The Count of Monte Cristo. Alexandre Dumas

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СКАЧАТЬ 10 The Little Room in the Tuileries

      WE WILL LEAVE Villefort on the road to Paris, travelling with all speed, and penetrating the two or three apartments which precede it, enter the small cabinet of the Tuileries with the arched window, so well known as having been the favourite cabinet of Napoleon and Louis XVIII, as also that of Louis Philippe.

      There, in this closet, seated before a walnut-tree table he had brought with him from Hartwell, and to which, from one of those fancies not uncommon to great people, he was particularly attached, the king, Louis XVIII, was carelessly listening to a man of fifty or fifty-two years of age, with gray hairs, aristocratic bearing, and exceedingly gentlemanly attire, whilst he was making a note in a volume of Horace, Gryphius’s edition, which was much indebted to the sagacious observations of the philosophical monarch.

      “You say, sir———” said the king.

      “That I am exceedingly disquieted, sire.”

      “Really, have you had a visit of the seven fat kine and seven lean kine?”

      “No, sire, for that would only betoken for us seven years of plenty and seven years of scarcity, and with a king as full of foresight as your majesty, scarcity is not a thing to be feared.”

      “Then of what other scourge are you afraid, my dear Blacas?”

      “Sire, I have every reason to believe that a storm is brewing in the south.”

      “Well, my dear duke,” replied Louis XVIII, “I think you are wrongly informed, and know positively that, on the contrary, it is very fine weather in that direction.”

      Man of ability as he was, Louis XVIII liked a pleasant jest. “Sire,” continued M. de Blacas, “if it only be to reassure a faithful servant, will your majesty send into Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphiné, trusty men who will bring you back a faithful report as to the feeling in these three provinces?”

      “Canimus surdis!” replied the king, continuing the annotations in his Horace.

      “Sire,” replied the courtier, laughing, in order that he might seem to comprehend the quotation, “your majesty may be perfectly right in relying on the good feeling of France, but I fear I am not altogether wrong in dreading some desperate attempt.”

      “By whom?”

      “By Bonaparte, or, at least, his party.”

      “My dear Blacas,” said the king, “you with your alarms prevent me from working.”

      “And you, sire, prevent me from sleeping with your security.”

      “Wait, my dear sir, wait a moment, for I have such a delightful note on the Pastor quùm traheret,—wait, and I will listen to you afterwards.”

      There was a brief pause, during which Louis XVIII wrote, in a hand as small as possible, another note on the margin of his Horace, and then looking at the duke with the air of a man who thinks he has an idea of his own, whilst he is but commenting upon the idea of another, he said:

      “Go on, my dear duke, go on—I listen.”

      “Sire,” said Blacas, who had for a moment the hope of sacrificing Villefort to his own profit, “I am compelled to tell you that these are not mere rumours destitute of foundation which thus disquiet me; but a reflective man, deserving all my confidence, and charged by me to watch over the south” (the duke hesitated as he pronounced these words), “has arrived post to tell me a great peril threatens the king, and then I hastened to you, sire.”

      “Mala ducis avi domum,” continued Louis XVIII, still annotating.

      “Does your majesty wish me to cease as to this subject?”

      “By no means, dear duke; but just stretch out your hand.”

      “Which?”

      “Whichever you please—there to the left.”

      “Here, sire?”

      “I tell you to the left, and you seek the right,—I mean on my right!—yes, there! You will find the report of the minister of police of yesterday. But here is M. Dandré himself;” and M. Dandré, announced by the chamberlain in waiting, entered.

      “Come in,” said Louis XVIII, with an imperceptible smile, “come in, baron, and tell the duke all you know—the latest news of M. de Bonaparte; do not conceal anything, however serious—let us see the island of Elba is a volcano, and we may expect to have issuing thence flaming and bristling war,—bella, horrida bella!”

      M. Dandré leaned very respectfully on the back of a chair with his two hands, and said:

      “Has your majesty perused yesterday’s report?”

      “Yes, yes! but tell the duke himself, who cannot find anything, what the report contains; give him the particulars of what the usurper is doing in his islet.”

      “Monsieur,” said the baron to the duke, “all the servants of his majesty must approve of the latest intelligence which we have from the island of Elba. Bonaparte”—M. Dandré looked at Louis XVIII, who, employed in writing a note, did not even raise his head—“Bonaparte,” continued the baron, “is mortally wearied, and passes whole days in watching his miners at work at Porto-Longone.”

      “And scratches himself for amusement,” added the king.

      “Scratches himself?” inquired the duke, “what does your majesty mean?”

      “Yes, indeed, my dear duke; did you forget that this great man, this hero, this demigod, is attacked with a malady of the skin which worries him to death, prurigo?”

      “And moreover, M. le Duc,” continued the minister of police, “we are almost assured that, in a very short time, the usurper will be insane.”

      “Insane?”

      “Insane to a degree; his head becomes weaker. Sometimes he weeps bitterly, sometimes laughs boisterously; at other times he passes hours on the seashore, flinging stones in the water, and when the flint makes ‘duck-and-drake’ five or six times he appears as delighted as if he had gained another Marengo or Austerlitz. Now you must agree these are indubitable symptoms of weakness?”

      “Or of wisdom, M. le Baron—or of wisdom,” said Louis XVIII, laughing; “the greatest captains of antiquity recreated themselves with casting pebbles into the ocean: see Plutarch’s life of Scipio Africanus.”

      M. de Blacas pondered deeply in this blind repose of monarch and minister. Villefort, who did not choose to reveal the whole secret, lest another should reap all the benefit of the disclosure, had yet communicated enough to cause him the greatest uneasiness.

      “Well, well, Dandré,” said Louis XVIII, “Blacas is not yet convinced, let us proceed, therefore, to the usurper’s conversion.”

      The minister of police bowed.

      “The usurper’s conversion!” murmured the duke, looking at the king and Dandré, who spoke СКАЧАТЬ