Part 80

At this name the count, who had hitherto saluted everyone with courtesy, but at the same time with coldness and formality, stepped a pace forward, and a slight tinge of red colored his pale cheeks. “You wear the uniform of the new French conquerors, monsieur,” said he; “it is a handsome uniform.” No one could have said what caused the count’s voice to vibrate so deeply, and what made his eye flash, which was in general so clear, lustrous, and limpid when he pleased. “You have never seen our Africans, count?” said Albert. “Never,” replied the count, who was by this time perfectly master of himself again. “Well, beneath this uniform beats one of the bravest and noblest hearts in the whole army.” “Oh, M. de Morcerf,” interrupted Morrel. “Let me go on, captain. And we have just heard,” continued Albert, “of a new deed of his, and so heroic a one, that, although I have seen him today for the first time, I request you to allow me to introduce him as my friend.” At these words it was still possible to observe in Monte Cristo the concentrated look, changing color, and slight trembling of the eyelid that show emotion. “Ah, you have a noble heart,” said the count; “so much the better.” This exclamation, which corresponded to the count’s own thought rather than to what Albert was saying, surprised everybody, and especially Morrel, who looked at Monte Cristo with wonder. But, at the same time, the intonation was so soft that, however strange the speech might seem, it was impossible to be offended at it. 20245m “Why should he doubt it?” said Beauchamp to Château-Renaud. “In reality,” replied the latter, who, with his aristocratic glance and his knowledge of the world, had penetrated at once all that was penetrable in Monte Cristo, “Albert has not deceived us, for the count is a most singular being. What say you, Morrel!” “_Ma foi_, he has an open look about him that pleases me, in spite of the singular remark he has made about me.” “Gentlemen,” said Albert, “Germain informs me that breakfast is ready. My dear count, allow me to show you the way.” They passed silently into the breakfast-room, and everyone took his place. “Gentlemen,” said the count, seating himself, “permit me to make a confession which must form my excuse for any improprieties I may commit. I am a stranger, and a stranger to such a degree, that this is the first time I have ever been at Paris. The French way of living is utterly unknown to me, and up to the present time I have followed the Eastern customs, which are entirely in contrast to the Parisian. I beg you, therefore, to excuse if you find anything in me too Turkish, too Italian, or too Arabian. Now, then, let us breakfast.” “With what an air he says all this,” muttered Beauchamp; “decidedly he is a great man.” “A great man in his own country,” added Debray. “A great man in every country, M. Debray,” said Château-Renaud. The count was, it may be remembered, a most temperate guest. Albert remarked this, expressing his fears lest, at the outset, the Parisian mode of life should displease the traveller in the most essential point. “My dear count,” said he, “I fear one thing, and that is, that the fare of the Rue du Helder is not so much to your taste as that of the Piazza di Spagna. I ought to have consulted you on the point, and have had some dishes prepared expressly.” “Did you know me better,” returned the count, smiling, “you would not give one thought of such a thing for a traveller like myself, who has successively lived on macaroni at Naples, polenta at Milan, olla podrida at Valencia, pilau at Constantinople, curry in India, and swallows’ nests in China. I eat everywhere, and of everything, only I eat but little; and today, 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 Nîmes, 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’Épinay; 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 Château-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.” Everyone 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 _café_ 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 someone 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.” 20249m “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 Poppæa, 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 Cæsar’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’Épinay’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 Château-Renaud; “you are the first man I ever met sufficiently courageous to preach egotism. Bravo, count, bravo!”