World Literature Classics Library: The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 204 Redemption (2)
Villefort's brow was suddenly covered with cold sweat, his feet were limp and slippery on the floor tiles, and his thoughts, like the cogs of a broken watch, were completely spinning. "In the madam's room!" he murmured, "in the madam's room!" He put one hand on his forehead, and the other held on to the wooden board on the wall, and walked back slowly with heavy steps.Go to that room, and you will once again see the body of the unfortunate woman; call Edward, and it will echo in the suite that has become a coffin; and speak, and you will break the proper silence of the tomb.Villefort only felt that his tongue was stuck in his throat and he was frozen. "Edward, Edward," he stammered, and the boy made no reply.The servant said that the child went into his mother's room and never came out. So where is the child?
Villefort took a step forward.Madame de Villefort's body lay across the door of the ladies' parlour, where Edward must have been.The corpse seemed to be guarding the doorway, its eyes still open, yet frozen, and a sneer of dread and mystery floated on its lips.The curtain behind the body was still raised, and a corner of the living room was visible, with an upright piano and a small part of a blue satin sofa.Villefort took three or four steps forward, and seeing the child lying on the sofa, he was sure that the child was asleep.Suddenly the unfortunate man felt an indescribable passion of joy, and a ray of clear, clear light shone into the hell in which he was languishing.As long as he stepped over the corpse and walked into the small living room, he would be able to pick up the child and take him far away, to that far away, very far away place.

Villefort is no longer that hypocrite who is really extravagant in heart, but clever in means and dignified in appearance. He is a tiger that has been mortally wounded, and its teeth have been shot when it was wounded just now. broken.He is no longer afraid of those worldly views, but he is afraid of ghosts.As if stepping over a raging fire, he rushed towards the corpse and passed it.He picked up the child, hugged him, shook him, called him, but the child did not respond.He pressed his hot lips to the child's cheek, which was already cold and pale.He touched the child's limbs with his hands, and the limbs were already stiff and straight.He put his hand on the child's chest again, and the heart had stopped beating.The child was dead, and a sheet of paper folded in four fell from Edward's chest.Villefort fell to his knees as if struck by a thunderbolt, and the child fell from his limp arms and rolled to the side of his mother.Villefort picked up the sheet of paper, recognized the writing in his wife's handwriting, and read it hastily.The paper reads:
You know I am a good mother, for it is for my son that I am a sinner.A good mother cannot leave her son alone!
Villefort could hardly believe his eyes, Villefort could hardly believe his reason.He crawled toward Edward's body, dragging his knees, and examined the child once more as a lioness looks at a dead cub.Then came a howl from his chest, a mournful, heartbreaking sound. "God!" he murmured, "God is everywhere!" The two newly dead men made his heart shattered, and he felt that the room was horribly desolate because of the two dead bodies. .What supported him just now was fanaticism and despair.Fanaticism makes the strong burst out with infinite energy, while despair is the greatest driving force for the dying struggle.It is precisely because of this motivation that the Titans of the Titans climbed to the heavens. Ajax, a figure in ancient Greek mythology, was designed by the goddess to die in a shipwreck because of offending the gods.Only then will he wave his fist at the gods.At this moment, however, Villefort, bowing his head under the weight of pain, stood up on his knees, and shook his hair, which was dripping with sweat and bristling with fear.This man, who had never had compassion for others, now wanted to find his elderly father. He felt that he was vulnerable and needed someone to tell his misfortune, and to cry beside him.He descended the narrow staircase we are all familiar with and entered Noirquier's room.

When Villefort entered the room, Noirquier was listening attentively to the abbot Bouzoni, and Noirquier's face expressed the greatest enthusiasm that his impassive countenance could express, while Bouzoni The elder, however, was as calm and calm as usual.Villefort smacked his forehead with his hand at the sight of the elder, and the past flashed before his eyes like a turbulent wave splashed by anger.He remembered that he had visited the abbot on the third day after the dinner at Auteuil, and that the abbot had also visited him on the day Valentine died. "Here you are, sir!" said he, "but you are always only in the company of Death, don't you?"

Elder Buzzoni stood up suddenly, and saw the prosecutor's face completely changed, with a fierce fire in his eyes, he understood, or rather he understood in a trance, the scene in the courtroom was over, but what's next? play, but he didn't know. "I came here to pray for your daughter!" said Buzzoni.

"Then what are you doing here today?"

"I've come to tell you that your debt to me is nearly paid, and I will pray that God will be as pleased as I am."

"My God!" said Villefort, stepping back in a panic, "this is not the voice of Elder Buzzoni!"

"You're right." The elder took off his wig, shook his head, and his long black hair immediately spread out, fell from both sides of his pale face, and spread along his shoulders.

