The Count of Monte Cristo. Alexandre DumasЧитать онлайн книгу.

       6 The Deputy Procureur

      IN ONE OF the large aristocratical mansions, situated in the Rue du Grand Cours, opposite the fountain of Medusa, a second marriage-feast was being celebrated, almost at the same hour with the ill-fated nuptial repast given by Dantès.

      In this case, however, although the occasion of the entertainment was similar, the company assembled formed a striking difference. Instead of a rude mixture of sailors, soldiers, and those belonging to the humblest grade of life, the present assembly was composed of the very flower of Marseilles society. Magistrates who had resigned their office during the usurper’s reign; officers who, scorning to fight under his banners, had offered their services to foreign powers, with younger members of the family, brought up to hate and execrate the man whom five years of exile would have converted into a martyr, and fifteen of restoration elevated to the rank of a demigod.

      The guests were still at table, and the heated and energetic conversation that prevailed betrayed the violent and vindictive passions that then agitated each dweller of the south, where, unhappily, religious strife had long given increased bitterness to the violence of party feeling.

      The emperor, now king of the petty Isle of Elba, after having held sovereign sway over one half of the world, counting us, his subjects, a small population of twenty millions, after having been accustomed to hear the “Vive Napoleons” of, at least, six times that number of human beings, uttered in nearly every language of the globe,—was looked upon among the haute société of Marseilles as a ruined man, separated for ever from any fresh connection with France or claim to her throne.

      The magistrates freely discussed their political views; the military part of the company talked unreservedly of Moscow and Leipsic, while the females indulged in open comment upon the divorce of the Empress Josephine.

      All seemed to evince that in this focus of royalism it was not over the downfall of one man they rejoiced, but in the bright and cheering prospect of a revivified political existence for themselves.

      An old man, decorated with the cross of Saint Louis, now rose and proposed the health of King Louis XVIII. This aged individual was the Marquis de Saint-Méran.

      This toast, recalling at once the patient exile of Hartwell, and the peace-loving king of France, excited universal enthusiasm; glasses were elevated in the air à l’Anglais; and the ladies, snatching their bouquets from their fair bosoms, strewed the table with their floral treasures. In a word, an almost poetical fervour prevailed.

      “Ah!” said the Marquise de Saint-Méran, a woman with a stern, forbidding eye, though still noble and elegant-looking, despite her having reached her fiftieth year—“Ah! these revolutionists, who have driven us from those very possessions they afterwards purchased for a mere trifle during the Reign of Terror, would be compelled to own, were they here, that all true devotion was on our side, since we were content to follow the fortunes of a falling monarch, while they, on the contrary, made their fortune by worshipping the rising sun;—yes, yes, they could not help admitting that the king, for whom we sacrificed rank, wealth, and station, was truly our ‘Louis the Well-beloved!’ while their wretched usurper has been, and ever will be, to them their evil genius, their ‘Napoleon the Accursed!’ Am I not right, Villefort?”

      “I beg your pardon, madame! I really must pray you to excuse me—but—in truth—I was not attending to the conversation.”

      “Marquise!—marquise!” interposed the same elderly personage who had proposed the toast, “let the young people alone; let me tell you, on one’s wedding day there are more agreeable subjects of conversation than dry politics!”

      “Never mind, dearest mother,” said a young and lovely girl, with a profusion of light brown hair, and eyes that seemed to float in liquid crystal; “ ‘tis all my fault for seizing upon M. de Villefort, so as to prevent his listening to what you said. But there—now take him—he is all your own, for as long as you like. M. Villefort, I beg to remind you my mother speaks to you.”

      “If Madame la Marquise will deign to repeat the words I but imperfectly caught, I shall be delighted to answer,” said M. de Villefort.

      “Never mind, Renée,” replied the marquise, with such a look of tenderness, as all were astonished to see her harsh dry features capable of expressing; for, however all other feelings may be withered in a woman’s nature, there is always one bright smiling spot in the maternal breast, and that is where a dearly-beloved child is concerned, “I forgive you. What I was saying, Villefort, was, that the Bonapartists had neither our sincerity, enthusiasm, nor devotion.”

      “They had, however, what supplied the place of those fine qualities,” replied the young man, “and that was fanaticism. Napoleon is the Mahomet of the West, and is worshipped by his commonplace but ambitious followers, not only as a leader and law-giver, but also as the personification of equality.”

      “He!” cried the marquise,—“Napoleon the type of equality!—for mercy’s sake, then, what would you call Robespierre?—Come, come, do not strip the latter of his just rights to bestow them on one who has usurped enough, methinks.”

      “Nay, madame! I would place each of these heroes on his right pedestal—that of Robespierre to be built where his scaffold was erected; that of Napoleon on the column of the Place Vendôme. The only difference consists in the opposite character of the equality supported by these two men; the one advocates the equality that elevates, the other professes the equality that depresses;—the one brings a king within reach of the guillotine, the other elevates the people to a level with the throne. Observe,” said Villefort, smiling, “I do not mean to deny, that both the individuals we have been referring to were revolutionary scoundrels, and that the 9th Thermidor and 4th of April were lucky days for France, worthy of being gratefully remembered by every friend to monarchy and civil order; and that explains how it comes to pass, that, fallen as I trust he is for ever, Napoleon has still preserved a train of parasitical satellites. Still, marquise, it has been so with other usurpers; Cromwell, for instance, who was not half so bad as Napoleon, had his partisans and advocates.”

      “Do you know, Villefort, that you are talking in a most dreadfully revolutionary strain?—but I excuse it—it is impossible to expect the son of a Girondin to be free from a small spice of the old leaven.”

      A deep crimson suffused the countenance of Villefort. “‘Tis true, madame,” answered he, “that my father was a Girondin, but he was not among the number of those who voted for the king’s death; he was an equal sufferer with yourself during the Reign of Terror, and had well-nigh lost his head on the same scaffold as your own father.”

      “True!” replied the marquise, without wincing in the slightest degree at the tragical remembrance thus called up; “but bear in mind, if you please, that our respective parents underwent persecution and proscription from diametrically