If the Count of Monte Cristo had been for a long time familiar with
the ways of Parisian society, he would have appreciated better the
significance of the step which M. de Villefort had taken. Standing well
at court, whether the king regnant was of the older or younger branch,
whether the government was doctrinaire liberal, or conservative; looked
upon by all as a man of talent, since those who have never experienced
a political check are generally so regarded; hated by many, but warmly
supported by others, without being really liked by anybody, M. de
Villefort held a high position in the magistracy, and maintained
his eminence like a Harlay or a Mole. His drawing-room, under the
regenerating influence of a young wife and a daughter by his first
marriage, scarcely eighteen, was still one of the well-regulated Paris
salons where the worship of traditional customs and the observance of
rigid etiquette were carefully maintained. A freezing politeness,
a strict fidelity to government principles, a profound contempt for
theories and theorists, a deep-seated hatred of ideality,--these were
the elements of private and public life displayed by M. de Villefort.
He was not only a magistrate, he was almost a diplomatist. His relations
with the former court, of which he always spoke with dignity and
respect, made him respected by the new one, and he knew so many
things, that not only was he always carefully considered, but sometimes
consulted. Perhaps this would not have been so had it been possible to
get rid of M. de Villefort; but, like the feudal barons who rebelled
against their sovereign, he dwelt in an impregnable fortress. This
fortress was his post as king's attorney, all the advantages of which
he exploited with marvellous skill, and which he would not have resigned
but to be made deputy, and thus to replace neutrality by opposition.
Ordinarily M. de Villefort made and returned very few visits. His wife
visited for him, and this was the received thing in the world, where the
weighty and multifarious occupations of the magistrate were accepted as
an excuse for what was really only calculated pride, a manifestation of
professed superiority--in fact, the application of the axiom, "Pretend
to think well of yourself, and the world will think well of you," an
axiom a hundred times more useful in society nowadays than that of the
Greeks, "Know thyself," a knowledge for which, in our days, we have
substituted the less difficult and more advantageous science of knowing
others.
To his friends M. de Villefort was a powerful protector; to his enemies,
he was a silent, but bitter opponent; for those who were neither the
one nor the other, he was a statue of the law-made man. He had a haughty
bearing, a look either steady and impenetrable or insolently piercing
and inquisitorial. Four successive revolutions had built and cemented
the pedestal upon which his fortune was based. M. de Villefort had the
reputation of being the least curious and the least wearisome man in
France. He gave a ball every year, at which he appeared for a quarter of
an hour only,--that is to say, five and forty minutes less than the king
is visible at his balls. He was never seen at the theatres, at concerts,
or in any place of public resort. Occasionally, but seldom, he played
at whist, and then care was taken to select partners worthy of
him--sometimes they were ambassadors, sometimes archbishops, or
sometimes a prince, or a president, or some dowager duchess. Such was
the man whose carriage had just now stopped before the Count of Monte
Cristo's door. The valet de chambre announced M. de Villefort at the
moment when the count, leaning over a large table, was tracing on a map
the route from St. Petersburg to China.
The procureur entered with the same grave and measured step he would
have employed in entering a court of justice. He was the same man, or
rather the development of the same man, whom we have heretofore seen as
assistant attorney at Marseilles. Nature, according to her way, had
made no deviation in the path he had marked out for himself. From being
slender he had now become meagre; once pale, he was now yellow; his
deep-set eyes were hollow, and the gold spectacles shielding his eyes
seemed to be an integral portion of his face. He dressed entirely in
black, with the exception of his white tie, and his funeral appearance
was only mitigated by the slight line of red ribbon which passed almost
imperceptibly through his button-hole, and appeared like a streak of
blood traced with a delicate brush. Although master of himself, Monte
Cristo, scrutinized with irrepressible curiosity the magistrate whose
salute he returned, and who, distrustful by habit, and especially
incredulous as to social prodigies, was much more despised to look
upon "the noble stranger," as Monte Cristo was already called, as an
adventurer in search of new fields, or an escaped criminal, rather than
as a prince of the Holy See, or a sultan of the Thousand and One Nights.
