in the cabin at his bed's head, the closet to contain three divisions,
so constructed as to be concealed from all but himself. The builder
cheerfully undertook the commission, and promised to have these secret
places completed by the next day, Dantes furnishing the dimensions and
plan in accordance with which they were to be constructed.
The following day Dantes sailed with his yacht from Genoa, under the
inspection of an immense crowd drawn together by curiosity to see the
rich Spanish nobleman who preferred managing his own yacht. But their
wonder was soon changed to admiration at seeing the perfect skill with
which Dantes handled the helm. The boat, indeed, seemed to be animated
with almost human intelligence, so promptly did it obey the slightest
touch; and Dantes required but a short trial of his beautiful craft to
acknowledge that the Genoese had not without reason attained their
high reputation in the art of shipbuilding. The spectators followed the
little vessel with their eyes as long as it remained visible; they then
turned their conjectures upon her probable destination. Some insisted
she was making for Corsica, others the Island of Elba; bets were offered
to any amount that she was bound for Spain; while Africa was positively
reported by many persons as her intended course; but no one thought of
Monte Cristo. Yet thither it was that Dantes guided his vessel, and at
Monte Cristo he arrived at the close of the second day; his boat had
proved herself a first-class sailer, and had come the distance from
Genoa in thirty-five hours. Dantes had carefully noted the general
appearance of the shore, and, instead of landing at the usual place, he
dropped anchor in the little creek. The island was utterly deserted, and
bore no evidence of having been visited since he went away; his treasure
was just as he had left it. Early on the following morning he commenced
the removal of his riches, and ere nightfall the whole of his immense
wealth was safely deposited in the compartments of the secret locker.
A week passed by. Dantes employed it in manoeuvring his yacht round the
island, studying it as a skilful horseman would the animal he destined
for some important service, till at the end of that time he was
perfectly conversant with its good and bad qualities. The former Dantes
proposed to augment, the latter to remedy.
Upon the eighth day he discerned a small vessel under full sail
approaching Monte Cristo. As it drew near, he recognized it as the boat
he had given to Jacopo. He immediately signalled it. His signal was
returned, and in two hours afterwards the new-comer lay at anchor beside
the yacht. A mournful answer awaited each of Edmond's eager inquiries
as to the information Jacopo had obtained. Old Dantes was dead, and
Mercedes had disappeared. Dantes listened to these melancholy tidings
with outward calmness; but, leaping lightly ashore, he signified his
desire to be quite alone. In a couple of hours he returned. Two of the
men from Jacopo's boat came on board the yacht to assist in navigating
it, and he gave orders that she should be steered direct to Marseilles.
For his father's death he was in some manner prepared; but he knew not
how to account for the mysterious disappearance of Mercedes.
Without divulging his secret, Dantes could not give sufficiently clear
instructions to an agent. There were, besides, other particulars he
was desirous of ascertaining, and those were of a nature he alone could
investigate in a manner satisfactory to himself. His looking-glass
had assured him, during his stay at Leghorn, that he ran no risk of
recognition; moreover, he had now the means of adopting any disguise
he thought proper. One fine morning, then, his yacht, followed by the
little fishing-boat, boldly entered the port of Marseilles, and anchored
exactly opposite the spot from whence, on the never-to-be-forgotten
night of his departure for the Chateau d'If, he had been put on board
the boat destined to convey him thither. Still Dantes could not view
without a shudder the approach of a gendarme who accompanied the
officers deputed to demand his bill of health ere the yacht was
permitted to hold communication with the shore; but with that perfect
self-possession he had acquired during his acquaintance with Faria,
Dantes coolly presented an English passport he had obtained from
Leghorn, and as this gave him a standing which a French passport would
not have afforded, he was informed that there existed no obstacle to his
immediate debarkation.
