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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Edmond Dantès, by Edmund Flagg
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Edmond Dantès
+
+Author: Edmund Flagg
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23183]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDMOND DANTÈS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sigal Alon, Fox in the Stars, Martin Pettit
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EDMOND DANTÈS.
+
+THE SEQUEL TO
+
+ALEXANDER DUMAS'
+
+CELEBRATED NOVEL OF
+
+THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO.
+
+AN ENTIRE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION.
+
+BY
+
+EDMUND FLAGG
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"EDMOND DANTÈS," one of the greatest novels ever written, is the sequel
+to Alexander Dumas' world-renowned chef-d'oeuvre, "The Count of
+Monte-Cristo," taking up the fascinating narrative where the latter ends
+and continuing it with marvellous power and absorbing interest. Every
+word tells, and the number of unusually stirring incidents is legion,
+while the plot is phenomenal in its strength, merit and ingeniousness.
+The superb book deals with the exciting career of Edmond Dantès, who
+first figures as the Count of Monte-Cristo, and then as the Deputy from
+Marseilles takes an active part in the French Revolution of 1848.
+Dramatic and graphic scenes abound, the reader finding startling
+surprises at every turn. Love, philanthropy, politics and bloodshed form
+the staple of the novel and are handled with extraordinary skill.
+Besides the hero, Haydée, Mercédès, Valentine de Villefort, Eugénie
+Danglars, Louise d'Armilly, Zuleika (Dantès' daughter), Benedetto,
+Lucien Debray, Albert de Morcerf, Beauchamp, Château-Renaud, Ali,
+Maximilian Morell, Giovanni Massetti, and Espérance (Dantès' son) figure
+prominently, while Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc and hosts of
+revolutionary leaders are introduced. "EDMOND DANTÈS" will delight all
+who read it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NEW YORK:
+
+WM. L. ALLISON COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COPYRIGHT:--1884.
+
+T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EDMOND DANTÈS.
+
+AN ENTIRE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION.
+
+_"Edmond Dantès" the Sequel to Alexander Dumas' masterpiece, "The Count
+of Monte-Cristo," is a novel that will delight, entertain and instruct
+all who read it. It has wonderful fascination, absorbing interest and
+rare merit, combined with remarkable power, amazing ingenuity and
+thorough originality. In it the narrative is taken up immediately at the
+close of "The Count of Monte-Cristo," and continued in a style of
+exceeding cleverness. There is a terrible volcanic tempest on the
+Mediterranean, in which Monte-Cristo and Haydée are wrecked, a vivid
+picture of the French Revolution of 1848 is given and the love affair of
+Zuleika and Giovanni Massetti is recounted in a manner unsurpassed for
+novelty and excitement. The central figure is Edmond Dantès, and about
+him are grouped Mercédès, Eugénie Danglars, Louise d'Armilly, Valentine
+de Villefort, Espérance (the son of Monte-Cristo), Benedetto, Albert de
+Morcerf, Maximilian Morrel, Ali and the other old friends of
+"Monte-Cristo" readers, as well as numerous political leaders famous in
+French history, namely, Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, Armand
+Marrast, Flocon, Albert and others. Thiers, Guizot, Odillon Barrot,
+General Lamoricière, General Bugeaud and other noted historical
+characters are introduced, as well as Lucien Debray, Château-Renaud,
+Beauchamp, etc. No one can afford to miss the opportunity to read
+"Edmond Dantès," which is published only by T. B. Peterson & Brothers,
+who also issue the only correct, complete and unabridged editions of the
+other volumes of the great "Monte-Cristo" Series, namely, "The Count of
+Monte-Cristo," "The Countess of Monte-Cristo," "The Wife of
+Monte-Cristo, Haydée," and "The Son of Monte-Cristo, Espérance."_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+Chapter.                                                 Page.
+      I. STORM AND SHIPWRECK,                               21
+
+     II. THE ISLAND,                                        38
+
+    III. THE CONFLAGRATION,                                 55
+
+     IV. THE NEWS FROM ALGERIA,                             70
+
+      V. EDMOND DANTÈS, DEPUTY FROM MARSEILLES,             82
+
+     VI. THE MYSTERY THICKENS,                              91
+
+    VII. DANTÈS AND HIS DAUGHTER,                          100
+
+   VIII. A VAST PRINTING HOUSE,                            116
+
+     IX. ARMAND MARRAST,                                   126
+
+      X. THE COMMUNISTS,                                   134
+
+     XI. "WAIT AND HOPE,"                                  168
+
+    XII. THE MYSTERIOUS PRIMA DONNA,                       178
+
+   XIII. THE ITALIAN LOVER,                                195
+
+    XIV. THE MINUTE VIALS,                                 202
+
+     XV. THE UNKNOWN NURSE,                                208
+
+    XVI. A NOTABLE FÊTE,                                   215
+
+   XVII. THE REVOLUTION BEGINS,                            244
+
+  XVIII. THE MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE,                            251
+
+    XIX. THE SECOND DAY,                                   257
+
+     XX. ANOTHER MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE,                        269
+
+    XXI. THE THIRD DAY,                                    278
+
+   XXII. THE LAST SESSION OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES,      294
+
+  XXIII. THE SACK OF THE TUILERIES,                        303
+
+   XXIV. A MEMORABLE NIGHT,                                306
+
+    XXV. THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT,                       313
+
+   XXVI. DANTÈS AND MERCÉDÈS,                              323
+
+  XXVII. ESPÉRANCE AND ZULEIKA,                            334
+
+ XXVIII. CAPTAIN JOLIETTE'S LOVE,                          343
+
+   XXIX. ZULEIKA GOES TO M. DANTÈS,                        355
+
+    XXX. TWO INTERVIEWS,                                   362
+
+   XXXI. VAMPA'S ANSWER,                                   371
+
+
+
+
+EDMOND DANTÈS.
+
+THE SEQUEL TO
+
+THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STORM AND SHIPWRECK.
+
+
+The Count of Monte-Cristo, with the beautiful Haydée clinging lovingly
+about his neck, her head pillowed upon his shoulder, stood on the deck
+of his superb yacht, the Alcyon, gazing at the fast-vanishing isle where
+he had left Maximilian Morrel and Valentine de Villefort.
+
+It was just daybreak, but by the faint glimmering light he could plainly
+distinguish the figures of a man and a woman upon the distant beach.
+They were walking arm in arm. Presently another figure, a man's,
+approached them and seemed to deliver something.
+
+"Look," said the Count to Haydée, "Jacopo has given Maximilian my
+letter; he reads it to Valentine, and now they know all. Jacopo points
+toward the yacht; they see us and are waving their handkerchiefs in
+token of adieu."
+
+Haydée raised her head and glanced in the direction of the Isle of
+Monte-Cristo.
+
+"I see them, my lord," she replied, in a joyous tone; "they are happy."
+
+"Yes," said the Count, "they are happy, but they deserve their
+happiness, and all is well."
+
+"They owe their happiness to you, my lord," resumed Haydée, meekly.
+
+"They owe it to God," answered Monte-Cristo, solemnly; "I was but His
+humble instrument, and He has allowed me in this to make some slight
+atonement for the wrong I committed in taking vengeance into my own
+mortal hands."
+
+Haydée was silent. She knew the sad history of Edmond Dantès, and was
+aware of how remorselessly the Count of Monte-Cristo had avenged the
+wrongs of the humble sailor of Marseilles. This she had learned from her
+lord's own lips within the past few days. The strict seclusion in which
+she had lived in Paris had necessarily excluded her from all personal
+knowledge of the Count's subtle war upon his enemies; true, she had
+emerged from her retirement to testify against Morcerf at his trial
+before the House of Peers, but at that time she was ignorant of the fact
+that by causing the foe of her family to be convicted of felony, treason
+and outrage she had simply promoted Monte-Cristo's vengeance on Fernand,
+the Catalan. But, though silent, the beautiful Greek girl, with her
+thoroughly oriental ideas, could not realize that the man who stood
+beside her, the being she almost worshiped, had been guilty of the least
+wrong in avenging himself. Besides, she would never have admitted, even
+in the most secret recesses of her own heart, that Monte-Cristo, who to
+her mind symbolized all that was good, pure and heroic in human nature,
+could have been wrong in anything he did.
+
+Meanwhile the Count also had been silent, and a shade of the deepest
+sadness had settled upon his pallid but intellectual visage. He gazed at
+the Isle of Monte-Cristo until it became a mere dot in the distance;
+then, putting his arm tenderly about his lovely companion's waist, he
+drew her gently toward the cabin.
+
+As they vanished down the companion-way, Bertuccio and the captain of
+the Alcyon, followed by Ali, the Nubian, advanced to the prow of the
+yacht.
+
+"Captain," said Bertuccio, "can you tell me whither we are bound? I feel
+an irresistible desire to know."
+
+"Yes," answered the captain, "I can tell you. The Count ordered me to
+make with all possible speed for the Island of Crete."
+
+Bertuccio gave a sigh of relief.
+
+"I feared we were bound for Italy," he said. "But," he added, after an
+instant's thought, "why should we go to Rome? Luigi Vampa is amply able
+to care for all the Count's interests there, if, indeed, any remain now
+that the Baron Danglars has been attended to."
+
+The captain, who was an old Italian smuggler, placed his finger
+warningly upon his lips and glanced warily around when Luigi Vampa's
+name was mentioned, but said nothing. Bertuccio took the hint and the
+conversation was dropped.
+
+Pressing onward under full sail, the magnificent yacht shot over the
+blue waters of the Mediterranean with the speed of an eagle on the wing.
+It sped past Corsica and Sardinia, and soon the arid, uninviting shores
+of Tunis were visible; then it passed between Sicily and Malta, steering
+directly toward the Island of Crete.
+
+Up to this time the weather had been of the most delightful description.
+Not a cloud had obscured the sky, and during the entire voyage the
+unruffled surface of the Mediterranean had resembled that of some
+peaceful lake. It was now the tenth of October, and just cool enough to
+be pleasant; the spice-laden breezes from the coast of Africa reached
+the yacht tempered by the moist atmosphere of the sea, furnishing an
+additional element of enjoyment.
+
+The Count of Monte-Cristo and Haydée, who seemed inseparable, came on
+deck every morning at dawn, and each evening walked back and forth,
+admiring the gorgeous sunset and watching the shades of night as they
+gradually settled down upon the wide expanse of the waters.
+
+It required no unusual penetration to see that they were lovers and that
+their delight in each other's society was unalloyed. Haydée clung to the
+Count, who, with his arm wound about her slender waist, looked down
+into the liquid depths of her eyes with a smile of perfect content,
+while his free hand ever and anon toyed with her night-black tresses.
+
+One evening as they were walking thus--it was the evening of the
+fifteenth of October, and Crete was distant but two days'
+sail--Monte-Cristo tenderly took Haydée's hand in his and said to her in
+a tone of ineffable softness:
+
+"Haydée, do you remember what you said to me on the Isle of Monte-Cristo
+just before we parted from Valentine and Maximilian?"
+
+"Oh! yes, my lord," was the low reply. "I said I loved you as one loves
+a father, brother, husband--I loved you as my life."
+
+"And do you now regret those words?"
+
+"Regret them! Oh! my lord, how could I do that?"
+
+"I asked you," said the Count, slowly, "because we are nearing our
+destination. In two days we shall land upon the shore of Crete, and,
+once there, it is my intention to make you my wife, provided your
+feelings toward me are still unchanged. Marriage, my child, is the most
+important step in life, and I do not wish you to take that step without
+fully understanding the promptings of your own dear heart. Only misery
+can follow the union of two souls not in perfect accord, not entirely
+devoted the one to the other. I am much older than you, Haydée, and my
+sufferings have aged me still more than years. I am a sad and weary
+man. You, on the contrary, stand just upon the threshold of existence;
+the world and its pleasures are all before you. Think, my child, think
+deeply before you pronounce the irrevocable vow."
+
+Haydée threw herself passionately upon Monte-Cristo's breast.
+
+"My lord," she cried, in accents broken by extreme agitation and
+emotion, "am I not your slave?"
+
+"No, Haydée," answered the Count, his bosom heaving and his eyes
+lighting up with a strange flash, "you are free, your fate rests in your
+own hands."
+
+"Then," said the young girl, ardently, "I will decide it this very
+instant. I accept my freedom that I may voluntarily offer myself to you,
+my love, my husband. You have suffered. Granted. So have I. Your
+sufferings have aged you; mine have transformed a child into a woman--a
+woman who knows the promptings of her heart, who knows that it beats for
+you, and you alone in all the world. My lord, I resign myself to you. Do
+you accept the gift?"
+
+As Haydée concluded, her beautiful eyes were suffused with tears and her
+whole frame quivered with intense excitement.
+
+Monte-Cristo bent down and kissed her upon the forehead.
+
+"Haydée, my own Haydée," he said, with a slight tremor in his manly
+voice, "I accept the gift. Be my wife, the wife of Monte-Cristo, and no
+effort of mine shall be wanting to assure your happiness."
+
+At that moment there was a sinister flash in the heavens, that were as
+yet without a cloud. The livid light shot downward to the water and
+seemingly plunged to the depths of the Mediterranean.
+
+The Count gave a start and drew his beloved Haydée closer to him; the
+frightened girl trembled from head to foot and clung to him for
+protection.
+
+"Oh! my lord, my lord," she murmured, "does Heaven disapprove of our
+plighted troth?"
+
+"Calm yourself, Haydée," answered Monte-Cristo. "The lightning is God's
+seal, and He has set it upon our betrothal."
+
+The flash was now repeated and was succeeded by several others of
+increased intensity, but as yet no thunder rolled and there was not the
+slightest indication of an approaching storm.
+
+Monte-Cristo took Haydée's hand and led her to the side of the yacht.
+Not a single wave wrinkled the surface of the sea for miles and miles;
+the water seemed asleep, while down upon it the moon poured a flood of
+silvery radiance. The stars, too, were beaming brightly. Still, however,
+the intense lightning shot athwart the placid sky. It had become almost
+incessant. Monte-Cristo could not account for the bewildering
+phenomenon. He summoned the captain of the Alcyon and said to him:
+
+"Giacomo, you have sailed the Mediterranean all your life, have you
+not?"
+
+"All my life, Excellency," replied he, touching his cap.
+
+"Have you ever before seen lightning such as this on a calm night?"
+
+"Never, Excellency."
+
+"It certainly cannot be heat-lightning."
+
+"I think not, Excellency. Heat-lightning has a quicker flash and is much
+less intense."
+
+"What do you suppose it portends?"
+
+"I can form no idea, Excellency."
+
+"Oh! my lord," said Haydée, "a terrible storm is coming, I am sure; I
+feel a premonition Of approaching danger. I pray you, guard against it."
+
+"Nonsense, my child," returned Monte-Cristo, with a laugh that, in spite
+of all his efforts at self-control, betrayed nervous agitation and an
+undefinable dread. "The sky is clear, the moon is shining brilliantly
+and the sea is altogether tranquil; if a storm were coming it would not
+be so. Banish your fears and reassure yourself; the lightning is but a
+freak of nature."
+
+The captain, too, was disturbed, though he could give himself no
+satisfactory reason for his uneasiness.
+
+Ali, with the characteristic superstition of the Nubian race, had
+prostrated himself upon the deck, and was making signs the Moslems of
+his country use to drive away malignant spirits.
+
+The night, however, passed without accident, though the singular
+lightning continued for several hours.
+
+Next morning the sun rose, encircled by a ruddy band, fringed on the
+outer rim with a faint yellow, while its beams had a sullen glare
+instead of their normal brilliancy. The lightning of the previous night
+was absent, but soon another and not less disquieting phenomenon
+manifested itself; as far as the eye could reach the sea seemed boiling,
+and, at intervals, a puff, as if of vapor, would filter through the
+waves, rising and disappearing in the heavens. Meanwhile the wind had
+fallen, and amid an almost dead calm the sails of the Alcyon hung
+listlessly, with only an occasional flapping. The yacht moved forward,
+indeed, but so slowly that it scarcely appeared to move at all.
+
+Monte-Cristo and Haydée came on deck at dawn, but the young girl
+displayed such terror at the unwonted aspect of the sun and the sea that
+the Count speedily persuaded her to return with him to the cabin. There
+she cowered upon a divan, hiding her face in her hands and moaning
+piteously. Her fiancé, distressed at her condition, endeavored to soothe
+and comfort her, but utterly without avail; her fears could neither be
+banished nor allayed. At length he threw himself on a rug at her feet,
+and, disengaging her hands from her face, drew them about his neck;
+Haydée clasped him frantically and clung to him as if she deemed that
+embrace a final one.
+
+As they were sitting thus, the Alcyon received a sudden and violent
+shock that shook the noble yacht from stem to stern. Instantly there was
+a sound of hurrying feet on deck, and the captain could be heard
+shouting hoarsely to the sailors.
+
+Monte-Cristo leaped up and caught Haydée in his arms. At that moment Ali
+darted down the companion-way and stood trembling before his master.
+
+"What was that shock?" demanded the Count, hurriedly.
+
+The agitated Nubian made a sign signifying he did not know, but that all
+was yet safe.
+
+"Remain with your mistress, Ali," said Monte-Cristo. "I am going to see
+what is the matter."
+
+"Oh! no, no," cried Haydée, imploringly, as the Count placed her again
+on the divan and was moving away. "Oh! no, no; do not leave me, my lord,
+or I shall die!"
+
+Ashy pale, Haydée arose from the divan, and cast herself on her knees at
+Monte-Cristo's feet.
+
+"Swear to me, at least, that you will not needlessly expose yourself to
+danger," she uttered, in a pleading tone.
+
+"I swear it," answered the Count. "Ali will faithfully guard you while I
+am gone," he added, "and ere you can realize my absence, I shall be
+again at your side."
+
+With these words he tore himself away and hastened to the deck.
+
+There a scene met his eye as unexpected as it was appalling. The entire
+surface of the Mediterranean was aglow with phosphorescence, and the sun
+was veiled completely by a heavy cloud that seemed to cover the whole
+expanse of the sky. This cloud was not black, but of a bloody hue, and
+the atmosphere was so densely charged with sulphur that it was almost
+impossible to breathe. The sea was boiling more furiously than ever, and
+the puffs of vapor that had before only occasionally filtered through
+the waves now leaped up incessantly, each puff attended with a slight
+explosion; the vapor was grayish when it first arose from the water, but
+as it ascended it became red, mingling at length with the bloody cloud
+that each moment acquired greater density. The wind blew fitfully,
+sometimes amounting to a gale and then utterly vanishing without the
+slightest warning. Soon the bloody cloud seemed to settle of its own
+weight upon the sea, growing so thick that the eye could not penetrate
+it, and a few feet from the yacht all was inky darkness.
+
+Monte-Cristo hurried to the captain, who was endeavoring to quiet the
+superstitious fears of the sailors. Drawing him aside, he said, in a low
+tone:
+
+"Giacomo, we are in frightful danger. This elemental disturbance is
+volcanic, and how it will end cannot be foretold. No doubt an earthquake
+is devastating the nearest land, or will do so before many hours have
+elapsed. At any moment rocks or islands may arise from the sea, and
+obstruct our passage. All we can do is to hold ourselves in readiness
+for whatever calamity may happen, and make for Crete as rapidly as
+possible, with the hope of eventually getting beyond the volcanic zone.
+Do not enlighten the crew as to the cause of the disturbance; did they
+know, or even suspect it, they could not be controlled, but would become
+either stupefied or reckless. Try to convince them that we are simply in
+the midst of a severe electrical storm that will speedily exhaust its
+fury and subside. Now, to work, and remember that everything depends
+upon your courage and resolution."
+
+Giacomo rejoined the sailors, who were huddled together at the stern of
+the yacht like so many frightened sheep. He spoke to them, doing his
+utmost to reassure them, and ultimately succeeded so well that they
+resumed their neglected duties with some show of alacrity and even
+cheerfulness.
+
+Meanwhile, Monte-Cristo, with folded arms and an outward show of
+calmness, was pacing the deck as if nothing unusual were in progress,
+and his demeanor was not without its effect on the sailors, who looked
+upon him with a species of awe and admiration. At times he went below to
+cheer the drooping spirits of his beloved Haydée, but speedily returned
+that the influence of his presence might not be lost.
+
+Thus the day passed. A night of painful suspense succeeded it, during
+which not a soul on board the Alcyon thought of sleeping. Nothing,
+however, occurred, save that the intense lightning of the previous night
+was renewed. Toward eleven o'clock the breeze freshened to such an
+extent that the yacht sped along on her course with great fleetness.
+
+In the morning the sun arose amid a purple haze, and the Mediterranean
+presented a more tumultuous and threatening aspect than it had the
+preceding day. The breeze was still blowing stiffly, and the lightning
+continued. Giacomo informed Monte-Cristo that unless a calm should
+suddenly come on they would certainly arrive at Crete by noon. The
+sailors, he added, were in good spirits, and might be relied upon,
+though they were much fatigued by reason of their unceasing labor.
+
+At ten o'clock the man at the wheel hurriedly summoned the captain to
+his side, and, with a look of terror and bewilderment, directed his
+attention to the compass, the needle of which no longer pointed to the
+north, but was dancing a mad dance, not remaining stationary for a
+single instant. To complicate the situation still further, the sun was
+suddenly obscured, absolute darkness invading both sea and sky. Only
+when the vivid lightning tore the dense clouds apart were those on board
+the Alcyon enabled to catch a glimpse of what was going on about them,
+and that glimpse was but momentary. Thunder peals were now added to the
+terrors of the time, while the yacht tossed and plunged on angry,
+threatening billows. Showers of sparks and glowing cinders, as if from
+some mighty conflagration, poured down into the water, striking its
+surface with an ominous hiss; they resembled meteors, and their
+brilliancy was augmented by the surrounding gloom. Rain also began to
+descend, not in drops, but in broad sheets and with the roar of a
+cataract; in a moment everybody on the Alcyon's deck was drenched to the
+skin.
+
+Haydée had not ventured from the cabin since the first day of the
+elemental commotion; in obedience to his master's commands, Ali
+constantly watched over her whenever the Count was facing the strange
+storm with Giacomo and the sailors.
+
+As the captain approached the man at the wheel, Monte-Cristo fixed his
+eyes upon the old Italian's countenance and saw it assume a deathly
+pallor as he noticed that the needle of the compass could no longer be
+depended on.
+
+In an instant the Count was beside him and realized the extent of the
+new evil that had befallen them.
+
+"We can steer but by guess now," said Giacomo, in a low, hoarse whisper.
+"God grant that we may be able to reach our destination."
+
+As he spoke, a loud crash was heard, and the rudder, torn from its
+fastenings by the violence of the tempest, swept by them, vanishing amid
+the darkness. The man at the wheel gazed after it, uttering a cry of
+despair.
+
+"We are completely at the mercy of the wind and waves!" said
+Monte-Cristo, in an undertone. "Can nothing be done?" he added,
+hurriedly.
+
+"Nothing, Excellency," returned the captain. "A temporary rudder might
+be rigged were the sea calmer, but, boiling and seething as it is, such
+a thing is utterly impossible."
+
+A panic had seized upon the sailors as they witnessed the catastrophe
+that rendered the Alcyon helpless, but this immediately gave place to
+stupor, and the men stood silent and overwhelmed.
+
+Bertuccio, from the time the dread storm had broken forth, had been
+gloomy and uncommunicative; he had held persistently aloof both from
+Monte-Cristo and the crew. In the general turmoil and confusion his
+bearing and behavior had passed unnoticed even by the vigilant eye of
+the Count.
+
+The steward now approached his master, and, taking him aside, whispered
+in his ear:
+
+"Heaven's vengeance is pursuing the Alcyon and all on board because of
+my crimes! I feel it--I know it!"
+
+The steward's face was as white as a sheet, but his eye betokened fixed
+resolution.
+
+"Not another word of this," cried Monte-Cristo, sternly. "Should the
+superstitious sailors hear you, they would demand with one voice that
+you be cast into the boiling sea."
+
+"And they would be right," rejoined Bertuccio, doggedly. "If I remain
+where I am, the Alcyon's doom is sealed. On the other hand, the moment
+you are rid of me the storm will cease as if by magic, and you will be
+saved."
+
+"Be silent!" commanded Monte-Cristo. "You are a Corsican--show a
+Corsican's courage!"
+
+"I will!" was the determined reply, and the steward walked with a firm
+tread to the side of the yacht.
+
+"What do you mean?" said the Count, hurrying after him and placing his
+hand on his shoulder.
+
+"You shall see!" answered Bertuccio.
+
+Shaking off Monte-Cristo's grasp, he leaped upon the bulwarks and
+suddenly sprang far out amid the seething waves. The Count uttered a cry
+of horror that was echoed by the captain. As for the crew, so utterly
+stupefied were they that they did not seem to comprehend the suicidal
+act. For an instant Monte-Cristo and Giacomo saw the steward whirling
+about amid the tumultuous flood; then he was swept away, and vanished in
+the impenetrable darkness beyond.
+
+The force of the wind had meanwhile augmented until a perfect hurricane
+was raging about the Alcyon; the noise was deafening, and the sails
+swelled to such an extent that they threatened to snap asunder. Suddenly
+they gave way, and the tattered shreds flew in all directions, like
+white-winged sea-fowl. Simultaneously the mast toppled and went by the
+board. The yacht, now a helpless wreck, pitched and tossed, but still
+shot onward, impelled by the wild fury of the gale. Gigantic waves at
+intervals swept the deck, each torrent as it retreated carrying with it
+all it could tear away, and making huge gaps in the bulwarks, to which
+the sailors were clinging with all the energy of desperation.
+Monte-Cristo had grasped the stump of the mast, and the captain clung
+with all his strength to the remains of the wheel. The lightning had
+become terrific, and the almost continuous roar of the thunder was
+sufficient to drown the mad din of the waters.
+
+All at once the jagged outlines of a gigantic rock loomed up, directly
+in the course of the fated vessel; in another instant the Alcyon struck
+and remained fast, while a vivid flash of lightning revealed what
+appeared to be an island, about a quarter of a mile away. But though the
+wreck of the yacht was motionless, the furious sea continued to break
+over the deck, and it seemed only a question of a few moments when the
+battered and torn hull of the Alcyon would go to pieces. The boat the
+vessel carried had long since been wrenched from its fastenings and
+swept into the whirlpool.
+
+Monte-Cristo, quitting the stump of the mast, darted down the
+companion-way into the cabin, and quickly returned to the deck bearing
+in his arms the swooning form of his adored Haydée. Ali followed him.
+The Nubian seemed to have entirely recovered from his fear, and
+manifested both alertness and decision.
+
+Shifting his lifeless burden to his left arm and grasping her firmly,
+Monte-Cristo advanced to the side of the Alcyon. Pausing there for an
+instant, he said, addressing Giacomo and the crew:
+
+"The yacht cannot hold together much longer; if we remain where we are
+we shall inevitably be ground to powder on the rock with our vessel.
+There is an island some distance to the right of us, and, sustained by
+Providence, we may succeed in reaching it by swimming. For my part, I
+shall try the venture and endeavor to save this lady. You, men, are
+untrammeled and stand a better chance of success than I do. I advise you
+all to follow my example; to cling further to the wreck is death!"
+
+With these words the Count made his way to a gap in the bulwarks and,
+grasping Haydée tightly, leaped with her into the midst of the angry
+sea. Ali followed his master, and soon they were seen far in the
+distance, struggling and battling with the waves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE ISLAND.
+
+
+It was the month of December, but on the little Island of Salmis in the
+Grecian Archipelago the temperature was as mild and genial as that of
+June. The grass was rank and thick, while the blooming almond trees
+filled the atmosphere with fragrance. On a narrow strip of sandy beach
+three or four fishermen were preparing their nets and boats for a
+fishing expedition to the waters beyond. They chatted as they toiled.
+The eldest of them, a man about sixty, with silvered locks and a long
+gray beard, said:
+
+"You may talk of storms as much as you please, but I maintain that the
+most severe tempest ever experienced in this neighborhood was the one I
+witnessed ten years ago last October, when we had the earthquake and the
+strange man, who now owns this island, was washed ashore."
+
+"The Count of Monte-Cristo you mean?" remarked one of the party.
+
+"Yes, the Count of Monte-Cristo, who has done so much for us all and
+whose wife is nothing less than an angel of goodness and charity."
+
+"You rescued him, did you not, Alexis?"
+
+"I found him lying upon the beach, with the lady who is now his wife
+tightly clasped in his arms, so tightly that I had no end of trouble to
+separate them. Both were unconscious at the time, and no wonder, for the
+sea was furious and they must have been dashed about at a fearful rate.
+It was a miracle they escaped with their lives. Near them lay that
+dark-skinned African, their servant, who styles himself Ali, as well as
+the corpses of several sailors. The African, however, revived just as I
+approached him. He's a man of iron, I tell you, for he immediately
+leaped to his feet and helped me to restore his master and mistress.
+When they came to, I took the whole party to my hut and cared for them.
+The next day I rowed the Count and the African out to the wreck of their
+vessel on that rock you see away over there, and they brought back with
+them a fabulous amount of money and jewels that they found in the
+strangest closets I ever saw in the cabin. Then the Count bought this
+island and has lived here ever since. He took the lady to Athens and was
+married to her there, and on his return he had the palace they now
+occupy built in the midst of the palm grove."
+
+By this time the fishermen had completed their preparations and,
+leaping into their boats, they started on their expedition.
+
+The palace in the palm grove to which old Alexis had alluded was,
+indeed, a magnificent dwelling, suitable in every respect for the
+residence of an oriental monarch. It was built in the Turkish fashion
+and its exterior was singularly beautiful and imposing. Huge palm trees
+surrounded it; they were planted in regular rows upon a vast lawn that
+was adorned with costly statues and fountains, while at intervals were
+scattered great flower beds filled with choice exotics and blooming
+plants of endless variety. A wide graveled walk and carriage-road led to
+the palace, the main entrance to which was flanked on either side by
+columns of dark-veined marble. The edifice itself was of green stone,
+and sparkled in the sunlight like a colossal emerald. It was surmounted
+by three zinc-covered domes, above each of which towered a gilded
+crescent.
+
+Within all was elegance and luxury. There were immense salons, with
+marble floors, and walls covered with Smyrna hangings of the most
+beautiful description that of themselves must have cost a fortune. These
+salons were furnished with rich divans, tables of malachite, cabinets of
+ebony, and oriental rugs of the most artistic and complicated
+workmanship. There were dazzling reception rooms filled with exquisite
+statues and superb paintings, the works of the greatest sculptors and
+artists of the east and west, of the past and the present. Figures by
+Thorwaldsen, Powers and other modern celebrities of the block and chisel
+stood beside antique masterpieces framed by the genius of Phidias and
+his brother sculptors of old Greece and Rome, masterpieces that had been
+torn from the ruins of antiquity by the hand of the untiring and
+enterprising excavator. Among the paintings were fine specimens of the
+skill of Albert Dürer, Murillo, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds and other votaries of the brush whose names are immortal. These
+paintings did not hang on the walls, for they were covered with rich
+tapestry from the looms of Benares and the Gobelins, but rested on
+delicately fashioned easels, themselves entitled to a high, rank as
+works of art. In the salons were statues by Michael Angelo, Pierre Puget
+and Pompeo Marchesi, and paintings by Claude Lorraine, Titian, Sir
+Thomas Lawrence, Correggio and Salvator Rosa.
+
+The vast library was encircled by lofty bookcases of walnut and ebony,
+filled with rare and costly volumes from the curiously illuminated
+missals of monkish days to the latest scientific works, together with a
+liberal sprinkling of poetry and fiction; upon tables, stands and
+mantels were superb ornaments in brass repoussé work and grand old
+faïence, including some wonderful specimens of ancient Chinese crackle
+ware, the peculiar secret of the manufacture of which had been lost in
+the flight of ages.
+
+At an exquisite desk of walnut, carved with grotesque images, sat the
+Count of Monte-Cristo; he was busily engaged in writing, and beside him
+lay a huge pile of manuscript that was ever and anon augmented by an
+additional sheet, hastily scrawled in strange, bewildering Semitic
+characters.
+
+The Count showed but small trace of the passage of years; he did not
+look much older than when he left the Isle of Monte-Cristo with Haydée
+on that voyage which was destined to result so disastrously for the
+Alcyon and her ill-fated crew. To be sure, his hair was slightly flecked
+with gray, but his visage still retained its full outline, and not a
+wrinkle marred its masculine beauty. He was clad in an exceedingly
+picturesque costume, half Greek and half Turkish, while upon his head
+was a red fez from the centre of which hung down a gilt tassel.
