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

“I should think so⁠—a horse that cost 5,000 francs!” said Monte Cristo, in the tone which a father would use towards a son.

“Do you regret them?” asked Morrel, with his open laugh.

“I? Certainly not,” replied the count. “No; I should only regret if the horse had not proved good.”

“It is so good, that I have distanced M. de Château-Renaud, one of the best riders in France, and M. Debray, who both mount the minister’s Arabians; and close on their heels are the horses of Madame Danglars, who always go at six leagues an hour.”

“Then they follow you?” asked Monte Cristo.

“See, they are here.” And at the same minute a carriage with smoking horses, accompanied by two mounted gentlemen, arrived at the gate, which opened before them. The carriage drove round, and stopped at the steps, followed by the horsemen.

The instant Debray had touched the ground, he was at the carriage-door. He offered his hand to the baroness, who, descending, took it with a peculiarity of manner imperceptible to everyone but Monte Cristo. But nothing escaped the count’s notice, and he observed a little note, passed with the facility that indicates frequent practice, from the hand of Madame Danglars to that of the minister’s secretary.

After his wife the banker descended, as pale as though he had issued from his tomb instead of his carriage.

Madame Danglars threw a rapid and inquiring glance which could only be interpreted by Monte Cristo, around the courtyard, over the peristyle, and across the front of the house, then, repressing a slight emotion, which must have been seen on her countenance if she had not kept her color, she ascended the steps, saying to Morrel:

“Sir, if you were a friend of mine, I should ask you if you would sell your horse.”

Morrel smiled with an expression very like a grimace, and then turned round to Monte Cristo, as if to ask him to extricate him from his embarrassment. The count understood him.

“Ah, madame,” he said, “why did you not make that request of me?”

“With you, sir,” replied the baroness, “one can wish for nothing, one is so sure to obtain it. If it were so with M. Morrel⁠—”

“Unfortunately,” replied the count, “I am witness that M. Morrel cannot give up his horse, his honor being engaged in keeping it.”

“How so?”

“He laid a wager he would tame Médéah in the space of six months. You understand now that if he were to get rid of the animal before the time named, he would not only lose his bet, but people would say he was afraid; and a brave captain of Spahis cannot risk this, even to gratify a pretty woman, which is, in my opinion, one of the most sacred obligations in the world.”

“You see my position, madame,” said Morrel, bestowing a grateful smile on Monte Cristo.

“It seems to me,” said Danglars, in his coarse tone, ill-concealed by a forced smile, “that you have already got horses enough.”

Madame Danglars seldom allowed remarks of this kind to pass unnoticed, but, to the surprise of the young people, she pretended not to hear it, and said nothing. Monte Cristo smiled at her unusual humility, and showed her two immense porcelain jars, over which wound marine plants, of a size and delicacy that nature alone could produce. The baroness was astonished.

“Why,” said she, “you could plant one of the chestnut-trees in the Tuileries inside! How can such enormous jars have been manufactured?”

“Ah! madame,” replied Monte Cristo, “you must not ask of us, the manufacturers of fine porcelain, such a question. It is the work of another age, constructed by the genii of earth and water.”

“How so?⁠—at what period can that have been?”

“I do not know; I have only heard that an emperor of China had an oven built expressly, and that in this oven twelve jars like this were successively baked. Two broke, from the heat of the fire; the other ten were sunk three hundred fathoms deep into the sea. The sea, knowing what was required of her, threw over them her weeds, encircled them with coral, and encrusted them with shells; the whole was cemented by two hundred years beneath these almost impervious depths, for a revolution carried away the emperor who wished to make the trial, and only left the documents proving the manufacture of the jars and their descent into the sea. At the end of two hundred years the documents were found, and they thought of bringing up the jars. Divers descended in machines, made expressly on the discovery, into the bay where they were thrown; but of ten three only remained, the rest having been broken by the waves. I am fond of these jars, upon which, perhaps, misshapen, frightful monsters have fixed their cold, dull eyes, and in which myriads of small fish have slept, seeking a refuge from the pursuit of their enemies.”

Meanwhile, Danglars, who had cared little for curiosities, was mechanically tearing off the blossoms of a splendid orange-tree, one after another. When he had finished with the orange-tree, he began at the cactus; but this, not being so easily plucked as the orange-tree, pricked him dreadfully. He shuddered, and rubbed his eyes as though awaking from a dream.

“Sir,” said Monte Cristo to him, “I do not recommend my pictures to you, who possess such splendid paintings; but, nevertheless, here are two by Hobbema, a Paul Potter, a Mieris, two by Gerard Douw, a Raphael, a Van Dyck, a Zurbaran, and two or three by Murillo, worth looking at.”

“Stay,” said Debray; “I recognize this Hobbema.”

“Ah, indeed!”

“Yes; it was proposed for the Museum.”

“Which, I believe, does not contain one?” said Monte Cristo.

“No; and yet they refused to buy it.”

“Why?” said Château-Renaud.

“You pretend not to know⁠—because government was not rich enough.”

“Ah, pardon me,” said Château-Renaud; “I have heard of these things every day during the last eight years, and I cannot understand them yet.”

“You will, by and by,” said Debray.

“I think not,” replied Château-Renaud.

“Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti and Count Andrea Cavalcanti,”