The first person to attract the attention of Dantes, as he landed on the
Canebiere, was one of the crew belonging to the Pharaon. Edmond welcomed
the meeting with this fellow--who had been one of his own sailors--as a
sure means of testing the extent of the change which time had worked in
his own appearance. Going straight towards him, he propounded a variety
of questions on different subjects, carefully watching the man's
countenance as he did so; but not a word or look implied that he had the
slightest idea of ever having seen before the person with whom he was
then conversing. Giving the sailor a piece of money in return for his
civility, Dantes proceeded onwards; but ere he had gone many steps he
heard the man loudly calling him to stop. Dantes instantly turned to
meet him. "I beg your pardon, sir," said the honest fellow, in almost
breathless haste, "but I believe you made a mistake; you intended to
give me a two-franc piece, and see, you gave me a double Napoleon."
"Thank you, my good friend. I see that I have made a trifling mistake,
as you say; but by way of rewarding your honesty I give you another
double Napoleon, that you may drink to my health, and be able to ask
your messmates to join you."
So extreme was the surprise of the sailor, that he was unable even
to thank Edmond, whose receding figure he continued to gaze after in
speechless astonishment. "Some nabob from India," was his comment.
Dantes, meanwhile, went on his way. Each step he trod oppressed his
heart with fresh emotion; his first and most indelible recollections
were there; not a tree, not a street, that he passed but seemed filled
with dear and cherished memories. And thus he proceeded onwards till he
arrived at the end of the Rue de Noailles, from whence a full view of
the Allees de Meillan was obtained. At this spot, so pregnant with fond
and filial remembrances, his heart beat almost to bursting, his knees
tottered under him, a mist floated over his sight, and had he not clung
for support to one of the trees, he would inevitably have fallen to the
ground and been crushed beneath the many vehicles continually passing
there. Recovering himself, however, he wiped the perspiration from his
brows, and stopped not again till he found himself at the door of the
house in which his father had lived.
The nasturtiums and other plants, which his father had delighted to
train before his window, had all disappeared from the upper part of the
house. Leaning against the tree, he gazed thoughtfully for a time at the
upper stories of the shabby little house. Then he advanced to the door,
and asked whether there were any rooms to be let. Though answered in the
negative, he begged so earnestly to be permitted to visit those on
the fifth floor, that, in despite of the oft-repeated assurance of the
concierge that they were occupied, Dantes succeeded in inducing the
man to go up to the tenants, and ask permission for a gentleman to be
allowed to look at them.
The tenants of the humble lodging were a young couple who had been
scarcely married a week; and seeing them, Dantes sighed heavily. Nothing
in the two small chambers forming the apartments remained as it had been
in the time of the elder Dantes; the very paper was different, while the
articles of antiquated furniture with which the rooms had been filled in
Edmond's time had all disappeared; the four walls alone remained as he
had left them. The bed belonging to the present occupants was placed as
the former owner of the chamber had been accustomed to have his; and, in
spite of his efforts to prevent it, the eyes of Edmond were suffused
in tears as he reflected that on that spot the old man had breathed
his last, vainly calling for his son. The young couple gazed with
astonishment at the sight of their visitor's emotion, and wondered to
see the large tears silently chasing each other down his otherwise stern
and immovable features; but they felt the sacredness of his grief,
and kindly refrained from questioning him as to its cause, while, with
instinctive delicacy, they left him to indulge his sorrow alone. When
he withdrew from the scene of his painful recollections, they both
accompanied him downstairs, reiterating their hope that he would come
again whenever he pleased, and assuring him that their poor dwelling
would ever be open to him. As Edmond passed the door on the fourth
floor, he paused to inquire whether Caderousse the tailor still dwelt
there; but he received, for reply, that the person in question had got
into difficulties, and at the present time kept a small inn on the route
from Bellegarde to Beaucaire.