"Sir," said Villefort, in the squeaky tone assumed by magistrates in
their oratorical periods, and of which they cannot, or will not, divest
themselves in society, "sir, the signal service which you yesterday
rendered to my wife and son has made it a duty for me to offer you my
thanks. I have come, therefore, to discharge this duty, and to express
to you my overwhelming gratitude." And as he said this, the "eye severe"
of the magistrate had lost nothing of its habitual arrogance. He spoke
in a voice of the procureur-general, with the rigid inflexibility of
neck and shoulders which caused his flatterers to say (as we have before
observed) that he was the living statue of the law.
"Monsieur," replied the count, with a chilling air, "I am very happy to
have been the means of preserving a son to his mother, for they say that
the sentiment of maternity is the most holy of all; and the good fortune
which occurred to me, monsieur, might have enabled you to dispense with
a duty which, in its discharge, confers an undoubtedly great honor; for
I am aware that M. de Villefort is not usually lavish of the favor which
he now bestows on me,--a favor which, however estimable, is unequal
to the satisfaction which I have in my own consciousness." Villefort,
astonished at this reply, which he by no means expected, started like a
soldier who feels the blow levelled at him over the armor he wears, and
a curl of his disdainful lip indicated that from that moment he noted in
the tablets of his brain that the Count of Monte Cristo was by no
means a highly bred gentleman. He glanced around, in order to seize
on something on which the conversation might turn, and seemed to fall
easily on a topic. He saw the map which Monte Cristo had been examining
when he entered, and said, "You seem geographically engaged, sir? It is
a rich study for you, who, as I learn, have seen as many lands as are
delineated on this map."
"Yes, sir," replied the count; "I have sought to make of the human
race, taken in the mass, what you practice every day on individuals--a
physiological study. I have believed it was much easier to descend from
the whole to a part than to ascend from a part to the whole. It is
an algebraic axiom, which makes us proceed from a known to an unknown
quantity, and not from an unknown to a known; but sit down, sir, I beg
of you."
Monte Cristo pointed to a chair, which the procureur was obliged to take
the trouble to move forwards himself, while the count merely fell back
into his own, on which he had been kneeling when M. Villefort entered.
Thus the count was halfway turned towards his visitor, having his back
towards the window, his elbow resting on the geographical chart which
furnished the theme of conversation for the moment,--a conversation
which assumed, as in the case of the interviews with Danglars and
Morcerf, a turn analogous to the persons, if not to the situation. "Ah,
you philosophize," replied Villefort, after a moment's silence, during
which, like a wrestler who encounters a powerful opponent, he took
breath; "well, sir, really, if, like you, I had nothing else to do, I
should seek a more amusing occupation."
"Why, in truth, sir," was Monte Cristo's reply, "man is but an ugly
caterpillar for him who studies him through a solar microscope; but you
said, I think, that I had nothing else to do. Now, really, let me ask,
sir, have you?--do you believe you have anything to do? or to speak in
plain terms, do you really think that what you do deserves being called
anything?"
Villefort's astonishment redoubled at this second thrust so forcibly
made by his strange adversary. It was a long time since the magistrate
had heard a paradox so strong, or rather, to say the truth more exactly,
it was the first time he had ever heard of it. The procureur exerted
himself to reply. "Sir," he responded, "you are a stranger, and I
believe you say yourself that a portion of your life has been spent
in Oriental countries, so you are not aware how human justice, so
expeditions in barbarous countries, takes with us a prudent and
well-studied course."
"Oh, yes--yes, I do, sir; it is the pede claudo of the ancients. I know
all that, for it is with the justice of all countries especially that I
have occupied myself--it is with the criminal procedure of all nations
that I have compared natural justice, and I must say, sir, that it is
the law of primitive nations, that is, the law of retaliation, that I
have most frequently found to be according to the law of God."
"If this law were adopted, sir," said the procureur, "it would greatly
simplify our legal codes, and in that case the magistrates would not (as
you just observed) have much to do."
"It may, perhaps, come to this in time," observed Monte Cristo; "you
know that human inventions march from the complex to the simple, and
simplicity is always perfection."
"In the meanwhile," continued the magistrate, "our codes are in full
force, with all their contradictory enactments derived from Gallic
customs, Roman laws, and Frank usages; the knowledge of all which,
you will agree, is not to be acquired without extended labor; it needs
tedious study to acquire this knowledge, and, when acquired, a strong
power of brain to retain it."
