our eyes open at once upon the past, the present, and the future. For
the last ten months my ministers have redoubled their vigilance, in
order to watch the shore of the Mediterranean. If Bonaparte landed at
Naples, the whole coalition would be on foot before he could even reach
Piomoino; if he land in Tuscany, he will be in an unfriendly territory;
if he land in France, it must be with a handful of men, and the result
of that is easily foretold, execrated as he is by the population. Take
courage, sir; but at the same time rely on our royal gratitude."
"Ah, here is M. Dandre!" cried de Blacas. At this instant the minister
of police appeared at the door, pale, trembling, and as if ready to
faint. Villefort was about to retire, but M. de Blacas, taking his hand,
restrained him.
Chapter 11. The Corsican Ogre.
At the sight of this agitation Louis XVIII. pushed from him violently
the table at which he was sitting.
"What ails you, baron?" he exclaimed. "You appear quite aghast. Has your
uneasiness anything to do with what M. de Blacas has told me, and M. de
Villefort has just confirmed?" M. de Blacas moved suddenly towards the
baron, but the fright of the courtier pleaded for the forbearance of
the statesman; and besides, as matters were, it was much more to his
advantage that the prefect of police should triumph over him than that
he should humiliate the prefect.
"Sire"--stammered the baron.
"Well, what is it?" asked Louis XVIII. The minister of police, giving
way to an impulse of despair, was about to throw himself at the feet of
Louis XVIII., who retreated a step and frowned.
"Will you speak?" he said.
"Oh, sire, what a dreadful misfortune! I am, indeed, to be pitied. I can
never forgive myself!"
"Monsieur," said Louis XVIII., "I command you to speak."
"Well, sire, the usurper left Elba on the 26th February, and landed on
the 1st of March."
"And where? In Italy?" asked the king eagerly.
"In France, sire,--at a small port, near Antibes, in the Gulf of Juan."
"The usurper landed in France, near Antibes, in the Gulf of Juan, two
hundred and fifty leagues from Paris, on the 1st of March, and you only
acquired this information to-day, the 4th of March! Well, sir, what you
tell me is impossible. You must have received a false report, or you
have gone mad."
"Alas, sire, it is but too true!" Louis made a gesture of indescribable
anger and alarm, and then drew himself up as if this sudden blow had
struck him at the same moment in heart and countenance.
"In France!" he cried, "the usurper in France! Then they did not watch
over this man. Who knows? they were, perhaps, in league with him."
"Oh, sire," exclaimed the Duc de Blacas, "M. Dandre is not a man to be
accused of treason! Sire, we have all been blind, and the minister of
police has shared the general blindness, that is all."
"But"--said Villefort, and then suddenly checking himself, he was
silent; then he continued, "Your pardon, sire," he said, bowing, "my
zeal carried me away. Will your majesty deign to excuse me?"
"Speak, sir, speak boldly," replied Louis. "You alone forewarned us of
the evil; now try and aid us with the remedy."
"Sire," said Villefort, "the usurper is detested in the south; and it
seems to me that if he ventured into the south, it would be easy to
raise Languedoc and Provence against him."
"Yes, assuredly," replied the minister; "but he is advancing by Gap and
Sisteron."
"Advancing--he is advancing!" said Louis XVIII. "Is he then advancing on
Paris?" The minister of police maintained a silence which was equivalent
to a complete avowal.
"And Dauphine, sir?" inquired the king, of Villefort. "Do you think it
possible to rouse that as well as Provence?"
"Sire, I am sorry to tell your majesty a cruel fact; but the feeling
in Dauphine is quite the reverse of that in Provence or Languedoc. The
mountaineers are Bonapartists, sire."
"Then," murmured Louis, "he was well informed. And how many men had he
with him?"
"I do not know, sire," answered the minister of police.
"What, you do not know! Have you neglected to obtain information on that
point? Of course it is of no consequence," he added, with a withering
smile.