+
+As he wrote his eyes sparkled and he seemed filled with enthusiasm. At
+length he threw aside his pen, and rising began to pace the vast
+apartment with long strides. "Alas!" he muttered, "perhaps after all I
+am only a vain dreamer, as hosts of others have been before me. But no,
+my scheme is feasible and cannot fail; it is based on sound principles
+and a thorough knowledge of mankind; besides, the immense wealth that an
+all-wise God has placed at my disposal will aid me and form a mighty
+factor in the cause. In the past I used that wealth solely for my own
+selfish ends, but now all is different; I have no thought of self--the
+philanthropist has replaced the egotist; I have aided the poor, relieved
+the stricken and brought joy to many a sorrowing home, but hitherto I
+have acted only in isolated cases; now I meditate a grand, a sublime
+stroke--to give freedom to man throughout the entire length and breadth
+of the Continent of Europe. If I succeed, and succeed I must, every
+down-trodden human being from the coast of France to the Ural Mountains,
+from the sunny Mediterranean to the frozen Arctic Ocean, will reap the
+benefit of my efforts and shake off the yoke of tyranny. Where shall I
+begin? Ah! with France, my own country, the land that gave me birth. I
+shall thus return good for evil, and Edmond Dantès, the prisoner of the
+Château d'If, will free the masses from their galling chains. My most
+potent instrument will be the public press; by means of journals I will
+found, or buy, the minds of all Europeans shall become familiarized with
+the theory of universal liberty and ripened for sweeping revolutions and
+the establishment of republics; I will also call fiction to my aid;
+struggling novelists and feuilletonists shall receive liberal subsidies
+from my hand on condition that they disseminate my ideas, theories and
+plans in their romances and feuilletons; thus will I reach thousands
+upon thousands who hold themselves aloof from politics, and almost
+insensibly they will be transformed into zealous, active partisans of
+the order of things that is to be; poets, too, shall sing the praises of
+freedom louder and more enthusiastically than ever before; in fine, no
+instrument, no means, however humble and apparently insignificant, shall
+be neglected when the proper moment arrives, but until it does arrive I
+must wait, wait patiently, wait though while waiting an internal fire
+consume me, and my veins throb with anxiety and expectation to the point
+of bursting."
+
+He sank into a chair, and, burying his face in his hands, was lost in
+profound thought.
+
+Meanwhile, a lovely woman, leading a beautiful girl of eight years and a
+handsome boy of nine, had noiselessly entered the apartment. It was
+Haydée, the wife of Monte-Cristo, Haydée grown mature and more beautiful
+than ever. Her night-black tresses were gathered in two wide braids at
+the back of her shapely head, so long that they reached below her waist.
+Her eyes were as bright as stars, and her slender hands, tipped with
+their pink nails, as white as the lily; her tiny feet, encased in
+Cinderella slippers of rose-hued satin, peeped out from beneath ample
+Turkish trousers, which were semi-transparent and disclosed the outlines
+of her beautifully turned limbs; she wore a close-fitting gilet of
+pearly silk, adorned with gilt fringe and cut low, displaying her snowy
+neck and magnificent shoulders; her arms were encompassed but not hidden
+by flowing sleeves of filmy gauze as fine as the tissue of a spider's
+web; about her neck flashed a collar of brilliant diamonds of enormous
+value, and on her tapering fingers were rings of emerald, ruby and
+sapphire; on her head was a red fez, precisely similar to her husband's;
+her countenance, a perfect revelation of angelic beauty, was wreathed
+in sunny smiles that betokened thorough happiness and contentment.
+
+The little girl, Zuleika, the daughter of Monte-Cristo, was her exact
+image, a reproduction of her lovely mother in miniature, a promise of
+rare delight for the future. The child's costume was also modeled after
+Haydée's, but with modifications suited to her tender years. Zuleika was
+of a gentle, loving disposition, but a vein of romance and poetry had
+already developed itself in her notwithstanding her extreme youth. She
+sighed for the unknown delights of the sea, and the wail of the surf
+sounded to her like the most delicious of mysterious harmonies. Her
+infant imagination peopled the watery realm with spirits of good and
+evil always in contention, and the great ships, with their huge white
+sails, that she saw in the distance from the sandy beach of the Island
+of Salmis, were in her eyes the mighty birds of Arabian story.
+
+The boy, Espérance, the son of Monte-Cristo, resembled his father both
+in disposition and appearance; his youthful soul was full of noble
+aspirations, while his daring and bravery filled even the hardy
+fishermen of the coast with wonder and amazement. He was a very manly
+and handsome child; quick, enthusiastic and energetic; his father's hope
+and his mother's idol; though Haydée saw, with extreme uneasiness, that
+the little lad was wise beyond his years, and was already devoted to
+Monte-Cristo's somewhat visionary schemes, which he appeared to grasp in
+all their complicated details. His attire was that of a Greek fisher
+boy; his trousers, rolled up above his knees, displayed his naked legs
+and bare feet; in one hand he held a rough sea cap that he had removed
+from his head at the door of the library. Espérance loved, above all
+other things, to be with the fishermen on the beach, and his joy knew no
+bounds when he was permitted to accompany them on their fishing
+expeditions to the waters beyond.
+
+Haydée remained silently gazing at Monte-Cristo for a moment; then,
+advancing into the middle of the room, she stood beside him with the
+children. Zuleika, dropping her mother's hand, sprang lightly upon her
+father's knees, and, clasping him about the neck with her chubby arms,
+kissed him rapturously.
+
+The Count started from his deep reverie and returned his daughter's
+kiss; then, looking up, he perceived Haydée and Espérance.
+
+"Ah! my loved ones," said he, "so you are all here!"
+
+"Yes, papa," returned Zuleika, in a clear, crystal voice, that sounded
+like the tinkle of a fairy bell, "we are all here--mamma, Espérance and
+'Leika!"
+
+Monte-Cristo smiled faintly, and patted the little girl tenderly on the
+cheek.
+
+"Haydée," said he, "fortune favors us in our children; they are, indeed,
+a blessing to us."
+
+"A veritable blessing, my lord," answered the lovely Haydée, "but still
+I cannot help feeling some terror at the thought that Espérance may one
+day be drawn into those political struggles you have so often foretold,
+and in which it is your intention to act a prominent part."
+
+"Papa will lead the people to victory, and I will fight by his side!"
+cried Espérance, proudly.
+
+Haydée gazed sadly at the enthusiastic boy, and tears came into her
+gazelle-like eyes.
+
+"Oh! my lord," she said to her husband, "teach Espérance the arts of
+peace, implant in his boyish bosom, while there is yet time, the love of
+home and domestic joys."
+
+The Count glanced admiringly at the little lad, who stood with dilated
+nostrils and eyes flashing fire; then, turning to Haydée, he said in an
+impressive tone:
+
+"My beloved wife, Espérance is but an infant, and it may be years ere
+Europe shall awake from her lethargy and strive to overturn the thrones
+of her despots; before that period, the period of revolution and
+bloodshed, our son may change his opinions and cease to be the ardent
+Republican he is now."
+
+"No, no," protested the enthusiastic boy; "I will be a Republican all my
+life!"
+
+Monte-Cristo smiled sadly, and, drawing the lad to his knee, said to
+him:
+
+"Espérance, my son, you are yet too young to know the ways of the world
+and the snares that monarchs set for the inexperienced and unwary. There
+are temptations at their command capable of winning over even the most
+zealous enemies, and they never hesitate to use them when the
+opportunity offers. At the proper time I will instruct you fully about
+all this; now, you cannot understand it."
+
+As Monte-Cristo ceased to speak, Ali entered the library, followed by
+three native servants attached to the palace. The Nubian bowed low
+before his master and reverently kissed Haydée's hand; the servants did
+likewise. Then Ali handed the Count a sealed letter, making signs to the
+effect that he had found it tied with a cord to one of the palm trees on
+the lawn.
+
+Monte-Cristo opened the letter and glanced at the signature; as he did
+so a look of surprise and annoyance settled upon his face.
+
+The note was written in the French language, and read as follows:
+
+
+     COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO: I am in hiding on the Island of Salmis and
+     must see you without delay. Meet me at midnight in the almond grove
+     near the eastern shore. Be sure to come alone.
+                                                         BENEDETTO.
+
+
+"Humph!" said the Count to himself as he finished reading this singular
+epistle. "I thought I was rid of that scoundrel forever, but it seems
+that the galleys at Toulon cannot hold him. Well, I suppose I must meet
+him; otherwise he may take a notion to come here, which would be both
+inconvenient and disagreeable. I imagine he wants a little money to
+enable him to escape to the east; if that is all, I will gladly give it
+to be rid of his presence, on the island. I prefer not to have as a
+neighbor a thief and an assassin, even if he did shine so brilliantly
+once in aristocratic Parisian society as the Prince Cavalcanti!"
+
+"What is the matter, my lord?" asked Haydée, noticing the expression on
+Monte-Cristo's countenance. "From whom is the letter?"
+
+"Oh! it is nothing," answered the Count, with a smile. "A poor fellow
+wishes my assistance, and is too modest to ask it in person; that's
+all!"
+
+Haydée was not satisfied with this indefinite reply; she knew that the
+contents of the letter so strangely conveyed to her husband had vexed
+and troubled him; but she also knew that Monte-Cristo could be as silent
+as the tomb about anything he wished to keep secret, and, therefore,
+judged it useless to attempt further questions. Besides, a singular
+presentiment of evil had taken possession of her at the sight of the
+ominous note, and she felt certain that some disaster was threatened;
+hence, she determined to be watchful and keep strict guard over her
+children until the mystery, whatever it was, should be cleared up.
+
+As the clock in his library struck the quarter before midnight,
+Monte-Cristo arose from the chair in which he had been sitting; donning
+his fez and a light cloak, he prepared to go to the almond grove on the
+eastern portion of the island, the spot Benedetto had appointed for
+their meeting; prior to setting out he slipped into his pocket a
+well-filled purse, and thrust a loaded revolver into the belt he wore
+about his waist.
+
+"The scoundrel was anxious that I should come alone, but he did not
+prohibit me from arming myself," muttered he, with a grim smile, "and I
+have seen too much of Signor Benedetto to care to leave the game
+entirely in his hands!"
+
+Quitting the palace by a private door, after making sure that everybody
+was asleep and that he was unobserved, Monte-Cristo bent his steps in
+the direction of the almond grove. It was a moonless night and very
+dark; the air was rather chill, while the roar of the surf sounded
+louder than usual in the crisp, bracing atmosphere. The Count gathered
+his cloak tightly about him and walked steadily onward, notwithstanding
+the thick darkness. At length the heavy odor of the almond blossoms
+warned him that he was approaching his destination, and he paused to
+survey the scene.
+
+About fifty yards away the almond grove loomed up, casting a denser
+shade upon the surrounding blackness. The Count hastened his steps and
+in a few seconds stood among the trees. As he paused the figure of a man
+emerged from behind a huge fragment of rock and thus hailed him:
+
+"Are you the Count of Monte-Cristo?"
+
+"I am," was the firm reply.
+
+"And are you alone, as I recommended?"
+
+"Entirely alone. Now, if you have finished your questions, pray who are
+you?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"Merely for form's sake."
+
+"Well, then, I am Benedetto."
+
+"Of course. As it was too dark for me to distinguish your features, I
+simply wanted to identify you. Now, state your business as briefly as
+possible."
+
+"I escaped from Toulon long ago, and, after wandering all over Europe,
+settled in Athens, where I remained until a week since, when the result
+of a difficulty compelled me to quit the city."
+
+"An assassination?"
+
+"Yes, an assassination!"
+
+Monte-Cristo shuddered to hear the cold-blooded villain talk so calmly
+of his foul crime, but, conquering his aversion, he said between his
+teeth:
+
+"Proceed."
+
+"I fled from Athens under cover of the night and the next morning hired
+a fisherman to bring me here in his boat, thinking that the island was
+inhabited only by a few poverty-stricken wretches who gained a scanty
+subsistence from the sea. On my arrival I was filled with terror at
+beholding your magnificent palace, which I was told belonged to a great
+lord. I naturally imagined that no one could inhabit such a dwelling
+save some high official of the Greek Government, and, without making
+further inquiries, again secured the services of the fisherman, who took
+me to the neighboring Island of Kylo. There I was in safety, for I fell
+in with a band of stout-hearted men, of whom I eventually became the
+chief."
+
+"Bandits, no doubt!"
+
+"Yes, bandits, if you will, but valiant men all the same. We prospered
+exceedingly and imagined that our career could be continued with
+impunity as long as we might desire; in this, however, we were sadly
+mistaken, for one fatal night the Greek soldiery suddenly descended upon
+us and hemmed us in on every side ere we were aware of their presence.
+We fought none the less desperately on that account, and in the
+sanguinary conflict all my companions were slain. I was grievously
+wounded and left for dead, but the following day managed to crawl to the
+beach and contrived to be conveyed hither, having learned by accident
+that the great lord of the Island of Salmis was no other than my old
+friend of happier days, the Count of Monte-Cristo, in short, yourself.
+Now, you know my story. I am a fugitive here as in France, and need your
+aid to enable me to escape."
+
+"You want money?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"A million of francs!"
+
+"Man!" cried Monte-Cristo, breathless with astonishment at Benedetto's
+audacious demand, "you are out of your senses! I will give you a
+thousand francs, but not a sou more!"
+
+"Beware how you trifle with a desperate man!" hissed Benedetto.
+
+"What have I to fear?" said Monte-Cristo, calmly. "You are alone."
+
+"I am not alone, Count of Monte-Cristo; my stout-hearted friends of the
+Island of Kylo are with me, and ready to support my demand!"
+
+"Then you lied to me; your story was a base fabrication."
+
+"Partly, Count; but enough of this--I want the million of francs; it is
+a small sum for you to spare an old friend, who did you as much service
+as Prince Andrea Cavalcanti! Are you going to give me the money?"
+
+"I am not!" replied Monte-Cristo, drawing his revolver from his belt and
+cocking it.
+
+"Ho! ho!" laughed Benedetto, mockingly, "that's your game, is it? Again
+I tell you to beware how you trifle with a desperate man!"
+
+At the repetition of this phrase, as if it had been a preconcerted
+signal, a dozen stalwart figures started up from the darkness and
+surrounded Monte-Cristo, who instantly discharged his weapon right and
+left among them. Several of the bandits fell, pierced by the balls, and
+Benedetto, with a loud oath, leaped at the Count's throat, brandishing a
+long, keen-bladed dagger above his head.
+
+Raising his empty revolver, Monte-Cristo with a hand of iron struck his
+on-coming assailant full in the face, stretching him instantly at his
+feet; but scarcely had he accomplished this when three of the bandits
+sprang upon him and hurled him to the earth beside Benedetto.
+
+"Now," cried one of the miscreants with a frightful curse, at the same
+time placing the muzzle of a pistol at the Count's temple, "now, my
+lord of Salmis, your time has come!"
+
+As he was about to fire, there arose a tremendous shout, and, headed by
+Ali, who swung aloft a Turkish yataghan, the entire force of
+Monte-Cristo's servants, armed to the teeth, swept down upon the
+astonished bandits. At the same instant a pistol-shot rang out, and the
+man who had threatened to take the Count's life fell to the ground a
+corpse. As Monte-Cristo regained his feet he saw Espérance standing a
+short distance away, the smoking weapon with which he had just killed
+his father's would-be murderer still clenched in his boyish hand. The
+struggle that ensued was of short duration, for the bandits, finding
+themselves outnumbered, speedily fled to their boats, leaving their
+wounded comrades behind them.
+
+When the Count realized that Espérance, his beloved son, had saved him
+from death, he rushed to the heroic lad, took him in his arms and bore
+him beyond the reach of danger; this done, he returned to aid Ali and
+the servants, but they were already victors and in full possession of
+the field.
+
+A search was made for the body of Benedetto, but it had disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE CONFLAGRATION.
+
+
+As the Count of Monte-Cristo, Espérance, Ali and the servants approached
+the palace on their return from the struggle with the bandits in the
+almond grove, their ears were suddenly saluted by loud cries of terror.
+They came from the library and thither Monte-Cristo hurried, followed by
+his son. On the floor in the centre of the apartment Haydée lay in a
+swoon, and bending over her mother was Zuleika, screaming and wringing
+her little hands. The Count raised his wife and placed her upon a divan,
+while Espérance brought a water-jar and bathed her temples with its
+cool, refreshing contents, Zuleika meanwhile holding her mother's hands
+and sobbing violently.
+
+At last Haydée recovered consciousness, and opening her eyes gazed
+wildly around her; seeing her husband, Espérance and Zuleika safe beside
+her, she uttered a faint sigh of relief. It was several moments longer
+before she could speak; then she exclaimed in a tremulous voice:
+
+"Oh! my lord, did you meet that terrible man?"
+
+"What man, Haydée?" asked the Count. "Do you mean Benedetto?"
+
+"I do not know his name; I never saw him before," answered Haydée; "but
+his face was all battered and bleeding; on his uncovered head the locks
+were matted and unkempt, and his garments were torn as if in wrenching
+his way through a thicket of tangled briers."
+
+"Benedetto, it was Benedetto!" cried Monte-Cristo. "You do not mean to
+say he was here, in this room?"
+
+"He was here and only a short time ago," replied Haydée, with a shudder.
+"I was standing at the window with Zuleika when he rushed by me like a
+whirlwind, and going to your secretary endeavored to open it, but in
+vain; then with a cry of rage he ran to the window, leaped out into the
+darkness and was gone! I know nothing further, for as he vanished I fell
+to the floor in a swoon."
+
+Monte-Cristo touched a bell and almost immediately Ali stood bowing
+before him, as calm and unmoved as though nothing unusual had occurred.
+
+"Ali," said the Count, "post all the servants within and without the
+palace, and let the strictest watch be kept until dawn. The chief of the
+bandits, who is no other than the former Prince Cavalcanti, was here in
+our absence and must yet be hovering in the vicinity. See that he does
+not effect another entrance, as his purpose is robbery if not murder!"
+
+Ali signified by his eloquent pantomime that he had already taken it
+upon himself to station the servants as his master directed, and that it
+would be utterly impossible for any one to approach the palace without
+being seen and seized.
+
+As the faithful Nubian turned to retire, Monte-Cristo noticed that his
+right hand was bandaged as if wounded, and inquired whether he had been
+hurt in the conflict with the bandits. Ali explained that a dagger
+thrust had cut his palm, but that the wound had been properly cared for
+and would soon heal.
+
+When the Count and his family were once more alone together, Haydée
+threw herself at her husband's feet and humbly demanded pardon.
+
+"What have you done to require pardon?" asked Monte-Cristo, in
+astonishment. "Speak, but I forgive you beforehand.'
+
+"Oh! my lord," said Haydée, still maintaining her kneeling posture
+despite her husband's efforts to raise her, "oh! my lord, I have been
+guilty of a despicable act, but my love for you and fears for your
+safety must be my excuse. You left the letter you received so strangely
+this morning lying upon your secretary. I opened it and hurriedly made
+myself acquainted with its contents, for I had a premonition that some
+terrible danger threatened you. Oh! my lord, pardon, pardon!"
+
+Monte-Cristo raised her to her feet, and imprinted a kiss upon her
+pallid brow.
+
+"So then, it is to you, Haydée, that I owe my timely rescue from the
+hands of Benedetto and his band of cut-throats! Had you committed even a
+much more serious fault than peeping into my correspondence, that would
+be more than sufficient to secure my full forgiveness. But do you know
+that Espérance shot and killed the miscreant who held his pistol to my
+temple and was about to blow out my brains?"
+
+"Espérance?" said Haydée in bewilderment. "Did he not remain behind with
+Zuleika and myself?"
+
+"No, mamma," said the boy, holding his head proudly erect. "I could not
+remain behind. I knew papa was in danger, and, taking a pistol that I
+had seen Ali load this morning from the cabinet of fire-arms, I followed
+the servants, arriving at the almond grove just in time."
+
+Haydée ran to her son, and, taking him in her arms, pressed him fondly
+to her heart, kissing him again and again.
+
+"Oh! Espérance," she cried, "had I known you were in the midst of those
+bloodthirsty cut-throats I should have died of terror! But you have
+saved your father's life, my son, and I bless you for it!"
+
+"He is a little hero," said Monte-Cristo, impressively.
+
+Zuleika had thrown herself upon the divan, and, utterly worn out by the
+excitement through which she had passed, was already wrapped in a deep
+slumber. The Count, Haydée and Espérance, however, could not resign
+themselves to sleep, and when the gray light of dawn appeared in the
+eastern sky, they were still in the library and still watching.
+
+Benedetto had not been seen again, and a diligent search of the entire
+island, made by Ali and the servants, failed to reveal even the
+slightest trace of him. He had evidently succeeded in finding some
+fisherman's skiff and in it had made his escape.
+
+This view of the case was confirmed a few hours later, when old Alexis
+came to the palace and informed Monte-Cristo that his smack had vanished
+during the night, having, in all probability, been carried off by
+thieves.
+
+"I knew," said the fisherman, "that the Island of Kylo was infested by
+bandits, but I had no idea they would venture here. Now, however, I
+thought I had better put you on your guard."
+
+"I am much indebted to you, Alexis," said the Count; then, slipping a
+purse of money into his hand, he added: "Take that and provide yourself
+with a new boat."
+
+Alexis touched his cap, bowed and was about to withdraw when
+Monte-Cristo said to him, assuming a careless tone:
+
+"By the way, my good fellow, have you ever chanced to meet any of the
+bandits you mentioned?"
+
+"Often, Excellency," replied Alexis.
+
+"What kind of men are they?"
+
+"Bold, bad wretches, whose hands have been more than once stained with
+innocent blood."
+
+"What is their strength?"
+
+"They number about fifty."
+
+"Do any women dwell among them?"
+
+"Yes, Excellency, their wives and sweethearts."
+
+"Who is the leader of the band?"
+
+"A strange, morose man, who has not been long in their midst."
+
+"Is he a Greek?"
+
+"No, Excellency, he is a foreigner."
+
+"A Frenchman?"
+
+"Quite likely, though I am not sure."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"He calls himself Demetrius."
+
+"Did he ever question you about me?"
+
+"Yes, Excellency."
+
+"And what did you reply?"
+
+"I told him you were the Count of Monte-Cristo."
+
+"Ah! What did he say then?"
+
+"He said he had heard of you before."
+
+"That will do, Alexis; I have all the information I require."
+
+The fisherman again touched his cap, and, making a low bow, took his
+departure.
+
+Under ordinary circumstances Monte-Cristo would not have been disturbed
+by the presence of bandits so near the Island of Salmis, but it became
+an altogether different thing when those bandits were led by Benedetto.
+
+A month passed, but in it nothing occurred calculated to break the
+tranquillity of the Count and his family. The bandits had not reappeared
+and Benedetto had given no sign of life. The faithful Ali no longer
+deemed it necessary to maintain his precautions against surprise, and
+the strict watch that had been kept up day and night ever since the
+conflict in the almond grove was abandoned. Haydée, Zuleika and
+Espérance resumed their usual mode of life, having apparently dismissed
+the robbers from their minds, while even Monte-Cristo seemed free from
+all uneasiness.
+
+One night, while the Count was writing at a late hour in the library, he
+yielded to fatigue and fell asleep over his papers. His slumber was
+troubled with a strange and vivid dream.
+
+A man in the picturesque garb of a Greek peasant, and wearing a mask on
+his face, suddenly stood before him, with his arms folded upon his
+breast. Monte-Cristo saw him distinctly, though unable to stir either
+hand or foot. The singular visitant surveyed the Count long and
+steadily. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but as to his
+identity the sleeper could form no idea. At last he slowly removed the
+mask, and recognition was instantaneous. The man was Danglars. He raised
+his right hand, and, pointing with his forefinger at the Count, said
+deliberately, with a hiss like some venomous serpent:
+
+"Edmond Dantès, there is a bitter account open between us, and I am here
+to force you to a bitter settlement!"
+
+The light of the huge lamp, suspended from the ceiling, fell full upon
+Danglars' countenance; it was as bloodless as that of a corpse, and the
+eyes shone with a remorseless, vindictive glare. The banker continued in
+the same hissing tone, his words penetrating to the very marrow of the
+slumberer's bones:
+
+"Count of Monte-Cristo, for by that name it still pleases you to be
+called, listen to me. By the most ingenious and fiendish combinations
+possible for a human being to contrive, you wrecked my fortune and with
+it my hopes. You drove me ignominiously from Paris; in Rome you caused
+me to be starved and robbed by Luigi Vampa and his brigands; then with
+the malevolent magnanimity of an arch-demon you sent me forth into the
+world a fugitive and an outcast. Count of Monte-Cristo, Edmond Dantès,
+low-born sailor of Marseilles, modern Mephistopheles as you are, I will
+be even with you! You have had your vengeance; now you shall feel mine!
+Here in the Grecian Archipelago, on the Island of Salmis, I will torture
+you through your dearest affections, and grind you to dust beneath my
+heel!"
+
+As Danglars finished, his features changed and became those of
+Villefort, while his Greek peasant's garb was transformed into the
+sombre habiliments of the Procureur du Roi. Villefort's face wore the
+look of madness, but there was a freezing calmness in his voice as he
+said:
+
+"Edmond Dantès, Count of Monte-Cristo, gaze upon the ruin you have made.
+Through you I was dragged down from my high position, exposed,
+humiliated and deprived of reason. But although the mere wreck of my
+former self, I am not utterly powerless, as you shall learn to your
+cost. You raised up my infamous son, Benedetto, to be the instrument of
+my destruction. Now, he shall work yours, and avenge his unhappy
+father!"
+
+The apparition paused, sighed deeply, and then resumed in a tone of
+still greater menace:
+
+"Count of Monte-Cristo, look well to your beloved wife, Haydée, look
+well to your heroic son, Espérance, look well to your darling daughter,
+Zuleika, for this night they are in frightful danger! Look well to your
+fabulous riches, for they are threatened; look well to your stately and
+magnificent palace, for already the element that shall devour it is
+noiselessly and stealthily at work! Count of Monte-Cristo, farewell!"
+
+A heart-rending shriek rang in the sleeper's ears, a mighty flash
+dazzled his eyes, and, with a grim smile upon his pallid countenance,
+Villefort vanished.
+
+Monte-Cristo awoke with a quick start and passed his hand across his
+forehead, as if dazed; then he leaped to his feet and glanced
+breathlessly about him. Danglars and Villefort had been only the idle
+coinage of his brain, but the heart-rending shriek, the mighty flash,
+they were, indeed, stern realities--the shriek was Haydée's, and the
+flash was fire!
+
+"My God!" cried Monte-Cristo, standing for an instant rooted to the
+spot, "can it be possible that this dream is the truth after all, and
+that I am even now to feel the vengeance of those two men?"
+
+He sprang into the spacious hall that was as light as day, and, as he
+did so, the figure of a man rushed by him--it was Benedetto, and in his
+hand he held a long knife dripping with blood. The Count turned and
+pursued him, snatching a dagger from a table as he ran. At the door
+leading to the lawn, he grasped him firmly by the shoulder and held him.
+
+"Murderer!" he shouted, "whose blood is that upon your knife?"
+
+"The blood of Haydée, the Greek slave!" hissed Benedetto, with a glare
+of ferocious triumph, "the blood of Haydée, your wife! Edmond Dantès, I
+am even with you!"
+
+Monte-Cristo struck at the assassin with his dagger, but Benedetto
+eluded the blow, and raising his own weapon inflicted a frightful gash
+upon the Count's cheek.
+
+A terrible struggle ensued. Monte-Cristo was possessed of wonderful
+strength and activity, but in both these respects the two desperate
+antagonists seemed fairly matched. Three times did the Count bury his
+dagger in Benedetto's body, but, though the assassin's blood gushed
+copiously from his wounds, he continued to fight with the utmost
+determination. At length the men grappled in a supreme, deadly effort,
+but Monte-Cristo, making a false step, slipped on the blood-spattered
+marble floor, and Benedetto, with the quickness of thought, hurling him
+backward, freed himself and bounding through the open doorway vanished
+in the darkness beyond.
+
+The Count uttered a groan of despair as he saw Haydée's self-confessed
+murderer escape him, and staggered to his feet; the fierce conflict with
+Benedetto had exhausted him, and he stood for an instant panting and
+breathless. The shrieks had now grown fainter and the hall was full of
+smoke. During all this time neither Ali nor any of the servants under
+him had appeared, a circumstance that, to Monte-Cristo, seemed
+inexplicable. He, however, did not pause to give it thought, but dashed
+up the stairway and strove to reach his wife's apartment; blinding,
+stifling clouds of smoke, through which penetrated the glare of the
+conflagration, drove him back again and again, but he renewed his
+attempts to force a passage with undaunted energy and courage. Finally,
+compressing his lips and holding his nostrils with the thumb and
+forefinger of his right hand, he gave a headlong plunge, and succeeded
+in reaching Haydée's door; it was open, displaying a scene that caused
+the Count's heart to sink within him; the whole chamber was one sea of
+flame; fiery tongues, like so many writhing and hissing serpents, were
+licking and consuming the costly tapestry, the richly carved furniture
+and the magnificent objects of art; the curtains of the bed were
+blazing, and upon the couch lay the senseless form of the wife of
+Monte-Cristo, the pallor of her faultless countenance contrasting
+painfully with the ruddy glow of the devouring element. In Haydée's
+breast was a gaping wound, from which her life blood was slowly oozing
+in ruby drops.
+
+Rendered utterly reckless by the terrible sight, the Count madly rushed
+to the couch, tore his beloved Haydée from it, and, clasping her tightly
+against his bosom, staggered into the corridor with his precious
+burden. There the smoke had increased in volume and density, but,
+summoning all his resolution and endurance to his aid, he plunged
+through it, and finally was successful in reaching the library.
+
+Then, with the swiftness of a flash of lightning, the husband was
+replaced by the father, and Monte-Cristo, for the first time since
+Haydée's shrieks had awakened him from his dream, thought of his
+children. Where were they and what had happened to them? The Count felt
+a cold perspiration break out upon his forehead, and a feeling of
+unspeakable dread took entire possession of him. Haydée demanded
+immediate attention, but Espérance and Zuleika must instantly be found
+and rescued. At the top of his voice Monte-Cristo shouted for Ali, but
+no reply was returned. Fearing to leave Haydée for even a moment, the
+Count strode about the library like a caged wild animal, still holding
+her in his arms. He shouted again and again until he was hoarse, calling
+distractedly upon Espérance, Zuleika and all the servants in turn.
+
+At last an answering shout came suddenly from the lawn, and old Alexis,
+followed by several fishermen, leaped into the library through an open
+window.
+
+Resigning Haydée to Alexis, the Count, accompanied by the fishermen,
+fairly flew to the apartment of his children, situated on a corridor in
+another portion of the palace. There Espérance and Zuleika were
+discovered gagged and bound; they lay upon the floor of their chamber,
+while Ali, who had been treated in like manner, was extended near them.
+To release the prisoners was but the work of a moment, and then it was
+learned that all the servants under Ali were confined in their
+dormitory. They, as well as Monte-Cristo's children and the Nubian, had
+been suddenly seized by a party of rough-looking Greeks, evidently a
+portion of Benedetto's band.
+
+Meanwhile the flames had spread from Haydée's chamber to the adjoining
+quarters of the edifice, and the entire palace seemed doomed, for to
+check the conflagration appeared impossible, but so happy had the Count
+been made by the recovery of his son and daughter, unharmed, that he
+gave himself no concern about the probable destruction of his
+magnificent property.
+
+Seizing his children, he directed Ali and the fishermen to release the
+captive servants, and hastily returned to the library. As he entered the
+room Haydée uttered a low groan and opened her eyes; she was lying on a
+divan, where old Alexis had placed her. Espérance and Zuleika sprang to
+her side; she took each by the hand, and as she did so they saw the
+wound in her breast. Zuleika burst into tears. Espérance compressed his
+lips and grew deadly pale.
+
+"My loved ones," said Haydée, faintly, "I feel that I am about to leave
+you forever, perhaps in a few moments. Be good children and obey your
+father in all things. Espérance, Zuleika, stoop and kiss me."
+
+They did as she desired; her lips were already purple and cold; the
+stamp of death was upon her features. Suddenly her frame was convulsed
+and her eyes assumed a glassy look.
+
+"Monte-Cristo, my husband, where are you?" she said, in a broken voice.
+
+"Here, Haydée," answered the Count, approaching.
+
+He strove to appear calm, but could not control his emotion.
+
+"Nearer, nearer, Edmond," said Haydée, growing weaker and weaker.
