podrida at Valencia, pilau at Constantinople, karrick in India, and
swallows' nests in China. I eat everywhere, and of everything, only
I eat but little; and to-day, that you reproach me with my want of
appetite, is my day of appetite, for I have not eaten since yesterday
morning."
"What," cried all the guests, "you have not eaten for four and twenty
hours?"
"No," replied the count; "I was forced to go out of my road to obtain
some information near Nimes, so that I was somewhat late, and therefore
I did not choose to stop."
"And you ate in your carriage?" asked Morcerf.
"No, I slept, as I generally do when I am weary without having the
courage to amuse myself, or when I am hungry without feeling inclined to
eat."
"But you can sleep when you please, monsieur?" said Morrel.
"Yes."
"You have a recipe for it?"
"An infallible one."
"That would be invaluable to us in Africa, who have not always any food
to eat, and rarely anything to drink."
"Yes," said Monte Cristo; "but, unfortunately, a recipe excellent for a
man like myself would be very dangerous applied to an army, which might
not awake when it was needed."
"May we inquire what is this recipe?" asked Debray.
"Oh, yes," returned Monte Cristo; "I make no secret of it. It is a
mixture of excellent opium, which I fetched myself from Canton in order
to have it pure, and the best hashish which grows in the East--that is,
between the Tigris and the Euphrates. These two ingredients are mixed
in equal proportions, and formed into pills. Ten minutes after one is
taken, the effect is produced. Ask Baron Franz d'Epinay; I think he
tasted them one day."
"Yes," replied Morcerf, "he said something about it to me."
"But," said Beauchamp, who, as became a journalist, was very
incredulous, "you always carry this drug about you?"
"Always."
"Would it be an indiscretion to ask to see those precious pills?"
continued Beauchamp, hoping to take him at a disadvantage.
"No, monsieur," returned the count; and he drew from his pocket a
marvellous casket, formed out of a single emerald and closed by a golden
lid which unscrewed and gave passage to a small greenish colored pellet
about the size of a pea. This ball had an acrid and penetrating odor.
There were four or five more in the emerald, which would contain about
a dozen. The casket passed around the table, but it was more to examine
the admirable emerald than to see the pills that it passed from hand to
hand. "And is it your cook who prepares these pills?" asked Beauchamp.
"Oh, no, monsieur," replied Monte Cristo; "I do not thus betray my
enjoyments to the vulgar. I am a tolerable chemist, and prepare my pills
myself."
"This is a magnificent emerald, and the largest I have ever seen," said
Chateau-Renaud, "although my mother has some remarkable family jewels."
"I had three similar ones," returned Monte Cristo. "I gave one to the
Sultan, who mounted it in his sabre; another to our holy father the
Pope, who had it set in his tiara, opposite to one nearly as large,
though not so fine, given by the Emperor Napoleon to his predecessor,
Pius VII. I kept the third for myself, and I had it hollowed out, which
reduced its value, but rendered it more commodious for the purpose I
intended." Every one looked at Monte Cristo with astonishment; he spoke
with so much simplicity that it was evident he spoke the truth, or
that he was mad. However, the sight of the emerald made them naturally
incline to the former belief. "And what did these two sovereigns give
you in exchange for these magnificent presents?" asked Debray.
"The Sultan, the liberty of a woman," replied the Count; "the Pope, the
life of a man; so that once in my life I have been as powerful as if
heaven had brought me into the world on the steps of a throne."
"And it was Peppino you saved, was it not?" cried Morcerf; "it was for
him that you obtained pardon?"
"Perhaps," returned the count, smiling.
"My dear count, you have no idea what pleasure it gives me to hear you
speak thus," said Morcerf. "I had announced you beforehand to my friends
as an enchanter of the 'Arabian Nights,' a wizard of the Middle Ages;
but the Parisians are so subtle in paradoxes that they mistake for
caprices of the imagination the most incontestable truths, when these
truths do not form a part of their daily existence. For example, here is
Debray who reads, and Beauchamp who prints, every day, 'A member of the
Jockey Club has been stopped and robbed on the Boulevard;' 'four persons
have been assassinated in the Rue St. Denis' or 'the Faubourg St.
