The World's Greatest Books_ Volume 3 Part 56

"Are you out of your mind, my good man? I suppose the hall is badly lit, and you were half-asleep and heard the name wrong. Go back and ask the name again."

"No, sir, I will swear that I'm not mistaken. I'm sure I heard and saw perfectly."

"Very well, then, show him in."

Victor went back to the door, trembling all the time, and said, "Please step in, sir."

My hasty sensation of terror was quickly dispelled. It was Lucien who was apologising to me for disturbing me at such an hour.

"The fact is," he said, "I only arrived ten minutes ago, and you will understand how impossible it was not to come and see you at once."

I at once thought of the letter I had sent. In five days it could not have reached Sullacro.

"Good heaven!" I cried. "Nothing is known to you?"

"Everything is known," he said quietly.

Lucien mentioned that on going to his brother's house, the people were so panic-stricken that they refused the door to him.

"Tell me," I said, when we were alone. "You must have been on your way here when you heard the fatal news?"

"On the contrary, I was at Sullacro. Have you for-forgotten what I told you about the apparitions in my family?"

"Has your brother appeared to you?" I cried.

"Yes. He told me he had been killed in a duel by M. de Chateau-Renard. I saw my brother in his room the day he was killed," Lucien went on, "and that night in a dream I saw the place where the duel was fought, and heard the name of M. de Chateau-Renard. And I have come to Paris to kill the man who killed my brother. My brother had never touched a pistol in his life, and it was as easy to kill him as to kill a tame stag. My mother knows why I have come. She is a true Corsican, and she kissed me on the forehead and said 'Go!'"

The next morning Lucien wrote to Giordano and sent a challenge to Chateau-Renard. Then he went with me to Vincennes, and, though he had never been there in his life before, Lucien walked straight to the spot where his brother had fallen. He turned round, walked twenty paces, and said, "This is where the villain stood, and to-morrow he will lie here."

Lucien predicted with absolute confidence the death of Chateau-Renard.

The challenge was accepted, the same seconds acted, and on the morrow we a.s.sembled in the fatal glade. Chateau-Renard was obviously uneasy. The signal was given, both men fired, and, sure enough, Chateau-Renard fell, shot through the temple as Lucien had foretold.

Then, for the first time since Louis' death, Lucien burst into tears. He dropped his pistol and threw himself into my arms. "My brother, my dear brother!" he cried.

The Count of Monte Cristo

"The Count of Monte Cristo" appeared in 1844, when Dumas had been writing plays and stories for twenty years, and at a period when he was most extraordinarily prolific. In that year, a.s.sisted by his staff of compilers and transcribers, he is said to have turned out something like forty volumes!

"Monte Cristo" first gave Dumas' novels a world-wide audience.

Its unflagging spirit, the endless surprises, and the air of reality which was cast over the most extravagant situations made the work worthy of the popularity it enjoyed in almost every country in the world. The island from which it takes its name is a barren rock rising 2,000 feet out of the sea a few miles south of Elba. Dumas attempted to emulate Scott, and built a chateau near St. Germain, which he called Monte Cristo, costing over $125,000. It was afterwards sold for a tenth of that sum to pay his debts.

_I.--The Conspiracy of Envy_

On February 28, 1815, the three-masted Pharaon arrived at Ma.r.s.eilles from Smyrna, commanded by the first mate, young Edmond Dantes, the captain having died on the voyage. He had left a package for the Marechal Bertrand on the Isle of Elba, which Dantes had duly delivered, conversing with the exiled Emperor Napoleon himself.

The shipowner, M. Morrel, confirmed young Dantes in the command, and, overjoyed, he hastened to his father, and then to the village of the Catalans, near Ma.r.s.eilles, where the dark-eyed Mercedes, his betrothed, impatiently awaited him.

But his good fortune excited envy. Danglars, the supercargo of the Pharaon, wanted the command for himself, and Fernand, the Catalan cousin of Mercedes, hated Dantes because he had won her heart. Fernand's jealousy so took possession of him that he fell in willingly with a scheme which the envious Danglars proposed. Making use of Dantes'

compromising visit to Elba, they addressed an anonymous denunciation to the _procureur du roi_, which, in this period of Bonapartist plots, was indeed a formidable matter. Caderousse, a boon companion, was at first taken into their confidence, but as he came to think it a dangerous trick to play the young captain, he refused to take part in it.