+
+The Count sank on his knees beside his dying wife and put his arms about
+her neck.
+
+"Oh! Haydée, Haydée," he sobbed; "thrice accursed be the infamous wretch
+who has done this!"
+
+"Edmond, my children, farewell," gasped Haydée; "I am going to a better
+land!"
+
+The death rattle was in her throat; she raised herself with a mighty
+effort, gazed lovingly at her husband and children, and strove to speak
+again, but could not; then a flickering shade of violet passed over her
+countenance, and she fell back dead.
+
+Espérance and Zuleika stood as if stunned; Monte-Cristo was overwhelmed
+with grief and despair.
+
+"The whole palace is in flames! Save yourselves, save yourselves!"
+cried a fisherman, rushing into the library, followed by his companions,
+Ali and the servants.
+
+Monte-Cristo leaped to his feet, seizing the corpse of Haydée and
+raising it in his arms. Ali grasped Espérance and Zuleika, and the
+entire party hastened from the burning edifice. They were not an instant
+too soon, for as they quitted the library the tempest of fire burst into
+it, accompanied by torrents of smoke. The fishermen and servants,
+commanded by the Nubian, had made every effort to save the doomed
+mansion, but in vain.
+
+Monte-Cristo and his children found refuge in the hut of Alexis, to
+which Haydée's body was reverently borne.
+
+The wife of Monte-Cristo was buried on the Island of Salmis, and over
+her remains her husband erected a massive monument.
+
+Shortly afterwards the Count, Espérance and Zuleika, attended by the
+faithful Ali, quitted the Island and took passage on a vessel bound for
+France.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE NEWS FROM ALGERIA.
+
+
+Beauchamp, the journalist, sat at his desk in his editorial sanctum
+early one bright morning in the autumn of 1841. He had gone to work long
+before his usual hour, for important movements were on foot, the
+political atmosphere was agitated and Paris was in a state of feverish
+excitement; besides, Beauchamp had that day printed in his journal a
+dispatch from Algeria that would be certain to cause a great sensation,
+and, with the proper spirit of pride, the journalist desired to be at
+his post that he might receive the numerous congratulations his friends
+could not fail to offer, as the dispatch had appeared in his paper
+alone.
+
+The sanctum had not an attractive look; in fact, it was rather
+dilapidated, while, in addition, the disorder occasioned by the previous
+night's work had not been repaired, and all was chaos and confusion.
+
+Beauchamp was busily engaged in glancing over the rival morning papers
+when Lucien Debray entered and seated himself at another desk. The
+Ministerial Secretary smiled upon the journalist in a knowing way, and
+the latter, nodding to him with an air of triumph, silently pointed to
+the pile of journals he had finished examining. Lucien took them up,
+and without a word began scanning their contents.
+
+"Glorious news that from the army in Algeria!" cried Château-Renaud,
+rushing into the sanctum.
+
+"Glorious, indeed!" replied the editor, looking up from the paper over
+which he was hurriedly skimming. On the huge table at his side, as well
+as beneath it, and under his feet and his capacious arm-chair, nothing
+was to be seen but newspapers.
+
+"Take a chair, Renaud, if you can find one, and help yourself to the
+news. You see I have Lucien similarly engaged yonder."
+
+The Ministerial Secretary glanced up from his papers, returned his
+friend's salutation and resumed his reading. He was dressed with his
+customary elegance and richness, but his form and face were fuller than
+when last before the reader, and his brown hair was besprinkled with
+gray.
+
+"I congratulate you, Beauchamp, on being the first to give the news,"
+continued Château-Renaud. "Not a paper in Paris but your own has a line
+from the army this morning."
+
+"Rather congratulate me and my paper on having a friend at court."
+
+"Ha! and that explains the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that an
+opposition journal has intelligence, which only the Bureau of War could
+have anticipated! Treason--treason!"
+
+The editor and the Secretary exchanged significant smiles.
+
+"Oh! I don't doubt that your favors are reciprocal," continued the
+young aristocrat, laughing. "I've half a mind to be something useful
+myself--Minister--editor--anything but an idler and a law-giver--just to
+experience the exquisite sensation of a new pleasure--the pleasure of
+revealing and publishing to the world something it knew not before. Why,
+you two fellows, in this dark and dirty little room, are the two
+greatest men in Paris this morning--or were, rather, before your paper,
+Beauchamp, laid before the world what only you and Lucien knew
+previously. Oh! the delight, the rapture of knowing something that
+nobody else knows, and then of making the revelation!"
+
+"And this news from Algeria is really important," remarked the editor.
+
+"Important! So important that it will be before the Chambers this
+morning," replied the Secretary.
+
+"So I supposed," said the Deputy, "and called to learn additional
+particulars, if you had any, on my way to the Chambers."
+
+"We gave all we had, my dear Lycurgus, and for that were indebted to an
+official dispatch, telegraphed to the War Office, and faithfully
+re-telegraphed to us by our well-beloved Lucien."
+
+"It's true, then, as I have sometimes suspected, that the wires radiate
+from the Minister's sanctum to the editor's?" was the laughing
+rejoinder.
+
+"It must be so, or there's witchcraft in it. There's witchcraft, at any
+rate, in this new invention. Speed, secrecy, security and surety--no
+eastern genius of Arabian fiction can be compared to the electric
+telegraph; and how Ministers or editors continued to keep the world in
+vassalage, as they always have done, without this ready slave, seems now
+scarce less wonderful than the invention itself. Instead of detracting
+from the power of the press, the telegraph renders it more powerful than
+ever."
+
+"But affairs in Algeria--is not the news splendid!" cried the editor.
+"Why did we not all become Spahis and win immortality, as some of our
+generals have?"
+
+"As to immortality," said the Secretary, "we should have been far more
+likely to win the phantom as dead men than as living heroes."
+
+"Debray was at the raising of the siege of Constantine," said Beauchamp
+laughing, "and knows all about the honors of war."
+
+"Yes, indeed, and all about the raptures of starvation, of cold and
+hunger, after victory, and the ecstatic felicity of being pursued by six
+Bedouins, and after having slain five having my own neck encircled by
+the yataghan of the sixth!"
+
+"And how chanced it that you saved your head, Lucien?" asked the Count.
+
+"Save it--I didn't save it; but a most excellent friend of mine--a
+friend in need--galloped up and saved it for me."
+
+"Yes," replied Beauchamp, "our gallant friend, Maximilian Morrel, the
+Captain of Spahis--now colonel of a regiment, and in the direct line of
+promotion to the first vacant bâton--eh, Lucien? A lucky thing to save
+the head of one of the War Office from a Bedouin's yataghan. Up--up--up,
+like a balloon, has this young Spahi risen ever since."
+
+"You are wrong, Beauchamp. Not like a balloon. Rather like a planet.
+Maximilian Morrel is one of the most gallant young men in the French
+army, and step by step, from rank to rank, has he hewn his own path with
+his good sabre, in a strong hand, nerved by a brave heart and proud
+ambition, to the position he now holds."
+
+"His name I see among the immortals in the dispatch of this morning.
+Well, well, Morrel is a splendid fellow, no doubt, but it's a splendid
+thing to have friends in the War Office, nevertheless, who will give
+that splendor a chance to shine--will plant the lighted candle in a
+candlestick, and not smother its beams under a bushel."
+
+"Morrel has now been in Africa five whole years," said the Secretary--"a
+few months only excepted after his marriage with Villefort's fair
+daughter, Valentine, (as was said) when he was indulged with a furlough
+for his honeymoon."
+
+"She is not in Paris?" asked Beauchamp.
+
+"No; she leads the life of a perfect recluse with her child, during her
+husband's absence, at his villa somewhere in the south--near Marseilles,
+where the department forwards her letters."
+
+"Yet she is said to be a magnificent woman," remarked the Count.
+
+"Wonderful!" cried Beauchamp. "A magnificent woman and a recluse!"
+
+"Oh! but it was a love-match of the most devoted species, you must
+remember."
+
+"True; she was to have married our friend, Franz d'Epinay."
+
+"And died to save herself from that fate, I suppose--and afterwards was
+resurrected and blessed Morrel with her hand and heart, and the most
+exquisite person that even a jaded voluptuary could covet.
+Happy--happy--happy man!"
+
+"Apropos of dying," said the Secretary, "do you remember how fast people
+died at M. de Villefort's house about that time?"
+
+"Horrible! A whole family of two or three generations, one after the
+other! First M. and Madame de Saint-Méran--then Barrois, the old servant
+of M. Noirtier--then Valentine, and, last of all, Madame de Villefort
+and Edward, her idol. No wonder that M. le Procureur du Roi himself went
+mad under such an accumulation of horrors! By the by, Debray, is M. de
+Villefort still an inmate of the Maison Royale de Charenton?"
+
+"I know nothing to the contrary," replied the Secretary, who had resumed
+his paper, and to whom the subject seemed not altogether agreeable. "He
+is an incurable." Then, as if to turn the subject, he continued:
+"Apropos of the immortals of Algeria, here is a name that seems destined
+even to a more rapid apotheosis than that of the favored Morrel."
+
+"You mean Joliette?" said the editor. "Who, in the name of all that is
+mysterious and heroic, is this same Joliette? I have found it impossible
+to discover, with all the means at the command of the press."
+
+"And I, with all the means at the command of the Government. All we can
+discover is this--that he is a man of about twenty-five; that he
+enlisted at Marseilles, and in less than three years has risen from the
+ranks to the command of a battalion. His career has been most
+brilliant."
+
+"And to whose favor does he owe his wonderful advancement, Beauchamp?"
+asked the Deputy, laughing.
+
+"To that of Marshal Bugeaud, Governor-General of Algeria."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Who has indulged him with an appointment in every forlorn hope!"
+
+"Excellent!" cried the Count. "What more could a man resolved to be a
+military immortal desire? Immortality the goal--two paths conduct to
+it--each sure--death--life!--the former the shorter, and, perhaps, the
+surer! But there is one name I never see in the war dispatches. Do you
+ever meet with it, Messrs. editor and Secretary--I mean the name of our
+brilliant friend, Albert de Morcerf? The rumor ran that, after the
+disgrace and suicide of the Count, his father, he and his mother went
+south, and he later to Africa."
+
+"I have hardly seen the name of Morcerf in print since the paragraph
+headed 'Yanina' in my paper, about which poor Albert was so anxious to
+fight me."
+
+"Nor I," said Debray. "But where now is Madame de Morcerf? Without
+exception, she was the most splendid specimen of a woman I ever saw!"
+
+"High praise, that!" cried the Count, laughing. "Who would suppose our
+cold, calculating, ambitious, haughty, talented and opulent diplomat and
+aristocrat had so much blood in his veins? When before was he known to
+admire anything, male or female--but himself--or, at all events, to be
+guilty of the bad taste of expressing that admiration?"
+
+"Debray is right," replied the journalist, somewhat gravely. "Madame de
+Morcerf was, indeed, a noble and dignified woman--accomplished, lovely,
+dignified, amiable--"
+
+"Stop!--stop!--in the name of all that's forbearing, be considerate of
+my weak nerves! You, too, Beauchamp. Well, she must have been a paragon
+to make the conquest of two of the most inveterate bachelors in all
+Paris! But where is this marvel of excellence--pardon me, Beauchamp,"
+perceiving that the journalist looked yet more grave, and seemed in no
+mood for bantering or being bantered--"where is Madame de Morcerf at the
+present time?"
+
+"At Marseilles, I have heard."
+
+"And is married again?"
+
+"No. She is yet a widow."
+
+"And is a recluse, like Morrel's beautiful wife?"
+
+"So says report. They dwell together."
+
+"How romantic! The young wife, whose hero-husband is winning glory amid
+the perils of war and pestilence, pours her griefs, joys and
+anticipations into the bosom of the young mother, who appreciates and
+reciprocates all, because she has a son exposed to the same perils--and
+both beautiful as the morning! A charming picture! Two immortals in
+epaulets and sashes in the background are only wanted instead of one.
+But I must to the Chambers. M. Dantès is expected to speak in the
+tribune this morning upon his measure for the workmen."
+
+"Do you know, Count, who this M. Dantès really is?" asked Debray.
+
+"There's a question for a Ministerial Secretary to ask a member while a
+journalist sits by! I only know of M. Dantès that he is the most
+eloquent man I ever listened to. I don't mean that he's the greatest
+man, or the profoundest statesman, or the wisest politician, or the
+sagest political economist; but I do mean that, for natural powers of
+persuasion and denunciation--for natural oratory--I have never known his
+rival. If Plato's maxim, 'that oratory must be estimated by its
+effects,' is at all correct, then is M. Dantès the greatest orator in
+France, for the effect of his oratory is miraculous. There is a sort of
+magic in his clear, sonorous, powerful, yet most exquisitely modulated
+voice, and the wave of his arm is like that of a necromancer's wand."
+
+"You are enthusiastic, Count," observed Beauchamp, "but very just. M.
+Dantès is, indeed, a remarkable man, and possessed of remarkable
+endowments, both of mind and body. His personal advantages are
+wonderful. Such a figure and grace as his are alone worth more than all
+the powers of other distinguished speakers for popular effect. 'The eyes
+of the multitude are more eloquent than their ears,' as the English
+Shakespeare says."
+
+"I never saw such eyes and such a face," remarked Debray, "but once in
+my life. Do you remember the Count of Monte-Cristo, Messieurs?"
+
+"We shall not soon forget him," was the reply. "But this man differs
+greatly from the Count in most respects, though certainly not unlike him
+in others."
+
+"True," replied the Secretary; "in manners, habits, costume and a
+thousand other things there is a marked difference. Besides, the Count
+was said to be incalculably rich, while the Deputy has every appearance
+of being in very moderate circumstances. But he leads a life so retired
+that he is known only in the Chambers and in his public character. I
+allude to the Deputy's person, when I speak of resemblance to that
+wonderful Count, who set all Paris in a fever, and, more wonderful
+still, kept it so for a whole season. There is I know not what in his
+air and manners that often recalls to me that extraordinary man. There
+are the same large and powerful eyes, the same brilliant teeth for which
+the women envied the Count so much, the same graceful and dignified
+figure, the same peculiar voice, the same good taste in dress, and,
+above all, the same colorless, pallid face, as if, to borrow the idea of
+the Countess of G----, he had risen from the dead, or was a visitant
+from another world, or a vampire of this. Her celebrated friend, Lord
+B----, she used to say, was the only man she ever knew with such a
+complexion."
+
+"But, if I recollect rightly," said Beauchamp, "the Count of
+Monte-Cristo was somewhat noted for his profusion of black hair and
+beard. The Deputy Dantès is so utterly out of the mode, and out of good
+taste, too, as to wear no beard, and his hair is short. His face is as
+smooth as a woman's, and he always wears a white cravat like a curé."
+
+"But he is, nevertheless, one of the handsomest men in Paris," added the
+Count--"at least the women say so. You might add, the Deputy has many
+gray hairs among his black ones, and many furrows on his white brow,
+while Monte-Cristo had neither. Besides, M. Dantès has a handsome
+daughter and a son who resembles him greatly, both well grown, while the
+Count was childless."
+
+"Well, well, be his person and family what they may," said the
+Secretary, rising, "I wish to God the Ministry could secure his talents.
+I tell you, Messieurs, that man's influence over the destinies of France
+is to be almost omnipotent. His powerful mind has grasped the great
+problem of the age--remuneration for labor. The next revolution in
+France will hinge upon that--mark the prediction--and this man and his
+coadjutors, among whom Beauchamp here is one, are doing all they can to
+hasten the crisis. The whole soul of this remarkable man seems devoted
+to the elevation of the masses--the laboring classes--the people--and to
+the amelioration of their condition. His efforts and those of all like
+him cannot ultimately succeed. But they will have a temporary triumph,
+and the streets of Paris will run with blood! These men are rousing
+terrible agencies. They are evoking the fiends of hunger and misery,
+which will neither obey them nor lie down at their bidding."
+
+"And the magicians who have summoned these foul fiends will prove their
+earliest victims!" said Château-Renaud, in some excitement.
+
+"Messieurs, listen a moment!" cried Beauchamp, rising. "Pardon me, but
+this discussion must cease, at least here. It can lead to no good
+result. As the conductor of a reform journal, I entirely differ with you
+both. But let not political differences interfere with our personal
+friendship. Come, come, old friends, let us forsake this place, redolent
+with politics, having a very atmosphere of discussion, and repair to the
+Chambers, taking Véry's on our way."
+
+"Agreed!" cried the Deputy and the Secretary, and the three left the
+journalist's sanctum arm in arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+EDMOND DANTÈS, DEPUTY FROM MARSEILLES.
+
+
+Beauchamp, Lucien Debray and Château-Renaud were not the only persons
+puzzled with regard to the enigmatical M. Dantès; all Paris was more or
+less bothered about him; his entire career prior to his appearance at
+the capital as the Deputy from Marseilles seemed shrouded in
+impenetrable mystery, and this was the more galling to the curious
+Parisians as his wonderful oratorical powers and his intense
+republicanism rendered him the cynosure of all eyes and made him the
+sensation of the hour. The Government had instituted investigations
+concerning him, but without result; even in Marseilles his antecedents
+were unknown; he had come there from the east utterly unheralded,
+attended only by a black servant, and bringing with him his son and
+daughter, but almost immediately he had plunged into politics, winning
+his way to the front with startling rapidity. From the first he had
+ardently espoused the cause of the working people, and such was his
+personal magnetism that he had made hosts of admirers, and had been
+chosen Deputy with hardly a dissenting voice. Some of the inhabitants of
+Marseilles, indeed, remembered a youthful sailor named Edmond Dantès,
+but they asserted that he had been dead many years, and that the Deputy
+was unlike him in every particular.
+
+As the young men passed the Théâtre Français, on their way to the
+Chamber of Deputies, after a glass of sherry and a biscuit at Véry's,
+their attention was attracted by a crowd gathered around an immense
+poster spread upon the bill-board. There seemed no little excitement
+among the throng, a large proportion of whom appeared to be artisans and
+laborers, and loud expressions of admiration, accompanied by animated
+gestures, were heard. Nor were there wanting also words of deep
+denunciation and of significant threatening.
+
+"Down! down with the tyrants! Bread or blood! Wages for work! Food for
+the laborer!" and other cries of equally fearful significance were
+audible.
+
+"Do you hear that, Beauchamp?" said Debray, quietly.
+
+"Undoubtedly," was the equally quiet reply.
+
+"Those laborers have deserted the daily toil which would give them the
+bread they so fiercely demand, in order to discuss their imaginary
+misery, and denounce those who are richer than themselves."
+
+"But what brings them to the theatre at this hour?" asked
+Château-Renaud.
+
+"The new play," suggested Beauchamp.
+
+"Ah! the new play. 'The Laborer of Lyons,' is it not?"
+
+"Yes," said Debray, "and one of the most dangerous productions of the
+hour."
+
+"It is evidently from the pen of one unaccustomed to dramatic
+composition, yet familiar with stage effect," added the journalist. "And
+yet, without the least claptrap, with but little melodramatic power,
+against strong opposition and bitter prejudices, and without claqueurs,
+its own native force and the popularity of the principles it supports
+have carried it triumphantly through the ordeal of two representations.
+It will, doubtless, have a long run, and its influence will be
+incalculable in the cause it advocates--the cause of human liberty and
+human right."
+
+"No doubt it will exert a most baneful influence," bitterly rejoined
+Debray. "Without containing a syllable to which the Ministry can object,
+at least sufficiently to warrant its suppression, it yet abounds with
+principles, sentiments and theories of the most incendiary description,
+well calculated to rouse the disaffection of the laboring classes to
+frenzy. Its inevitable effect will be to give them a false and
+exaggerated idea of their wrongs and their rights, and to stimulate them
+to revolution. Oh! these men have much to answer for. They are drawing
+down an avalanche."
+
+"They are the champions of human liberty," said Beauchamp, warmly, "and
+will be blessed by posterity, if not by the men of the present
+generation."
+
+"Truce to politics, Messieurs!" cried the Deputy, observing that his
+friends were becoming excited. "I had heard of this play and its
+powerful character. Who's the author, Beauchamp?"
+
+"The production is attributed to M. Dantès, the Deputy from Marseilles,
+with what truth I know not; but he is fully capable of composing such a
+drama. To-morrow night, it is supposed, the author, whoever he may be,
+will be compelled by the people to appear and claim the laurels ready to
+be showered on him in such profusion. But it is nearly three o'clock,"
+continued Beauchamp, "and M. Dantès is expected to speak in the early
+part of the sitting."
+
+"To the Chamber, then," said the others, and the trio mingled with the
+crowd hurrying in the same direction.
+
+"What a glorious thing is popularity!" exclaimed the Count.
+
+"What a glorious thing to be the champion of the people!" rejoined
+Beauchamp.
+
+"And how glorious is that champion's glorious career!" cried the
+Secretary. "Let the hydra alone. Like the antique god of mythology, it
+eats up its own children as soon as they get large enough to be eaten.
+It is a fickle beast, and the idol of to-day it crushes to-morrow."
+
+The hall of the Chamber of Deputies was crowded when the three friends
+entered. Although the hour for the President to take the chair had not
+yet arrived, the benches were full, and the galleries, public and
+private, were overflowing. Strong agitation was visible among the
+Ministerial benches of the extreme left. The Premier himself was
+present, although his cold countenance, like the surface of a frozen
+lake, betrayed neither apprehension nor the reverse. Self-reliant,
+self-poised, calm, seemingly insensible to surrounding objects and
+events, this man of iron, with a heart of ice and a brain of fire,
+glanced quietly and fixedly around him, with his cold, dark eye, which,
+from time to time, rested on the Communist benches of the extreme right,
+unmoved by the stern glances hurled at him by his many fierce opponents
+and the almost tumultuous excitement by which they were agitated.
+
+At length President Sauzet took the chair. The house came to order, and
+the sitting opened with the usual preliminary business. A large number
+of petitions from the workmen of Paris for employment by the Government
+were presented and referred, and one immense roll containing a hundred
+thousand names, which came from the manufacturing districts, was brought
+in on the shoulders of two men and placed in the area before the
+President's chair, escorted by a deputation from the artisans; it was
+received with an uproar of applause from the centre of the extreme right
+of the benches, and from the throngs of blouses in the galleries. The
+tumult having, at length, subsided, the order of the day was announced
+to be the discussion of the bill introduced by M. Dantès, having for its
+purpose the general amelioration of the condition of the industrial
+classes in the Kingdom; and M. Dantès was himself announced to be the
+first on the list to occupy the tribune. A deep murmur of anticipation
+ran around the vast hall at this announcement. The multitudes in the
+galleries leaned forward to gain a better view of this idol, and to
+catch every syllable that might fall from his lips; and every eye among
+the members was turned to the seat of M. Dantès, on the centre right of
+the benches.
+
+A tall figure in black, with a white cravat, rose and advanced to the
+tribune slowly, amid a stillness as hushed and breathless as the prior
+excitement had been noisy. In age, M. Dantès seemed about fifty or
+fifty-five. His form was slight and his movements were graceful and
+dignified. His face was livid and as calm as marble; but for the large
+and eloquent eye, dark as night, one might have thought that broad white
+brow, that massive chin, those firmly compressed lips and that colorless
+mouth were those of a statue. Yet in the furrows of that forehead and
+the deep lines of that face could be read the record of thought and
+suffering. The busy plowshare had turned up the deep graves of departed
+passions. No one could gaze or even glance at that face and not perceive
+at once that it was the visage of a man of many sorrows--yet of a man
+proud, calm, self-possessed, self-poised and indomitable. His hair,
+which had been raven black, now rested in thin waves around his
+expansive forehead and was sprinkled with gray, while his intellectual
+countenance wore that expression of weariness and melancholy which
+illness, deep study and grief invariably trace.
+
+Mounting the steps of the tribune with slow and deliberate tread, he
+drew up his tall figure, and resting his left hand, which grasped a roll
+of papers, upon the marble slab, glanced around on the turbulent billows
+of upturned and excited faces, as if at a loss how to address them.
+Having read the bill, after the usual prefatory remarks, he began by
+laying down the platform which he proposed occupying in its advocacy and
+support, consisting, of course, of abstract, self-evident propositions,
+which none could have the hardihood to gainsay, yet, when once admitted,
+the deductions inevitably flowing therefrom none could resist. The
+propositions seemed safe and indisputable, but the deductions evolved
+from those propositions were as frightful to the legitimist as they were
+delightful to the liberal. That each man is born the heir to the same
+natural rights--that each man, alike and equally with all others, has a
+birthright of which he cannot be divested and of which he cannot divest
+himself, to act, to think and to pursue happiness wherever he can find
+it without infringement on the rights of his fellow beings--none were
+disposed to deny. That each human animal, as each animal of inferior
+grade, has, also, the right of subsistence, drained from the bosom of
+the earth, the great mother of us all, which without his foreknowledge
+or wish gave him being, seemed, also, indisputable. But when from these
+propositions were deduced that crime is rather the result of misery
+than depravity, and that the office of government is more to prevent
+crime by creating happiness than to punish it by creating misery, and
+that for the natural rights resigned by the individual in entering into
+and upholding the social system human government is bound to afford
+employment and subsistence to each of its members, that labor and its
+produce should be in partnership, that competition should be abolished,
+and work and wages so distributed by the State as to equalize the
+condition of each individual in the community, and, finally, that the
+claims of labor are not satisfied by wages, but the workman is entitled
+to a proprietary share in the capital which employs him, inasmuch as all
+the woes and miseries of the laborer arise exclusively from the
+competition for work--when these deductions were advanced the opulent
+and the conservative started back in terror and dismay. Distribution of
+property, universal plunder, havoc, bloodshed, sans culottism, a red
+republic and the ghastly shapes of another Reign of Terror rose in
+frightful vividness before the fancy. As the speaker proceeded to
+illustrate and sustain his positions, which were those of the Communist,
+Socialist, Fourierist, call them which we may, and poured forth a fiery
+flood of persuasion, invective, denunciation and shouts of applause,
+mingled with cries of rage and dismay, rose from all quarters of the
+hall. Unmoved and undaunted, that marble man, livid as a spectre, his
+dark eyes blazing, his thin and writhing lip flecked with foam, his
+tall form swaying to and fro, rising, bending--now thrown back, then
+leaning over the marble bar of the tribune--continued to pour forth his
+scathing sarcasm, his crushing invective, his eloquent persuasion and
+his unanswerable argument in tones, now soft and tuneful as a silvery
+bell, then sad and pitiful as an evening zephyr, then clear, high and
+sonorous as a clarion, then hoarse and deep as the thunder, for a period
+of four hours, unbroken and continuous, without stop or stay.
+
+The effect of this speech, as the orator, pale, exhausted, shattered,
+unstrung, with nerves like the torn cordage of a ship that has outridden
+the tempest, descended from the tribune, baffles all description.
+Fearful of its influence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at once arose,
+and in order to divert the attention of the Chamber asked leave to lay
+before it the late dispatches from the seat of war, setting forth the
+glorious triumphs of the French arms in Algeria. This intelligence,
+which, at any other time, would have been received with rapturous
+enthusiasm, was listened to under the influence of a counterirritant
+already at work, with comparative calmness, and its only effect was to
+cause a postponement of the vote on the laborers' bill upon the plea of
+the lateness of the hour, although not without strenuous opposition from
+the extreme right. The rejoicing of the galleries at the triumph of
+their champion and their fierce applause knew no bounds at the close of
+the sitting, and their idol escaped being borne in his chair to his
+lodgings only by gliding through a private exit from the hall to the
+first carriage he could find.
+
+"What think you?" cried Beauchamp, triumphantly, to the Ministerial
+Secretary, as they were pressed together for an instant by the excited
+throng on the steps as they left the hall.
+
+"Think, Monsieur!" was the bitter rejoinder of the Secretary, whose
+agitation completely overcame his habitual and constitutional
+self-possession, "I think Paris is on the eve of another Reign of
+Terror!"
+
+Beauchamp laughed, and the friends were drawn apart by the conflicting
+billows of the crowd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE MYSTERY THICKENS.
+
+
+M. Dantès' wonderful speech was the principal topic of conversation in
+every quarter of Paris, exciting comment of the most animated
+description. Of course, the workmen and their friends were delighted
+with it, and could not find words strong enough to adequately express
+their enthusiastic admiration for the gifted orator. Those belonging to
+the Government party, on the other hand, denounced the speaker as a
+demagogue and the speech as in the highest degree incendiary and
+dangerous. Strange to relate, whoever spoke of the oration always
+mentioned the new play, "The Laborer of Lyons," attributing its
+authorship to the mysterious Deputy from Marseilles, and the drama
+received cordial endorsement or scathing censure, according to the
+political opinions of those who alluded to it.
+
+For these reasons curiosity in regard to M. Dantès ran higher than ever,
+but instead of decreasing as he became more prominent, the mystery
+surrounding him seemed only to thicken. Nevertheless, the Deputy was the
+lion of the hour, or rather would have been, had he permitted himself to
+be lionized, but this he persistently declined to do, holding aloof from
+society and mingling with none save his political associates, though
+even to them he was a problem they could not solve; they, however,
+recognized in him a powerful coadjutor, and with that were forced to be
+content.
+
+
+     "THE HALL OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES was last evening thronged to
+     overflowing. It had been understood that M. Dantès was to advocate
+     the People's Bill, and, as usual, it had but to be known that this
+     distinguished orator was to occupy the tribune to draw out all
+     classes of citizens. Nor was the vast multitude disappointed. A
+     more powerful speech has never been heard within those walls. More
+     than four hours was the audience enchained by the matchless
+     eloquence of this remarkable man, which was received with thunders
+     of applause. A report of this speech will be found under the
+     appropriate head."
+
+     "THE NEW PLAY entitled, 'The Laborer of Lyons,' recently produced
+     at the Théâtre Français with triumphant success, and which has
+     caused such a deep and universal sensation, is repeated to-night.
+     There is reason to anticipate that the author, who is supposed to
+     be a celebrated orator of the opposition, may be induced to comply
+     with the call, which will be again renewed, to avow himself."
+
+
+Such were two paragraphs which the following morning appeared in
+Beauchamp's journal, and similar notices of both speech and drama were
+published in every other opposition sheet in Paris. In the Ministerial
+organ, on the contrary, and in all the papers of like political bias,
+appeared the following and similar paragraphs:
+
+
+     "THE SPEECH OF M. DANTÈS, last evening, in the Chamber of Deputies,
+     was one of the most dangerous diatribes to which we ever
+     listened--dangerous for the insidious and sophistical principles it
+     advanced, and the almost fiend-like eloquence with which they were
+     urged. Where are these things to stop? At what terrible catastrophe
+     do these men aim? What crisis do they contemplate?"
+
+
+     "THE NEW DRAMA at the Théâtre Français, called 'The Laborer of
+     Lyons,' which is to-night to be repeated, is calculated and seems
+     to have been designed by its reckless author to produce the very
+     worst effects among the laboring classes. We deeply regret that it
+     has been suffered by the censors to be brought out."
+
+
+The multitude called forth by paragraphs like these to witness the new
+play was, of course, immense. Long before the time for the curtain to
+rise, the vast edifice was crowded to its utmost capacity with an eager
+and enthusiastic assemblage. Not only were the galleries, parquette and
+lobbies filled with blouses, but the boxes were glittering with a
+perfect galaxy of fashion, loveliness and rank. Conspicuous in the
+orchestra stalls were the three friends--the Secretary, the journalist
+and the Deputy. In a small and private loge in the second tier,
+concealed from all eyes by its light curtain of green silk, and its
+position, but himself viewing everything upon the stage or in the house,
+sat the author of the play, calmly awaiting the rising of the curtain.
+
+The performance at length began, and the piece proceeded to its
+termination amid thunders of applause, which, as the curtain finally
+descended on the last scene of the last act, became perfectly deafening,
+accompanied by cries for the author. But no author appeared behind the
+footlights or in the proscenium box; and, at last, the uproar becoming
+redoubled, the manager came forward, and, in the author's behalf,
+tendered grateful acknowledgments for the unprecedented favor, even by a
+Parisian audience, with which the production had been received, but, at
+the same time, entreated the additional favor that they would grant the
+author's request, and permit his name, for the present, to remain
+unknown. He would, however, venture to reveal this much, that the author
+was a distinguished friend of the people. The earthquake of applause
+which succeeded this announcement was almost frightful, and while the
+scene was at its height, the three friends with great difficulty managed
+to extricate themselves from the multitude which wedged up the lobbies,
+and to make their escape.
+
+"A friend of the people!" cried Debray, bitterly, as his coupé,
+containing himself and companions, drove off to Véry's. "From such
+friends let the people be saved, and they may save themselves from their
+foes."
