World Literature Classics Library: The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 167 Night (2)
"For such an abominable family, I can't sweep the ground!" Monte Cristo murmured, "God inspired me to punish this family, and now I want to violate the will of God! Impossible, madam, this Can't do it!"

"Edmond," said the poor mother, "my God! I call you Edmond, why don't you call me Mercedes?"

"Mercedes," continued Monte Cristo, "Mercedes! Ah! Yes, you are right, I still feel how sweet that name is called. It is the first time in many years. So clear and loud from my lips. O Mercedes, thy name I have spoken in my sorrows, in my moanings, in my sorrows; I called out when I was so cold that I had to curl up in the straw of the dark cell; I called out when I was lying tossing and turning on the stone floor of the cell in the heat. Mercedes, I must have revenge. , These 14 years I have been tortured, these 14 years I have cried out to the sky, cursed and cursed, I will tell you, Mercedes, I must take revenge.” The count trembled with excitement, fearing that his beloved would suffer After begging, he softened his heart, so he recalled the past and kept the resentment in his heart.

"You must have revenge, Edmond!" cried the poor mother, "but you must have revenge against the guilty man, you must have revenge against him, you must have revenge against me, but you must not seek revenge against my son!"

"The Bible says," replied Monte Cristo, "that 'the faults of the fathers run on the children to the third and fourth generation.' Since the prophets wrote these words according to God's will, why should I be more merciful than God? "

"Because God owns time and eternity, and these two things do not belong to mortals."

Monte Cristo sighed deeply like a roaring lion, and clutched his fair hair with both hands.

"Edmond," continued Mercedes, stretching out her arms towards the count, "ever since I knew you I have loved your name, and I have always admired you in my heart. Edmond, my friend, the mirror in my heart Do not compel me to destroy the image of a noble and pure image at all times. Edmond, do you know that I have prayed to God for you, and I always hope that you are alive, but I feel that you Dead. Yes, dead, misfortune! I think your body is buried under some gloomy watchtower, I think your body is thrown into the pit where the prison guards push the dead prisoners down, I can only wash my face with tears. What can I do for you, Edmond, but pray for you and cry for you? Please listen to me, I have had the same dream every night for ten years. I I heard that you wanted to escape from prison. You pretended to be another prisoner and got into a sack that was supposed to hold other dead people. Then you were thrown from the Château d’If alive as if you were dead. When you hit the rocks, you yelled, Only then did they know that the man in the sack had changed, and the man who buried the body became your executioner. Oh, Edmond, I beg you for my son, and I swear on my son's life, Edmond, a full 10 I dreamed every night in the past 10 years. I saw someone on the cliff holding a thing that I couldn’t tell what it looked like or what it was. For the whole 10 years, I heard a scream every night when I was falling asleep. I woke up immediately, and felt that I was trembling and cold. I was the same, ah! Please believe that I am telling the truth, although I have a lot of debts, I have also suffered a lot."

"When your father died, but you couldn't die for him, have you ever tasted this kind of sorrow?" Monte Cristo asked with his hands deep in his hair, "When you fell into the abyss and were dying, you The woman you love stretches her hand to your rival, have you ever seen such a woman?"

"No," said Mercedes, interrupting Monte Cristo, "but I have seen the man I love set out to be the murderer, to kill my son."

Mercedes uttered these words with such mournfulness, and with such despair in her voice, that Monte Cristo choked his throat and uttered a hoarse lament.The lion is tamed, the Avenger is subdued. "What do you say?" he said. "Let your son live? Well! He will live!"

Mercedes yelled, and two tears flowed from Monte Cristo's eyes, but in an instant the two teardrops disappeared, as if in the eyes of God these two teardrops were more important than ancient Juzarate and Ofir's most precious pearl was still precious, so he immediately sent an angel to take it away.

"Oh!" cried Mercedes, taking the count's hand and raising it to her lips, "Oh! thank you, thank you, Edmond, you are still the one I saw in my dream, and I will always love you You. Oh! Now I can say that."