Having obtained the address of the person to whom the house in the
Allees de Meillan belonged, Dantes next proceeded thither, and, under
the name of Lord Wilmore (the name and title inscribed on his passport),
purchased the small dwelling for the sum of twenty-five thousand francs,
at least ten thousand more than it was worth; but had its owner asked
half a million, it would unhesitatingly have been given. The very same
day the occupants of the apartments on the fifth floor of the house, now
become the property of Dantes, were duly informed by the notary who had
arranged the necessary transfer of deeds, etc., that the new landlord
gave them their choice of any of the rooms in the house, without the
least augmentation of rent, upon condition of their giving instant
possession of the two small chambers they at present inhabited.
This strange event aroused great wonder and curiosity in the
neighborhood of the Allees de Meillan, and a multitude of theories
were afloat, none of which was anywhere near the truth. But what raised
public astonishment to a climax, and set all conjecture at defiance, was
the knowledge that the same stranger who had in the morning visited the
Allees de Meillan had been seen in the evening walking in the little
village of the Catalans, and afterwards observed to enter a poor
fisherman's hut, and to pass more than an hour in inquiring after
persons who had either been dead or gone away for more than fifteen or
sixteen years. But on the following day the family from whom all these
particulars had been asked received a handsome present, consisting of an
entirely new fishing-boat, with two seines and a tender. The delighted
recipients of these munificent gifts would gladly have poured out
their thanks to their generous benefactor, but they had seen him,
upon quitting the hut, merely give some orders to a sailor, and then
springing lightly on horseback, leave Marseilles by the Porte d'Aix.
Chapter 26. The Pont du Gard Inn.
Such of my readers as have made a pedestrian excursion to the south
of France may perchance have noticed, about midway between the town of
Beaucaire and the village of Bellegarde,--a little nearer to the former
than to the latter,--a small roadside inn, from the front of which
hung, creaking and flapping in the wind, a sheet of tin covered with
a grotesque representation of the Pont du Gard. This modern place of
entertainment stood on the left-hand side of the post road, and backed
upon the Rhone. It also boasted of what in Languedoc is styled a garden,
consisting of a small plot of ground, on the side opposite to the main
entrance reserved for the reception of guests. A few dingy olives and
stunted fig-trees struggled hard for existence, but their withered dusty
foliage abundantly proved how unequal was the conflict. Between these
sickly shrubs grew a scanty supply of garlic, tomatoes, and eschalots;
while, lone and solitary, like a forgotten sentinel, a tall pine raised
its melancholy head in one of the corners of this unattractive spot, and
displayed its flexible stem and fan-shaped summit dried and cracked by
the fierce heat of the sub-tropical sun.
In the surrounding plain, which more resembled a dusty lake than solid
ground, were scattered a few miserable stalks of wheat, the effect,
no doubt, of a curious desire on the part of the agriculturists of the
country to see whether such a thing as the raising of grain in those
parched regions was practicable. Each stalk served as a perch for a
grasshopper, which regaled the passers by through this Egyptian scene
with its strident, monotonous note.
For about seven or eight years the little tavern had been kept by a man
and his wife, with two servants,--a chambermaid named Trinette, and
a hostler called Pecaud. This small staff was quite equal to all
the requirements, for a canal between Beaucaire and Aiguemortes had
revolutionized transportation by substituting boats for the cart and
the stagecoach. And, as though to add to the daily misery which this
prosperous canal inflicted on the unfortunate inn-keeper, whose utter
ruin it was fast accomplishing, it was situated between the Rhone from
which it had its source and the post-road it had depleted, not a
hundred steps from the inn, of which we have given a brief but faithful
description.
The inn-keeper himself was a man of from forty to fifty-five years of
age, tall, strong, and bony, a perfect specimen of the natives of those
southern latitudes; he had dark, sparkling, and deep-set eyes, hooked
nose, and teeth white as those of a carnivorous animal; his hair, like
his beard, which he wore under his chin, was thick and curly, and in
spite of his age but slightly interspersed with a few silvery threads.
His naturally dark complexion had assumed a still further shade of brown
from the habit the unfortunate man had acquired of stationing himself
from morning till eve at the threshold of his door, on the lookout for
