The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 11. The Corsican Ogre

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 today, the 3rd 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. Dandré 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 Dauphiné, 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

Dauphiné 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 Dandré 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

Dantès 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 today 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 moustache. 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-Héron.” Villefort

leaned on the back of an armchair, 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

least.”

“We shall see. I will no longer detain you, M. de Villefort, for you

must be fatigued after so long a journey; go and rest. Of course you

stopped at your father’s?” A feeling of faintness came over Villefort.

“No, sire,” he replied, “I alighted at the Hotel de Madrid, in the Rue

de Tournon.”

“But you have seen him?”

“Sire, I went straight to the Duc de Blacas.”

“But you will see him, then?”

“I think not, sire.”

“Ah, I forgot,” said Louis, smiling in a manner which proved that all

these questions were not made without a motive; “I forgot you and M.

Noirtier are not on the best terms possible, and that is another

sacrifice made to the royal cause, and for which you should be

recompensed.”

“Sire, the kindness your majesty deigns to evince towards me is a

recompense which so far surpasses my utmost ambition that I have nothing

more to ask for.”

“Never mind, sir, we will not forget you; make your mind easy. In the

meanwhile” (the king here detached the cross of the Legion of Honor

which he usually wore over his blue coat, near the cross of St. Louis,

above the order of Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel and St. Lazare, and gave it

to Villefort)—“in the meanwhile take this cross.”

“Sire,” said Villefort, “your majesty mistakes; this is an officer’s

cross.”

“Ma foi!” said Louis XVIII., “take it, such as it is, for I have not the

time to procure you another. Blacas, let it be your care to see that the

brevet is made out and sent to M. de Villefort.” Villefort’s eyes were

filled with tears of joy and pride; he took the cross and kissed it.

“And now,” he said, “may I inquire what are the orders with which your

majesty deigns to honor me?”

“Take what rest you require, and remember that if you are not able to

serve me here in Paris, you may be of the greatest service to me at

Marseilles.”

“Sire,” replied Villefort, bowing, “in an hour I shall have quitted

Paris.”

“Go, sir,” said the king; “and should I forget you (kings’ memories are

short), do not be afraid to bring yourself to my recollection. Baron,

send for the minister of war. Blacas, remain.”

“Ah, sir,” said the minister of police to Villefort, as they left the

Tuileries, “you entered by luck’s door—your fortune is made.”

“Will it be long first?” muttered Villefort, saluting the minister,

whose career was ended, and looking about him for a hackney-coach. One

passed at the moment, which he hailed; he gave his address to the

driver, and springing in, threw himself on the seat, and gave loose to

dreams of ambition.

Ten minutes afterwards Villefort reached his hotel, ordered horses to be

ready in two hours, and asked to have his breakfast brought to him. He

was about to begin his repast when the sound of the bell rang sharp and

loud. The valet opened the door, and Villefort heard someone speak his

name.

“Who could know that I was here already?” said the young man. The valet

entered.

“Well,” said Villefort, “what is it?—Who rang?—Who asked for me?”

“A stranger who will not send in his name.”

“A stranger who will not send in his name! What can he want with me?”

“He wishes to speak to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes.”

“Did he mention my name?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of person is he?”

“Why, sir, a man of about fifty.”

“Short or tall?”

“About your own height, sir.”

“Dark or fair?”

“Dark,—very dark; with black eyes, black hair, black eyebrows.”

“And how dressed?” asked Villefort quickly.

“In a blue frock-coat, buttoned up close, decorated with the Legion of

Honor.”

“It is he!” said Villefort, turning pale.

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“Eh, pardieu!” said the individual whose description we have twice

given, entering the door, “what a great deal of ceremony! Is it the

custom in Marseilles for sons to keep their fathers waiting in their

anterooms?”

“Father!” cried Villefort, “then I was not deceived; I felt sure it must

be you.”

“Well, then, if you felt so sure,” replied the new-comer, putting his

cane in a corner and his hat on a chair, “allow me to say, my dear

Gérard, that it was not very filial of you to keep me waiting at the

door.”

“Leave us, Germain,” said Villefort. The servant quitted the apartment

with evident signs of astonishment.