The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 6. The Deputy Procureur du Roi-1

Chapter 6. The Deputy Procureur du Roi

In one of the aristocratic mansions built by Puget in the Rue du Grand

Cours opposite the Medusa fountain, a second marriage feast was being

celebrated, almost at the same hour with the nuptial repast given by

Dantès. In this case, however, although the occasion of the

entertainment was similar, the company was strikingly dissimilar.

Instead of a rude mixture of sailors, soldiers, and those belonging to

the humblest grade of life, the present assembly was composed of the

very flower of Marseilles society,—magistrates who had resigned their

office during the usurper’s reign; officers who had deserted from the

imperial army and joined forces with Condé; and younger members of

families, brought up to hate and execrate the man whom five years of

exile would convert into a martyr, and fifteen of restoration elevate to

the rank of a god.

The guests were still at table, and the heated and energetic

conversation that prevailed betrayed the violent and vindictive passions

that then agitated each dweller of the South, where unhappily, for five

centuries religious strife had long given increased bitterness to the

violence of party feeling.

The emperor, now king of the petty Island of Elba, after having held

sovereign sway over one-half of the world, counting as his subjects a

small population of five or six thousand souls,—after having been

accustomed to hear the “Vive Napoléons” of a hundred and twenty millions

of human beings, uttered in ten different languages,—was looked upon

here as a ruined man, separated forever from any fresh connection with

France or claim to her throne.

The magistrates freely discussed their political views; the military

part of the company talked unreservedly of Moscow and Leipsic, while the

women commented on the divorce of Josephine. It was not over the

downfall of the man, but over the defeat of the Napoleonic idea, that

they rejoiced, and in this they foresaw for themselves the bright and

cheering prospect of a revivified political existence.

An old man, decorated with the cross of Saint Louis, now rose and

proposed the health of King Louis XVIII. It was the Marquis de Saint-

Méran. This toast, recalling at once the patient exile of Hartwell and

the peace-loving King of France, excited universal enthusiasm; glasses

were elevated in the air à l’Anglaise, and the ladies, snatching their

bouquets from their fair bosoms, strewed the table with their floral

treasures. In a word, an almost poetical fervor prevailed.

“Ah,” said the Marquise de Saint-Méran, a woman with a stern, forbidding

eye, though still noble and distinguished in appearance, despite her

fifty years—“ah, these revolutionists, who have driven us from those

very possessions they afterwards purchased for a mere trifle during the

Reign of Terror, would be compelled to own, were they here, that all

true devotion was on our side, since we were content to follow the

fortunes of a falling monarch, while they, on the contrary, made their

fortune by worshipping the rising sun; yes, yes, they could not help

admitting that the king, for whom we sacrificed rank, wealth, and

station was truly our ‘Louis the well-beloved,’ while their wretched

usurper has been, and ever will be, to them their evil genius, their

‘Napoleon the accursed.’ Am I not right, Villefort?”

“I beg your pardon, madame. I really must pray you to excuse me, but—in

truth—I was not attending to the conversation.”

“Marquise, marquise!” interposed the old nobleman who had proposed the

toast, “let the young people alone; let me tell you, on one’s wedding

day there are more agreeable subjects of conversation than dry

politics.”

“Never mind, dearest mother,” said a young and lovely girl, with a

profusion of light brown hair, and eyes that seemed to float in liquid

crystal, “’tis all my fault for seizing upon M. de Villefort, so as to

prevent his listening to what you said. But there—now take him—he is

your own for as long as you like. M. Villefort, I beg to remind you my

mother speaks to you.”

“If the marquise will deign to repeat the words I but imperfectly

caught, I shall be delighted to answer,” said M. de Villefort.

“Never mind, Renée,” replied the marquise, with a look of tenderness

that seemed out of keeping with her harsh dry features; but, however all

other feelings may be withered in a woman’s nature, there is always one

bright smiling spot in the desert of her heart, and that is the shrine

of maternal love. “I forgive you. What I was saying, Villefort, was,

that the Bonapartists had not our sincerity, enthusiasm, or devotion.”

“They had, however, what supplied the place of those fine qualities,”

replied the young man, “and that was fanaticism. Napoleon is the Mahomet

of the West, and is worshipped by his commonplace but ambitious

followers, not only as a leader and lawgiver, but also as the

personification of equality.”

“He!” cried the marquise: “Napoleon the type of equality! For mercy’s

sake, then, what would you call Robespierre? Come, come, do not strip

the latter of his just rights to bestow them on the Corsican, who, to my

mind, has usurped quite enough.”

“Nay, madame; I would place each of these heroes on his right

pedestal—that of Robespierre on his scaffold in the Place Louis Quinze;

that of Napoleon on the column of the Place Vendôme. The only difference

consists in the opposite character of the equality advocated by these

two men; one is the equality that elevates, the other is the equality

that degrades; one brings a king within reach of the guillotine, the

other elevates the people to a level with the throne. Observe,” said

Villefort, smiling, “I do not mean to deny that both these men were

revolutionary scoundrels, and that the 9th Thermidor and the 4th of

April, in the year 1814, were lucky days for France, worthy of being

gratefully remembered by every friend to monarchy and civil order; and

that explains how it comes to pass that, fallen, as I trust he is

forever, Napoleon has still retained a train of parasitical satellites.

Still, marquise, it has been so with other usurpers—Cromwell, for

instance, who was not half so bad as Napoleon, had his partisans and

advocates.”