+
+"And the play, what think you of that?" cried Beauchamp.
+
+"That it is a most able and abominable production, eminently calculated
+to cause exactly the evils which we have this night perceived--to excite
+and rouse the worst passions of the mob, and render the masses
+dissatisfied with their inevitable and irredeemable lot, and as
+dangerous as wild beasts to all whose lot is more favored."
+
+"Man has rights as man, and men in masses have rights, and one of those
+rights is to know actually what those rights are," said Beauchamp. "The
+most melancholy feature in the oppression of man is his ignorance that
+he is oppressed. Enlighten him as to those rights, elevate his mind to
+appreciate and value them, and then counsel him firmly and resolutely to
+demand those rights, and quietly and wisely to obtain them."
+
+"Aye! but will he obey such counsel?" exclaimed Château-Renaud. "Will
+not the result of such enlightenment and excitement prove, as it ever
+has proved, anarchy, revolution, guilt, blood? Who shall restrain the
+monster once lashed into madness?"
+
+"But you can surely perceive no such design in this play, and no such
+effect," rejoined Beauchamp.
+
+"In the abstract," replied the Count, "this production is
+unexceptionable--most beautiful, yet most powerful. How it could have
+been the work of an unpracticed pen, embodying as it does passages of
+which the first dramatists of the romantic school might be proud, I
+cannot imagine. Besides, there seems familiar acquaintance with stage
+effect and the way in which it is produced. But that might have been,
+and probably was, the result of some professional player's suggestions."
+
+"And, then, the profound knowledge of the human heart evinced--its
+passions, motives and principles of action," added the journalist.
+"There seems an individuality, a personality in the production, which
+compels the idea that the author is himself the hero, that he has
+himself experienced the evils he so vividly portrays, that the drama is
+at once the effusion of his own heart and the embodiment of his own
+history. Can that man be M. Dantès?"
+
+"If it be he," cried the Secretary, "there is more reason than ever to
+call him the most dangerous man in Paris. What with his speeches in the
+Chamber and his plays at the theatre, all tending to one most
+unrighteous end, and all aiming to inflame such an explosive mass as the
+workmen of Paris, he may be regarded as little less than the very agent
+of the fiend to accomplish havoc on earth!"
+
+"Yet, strange to say, my dear Secretary," said the journalist,
+laughing, "you have not yet estimated the tithe of this man's influence
+for good, or, as you think, for evil. Rumor proclaims him to be as
+immensely opulent as appearances would indicate him to be impoverished.
+That his whole soul, as you say, is devoted to the people, with all his
+wonderful powers of mind and person, is undoubted. That he has availed
+himself of that grand lever, the press, to accomplish his purposes, be
+they good or bad, seems equally certain. 'La Réforme,' the new daily, is
+undoubtedly under his control, if not sustained by his pen and his
+purse, for it has a wider circulation than all the other Parisian papers
+put together. It goes everywhere--it seeks the alleys, not the
+boulevards, finds its way to the threshold of all, whether paid for or
+not."
+
+"Ah!" cried Debray, in great agitation. "Is it so?"
+
+"And, then, not only is the public press subsidized by this man, if
+report is not even falser than usual, but a whole army of pamphleteers,
+journalists, littérateurs and students await his bidding, as well as
+some of the most distinguished novelists and dramatists of the nation
+and age!"
+
+"My God!" exclaimed the Count. "Can this be so?"
+
+"Nay--nay," replied Beauchamp, "I make no assertions, I merely retail
+rumors. But what cannot uncounted wealth achieve, directed by genius and
+intelligence?"
+
+"But is this man actually so wealthy?" asked Debray, pale with
+agitation. "His manners, dress, equipage, residence and mode of life
+would indicate just the reverse."
+
+"I know not--no one knows," said Beauchamp. "It is only known to myself
+and to a few others that he dwells in the mansion No. 27 Rue du Helder,
+formerly the residence of the Count de Morcerf, and that his private
+apartment is that pavilion at the corner of the court, where at
+half-past ten, on the morning of the 21st of May, 1838, we breakfasted
+with our amiable friend Albert, and were met by that remarkable man, the
+Count of Monte-Cristo."
+
+"I remember that morning well," said Château-Renaud.
+
+"Everything, it is said, remains in that once splendid mansion precisely
+as when it was deserted by the Countess and her son, at the time of the
+suicide of the Count--everything except that glorious picture of the
+Catalan fisherman by Leopold Robert, in Albert's exquisite chamber,
+which alone he took with him."
+
+"It is strange that a man so opulent as you represent M. Dantès to be,
+should adopt his magnificence at second hand," observed Debray, coolly.
+
+"But I do not represent him as opulent, my dear Lucien; and he certainly
+is the last man either to invent magnificence or to adopt it. Why, he is
+as plain in manners and mode as St. Simon himself. His dress you have
+seen; as to equipage his only conveyance is a public fiacre; as to
+diet, household arrangements and everything else of a personal nature,
+nothing can be more republican and less epicurean than is witnessed at
+his house. His study, Albert de Morcerf's pavilion, is said to be the
+only sumptuous apartment in the whole establishment; and that
+sumptuousness is of a character entirely literary and practical. His
+retinue consists of three servants, called Baptistin, Bertuccio and Ali,
+the latter being a Nubian, although fame gives him a perfect army of
+servitors prompt to execute his bidding. But I will not indulge your
+skeptical and sarcastic nature, Lucien, with a detail of all that rumor
+says of this wonderful man. I will only say that all he is, and has or
+hopes for seems devoted to one single object--the welfare of his race."
+
+"Has he a wife?" asked Debray.
+
+"He is a widower, with two children, a young girl, called Zuleika, and a
+youthful son, called Espérance. But my acquaintance with him is wholly
+of a public character. I have never been in his house, and very few
+there are who have been. But here we are."
+
+And the coupé stopped at Véry's.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+DANTÈS AND HIS DAUGHTER.
+
+
+Even in the immediate vicinity of the Morcerf mansion, No. 27 Rue du
+Helder, no one was aware that its new tenant was M. Dantès, the famous
+Deputy from Marseilles. All the neighbors knew was that the palatial
+edifice had been purchased by a stranger, who said he was acting for his
+master, a man of great wealth lately arrived from the east. No repairs
+or alterations had been made, while the Morcerf furniture was bought
+with the house, the only new articles making their appearance being
+several huge bookcases and a number of large boxes evidently containing
+books, together with a host of traveling trunks filled, as was to be
+presumed, with the wardrobe of the family. The servants took possession
+during the day and were duly noted, but how or when the proprietor came
+could not be ascertained, while after his installation glimpses of him
+were exceedingly rare.
+
+Occasionally, however, a beautiful girl, with an oriental look
+notwithstanding her tasteful and elegant Parisian attire, would be seen
+for a moment at the windows, but she invariably vanished on realizing
+that she was observed. Sometimes, a handsome young man stood at her
+side, but he also seemed anxious to avoid the scrutiny of the curious,
+although he evinced less timidity than his companion, always withdrawing
+slowly and with great deliberation.
+
+It was after midnight. On the second floor of the pavilion once
+inhabited by the Viscount Albert de Morcerf was now a spacious library.
+The walls were lined with tall book-shelves, mounting to the lofty
+ceiling, and groaning under ponderous piles of volumes, from the huge
+black letter folio of the Middle Ages to the lightest duodecimo of the
+day; while in all parts of the chamber, on the floor, tables and chairs,
+and in the deep embrasures of the windows, were scattered huge masses of
+papers, pamphlets, manuscripts and charts. Over the bookcases stood
+marble busts of Danton, Mirabeau, Napoleon, Armand Carrel, the Duc de
+St. Simon and other great men whose names are identified with France;
+between the windows looking out on the garden, shrouded in shrubs and
+creeping plants, hung a full-length and magnificent picture of Fourier.
+Near the centre of the apartment stood a vast table covered with books,
+papers, manuscripts and writing materials, beside which stood one of
+those sombre and massive arm-chairs, on the possession of which the
+former proprietor had so felicitated himself, bearing on a carved shield
+the fleur-de-lis of the Louvre, and in whose sumptuous and antique
+embrace had, perhaps, reposed a Richelieu, a Mazarin or a Sully. The
+windows were hung with heavy tapestry of ancient pattern and rich dye,
+and also the walls, save where covered with books. A soft and summery
+atmosphere, the warmth of which emanated from concealed furnaces,
+neutralized the chill of an autumnal night, and the mellow chiaro-oscuro
+of a vast astral diffused its lunar effulgence on all around.
+
+Within this chamber was a man, who, with arms crossed upon his bosom and
+eyes fastened in profound and seemingly mournful contemplation upon the
+floor, slowly paced from one extremity of the spacious apartment to the
+other.
+
+This man was M. Dantès, representative of Marseilles in the French
+Chamber of Deputies.
+
+"At last, at last," he murmured, "the avenging Nemesis ceases to gnaw!
+At length the angel Peace begins to smile! The tempest, which, for
+nearly thirty years, has raved and swelled in my heart, begins to lull!
+At length I commence to live--at length I realize and pursue life's true
+end. Let me reflect," he continued, after a pause, "let me review the
+past. The past! alas! my past is a painful blank! At twenty, from the
+very marriage-feast, from the side of her whom more than life I loved, I
+was torn by the envy of one man and the jealousy of another, and then,
+by the ambition of a third, to whom nothing was crime if it but
+ministered to that unhallowed impulse, I was plunged into a dungeon,
+whose counterpart only the vaults of hell can furnish. For fourteen long
+years I was the tenant of a sombre tomb. The agony, the despair of
+those awful years--oh! God! oh! God!" and he shuddered and clasped his
+hands over his head as if to crush the recollection.
+
+After a pause he resumed: "And then those daily vows of vengeance! oh!
+vain and impotent vows as then they seemed! vows of awful agony, of
+fiendish retribution, though at that time I knew not all! I knew not
+that a venerable father had pined and died of starvation through the
+wrong done to me! I knew not that the woman I loved had become the bride
+of my destroyer! Yet those vows, awful and blasphemous as they were,
+those vows of vengeance have been terribly, dreadfully fulfilled! As the
+destroying angel of God's retributive providence, I was endowed with
+superhuman powers to walk the earth, to administer His justice and to
+execute His decrees. For fourteen years was that vengeance prepared, yet
+delayed. At last, it fell--it fell. All who had wronged me met their
+dreadful doom. Ambition was changed to madness. Avarice was tortured
+with bankruptcy. Falsehood sought refuge in self destruction; and
+all--all--all--even the meanest of those who had contributed to blight
+my life--perished miserably at my will! And did the guilty suffer alone?
+Alas! impious, remorseless, horrible revenge! The innocent and the
+criminal suffered alike. A might approaching omnipotence was vouchsafed
+me, but no power of omniscience to direct my hand or stay its effects.
+Blind and mad I knew not what I did. Those I most loved fell beneath the
+blow which crushed those I most abhorred, and shared the same fate. The
+terrible agencies I had summoned as my slaves became my masters. The
+fiends which, as ministers of God's justice, garbed in the guise of
+angels of light, I had, by hideous necromancy, evoked to aid me in
+righteous retribution, proved the dark demons of hell and derided all
+orders to accomplish my bidding. The awful engines I had set in motion I
+found myself powerless to arrest or control. Effects ceased not with the
+causes in which they had their origin. The stroke of vengeance, aimed at
+foes, recoiled on friends--recoiled on myself. And when I fain would
+stop, when I would arrest the awful havoc which my will had commenced,
+the dark ministers I had called up howled in my ears, 'On! on! on!
+vengeance is thine! vengeance is thine!' They mocked my terror and
+laughed at my apprehensions.
+
+"At last there seemed a pause. Fate appeared to have done her worst, to
+have executed her decrees. The blind agencies of vengeance blasted no
+more, because there seemed no more to blast. The misery I had caused I
+strove to alleviate, the innocent hearts I had crushed I endeavored to
+heal; rejoicing in the joy I had created and the affection I gratified,
+once more I loved--loved, but, oh! not as I first had loved--not with
+that deep, adoring, delirious passion of my youth, and yet with a
+subdued, fraternal feeling I loved; in the calm and sweet seclusion of a
+favored clime, parted from the world with all its miseries and its
+crimes, environed by all that man or nature could contribute to human
+bliss, I began to dream of happiness, in the happiness I had created.
+But, alas! I forgot that man's happiness lies not in his own hand, but
+in the hand of his Maker. I forgot that an omniscient eye pursued me,
+that a blasphemed and omnipotent Power was over me. The blow
+paused--hovered--fell, not upon me, not on the guilty, but again it fell
+on the innocent; and she, who was my only hope, my beloved Haydée, my
+wife, was snatched from my heart, ruthlessly murdered by that fiend,
+Benedetto!"
+
+The unhappy man pressed his hand to his forehead, and for some time
+paced the chamber in silence; then, approaching a small alcove at one
+extremity of the apartment, he raised the heavy and sumptuous hangings
+and revealed a small silver casket of exquisite workmanship and
+appointments, that sparkled as the mellow light poured in upon it. M.
+Dantès knelt beside the ebony table on which this casket rested, and for
+some moments seemed absorbed in prayer; then, rising and taking the
+casket in his hands, he touched a spring, when the lid flew open,
+disclosing a miniature portrait of Haydée, set in a frame of gold,
+ornamented with flashing diamonds and emeralds; he gazed long and
+lovingly at this portrait, that seemed designed to show how exquisitely
+fair God's creatures may be, after which he kissed it reverently, closed
+the casket, restored it to the table, and slowly dropped the hangings to
+their place. Resuming his walk, he said, mournfully: "But the deepest
+wound will close; the heaviest grief, the bitterest woe, becomes
+assuaged. Time, the comforter, soothes and consoles. From this stroke of
+bereavement I at length awoke, and, at the same moment, awoke to the
+conviction that my whole past had been an error; that my life had been a
+lie; that the years which had succeeded my imprisonment had been more
+utterly lost than those passed within my dungeon itself; and there came
+to me the conviction that time, talent, power and wealth had been worse
+than wasted--that the wondrous riches, undreamed of save in the wildest
+flights of oriental fiction, and by a miracle bestowed upon me, were
+designed for nobler, holier purposes than to subserve a fiendish and
+blasphemous vengeance for even unutterable wrongs, or to minister to the
+gratification of pride, and the satisfaction of selfish tastes and
+appetites, however refined and sublimated.
+
+"I looked around me--the world was full of misery--and the same
+disposition which had plunged me into a dungeon was crushing the hearts
+and hopes of millions of my race. My bosom softened by bereavement
+yearned toward my suffering fellows, and the path of duty, peace and
+happiness seemed open to my desolate and despairing heart. Resolution
+followed conviction; the world was my field; liberty, equality and
+fraternity were my objects. Not France alone, with her miserable
+millions, but Russia with her serfs, Poland with her wrongs, the
+enslaved Italian, the oppressed German, the starving son of Erin, the
+squalid operative of England, the priest-ridden slave of Jesuit Spain,
+and the oppressed but free-born Switzer. Great men and good men I found
+had already, with superhuman skill, constructed a system, a machine for
+the amelioration of mankind's condition, which needed only the
+co-operation of boundless wealth to set it in motion. That wealth was
+mine! The common house for the laborer, the asylum for the insane, for
+the orphan, the Magdalen, the destitute, the sick, the friendless, the
+deserted, the bereaved, or the asylum for the victim of his own vices,
+or the vices of others, for the depravity which originates in misery,
+ignorance or fate--all these my riches could sustain. Around me, in the
+accomplishment of this design, the uncounted wealth intrusted to my
+stewardship has already gathered the mightiest minds in every department
+of intellect, and the best hearts; and if but a few years are vouchsafed
+us to carry out the system we have adopted, all Europe, despite her
+throned and sceptred tyrants, impiously claiming the right to oppress by
+the will of God, shall be free! Silently but surely, the principle of
+human liberty is ceaselessly at work, undermining thrones and
+overthrowing dynasties. The hush that precedes the tornado even now
+broods over Europe; nations slumber the heavy sleep that preludes the
+earthquake. The hour of revolution is at hand--of social regeneration,
+disenthrallment, redemption, over all the world. In every capital of
+Europe the mine is prepared--the train laid to be lighted, and from this
+solitary chamber the free thought on the lightning's pinion flies to
+Vienna, St. Petersburg, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, London, over mountain and
+plain--over sea and land--through the forest wilderness and the thronged
+city; taken up by the press, it makes thrones totter and tyrants
+tremble--tremble at an influence which emanates they know not whence and
+contemplates a purpose they know not what--an influence whose mystery
+they are impotent to penetrate, and whose shadowy but awful right they
+are powerless to resist!"
+
+At that instant the silvery tinkle of a bell was heard at the table, and
+a low and continuous whizzing as of clockwork at once commenced. The
+Deputy advanced hastily to the table. The register of the electric
+telegraph like a living thing was unfolding the secrets of events at
+that moment transpiring at the furthest extremity of the Kingdom!
+Eagerly seizing the slip of paper which was gliding through the machine,
+he glanced over the cabalistic cipher there traced.
+"Lyons--Marseilles--Rome--Algeria," he murmured. "All goes well." And
+while the wonderful register, like a thing of life, still whizzed,
+clicked and delivered its magic scroll, covered with characters
+unintelligible to all but him for whose eye they were designed, he
+touched a spring, and a row of ivory keys resembling those of a
+piano-forte was revealed. Then rapidly touching them with the fingers of
+one hand, while he held up before him the endless slip of paper in the
+other as it was evolved, he transferred its cabalistic contents,
+character by character, to their distant destination.
+
+And when the day dawned on Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Madrid, the
+intelligence thus concentrated, and thus distributed in that solitary
+chamber, was laid by the press before a hundred thousand eyes, in a
+language which each could comprehend, for in every capital of Europe
+unbounded wealth had established a press which groaned in unceasing
+parturition for human rights, causing princes to tremble and ministers
+to wonder and grow pale; over each press, thus set in motion as if
+literally by an electric touch a thousand miles away, presided men of
+the greatest powers and most varied attainments which philanthropy or
+covetousness could enlist, while the result of their labors was sown
+broadcast among the poorest and humblest, without price or compensation,
+pouring light upon their darkened understandings and giving them
+knowledge of their rights.
+
+Nor was the newspaper press alone active. The feuilleton press was also
+at work; and magazines, reviews, pamphlets, whole libraries of volumes,
+were flung like Sibylline leaves on the four winds of heaven. Fiction,
+the drama, religion, art, literature, moral and mechanical science--all
+departments of intellect--silently, unseen, yet surely exerted their
+omnipotent influence for the attainment of one single glorious end--the
+happiness, rights, freedom of man; all this was under the guidance of
+one powerful mind and benevolent heart, wielding the resistless
+necromancy of countless and exhaustless treasure! Not a point in all
+Europe whence influence could radiate and be distributed was there at
+which this man, in one brief year, had not set in motion the press and
+the telegraph, those tremendous levers of the age to move the world, and
+all the more powerfully to move it because oft unseen. Not a court was
+there of emperor or prince, czar or kaiser, king, duke or potentate in
+which dwelt not his emissary, who suspected, least of all, knew
+everything that occurred, and, on the lightning's wing, dispatched it to
+its destination, so that the most important decrees of the
+cabinet-council of Vienna were exposed to the whole world by the
+Parisian press long before they had been communicated by Metternich to
+his sovereign. And thus, often, the ruler first learned the purposes of
+the Minister. Not a city or village was there in all Europe which
+nourished not in its bosom the germ of reform and revolution, while the
+great principle of association combined, embodied, and concentrated into
+a focus energies and influences which would otherwise have proved
+comparatively powerless.
+
+The click and buzz of the register ceased--the engine had revealed its
+secret--the shadowy tale had been caught up as it fell and given to the
+press of all Europe, thence to be laid before men's minds.
+
+Exhausted by the severe mental toil, and by the lateness of the hour,
+the Deputy sank back into his arm-chair and clasped his hands.
+"Glorious, omnipotent science!" he exclaimed in low and trembling, yet
+eager and enthusiastic tones. "Wealth must yield in power to thee, for
+what wealth can rival thy achievements or secure thy results? Thou hast
+girt the earth with web-work, forced the lightning to syllable the
+unspoken thought and made man's mind ubiquitous like God's; ere long,
+thou wilt have knit together with thy magic spells a world of mankind
+into one vast brotherhood!"
+
+M. Dantès ceased and, closing his eyes wearily, continued to think over
+the possibilities of the future. As he sat there motionless and
+seemingly asleep, a light footfall was heard in the apartment and his
+daughter stood before him. Zuleika was now sixteen, tall and matured
+beyond her years; she greatly resembled her dead mother, Haydée, the
+beautiful Greek, and the half-oriental costume she wore helped to render
+the resemblance still more striking; her abundant hair was the hue of
+the raven's wing, her feet and hands were those of a fairy, while her
+large and expressive eyes flashed like diamonds, and her parted lips, as
+red as rubies, disclosed perfect teeth of the whiteness of pearls. A
+shade of anxiety settled upon her handsome countenance as she bent over
+her weary father. The Deputy opened his eyes and glanced at her.
+
+"Why are you up so late, my child?" he asked, fondly. "I thought you
+were sleeping soundly long ere this."
+
+"I was waiting for you, papa," replied Zuleika, in a low, musical voice,
+that sounded like a chime of tiny bells; "I could not retire to my
+couch while you were toiling."
+
+M. Dantès pointed to a stool; the young girl brought it and seated
+herself at his feet; he drew her to his knee, smoothing her tresses
+gently and affectionately.
+
+"So you would not desert me, darling?" he said, with a glad smile.
+
+"No, indeed, dear papa," answered she, nestling closer to him.
+
+"Will you always love me as you do now, Zuleika?" asked the father,
+looking down into the liquid depths of her eyes.
+
+"Oh! papa, what a question, what a singular question!" said the girl,
+springing to her feet, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissing
+him again and again.
+
+"But love of another kind and for another will come along after awhile,"
+said the Deputy sadly, "and then you will forget your father."
+
+Zuleika blushed and hung her head in maidenly modesty; then she
+exclaimed:
+
+"No, no, papa; never will I forget you whatever may happen!"
+
+"Ah! my darling, you know not what you are saying; it is only natural
+for a woman to cast her father aside and cleave unto her husband."
+
+"But, papa, I have not even a lover yet, and, besides, I am not a woman;
+I am merely a little girl and your own, true, loving daughter."
+
+"Yes, yes, but you must remember that last year, young as you were
+then, you attracted marked attention from several youthful Romans of the
+best families in the Eternal City, and that one of them, the Viscount
+Giovanni Massetti, went so far as to ask me for your hand."
+
+At the mention of Massetti's name the blush upon Zuleika's cheek
+deepened. She trembled slightly, but said nothing; her heart fluttered
+painfully, but the pain was not altogether disagreeable. The young
+Viscount was evidently not unpleasing to her.
+
+M. Dantès resumed, looking at her fixedly the while:
+
+"My daughter, as you were then attending the convent school I felt it my
+duty to deny Giovanni Massetti's solicitation, nay, his ardent,
+impetuous prayer, but I did not deprive him of all hope; I gave him
+permission to urge his suit with you personally after a year from that
+time had elapsed. Did I do right?"
+
+Zuleika maintained silence, but blushed and trembled more than ever,
+while her heart fluttered so that she placed her hand upon her breast to
+still it.
+
+"Come, come, my daughter, answer me," said the Deputy, kindly, "did I do
+right? Tell me what your little heart says."
+
+"I do not know, oh! I do not know!" cried Zuleika, bursting into tears.
+
+"There, there now," said her father, soothingly; "I did not mean either
+to frighten or wound you. If the Viscount is displeasing to you I will
+answer his letter to-morrow and tell him as gently as possible that he
+has no hope of winning your hand."
+
+"What! have you received a letter from Giovanni?" exclaimed Zuleika,
+with sudden interest, her tears vanishing instantly and her pretty face
+brightening up.
+
+"Ho! ho!" said M. Dantès to himself, "Mademoiselle has waked up in
+earnest now." Then he added aloud: "Yes, one came this afternoon. The
+Viscount is in Paris, and has claimed the privilege I accorded him a
+year ago, provided you interposed no objection. However, the matter can
+speedily be settled. Young Massetti is a man of honor, and will not for
+an instant think of troubling with his attentions a lady to whom they
+cannot prove acceptable."
+
+"Oh! papa, papa, don't tell him that; he wouldn't come here if you did;
+besides, did--did--did I ever tell you that Giovanni's attentions would
+prove unacceptable to me?"
+
+"No, not in so many words," answered M. Dantès, archly, "but I inferred
+as much from your manner and tears just now. So I am to understand that
+you do not want me to reply to the Viscount's letter, am I?"
+
+"Oh! yes, I want you to reply to his letter, but--but----"
+
+"But what, darling?"
+
+"I do not wish you to tell him there is no hope!"
+
+"You think there is hope, then?"
+
+"I--I--am afraid so, dear papa!"
+
+"Yet a moment ago you told me you had no lover, and were merely a little
+girl!"
+
+"I did not know then that Giovanni was in Paris, and I--I--thought he
+had forgotten all about me."
+
+M. Dantès smiled as he said:
+
+"That makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes," answered Zuleika, innocently; then she added in a tone of great
+earnestness: "Write to Giovanni in the morning, and--and tell him I
+shall be delighted to see him."
+
+"I will write and inform him that, so far as I have been able to
+discover, my daughter does not object to receiving a visit from him."
+
+"Oh! that would be too cold and formal, and Giovanni is such an old
+friend."
+
+"Well, well," said M. Dantès, "I will so frame my reply as to give
+entire satisfaction both to you and him. Now, my child, kiss me and
+retire to your couch, for it is very, very late."
+
+Zuleika embraced her father and kissed him repeatedly; then, with
+beaming eyes and a countenance overflowing with happiness she ran
+lightly from the apartment.
+
+As she tripped joyously away, M. Dantès arose from his arm-chair and
+gazed after her with a look of the utmost sadness.
+
+"Oh! my daughter, my daughter," he murmured, "soon will you also quit
+me, and then I shall be alone, indeed! True, Espérance will remain,
+but, generous, manly and heroic as he is, he can never fill the void
+Zuleika will leave. Oh! Haydée, Haydée, my beloved wife, why were you
+torn so ruthlessly from your husband's heart!"
+
+Zuleika's dreams that night were rose-hued and delicious, and in all of
+them the central figure was the youthful Roman Viscount.
+
+When day dawned M. Dantès was still pacing his library.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A VAST PRINTING HOUSE.
+
+
+A street somewhat famous in Paris is the Rue Lepelletier, famous not for
+its length, for its breadth, for the splendid edifices it exhibits, or
+for the scenes and events it has witnessed, but famous for the exploits
+beheld by its neighbors, and the magnificent structures by them
+displayed. Not that the Rue Lepelletier can boast no fine edifices, for
+the grand opera-house would give the loud lie to such an assertion. And
+then there is the Foreign Office near by, the Hôtel of the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue des
+Capucines, and other noted places.
+
+But there is one structure on the Rue Lepelletier not very noticeable
+save for its immense size and its ancient and dingy aspect, which has
+witnessed more scenes and events, and is more important than all its
+more splendid neighbors put together.
+
+This edifice is of brick, five stories in height, and, as has been
+intimated, is time-stained, storm-stained, smoke-stained and stained, it
+would seem, by all other conceivable causes of stain, so begrimed and
+dingy, yet so venerable and imposing, does it seem.
+
+This vast and ancient pile can be said to represent no order of
+architecture. Architectural elegance appears not to have been thought of
+when it was designed, and yet the façade of the old building seems to
+bear the same relation to the building itself as the face of an old man
+bears to his body, and that face is full of character, as are the faces
+of some men--sombre, sedate, serious, almost sinister in aspect. This
+old face, too, seemed full of apertures, through which unceasing and
+sleepless espionage could be kept up on the good citizens of the good
+City of Paris. Doors, and especially windows, numberless, opened and
+looked upon the street, and on a cul de sac at one end of the edifice.
+
+One of the doors opening on the cul de sac, at its further extremity,
+was broad, low, dark and sombre; like the gates of hell, as portrayed by
+the English bard, it "stood open night and day." If you entered this
+door and advanced, you would immediately find yourself ascending a
+narrow, gloomy and winding flight of stairs. Having with difficulty
+groped your way to the top, without having broken your neck, by having
+first reached the point from which you started, to wit, the bottom; or
+your shins, by stumbling against the steps--having, I say, accomplished
+the ascent to the first landing, your further passage is effectually
+stopped by a massive door, which resists all your efforts to open it;
+and, as you are contemplating the dangerous descent which you now think
+you are immediately and inevitably forced to make, an ivory bell-handle
+against the wall, beside the door, arrests your attention, with the
+words around it, which, with difficulty, you decipher by the dim light,
+"Editor's Room--No Admittance," followed by the encouraging, but
+somewhat contradictory word, "Ring," which, doubtless, means this: "If
+you are a particular friend of the editor, or have particular business
+with him as a journalist, ring the bell, and perhaps you may be
+admitted." Supposing either of these positions yours, you "ring the
+bell," and immediately you are startled by the tinkling of a small bell
+in the darkness close beside you, and the ponderous door, firm as a
+barricade till then, is now opened by unseen hands--by the same hand,
+indeed, and by the same action of that hand which caused the bell to
+tinkle.
+
+You enter the door, and find yourself in a corridor or passage, long and
+dark, for everything in this building is dark, and gaslight is the only
+light eighteen hours in the twenty-four; you find yourself in a
+corridor, I say, running the entire depth of the building, and bringing
+you back again toward the Rue Lepelletier, which you left on entering
+the cul de sac, to seek the low entrance below. As you traverse the
+endless gallery, your attention is arrested by a deep hum, as of many
+voices at a distance, with which the entire structure seems pervaded,
+accompanied by a heavier sound, which rises and falls with measured
+stroke. This mysterious hum might have been heard when you first
+approached or entered the building; but the silence and solitude of the
+corridor have caused you to notice it now for the first time, and to
+wonder at its cause.
+
+Now had you the power of those magicians, necromancers, clairvoyants and
+demi-devils, whether of the flesh or the spirit, who, at a glance, can
+gaze through massive walls and peer down the chimneys of a great city,
+and who, almost without glancing at all, can see through partitions,
+key-holes and iron doors, your wonder at the cause of these unknown
+sounds would instantly cease, while it would be yet more excited by
+those causes themselves, for the vast building all around you, and
+through which you are passing, and which envelops you in its ceaseless
+hum, like the voice of a great city, would seem to you nothing less than
+a leviathan of life and action--a Titan--a Frankenstein--a mental and
+material giant, with its acoustic tubes, like veins and arteries,
+running all over the structure, just beneath the surface of the walls,
+and uniting in every apartment; with its electric wires, like bundles of
+nerves, which, having webbed the whole body with network, converge into
+a focus-tube, and thence pass down into the vaults, through the massive
+foundations, and beneath, the pavements of the thronged streets of the
+metropolis, and thence, rising again to the surface, branching on
+distinct, diverse and solitary routes without the suburbs all over
+Europe. You would see, too, the mighty heart of this Titan, whose heavy
+heavings you have felt, heard and wondered at--THE PRESS--in its
+subterranean tenement, amid smoke and flame. THE PRESS; which, like the
+animal heart, receives eventually all that the veins convey to it, and
+flings forth everything in modified form through lungs and arteries.
+Tireless and untired in its action, never ceasing, never resting, for as
+well might a man think to live when his heart had ceased to beat, as a
+printing office exist when the throbbings of its press were no longer
+felt; and as well could a man be supposed to live without breath as a
+printing-office of the nineteenth century without its lungs, the steam
+engine, or its breath of life, the subtle fluid by which it is moved.
+
+But to drop metaphor. In the basement of the building you would find the
+press-room, with its steam engine, its furnaces, its presses, its dark
+demi-devils, and ghostly and ghastly gnomes and genii groping or
+flitting about amid the glare and gloom, begrimed and besmoked,
+seemingly at work at unhallowed yet supernatural toil, which toil, as if
+a punishment for sin, like that of Sisyphus, or the daughters of Danae
+in the heathen Tartarus, was eternal. The press never stops.
+
+On the first floor you would perceive the financial and publishing
+department in all its endless ramifications, with the separate bureaus
+for folding, enveloping, mailing, etc.
+
+On the second floor--but that you will shortly behold, and it will
+describe itself.
+
+On the third floor you would discover immense magazines of
+material--paper, ink, of every hue and quality, and type of every known
+description; and all in quantities seemingly as useless as incalculable.