On the morrow the wedding-feast took place, and at two o'clock Dantes, radiant with joy and happiness, prepared to accompany his bride to the hotel de ville for the civil ceremony. But at that moment the measured tread of soldiery was heard on the stairs, and a magistrate presented himself, bearing an order for the arrest of Edmond Dantes. Resistance or remonstrance was useless, and Dantes suffered himself to be taken to Ma.r.s.eilles, where he was examined by the deputy _procureur du roi,_ M.

de Villefort. To him, on demand, he recounted the story of his visit to Elba.

"Ah!" said Villefort, "if you have been culpable it was imprudence. Give up this letter you have brought from Elba, and go and rejoin your friends."

"You have it already," cried Dantes.

Villefort glanced at it, and sank into his seat, stupefied. It was addressed to M. Noirtier, a staunch Bonapartist.

"Oh, if he knew the contents of this," murmured he, "and that Noirtier is father of Villefort, I am lost!" He approached the fire, and cast the fatal letter in.

"Sir," said he, "I shall detail you till this evening in the Palais de Justice. Should anyone else interrogate you do not breathe a word of this letter."

"I promise."

It was Villefort who seemed to entreat, and the prisoner to rea.s.sure him.

But the doom of Edmond Dantes was cast. Sacrificed to Villefort's ambition, he was lodged the same night in a dungeon of the gloomy fortress-prison of the Chateau d'If, while Villefort posted to Paris to warn the king that the usurper Bonaparte was meditating a landing in France.

Napoleon returned. There followed the Hundred Days, and Louis XVIII.

again mounted the throne. M. Morrel's intercessions during Napoleon's brief triumph for the release of Dantes but served, on the restoration of Louis, to compromise further the unhappy prisoner, who languished in a foul prison in the depths of the Chateau d'If.

In the cell next to Dantes was another political prisoner, the Abbe Faria. He had been in the chateau four years when Dantes was immured, and, with marvellously contrived tools and incredible toil, had burrowed a tunnel through the rock fifty feet long, only to find that, instead of leading to the outer wall of the chateau, whence he could have flung himself into the sea, it led to the cell of another prisoner--Dantes. He penetrated it after Dantes had been solitary six years.

The prisoners met every day between the visits of their gaolers. Faria showed Dantes the products of his industry and ingenuity--his books, written on the linen of shirts, his fish-bone pens and needles, knives, and matches, all accomplished secretly; and beguiled much of the weariness of confinement by educating Dantes in the sciences, history, and languages. Dantes possessed a prodigious memory, combined with readiness of conception, and his studies progressed rapidly. Soon Dantes told the abbe his story, and the abbe had little difficulty in opening the eyes of the astonished Dantes to the villainy of his supposed friends and the deputy _procurer_. Thus was instilled into his heart a new pa.s.sion--vengeance.

_II.--The Cemetery of the Chateau d'If_

More than seven years pa.s.sed thus when coming into the abbe's dungeon one night, Dantes found him stricken with paralysis. His right arm and leg remained paralysed after the seizure. When Dantes next visited him the abbe showed him a paper, half-burnt, and rolled in a cylinder.

"This paper," said Faria, "is my treasure; and if I have not been allowed to possess it, you will. Who knows if another attack may not come, and all be finished?"

The abbe had been secretary to the last of the Counts of Spada, one of the most powerful families of mediaeval Italy, and he, dying in poverty, had left Faria an old breviary, which had been in the family since the days of the Borgias. In this, by chance, Faria found a piece of yellowed paper, on which, when put in the fire, writing began to appear. From the remains of the paper he made out during the early days of his imprisonment, that a Cardinal Spada, at the end of the fifteenth century, fearing poisoning at the hands of Pope Alexander VI., had buried in the Island of Monte Cristo, a rock between Corsica and Elba, all his ingots, gold, money, and jewels, amounting then to nearly two million Roman crowns.

"The last Count of Spada made me his heir," said the abbe. "The treasure now amounts to nearly thirteen millions of money!"

The abbe remained paralysed, and had given up all hope of enjoying the treasure himself; and presently another seizure took him, and one night Dantes was alone with the corpse.

Next morning the preparations for burying the dead man were made, the body being placed in a sack and left in the cell till the evening.