"Sire, it was impossible to learn; the despatch simply stated the fact
of the landing and the route taken by the usurper."
"And how did this despatch reach you?" inquired the king. The minister
bowed his head, and while a deep color overspread his cheeks, he
stammered out,--
"By the telegraph, sire."--Louis XVIII. advanced a step, and folded his
arms over his chest as Napoleon would have done.
"So then," he exclaimed, turning pale with anger, "seven conjoined and
allied armies overthrew that man. A miracle of heaven replaced me on
the throne of my fathers after five-and-twenty years of exile. I have,
during those five-and-twenty years, spared no pains to understand the
people of France and the interests which were confided to me; and now,
when I see the fruition of my wishes almost within reach, the power I
hold in my hands bursts, and shatters me to atoms!"
"Sire, it is fatality!" murmured the minister, feeling that the pressure
of circumstances, however light a thing to destiny, was too much for any
human strength to endure.
"What our enemies say of us is then true. We have learnt nothing,
forgotten nothing! If I were betrayed as he was, I would console myself;
but to be in the midst of persons elevated by myself to places of honor,
who ought to watch over me more carefully than over themselves,--for my
fortune is theirs--before me they were nothing--after me they will be
nothing, and perish miserably from incapacity--ineptitude! Oh, yes, sir,
you are right--it is fatality!"
The minister quailed before this outburst of sarcasm. M. de Blacas wiped
the moisture from his brow. Villefort smiled within himself, for he felt
his increased importance.
"To fall," continued King Louis, who at the first glance had sounded the
abyss on which the monarchy hung suspended,--"to fall, and learn of that
fall by telegraph! Oh, I would rather mount the scaffold of my brother,
Louis XVI., than thus descend the staircase at the Tuileries driven away
by ridicule. Ridicule, sir--why, you know not its power in France, and
yet you ought to know it!"
"Sire, sire," murmured the minister, "for pity's"--
"Approach, M. de Villefort," resumed the king, addressing the young man,
who, motionless and breathless, was listening to a conversation on which
depended the destiny of a kingdom. "Approach, and tell monsieur that it
is possible to know beforehand all that he has not known."
"Sire, it was really impossible to learn secrets which that man
concealed from all the world."
"Really impossible! Yes--that is a great word, sir. Unfortunately, there
are great words, as there are great men; I have measured them. Really
impossible for a minister who has an office, agents, spies, and fifteen
hundred thousand francs for secret service money, to know what is going
on at sixty leagues from the coast of France! Well, then, see, here is a
gentleman who had none of these resources at his disposal--a gentleman,
only a simple magistrate, who learned more than you with all your
police, and who would have saved my crown, if, like you, he had the
power of directing a telegraph." The look of the minister of police was
turned with concentrated spite on Villefort, who bent his head in modest
triumph.
"I do not mean that for you, Blacas," continued Louis XVIII.; "for if
you have discovered nothing, at least you have had the good sense
to persevere in your suspicions. Any other than yourself would have
considered the disclosure of M. de Villefort insignificant, or else
dictated by venal ambition," These words were an allusion to the
sentiments which the minister of police had uttered with so much
confidence an hour before.
Villefort understood the king's intent. Any other person would, perhaps,
have been overcome by such an intoxicating draught of praise; but
he feared to make for himself a mortal enemy of the police minister,
although he saw that Dandre was irrevocably lost. In fact, the
minister, who, in the plenitude of his power, had been unable to unearth
Napoleon's secret, might in despair at his own downfall interrogate
Dantes and so lay bare the motives of Villefort's plot. Realizing this,
Villefort came to the rescue of the crest-fallen minister, instead of
aiding to crush him.