+
+On the fourth and fifth floors you would find the composition rooms,
+whence fly the winged words all over the world, peopled by its whole
+army of compositors; while from the long platoons of cases,
+"click--click--click" is heard, the sole and unceasing sound which alone
+in those apartments is ever suffered to fall on the ear. If we add that
+the entire structure is warmed in winter by heated air, conveyed in
+tubes from the furnaces of the press, our description will be complete,
+and we may say such is the printing office of the nineteenth century in
+Paris. How changed from that of German Guttenberg or English Caxton,
+three hundred years before! Such is it by daylight. Flood every object
+and apartment with gaslight, and you have the scene at night--through
+all the night, for couriers and dispatches never cease to arrive--and
+the journal issues with the dawn--and the workmen are relieved by
+constant and continuous relays. Such an office gives employment to
+hundreds and bread to thousands. It demands twenty editors, exclusive
+of their chief, twenty reporters, exclusive of the same number in the
+commercial and mercantile corps; twenty-five clerks and bureau agents,
+sixty carriers, twenty mechanicians and margers, sixty folders, twenty
+pressmen, seventy correctors and compositors and five hundred
+distributors, besides a numberless and nameless army of attachés and
+employés too numerous to be specified. The aggregate compensation of
+this army is ten thousand francs per day, the annual income is nine
+millions of francs, the circulation is ninety thousand copies daily, and
+each number is read by half a million people, and through their
+influence by half a million more.
+
+The daily tax of the Government is nine thousand francs. The press has
+been called the Third Estate of France. It is not! Nor is it the
+second--nor is it the first! It combines all three. Nay, the power of
+all three united equals not its tithe; and its position--its
+rank!--royalty itself bows to the press! Ask the history of the past ten
+years. Point to the man of power or position in the court or State, who
+owes it not to the press! Where is the statesman who is not, or has not
+been, a journalist, or the savant, the philosopher, the philanthropist,
+the poet, the orator, the advocate, the diplomat, even the successful
+soldier? The sword and the pen are emblems of the power of France--its
+achievements and its continuance; Sir Bulwer Lytton says,
+
+
+     "The pen is mightier than the sword!"
+
+
+But I have left you, dear reader, perambulating the dim corridor--so
+dim that your eyes can hardly decipher, although it is now high noon,
+the various signs upon the series of doors in the wall on your left,
+designating the various rooms of the editorial corps, for to the
+editorial department is devoted the second floor of this extensive
+edifice. The last door in this prolonged series bears the name of the
+chief journalist. You ring a bell, are bid to enter, and the apartment
+is before you. Immense windows, rising from the floor to the ceiling,
+and opening upon a balcony, which overhangs the Rue Lepelletier, afford
+abundance of light for your eye to detect everything in the room by day,
+and an immense chandelier with gas-burners and opaque shades, pouring
+forth its flood of mellow radiance, would facilitate the same
+investigation yet more at night. Beneath the chandelier is spread the
+immense oval slab of the table. At it sits a man writing. Well, let him
+write on, at least for the present. Beside him, pile upon pile, pile
+upon pile, rise papers, wave after wave, flood upon flood, nothing but
+papers; on the floor beneath his feet, on the table and under the table,
+before him, behind him, and all around him, naught but papers, papers,
+rising, rising, as if in wrathful might and stormy indignation, while
+the very walls are lined with papers in all languages, from all climes
+and governments, and of every age and dimension, deposited in huge folio
+volumes and arranged in huge closets, along one whole side of the room.
+From the four continents, yea, and from the islands of the sea
+likewise, has this vast army come. In those tall closets extending from
+floor to ceiling might be found the full files for years of every
+leading paper in every part of Christendom, affording a treasury of
+reference, universal, unfailing, exhaustless, of knowledge of every
+conceivable description, rapidly found by means of exact and copious
+tables of contents.
+
+Upon the other side of the apartment extend ranges of shelves, from
+floor to ceiling, filled with ponderous tomes in black substantial
+binding, seeming to belong to that class of standard works chiefly
+valuable for reference as authorities, and bearing ample testimony in
+their wear and tear, and their soiled appearance, to having been
+faithfully fingered. No thin, delicate and perfumed duodecimo is there,
+resplendent in gold and Russia, with costly engravings on steel, and
+letter-press in gilt or hot-pressed post. No, the books, the table, the
+journalist and the whole chamber bear the dark, stern, toil-soiled
+aspect of labor, the severe air of practical utility. The only
+ornaments, if such they can be styled, are busts--the busts of the
+silver-tongued Vergniaud and a few of his political brothers--the victim
+Girondins of '92 being conspicuous. Here, too, in a prominent niche is
+the noble front of Armand Carrel, the brave, the knightly, the
+chivalric, the true Republican, the true statesman, the true journalist,
+the true man--Armand Carrel, who, with Adolphe Thiers, his associate,
+sat first in this apartment as its chief--Armand Carrel, who fell years
+ago before the pistol of Émile de Girardin, a brother journalist, the
+founder of the cheap press, the hero of scores of combats before and
+since, yet almost unscathed by all.
+
+Such are some of the ornaments of the chief editor's sanctum. At the
+further extremity of the apartment, the wall is covered with maps and
+diagrams, as well as charts of the prominent cities and points in
+Europe; and a large table beneath is heaped with books of travel,
+geographical views, and historical scenes arranged with no regard to
+order, and seeming to lie precisely as thrown down after having been
+used.
+
+In a word, the whole room bears unmistakable evidence of stern,
+practical thought. In it and about it display is everywhere scrupulously
+eschewed. Practical utility is the only question of interest as touching
+the instruments of an editor, as of those of a carpenter; and the
+workshop of the journalist bears no inconsiderable similarity to that of
+the artisan in more respects than one. To each a tool is valuable, be
+that tool a book or a chisel, only for its usefulness, and the facility
+and rapidity with which it will aid the possessor to accomplish his
+ends, and not for its beauty of form, or costliness of material or
+construction.
+
+In one respect only was there variance from this settled custom to be
+perceived, and that was in that delicate mechanism embodying the
+triumphs of modern science, which facilitates transmission of thought,
+and which, by skillful adaptation, made this one chamber a focus to
+which ideas and feeling in every other apartment of that vast
+establishment converged, and which enabled one man, without rising from
+his chair, to issue his orders to every department, from press-room to
+composing-room, from foundation stone to the turrets of that tall pile,
+everything being governed by the will and impulse of a single mind.
+Indeed, to such an extent is labor-saving carried in the Parisian
+printing office that the compositor may never have seen the journalist
+whose leaders he has spent half his life in setting up, for copy, proof
+and revise glide up or down as if by the agency only of magic, and the
+real actors rarely meet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ARMAND MARRAST.
+
+
+The journalist who now occupied the editorial chair was seemingly about
+thirty-five years of age, and one whom the ladies would call "a
+fine-looking man." His stature was about the average, his shoulders
+broad and his form thick-set. His face was long and thin, his forehead
+full and capacious, though not high, and was furrowed by thought. His
+beard, which, like his hair, was black, encircled his chin, and a
+moustache was suffered to adorn his lip. His dress was black and a plain
+stock, without a collar, surrounded his throat. His eyes were large,
+black, and piercing, and the expression of his countenance was
+contemplative and sad.
+
+Such is a hasty limning of the personal outlines of the first journalist
+in Paris, the chief editor of the chief organ of the democracy in
+Europe, Armand Marrast, of "Le National."
+
+An air of depression, exhaustion and regret was upon his face as he sat
+beside the table, with a pen in his hand and paper before him, in a
+thoughtful mood, as if planning a leader for his journal, of which but a
+single line was written. Whatever were his reflections, they were
+evidently far from pleasant; but the single line traced at the head of
+the paper indicated the source of his uneasiness. It read:
+
+"Again the House of Orléans triumphs!"
+
+Throwing down his pen, he folded his arms, and began hastily pacing the
+chamber.
+
+"Again the House of Orléans triumphs!" he bitterly exclaimed. "Aye,
+again and again! It is thus forever, and thus forever seems likely to
+continue. Every measure, however imperative, of the opposition,
+ignominiously fails--every measure of the Government, however infamous,
+succeeds. And so it has been for twelve years. Ah! what a barren sceptre
+did the Three Days of '30 place in the hands of the French people! The
+despotism of a Citizen King has been as deadly as that of the
+Restoration, and more insulting. For twelve years his acts have been but
+a continuous series of infringements upon the rights, and insults to the
+opinions, of the men of July. The Republican party is trampled on.
+Freedom of the press, electoral reform, rights of labor, restriction of
+the Royal prerogative, reduction of the civil list, all these measures
+are effectually crushed. The press is fettered, and its conductors are
+incarcerated. Out of a population of thirty-three millions, but two
+hundred thousand are electors. Out of four hundred and sixty deputies,
+one-third hold places under the Government, the aggregate of whose
+salaries would sustain thousands of starving families at their very
+doors. Paris, despite every struggle of freedom, is, at this hour, a
+Bastille. The line of fortification is complete. Wherever the eye turns
+battlements frown, ordnance protrudes, bayonets bristle. Corruption
+stalks unblushingly abroad in the highest places, and the frauds of
+Gisquet all Paris knows are but those of an individual. The civil list,
+instead of being reduced, is every year enlarged. A Citizen King
+receives forty times the appropriation received by the First Consul,
+while his whole family are quartered on the State. The dotation to the
+Duke of Orléans, on his marriage, would have saved from starvation
+hundreds of thousands whose claim for charity far exceeded his. Thank
+God, his own personal unpopularity defeated the dotation designed for
+the Duke of Nemours. But the appanages were granted because the King's
+life was attempted by an assassin. A Citizen King, indeed! This man
+cares only for his own. He would be allied to every dynasty in Europe.
+His policy is unmixed selfishness. His love for the people who made him
+their monarch is swallowed up in love for himself. Millions have been
+wrung from the sweat of toil to accomplish a worse than useless
+conquest, thousands of Frenchmen have been sacrificed on the burning
+sands of Africa, and all for what?--that a throne might be won for a
+boy--a boy without ability, or experience, and now the Duke of Aumale is
+Governor-General of Algeria, while hundreds of brave men are forgotten."
+
+As these last words, which indicated the cause of the present agitation,
+were uttered by the excited journalist a door at the further end of the
+apartment softly opened, and a young man of very low stature and boyish
+in aspect entered. He seemed, at a first glance, hardly to have attained
+his majority, though actually he was ten years older. His face was
+round, yet pale, his lips full, his brow commanding, his eye large, dark
+and thoughtful, and His characteristic expression mild and benevolent.
+He wore a dark frock coat, buttoned to the chin, and a plain black
+cravat was tied around his neck.
+
+The journalist was so deeply absorbed in his meditations that for some
+moments he seemed unaware that he was no longer alone, and he might have
+remained yet longer in that ignorance had not the guest approached and
+exclaimed:
+
+"Algeria!"
+
+The journalist raised his head and hastily turned.
+
+"Ah! Louis, is it you?" he said, cordially extending his hand; "I'm glad
+you've come. But why did I not hear you?"
+
+"For two reasons, my dear Armand," said the visitor, seating himself in
+an editorial chair: "one, that I came in by the private entrance, and
+the other, that you were too zealously engaged in cursing the recent
+appointment of the King to hear anything short of a salvo of artillery."
+
+"Ah! that cursed appointment! What next I wonder? Thank God, the old man
+has no more sons to make governors, although he'll never be satisfied
+till each one of them has a crown on his head, by his own right or the
+right of a wife."
+
+"And what care we whom the boys marry, so long as marriage takes them
+out of France? Montpensier can find favor in the eyes of the Spanish
+Infanta, Christina's sister, and thus balk England; be it so, yes, be it
+so, especially since it can't be helped or prevented."
+
+"But this affair of Algeria, Louis--"
+
+"Is a very different affair you would say. No doubt, no doubt. As to
+Algeria, I have always viewed it as a very costly bauble for France, 'an
+opera-box' as the Duke of Broglie once said, 'rather too expensive for
+France.'"
+
+"But then it has been a splendid arena for French valor. It has given
+the rough old Bugeaud a Marshal's bâton, and has made the gallant
+Lamoricière, his sworn foe, a general officer, thanks to his own
+intrepid conduct and the court influence of his brother-in-law, Thiers."
+
+"In the late dispatch appear the names of some new candidates for
+advancement, I perceive."
+
+"You allude to Morrel and Joliette among others, I suppose. Morrel has
+received a regiment, and Joliette is Chef d'Escadron of Spahis. Luckily
+for aspirants, and thanks to disease and slaughter, there is no lack of
+vacancies."
+
+"The name of Morrel I have seen before in the 'Moniteur,' but
+Joliette--who is he?"
+
+"A sort of protégé of Bugeaud, 'tis said. He is reported to have
+enlisted at Marseilles, and in three years has risen to his present
+position from the ranks. He is of a good family, rumor says, but,
+suddenly reduced by some calamity, he became a soldier."
+
+"He must be a brave fellow, Armand! As I said before, Algeria has been a
+fine field for the development of military genius. My chief objections
+to French conquests are these--they have drained millions from France
+which should have been devoted to the cause of labor, and have tended to
+dazzle the masses with the glory of the achievements of French valor
+abroad; thus while thousands of the young and enterprising have been
+lured away to fill up the ranks, and to seek fame and fortune, the minds
+of those remaining have been withdrawn from their own wrongs, oppression
+and suffering, and from efficiently concerting to sustain the measures
+of their friends for their relief. There is not a race in Christendom
+so fond of military glory and achievement as the French. Dazzled by
+this, the people, the masses--"
+
+"The people, the masses!" impatiently interrupted the journalist. "You
+know me, Louis; for years you have known me well, for years have we
+devoted every energy of heart and soul to the cause of the people, and
+for years, ever since we came to man's estate, have we been equal
+sufferers in the same cause--"
+
+"Sufferers in the cause of the people of France, in the cause of man, we
+both, doubtless, have been, but not equal sufferers. What have been my
+sacrifices or sufferings, my dear Armand, compared to yours? In that
+dark hour when Armand Carrel fell--fell by an ignoble bullet in an
+ignoble cause--fell in bitterness and without a hope for liberty in his
+beloved France--I felt impelled to come forward and exert myself for the
+welfare of my race, and endeavor to aid others in filling the gap
+created by his loss. To France, to my country, did I then, though but a
+boy, devote myself--France, my country!--for such I feel her to be,
+though I was born in Spain and my mother was a Corsican. Since that hour
+my pen has been dedicated to the cause of the people, the dethronement
+of the Bourgeoisie and the organization of labor. As to sacrifice or
+suffering, I have sacrificed only my time and toil at the worst. I have
+not been deemed worthy of suffering even a fine for a newspaper libel,
+and my paper has never been thought worth suppression!"
+
+"And what have I accomplished, Louis?" asked Marrast, gloomily. "My life
+seems almost a blank."
+
+"With Armand Carrel, you have for fifteen years been the champion of
+Republicanism in France, and with you, as leaders, has all been
+accomplished that now exists. When Carrel died, on you fell his mantle.
+As editor of 'La Tribune,' your boldness and charging Casimir Perier and
+Marshal Soult with connivance in Gisquet's scandalous frauds brought
+upon you fine and imprisonment. Your boldness and patriotism during the
+insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, 1832, once more caused your
+paper to be stopped and your presses to be sealed. In April, '34, your
+press was again stopped, and you, with Godefroi Cavaignac, were thrown
+into Sainté Pélagie, whence you so gallantly escaped, though to become
+an exile in England. Again, in '35, you were sentenced to
+transportation. So much for sufferings; as to sacrifices--why, you have
+been utterly ruined by fines!"
+
+"Well, Louis, well," was the sad answer, "granting all this, my
+sacrifices and sufferings are only the more bitter from the fact of
+having been utterly in vain, entirely useless. You, Louis, have been
+wiser than I. Your journal is well named 'Bon Sens.'"
+
+"Possibly wiser," was the reply, "and possibly less bold. But does not
+discretion sometimes win what boldness would sacrifice? In rashly
+struggling for all we sometimes lose all. Prudence and perseverance, my
+dear Armand, are invaluable."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE COMMUNISTS.
+
+
+At this moment the private door opened, and three men entered the
+editorial sanctum.
+
+Marrast quickly turned, and his friend was silent.
+
+"Ha! Albert, Flocon, Rollin!" he cried. "Welcome, welcome! Our friend,
+Louis Blanc, was just about wasting on me a sermon upon patience, but
+now he'll have an audience worthy of the subject. Be seated and listen!"
+
+"Patience!" exclaimed Flocon. "Well, I'm sure we need it."
+
+"That we do, in our present low estate," echoed Rollin.
+
+Albert said nothing, but smiled with sarcastic significance.
+
+When the salutations were over and the party, all but Marrast, who
+restlessly paced the room, were seated, Louis Blanc looked around on his
+friends with a sad smile, and continued:
+
+"Marrast is right, Messieurs. I was, indeed, preaching patience. I was
+endeavoring to soothe his irritation and chide his depression with a
+sermon; since we are all old friends and fellow-sufferers in the good
+cause and have a common interest in knowing the reasons of failure and
+the means of triumph, I will by your leave proceed."
+
+"Aye, dear Louis, go on!" cried Marrast, kindly. "But you are the most
+youthful sage I ever listened to."
+
+"Yes, Louis, proceed; you look like a curé," said Rollin, laughing.
+
+"I subscribe to Louis Blanc's creed, be it what it may," added Flocon,
+briskly.
+
+"And so do I," said Albert, gravely, in a deep tone.
+
+Of the new visitors, Ledru Rollin was a man of medium stature, about
+thirty-five years of age and dressed in the extreme of the mode. His
+complexion and hair were light, his eyes large, blue and protruding, his
+mouth prominent, and his full cheeks covered with whiskers, which like
+those of Marrast, were closely trimmed and met beneath his chin. His
+head and shoulders were thrown back, and his air was bold and
+independent. He was a lawyer of talent, who had gained celebrity as
+advocate of the accused on many occasions of State prosecutions.
+
+Flocon was an older man than Rollin, and his countenance bore the wary,
+vigilant and suspicious look which experience alone gives. He was low in
+stature, thick-set and close-knit in figure; his eyes seemed always half
+closed; his brow was broad and massive; his face was long; a moustache
+was on his lip, and his hair was closely cut. The outline of his head
+and the expression of his face seemed those rather of one born on the
+banks of the Rhine than on the banks of the Seine, so calm and
+passionless did they appear. His dress was plain but neat. Flocon was
+the chief editor of "La Réforme," the name of which indicates its
+character. It was this man who, in February, 1833, repressed the
+violence of his partisans and saved the office of the "Gazette de
+France," yet the very next day published his celebrated letter to the
+Legitimists, which, for audacity, force and pungency was only equaled by
+the paralyzing effect it produced. The fines, imprisonments and civil
+incapacities to which this man had been subjected for assaults upon a
+government he deemed corrupt, for the ten years preceding, had been
+literally numberless.
+
+Albert was a man of fifty or more, with a large head, square German face
+and forehead, a large hazel eye, fixed and unexcitable, hair closely
+cut, and beard upon his chin and lip. His dress was a long iron-gray
+frock coat, buttoned closely to his chin. His face was rather thin, and
+his complexion bronzed. His name had for years been identified with
+reform; and though a manufacturer himself, of the class of workmen,
+being proprietor and chief engineer of a large machine factory at Lyons,
+he had established and sustained in that city a paper to advocate his
+principles, named "La Glaneuse," the prosecution of which by the
+Government for libel and the fining and imprisonment of its editor
+formed an originating cause of the revolt in Lyons of April, 1834. For
+the part played by this man in the revolt thus arising, he was sentenced
+to transportation, a penalty afterwards commuted to fine and
+imprisonment. He was a man of few words, remarkably few, but of deep
+thought and prompt action, and, in moments of crisis and emergency, a
+man of unshaken and inflexible nerve. To the casual observer, he seemed
+only a silent man, or a sullen one, astute or stolid; in times of peril
+he was a man of iron, but a man of action and passion, too, moving with
+resistless might. To rouse his powers, mental or physical, demanded,
+indeed, circumstances of unusual import, but once roused they were
+irresistible.
+
+Such were the personages now assembled in the office of "Le National;"
+and, of those five men, all were connected with the press, directly, as
+editor or proprietor, save only Ledru Rollin, and he was a writer for
+"La Réforme," as well as an advocate.
+
+The name of Louis Blanc's paper was, as has been said, "Le Bon Sens."
+
+But to return to the narrative.
+
+"And you really wish a sermon from me, old comrades, with patience as
+the text?"
+
+"Aye--aye--aye!" exclaimed all.
+
+"Suppose I add to it this line I find on the paper before me on the
+table, that our good Marrast had just written as the text for a
+paragraph which would probably have cost him another fine and
+imprisonment, had the paragraph been completed and published?"
+
+"Read! read!" cried Rollin.
+
+"With your permission, Armand?"
+
+"Certainly," replied the editor, still continuing his promenade.
+
+"'Again the House of Orléans triumphs!'" read Louis Blanc, aloud.
+
+"And is it not true--the accursed tyrants?" vociferated Rollin.
+
+"Aye, true!" was the mild answer; "alas, too true! That perfidious House
+does triumph, and for that very reason the fact should never be
+acknowledged by its opponents."
+
+Rollin shook his head, and, throwing himself back in his capacious
+chair, folded his arms, sunk his chin upon his breast and closed his
+eyes.
+
+Marrast continued his walk.
+
+Flocon remained silent and thoughtful.
+
+Albert gave a significant smile.
+
+"Oppose ceaselessly, but quietly, every act of despotism this Bourgeois
+Government may attempt; but, be the result what it may, never admit
+yourselves discouraged, depressed, dismayed, defeated. From every fall
+rise like Antaeus, with renewed vigor. Nor is it wise or prudent in
+those engaged in a great and glorious cause to provoke danger, to brave
+penalty, when nothing of good to that cause can reasonably be expected.
+Prudence, policy, patience and perseverance accomplish more than
+rashness, yet are not inconsistent with intrepidity, boldness,
+patriotism and philanthropy the most exalted. Comrades, what says the
+past, the past ten years, in whose events we have all so intimately
+mingled? Shall I tell you?"
+
+"Aye! 'L'Histoire de Dix Ans,'" said Flocon.
+
+"We are all sure of being immortal there, in that same book of yours!
+Eh! Louis?" cried Rollin, opening his large blue eyes.
+
+Louis Blanc smiled and continued:
+
+"Shall I convince you, comrades, by the history of the past ten years,
+the scenes we have all witnessed, the events we have all deplored, the
+defeats we have all sustained, the insulting ovations we have all been
+forced to behold and the unceasing triumphs and tyranny of the House of
+Orléans that, had patience and prudence been our motto, these defeats
+and triumphs would never have been witnessed, because these premature
+revolts would never have been made?"
+
+Albert bowed and gave his peculiar smile.
+
+"Our friend Albert smiles, and well he may. He has had a sad experience
+in this error of premature outbreaks. In April, 1834, he exerted every
+energy to restrain the revolt in Lyons, as chief of the Société des
+Droits de l'Homme, and as the undoubted friend of the operatives. But
+his efforts were futile. Exasperated, urged on by less experienced
+leaders, they were in full tide of revolution, and could no more be
+restrained in their unwise rising than could the mountain cataract in
+mad career be dammed. The result was, of course, defeat--most disastrous
+defeat. Hundreds of the people perished, and our friend was imprisoned
+and fined for taking part in a movement, which he had in vain attempted
+to quell, and then, with the certainty of defeat, had joined, rather
+than desert the people who trusted and relied on him."
+
+"A noble act!" cried Marrast, as he paced the room.
+
+Albert quietly smiled, but otherwise his countenance remained unmoved.
+
+"And was it not a most noble and a most wise act," continued the author
+of "The Ten Years," "when our friend Flocon, by an energetic and
+eloquent harangue, restrained the indignant people from razing to the
+ground the office of the 'Gazette de France,' the organ of the Duchess
+of Berri, and his bitter foe? Terribly would that rash act have recoiled
+on us, and yet, at the same time, with this most patriotic and prudent
+deed before us, a wilder measure than even that was adopted, and it was
+quelled only by force. You all remember the events. In February, '33,
+Eugène Brifault, in his 'Corsair,' alluded jestingly to the mysterious
+pregnancy of the mother of Henry V., Duke of Bordeaux, as did every one,
+she then being imprisoned at Baye because of her prior conspiracy to
+place her son on the throne, and her secret marriage in Italy being
+unrevealed. The Legitimists of 'Le Revenant' challenged; the allusion
+was repeated, and a second trial and a death ensued. 'Le National' and
+'La Tribune,' regarding these repeated challenges as a menace to the
+Republicans, hurled defiance at the Legitimists, and demanded twelve
+distinct rencontres in behalf of as many names of our friends posted at
+their offices, among which those of Armand Carrel, Godefroi Cavaignac
+and Armand Marrast were conspicuous. The challenge is accepted--the
+names of twelve Legitimists are furnished--Armand Carrel selects Roux
+Laborie--they fight, and Carrel is dangerously wounded--the police then
+interfere--the affair ends with Flocon's terrific and audacious defiance
+flung down at the whole Legitimist and Orléans parties in the columns of
+'La Réforme.' Now, what to Republicans were the quarrels of Legitimists
+and Orléanists? If we were to be ruled by a king, what cared we whether
+that king were Henry V. or Louis Philippe? How would the sacrifice of
+Carrel, Marrast, Cavaignac, or of any of those twelve brave men have
+been repaid, or made up? And afterwards, alas! in July of '36, when
+Armand Carrel, causelessly assuming a quarrel not his own, because of a
+fancied attempt to degrade the press, by rendering its issues
+accessible, by cheapness, to the masses, was slain in the Bois de
+Vincennes by the vulgar bullet of Émile de Girardin, of 'La Presse.'
+What reparation to our cause was it that our champion had died like a
+hero, and Châteaubriand, Arago, Cormenin and Béranger wept around his
+grave? Alas! that inestimable life belonged to his country and his race,
+and not to himself, to fling away in an obscure quarrel."
+
+"But we are not all of us Armand Carrels," said Rollin.
+
+"And yet, to the great cause of human liberty, and the amelioration of
+man's condition, to which each of us stands sworn, are pledged our
+lives. To hazard that cause, by the sacrifice of those lives, or by
+rashly and unwisely attempting its advancement, makes us violators of
+our vows, quite as much in reality as if we had become traitors."
+
+"But the instances you cite are those only of individual rashness,
+Louis, and not of the people, or of their leaders acting in concert,"
+remarked Marrast.
+
+"True, concert of action has been chiefly needed, but I have only to
+recall the dates and places of our repeated attempts and defeats, for
+the past ten years, to convince you all that those attempts were
+premature, and had they not been so, they might have been
+successful--that they have frittered away energies which, properly
+concentrated and directed, might have achieved a revolution; and that
+while they have betrayed our designs and depressed our friends, have
+enabled our foes insultingly to triumph and caused them to be on the
+constant qui vive to anticipate our movements. What but premature and
+undigested uprisings were the conspiracy of the bell-tower of Nôtre
+Dame, in January of '32, when 'Le National' was seized--or the
+disturbances in La Vendée--or those in Grenoble--or those in
+Marseilles--or those in the Rue des Prouvaires--or those in April,
+during the cholera, when Casimir Perier died--or those of the 5th and
+6th of June, on the occasion of General Lamarque's funeral, on pretence
+of avenging upon the Government the affront offered during the
+obsequies of Casimir Perier, the victim-Premier of the cholera? For the
+part taken by 'La Tribune,' then conducted by Marrast, in this revolt,
+its press was seized and sealed. The same was the fate of 'La
+Quotidienne,' and the same would have been the fate of 'Le National,'
+but for its barricades. Well do I remember the meeting of our friends in
+this very apartment on the night after General Lamarque's funeral. The
+great shade of the venerable warrior seemed among us, repeating for our
+counsel and imitation his last impressive words, 'I die but the cause
+lives!' But, alas! we observed it not. Doubt, dissension, dismay and
+despair were in our midst. All was dark--all was defiance and
+denunciation, crimination and recrimination--brother's hand raised
+against brother. Armand Carrel that night sat in this chair, but he was
+not the man to command his own will or opinions; how could he then bring
+to obedience and concert the conflicting impulses of others? Armand
+Carrel was a wonderful man. His motto, like that of Danton, was this:
+'Audacity, audacity, always audacity!' Yet with all the audacity of
+Danton, he had little of his firmness. An officer under the Restoration,
+a conspirator at Bifort, in arms in Spain against the white flag, three
+times a prisoner before a council of war--in 1830 he was with Thiers,
+the founder of this journal; but everywhere he carried the exactitude of
+the camp; even in dress, manner and bearing he was a soldier--lofty,
+haughty, seemingly overbearing, yet, at heart, noble and generous, and
+to his friends accessible in the extreme. To his military notions,
+nothing could be accomplished without soldiers, and for the people to
+carry a revolution against soldiers seemed to him absurd."
+
+"Armand Carrel would have been, nevertheless, a good revolutionist,
+Louis," said Marrast; "but he was a bad conspirator. He had no faith in
+the people, no confidence in the efforts of undisciplined and unarmed
+masses."
+
+"And therein," said Rollin, "he greatly erred."
+
+"Although we can as yet boast of having accomplished but very little by
+them, Ledru," added Flocon, with a meaning smile. "The masses are easily
+roused, but they don't stay roused, and then they often get
+unmanageable, even by those by whose summons they were stirred up. They
+fight well, but, somehow or other, they always get beaten; they succumb
+at last, and bow their necks to the yoke lower than ever."
+
+"It is not the people," said Louis Blanc, "it is we the leaders, who are
+to be blamed. We rouse them before we are ready for them--before we have
+prepared them or anything else for a result; and then it is not strange
+that they only rush bravely on to death and defeat. We seize on the
+occasion of a funeral for an outbreak without organization, and the
+cuirassiers of the military escort trample our ranks beneath their
+horses' hoofs. But for unusual efforts, such would have been the case at
+the funeral of Dulong, the Deputy who fell in a duel with General
+Bugeaud, in January of '34."
+
+"What were the circumstances?" asked Rollin.
+
+"Armand recollects them better than I," replied Louis Blanc.
+
+"The circumstances were these, as I remember them," said Marrast.
+"General Bugeaud remarked in the course of a speech in the Chamber that
+'obedience is always a soldier's duty.' 'What if the order be to become
+a turnkey?' asked Dulong, in allusion to the General's position in
+relation to the Duchess of Berri, during her pregnancy and confinement
+at Baye. Armand Carrel endeavored to pacificate, but the effort failed.
+They met in the Bois de Boulogne at ten o' clock in the morning; the
+weapons were pistols; the distance forty paces. Bugeaud fired almost as
+soon as he turned, advancing only a few steps; his ball entered above
+Dulong's right eye, and at six o'clock that evening he was dead."
+
+"There was a splendid ball at the Tuileries that night, was there not?"
+asked Flocon.
+
+"There was, and this, with other things, excited in the masses the idea
+that their champion was the victim of a Royalist conspiracy, which all
+the influence of Armand Carrel and Dulong's uncle, Dupont de l'Eure was
+hardly sufficient to suppress. But Dupont immediately resigned his seat
+in the Chamber. He would sit no longer in a body one man of which he
+deemed the murderer of a beloved nephew. The obsequies were grand.
+Armand Carrel pronounced the eulogy, and two hundred and thirty-four
+deputies wet the grave with their tears. The people were greatly
+excited, and, as has been said, were with great difficulty restrained
+by Carrel and Dupont. Had they been suffered to revolt, the only result
+which could have followed would have been a terrific outpouring of their
+blood, furnishing another instance, I suppose, of the evil of
+impatience; is it not so, Louis?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," was the reply; "and only two months after that other
+instance actually occurred, for our warning, in the revolt at Lyons,
+with which we are all familiar, and in which we were all actors, most of
+us to our sorrow. This was in April. Albert's journal, 'La Glaneuse,'
+had been seized for libel on the Government, and the editor fined and
+imprisoned. Next a reform banquet of the operatives was forbidden,
+although but a year before Garnier Pages had been suffered to banquet
+the Lyonnese to the number of two thousand, and although at no period
+had so many gorgeous festivities and public balls been given by the rich
+Royalists, as if in premeditated scorn of the banquet prohibited to the
+poor Republicans. The result was so prompt as to seem inevitable; there
+was a strike of the operatives, an insurrection of the people. Albert
+was sent to Paris as an envoy, to find a man to lead the revolt. MM.
