Monte Cristo waited, according to his usual custom, until Duprez
had sung his famous "Suivez-moi;" then he rose and went out. Morrel
took leave of him at the door, renewing his promise to be with him
the next morning at seven o'clock, and to bring Emmanuel. Then he
stepped into his coupe, calm and smiling, and was at home in five
minutes. No one who knew the count could mistake his expression
when, on entering, he said, "Ali, bring me my pistols with the
ivory cross."
Ali brought the box to his master, who examined the weapons with
a solicitude very natural to a man who is about to intrust his life
to a little powder and shot. These were pistols of an especial
pattern, which Monte Cristo had had made for target practice in his
own room. A cap was sufficient to drive out the bullet, and from
the adjoining room no one would have suspected that the count was,
as sportsmen would say, keeping his hand in. He was just taking one
up and looking for the point to aim at on a little iron plate which
served him as a target, when his study door opened, and Baptistin
entered. Before he had spoken a word, the count saw in the next
room a veiled woman, who had followed closely after Baptistin, and
now, seeing the count with a pistol in his hand and swords on the
table, rushed in. Baptistin looked at his master, who made a sign
to him, and he went out, closing the door after him. "Who are you,
madame?" said the count to the veiled woman.
The stranger cast one look around her, to be certain that they
were quite alone; then bending as if she would have knelt, and
joining her hands, she said with an accent of despair, "Edmond, you
will not kill my son?" The count retreated a step, uttered a slight
exclamation, and let fall the pistol he held. "What name did you
pronounce then, Madame de Morcerf?" said he. "Yours!" cried she,
throwing back her veil, — "yours, which I alone, perhaps, have not
forgotten. Edmond, it is not Madame de Morcerf who is come to you,
it is Mercedes."forgotten. Edmond, it is not Madame de Morcerf who is come to you,
it is Mercedes."
"Mercedes is dead, madame," said Monte Cristo; "I know no one
now of that name."
"Mercedes lives, sir, and she remembers, for she alone
recognized you when she saw you, and even before she saw you, by
your voice, Edmond, — by the simple sound of your voice; and from
that moment she has followed your steps, watched you, feared you,
and she needs not to inquire what hand has dealt the blow which now
strikes M. de Morcerf."
"Fernand, do you mean?" replied Monte Cristo, with bitter irony;
"since we are recalling names, let us remember them all." Monte
Cristo had pronounced the name of Fernand with such an expression
of hatred that Mercedes felt a thrill of horror run through every
vein. "You see, Edmond, I am not mistaken, and have cause to say,
`Spare my son!'"
"And who told you, madame, that I have any hostile intentions
against your son?"
"No one, in truth; but a mother has twofold sight. I guessed
all; I followed him this evening to the opera, and, concealed in a
parquet box, have seen all."
"If you have seen all, madame, you know that the son of Fernand
has publicly insulted me," said Monte Cristo with awful
calmness.
"Oh, for pity's sake!"
"You have seen that he would have thrown his glove in my face if
Morrel, one of my friends, had not stopped him."
"Listen to me, my son has also guessed who you are, — he
attributes his father's misfortunes to you."
"Madame, you are mistaken, they are not misfortunes, — it is a
punishment. It is not I who strike M. de Morcerf; it is providence
which punishes him."
"And why do you represent providence?" cried Mercedes. "Why do
you remember when it forgets? What are Yanina and its vizier to
you, Edmond? What injury his Fernand Mondego done you in betraying
Ali Tepelini?"
"Ah, madame," replied Monte Cristo, "all this is an affair
between the French captain and the daughter of Vasiliki. It does
not concern me, you are right; and if I have sworn to revengenot concern me, you are right; and if I have sworn to revenge
myself, it is not on the French captain, or the Count of Morcerf,
but on the fisherman Fernand, the husband of Mercedes the
Catalane."
"Ah, sir!" cried the countess, "how terrible a vengeance for a
fault which fatality made me commit! — for I am the only culprit,
Edmond, and if you owe revenge to any one, it is to me, who had not
fortitude to bear your absence and my solitude."
"But," exclaimed Monte Cristo, "why was I absent? And why were
you alone?"
"Because you had been arrested, Edmond, and were a
prisoner."
"And why was I arrested? Why was I a prisoner?"
"I do not know," said Mercedes. "You do not, madame; at least, I
hope not. But I will tell you. I was arrested and became a prisoner
because, under the arbor of La Reserve, the day before I was to
marry you, a man named Danglars wrote this letter, which the
fisherman Fernand himself posted." Monte Cristo went to a
secretary, opened a drawer by a spring, from which he took a paper
which had lost its original color, and the ink of which had become
of a rusty hue — this he placed in the hands of Mercedes. It was
Danglars' letter to the king's attorney, which the Count of Monte
Cristo, disguised as a clerk from the house of Thomson &
French, had taken from the file against Edmond Dantes, on the day
he had paid the two hundred thousand francs to M. de Boville.
Mercedes read with terror the following lines: —
"The king's attorney is informed by a friend to the throne and
religion that one Edmond Dantes, second in command on board the
Pharaon, this day arrived from Smyrna, after having touched at
Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, is the bearer of a letter from Murat to
the usurper, and of another letter from the usurper to the
Bonapartist club in Paris. Ample corroboration of this statement
may be obtained by arresting the above-mentioned Edmond Dantes, who
either carries the letter for Paris about with him, or has it at
his father's abode. Should it not be found in possession of either