"I agree with you entirely, sir; but all that even you know with respect
to the French code, I know, not only in reference to that code, but as
regards the codes of all nations. The English, Turkish, Japanese, Hindu
laws, are as familiar to me as the French laws, and thus I was right,
when I said to you, that relatively (you know that everything is
relative, sir)--that relatively to what I have done, you have very
little to do; but that relatively to all I have learned, you have yet a
great deal to learn."
"But with what motive have you learned all this?" inquired Villefort,
in astonishment. Monte Cristo smiled. "Really, sir," he observed, "I see
that in spite of the reputation which you have acquired as a superior
man, you look at everything from the material and vulgar view of
society, beginning with man, and ending with man--that is to say, in
the most restricted, most narrow view which it is possible for human
understanding to embrace."
"Pray, sir, explain yourself," said Villefort, more and more astonished,
"I really do--not--understand you--perfectly."
"I say, sir, that with the eyes fixed on the social organization of
nations, you see only the springs of the machine, and lose sight of
the sublime workman who makes them act; I say that you do not recognize
before you and around you any but those office-holders whose commissions
have been signed by a minister or king; and that the men whom God has
put above those office-holders, ministers, and kings, by giving them a
mission to follow out, instead of a post to fill--I say that they
escape your narrow, limited field of observation. It is thus that human
weakness fails, from its debilitated and imperfect organs. Tobias took
the angel who restored him to light for an ordinary young man. The
nations took Attila, who was doomed to destroy them, for a conqueror
similar to other conquerors, and it was necessary for both to reveal
their missions, that they might be known and acknowledged; one was
compelled to say, 'I am the angel of the Lord'; and the other, 'I am
the hammer of God,' in order that the divine essence in both might be
revealed."
"Then," said Villefort, more and more amazed, and really supposing he
was speaking to a mystic or a madman, "you consider yourself as one of
those extraordinary beings whom you have mentioned?"
"And why not?" said Monte Cristo coldly.
"Your pardon, sir," replied Villefort, quite astounded, "but you will
excuse me if, when I presented myself to you, I was unaware that I
should meet with a person whose knowledge and understanding so far
surpass the usual knowledge and understanding of men. It is not usual
with us corrupted wretches of civilization to find gentlemen like
yourself, possessors, as you are, of immense fortune--at least, so it
is said--and I beg you to observe that I do not inquire, I merely
repeat;--it is not usual, I say, for such privileged and wealthy
beings to waste their time in speculations on the state of society, in
philosophical reveries, intended at best to console those whom fate has
disinherited from the goods of this world."
"Really, sir," retorted the count, "have you attained the eminent
situation in which you are, without having admitted, or even without
having met with exceptions? and do you never use your eyes, which must
have acquired so much finesse and certainty, to divine, at a glance, the
kind of man by whom you are confronted? Should not a magistrate be not
merely the best administrator of the law, but the most crafty expounder
of the chicanery of his profession, a steel probe to search hearts, a
touchstone to try the gold which in each soul is mingled with more or
less of alloy?"
"Sir," said Villefort, "upon my word, you overcome me. I really never
heard a person speak as you do."
"Because you remain eternally encircled in a round of general
conditions, and have never dared to raise your wings into those upper
spheres which God has peopled with invisible or exceptional beings."
"And you allow then, sir, that spheres exist, and that these marked and
invisible beings mingle amongst us?"
"Why should they not? Can you see the air you breathe, and yet without
which you could not for a moment exist?"
"Then we do not see those beings to whom you allude?"
"Yes, we do; you see them whenever God pleases to allow them to assume a
material form. You touch them, come in contact with them, speak to them,
and they reply to you."
"Ah," said Villefort, smiling, "I confess I should like to be warned
when one of these beings is in contact with me."
"You have been served as you desire, monsieur, for you were warned just
now, and I now again warn you."
"Then you yourself are one of these marked beings?"
