Dumas' Paris Part 32

"It was about six o'clock in the evening; an opal-coloured light, through which an autumnal sun shed its golden rays, descended on the blue sea. The heat of the day had gradually decreased, and a light breeze arose, seeming like the respiration of nature on awakening from the burning siesta of the south; a delicious zephyr played along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and wafted from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e the sweet perfume of plants, mingled with the fresh smell of the sea.

"A light yacht, chaste and elegant in its form, was gliding amidst the first dews of night over the immense lake, extending from Gibraltar to the Dardanelles, and from Tunis to Venice. The motion resembled that of a swan with its wings opened toward the wind, gliding on the water. It advanced, at the same time, swiftly and gracefully, leaving behind it a glittering track. By degrees the sun disappeared behind the western horizon; but, as though to prove the truth of the fanciful ideas in heathen mythology, its indiscreet rays reappeared on the summit of each wave, seeming to reveal that the G.o.d of fire had just enfolded himself in the bosom of Amphitrite, who in vain endeavoured to hide her lover beneath her azure mantle."

Of the island of Monte Cristo itself, Dumas' description is equally gratifying. In the earlier chapters he gives it thus:

"The isle of Monte Cristo loomed large in the horizon.... They were just abreast of Mareciana, and beyond the flat but verdant isle of La Pianosa.

The peak of Monte Cristo, reddened by the burning sun, was seen against the azure sky.... About five o'clock in the evening the island was quite distinct, and everything on it was plainly perceptible, owing to that clearness of the atmosphere which is peculiar to the light which the rays of the sun cast at its setting.

"Edmond gazed most earnestly at the ma.s.s of rocks which gave out all the variety of twilight colours, from the brightest pink to the deepest blue; and from time to time his cheeks flushed, his brow became purple, and a mist pa.s.sed over his eyes.... In spite of his usual command over himself, Dantes could not restrain his impetuosity. He was the first who jumped on sh.o.r.e; and had he dared, he would, like Lucius Brutus, have 'kissed his mother earth.' It was dark, but at eleven o'clock the moon rose in the midst of the ocean, whose every wave she silvered, and then, 'ascending high,' played in floods of pale light on the rocky hills of this second Pelion.

"The island was familiar to the crew of _La Jeune Amelie_--it was one of her halting-places. As to Dantes, he had pa.s.sed it on his voyages to and from the Levant, but never touched at it."

It is unquestionable that "The Count of Monte Cristo" is the most popular and the best known of all Dumas' works. There is a deal of action, of personality and characterization, and, above all, an ever-shifting panorama, which extends from the boulevards of Ma.r.s.eilles to the faubourgs of Paris, and from the island Chateau d'If to the equally melancholy _allees_ of Pere la Chaise, which M. de Villefort, a true Parisian, considered alone worthy of receiving the remains of a Parisian family, as it was there only that they would be surrounded by worthy a.s.sociates.

All travellers for the East, _via_ the Mediterranean, know well the ancient Phoenician port of Ma.r.s.eilles. One does not need even the words of Dumas to recall its picturesqueness and importance--to-day as in ages past. Still, the opening lines of "The Count of Monte Cristo" do form a word-picture which few have equalled in the pages of romance; and there is not a word too much; nothing superfluous or extraneous.

"On the 28th of February, 1815, the watchtower of Notre Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the _Pharaon_, from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples.

"As usual, a pilot put off immediately, and, rounding the Chateau d'If, got on board the vessel between Cape Morgion and the isle of Rion.

"Immediately, and according to custom, the platform of Fort Saint-Jean was covered with lookers-on; it is always an event at Ma.r.s.eilles for a ship to come into port, especially when this ship, like the _Pharaon_, had been built, rigged, and laden on the stocks of the old Phocee, and belonged to an owner of the city.

"The ship drew on: it had safely pa.s.sed the strait, which some volcanic shock has made between the isle of Calasareigne and the isle of Jaros; had doubled Pomegue, and approached the harbour under topsails, jib, and foresail, but so slowly and sedately that the idlers, with that instinct which misfortune sends before it, asked one another what misfortune could have happened on board. However, those experienced in navigation saw plainly that, if any accident had occurred, it was not to the vessel herself, for she bore down with all the evidence of being skilfully handled, the anchor ready to be dropped, the bowsprit-shrouds loose, and, beside the pilot, who was steering the _Pharaon_ by the narrow entrance of the port Ma.r.s.eilles, was a young man, who, with activity and vigilant eye, watched every motion of the ship, and repeated each direction of the pilot.