Germain;' 'ten, fifteen, or twenty thieves, have been arrested in a cafe
on the Boulevard du Temple, or in the Thermes de Julien,'--and yet these
same men deny the existence of the bandits in the Maremma, the Campagna
di Romana, or the Pontine Marshes. Tell them yourself that I was taken
by bandits, and that without your generous intercession I should
now have been sleeping in the Catacombs of St. Sebastian, instead of
receiving them in my humble abode in the Rue du Helder."
"Ah," said Monte Cristo "you promised me never to mention that
circumstance."
"It was not I who made that promise," cried Morcerf; "it must have been
some one else whom you have rescued in the same manner, and whom you
have forgotten. Pray speak of it, for I shall not only, I trust, relate
the little I do know, but also a great deal I do not know."
"It seems to me," returned the count, smiling, "that you played a
sufficiently important part to know as well as myself what happened."
"Well, you promise me, if I tell all I know, to relate, in your turn,
all that I do not know?"
"That is but fair," replied Monte Cristo.
"Well," said Morcerf, "for three days I believed myself the object of
the attentions of a masque, whom I took for a descendant of Tullia or
Poppoea, while I was simply the object of the attentions of a contadina,
and I say contadina to avoid saying peasant girl. What I know is, that,
like a fool, a greater fool than he of whom I spoke just now, I mistook
for this peasant girl a young bandit of fifteen or sixteen, with a
beardless chin and slim waist, and who, just as I was about to imprint
a chaste salute on his lips, placed a pistol to my head, and, aided by
seven or eight others, led, or rather dragged me, to the Catacombs of
St. Sebastian, where I found a highly educated brigand chief perusing
Caesar's 'Commentaries,' and who deigned to leave off reading to inform
me, that unless the next morning, before six o'clock, four thousand
piastres were paid into his account at his banker's, at a quarter past
six I should have ceased to exist. The letter is still to be seen,
for it is in Franz d'Epinay's possession, signed by me, and with a
postscript of M. Luigi Vampa. This is all I know, but I know not, count,
how you contrived to inspire so much respect in the bandits of Rome who
ordinarily have so little respect for anything. I assure you, Franz and
I were lost in admiration."
"Nothing more simple," returned the count. "I had known the famous Vampa
for more than ten years. When he was quite a child, and only a shepherd,
I gave him a few gold pieces for showing me my way, and he, in order to
repay me, gave me a poniard, the hilt of which he had carved with his
own hand, and which you may have seen in my collection of arms. In after
years, whether he had forgotten this interchange of presents, which
ought to have cemented our friendship, or whether he did not recollect
me, he sought to take me, but, on the contrary, it was I who captured
him and a dozen of his band. I might have handed him over to Roman
justice, which is somewhat expeditious, and which would have been
particularly so with him; but I did nothing of the sort--I suffered him
and his band to depart."
"With the condition that they should sin no more," said Beauchamp,
laughing. "I see they kept their promise."
"No, monsieur," returned Monte Cristo "upon the simple condition that
they should respect myself and my friends. Perhaps what I am about to
say may seem strange to you, who are socialists, and vaunt humanity and
your duty to your neighbor, but I never seek to protect a society which
does not protect me, and which I will even say, generally occupies
itself about me only to injure me; and thus by giving them a low place
in my esteem, and preserving a neutrality towards them, it is society
and my neighbor who are indebted to me."
"Bravo," cried Chateau-Renaud; "you are the first man I ever met
sufficiently courageous to preach egotism. Bravo, count, bravo!"
"It is frank, at least," said Morrel. "But I am sure that the count does
not regret having once deviated from the principles he has so boldly
avowed."
"How have I deviated from those principles, monsieur?" asked Monte
Cristo, who could not help looking at Morrel with so much intensity,
that two or three times the young man had been unable to sustain that
clear and piercing glance.