+Cabet and Pages were deemed too moderate. Cavaignac would go only with
+Cabet. Lafayette was too feeble, but gave his name and letters. Carrel
+and Marrast were not members of the Société des Droits de l'Homme, and
+Albert had been cautioned that Carrel was too moderate. Thiers had
+denounced 'La Tribune,' and Marrast's friends were hiding him from the
+police. In despair concerning his mission, the envoy was about returning
+home, when he was sent for to Armand Carrel's house, and Carrel offered
+to go to Lyons and lead the revolt, provided Godefroi Cavaignac would
+accompany him. Now these friends had long been at feud, but all private
+grievances were forgotten in this crisis of the cause, and Albert is
+just about preceding them in the post-chaise, to announce their coming,
+when, lo! the telegraph says, 'Order reigns in Lyons!' Here, then, after
+a terrific slaughter, was recorded another fruitless revolt, because a
+premature one. Nay, it was infinitely worse than fruitless. Not only did
+the Republicans utterly fail in their attempts, not only were they
+cruelly crushed by the Royal mercenaries, but they were openly derided
+in their defeat, and the cause was gloomier than ever. The slaughter of
+women and children in the streets of Lyons, and on their own
+hearthstones, in the course of this insurrection, was hideous, and is
+graphically portrayed in the memorial of our friend Ledru Rollin, as
+advocate in the matter. But, as if all this were not enough for our
+persecuted cause, the decease of the great and good Lafayette, the idol
+of freemen all the world over, took place in the following May. Alas!
+his sun went down in clouds. His end was dark. Bitter maledictions
+quivered on his dying lips. He had lived to mourn that July day, only
+three years before, when, on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, he had,
+with his own hands, been called to invest a cold-blooded, perfidious,
+selfish, and most ungrateful tyrant with Royal robes. Alas! there was
+order in Lyons--Lafayette was in his grave--peace reigned in Paris--the
+House of Orléans triumphed!"
+
+"Those were dark days," said Marrast, sadly.
+
+"They were, dear Armand, dark, indeed, for you and your friends, for
+your journal had been suppressed, and you were an inmate, with
+Cavaignac, of Sainté-Pélagie."
+
+"Whence you both, bravely and boldly effected your escape more than a
+year afterwards and fled to England, to the most glorious discomfiture
+of the knaves who put you there!" cried Rollin. "Vive la République!
+yet, Messieurs! We've all seen dark days, and the present is none of the
+brightest; and we've all come together at these old headquarters of
+liberty just to be unhappy together, just to help each other be
+miserable, which, in fact, is vastly happier unhappiness than being
+miserable alone. At all events, that's what I want. But it can't always
+be right. I predict a revolution before another ten years shall have
+rolled round, which shall make immortals of us all--that revolution for
+which we have been waiting, watching, toiling and writing, lo! now these
+thirteen years and upward, for the which waiting, watching, toiling and
+writing we have some of us been fined, who had money enough to pay a
+fine, and others imprisoned and hunted about and persecuted. Why,
+there's Albert and Flocon haven't been able to get a franc cleverly warm
+in their pockets these ten years, before forth it was drawn in the form
+of a fine; while as for Marrast, he has the perfect air and bearing of a
+bandit, so often has he seen the inside of a dungeon; and our friend
+Albert isn't much better looking. As for Louis and myself, why, we never
+knew what it was to have a franc get warm in our pockets, so we escaped
+having any drawn forth by Ministers, and they have never thought us
+worth prosecuting or imprisoning. But they may change their minds when
+Louis' book, that is to make us all immortal, comes out. Eh, Louis?"
+
+Louis Blanc smiled, but made no answer.
+
+"Well, it is only meet, I suppose, that I should receive my share of the
+blows," said Marrast. "I'm sure I'm not very delicate or very
+ceremonious in bestowing them. Besides, every one of my predecessors has
+endured the same--Carrel, Thomas, Bastide; while poor Rouen, the
+proprietor, would have been ruined, indeed, a dozen times with fines,
+but for his enormous profits. Why, this old office has been a perfect
+butt for Ministers to fire at--it has received a dozen fusillades, at
+least; but it stands yet, and, strange as may have been the scenes it
+has witnessed, it will witness yet other and stranger ones, and we shall
+all be witnesses thereof, and actors in them, too, or greatly do I err."
+
+"So be it, with all our hearts!" was the general shout.
+
+"Apropos of State prosecutions against 'Le National,'" said Louis Blanc,
+"that was a most exciting time when Rouen was brought by Thiers before
+the Court of Peers, for a libel on that most august and erudite body."
+
+"Aye! and a most, liberal, honest and honorable conclave--the
+thrice-sodden and most solemn knaves and mules!" cried Rollin.
+
+"Rouen at the bar demanded Armand Carrel for his defence," continued
+Louis Blanc. "To refuse was impossible, but a bitter pill must it have
+been to Thiers and Mignet to consent. They must have foreseen what came.
+Both, now in the Ministry, only four years before both had been in 'Le
+National'--Thiers as the colleague of Carrel, and Mignet as a
+collaborateur. The files of the journal were produced, and, lo! there
+stood paragraphs proven to have emanated from the pens of the
+prosecutors far more libelous and venomous on the august peers than
+anything Rouen had published. You all remember the scene that ensued and
+won't forget it soon."
+
+"No; nor shall we soon forget that noble passage in Armand Carrel's
+defence," said Flocon, "in which he evoked the shade of Marshal Ney, and
+from the wild excitement that followed, one would suppose that it had
+really risen in the hall, bleeding and ghastly, and pointing to its
+wounds, like the ghost of Banquo, to blast his hoary, jeweled and noble
+assassin, who, seated on those very seats, had sentenced him to an
+infamous doom. Carrel was instantly stopped, but General Excelmens rose
+in his seat and pronounced the charge true. It was then reiterated with
+tremendous applause from the galleries. How Carrel escaped punishment
+for contempt is not known. Rouen was convicted of libel on the peers, of
+course; his sentence was a fine of ten thousand francs and imprisonment
+for two years."
+
+"But of what words did this famous libel actually consist?" asked Ledru
+Rollin.
+
+"Louis can tell you better than I," said Flocon.
+
+"Why, the words were severe enough, no doubt," replied Louis Blanc, "but
+Thiers and Mignet had themselves expressed the same ideas a hundred
+times, though in less powerful and pointed language. The passage which
+seems particularly to have given offence was this, that in the eyes of
+eternal justice and those of posterity, as well as in the testimony of
+their own consciences, these renegades from the Revolution, these
+returned emigrants, these men of Ghent, these military and civil
+parvenus, these old Senators and spoiled Marshals of Bonaparte, these
+Procureur Generals, these new-made nobles of the Restoration, these
+three or four generations of Ministers sunk in public hatred and
+contempt, and stained with blood--all these, seasoned with a few
+notabilities, thrown in by the Royalty of the 7th of August, on
+condition they should never open their lips save to approve their
+master's commands--all this farrago of servilities was not competent to
+pronounce on the culpability of men seeking to enforce the results of
+the Revolution of July!"
+
+"It was not until the commencement of 1835, I think," said Marrast,
+"that Ministers opened a general onslaught upon the Parisian press. 'Le
+Républicain' was interdicted that year. It was then, too, that the laws
+against public criers and newspaper hawkers were instituted. As far back
+as '33, however, Rodde had braved all such prohibitions by selling and
+with impunity, too, his own paper in the streets. In May of '35 came on
+the general prosecution of the press. Rollin was advocate in the
+defence. There were warm words between Armand Carrel and his friend
+Dupont, the lawyer, and there was at one time apprehension of a duel."
+
+"The position of Armand Carrel with Thiers, his former colleague, was,
+at that time, a singular one," remarked Rollin. "Each seemed to be on
+the constant search for opportunities to exasperate the other. The
+editor assailed the Minister in his columns, and the Minister retaliated
+by an arrest. Carrel censured and ridiculed Thiers, though he respected
+his abilities, and Thiers feared and hated Carrel, though he admired his
+talents."
+
+"It was about this time that Fieschi exploded his infernal machine at
+the King, was it not?" asked Flocon. "Thiers arrested Carrel then, I
+know."
+
+"It was on the 28th of July of '35, at ten in the morning, on the
+Boulevard du Temple. This was the second attempt on the King's life, the
+first having been that of Bergeron, in November of '33. Carrel was
+arrested as an accomplice, it was pretended, for every one of these
+attempts has been attributed to the whole body of the Republicans,
+while they were utterly ignorant of them until they took place, and then
+bitterly denounced them. But the Government has made capital out of all
+these insane attempts, and against the opposition, too."
+
+"I've heard it asserted," said Rollin, "that the Government got up some
+of those little exhibitions of fireworks for that very purpose. They are
+quite harmless, so far as the old man is concerned--wonderfully so--and
+Fieschi was made a perfect fool of, so ridiculously lionized was he by
+King, Court and Ministers. Our friend Marie was advocate for that
+wretched old man, Pépin, Fieschi's accomplice, more a ghost than a
+living creature."
+
+"You are entirely right, friend Rollin," said Louis Blanc, "in the idea
+that every one of these attempts strengthens the Government and recoils
+on the opposition. No one should so vigilantly and vigorously watch for
+and suppress such attempts as we. Heaven defend the old despot from the
+assassin's weapon, as it seems well inclined to do, or the deed will
+surely be attributed to us. Every unsuccessful attempt at assassination
+is viewed like an unsuccessful attempt at revolt on the part of the
+opposition, and injures our cause accordingly. Better never to attempt
+than never to succeed."
+
+"Do you think it true, Louis, as was reported," asked Marrast, "that as
+soon as the smoke of Fieschi's explosion swept off, and the old man
+found himself standing unharmed amid a heap of slain and mangled,
+Marshal Mortier and Colonel Rieussec being among the killed, his first
+exclamation was this, with, ill-concealed gratification, 'Now I shall
+get my appanages and the dotations for the boys.'"
+
+"Nothing is more probable," said Louis Blanc. "That old man has but one
+impulse--selfishness, and but one attachment--to his family--his family,
+because it is his. His purse and family have for years been his sole
+objects of love. To aggrandize his own has been for years his sole end
+and aim. He parcels out the thrones and kingdoms of Europe among his
+children as if it were but a family estate."
+
+"What thoughtful selfishness!" exclaimed Flocon; "and at a moment, too,
+when he had but just escaped an awful death, and all around him flowed
+the blood and lay scattered the lacerated limbs of his faithful
+servants, either dead or dying with groans and shrieks of most agonizing
+torture, and all because of himself; how disgraceful that, at such a
+terrible moment, his first thought should have been of the few more
+francs his trembling hand was striving to tear from a people by whom he
+had already been made the richest man in Europe, and which the
+occurrence of this dreadful event might serve to win for him."
+
+"Well," said Rollin, "whether this event aided to win the appanages and
+dotations, and was so designed, or not, it is very sure the aforesaid
+appanages and dotations were secured. No wonder that such attempts
+succeed each other so rapidly--one every year, at the least! When was
+the next, Louis--that of Alibaud, I think?"
+
+"That took place about sunset on the 25th of June, '36," was the reply.
+"Alibaud discharged a walking-stick-gun at the King, as he left the
+Tuileries, on his way to Neuilly, at the corner of the Porte Royale.
+That Alibaud was a mere boy, and a very interesting and intelligent boy,
+too; but for some mysterious cause he did not find favor with the court,
+as did Fieschi. He evidently attempted the assassination from
+conviction, from a feeling of manifest destiny. After his failure, he
+only wished to die, and to die at once. All who have succeeded Alibaud
+have been but vulgar cut-throats."
+
+"In what year was the insurrection of Armand Barbes and Martin Bernard?"
+asked Flocon. "That proved most disastrous to our cause."
+
+"That was in '39, May, I think," answered Rollin. "Barbes, Blanqui and
+Bernard were arraigned as leaders. Marie and myself were advocates for
+Barbes. Blanqui was sentenced to death and Barbes to the galleys for
+life. But we obtained commutation of penalty for both."
+
+"And where is to be the end of all these things?" asked Marrast,
+gloomily, as he continued pacing the chamber with folded arms, his head
+resting on his bosom. "Are the ten years on which we have now entered to
+be characterized by the fruitless efforts of the past? Are the people of
+France again, and again, and again to strike for freedom, only to be
+stricken into the dust and trampled beneath the armed heel of a despot's
+myrmidons? Are the streets of Lyons, Paris and Marseilles again to be
+drenched with the life-blood of their dwellers, poured out as freely as
+water and as fruitlessly? Are we all again, for full ten years, to toil,
+strive, struggle and suffer; to be hunted down like the vilest
+criminals, and, like criminals, plunged into the most pestilential
+dungeons; to be stripped like slaves of our hard-won earnings, and to be
+deprived of the most humble franchises of men claiming at all to be
+free; to be treated with scorn and contumely, and to be debarred the
+exercise of those common rights, which, like air and water, belong to
+all; I say, brothers, are all these scenes to be repeated during the ten
+years on which we have now entered, as they have been witnessed during
+the ten years now past?"
+
+"You speak sadly, Armand," observed Rollin.
+
+"Not so sadly as I feel. I have listened with attention to the
+recapitulation of the political events of the past ten years in France;
+and most plainly, and as sadly as plainly, does the result prove that
+every movement in our cause has been as premature as it has been
+unsuccessful."
+
+"May we not gather wisdom, which shall conduct us to success in the
+future, from the very errors and disasters of the past?" remarked
+Flocon.
+
+"Alas!" despondingly replied Marrast, "what is there in our present to
+promise a bright future more than was in our past to promise us a bright
+present? Our great leaders of another generation have all left us, one
+after another--all have dropped into their graves. The cold marble has
+closed over their venerable brows, and they rest well. Yet they died
+and made no sign of hope. On us, young, inexperienced and rash, has
+devolved their task; but the mantle of their power and virtue has not,
+alas! descended with that task to aid in its momentous accomplishment.
+General Lamarque's sun went down in clouds. Midnight, deeper than
+Egyptian darkness, brooded over the delirious deathbed of Lafayette.
+Armand Carrel fell without hope; and are we wiser than they? How often,
+oh! how often have I listened to the words of wisdom that fell from
+those eloquent lips, even as a boy reverently listens to a parent--for
+such was Armand Carrel to me. Upon this very spot have I stood, in that
+very chair has he sat, that chair, which, with mingled shame and pride,
+I reflect is now filled by me--shame, that it is filled in a manner so
+unworthy of him--pride, that I should have been deemed fit, after him to
+fill it at all--in that very chair, I say, has his noble form reclined,
+when he for hours, even from night till the next day's dawn, dwelt with
+sorrowful eloquence upon his country's present, and looked forward with
+gloomy foreboding and prediction for the future. It almost seems to me
+that this mighty shade is with us now!"
+
+"And why was all this despondency, my dear Armand?" remarked Louis
+Blanc, mildly. "Was it not because our noble and gifted friend was
+essentially a soldier, not a civilian, not a statesman, not a
+revolutionist? Had Armand Carrel gone to Algeria, he would have died--if
+died he had not in an unknown duel, with an unknown bravo--he would
+have died a Marshal of France--a Bugeaud, a Chaugarnier, a Bedeau, a
+Cavaignac, a Clausel, a Lamoricière. Carrel had no faith in the masses
+to achieve a revolution. He never believed that they could even
+withstand a single charge of regular troops, much less repel and
+overcome it."
+
+"Not even with barricades?" asked Rollin.
+
+"Not even in defence of barricades," continued Louis Blanc.
+
+"Regular troops have much to learn," added Rollin, with a significant
+smile. "They will see the day--aye! and we all shall see it and rejoice
+at its coming, despite all melancholy prognostications, when the people
+of Paris will dictate abdication to the king of the barricades, from the
+top of the barricades, the people's throne! Nor will that event tarry
+long!"
+
+"I doubt it not, I doubt it not, Ledru!" exclaimed Louis Blanc, rejoiced
+that one of the youngest and least stable of their number appeared free
+from the apprehensions of one of the most influential and seemingly most
+reliable. "I accept the omen indicated by your enthusiasm. But I
+accounted for the vacillation and distrust of our lamented friend,
+Armand Carrel, by reverting to the fact that he relied entirely on
+regular troops, military skill, scientific tactics and severe
+subordination. Now, all of these belonged to our oppressors and none of
+them to us; and, inasmuch as he could not perceive that enthusiasm,
+passion for freedom, love of country and family, and the very wrath and
+rage of desperation itself sometimes not only supply the place of
+discipline, arms and the knowledge requisite to use them, but even
+enable vast masses to break down and crush beneath their heel the
+serried ranks of veteran troops, he could only despair at the prospects
+apparently before him. Besides, Armand Carrel, like all military men,
+was a man of action, not reflection--of execution, not contrivance--a
+soldier, not a conspirator. At the head of ten thousand veteran troops,
+he would have charged on thrice their number without discipline, with
+the confident assurance of sweeping them from his path as the chaff of
+the threshing floor is swept before the blast; but, with an
+undisciplined mob, as he contemptuously called the masses, he would have
+moved not a step. The larger the multitude, the less effective and the
+more impossible to manage he would have deemed it. A revolution
+accomplished by means of the three arms of the military
+service--artillery, cavalry and infantry--horse, foot and dragoons, he
+could readily conceive; but a revolution conducted to a successful issue
+only by means of pikes, axes, muskets and barricades, never, to the hour
+of his death, despite the victory of the Three Days, could Carrel
+comprehend."
+
+"Besides," said Flocon, "it must not be forgotten that Armand Carrel,
+though a most devoted friend to Republicanism, was never a member of the
+Société des Droits de l'Homme--was never, as we all now are--a
+Communist, a Socialist, a Fourierist, a friend to the laborer. No
+wonder he hoped so little for the people, and trusted to accomplish so
+little through them."
+
+"There can be no doubt that the social principle which Republicanism is
+now unconsciously assuming all over France," mildly remarked Louis
+Blanc, "is lending to the cause incalculable strength. How terribly
+impressed with a conviction of the justice of the cause in which they
+perished must have been the unhappy insurgents of Lyons, when, with this
+motto on their banner: 'To live toiling or die fighting,' they marched
+firmly up to the cannon's mouth and fought, and, thus fighting, fell.
+Yet this conviction is not peculiar to the workmen of Lyons. It pervades
+all Paris, all France, and needs only to be roused to act with an energy
+which no human power can resist. Social Republican will be the type of
+the next revolution in France--it must be. The French people have been
+dazzled by the mirage of liberty ever since '89,--but it has been only a
+mirage. On the last three days of July, '30, the people of Paris drove
+out one Bourbon to enthrone another. True, 'The State is myself,' was
+not the despotic motto he assumed, as did one of his successors, but it
+was 'Me and my family,' which has proved equally selfish, if not so
+absolute, and far more dangerous to freedom. With Lafayette and Benjamin
+Constant, the Citizen King they had made, quarreled as soon as on his
+throne, and Lafitte and Dupont de l'Eure, his supporters, were banished
+from the Court. Casimir Perier was called to crush the Liberals. Armand
+Carrel assailed the act, and urged a republic. 'Le National' was
+prosecuted, and insurrections followed. Thus was the Revolution of the
+Three Days won by the people to be seized and enjoyed by the
+Bourgeoisie. The next revolution will be won by the people, too, but the
+people will enjoy it!"
+
+"And how progresses our principles, Louis, among the people?" asked
+Marrast, who had listened attentively to every word that had been
+uttered.
+
+"Never so gloriously as now, Armand, never! Never has there been such a
+diffusion of information upon the subject of the rights of labor as now.
+Pagnerre tells me every day that volumes, tracts and pamphlets on this
+topic disappear like magic from his shelves."
+
+"Has not the Minister a hand in this mysterious disappearance of
+Communist literature?" asked Rollin. "We all know he is quite frantic on
+the topic of popular education."
+
+"Oh! yes, we all understand Guizot's love for the people! His system of
+education promulgated in 1833 was so very beautiful that it was almost a
+pity it was utterly impracticable. But Guizot has very little to do with
+Pagnerre's book-shelves, or with Pagnerre in any way, except to
+prosecute him from time to time for publishing Cormenin's withering
+tracts designed for the Minister himself, and yet it would almost seem
+there was a design to exhaust the market of the publications of our
+friends; only the great mass of them go to the provinces and large
+quantities abroad. My own little brochure, 'The Organization of Work,'
+after having fallen stillborn from the press, died a natural death and
+been laid out in state for a year or two on Pagnerre's shelves, all at
+once is resurrected, runs through half a dozen large editions, and is
+translated into half a dozen languages. The same is true of Lamartine's
+'Vision of the Future,' and the same of Cormenin's tracts, and of the
+ten thousand brochures on this same subject of Communism in all its
+different shades and phrases, and in every variety of size, form and
+style of writing and appearance. These publications are adapted to every
+taste and comprehension. The workman is suited as well as the savant.
+All this savors of magic. Even my most sanguine anticipations are
+surpassed by reality. There will never long lack a supply for a demand,
+be that demand what it may. A demand for Fourier literature has turned
+all the pens in Paris hard at work upon it--novelists, essayists,
+pamphleteers--while the Porte St. Antoine, the Porte St. Martin and all
+the minor theatres, where are found the masses, swarm with melodramas,
+farces and vaudevilles on the same subject, and none of you have
+forgotten the powerful play, entitled 'The Laborer of Lyons,' attributed
+to M. Dantès, recently produced with such success on the boards of the
+Français itself."
+
+"And who is this M. Dantès," asked Ledru Rollin, "if you will suffer me
+to interrupt?"
+
+"Decidedly the most remarkable man in the French Chamber of Deputies,"
+replied Marrast. "In powers of natural eloquence I never saw his rival."
+
+"Nor is that all," added Louis Blanc. "Unlike most men noted as mere
+orators, he is a sound logician, as well as a polished rhetorician. As a
+political economist he has few equals. To that subject he seems to have
+devoted much study, while his familiarity with the political history of
+France and of the times generally all over Christendom seems boundless.
+In debate, you observe he is never at a loss for fact or argument, let
+the discussion take what direction it may."
+
+"And he has celebrity also as a writer, has he not?" asked Ledru Rollin.
+
+"The author of 'The Laborer of Lyons' must be a man of distinguished
+literary genius," was the reply.
+
+"Better than all," said Flocon, "he is devoted heart and soul to the
+good cause."
+
+"Such devotedness to a cause I never witnessed," said Marrast. "He puts
+us all to the blush. With him it appears a matter of direct individual
+interest. He is perfectly untiring. He is like one impelled by his fate.
+Love or vengeance could not force onward a man to the attainment of an
+object more irresistibly than he seems forced, and that, too, without
+the slightest apparent stain of personal interest or ambition. That man
+appears to me a miracle--a pure philanthropist. He strives, struggles,
+suffers, sacrifices, and all with the sole object of ameliorating the
+condition of his race."
+
+"It is, indeed, wonderful," said Rollin, thoughtfully. "Do you know,
+Marrast, anything of his past history?"
+
+"Little, if anything. Of himself he never speaks, and I can gather
+nothing from others. Even his constituents had known nothing of him but
+a few months before he became their representative in the Chamber. His
+popularity with them he owes to his efforts to ameliorate their
+condition. At his own expense he established among them a Phalanstrie,
+which is now in most successful operation."
+
+"He is rich, then?" asked Flocon.
+
+"Seemingly not, to judge from his habits of life," replied Marrast. "Not
+a man in the Chamber is more Republican in garb, manner, equipage or
+residence than he, and yet he may be rich."
+
+"Is he married?" asked Rollin.
+
+"He has been, I am told," said Marrast. "But we interrupt you, Louis.
+You were alluding to the unusual influences now at work for our cause."
+
+"I was about speaking of the newspaper press," said Louis Blanc. "Never
+has there been known such a revolution in favor of Reform and Communist
+journals, and to none is this better known than to some of ourselves.
+There's Flocon's new journal, 'La Réforme,' that has leaped at once into
+a circulation never before achieved but by long years of toil and
+enterprise. The old 'National,' we need but to look around us to be
+sure, was never more prosperous than now, while I am free to confess
+that my journal, 'Le Bon Sens,' which has been a sickly child ever since
+its birth, has, within three months, tripled its number of readers, or,
+at least, its payers. The same is in the main true of 'Le Monde,' by La
+Croix, 'Le Journal du Peuple,' by Dubose, 'Le Courier Français,' by
+Chatelain, 'La Commerce,' by Bert, 'La Minerve,' by Lemaine, 'La
+Presse,' by Girardin, and all the journals in Paris which diffuse true
+ideas upon labor and the rights of the people, be they in other respects
+what they may. Even the 'Charivari,' which views the old King and his
+Ministers as fair butts of ridicule, perceives a marked increase in its
+patronage since it commenced that course, which sudden popularity
+naturally excites it to increase of zeal in the same path. Besides all
+this, an army of new papers, aiming to aid the great cause, have not
+only sprung up of late, like mushrooms, in Paris, but all over France,
+and even all over Europe; and so far appear they from interfering with
+each other's prospects that the more there are the better they seem
+sustained and the more ably conducted. A swarm of new and unknown
+writers for the press on this great subject seems all at once to have
+appeared from unseen hiding-places."
+
+"This is very strange, Louis," said Marrast, "and yet it is, doubtless,
+very true. I had observed what you remark myself, although I have viewed
+the movement less hopefully for the cause of the Republic than you."
+
+"Depend upon it, Armand," said Louis Blanc, smiling, "that
+Republicanism and Socialism are identical terms, as much so as Communism
+and despotism are antagonistic terms."
+
+"But how do you account for this wonderful change, this unprecedented
+fever for Fourierism?" asked Flocon.
+
+"I don't pretend to account for it at all. The merits of the cause have,
+perhaps, begun to be properly appreciated. Unusual efforts have been
+made by our friends of late. Whole nations and epochs are sometimes
+seized with a contagious mania for peculiar species of literature, as
+for everything else. But I will hint to you a suspicion which I have
+recently entertained, namely, that, after all, the rapid sale and ready
+market for every species of Fourier literature is not an unerring
+indication of the amount of reading of such literature, or the demand
+that actually exists of buyers as well as readers--individual ones at
+least. As for the journalistic literature, that I have learned is,
+without doubt, gratuitously distributed, to a great extent, among the
+masses."
+
+"But can the masses read the papers?" asked Marrast.
+
+"Each family, house, neighborhood, café or cabaret, at any rate, has, at
+least one reader," said Rollin; "and all the men, women and children
+have ears to hear, if not power to comprehend. But some of these papers,
+which I have seen, come down in style to the very humblest
+comprehension."
+
+"Can it be," asked Flocon, "that there is such a club as a society for
+the diffusion of social knowledge in Paris, after the form of that in
+London, instituted by Lord Henry Brougham and his Whig coadjutors, for
+the diffusion of general information, and so opposed by the Tories."
+
+"If there be such an association," said Louis Blanc, "it has managed to
+elude all my vigilance thus far, and that of the Government, too, for
+Guizot can perceive, if no one else can, the inevitable effect of all
+this, and he has no idea that the dear people of France shall be
+educated by any one save himself. But, actually, there seems to me to
+exist too much unity of purpose and action in this enterprise for it to
+be the work of an association. I should rather suppose one powerful and
+philanthropic mind at the head of the movement, were there not two
+things so plainly opposed to it as to forbid the idea--the first being
+that there is no one man in Europe who is rich enough to expend such
+immense sums upon such an enterprise, if he would, and the second that
+there is no man who has the subject sufficiently at heart to do it, if
+he could."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+"WAIT AND HOPE."
+
+
+Just then a light rap was heard at the private door, which Marrast
+immediately hastened to open, as if in anticipation of the arrival of a
+friend.
+
+A brief and rapid colloquy ensued; then M. Dantès, the Deputy from
+Marseilles, was introduced. He seemed acquainted with, and to be held in
+high regard by all present. His dress, as usual, was black, with a white
+cravat, and his manner and bearing had all that magnetism and dignity
+which so deeply impressed those he met.
+
+"I find you in private conference, do I not, Messieurs?" asked he,
+glancing around with a smile. "I pray you let me not interrupt. I have
+called but for a moment to speak with M. Marrast respecting a measure in
+the Chamber, and have consented to enter only at his solicitation."
+
+"You are right, M. Dantès," replied Marrast, "in supposing us engaged in
+a private conference, and upon matters of deep import, though
+conferences in this office can never be so private or so important as
+not to derive benefit from the presence and counsel of the Deputy from
+Marseilles."
+
+"Most true," observed Louis Blanc; "and so far from intrusion do we
+view your arrival that we can but consider it most opportune that we
+have the privilege of referring to you a question on which, between us,
+especially between our friend Marrast and myself, there seems some
+little diversity of sentiment."
+
+"It would, I fear," said M. Dantès, "be unpardonable arrogance in one so
+young as I am in the great cause of human liberty to offer counsel to
+you, who are all veterans, and most of you little less than martyrs to
+your enthusiasm. But no good citizen will shrink from the responsibility
+of declaring the results of his reflections on all topics which have
+reference to the general weal."
+
+"We differ mainly in this," said Marrast: "Louis Blanc attributes the
+Republican failures of the past ten years to prematurity and want of
+preparation in our attempts, and contends that all those reverses may be
+retrieved by patience and prudence in future, while, to my mind, there
+is nothing to indicate for the future, from the same causes, different
+results than those experienced in the past."
+
+"Concert of action," said M. Dantès, mildly, "is always an indispensable
+requisite in the accomplishment of every enterprise which relies for its
+success on association, or the combined efforts of individuals laboring
+for a common end; yet, with all the concert of action which can possibly
+be attained, the best arranged and best digested scheme in the world may
+be ruined by premature movement. Of this we surely have sad proof in the
+history of the past ten years alluded to. There is something of truth
+in the declaration so frequently made that the French people are not yet
+prepared for freedom. If this be so, then it is the duty of their
+friends to prepare them. It is folly to suppose that the masses should,
+at first, intuitively know all their rights and the best mode of
+vindicating them. This they must be taught; and, to this end, the press
+should be unceasingly at work, not only all over France, but all over
+Europe, in diffusing correct views upon life and labor, and political
+rights and powers. There should be, also, concert of action among the
+friends of freedom, and clubs should at once be instituted in every
+city, town and village in France, which should be in private and
+intimate correspondence with similar clubs at Paris and in all the
+capitals of Christendom. There should, likewise, be unity of action
+introduced among the masses themselves. In a city like Paris, and among
+a people like the French, secret signals can easily be arranged, by
+which, at any hour of the night, or of the day, fifty thousand laborers
+in their blouses might be concentrated at any point where their presence
+is required, and that, too, with arms in their hands furnished from
+secret arsenals; and thus would those pitiable slaughters of helpless
+insurgents, like those of sheep in the shambles, we have so often
+witnessed, be avoided, if nothing besides were gained. The people are
+ever but too ready to pour out their blood, and the most difficult and
+delicate task in our enterprise is, after all, to restrain them--to
+impress upon them the all important maxim, without which nothing great,
+good or enduring is achieved, those three words in which all human
+wisdom is contained, 'Wait and hope.'"
+
+"And for what are we to wait and hope, for which we have not already in
+vain waited and hoped the past ten years?" asked Marrast.
+
+"The true hour to strike!" was the firm answer.
+
+"And that hour, when will it come?"
+
+"It may come quickly, as it will come surely, soon or late! It cannot be
+that the Revolution of July should continue much longer to result in the
+solemn mockery it has. It cannot be that its friends should much longer
+be withheld from those by whom it was achieved, only to aggrandize one
+old man and his sons. It cannot be that the unmitigated and disgusting
+selfism of Louis Philippe, and his efforts to ally himself with every
+crowned head in Europe--not for the glory of France, but for his
+own--will much longer be overlooked or their perils masked. The
+appanages grasped by himself--the dotation and bridal outfit of the Duke
+of Orléans--the dotation sought for the Duke of Nemours, and his
+appointment as Regent during the minority of the Count of Paris--the
+Governorship of Algeria bestowed on the youthful and inexperienced
+Aumale, to the insult of so many brave and victorious generals--the
+naval supremacy, to which has been exalted the ambitious Joinville, and
+his union to the opulent Brazilian Princess--the effort to unite the
+young Montpensier with the Infanta of Spain--the environment of Paris
+with Bastilles, with the avowed purpose of fortifying order by turning
+the ordnance which should protect into enginery of destruction--an
+immense standing army--the notorious corruption of officials, and the
+audacious dabbling of Ministers in the stocks, if not the King himself,
+by means of information obtained by the Government telegraph, and
+withheld from the people, or of information manufactured by the
+telegraph designed to affect the Bourse--the unprecedented number of
+placemen occupying seats in the Chamber of Deputies, yet receiving
+exorbitant salaries as incumbents of civil offices, one man being often
+in receipt of the salaries of several offices, though performing the
+duties of none--the fact that Ministers have maintained majorities by
+unblushing bribery in elections--that hardly one man in two hundred is
+an elector--the profligate arts of corruption by which every able man is
+bought by the Court--the disgraceful censorship of the press and the
+drama--the enormous appropriations for the civil list, wrung out by
+grinding taxes from the toil and sweat of millions--the absurd
+assumption, yet the monstrous power, over the press and its conductors,
+of that conclave of hoary dotards called the Chamber of Peers--the utter
+and most impious disregard of the deprivation and misery of the
+operative and laborer, although arrayed side by side with the insolence
+and wealth pampered by the taxes torn from themselves--the total
+forgetfulness of the self-evident truth of the right of all men to
+labor, unrestricted by the baleful influences of the competition of
+capitalists--these facts, properly urged and set forth by the press,
+from the tribune and in the clubs, in connection with due enlightenment
+of the masses upon their rights as to labor and its reward and the duty
+of government thereupon could not fail to prepare the popular mind, all
+over France, and all over Europe, for reform--for revolution."