"This is the face of M. Monte Cristo!" cried Villefort, terrified, with wide-eyed eyes.

"It's not right yet, Mr. Prosecutor, think about it again, and think farther away."

"Such a voice! Such a voice, where was the first time I heard this voice?"

"The first time you heard this voice was in Marseilles, on the day you were engaged to Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran twenty-three years ago. You can go to your files."

"Aren't you Buzzoni? Are you not Monte Cristo? My God, you are that dark, venomous enemy! I must have done something wrong to you at Marseilles, oh! I'm in trouble!"

"Yes, you are right, that is exactly what it is," said the count, folding his arms across his broad chest, "just think and remember."

"But how can I be sorry to you?" cried Villefort, whose mind was already wandering between sanity and madness, drifting in the mist that was neither dream nor awakening. "How can I be sorry to you? Speak! Speak!" Bar!"

"You sentenced me to a slow and terrible death, you killed my father, you took away my freedom of love, you destroyed my career and my marriage!"

"Who are you? What are you? My God!"

"When you put a poor man into the dark prison of Chateau d'If, I was his ghost. This ghost finally crawled out of his grave. God put on him the Count of Monte Cristo's mask and gave him countless all the diamonds and gold, so that you didn't recognize him until today."

"Ah! I recognize it! I recognize who you are!" said the prosecutor, "You are..."

"I am Edmond Dantès!"

"You are Edmond Dantès!" shouted the prosecutor, grabbing the count's wrist, "well, let's go!"

He took the count upstairs, and Monte Cristo couldn't help feeling astonished, and followed him up the stairs, not knowing where the prosecutor was leading him, but he already had a premonition of another disaster.

"Look! Edmond Dantès," said Villefort, pointing to the corpses of his wife and son, "look! Open your eyes and see, have you avenged yourself?"

Monte Cristo grew pale at the sight of the dreadful spectacle before him.He understood it all at once, that he had surpassed the authority of revenge.He also understood that from then on he could never say: 'God is with me and thinks of me. '" With an indescribable anxiety, he threw himself down beside the dead body of the child, stretched out his hands to open his eyes, felt for his pulse again, and then rushed into Valentine's room with him in his arms. The door is closed tightly...

"My child!" cried Villefort, "he has taken my child's body! Oh! Damn it! What a misfortune! Damn you!"

He wanted to rush after Monte Cristo, but as if in a dream, he only felt as if his feet had taken root in the ground.His eyes were bulging, almost tearing his eye sockets, his fingers pinched the flesh on his chest and gradually dug in, the blood stained his nails red.The veins on the temples were bursting, the whole brain was boiling, the skull seemed narrow and small, the top of the skull seemed to be washed away, and the brain fell into a sea of ​​burning flames.For some minutes he stood stupefied, until at last his mind sank into a frightful state of utter disarray.At this time, he yelled, then laughed again and again, and hurried downstairs.

A quarter of an hour later the door of Valentine's room was reopened, and the Count of Monte Cristo entered again.His face was pale, his eyes were melancholy and miserable, and he felt that his chest was stuffy and he couldn't breathe.His face was usually so calm and solemn, but at this moment he was frowning and dejected.He held in his arms the child who could never be saved again.Kneeling on one knee, he reverently placed the child beside his mother, resting his head on her breast.Then he got up, went out of the room, and came downstairs to meet a servant. "Where is M. de Villefort?" he asked.The servant didn't speak, but just stretched out his hand and pointed towards the garden.Monte Cristo walked down the steps in front of the small building and hurried towards the direction pointed by the servants, only to see that Villefort had been surrounded by servants, and he was digging frantically on the ground with a shovel in his hand.

"Nor here," murmured Villefort, "nor here." He went a few steps forward, and dug again.

Monte Cristo came up to him and said softly, "Sir," almost humbly, "you have lost a son, but..."

Villefort did not hear, nor could he understand, he interrupted Monte Cristo. "Oh! I will find him," said Villefort. "I don't care if you say he is not here. I will find him, even on the day of the final judgment."

Monte Cristo lost his voice in astonishment, and stepped back. "Oh!" he said, "he's mad!" Then, as if afraid that the walls of the haunted house would come down and crush him, he hurried out into the street, doubting for the first time that he did so. Should it be? "Oh! that's enough, that's enough," he said, "the last one must be kept."

Monte Cristo returned to his apartment on the Champs Elysées, just in time to find Morrel there.Morrel was silent, and wandered there like a ghost, as if waiting for the God-appointed time when he should return to his grave.

"Get ready, Maximilian," said Monte Cristo, smiling, "we are leaving Paris tomorrow."

"You have nothing else to do here?" asked Morrel.

"No," replied Monte Cristo, "things must not be overdone, it is the law of nature!

(End of this chapter)