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

form. You touch them, come in contact with them, speak to them, and they reply to you.”

“Ah,” said Villefort, smiling, “I confess I should like to be warned when one of these beings is in contact with me.”

“You have been served as you desire, monsieur, for you were warned just now, and I now again warn you.”

“Then you yourself are one of these marked beings?”

“Yes, monsieur, I believe so; for until now, no man has found himself in a position similar to mine. The dominions of kings are limited either by mountains or rivers, or a change of manners, or an alteration of language. My kingdom is bounded only by the world, for I am not an Italian, or a Frenchman, or a Hindu, or an American, or a Spaniard⁠—I am a cosmopolite. No country can say it saw my birth. God alone knows what country will see me die. I adopt all customs, speak all languages. You believe me to be a Frenchman, for I speak French with the same facility and purity as yourself. Well, Ali, my Nubian, believes me to be an Arab; Bertuccio, my steward, takes me for a Roman; Haydée, my slave, thinks me a Greek. You may, therefore, comprehend, that being of no country, asking no protection from any government, acknowledging no man as my brother, not one of the scruples that arrest the powerful, or the obstacles which paralyze the weak, paralyzes or arrests me. I have only two adversaries⁠—I will not say two conquerors, for with perseverance I subdue even them⁠—they are time and distance. There is a third, and the most terrible⁠—that is my condition as a mortal being. This alone can stop me in my onward career, before I have attained the goal at which I aim, for all the rest I have reduced to mathematical terms. What men call the chances of fate⁠—namely, ruin, change, circumstances⁠—I have fully anticipated, and if any of these should overtake me, yet it will not overwhelm me. Unless I die, I shall always be what I am, and therefore it is that I utter the things you have never heard, even from the mouths of kings⁠—for kings have need, and other persons have fear of you. For who is there who does not say to himself, in a society as incongruously organized as ours, ‘Perhaps some day I shall have to do with the king’s attorney’?”

“But can you not say that, sir? The moment you become an inhabitant of France, you are naturally subjected to the French law.”

“I know it sir,” replied Monte Cristo; “but when I visit a country I begin to study, by all the means which are available, the men from whom I may have anything to hope or to fear, till I know them as well as, perhaps better than, they know themselves. It follows from this, that the king’s attorney, be he who he may, with whom I should have to deal, would assuredly be more embarrassed than I should.”

“That is to say,” replied Villefort with hesitation, “that human nature being weak, every man, according to your creed, has committed faults.”

“Faults or crimes,” responded Monte Cristo with a negligent air.

“And that you alone, amongst the men whom you do not recognize as your brothers⁠—for you have said so,” observed Villefort in a tone that faltered somewhat⁠—“you alone are perfect.”

“No, not perfect,” was the count’s reply; “only impenetrable, that’s all. But let us leave off this strain, sir, if the tone of it is displeasing to you; I am no more disturbed by your justice than are you by my second-sight.”

“No, no⁠—by no means,” said Villefort, who was afraid of seeming to abandon his ground. “No; by your brilliant and almost sublime conversation you have elevated me above the ordinary level; we no longer talk, we rise to dissertation. But you know how the theologians in their collegiate chairs, and philosophers in their controversies, occasionally say cruel truths; let us suppose for the moment that we are theologizing in a social way, or even philosophically, and I will say to you, rude as it may seem, ‘My brother, you sacrifice greatly to pride; you may be above others, but above you there is God.’ ”

“Above us all, sir,” was Monte Cristo’s response, in a tone and with an emphasis so deep that Villefort involuntarily shuddered. “I have my pride for men⁠—serpents always ready to threaten everyone who would pass without crushing them under foot. But I lay aside that pride before God, who has taken me from nothing to make me what I am.”

“Then, count, I admire you,” said Villefort, who, for the first time in this strange conversation, used the aristocratic form to the unknown personage, whom, until now, he had only called monsieur. “Yes, and I say to you, if you are really strong, really superior, really pious, or impenetrable, which you were right in saying amounts to the same thing⁠—then be proud, sir, for that is the characteristic of predominance. Yet you have unquestionably some ambition.”

“I have, sir.”

“And what may it be?”

“I too, as happens to every man once in his life, have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he showed me all the kingdoms of the world, and as he said before, so said he to me, ‘Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?’ I reflected long, for a gnawing ambition had long preyed upon me, and then I replied, ‘Listen⁠—I have always heard of Providence, and yet I have never seen him, or anything that resembles him, or which can make me believe that he exists. I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.’ Satan bowed his head, and groaned. ‘You mistake,’ he said, ‘Providence does exist, only you have never seen him, because the child of God is as invisible as the parent. You