+
+"Unquestionably," cried Louis Blanc, "such would be the effect; and it
+would not only prepare the people for reform, and stimulate them to
+obtain it, but it would make them Republicans--true
+Republicans--American Republicans! The Americans do not plume themselves
+on the title citizen, but they work; they dispute little about words,
+but clear their lands; they do not talk of exterminating anybody, but
+they cover the sea with their ships, they construct immense canals,
+roads and steamers without jabbering at every stroke of the spade about
+the rights of man. With them, labor, merit, talent and honest opulence
+are honored and rewarded aristocracies. Such Republicans would furnish
+France more Washingtons, Jeffersons and Madisons, and fewer
+Robespierres, Dantons and Marats!"
+
+"There can be no doubt," remarked Flocon, "that the paramount interest
+in a republic is that of those who work, that the labor question is of
+supreme importance, that the profound problem now submitted to the
+industrial nations of Christendom demands satisfactory solution, and
+that the long-enduring and most iniquitous miseries of those who toil
+must cease. Reform, revolution and government which achieve not these,
+achieve nothing! They would be worse than useless. The measures
+suggested by our distinguished friend seem to me eminently calculated to
+attain the consummation we desire."
+
+"A good government must and always will systematically uphold the poor,
+and ever interpose to protect the weak against the strong," said Louis
+Blanc. "The state should be tutelary for the ignorant, the poor and the
+suffering of every description. We must have a guardian government--a
+government that will accord the aid of that mighty engine, credit, not
+to the rich only, but also to the poor. It must interpose likewise in
+the matter of industry, and exclude that antagonistical principle of
+competition--the poisoned fount of so much virulence, violence and ruin.
+Our maxim is, brothers, and in this do we all concur, 'Human
+Solidarity,' and our motto, 'Unity, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.'
+All men are of one family, and once thoroughly sensible of this kindred,
+discord, hate and selfism will no longer be possible."
+
+"The views advanced," said Ledru Rollin, "so far as they tend to the
+elevation of the masses and to popular preparation for reform,
+Republicanism or revolution, have my most cordial approval; but I would
+beg to ask how long are the people to 'wait and hope?' When is to come
+the hour to strike?"
+
+"Who can tell," said M. Dantès, in his low, clear and musical tones,
+"at what moment the breath will come which may hurl on its errand of
+devastation the avalanche which the snows and suns of centuries,
+perchance, have been preparing for its awful mission? In the stillness
+of the night-time, beneath the clear blue sky of summer, or amid the
+ravings of the midnight tempest, its dread march is ordered, and in
+resistless, crushing sublimity it begins to move on to accomplish its
+terrible errand. Who may predict the precise moment when the earthquake
+shall rock, the tornado sweep, the red lightning scathe, or the lava
+flood desolate? And who shall tell the day or the hour when the people,
+in their majesty and might, shall rise to avenge their wrongs? The
+snow-flake falls fleecily on the mountain's top through many a long and
+silent night; a land green as Eden smiles over the volcano; through many
+a calm and sunny day the electric flame gathers in the firmament! At
+length, when least expected, the avalanche sweeps, the volcano bursts,
+the red bolt strikes. France is the victim of many wrongs. Which one of
+them shall prove the last drop in her cup of bitterness we know not.
+France is divided into many political sects, and all but one aim at
+revolution. Which one of all shall it be to set the ball of revolution
+in motion? The Legitimists, who consider the Duke of Bordeaux the
+rightful heir, and Louis Philippe a usurper; the Bonapartists, who think
+they evoke the great shade of Napoleon in the person of his unworthy
+descendant; or the old Republicans? As for the Conservatives, let them
+with Guizot at their head, uphold themselves if they can, and let the
+dynasties under Barrot and Thiers overthrow and succeed their factional
+foes. Their petty quarrels we care not for. Nor shall we, the
+Communists, ever suffer ourselves to be deemed the revolutionary party;
+but the revolution once commenced, let us throw ourselves into its
+torrent, and with our thorough, perfect and secret organization, we
+cannot fail to shape it most successfully to our own, our righteous
+ends. The hour when revolution may commence we cannot predict, as it is
+not our policy to start or precipitate it; but that hour may come
+quickly. It must come on the demise of Louis Philippe, which event
+cannot be long delayed, and it may be precipitated before. Nor will
+France alone be convulsed. As the news of that old man's death, on the
+lightning's wing, spreads over Europe, the electric wire will prove but
+a train passing through repeated mines, which, one after the other, will
+explode with awful devastation. Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg, the
+strongholds of despotism in Europe, each will totter--all but the last
+will fall. The press is powerless on the Russian serf. Russia will be
+the tyrant's last citadel. Italy will throw off the Austrian yoke and be
+free. Gregory XVIII. will shortly die. A wise, far-seeing and benevolent
+priest, named Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, born at Sinigaglia, and
+now a cardinal, with the title of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, will
+succeed to the Papal See, and Italy will be a republic; Genoa, Venice,
+Naples, Lombardy, Piedmont and Sardinia will be sister yet sovereign
+states, forming one union--the constellation of freedom, the favorite
+scheme of Napoleon's better days at last achieving reality. Switzerland,
+with her green hills and her field Morgarten, her priestly despots
+expelled, shall also be free. But I weary you, Messieurs."
+
+"By no means," cried Marrast, cordially clasping M. Dantès by the hand.
+"I have listened in silence to your earnest exposition of the policy you
+suggest, and so truly do I subscribe to it that, henceforth, I am your
+disciple and adopt your motto, 'Wait and hope' for my own. But it is
+nearly two o'clock. In an hour the Chamber sits."
+
+"And, meanwhile, Messieurs," interrupted M. Dantès, "I know not that we
+can better employ ourselves, after so protracted a séance, than to
+repair to Véfour's. This talking is hungry work, and listening and
+thinking, which are by far more tedious, are still more so. So to
+Véfour's."
+
+"The séance 'National' is closed!" cried Ledru Rollin, laughing, as the
+whole company descended the gloomy stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS PRIMA DONNA.
+
+
+All fashionable Paris was excited over the announcement of a new prima
+donna, whose wonderful achievements in Italian opera had set even the
+exacting critics of Italy wild with enthusiasm and delight.
+
+This great artiste was no other than the renowned Louise d'Armilly. She
+had never before sung in the presence of a Parisian audience, but her
+fame had preceded her, and it was accepted as certain that her triumph
+at the Académie Royale would be both instantaneous and overwhelming.
+
+She was to assume the rôle of Lucrezia Borgia, in Donizetti's brilliant
+opera of that name, a rôle in which the enterprising director of the
+Académie Royale assured the expectant public that she possessed no
+equal.
+
+For weeks every Parisian journal had been sounding her praises with
+unremitting zeal, and now her name was as familiar as a household word
+in all the high society salons, where the ladies and their gallants
+could talk of nothing but the approaching operatic event, while in the
+cafés and on the boulevards an equal degree of interest was exhibited.
+
+Even the masses, notwithstanding the political agitation in which they
+were involved, had caught the prevailing excitement, and the leaders of
+the contending parties themselves paused amid their heated discussions
+to talk of Louise d'Armilly.
+
+The career of this young and beautiful artiste had been remarkable. Her
+début had been made at Brussels, about two years before, in company with
+her brother, M. Léon d'Armilly, and there, as well as at all the
+theatres of Italy, La Scala, Argentina and Valle, they had roused a
+perfect storm of operatic enthusiasm.
+
+The origin of this young artiste was veiled in the deepest mystery.
+Rumor ascribed to her descent from one of the oldest and most
+respectable families of France; and domestic trials, among which was a
+matrimonial misadventure, no less than the arrest of an Italian Prince
+whom she was about to wed, on the bridal night, as an escaped galley
+slave, were assigned as the cause which had given her splendid powers to
+the stage.
+
+At an earlier hour than usual--for Parisian fashion never fills the
+opera-house until the curtain falls on the second act--the Rue
+Lepelletier was crowded with carriages, La Pinon with fiacres, and the
+Grande Batelière and the passages to the Boulevard des Italiens with
+persons on foot, all hastening toward that magnificent edifice,
+constructed within the space of a single year by Debret, to replace the
+building in the Rue de Richelieu ordered to be razed by the Government
+because of the assassination at its door of the Duke of Berri, in
+1820--that magnificent structure which accommodates two thousand
+spectators with seats.
+
+Among the first in the orchestra stalls were Beauchamp and Debray, whose
+attention was divided between the stage and the arrivals of splendidly
+attired elégantes in the different loges, during the overture. All the
+élite of Paris seemed on the qui vive.
+
+"It will be a splendid house," observed Debray.
+
+"The débutante, be she whom she may, should feel flattered by such an
+unexampled assemblage of all the ton of Paris."
+
+Orchestra, balcony, galleries, amphitheatres, lobbies and parterre were
+packed; every portion of the vast edifice, in short, was thronged except
+a few of the loges and baignoires, into which every moment brilliant
+companies were entering.
+
+"Who is that tall, dark military man, with the heavy moustache, now
+making his way into the Minister's box?" asked Beauchamp, after a pause.
+
+"That man is no less a personage than the Governor of Algeria, Eugène
+Cavaignac, Marshal of Camp," said Debray. "He reported himself at the
+War Office this morning, and is the lion of the house."
+
+"Ah!" cried the journalist; "and that is the hero of Constantine! What a
+frank, open countenance, and what a distingué bearing and manner!"
+
+"You would not suppose all that man's life passed in a camp, would you?"
+
+"His career has, I understand, been remarkable," said Beauchamp.
+
+"Very. His father was a Conventionist of '92, a famous old fellow, who,
+among other terrible things laid at his door, is said to have pawned an
+old man's life, old Labodère, for his daughter's honor; somewhat, you
+remember, as Francis I. spared St. Valliar's life for the favor of the
+lovely Diana of Poitiers, his only child. His aged mother is yet living,
+a woman of strong mind, though seventy, and he does nothing without her
+advice. His brother Godefroi's name was notorious as that of a powerful
+Republican leader for years before his decease. At eighteen Eugène
+entered the Polytechnic School. At twenty-two he was a sub-lieutenant in
+the engineer corps of the second regiment. In '28 he was first
+lieutenant in France; in '29 he was captain; in '34 he was in Algeria;
+and, in '39, his cool, bold, decided but discreet conduct had made him
+chef de bataillon, despite the fact that he had incurred the Royal
+displeasure some years before by a disloyal toast at a banquet. In '40
+he was lieutenant-colonel; in '41 marshal of camp, and first commander
+of division of Tlemeen; in '43, he was conqueror of Constantine, at the
+first siege of which I so nearly lost my own valuable head, and he is
+now Governor of Algeria, after service there of fourteen years."
+
+"And the tall and sinewy man beside him, presenting such a contrast to
+Cavaignac, with his light complexion, gray hair, and sullen and not very
+intelligent expression?"
+
+"Oh! that is General Bugeaud, by some deemed the real conqueror of
+Algeria. But he's not at all popular with the army. His manners are
+simple and excessively blunt. He is a perfect despot with his staff,
+'tis said; yet he is quite a wag when in good-humor, and, at Ministerial
+dinners, can unbend and make himself as agreeable as need be wished. His
+voice is as harsh as a Cossack's, and in perfect contrast to that of
+Cavaignac, which is the richest and most musical you ever heard, yet
+distinct, emphatic and impressive."
+
+"Bugeaud incurred intense odium with the opposition for his unwarranted
+severity as jailor of the Duchess of Berri, in '34, and his killing
+Dulong in a duel, because of a deserved taunt on the subject."
+
+"Bugeaud did his duty," said the Secretary, "though a man of his nature
+could hardly perform such a duty with gentleness. Bugeaud is not a
+gentleman; he knows it, and don't try to seem one. He is only a soldier.
+But there comes his very particular foe; General Lamoricière. That
+magnificent woman on his arm is his wife and the sister of the lady who
+follows, with her husband, the ex-Minister, Adolphe Thiers."
+
+"What a contrast!" cried Beauchamp. "The tall and elegant figure of
+Lamoricière, in his brilliant uniform of the Spahis, half oriental, half
+French, with his lovely wife, and the low, swarthy little ex-Minister in
+complete black, with his huge round spectacles on his nose nearly twice
+the size of his eyes, and a wife on his arm nearly double his stature.
+Why, Thiers reminds me of a Ghoul gallanting a Peri."
+
+"And yet that same dark little ex-Minister has perhaps, in many respects
+the most powerful mind--at all events, the most available mind--impelled
+as it is by his restless ambition, in all France. Do you observe how
+incessantly his keen black eye flashes around the house, beneath his
+huge glasses?"
+
+"He seems perfectly aware that every eye in the house is directed toward
+his loge. But is it true that his brother-in-law owes his rapid rise to
+his influence at Court?"
+
+"By no means," replied Debray. "If there is a man in the French army who
+has achieved his own fortunes, that man is Lamoricière. He went to
+Algeria a lieutenant, and bravely and gallantly has he attained his
+present brilliant position. It was he who proposed the creation of a
+corps of native Arab troops, like the Sepoys of British India; and he
+was appointed colonel of the first regiment of Spahis. Our quondam
+friend, Maximilian Morrel, has a command in this regiment, and is a
+protégé of his illustrious exemplar."
+
+"The hostility between Lamoricière and Bugeaud arises, I suppose, from
+the latter's detestable disposition, his overbearing and dictatorial
+temper. Lamoricière is not a man, I take it, to be the slave of any
+one."
+
+"Rivalry in Africa is thought to have originated the feud," remarked
+Debray, "and political differences in Paris to have inflamed it.
+Bugeaud is a Legitimist, and Lamoricière a Republican."
+
+"Silence!" cried the musical connoisseurs in the orchestra. "The curtain
+rises."
+
+As the curtain rose a hush of expectation reigned over the audience. The
+hum and bustle ceased, and silence most profound succeeded. The
+appearance of the fair cantatrice was the signal for such a reception as
+only a Parisian audience can give, and the first strains that issued
+from her lips assured them that their applause was not misplaced.
+
+And surely never was the dark Duchess of Ferrara more faithfully
+personated than by the present artiste. This vraisemblance, which is so
+seldom witnessed in the opera, seemed to strike every eye. Her figure
+was tall and majestic, and voluptuously developed. Her air and bearing
+were haughty, dignified, and queen-like. Her complexion was very dark,
+but perfectly clear; her forehead broad and high; her brows heavy, but
+gracefully arched; her eyes large, black and flashing; her hair dark as
+night, and arranged with great simplicity in glossy bands; and her mouth
+large, but filled with teeth of pearl-like whiteness, contrasted by lips
+of coral wet with the spray. The entire outline of her face was Roman,
+and exhibited in its contour and lineaments even more than Roman
+sternness and decision; and its effect was still more heightened by a
+large mole at one corner of her mouth and the velvet robes in which she
+was appropriately costumed.
+
+The scene between the Duchess and the Spaniard, Gubetta, was received
+with the utmost applause, and the pathos of that between the son and his
+unknown mother, which succeeded, touched the audience to tears; but when
+the maskers rushed in and her vizard was torn off, and her true name
+proclaimed, and, amid her heart-rending wailings, the curtain fell on
+the first act, the shouts were perfectly thunderous with enthusiasm. The
+rôle of Gennaro was performed by the brother of the cantatrice, Léon
+d'Armilly, a young man of twenty, of delicate and graceful figure, and
+as decidedly blonde as his sister was brunette. Nature seemed to have
+made a great mistake in sex when this brother and sister were fashioned.
+Indeed, it seemed hardly possible that they could be brother and sister,
+a remark constantly made by the audience, and the kindred announced on
+the bills was generally viewed as one of those convenient relationships
+often assumed on the stage, but having no more reality than those of the
+dramatis personæ themselves.
+
+"A second Pasta!" cried Château-Renaud, entering the stalls immediately
+on the descent of the curtain. "Heard you ever such a magnificent
+contralto?"
+
+"Saw you ever such a magnificent bust?" asked Beauchamp.
+
+"Were it not for a few manifest impossibilities," thoughtfully remarked
+Debray, "I should swear that this same angelic Louise d'Armilly was no
+other than a certain very beautiful, very eccentric and very talented
+young lady whom we all once knew as a star of Parisian fashion, and who,
+the last time she was in this house, sat in the same loge where now sit
+the African generals."
+
+"Whom can you mean, Debray?" cried Beauchamp.
+
+"A certain haughty young lady, who was to have married an Italian
+Prince, but, on the night of the bridal, in the midst of the
+festivities, the house being thronged with guests, and even while the
+contract was receiving the signatures, the Prince was arrested as an
+escaped galley-slave, and at his trial proved to be the illegitimate son
+of the bride's mother and a certain high legal functionary, the
+Procureur du Roi, now at Charenton, through whose burning zeal for
+justice the horrible discovery transpired."
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed Château-Renaud. "You cannot mean Eugénie Danglars,
+daughter of the bankrupt baron, whom our unhappy friend Morcerf was once
+to have wed?"
+
+"The very same," quietly rejoined the Secretary; "but this lady cannot
+be Mlle. Danglars, I say absolutely, for many sufficient reasons," he
+quickly added; then, as if to turn the conversation, he hastily
+remarked: "Ah! there are M. Dantès and M. Lamartine, as usual,
+together."
+
+"M. Dantès!" exclaimed the Count, in surprise, looking around.
+"Impossible!"
+
+"And yet most true," observed Beauchamp; "in the third loge from the
+Minister's to the right. What a wonderful resemblance there is between
+those men--the poet and the Deputy! One would suppose them brothers. The
+same tall and elegant figure, the same white and capacious brow, the
+same dark, blazing eye, the same raven hair, and, above all, the same
+most unearthly and spiritual pallor of complexion."
+
+"No wonder M. Dantès is pale," said the Count. "Have you not heard of
+the occurrence of this evening in the Chamber? M. Dantès was in the
+midst of one of his powerful harangues against the Government, when
+suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he stopped--coughed violently
+several times, and pressed his handkerchief to his mouth; then taking a
+small vial from his vest pocket, he placed it to his lips, and
+instantaneously, as if new life had entered him, proceeded more
+eloquently than ever to the conclusion of his speech."
+
+"I heard something of this," said Beauchamp.
+
+"As he descended from the tribune his friends thronged around him,
+anxious about his health. He quieted their apprehensions with his
+peculiar smile of assurance, but I observed that his white handkerchief
+was spotted with blood, and he almost immediately left the Chamber."
+
+"That man will kill himself in the cause he has espoused," remarked
+Debray. "See how ghastly he now looks. But so much the better for the
+Ministry. He is a formidable foe. Indeed, that loge contains the two
+most powerful opponents of the Government."
+
+"And who are those men just entering the box?" asked Beauchamp.
+
+"None other than the two rival astronomers of Europe," said Debray, "and
+yet most intimate friends. The taller and elder, the one with gray hair,
+a dark, sharp Bedouin countenance, and that large, wild, black eye, with
+a smile of mingled sarcasm and humor ever on his thin lip, is Emanuel
+Arago. The other, the short, robust man, with fair complexion, sandy
+hair, bright blue eye and vivacious expression, is Le Verrier, the most
+tireless star-gazer science has produced since Galileo. But hush! the
+curtain is up."
+
+"Oh! it matters not," said the Count; "only Gennaro and the Spaniard
+appear in the second act, and I have neither eyes nor ears save for the
+Duchess to-night. But who are those, Beauchamp?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the loge on the first tier, next to the Minister's and directly
+opposite to that of M. Dantès?"
+
+"Ah! two officers of the Spahis and two most exquisite women!" exclaimed
+Debray. "They belong, doubtless, to the African party in the Minister's
+loge. Your lorgnette, Count. What a splendid woman!"
+
+Hardly had the Secretary raised the glass to his eyes before he dropped
+it with the exclamation:
+
+"A miracle! a miracle!"
+
+"What?" cried both of the other young men, turning to the box at which
+Debray was gazing.
+
+"Messieurs, do you remember the fair Valentine de Villefort, whose
+untimely and mysterious demise all the young people of Paris so much
+bewailed, some two or three years ago, and whose lovely remains, we,
+with our own eyes, saw deposited in the Saint-Méran and de Villefort
+vault at Père Lachaise, one bitter cold autumn evening, and there
+listened most patiently and piously to a whole breviary of mournful
+speeches, declarative of the said Valentine's most superlative
+excellence?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, we remember it well," was the reply.
+
+"Then behold, and never dare to doubt the reappearance of the dead again
+to the ocular organs of humanity."
+
+"Valentine de Villefort!" exclaimed the Count, after a careful and
+scrutinizing survey, "by all that's supernatural; and more exquisitely
+lovely than ever!"
+
+"Then it was true, after all, the strange story we heard," said
+Beauchamp, "of the young lady's resurrection and marriage to Maximilian
+Morrel, somewhere far away in parts unknown?"
+
+"No doubt," replied the Count, "for, if I mistake not--and I'm sure I
+don't mistake, now that I look more closely--that stalwart, splendid
+fellow, with the broad forehead, black eyes and moustache, and the order
+of the Legion of Honor on his breast, to set off his rich uniform of the
+Spahis, and on whose arm the fair apparition is leaning, is no other
+than Maximilian Morrel himself--the identical man who saved my
+worthless neck from a yataghan in Algeria."
+
+"How dark he's grown!" said Debray.
+
+"No more so than all these African heroes--for instance, Cavaignac and
+Lamoricière."
+
+"But what a splendid contrast there is between the young Colonel of the
+Spahis and his lovely bride, if such she be! He, dark as a Corsican;
+she, fair as an Englishwoman--he, upright as a poplar; she, drooping
+like a willow--his hair and eyes black as midnight, while her soft,
+languishing orbs are as blue as the summer sky, and her glossy ringlets
+as brown as a chestnut!"
+
+"On my word," said Beauchamp, "the Count grows poetical! Morrel had
+better keep his beautiful wife out of the way! But have you discovered
+who are the other couple in the box?" he added to the Secretary, who had
+his lorgnette in most vigilant requisition. "Any more discoveries,
+Debray?"
+
+A sigh might have been heard as the Secretary took his glass from his
+eye, and replied simply:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And who now?" asked Château-Renaud. "There seems no end to discoveries
+to-night."
+
+"The young man who, by his decorations, seems a chef de bataillon of the
+Spahis," replied Debray, "I cannot make out. But, be he whom he may, he
+is effectually disguised from his most intimate friends by his luxuriant
+beard and moustache. As for the lady--there is but one woman in the
+world I have ever had the good fortune to behold who could be mistaken
+for her."
+
+"And that is?" said Beauchamp.
+
+"Herself."
+
+"And who is herself, Lucien?" asked Château-Renaud.
+
+"Have you forgotten the Countess de Morcerf?"
+
+"The Countess de Morcerf?--the wife of the general who was convicted by
+the peers of felony, treason and outrage in the matter of Ali Tebelen,
+Pacha of Yanina?" said Beauchamp.
+
+"And who blew his brains out in despair?" added the Count.
+
+"The same," said Debray. "She returned to Marseilles with her son
+Albert. You remember Albert and his strange conduct in the duel with the
+Count of Monte-Cristo?"
+
+"One could hardly forget such chivalric generosity, such magnificent
+magnanimity and such sublime self-control as were exhibited by the young
+man on that occasion!" said Beauchamp. "It is to be hoped he was not
+equally forbearing toward the Arabs in his African campaigns, although,
+as his name has never been seen or heard since he entered the army, in
+all probability he was."
+
+"Well, well," cried the Secretary, impatiently, "the Countess retired to
+Marseilles, and there she is said to have resided in utter seclusion, in
+company only with Morrel's beautiful wife, devoting the vast wealth of
+the deceased Count to philanthropic objects, having received it, as his
+widow, only with the understanding it should be thus bestowed."
+
+"But the rumor was," said Beauchamp, "and indeed I was so assured by M.
+de Boville himself, Receiver-General of the Hospitals, at the time, that
+the Countess gave all the Count's fortune to the hospitals, and that he
+himself registered the deed of gift."
+
+"Oh! that was only some twelve or thirteen hundred thousand francs,"
+said Debray. "Three months after her settlement at Marseilles, in a
+small house in the Allées de Meillan, said to be her own by maternal
+inheritance, a letter came to her from Thomson and French, of Rome,
+stating that there was a deposit in their house, to the credit of the
+estate of the late Count, of the enormous sum of two millions of francs,
+subject to her sole control and order, as the Count's only heir, in the
+absence of his son."
+
+"Two millions of francs!" cried the two young men in a breath.
+
+"Even so, Messieurs," said Debray. "The story does sound rather
+oriental; but I have reason to know that it is entirely true, for I made
+diligent inquiry about it when last at Marseilles."
+
+"And what took you to Marseilles, Lucien?" asked the Count
+significantly.
+
+"The Ministry," replied Debray, with evident confusion, coloring deeply.
+
+"But why does not the Countess marry again?" asked Château-Renaud,
+surveying her faultless form and face through his glass. "In the prime
+of life, rich, and, despite her past troubles, most exquisitely
+beautiful, it is strange she don't make herself and some one else
+happy!"
+
+"Especially as no one could ever accuse her of having very desperately
+loved her dear first husband," added the journalist. "Why don't she
+marry, Lucien?"
+
+"How the devil should I know!" replied the Secretary in great confusion.
+"You don't suppose I ever asked her the question, do you?"
+
+"Upon my word," exclaimed the Count, laughing, "I shall begin to think
+you have, if you take it so warmly. But, hist! the bell! The curtain
+rises. We mustn't lose the third act of Donizetti's chef d'oeuvre,
+with such a Lucrezia, for any woman living."
+
+But it was very evident that much of the magnificent performance of the
+débutante and her companion, in the thrilling scene between the Duke and
+Duchess of Ferrara and the young Captain Gennaro, was lost to the
+Secretary.
+
+"Do you observe, Beauchamp, how strangely fascinated with the new
+cantatrice seems the young officer of the Spahis who accompanies the
+Countess?" he whispered. "Do but look. He sits like one transfixed."
+
+"And the Countess seems transfixed also, though not by the same object,"
+was the reply. "How excessively pale, yet how beautiful she is! That
+plain black dress, without ornament or jewel, and her raven hair, parted
+simply on her forehead, enhance her voluptuous charms infinitely more
+than could the most gorgeous costume. Heavens! what a happy man will he
+be who can call her his!"
+
+"Amen!" said Debray, and the word seemed to rise from the very depths of
+his heart. "But she will never marry. Some early disappointment, even
+before her union with Morcerf, has withered her heart, and the terrible
+divorce which parted her from him, although she never loved him, will
+keep her single forever. Her first and only love is either dead
+or--worse--married to another."
+
+"See, see, Lucien!" cried Beauchamp, hurriedly; "at whom does she gaze
+so intently, and yet so sadly? It cannot be Lamartine, for there sits
+his lovely young English wife at his side; nor can it be old Arago, nor
+young Le Verrier; and yet some one in that box it surely is."
+
+"M. Dantès?" cried Debray.
+
+"Impossible! That man seems hardly conscious that there are such beings
+as women. His whole soul is in affairs of state."
+
+"His whole soul seems somewhere else just at present," exclaimed the
+Secretary, bitterly. "Look!"
+
+"How dreadfully pale he is!" said Beauchamp; "and yet his eyes fairly
+blaze. Is it the Countess he gazes at?"
+
+"Is it M. Dantès she gazes at?"
+
+At that moment, amid the wild farewell of the mother to her son, upon
+the stage, the curtain came down, and at the same instant, M. Dantès
+hastily pressed his white handkerchief to his lips, and, leaning on the
+arms of Lamartine and Arago, hastily left the box.
+
+"Ha! the Countess faints!" cried Debray, as the door closed on M.
+Dantès. "Do they know each other, then?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE ITALIAN LOVER.
+
+
+It was early in the evening succeeding the day on which M. Dantès had
+answered Giovanni Massetti's letter. Zuleika was seated in the vast,
+sumptuously-furnished salon of the magnificent Morcerf mansion, now, as
+the reader already knows, the residence of the famous and mysterious
+Deputy from Marseilles. She sat upon a superb green velvet-covered sofa,
+half reclining in an indolent, picturesque attitude; behind the sofa and
+leaning over its back stood a young Italian, a perfect model of manly
+beauty; his ardent black eyes were riveted on Zuleika's blushing
+countenance with a look of the most profound and enthusiastic adoration,
+while his hand held the young girl's with a gentle, loving pressure,
+which was returned with unmistakable warmth. The apartment was dimly
+lighted and huge, sombre patches of shadow lay everywhere. Zuleika and
+her lover were alone together; for some time they seemed too full of
+happiness to speak, but finally Giovanni said, in a soft, flutelike
+whisper, as if unwilling to break with loudly uttered words the
+delicious spell of his love-dream:
+
+"Zuleika, darling Zuleika, so you did not once forget me during our
+long, cruel separation?"
+
+"Never for a single instant, Giovanni," answered the young girl, the
+flush upon her cheek deepening as she spoke, her hand tightening about
+her lover's and her lovely eyes filling with a soft fire. "But I
+sometimes feared you had forgotten me!"
+
+"You were always present in my mind and in my heart," replied the
+Italian in a tone that thrilled her through and through. Stooping, he
+placed his lips to her forehead and imprinted upon it a long and silent
+kiss; then, flushing in his turn, he added, still holding his head
+against hers: "From the very moment of our first meeting you have
+reigned in my bosom, my own, my love, the queen of my destiny and my
+life!"
+
+"Oh! Giovanni, Giovanni," murmured the young girl, "I am happy, so
+happy!"
+
+He kissed her again, this time upon her upturned lips that with a slight
+movement almost imperceptibly returned the kiss, sending his blood
+tingling through his veins and causing him to tremble with delight from
+head to foot. No longer able to restrain himself, he hastily quitted the
+back of the sofa, threw himself down beside her and clasping her in his
+arms drew her unresistingly upon his bosom. Once there she did not offer
+to stir, but even nestled closer to him and pillowed her head on his
+broad shoulder. The tumultuous beating of both their hearts was audible
+amid the unbroken silence that ensued. With one hand the Viscount
+tenderly smoothed her silken tresses, and his arm tightened around her
+waist as if he had determined never to release her again.
+
+"Your father, in his letter of this morning," said Giovanni finally,
+"told me there was hope, that you did not look upon my addresses with
+aversion, and that I had his leave to pay court to you and ascertain
+your wishes from your own dear lips. I hastened here this evening, and
+M. Dantès himself bade me seek you in this salon. I came on the wings of
+love and found all my fondest hopes realized; that I possessed your
+heart as you possessed mine. Oh! tell me, Zuleika, that this is not all
+a dream, for it seems too delicious to be true!"
+
+"It is reality, Giovanni, blessed reality," answered the young girl in a
+low voice.
+
+"And do you really love me with all your soul?"
+
+"With all my soul, Giovanni!"
+
+The ardent Italian showered a flood of burning kisses upon her forehead,
+cheeks and lips, and she quivered like a leaf in his embrace. Then he
+said, with a shade of anxiety in his tone:
+
+"And your brother Espérance, is he disposed to look upon me with
+approval? You know that in Rome he did not see fit to include me in the
+number of his friends. We had a little difference, you will remember,
+and ever afterwards he was cold toward me."