"Yes, monsieur, I believe so; for until now, no man has found himself in
a position similar to mine. The dominions of kings are limited either
by mountains or rivers, or a change of manners, or an alteration of
language. My kingdom is bounded only by the world, for I am not an
Italian, or a Frenchman, or a Hindu, or an American, or a Spaniard--I am
a cosmopolite. No country can say it saw my birth. God alone knows what
country will see me die. I adopt all customs, speak all languages. You
believe me to be a Frenchman, for I speak French with the same facility
and purity as yourself. Well, Ali, my Nubian, believes me to be an Arab;
Bertuccio, my steward, takes me for a Roman; Haidee, my slave, thinks
me a Greek. You may, therefore, comprehend, that being of no country,
asking no protection from any government, acknowledging no man as
my brother, not one of the scruples that arrest the powerful, or the
obstacles which paralyze the weak, paralyzes or arrests me. I have only
two adversaries--I will not say two conquerors, for with perseverance I
subdue even them,--they are time and distance. There is a third, and the
most terrible--that is my condition as a mortal being. This alone can
stop me in my onward career, before I have attained the goal at which
I aim, for all the rest I have reduced to mathematical terms. What men
call the chances of fate--namely, ruin, change, circumstances--I have
fully anticipated, and if any of these should overtake me, yet it
will not overwhelm me. Unless I die, I shall always be what I am, and
therefore it is that I utter the things you have never heard, even from
the mouths of kings--for kings have need, and other persons have fear
of you. For who is there who does not say to himself, in a society as
incongruously organized as ours, 'Perhaps some day I shall have to do
with the king's attorney'?"
"But can you not say that, sir? The moment you become an inhabitant of
France, you are naturally subjected to the French law."
"I know it sir," replied Monte Cristo; "but when I visit a country I
begin to study, by all the means which are available, the men from whom
I may have anything to hope or to fear, till I know them as well as,
perhaps better than, they know themselves. It follows from this, that
the king's attorney, be he who he may, with whom I should have to deal,
would assuredly be more embarrassed than I should."
"That is to say," replied Villefort with hesitation, "that human nature
being weak, every man, according to your creed, has committed faults."
"Faults or crimes," responded Monte Cristo with a negligent air.
"And that you alone, amongst the men whom you do not recognize as your
brothers--for you have said so," observed Villefort in a tone that
faltered somewhat--"you alone are perfect."
"No, not perfect," was the count's reply; "only impenetrable, that's
all. But let us leave off this strain, sir, if the tone of it is
displeasing to you; I am no more disturbed by your justice than are you
by my second-sight."
"No, no,--by no means," said Villefort, who was afraid of seeming
to abandon his ground. "No; by your brilliant and almost sublime
conversation you have elevated me above the ordinary level; we no longer
talk, we rise to dissertation. But you know how the theologians in their
collegiate chairs, and philosophers in their controversies, occasionally
say cruel truths; let us suppose for the moment that we are theologizing
in a social way, or even philosophically, and I will say to you, rude
as it may seem, 'My brother, you sacrifice greatly to pride; you may be
above others, but above you there is God.'"
"Above us all, sir," was Monte Cristo's response, in a tone and with
an emphasis so deep that Villefort involuntarily shuddered. "I have my
pride for men--serpents always ready to threaten every one who would
pass without crushing them under foot. But I lay aside that pride before
God, who has taken me from nothing to make me what I am."
"Then, count, I admire you," said Villefort, who, for the first time
in this strange conversation, used the aristocratic form to the unknown
personage, whom, until now, he had only called monsieur. "Yes, and I
say to you, if you are really strong, really superior, really pious,
or impenetrable, which you were right in saying amounts to the
same thing--then be proud, sir, for that is the characteristic of
predominance. Yet you have unquestionably some ambition."
"I have, sir."
"And what may it be?"
"I too, as happens to every man once in his life, have been taken by
Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he showed
me all the kingdoms of the world, and as he said before, so said he to
me, 'Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?' I
reflected long, for a gnawing ambition had long preyed upon me, and then
I replied, 'Listen,--I have always heard of providence, and yet I have
never seen him, or anything that resembles him, or which can make me
believe that he exists. I wish to be providence myself, for I feel that
the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is
to recompense and punish.' Satan bowed his head, and groaned. 'You
mistake,' he said, 'providence does exist, only you have never seen him,
because the child of God is as invisible as the parent. You have seen
nothing that resembles him, because he works by secret springs, and
moves by hidden ways. All I can do for you is to make you one of the
agents of that providence.' The bargain was concluded. I may sacrifice
my soul, but what matters it?" added Monte Cristo. "If the thing were
to do again, I would again do it." Villefort looked at Monte Cristo with
extreme amazement. "Count," he inquired, "have you any relations?"
