Edmond Dantes Part 16

"Messieurs, do you remember the fair Valentine de Villefort, whose untimely and mysterious demise all the young people of Paris so much bewailed, some two or three years ago, and whose lovely remains, we, with our own eyes, saw deposited in the Saint-Meran and de Villefort vault at Pere Lachaise, one bitter cold autumn evening, and there listened most patiently and piously to a whole breviary of mournful speeches, declarative of the said Valentine's most superlative excellence?"

"Undoubtedly, we remember it well," was the reply.

"Then behold, and never dare to doubt the reappearance of the dead again to the ocular organs of humanity."

"Valentine de Villefort!" exclaimed the Count, after a careful and scrutinizing survey, "by all that's supernatural; and more exquisitely lovely than ever!"

"Then it was true, after all, the strange story we heard," said Beauchamp, "of the young lady's resurrection and marriage to Maximilian Morrel, somewhere far away in parts unknown?"

"No doubt," replied the Count, "for, if I mistake not--and I'm sure I don't mistake, now that I look more closely--that stalwart, splendid fellow, with the broad forehead, black eyes and moustache, and the order of the Legion of Honor on his breast, to set off his rich uniform of the Spahis, and on whose arm the fair apparition is leaning, is no other than Maximilian Morrel himself--the identical man who saved my worthless neck from a yataghan in Algeria."

"How dark he's grown!" said Debray.

"No more so than all these African heroes--for instance, Cavaignac and Lamoriciere."

"But what a splendid contrast there is between the young Colonel of the Spahis and his lovely bride, if such she be! He, dark as a Corsican; she, fair as an Englishwoman--he, upright as a poplar; she, drooping like a willow--his hair and eyes black as midnight, while her soft, languis.h.i.+ng orbs are as blue as the summer sky, and her glossy ringlets as brown as a chestnut!"

"On my word," said Beauchamp, "the Count grows poetical! Morrel had better keep his beautiful wife out of the way! But have you discovered who are the other couple in the box?" he added to the Secretary, who had his lorgnette in most vigilant requisition. "Any more discoveries, Debray?"

A sigh might have been heard as the Secretary took his gla.s.s from his eye, and replied simply:

"Yes."

"And who now?" asked Chateau-Renaud. "There seems no end to discoveries to-night."

"The young man who, by his decorations, seems a chef de bataillon of the Spahis," replied Debray, "I cannot make out. But, be he whom he may, he is effectually disguised from his most intimate friends by his luxuriant beard and moustache. As for the lady--there is but one woman in the world I have ever had the good fortune to behold who could be mistaken for her."

"And that is?" said Beauchamp.

"Herself."

"And who is herself, Lucien?" asked Chateau-Renaud.

"Have you forgotten the Countess de Morcerf?"

"The Countess de Morcerf?--the wife of the general who was convicted by the peers of felony, treason and outrage in the matter of Ali Tebelen, Pacha of Yanina?" said Beauchamp.

"And who blew his brains out in despair?" added the Count.

"The same," said Debray. "She returned to Ma.r.s.eilles with her son Albert. You remember Albert and his strange conduct in the duel with the Count of Monte-Cristo?"

"One could hardly forget such chivalric generosity, such magnificent magnanimity and such sublime self-control as were exhibited by the young man on that occasion!" said Beauchamp. "It is to be hoped he was not equally forbearing toward the Arabs in his African campaigns, although, as his name has never been seen or heard since he entered the army, in all probability he was."

"Well, well," cried the Secretary, impatiently, "the Countess retired to Ma.r.s.eilles, and there she is said to have resided in utter seclusion, in company only with Morrel's beautiful wife, devoting the vast wealth of the deceased Count to philanthropic objects, having received it, as his widow, only with the understanding it should be thus bestowed."

"But the rumor was," said Beauchamp, "and indeed I was so a.s.sured by M.

de Boville himself, Receiver-General of the Hospitals, at the time, that the Countess gave all the Count's fortune to the hospitals, and that he himself registered the deed of gift."

"Oh! that was only some twelve or thirteen hundred thousand francs,"

said Debray. "Three months after her settlement at Ma.r.s.eilles, in a small house in the Allees de Meillan, said to be her own by maternal inheritance, a letter came to her from Thomson and French, of Rome, stating that there was a deposit in their house, to the credit of the estate of the late Count, of the enormous sum of two millions of francs, subject to her sole control and order, as the Count's only heir, in the absence of his son."

"Two millions of francs!" cried the two young men in a breath.

"Even so, Messieurs," said Debray. "The story does sound rather oriental; but I have reason to know that it is entirely true, for I made diligent inquiry about it when last at Ma.r.s.eilles."

"And what took you to Ma.r.s.eilles, Lucien?" asked the Count significantly.

"The Ministry," replied Debray, with evident confusion, coloring deeply.

"But why does not the Countess marry again?" asked Chateau-Renaud, surveying her faultless form and face through his gla.s.s. "In the prime of life, rich, and, despite her past troubles, most exquisitely beautiful, it is strange she don't make herself and some one else happy!"

"Especially as no one could ever accuse her of having very desperately loved her dear first husband," added the journalist. "Why don't she marry, Lucien?"

"How the devil should I know!" replied the Secretary in great confusion.

"You don't suppose I ever asked her the question, do you?"

"Upon my word," exclaimed the Count, laughing, "I shall begin to think you have, if you take it so warmly. But, hist! the bell! The curtain rises. We mustn't lose the third act of Donizetti's chef d'oeuvre, with such a Lucrezia, for any woman living."

But it was very evident that much of the magnificent performance of the debutante and her companion, in the thrilling scene between the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Ferrara and the young Captain Gennaro, was lost to the Secretary.

"Do you observe, Beauchamp, how strangely fascinated with the new cantatrice seems the young officer of the Spahis who accompanies the Countess?" he whispered. "Do but look. He sits like one transfixed."

"And the Countess seems transfixed also, though not by the same object,"

was the reply. "How excessively pale, yet how beautiful she is! That plain black dress, without ornament or jewel, and her raven hair, parted simply on her forehead, enhance her voluptuous charms infinitely more than could the most gorgeous costume. Heavens! what a happy man will he be who can call her his!"

"Amen!" said Debray, and the word seemed to rise from the very depths of his heart. "But she will never marry. Some early disappointment, even before her union with Morcerf, has withered her heart, and the terrible divorce which parted her from him, although she never loved him, will keep her single forever. Her first and only love is either dead or--worse--married to another."

"See, see, Lucien!" cried Beauchamp, hurriedly; "at whom does she gaze so intently, and yet so sadly? It cannot be Lamartine, for there sits his lovely young English wife at his side; nor can it be old Arago, nor young Le Verrier; and yet some one in that box it surely is."

"M. Dantes?" cried Debray.

"Impossible! That man seems hardly conscious that there are such beings as women. His whole soul is in affairs of state."

"His whole soul seems somewhere else just at present," exclaimed the Secretary, bitterly. "Look!"

"How dreadfully pale he is!" said Beauchamp; "and yet his eyes fairly blaze. Is it the Countess he gazes at?"

"Is it M. Dantes she gazes at?"

At that moment, amid the wild farewell of the mother to her son, upon the stage, the curtain came down, and at the same instant, M. Dantes hastily pressed his white handkerchief to his lips, and, leaning on the arms of Lamartine and Arago, hastily left the box.

"Ha! the Countess faints!" cried Debray, as the door closed on M.

Dantes. "Do they know each other, then?"

CHAPTER XIII.