton, who knows no more than the machine he is
employed to work."
"You are a singular man," said Villefort.
"What line would you advise me to study?"
"The one that is most in use just at this time."
"The Spanish one, you mean, I suppose?"
"Yes; should you like a letter to the minister that they might explain
to you"--
"No," said Monte Cristo; "since, as I told you before, I do not wish to
comprehend it. The moment I understand it there will no longer exist a
telegraph for me; it will be nothing more than a sign from M. Duchatel,
or from M. Montalivet, transmitted to the prefect of Bayonne, mystified
by two Greek words, tele, graphein. It is the insect with black claws,
and the awful word which I wish to retain in my imagination in all its
purity and all its importance."
"Go then; for in the course of two hours it will be dark, and you will
not be able to see anything."
"Ma foi, you frighten me. Which is the nearest way? Bayonne?"
"Yes; the road to Bayonne."
"And afterwards the road to Chatillon?"
"Yes."
"By the tower of Montlhery, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Thank you. Good-by. On Saturday I will tell you my impressions
concerning the telegraph." At the door the count was met by the two
notaries, who had just completed the act which was to disinherit
Valentine, and who were leaving under the conviction of having done a
thing which could not fail of redounding considerably to their credit.
Chapter 61. How a Gardener May Get Rid of the Dormice that Eat His Peaches
Not on the same night, as he had intended, but the next morning, the
Count of Monte Cristo went out by the Barrier d'Enfer, taking the
road to Orleans. Leaving the village of Linas, without stopping at the
telegraph, which flourished its great bony arms as he passed, the count
reached the tower of Montlhery, situated, as every one knows, upon the
highest point of the plain of that name. At the foot of the hill the
count dismounted and began to ascend by a little winding path, about
eighteen inches wide; when he reached the summit he found himself
stopped by a hedge, upon which green fruit had succeeded to red and
white flowers.
Monte Cristo looked for the entrance to the enclosure, and was not long
in finding a little wooden gate, working on willow hinges, and fastened
with a nail and string. The count soon mastered the mechanism, the gate
opened, and he then found himself in a little garden, about twenty feet
long by twelve wide, bounded on one side by part of the hedge, which
contained the ingenious contrivance we have called a gate, and on the
other by the old tower, covered with ivy and studded with wall-flowers.
No one would have thought in looking at this old, weather-beaten,
floral-decked tower (which might be likened to an elderly dame dressed
up to receive her grandchildren at a birthday feast) that it would have
been capable of telling strange things, if,--in addition to the menacing
ears which the proverb says all walls are provided with,--it had also a
voice. The garden was crossed by a path of red gravel, edged by a border
of thick box, of many years' growth, and of a tone and color that would
have delighted the heart of Delacroix, our modern Rubens. This path was
formed in the shape of the figure of 8, thus, in its windings, making a
walk of sixty feet in a garden of only twenty.
Never had Flora, the fresh and smiling goddess of gardeners, been
honored with a purer or more scrupulous worship than that which was paid
to her in this little enclosure. In fact, of the twenty rose-trees which
formed the parterre, not one bore the mark of the slug, nor were there
evidences anywhere of the clustering aphis which is so destructive to
plants growing in a damp soil. And yet it was not because the damp
had been excluded from the garden; the earth, black as soot, the
thick foliage of the trees betrayed its presence; besides, had natural
humidity been wanting, it could have been immediately supplied by
artificial means, thanks to a tank of water, sunk in one of the corners
of the garden, and upon which were stationed a frog and a toad, who,
from antipathy, no doubt, always remained on the two opposite sides of
the basin. There was not a blade of grass to be seen in the paths, or
a weed in the flower-beds; no fine lady ever trained and watered her
geraniums, her cacti, and her rhododendrons, with more pains than this
hitherto unseen gardener bestowed upon his little enclosure. Monte
Cristo stopped after having closed the gate and fastened the string to
the nail, and cast a look around.
"The man at the telegraph," said he, "must either engage a gardener or
devote himself passionately to agriculture." Suddenly he struck against
something crouching behind a wheelbarrow filled with leaves; the
something rose, uttering an exclamation of astonishment, and Monte
Cristo found himself facing a man about fifty years old, who was
plucking strawberries, which he was placing upon grape leaves. He had
twelve leaves and about as many strawberries, which, on rising suddenly,
he let fall from his hand. "You are gathering your crop, sir?" said
Monte Cristo, smiling.
"Excuse me, sir," replied the man, raising his hand to his cap; "I am
not up there, I know, but I have only just come down."
"Do not let me interfere with you in anything, my friend," said the
count; "gather your strawberries, if, indeed, there are any left."
"I have ten left," said the man, "for here are eleven, and I had
twenty-one, five more than last year. But I am not surprised; the spring
has been warm this year, and strawberries require heat, sir. This is the
reason that, instead of the sixteen I had last year, I have this year,
you see, eleven, already plucked--twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,
sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Ah, I miss three, they were here last
night, sir--I am sure they were here--I counted them. It must be the
Mere Simon's son who has stolen them; I saw him strolling about here
this morning. Ah, the young rascal--stealing in a garden--he does not
know where that may lead him to."
"Certainly, it is wrong," said Monte Cristo, "but you should take into
consideration the youth and greediness of the delinquent."
"Of course," said the gardener, "but that does not make it the less
unpleasant. But, sir, once more I beg pardon; perhaps you are an officer
that I am detaining here." And he glanced timidly at the count's blue
coat.
"Calm yourself, my friend," said the count, with the smile which he made
at will either terrible or benevolent, and which now expressed only the
kindliest feeling; "I am not an inspector, but a traveller, brought
here by a curiosity he half repents of, since he causes you to lose your
time."
"Ah, my time is not valuable," replied the man with a melancholy smile.
"Still it belongs to government, and I ought not to waste it; but,
having received the signal that I might rest for an hour" (here he
glanced at the sun-dial, for there was everything in the enclosure of
Montlhery, even a sun-dial), "and having ten minutes before me, and my
strawberries being ripe, when a day longer--by-the-by, sir, do you think
dormice eat them?"
"Indeed, I should think not," replied Monte Cristo; "dormice are bad