"No, sir, I am alone in the world."
"So much the worse."
"Why?" asked Monte Cristo.
"Because then you might witness a spectacle calculated to break down
your pride. You say you fear nothing but death?"
"I did not say that I feared it; I only said that death alone could
check the execution of my plans."
"And old age?"
"My end will be achieved before I grow old."
"And madness?"
"I have been nearly mad; and you know the axiom,--non bis in idem. It
is an axiom of criminal law, and, consequently, you understand its full
application."
"Sir," continued Villefort, "there is something to fear besides
death, old age, and madness. For instance, there is apoplexy--that
lightning-stroke which strikes but does not destroy you, and yet which
brings everything to an end. You are still yourself as now, and yet you
are yourself no longer; you who, like Ariel, verge on the angelic, are
but an inert mass, which, like Caliban, verges on the brutal; and this
is called in human tongues, as I tell you, neither more nor less than
apoplexy. Come, if so you will, count, and continue this conversation
at my house, any day you may be willing to see an adversary capable of
understanding and anxious to refute you, and I will show you my father,
M. Noirtier de Villefort, one of the most fiery Jacobins of the French
Revolution; that is to say, he had the most remarkable audacity,
seconded by a most powerful organization--a man who has not, perhaps,
like yourself seen all the kingdoms of the earth, but who has helped to
overturn one of the greatest; in fact, a man who believed himself,
like you, one of the envoys, not of God, but of a supreme being; not of
providence, but of fate. Well, sir, the rupture of a blood-vessel on the
lobe of the brain has destroyed all this, not in a day, not in an hour,
but in a second. M. Noirtier, who, on the previous night, was the old
Jacobin, the old senator, the old Carbonaro, laughing at the guillotine,
the cannon, and the dagger--M. Noirtier, playing with revolutions--M.
Noirtier, for whom France was a vast chess-board, from which pawns,
rooks, knights, and queens were to disappear, so that the king was
checkmated--M. Noirtier, the redoubtable, was the next morning 'poor M.
Noirtier,' the helpless old man, at the tender mercies of the weakest
creature in the household, that is, his grandchild, Valentine; a dumb
and frozen carcass, in fact, living painlessly on, that time may be
given for his frame to decompose without his consciousness of its
decay."
"Alas, sir," said Monte Cristo "this spectacle is neither strange to
my eye nor my thought. I am something of a physician, and have, like
my fellows, sought more than once for the soul in living and in dead
matter; yet, like providence, it has remained invisible to my eyes,
although present to my heart. A hundred writers since Socrates, Seneca,
St. Augustine, and Gall, have made, in verse and prose, the comparison
you have made, and yet I can well understand that a father's sufferings
may effect great changes in the mind of a son. I will call on you,
sir, since you bid me contemplate, for the advantage of my pride, this
terrible spectacle, which must have been so great a source of sorrow to
your family."
"It would have been so unquestionably, had not God given me so large a
compensation. In contrast with the old man, who is dragging his way
to the tomb, are two children just entering into life--Valentine,
the daughter by my first wife--Mademoiselle Renee de Saint-Meran--and
Edward, the boy whose life you have this day saved."
"And what is your deduction from this compensation, sir?" inquired Monte
Cristo.
"My deduction is," replied Villefort, "that my father, led away by his
passions, has committed some fault unknown to human justice, but marked
by the justice of God. That God, desirous in his mercy to punish but
one person, has visited this justice on him alone." Monte Cristo with a
smile on his lips, uttered in the depths of his soul a groan which would
have made Villefort fly had he but heard it. "Adieu, sir," said the
magistrate, who had risen from his seat; "I leave you, bearing a
remembrance of you--a remembrance of esteem, which I hope will not be
disagreeable to you when you know me better; for I am not a man to bore
my friends, as you will learn. Besides, you have made an eternal friend
of Madame de Villefort." The count bowed, and contented himself with
seeing Villefort to the door of his cabinet, the procureur being
escorted to his carriage by two footmen, who, on a signal from their
master, followed him with every mark of attention. When he had gone,
Monte Cristo breathed a profound sigh, and said,--"Enough of this
poison, let me now seek the antidote." Then sounding his bell, he said
to Ali, who entered, "I am going to madam's chamber--have the carriage
ready at one o'clock."
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