"Why, it seems to me," replied Morrel, "that in delivering M. de
Morcerf, whom you did not know, you did good to your neighbor and to
society."
"Of which he is the brightest ornament," said Beauchamp, drinking off a
glass of champagne.
"My dear count," cried Morcerf, "you are at fault--you, one of the most
formidable logicians I know--and you must see it clearly proved that
instead of being an egotist, you are a philanthropist. Ah, you call
yourself Oriental, a Levantine, Maltese, Indian, Chinese; your family
name is Monte Cristo; Sinbad the Sailor is your baptismal appellation,
and yet the first day you set foot in Paris you instinctively display
the greatest virtue, or rather the chief defect, of us eccentric
Parisians,--that is, you assume the vices you have not, and conceal the
virtues you possess."
"My dear vicomte," returned Monte Cristo, "I do not see, in all I have
done, anything that merits, either from you or these gentlemen, the
pretended eulogies I have received. You were no stranger to me, for
I knew you from the time I gave up two rooms to you, invited you to
breakfast with me, lent you one of my carriages, witnessed the Carnival
in your company, and saw with you from a window in the Piazza del Popolo
the execution that affected you so much that you nearly fainted. I will
appeal to any of these gentlemen, could I leave my guest in the hands
of a hideous bandit, as you term him? Besides, you know, I had the idea
that you could introduce me into some of the Paris salons when I came
to France. You might some time ago have looked upon this resolution as a
vague project, but to-day you see it was a reality, and you must submit
to it under penalty of breaking your word."
"I will keep it," returned Morcerf; "but I fear that you will be much
disappointed, accustomed as you are to picturesque events and fantastic
horizons. Amongst us you will not meet with any of those episodes with
which your adventurous existence has so familiarized you; our Chimborazo
is Mortmartre, our Himalaya is Mount Valerien, our Great Desert is the
plain of Grenelle, where they are now boring an artesian well to water
the caravans. We have plenty of thieves, though not so many as is said;
but these thieves stand in far more dread of a policeman than a lord.
France is so prosaic, and Paris so civilized a city, that you will not
find in its eighty-five departments--I say eighty-five, because I do
not include Corsica--you will not find, then, in these eighty-five
departments a single hill on which there is not a telegraph, or a grotto
in which the commissary of police has not put up a gaslamp. There is but
one service I can render you, and for that I place myself entirely
at your orders, that is, to present, or make my friends present, you
everywhere; besides, you have no need of any one to introduce you--with
your name, and your fortune, and your talent" (Monte Cristo bowed with
a somewhat ironical smile) "you can present yourself everywhere, and be
well received. I can be useful in one way only--if knowledge of Parisian
habits, of the means of rendering yourself comfortable, or of the
bazaars, can assist, you may depend upon me to find you a fitting
dwelling here. I do not dare offer to share my apartments with you, as I
shared yours at Rome--I, who do not profess egotism, but am yet egotist
par excellence; for, except myself, these rooms would not hold a shadow
more, unless that shadow were feminine."
"Ah," said the count, "that is a most conjugal reservation; I recollect
that at Rome you said something of a projected marriage. May I
congratulate you?"
"The affair is still in projection."
"And he who says in 'projection,' means already decided," said Debray.
"No," replied Morcerf, "my father is most anxious about it; and I
hope, ere long, to introduce you, if not to my wife, at least to my
betrothed--Mademoiselle Eugenie Danglars."
"Eugenie Danglars," said Monte Cristo; "tell me, is not her father Baron
Danglars?"
"Yes," returned Morcerf, "a baron of a new creation."
"What matter," said Monte Cristo "if he has rendered the State services
which merit this distinction?"
"Enormous ones," answered Beauchamp. "Although in reality a Liberal, he
negotiated a loan of six millions for Charles X., in 1829, who made
him a baron and chevalier of the Legion of Honor; so that he wears the