"Sire," said Villefort, "the suddenness of this event must prove to your
majesty that the issue is in the hands of Providence; what your majesty
is pleased to attribute to me as profound perspicacity is simply owing
to chance, and I have profited by that chance, like a good and devoted
servant--that's all. Do not attribute to me more than I deserve, sire,
that your majesty may never have occasion to recall the first opinion
you have been pleased to form of me." The minister of police thanked
the young man by an eloquent look, and Villefort understood that he had
succeeded in his design; that is to say, that without forfeiting the
gratitude of the king, he had made a friend of one on whom, in case of
necessity, he might rely.
"'Tis well," resumed the king. "And now, gentlemen," he continued,
turning towards M. de Blacas and the minister of police, "I have no
further occasion for you, and you may retire; what now remains to do is
in the department of the minister of war."
"Fortunately, sire," said M. de Blacas, "we can rely on the army; your
majesty knows how every report confirms their loyalty and attachment."
"Do not mention reports, duke, to me, for I know now what confidence to
place in them. Yet, speaking of reports, baron, what have you learned
with regard to the affair in the Rue Saint-Jacques?"
"The affair in the Rue Saint-Jacques!" exclaimed Villefort, unable to
repress an exclamation. Then, suddenly pausing, he added, "Your pardon,
sire, but my devotion to your majesty has made me forget, not the
respect I have, for that is too deeply engraved in my heart, but the
rules of etiquette."
"Go on, go on, sir," replied the king; "you have to-day earned the right
to make inquiries here."
"Sire," interposed the minister of police, "I came a moment ago to give
your majesty fresh information which I had obtained on this head, when
your majesty's attention was attracted by the terrible event that has
occurred in the gulf, and now these facts will cease to interest your
majesty."
"On the contrary, sir,--on the contrary," said Louis XVIII., "this
affair seems to me to have a decided connection with that which occupies
our attention, and the death of General Quesnel will, perhaps, put us on
the direct track of a great internal conspiracy." At the name of General
Quesnel, Villefort trembled.
"Everything points to the conclusion, sire," said the minister of
police, "that death was not the result of suicide, as we first believed,
but of assassination. General Quesnel, it appears, had just left a
Bonapartist club when he disappeared. An unknown person had been
with him that morning, and made an appointment with him in the Rue
Saint-Jacques; unfortunately, the general's valet, who was dressing
his hair at the moment when the stranger entered, heard the street
mentioned, but did not catch the number." As the police minister related
this to the king, Villefort, who looked as if his very life hung on the
speaker's lips, turned alternately red and pale. The king looked towards
him.
"Do you not think with me, M. de Villefort, that General Quesnel, whom
they believed attached to the usurper, but who was really entirely
devoted to me, has perished the victim of a Bonapartist ambush?"
"It is probable, sire," replied Villefort. "But is this all that is
known?"
"They are on the track of the man who appointed the meeting with him."
"On his track?" said Villefort.
"Yes, the servant has given his description. He is a man of from fifty
to fifty-two years of age, dark, with black eyes covered with shaggy
eyebrows, and a thick mustache. He was dressed in a blue frock-coat,
buttoned up to the chin, and wore at his button-hole the rosette of an
officer of the Legion of Honor. Yesterday a person exactly corresponding
with this description was followed, but he was lost sight of at the
corner of the Rue de la Jussienne and the Rue Coq-Heron." Villefort
leaned on the back of an arm-chair, for as the minister of police went
on speaking he felt his legs bend under him; but when he learned that
the unknown had escaped the vigilance of the agent who followed him, he
breathed again.
"Continue to seek for this man, sir," said the king to the minister of
police; "for if, as I am all but convinced, General Quesnel, who
would have been so useful to us at this moment, has been murdered, his
assassins, Bonapartists or not, shall be cruelly punished." It required
all Villefort's coolness not to betray the terror with which this
declaration of the king inspired him.
"How strange," continued the king, with some asperity; "the police think
that they have disposed of the whole matter when they say, 'A murder has
been committed,' and especially so when they can add, 'And we are on the
track of the guilty persons.'"
"Sire, your majesty will, I trust, be amply satisfied on this point at