“Do you know, Villefort, that you are talking in a most dreadfully

revolutionary strain? But I excuse it, it is impossible to expect the

son of a Girondin to be free from a small spice of the old leaven.” A

deep crimson suffused the countenance of Villefort.

“’Tis true, madame,” answered he, “that my father was a Girondin, but he

was not among the number of those who voted for the king’s death; he was

an equal sufferer with yourself during the Reign of Terror, and had

well-nigh lost his head on the same scaffold on which your father

perished.”

“True,” replied the marquise, without wincing in the slightest degree at

the tragic remembrance thus called up; “but bear in mind, if you please,

that our respective parents underwent persecution and proscription from

diametrically opposite principles; in proof of which I may remark, that

while my family remained among the staunchest adherents of the exiled

princes, your father lost no time in joining the new government; and

that while the Citizen Noirtier was a Girondin, the Count Noirtier

became a senator.”

“Dear mother,” interposed Renée, “you know very well it was agreed that

all these disagreeable reminiscences should forever be laid aside.”

“Suffer me, also, madame,” replied Villefort, “to add my earnest request

to Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran’s, that you will kindly allow the veil of

oblivion to cover and conceal the past. What avails recrimination over

matters wholly past recall? For my own part, I have laid aside even the

name of my father, and altogether disown his political principles. He

was—nay, probably may still be—a Bonapartist, and is called Noirtier; I,

on the contrary, am a staunch royalist, and style myself de Villefort.

Let what may remain of revolutionary sap exhaust itself and die away

with the old trunk, and condescend only to regard the young shoot which

has started up at a distance from the parent tree, without having the

power, any more than the wish, to separate entirely from the stock from

which it sprung.”

“Bravo, Villefort!” cried the marquis; “excellently well said! Come,

now, I have hopes of obtaining what I have been for years endeavoring to

persuade the marquise to promise; namely, a perfect amnesty and

forgetfulness of the past.”

“With all my heart,” replied the marquise; “let the past be forever

forgotten. I promise you it affords me as little pleasure to revive it

as it does you. All I ask is, that Villefort will be firm and inflexible

for the future in his political principles. Remember, also, Villefort,

that we have pledged ourselves to his majesty for your fealty and strict

loyalty, and that at our recommendation the king consented to forget the

past, as I do” (and here she extended to him her hand)—“as I now do at

your entreaty. But bear in mind, that should there fall in your way

anyone guilty of conspiring against the government, you will be so much

the more bound to visit the offence with rigorous punishment, as it is

known you belong to a suspected family.”

“Alas, madame,” returned Villefort, “my profession, as well as the times

in which we live, compels me to be severe. I have already successfully

conducted several public prosecutions, and brought the offenders to

merited punishment. But we have not done with the thing yet.”

“Do you, indeed, think so?” inquired the marquise.

“I am, at least, fearful of it. Napoleon, in the Island of Elba, is too

near France, and his proximity keeps up the hopes of his partisans.

Marseilles is filled with half-pay officers, who are daily, under one

frivolous pretext or other, getting up quarrels with the royalists; from

hence arise continual and fatal duels among the higher classes of

persons, and assassinations in the lower.”

“You have heard, perhaps,” said the Comte de Salvieux, one of M. de

Saint-Méran’s oldest friends, and chamberlain to the Comte d’Artois,

“that the Holy Alliance purpose removing him from thence?”

“Yes; they were talking about it when we left Paris,” said M. de Saint-

Méran; “and where is it decided to transfer him?”

“To Saint Helena.”

“For heaven’s sake, where is that?” asked the marquise.

“An island situated on the other side of the equator, at least two

thousand leagues from here,” replied the count.

“So much the better. As Villefort observes, it is a great act of folly

to have left such a man between Corsica, where he was born, and Naples,

of which his brother-in-law is king, and face to face with Italy, the

sovereignty of which he coveted for his son.”

“Unfortunately,” said Villefort, “there are the treaties of 1814, and we

cannot molest Napoleon without breaking those compacts.”

“Oh, well, we shall find some way out of it,” responded M. de Salvieux.

“There wasn’t any trouble over treaties when it was a question of

shooting the poor Duc d’Enghien.”

“Well,” said the marquise, “it seems probable that, by the aid of the

Holy Alliance, we shall be rid of Napoleon; and we must trust to the

vigilance of M. de Villefort to purify Marseilles of his partisans. The

king is either a king or no king; if he be acknowledged as sovereign of

France, he should be upheld in peace and tranquillity; and this can best

be effected by employing the most inflexible agents to put down every

attempt at conspiracy—’tis the best and surest means of preventing

mischief.”

“Unfortunately, madame,” answered Villefort, “the strong arm of the law

is not called upon to interfere until the evil has taken place.”

“Then all he has got to do is to endeavor to repair it.”

“Nay, madame, the law is frequently powerless to effect this; all it can

do is to avenge the wrong done.”

“Oh, M. de Villefort,” cried a beautiful young creature, daughter to the

Comte de Salvieux, and the cherished friend of Mademoiselle de Saint-

Méran, “do try and get up some famous trial while we are at Marseilles.

I never was in a law-court; I am told it is so very amusing!”

“Amusing, certainly,” replied the young man, “inasmuch as, instead of

shedding tears as at the fictitious tale of woe produced at a theatre,

you behold in a law-court a case of real and genuine distress—a drama of

life. The prisoner whom you there see pale, agitated, and alarmed,

instead of—as is the case when a curtain falls on a tragedy—going home

to sup peacefully with his family, and then retiring to rest, that he

may recommence his mimic woes on the morrow,—is removed from your sight

merely to be reconducted to his prison and delivered up to the