The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (best book club books .TXT) 📕

a clump of trees, he stopped. The steward could not restrain himself.

“Move, monsieur⁠—move away, I entreat you; you are exactly in the spot!”

“What spot?”

“Where he fell.”

“My dear Monsieur Bertuccio,” said Monte Cristo, laughing, “control yourself; we are not at Sartène or at Corte. This is not a Corsican maquis but an English garden; badly kept, I own, but still you must not calumniate it for that.”

“Monsieur, I implore you do not stay there!”

“I think you are going mad, Bertuccio,” said the count coldly. “If that is the case, I warn you, I shall have you put in a lunatic asylum.”

“Alas! excellency,” returned Bertuccio, joining his hands, and shaking his head in a manner that would have excited the count’s laughter, had not thoughts of a superior interest occupied him, and rendered him attentive to the least revelation of this timorous conscience. “Alas! excellency, the evil has arrived!”

“M. Bertuccio,” said the count, “I am very glad to tell you, that while you gesticulate, you wring your hands and roll your eyes like a man possessed by a devil who will not leave him; and I have always observed, that the devil most obstinate to be expelled is a secret. I knew you were a Corsican. I knew you were gloomy, and always brooding over some old history of the vendetta; and I overlooked that in Italy, because in Italy those things are thought nothing of. But in France they are considered in very bad taste; there are gendarmes who occupy themselves with such affairs, judges who condemn, and scaffolds which avenge.”

Bertuccio clasped his hands, and as, in all these evolutions, he did not let fall the lantern, the light showed his pale and altered countenance. Monte Cristo examined him with the same look that, at Rome, he had bent upon the execution of Andrea, and then, in a tone that made a shudder pass through the veins of the poor steward⁠—

“The Abbé Busoni, then told me an untruth,” said he, “when, after his journey in France, in 1829, he sent you to me, with a letter of recommendation, in which he enumerated all your valuable qualities. Well, I shall write to the abbé; I shall hold him responsible for his protégé’s misconduct, and I shall soon know all about this assassination. Only I warn you, that when I reside in a country, I conform to all its code, and I have no wish to put myself within the compass of the French laws for your sake.”

“Oh, do not do that, excellency; I have always served you faithfully,” cried Bertuccio, in despair. “I have always been an honest man, and, as far as lay in my power, I have done good.”

“I do not deny it,” returned the count; “but why are you thus agitated. It is a bad sign; a quiet conscience does not occasion such paleness in the cheeks, and such fever in the hands of a man.”

“But, your excellency,” replied Bertuccio hesitatingly, “did not the Abbé Busoni, who heard my confession in the prison at Nîmes, tell you that I had a heavy burden upon my conscience?”

“Yes; but as he said you would make an excellent steward, I concluded you had stolen⁠—that was all.”

“Oh, your excellency!” returned Bertuccio in deep contempt.

“Or, as you are a Corsican, that you had been unable to resist the desire of making a ‘stiff,’ as you call it.”

“Yes, my good master,” cried Bertuccio, casting himself at the count’s feet, “it was simply vengeance⁠—nothing else.”

“I understand that, but I do not understand what it is that galvanizes you in this manner.”

“But, monsieur, it is very natural,” returned Bertuccio, “since it was in this house that my vengeance was accomplished.”

“What! my house?”

“Oh, your excellency, it was not yours, then.”

“Whose, then? The Marquis de Saint-Méran, I think, the concierge said. What had you to revenge on the Marquis de Saint-Méran?”

“Oh, it was not on him, monsieur; it was on another.”

“This is strange,” returned Monte Cristo, seeming to yield to his reflections, “that you should find yourself without any preparation in a house where the event happened that causes you so much remorse.”

“Monsieur,” said the steward, “it is fatality, I am sure. First, you purchase a house at Auteuil⁠—this house is the one where I have committed an assassination; you descend to the garden by the same staircase by which he descended; you stop at the spot where he received the blow; and two paces farther is the grave in which he had just buried his child. This is not chance, for chance, in this case, is too much like Providence.”

“Well, amiable Corsican, let us suppose it is Providence. I always suppose anything people please, and, besides, you must concede something to diseased minds. Come, collect yourself, and tell me all.”

“I have related it but once, and that was to the Abbé Busoni. Such things,” continued Bertuccio, shaking his head, “are only related under the seal of confession.”

“Then,” said the count, “I refer you to your confessor. Turn Chartreux or Trappist, and relate your secrets, but, as for me, I do not like anyone who is alarmed by such phantasms, and I do not choose that my servants should be afraid to walk in the garden of an evening. I confess I am not very desirous of a visit from the commissary of police, for, in Italy, justice is only paid when silent⁠—in France she is paid only when she speaks. Peste! I thought you somewhat Corsican, a great deal smuggler, and an excellent steward; but I see you have other strings to your bow. You are no longer in my service, Monsieur Bertuccio.”

“Oh, your excellency, your excellency!” cried the steward, struck with terror at this threat, “if that is the only reason I cannot remain in your service, I will tell all, for if I quit you, it will only be to go to the scaffold.”

“That is different,” replied Monte Cristo; “but if you intend to tell an untruth, reflect it were better not to speak