"Besides," said Monte Cristo, "it will not be long before you will love poor Edmund; death will soon return to the grave, and the ghosts will return to the dark night."

"What do you say, Edmond?"

"I say, since you have given the order, Mercedes, it is imperative to die."

"Death? Who said that? Who is talking about death? How do you think of death?"

"Don't you think, in front of the audience, in front of your friends, in front of your son's friends, I was openly insulted, it was just a child who challenged me, he would take my forgiveness as his victory, he Will show off. I said, don't you think, do I still have the heart to live? What I love most, besides you, Mercedes, is myself, which is my self-esteem, which is what makes me better than others. A power of man, and this power is my life. You are destroying this power with a word now, so I must die."

"But the duel will not take place, Edmond, because you have forgiven it."

"There will be a duel, Madame," said Monte Cristo, in a solemn tone, "but it will not be your son's blood that will fall to the ground, but mine."

With a scream, Mercedes rushed towards Monte Cristo, but stopped suddenly. "Edmond," she said, "there is a God above all of us, and since you are alive, and since I see you again, I trust God from the bottom of my heart. I believe God will help, but now that you say If you don't, I'm completely relieved. You say my son will live, so he will, don't you?"

"He will live, yes, Madame," said Monte Cristo, astonished that Mercedes accepted such a tragic sacrifice from him without a word of exclamation, without any sign of astonishment. .

Mercedes held out her hand to the Count. "Edmond," she said, looking tearfully at the count, "it is a very good and noble thing for you to do. A poor woman has come to you, wishing to get what she deserved, but you Still pity her, how sublime it is! Alas! Time makes us old, but what really makes me old is the worry in my heart. Now I have no smile on my face, and my eyes are dim, and I can no longer remind you of the old days. That Mercedes you have so long gazed at. Ah! Believe me, Edmond, I have told you just now that I too have been tortured, and I say it again, that a man who sees his life slowly passing away, Looking back at the past, there is neither a ray of joy nor a ray of hope. How sad it is, but it also shows that all the grievances and grievances in the world are not over. No, the grievances and grievances in the world are not all over. With what I still have in my heart Emotion, I feel it too. Oh! I say it again, Edmond, it is so sweet, so noble, so sublime to be so open-minded as you are!"

"Since you say that, Mercedes, what would you say if you knew how great a sacrifice I have made to answer you? Just imagine that the Supreme Lord created the world and turned chaos into fertile soil. However, in the third part of the creation of the world, in order not to make some angel cry one day because of our sins, in order not to let the tears flow from the eyes that will never be blind, God had to give up halfway. Think about it again, when everything is ready, all living beings have their own shapes, and the vastness of thousands of miles has become a piece of fertile soil. When God is admiring his masterpiece, he extinguishes the sun and kicks the world into that A long night. If you think about it this way, you will know, no, no, to be precise, you must not have thought that although what I am abandoning at this moment is life, what is it that I am really giving up?"

Mercedes looked at the count with astonishment, admiration and gratitude in her eyes.Monte Cristo rested his burning hands on his brow, as if his head were no longer under the load of thoughts.

"Edmond," said Mercedes, "I have but one word to say to you."

There was a wry smile on the count's face.

"Edmond," continued Mercedes, "you will see that although my face is pale, although my eyes are dimmed, although my beauty is gone, in short, in appearance, Mercedes Tess is not as good as it used to be, but you will see that her heart is the same as before. Good-bye, Edmund, I have nothing to ask from the sky now. I think you are as noble and heroic as before. .Good-bye, Edmond...good-bye, and thank you!"

The count, however, was silent and said nothing more.Mercedes opened the study door by herself and left.It was only after Mercedes was out of sight that the count, who had lost his chance of revenge, woke up from his painful and deep dream.The clock at Les Invalides struck one o'clock in the middle of the night, and Madame Mocerf's carriage rattled away from the stone road of the Champs-Elysées, and the count looked up at the sound. "It's incredible," he said, "that the day I make up my mind to take revenge, why don't I take my heart out?"

(End of this chapter)