The Count of Monte Cristo. Alexandre Dumas

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      “What matters that?” muttered Fernand.

      “And why, I should like to know,” persisted Caderousse, “should they put Dantès in prison; he has neither robbed, nor killed, nor murdered.”

      “Hold your tongue!” said Danglars.

      “I won’t hold my tongue!” replied Caderousse; “I say I want to know why they should put Dantès in prison; I like Dantès; Dantès, your health!” and he swallowed another glass of wine.

      Danglars saw in the muddled look of the tailor the progress of his intoxication, and turning towards Fernand, said:

      “Well, you understand there is no need to kill him.”

      “Certainly not, if, as you said just now, you have the means of having Dantès arrested. Have you that means?”

      “It is to be found for the searching. But, why should I meddle in the matter? it is no affair of mine.”

      “I know not why you meddle,” said Fernand, seizing his arm, “but this I know, you have some motive of personal hatred against Dantès, for he who himself hates, is never mistaken in the sentiments of others.”

      “I! motives of hatred against Dantès? None, on my word! I saw you were unhappy, and your unhappiness interested me; that’s all; but the moment you believe I act for my own account, adieu, my dear friend, get out of the affair as best you may;” and Danglars rose as if he meant to depart.

      “No, no,” said Fernand, restraining him, “stay! It is of very little consequence to me in the long-run whether you have any angry feelings or not against Dantès. I hate him! I confess it openly. Do you find the means, I will execute it, provided it is not to kill the man, for Mercédès has declared she will kill herself if Dantès is killed.”

      Caderousse, who had let his head drop on the table, now raised it, and looking at Fernand with his dull and fishy eyes, he said:

      “Kill Dantès! who talks of killing Dantès? I won’t have him killed—I won’t! He’s my friend, and this morning offered to share his money with me, as I shared mine with him. I won’t have Dantès killed—I won’t!”

      “And who has said a word about killing him, muddlehead!” replied Danglars. “We were merely joking: drink to his health,” he added, filling Caderousse’s glass, “and do not interfere with us.”

      “Yes, yes, Dantès’ good health!” said Caderousse, emptying his glass, “here’s to his health! his health!—hurrah!”

      “But the means—the means?” said Fernand.

      “Have you not hit upon any?”

      “No!—you undertook to do so.”

      “True,” replied Danglars; “the French have the superiority over the Spaniards, that the Spaniards ruminate whilst the French invent.”

      “Do you invent, then?” said Fernand impatiently.

      “Waiter,” said Danglars, “pen, ink, and paper.”

      “Pen, ink, and paper,” muttered Fernand.

      “Yes; I am a supercargo; pen, ink, and paper are my tools, and without my tools I am fit for nothing.”

      “Pen, ink, and paper!” then called Fernand loudly.

      “All you require is a table,” said the waiter, pointing to the writing materials.

      “Bring them here.”

      The waiter did as he was desired.

      “When one thinks,” said Caderousse, letting his hand drop on the paper, “there is here wherewithal to kill a man more sure than if we waited at the corner of a wood to assassinate him. I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper, than of a sword or pistol.”

      “The fellow is not so drunk as he appears to be,” said Danglars. “Give him some more wine, Fernand.” Fernand filled Caderousse’s glass, who, toper as he was, lifted his hand from the paper and seized the glass.

      The Catalan watched him until Caderousse, almost overcome by this fresh assault on his senses, rested, or rather allowed his glass to fall upon the table.

      “Well!” resumed the Catalan, as he saw the final glimmer of Caderousse’s reason vanishing before the last glass of wine.

      “Well, then, I should say, for instance,” resumed Danglars, “that if after a voyage such as Dantès has just made, and in which he touched the Isle of Elba, some one were to denounce him to the king’s procureur as a Bonapartist agent———”

      “I will denounce him!” exclaimed the young man hastily.

      “Yes, but they will make you then sign your declaration, and confront you with him you have denounced; I will supply you with the means of supporting your accusation, for I know the fact well. But Dantès cannot remain for ever in prison, and one day or other he will leave it, and the day when he comes out, woe betide him who was the cause of his incarceration!”

      “Oh, I should wish nothing better than that he would come and seek a quarrel with me.”

      “Yes, and Mercédès! Mercédès, who will detest you if you have only the misfortune to scratch the skin of her dearly beloved Edmond!”

      “True!” said Fernand.

      “No! no!” continued Danglars; “if we resolve on such a step, it would be much better to take, as I now do, this pen, dip it into this ink, and write with the left hand (that the writing may not be recognised) the denunciation we propose.” And Danglars, uniting practice with theory, wrote with his left hand, and in a writing reversed from his usual style, and totally unlike it, the following lines which he handed to Fernand, and which Fernand read in an undertone:—

      “Monsieur,—The procureur du roi is informed by a friend of the throne and religion, that one Edmond Dantès, mate of the ship Pharaon, arrived this morning from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, has been intrusted by Murat with a letter for the usurper, and by the usurper with a letter for the Bonapartist committee in Paris.

      “Proof of this crime will be found on arresting him, for the letter will be found upon him, or at his father’s, or in his cabin on board the Pharaon.”

      “Very good,” resumed Danglars; “now your revenge looks like common sense, for in no way can it revert to yourself, and the matter will thus work its own way; there is nothing to do now but fold the letter as I am doing, and write upon it, ‘To M. le Procureur Royal,’ and that’s all settled.”

      And Danglars wrote the address as he spoke.

      “Yes, and that’s all settled!” exclaimed Caderousse, who, by a last effort of intellect, had followed the reading of the letter, and instinctively comprehended all the misery which such a denunciation must entail. “Yes, and that’s all settled: only it will be an infamous shame;” and he stretched out his hand to reach the letter.

      “Yes,” said Danglars, СКАЧАТЬ