"The vague disquietude which prevailed amongst the spectators had so much affected one of the crowd that he did not await the arrival of the vessel in harbour, but, jumping into a small skiff, desired to be pulled alongside the _Pharaon_, which he reached as she rounded the creek of La Reserve."

The process of coming into harbour at Ma.r.s.eilles does not differ greatly to-day from the description given by Dumas.

New harbour works have been constructed, and sailing-ships have mostly given way to great steamers, but the channel winds and twists as of old under the lofty brow, capped by the sailors' church of Notre Dame de la Garde, which is to-day a tawdry, bizarre shrine, as compared with the motive which inspired the devout to ascend its heights to pray for those who go down to the sea in ships.

Ma.r.s.eilles, of all cities of France, more even than Bordeaux or Lyons, is possessed of that individuality which stands out strong on the background of France--the land and the nation.

In the commercial world its importance gives it a high rank, and its _affaires_ are regulated by no clues sent each morning by post or by telegraph from the world's other marts of trade. It has, moreover, in the Canebiere, one of the truly great streets of the world. Dumas remarked it, and so, too, have many others, who know its gay cosmopolitan aspect at all the hours of day and night.

From "The Count of Monte Cristo," the following lines describe it justly and truly, and in a way that fits it admirably, in spite of the fact that Dumas wrote of it as it was a hundred years ago:

"The young sailor jumped into the skiff, and sat down in the stern, desiring to be put ash.o.r.e at the Canebiere. The two rowers bent to their work, and the little boat glided away as rapidly as possible in the midst of the thousand vessels which choke up the narrow way which leads between the two rows of ships from the mouth of the harbour to the Quai d'Orleans.

"The ship-owner, smiling, followed him with his eyes until he saw him spring out on the quai and disappear in the midst of the throng, which, from five o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night, choke up this famous street of La Canebiere, of which the modern Phoceens are so proud, and say, with all the gravity in the world, and with that accent which gives so much character to what is said, 'If Paris had La Canebiere, Paris would be a second Ma.r.s.eilles.'"

The Chateau d'If, far more than the island of Monte Cristo itself, is the _locale_ which is mostly recalled with regard to the romance of "Monte Cristo."

Dumas has, of course, made melodramatic use of it; in fact, it seems almost as if he had built the romance around its own restricted _pied a terre_, but, nevertheless, it is the one element which we are pleased to call up as representative of the story when mention is made thereof.

Not a line, not a word, is misplaced in the chapters in which Dumas treats of Dantes' incarceration in his island prison. Description does not crowd upon action or characterization, nor the reverse.

"Through the grating of the window of the carriage, Dantes saw they were pa.s.sing through the Rue Caisserie, and by the Quai St. Laurent and the Rue Taramis, to the port. They advanced toward a boat which a custom-house officer held by a chain near the quai. A shove sent the boat adrift, and the oarsman plied it rapidly toward the Pilon. At a shout the chain that closes the port was lowered, and in a second they were outside the harbour.... They had pa.s.sed the Tete de More, and were now in front of the lighthouse and about to double the battery.... They had left the isle Ratonneau, where the lighthouse stood, on the right, and were now opposite the Point des Catalans.

"'Tell me where you are conducting me?' asked Dantes of his guard.

"'You are a native of Ma.r.s.eilles, and a sailor, and yet you do not know where you are going?'

"'On my honour, I have no idea.'

"'That is impossible.'

"'I swear to you it is true. Tell me, I entreat.'

"'But my orders.'

"'Your orders do not forbid your telling me what I must know in ten minutes, in half an hour, or an hour. You see, I cannot escape, even if I intended.'

"'Unless you are blind, or have never been outside the harbour, you must know.'

"'I do not.'

"'Look around you, then.' Dantes rose and looked forward, when he saw rise within a hundred yards of him the black and frowning rock on which stands the Chateau d'If. This gloomy fortress, which has for more than three hundred years furnished food for so many wild legends, seemed to Dantes like a scaffold to a malefactor.

"'The Chateau d'If?' cried he. 'What are we going there for?' The gendarme smiled.

"'I am not going there to be imprisoned,' said Dantes; 'it is only used for political prisoners. I have committed no crime. Are there any magistrates or judges at the Chateau d'If?'

"'There are only,' said the gendarme, 'a governor, a garrison, turnkeys, and good thick walls. Come, come, do not look so astonished, or you will make me think you are laughing at me in return for my good nature.' Dantes pressed the gendarme's hand as though he would crush it.

"'You think, then,' said he, 'that I am conducted to the chateau to be imprisoned there?'

"'It is probable.'"

The details of Dantes' horrible confinement, at first in an upper cell, and later in a lower dungeon, where, as "No. 34," he became the neighbour of the old Abbe Faria, "No. 27," are well known of all lovers of Dumas.

The author does not weary one, and there are no lengthy descriptions dragged in to merely fill s.p.a.ce. When Dantes finally escapes from the chateau, after he had been imprisoned for fourteen years, Dumas again launches into that concise, direct word-painting which proclaims him the master.

"It was necessary for Dantes to strike out to sea. Ratonneau and Pomegue are the nearest isles of all those that surround the Chateau d'If; but Ratonneau and Pomegue are inhabited, together with the islet of Daume; Tiboulen or Lemaire were the most secure. The isles of Tiboulen and Lemaire are a league from the Chateau d'If....

"Before him rose a ma.s.s of strangely formed rocks, that resembled nothing so much as a vast fire petrified at the moment of its most fervent combustion. It was the isle of Tiboulen....

"As he rose, a flash of lightning, that seemed as if the whole of the heavens were opened, illumined the darkness. By its light, he saw the isle of Lemaire and Cape Croiselle, a quarter of a league distant."

In "The Count of Monte Cristo," Dumas makes a little journey up the valley of the Rhone into Provence.

In the chapter ent.i.tled "The Auberge of the Pont du Gard," he writes, in manner unmistakably familiar, of this land of the troubadours, the roses, and the beautiful women; for the women of Arles--those world-famous Arlesiennes--are the peers, in looks, of all the women of France.

Dumas writes of Beaucaire, of Bellegarde, of Arles, and of Aigues-Mortes, but not very affectionately; indeed, he seems to think all Provence "an arid, sterile lake," but he comes out strong on the beauty of the women of Arles, and marvels how they can live in the vicinity of the devastating fevers of the Camargue.

The auberge of the Pont du Garde itself--the establishment kept by the old tailor, Caderousse, whom Dantes sought out after his escape from the Chateau d'If--the author describes thus:

"Such of my readers as have made a pedestrian excursion to the south of France may perchance have noticed, midway between the town of Beaucaire and the village of Bellegarde, a small roadside inn, from the front of which hung, creaking and flapping in the wind, a sheet of tin covered with a caricature resemblance of the Pont du Gard. This modern place of entertainment stood on the left-hand side of the grand route, turning its back upon the Rhone. It also boasted of what in Languedoc is styled a garden, consisting of a small plot of ground, a full view of which might be obtained from a door immediately opposite the grand portal by which travellers were ushered in to partake of the hospitality of mine host of the Pont du Gard. This plaisance or garden, scorched up beneath the ardent sun of a lat.i.tude of thirty degrees, permitted nothing to thrive or scarcely live in its arid soil. A few dingy olives and stunted fig-trees struggled hard for existence, but their withered, dusty foliage abundantly proved how unequal was the conflict. Between these sickly shrubs grew a scanty supply of garlic, tomatoes, and eschalots; while, lone and solitary, like a forgotten sentinel, a tall pine raised its melancholy head in one of the corners of this unattractive spot, and displayed its flexible stem and fan-shaped summit dried and cracked by the withering influence of the mistral, that scourge of Provence."

The great fair of Beaucaire was, and is,--though Beaucaire has become a decrepit, tumble-down river town on the Rhone, with a ruined castle as its chief attraction,--renowned throughout France.