+
+Zuleika shuddered as she recalled the fact that the little difference
+alluded to had been a violent quarrel that had nearly resulted in a duel
+between the two young men. She had never known the details, for both her
+brother and Giovanni had studiously concealed them from her; indeed,
+Espérance had carefully avoided all mention of the Viscount's name ever
+since the day they had become embroiled. Was M. Dantès aware of the
+trouble between his son and the youthful Italian? She did not know, but,
+at the same time, felt firmly persuaded that her father had fully
+investigated the doings, character and family of her suitor, and would
+not have sanctioned a renewal of his addresses to her had he not been
+perfectly satisfied in every respect. She, therefore, answered:
+
+"I am altogether ignorant as to what Espérance thinks of you, and cannot
+say whether he still harbors resentment against you or not; but,
+whatever may be his opinion and feelings, rest assured that he will
+never interfere to cause his sister an instant of unhappiness, more
+especially as he knows that my father looks upon you with a favoring
+eye."
+
+"But how about the coldness existing between us?"
+
+"Does it still exist on both sides?"
+
+"Not on mine, Zuleika, not on mine. I forgave and forgot all long ago."
+
+"Forgave and forgot! Then Espérance must have wronged you!"
+
+"He did, Zuleika, and with the proverbial hot blood and headlong
+impulses of the Roman youth I resented that wrong. But I could not
+remain at enmity with the brother of the girl I loved, so when I became
+cooler I sought him out and endeavored to apologize."
+
+"And he accepted your apology?"
+
+"He did not accept it, but turned on his heel and left me without a
+word. He evidently thought me a coward and attributed my efforts toward
+effecting a reconciliation to a desire to escape fighting him."
+
+"But why did you quarrel in the first place? What was the cause of the
+difference between you?"
+
+The young Italian hung his head and did not answer. Zuleika saw that he
+had grown deadly pale, and she felt his hand tremble nervously.
+
+Freeing herself from his embrace, the young girl sprang to her feet and
+faced him.
+
+"Giovanni," said she, firmly, "tell me the whole story of this painful
+affair. It is imperative that I should know it!"
+
+"Do you doubt me, Zuleika, do you doubt me?" he asked, bitterly, and he
+buried his face in his hands.
+
+"Do I doubt you, Giovanni? No. But, if you love me, tell me all the
+details of the trouble between my brother and yourself!"
+
+"I cannot, I cannot, Zuleika!" he cried. "Command me to shed the last
+drop of blood in my veins for you and I will do it without an instant's
+hesitation, but I cannot tell you that terrible tale of deceit,
+treachery and bloodshed!"
+
+He had arisen and was walking excitedly about the salon; his pallor had
+increased and he trembled in every limb.
+
+Zuleika stood with folded arms and gazed at him; she was calm and her
+eyes had a look of determination the young man had never before beheld
+in them; it filled him with dismay. A few moments ago she had been all
+love and tenderness, a yielding, trusting maiden in her lover's arms;
+now, she resembled a beautiful Amazon bent on achieving a victory, whom
+nothing but unconditional surrender would satisfy.
+
+"The story, the story," she repeated, "tell me the story!"
+
+Her face was as white as marble and her faultless lips seemed chiseled
+from stone. She looked so beautiful and tempting as she stood there, her
+surpassing loveliness enhanced by the picturesque half-oriental,
+half-Parisian dress she wore, that the Viscount felt his passion for her
+redoubled. He flung himself at her feet and seizing the hem of her
+superb robe kissed it rapturously.
+
+"Oh! Zuleika, Zuleika," he cried, utterly unable to restrain himself, "I
+am your slave! Place your tiny foot upon my neck and crush me where I
+lie! I shall expire adoring you!"
+
+"Giovanni," replied Zuleika, greatly moved by this display of devotion,
+"rise and be a man!"
+
+The Italian sprang up as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt; then he
+endeavored to clasp her in his arms, but she quietly repulsed him.
+
+"Zuleika," cried he, sadly, "you do not love me; you never loved me; I
+have been the victim of a cruel deception!"
+
+"If you think so," answered the young girl, quietly, "there is but one
+course you can pursue as a man of honor--spurn the deceiver from you and
+never look upon her face again!"
+
+The young man gazed at her reproachfully.
+
+"What have I done to turn you thus against me?" he asked, his tone
+suddenly becoming humble.
+
+"What have you done? You refuse to reveal this mystery to me, which, as
+you yourself admit, involves deceit, treachery and bloodshed, and which,
+for aught I know, has set an indelible stain upon your life! I love you
+truly, love you with all the passion of a woman's nature, but I must
+know this history that I may judge whether you are worthy of my love!"
+
+"I assure you, Zuleika, that there is no stain upon my life, that there
+is nothing in this history that tends in the least to dishonor me, but
+still I cannot speak."
+
+"Then we must separate."
+
+"Oh! Zuleika, Zuleika, do not be pitiless! You will drive me mad!"
+
+The young girl touched a bell and Ali, the Nubian, appeared.
+
+"Monsieur is about taking his departure," said she to the faithful
+servant. "I leave him in your hands."
+
+And without a word of farewell to Giovanni, she swept from the salon
+like a queen.
+
+The Viscount gazed after her with indescribable sadness pictured upon
+his handsome countenance. Then he followed Ali, put on his overcoat and
+hat and regretfully left the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE MINUTE VIALS.
+
+
+Even to the Communists, with whom he had come into such close contact,
+M. Dantès, the Deputy from Marseilles, remained as much of a mystery as
+ever. Marrast, though now devotedly attached to him, admitted that he
+was totally unable to fathom either his designs, or his methods of
+accomplishing them, while Lamartine, who was in his company a large
+portion of the time, when questioned concerning him, replied that all he
+knew of M. Dantès was that he was a firm friend of the cause and an
+untiring worker in the interest of the weary and oppressed masses.
+
+Debray, though he had no tangible foundation for it, could not get rid
+of the idea that the dangerous Deputy and the Count of Monte-Cristo were
+one and the same individual, but Beauchamp, with the usual incredulity
+of journalists, scoffed at the notion, and Château-Renaud derided it
+whenever it was mentioned in his presence.
+
+That M. Dantès had great wealth was, however, generally admitted, though
+whence it was derived or in what manner it was invested no one could
+tell. It was now no longer a secret that he had purchased and resided in
+the magnificent mansion formerly owned by the Count de Morcerf, in the
+Rue du Helder, and this circumstance, while it vastly augmented the
+interest attaching to him, did not in the least detract from the
+enthusiasm felt for him by the working classes.
+
+It was night. In a large chamber, richly furnished, but dimly lighted,
+in the mansion in the Rue du Helder, the same apartment once inhabited
+by the Countess de Morcerf, motionless, and seemingly lifeless, with a
+countenance as pale as alabaster, and as still, lay M. Dantès, the
+Deputy from Marseilles. Although, in the ashy pallor of the lips and
+brow, and the fixed, serene, almost stern aspect of the immovable face,
+might be read unmistakable evidence of an exhausting and dangerous
+constitutional shock to the system, yet none of that emaciation, over
+which broods the shadow of the angel of death, resulting from protracted
+illness, was there to be seen. The broad white forehead--the raven hair,
+sparsely sprinkled with silver--the round temples--the delicately
+penciled brow, encircling, like a sable arch, the large and
+almond-formed eye--the full calm lip, and the chiseled chin and
+nostril--all these were as perfect now as when last before the reader.
+The cheek was, perhaps, slightly sunken, but it could not be more pallid
+than when last beheld; and but for that nameless quietude--that "rapture
+of repose," as Lord Byron well expresses it--that placid languor which
+sleeps on the features, which illness always creates and which
+spiritualizes and intellectualizes the most common features, the invalid
+might be supposed to be enjoying the most quiet slumber.
+
+Excepting the invalid, there was no one in that chamber save the
+faithful Ali, who moved noiselessly about, from time to time, or sat
+immovably upon the floor and gazed on his master's pallid face.
+
+As the silvery tones of the chamber clock tinkled forth the third
+quarter after ten, the door opened, and a small, dark, thin man, with
+large whiskers, keen, penetrating eyes, broad, bald forehead, thinly
+covered with gray hair, and apparently about fifty years of age, briskly
+entered. It was Dr. Orfila, a name somewhat known in medical science.
+Approaching the bed, he placed his fingers upon the sick man's pulse,
+and gazed earnestly on his face for some time in silence.
+
+"Strange!" he at length muttered; "the most powerful drugs in the most
+unheard-of quantities are powerless! Who, then, is this man, whose
+nature so differs from that of every one else? Can he so have
+accustomed his system to poisons, that, as with the King of Pontus, they
+are ineffectual to help or to harm him? His constitution must be iron!
+The vitality of a dozen men is in him, or he'd have been dead a month
+ago. Well, it's plain he's no worse, if he's no better. Drugs are
+useless, and he must be left to nature and his amazing constitution.
+This stupor, this utter death of all the faculties and senses for so
+long a time, is wonderful. Fever, delirium, anything but this death-like
+trance. It seems as if this man had been sleepless all his life before,
+and that now his overwrought brain and heart were compensating
+themselves for the toil and wakefulness of years. Could I but excite the
+nerves!"
+
+For some time the physician gazed in deep thought at the pale face of
+the unconscious slumberer. Suddenly turning to the Nubian, he said to
+him:
+
+"Ali, where does your master keep the drugs he has been for years
+accustomed to take?"
+
+The Nubian stared in mute amazement, but moved not from his rug.
+
+"Ali," said Dr. Orfila, sternly, "unless I see and know those drugs,
+this night your master dies."
+
+The Nubian looked anxiously into the face of the physician, and then, as
+if satisfied with the scrutiny, rose, and, with noiseless steps, left
+the room. In a few moments he re-entered and placed in the physician's
+hands a small casket of ebony, exquisitely worked and studded with gems.
+Taking it hastily to the shaded lamp upon a table at the extremity of
+the chamber, he attempted to open it, but his attempts were vain.
+Indeed, to all appearances, it was a solid block of ebony, and its
+extreme heaviness, compared with its dimensions, seemed to favor the
+idea.
+
+"Well?" said the doctor, returning the casket, after a close scrutiny,
+to the Nubian, who had followed him.
+
+Ali took the casket, and instantly a portion of the top flew up,
+disclosing within the centre of the cube of ebony a cavity lined with
+crimson velvet, and a dazzling array of minute vials of crystal, each
+filled with a fluid--pink, blue, green and yellow in hue, while the
+contents of several were colorless. The Nubian had touched a spring
+concealed in the carving, and known only to his master and himself.
+
+The physician removed the minute vials one after another from their
+receptacles, and held them up to the light; on each was a cipher, and on
+no two was the same. Most of them were quite filled with the fluid
+contained, but some were only half full, while one was nearly empty. Dr.
+Orfila looked closely at the cipher upon each vial as he removed it from
+the casket. He then held it to the light to determine its particular hue
+or shade, and sometimes withdrew the crystal stopper ground into the
+deep mouth, touching it cautiously and quickly to his nostril or the tip
+of his tongue. "Morphia, cinchonia, quinia, lobelia, belladonna,
+narcotina, bromine, arsenicum, strychnos colubrina, brucoea
+ferruginea," muttered the savant, as he examined one vial after the
+other and replaced it. "Brucoea ferruginea--ha! brucine! I thought as
+much," exclaimed he, holding up the vial, which showed, by being nearly
+empty, that its contents had been used more frequently than those of any
+of the others.
+
+"How many drops of this is the greatest number your master has ever
+taken?" asked Dr. Orfila.
+
+The Nubian, who, it will be remembered, was a mute, held up both hands
+with the fingers outspread, and then two other fingers of one of his
+hands.
+
+"Twelve drops!" cried the astonished physician. "Impossible!"
+
+Ali insisted on the assertion.
+
+"And yet it must be so," the doctor added. "That would explain all."
+
+Taking the vial and a minute crystal vessel, which he found in the
+casket, he hastily but carefully dropped into the latter thirteen drops.
+Then filling the vessel with water, he approached the patient, who still
+slumbered heavily on, and placed it to his lips. For an instant he
+seemed conscious of the wish of the physician, and with an effort the
+mixture was swallowed. Then he lay as still and motionless as before.
+
+Returning the vials and the vessel to their places, Dr. Orfila closed
+the casket and gave it to the Nubian. He then gazed long and anxiously
+at the torpid slumberer, standing at the bedside and watching that
+marble face.
+
+At length the clock struck eleven. Dr. Orfila started and hastily
+glanced at his repeater; then, turning to the Nubian, who had carried
+away the casket, and, having noiselessly returned, stood silently beside
+him, he said:
+
+"Ali, in one hour your master will be in high fever; in two hours he
+will, probably, be delirious. He will then sleep soundly, and toward
+morning will wake, I hope, in his right mind, but terribly exhausted and
+profusely perspiring. At daylight I shall be here. You must not leave
+him for a single instant as you value his life."
+
+The Nubian clasped his hands above his head and bent his forehead almost
+to the floor.
+
+"If you think necessary, however, Ali, send for me before morning."
+
+The physician gave one more look at his patient, pressed his fingers on
+his pulse, placed his palm on his forehead, and then, taking his hat and
+cane, left the chamber.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE UNKNOWN NURSE.
+
+
+When the rumor that M. Dantès had been taken seriously ill was first
+circulated throughout Paris, it caused excitement in every quarter of
+the city, filling the Communists and workmen with dismay and greatly
+elating their opponents.
+
+In the midst of the excitement a strange lady, very plainly attired,
+but whose language and bearing gave unmistakable evidence of refinement
+and aristocratic associations, made her appearance one morning at the
+office of Dr. Orfila and humbly asked permission to nurse his
+distinguished patient. The physician, somewhat surprised at such a
+request from such a woman, immediately grew suspicious and demanded an
+explanation, when the lady informed him that she had known the sick man
+in his youth and was still deeply interested in his welfare. She refused
+to give her name, but solemnly assured the doctor that, should he grant
+her petition, M. Dantès on his recovery would be ready to thank him on
+bended knees.
+
+Convinced at length that no harm was intended, the physician gave his
+permission and the unknown lady was duly installed as nurse. She
+discharged her duties with unflagging devotion and energy, satisfying
+even the exacting Nubian, with whom she divided the watch at the bedside
+of the unconscious deputy. Dr. Orfila was delighted, while Espérance and
+Zuleika were overjoyed.
+
+On--on--the sleeper still slumbered on! One--two--three--four quarters
+after eleven tinkled in silvery numbers upon the delicate bell of the
+clock, yet the closed eyelids and fixed lips moved not, gave no sign;
+but for the light, though regular undulation of the chest, life itself
+might seem to have fled forever. Yet life was still there!
+
+How strange the bond which connects vitality with consciousness--the
+body with the soul! And yet more strange is that phase of existence in
+which the one moves on without the other. The mind sometimes is all life
+when the body is dead, and oftener still is the body all life when the
+mind seems gone. Mind, too, may frequently act independently, not only
+of the body, as in dreams, but, also, of consciousness and of the heart;
+while the body, as in somnambulism, may act altogether alone.
+
+On--on--the slumberer breathed on, but he thought not, felt not,
+perceived not. A revolution, an earthquake might heave around him, but
+the convulsive throes of man or of nature would have been as nothing to
+him. The brow would have remained as calm and as cold, and the cheek as
+pale and as still, while, in all human probability, the faithful Nubian
+would have sat as immovable upon his rug at the bedside of his beloved
+master, and have gazed upon him as untiringly with his dark and
+sleepless eye.
+
+As the last quarter after eleven sounded, followed immediately by the
+hour of midnight, a small door beside the bed noiselessly opened, and a
+female figure in white silently entered the room; but not so noiselessly
+was the entrance effected as to escape the ear of the vigilant Ali. He
+glanced hurriedly around; then, as if familiar with the apparition, and
+anticipating its approach, he rose, and, taking his rug to the further
+extremity of the chamber, again laid himself down, like a faithful dog,
+though not now to watch.
+
+Meanwhile the lady, quietly approaching the bed, gazed long and
+mournfully at the slumberer's pale yet noble visage; then, kneeling, she
+buried her face in her hands amid the coverings.
+
+She was, probably, forty; yet, in the full and faultless perfection of
+her form--in her graceful and yielding motions--in her statuesque bust,
+rounded cheek and night-black hair, she would, to the casual observer,
+have indicated hardly the half of that age. Her figure was tall and
+dignified, yet mobile as a willow; her eyes were dark and luminous, and,
+in their profound depths, slept a world of melancholy meaning. Her hair
+was simply parted on a broad forehead, and was gathered in heavy masses
+low on the neck. Her lips were full and red, and, when parted, exhibited
+teeth of dazzling whiteness, while her complexion, which was very dark,
+was yet clear and pure as the hue of the magnolia's petal. But that face
+was pale, very pale, almost as colorless as that of the quiet sleeper at
+its side, and upon it rested an expression of love unutterable, mingled
+with the sadness of death.
+
+Such was the unknown nurse, the Countess de Morcerf, as she again was an
+inmate of that apartment of which she had once, under circumstances how
+different, been mistress; such was Mercédès, the Catalane of Marseilles,
+again at the side of the man whom all her life she had loved, with none
+to gainsay or forbid!
+
+Upon that pale and motionless countenance she gazed long and deeply,
+and, oh! the world of memory that passed through her mind!--the world
+of thought and feeling that centred in that fixed gaze! At length,
+clasping her hands upon her forehead, her eyes streaming with tears, she
+bowed her face upon the bed, from which she had just raised it, and long
+seemed absorbed in prayer.
+
+Roused from this position by some movement of the slumberer, she started
+up and watched him.
+
+The shaded rays of the dim and distant lamp threw a faint glimmering of
+light upon the pale countenance, but the quick eye of love
+instantaneously detected a change. A slight flush was mounting the
+cheek, and gentle perspiration was distilling upon the brow, while a
+smile played on the mouth. Suddenly, as she gazed, those pallid lips
+moved. Astonished, she listened.
+
+"Marseilles! beautiful Marseilles!" said the sleeper. "Home of my
+boyhood, home of my heart. I come!" Then quickly and sternly came the
+order, "Let go the anchor--furl the sails--mate, take charge of the
+ship!" Then the tones changed, and a joyful light shot over the face as
+the lips exclaimed, "Now for my father! now for my love! Mercédès!
+Mercédès!"
+
+Amazed, the fair watcher retained her position, and gazed and listened
+so silently and breathlessly that the quick and audible beatings of her
+heart might have been numbered.
+
+"Mine--mine at last!" continued the dreamer. "The marriage-feast--the
+marriage-feast!" But instantly the expression of the voice and the
+countenance altered. The light of joy was shrouded in clouds.
+"Arrest--arrest me?" was the exclamation--"me! at my marriage-feast! A
+dungeon for me! Mercédès! Mercédès! My love--my wife! Oh! God! it is the
+Château d'If! Despair--despair!"
+
+Shocked, terrified at the terrible energy of these words, and the
+expression of unutterable woe that rested on the countenance of the
+sleeper, the affrighted woman, who comprehended but too well the fearful
+significance of the abrupt and disjointed syllables, hastily arose as if
+to rouse the slumberer from his dream or to call on the Nubian for aid.
+
+But, before she could carry the purpose into execution, the aspect of
+the Deputy's visage again had changed. A dark frown settled on the brow,
+a spirit of fixed resolve contracted the firm lip and dilated the
+nostril, and the word, "Vengeance--vengeance!" in whispers scarcely
+audible, but repeatedly and rapidly pronounced, was heard.
+
+A longer silence than before succeeded. At length another change swept
+over the face, and the words, "Free--free--I am free!" burst from the
+lips; then they murmured, "Treasure untold! wondrous
+wealth!--diamonds--pearls--rubies--ingots of gold! The mad abbé's dream
+was reality!" Again the countenance darkened. "Fourteen years in a
+dungeon for no crime!--a father dead of starvation!--a bride the bride
+of the fiend who has done all this--and he a peer of France--and his
+friends a millionaire of Paris and the Procureur du Roi!
+Vengeance--vengeance--vengeance!" There was a pause, and the dreamer
+exultingly continued, "It is done! The peer of France is a disgraced
+suicide! The Procureur du Roi is a madman! The banker is a bankrupt!"
+The dreamer again paused, and his countenance once more changed. "Alas!
+alas! man is not God! 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord!'
+The innocent suffer with the guilty. To avenge a wrong has been
+sacrificed a life, and only misery has been the recompense! No more--no
+more--no more of this! Man and man's happiness be henceforth the aim! To
+that be devoted wealth untold!"
+
+The lips ceased to move. Gradually the high excitement of the features
+passed away and was succeeded by an expression of sadness and love.
+"Haydée--gone--gone to a better world. Mercédès--Mercédès--oh! does she
+love me yet? The long lost idol of my heart!--the adored angel of my
+life!--come! come! come!"
+
+As the dreamer spoke, he spread wide his arms; when his eyes opened, and
+his long slumbering senses returned, Mercédès, his own Mercédès, was,
+indeed, clasped to his breast.
+
+"Mercédès! Mercédès?" he faintly whispered. "Ah! it was no dream, for
+you are, indeed, beside me and mine--mine forever!"
+
+"Thine--thine--forever!" was the reply, and she clasped his feeble form
+to her heart as she would have clasped that of a child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A NOTABLE FÊTE.
+
+
+On the night of Monday, February 21st, 1848, all Paris was at the house
+of M. Gaultier de Rumilly, in the Avenue des Champs Elysées. M. Gaultier
+de Rumilly was well known as one of the leaders of the extreme left,
+though the confidential friend of M. Odillon Barrot, and the fête was
+perfectly understood to be a political reunion, rather than a social
+one. All the accompaniments of the most splendid society events of the
+season were in requisition. Even the brilliant balls given by the
+opulent citizens of New York were eclipsed in luxury and splendor. There
+was the streaming of lamps and chandeliers, the swell of enchanting
+music, the whirl of the fascinating polka, redowa or mazurka, while
+throngs of richly attired and lovely women were constantly enhancing the
+magnificence of the scene by their arrival. The brilliancy of the
+occasion was also richly diversified by the presence of an unusually
+large number of officers of the Municipal and National Guards in full
+uniform, as well as of several belonging to the Line or the regiments of
+Algeria.
+
+It was about ten o'clock. Within, all was light, life and loveliness;
+without, the winter wind moaned drearily through the leafless trees of
+the Boulevard, and the drifting sleet swept along the deserted streets.
+It was a wild night. Throughout all Paris seemed going forth a
+portentous murmur, like that mysterious moaning of the ocean, which,
+with mariners, is the prelude of a storm. An ominous whispering, as of
+many voices, seemed to sink and swell on the sweeping night blast; then
+all was still. Again, in the distance, would rise a sharp shout, or the
+stern, brief word of military command. At intervals, also, one might
+imagine he heard a deep rumbling, as of heavy ordnance and its tumbrels
+over the pavements, accompanied by the measured tread of armed men and
+the clattering hoofs of cavalry horses. Then these sounds died away, and
+along the narrow streets of Paris again the night wind only swept, the
+bitter blast howled and the ominous whispering, as of spirits, rose and
+fell.
+
+It was a strange and stormy night--murky and chilly--while at intervals
+the cold rain dashed down in cutting blasts. But within the magnificent
+mansion of Gaultier de Rumilly all was light and loveliness, as has been
+said. The splendid salons were already thronged, yet crowds of
+richly-attired guests were constantly arriving.
+
+"Ha! Beauchamp, just come?" cried Château-Renaud to his friend, as he
+entered.
+
+"By the grace of God, yes!" said the journalist. "What a night!"
+
+"What a throng of men and women say rather!" was the reply.
+
+"Very true. Who's here?"
+
+"Ask who's not here, and your question may be easily answered. All Paris
+is here! Women of every age and station, and men of all political
+creeds--Conservatives, Dynastics, Legitimists, Republicans and
+Communists. Indeed, this soirée seems to me, and I shouldn't wonder if
+it were designed so to be, a general reunion of the leaders of all the
+great parties in France, to compare notes and learn the news."
+
+"And there is news enough to learn, it would seem. Is M. Dantès here?"
+
+"He is, or was, and his beautiful wife, too, the most magnificent woman
+in Paris. Morrel also is here with his fair bride."
+
+"And who is that dark, dignified man in the Turkish costume, around whom
+the ladies have clustered so inquisitively?" asked the Deputy.
+
+"Why, that's the Emir of Algeria, the famous captive of the Duke
+d'Aumale," was the reply.
+
+"What! Abd-el-Kader! How comes he here?"
+
+"Oh! as a special favor, I suppose; he has a respite from his sad
+prison."
+
+"What a splendid beard, and what keen black eyes!"
+
+"No, his eyes are decidedly gray, but so shaded by his extraordinary
+lashes that they seem black. They say that he was more distinguished as
+a scholar, in Algeria, than as a soldier, statesman or priest. In fact,
+he is as erudite as an Arab can be, and his library, which is contained
+in two leathern trunks, accompanied him in all his wanderings prior to
+his submission."
+
+"And what think you really induced him to surrender himself?"
+
+"Policy of the deepest character, and worthy of Talleyrand, Metternich
+or Nesselrode, if we are to rely on the eloquent speech of Lamoricière
+in the Chamber, the other day."
+
+"I remember. Bugeaud spoke first, and Lamoricière followed. He thought
+that the Arab Curtius leaped into the gulf because, by so doing, he was
+convinced he could injure French interests more than by his freedom.
+Well, perhaps he was right. He bids fair to be a hard bone of contention
+between the opposition and the Ministry."
+
+"If I mistake not, Lamoricière disclaimed all responsibility for
+accepting the surrender, and placed it on the Governor-General, the
+young Duke, for whom the Ministry is liable?"
+
+"Yes; and Guizot announced that he would send the Emir back to
+Alexandria, could security be given against his return to Algeria."
+
+"As to the Emir's surrender, at which you wonder, the real cause is said
+to have been not policy, but the universal passion--love."
+
+"He is an Antony, then, instead of a Curtius."
+
+"So it seems. At the moment when, with incredible efforts, he had
+effected the passage of the Moorish camp, and was off like an ostrich
+for the desert, the firing of the French, who had reached his deira,
+struck his ear. Back he flew like the lamiel. Twice his horse fell
+under him dead--twice he was surrounded and seized, and twice, by his
+wonderful agility, he regained his freedom. At last, perceiving that all
+was lost, he turned his face again toward the desert, and, for two days
+and nights, continued his flight. But his heart was behind him. Certain
+of escape himself, he preferred hopeless captivity with her he loved,
+and he returned."
+
+"Quite poetical, on my word! Worthy of Sadi, the Arab Petrarch,
+himself!" said Château-Renaud.
+
+"He is decidedly a great man, that Abd-el-Kader. They say he bears his
+misfortunes like a philosopher--or, better, a Turk--unalterably mild and
+dignified, while his wives and his mother wail at his feet. Every
+morning he reads the Koran to them, and during the orisons all the
+windows are open, and a large fire blazes in the centre of the room."
+
+"He is a decided godsend to the quidnuncs of Paris."
+
+"So would be a Hottentot, or a North American savage," replied
+Beauchamp.
+
+"Rather a different affair this from the Ministerial soirée a week ago,
+I fancy," remarked the editor.
+
+"Rather. I will confess to you, Beauchamp, I attended that soirée from
+curiosity to see whether M. Guizot retained his habitual placidity of
+manner amid the clouds every day thickening around him."
+
+"And what was the result?"
+
+"Why, this. He was as polite and courteous as ever, and the same cold,
+imperturbable smile was on his thin lip; but he looked careworn, and
+upon his countenance was an expression of solicitude, when it was
+closely watched, which I never saw there before. Ah, Beauchamp, I envy
+not the Premier!"
+
+"And the guests?" asked the journalist.
+
+"Of guests there were but few; and the spacious salons of the Hôtel des
+Affaires Étrangères looked dismal and deserted."
+
+"The lovely Countess Leven--"
+
+"Even she was absent."
+
+"And the Countess of Dino?"
+
+"Absent, too."
+
+"The soirée must have been, indeed, dull without those 'charming queens
+of intrigue,' as Louis Blanc courteously calls them. But tell me, Count,
+is the Minister really the husband of the beautiful Leven, or is she
+only his par amours?"
+
+"No one knows. It is certain, however, that the great man devotes to the
+enchantress every moment he can steal from the State, though to look at
+him one would hardly suppose him a lover, in any meaning of the term.
+But who knows? To read his writings can one imagine a purer man? But,
+then, the affairs of Gisquet, Cubières, Teste, and, last and worst,
+Petit, whose case was before the Chamber, do they not betray deplorable
+lack of firmness or morality? But no more of this. Who is that dark,
+splendid woman to whom young Joliette seems so devoted? I have seen
+them together before!"
+
+"Why, you surely have not forgotten Louise d'Armilly, the charming
+cantatrice! She has recently left the boards, to the irreparable loss of
+the opera, having come into possession of an immense inheritance--some
+millions, it is said, left by her father, who was once a banker of
+Paris. She is asserted to be very accomplished and very ambitious, and,
+as the young African paladin is thoroughly bewitched by her, and she by
+him, they will, doubtless, be matched as well as paired."
+
+"Has Lucien been here?" asked the Deputy, after a pause, during which
+the young men surveyed the brilliant throngs that passed before them and
+returned the salutations of their acquaintances.
+
+"I think not. We have not met, at least," replied the journalist.
+
+"He can hardly be spared to-night, I fancy. The Ministry have had a
+stormy day, and are, doubtless, preparing for one still more stormy
+to-morrow."
+
+"There was a perfect tempest in the Chamber this evening, I understand."
+
+"Call it rather a hurricane, a tornado!"
+
+"Ah! give me the particulars; here, come with me into this corner.
+Unfortunately, I was not present. I was busy on the General Committee
+for the Banquet of the Twelfth Arrondissement, to-morrow, at Chaillot.
+To avoid all possibility of collision with the police, we resolved, you
+know, not to have the banquet within the walls of Paris, and so there is
+to be a procession to the Barrière de l'Etoile. I have been there since
+morning, and reached the city only in time to come here. So, you see, I
+am edifyingly ignorant of the latest news."
+
+"Then I have to inform you that there is to be no banquet after all."
+
+"No banquet! Why, I thought it was compromised between Guizot and Barrot
+that the banquet should be allowed to proceed under protest, in order
+that the question might be brought before the Supreme Court."
+
+"Such was the purpose, but a manifesto of the Banquet Committee, drawn
+up by Marrast, it is said, and, at all events, issued in 'Le National'
+this morning, declaring the design not only of a banquet, but of a
+procession, changed everything. The address sets forth that all invited
+to the banquet would assemble at the Place de la Madeleine to-morrow at
+about noon, and thence, escorted by the National Guard, and accompanied
+by the students of the universities, should proceed by the Place de la
+Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, at the extremity of the Avenue des
+Champs Elysées, and thence to the immense pavilion on the grounds of
+General Shian. Only one toast, 'Reform, and the right to assemble,' was
+announced to be drunk, and then a commissary of police could enter a
+formal protest against the whole proceeding on the spot, on which to
+base a legal prosecution, and the multitude would disperse."
+
+"A very sensible mode of procedure," quietly remarked the journalist,
+"and one eminently calculated to relieve your friend Guizot and my
+friend Barrot from the awkward dilemma of a direct issue."
+
+"But so thought not my friend Guizot. Like his oracle, the sage
+Montesquieu, he thought, 'Who assembles the people causes them to
+revolt.' He took fright at the manifesto, as he was pleased to dignify
+the simple programme in this morning's 'National,' and so, early in the
+sitting, it was announced that the reform banquet was utterly prohibited
+by M. Delessert, Préfect of Police, on the express injunction and
+responsibility of M. Duchatel, Minister of the Interior, by and with the
+advice of M. Hebert, Minister of Justice."
+
+"Ha! and what said Odillon Barrot?" cried the journalist.
+
+"He--why he said nothing at all, but immediately retired at the head of
+the opposition from the Chamber."
+
+"To consult?"
+
+"Of course. An hour after, they returned in a body two hundred and fifty
+strong, with Barrot at their head, who at once mounted the tribune and
+denounced the despotism of the Ministry in forbidding the peaceful
+assembling of the citizens, without tumult or arms, to discuss their
+political rights. Duchatel replied, under great excitement.
+
+"'Shall reform committees dare to call out the National Guard at their
+pleasure?' he asked.
+
+"'Will you dare to call out the National Guard?' retorted De Courtais,
+fiercely. 'Only try it!'
+
+"'The Government of France will never yield!' rejoined the Minister,
+pale with fury.
+
+"'Speak in your own name, Monsieur!' shouted Flocon.
+
+"'I shall never speak in yours!' was the answer.
+
+"'You play the game of menace!' cried Lesseps.
+
+"'The Government will never yield!' again vociferated Duchatel.
+
+"'Those were the very words of Charles X.!' observed M. Dantès, sternly.
+The entire left responded in a terrific roar.
+
+"'There is blood in those words!' shouted Ledru Rollin.
+
+"'The Government will never yield!' the Minister of the Interior for the
+third time vehemently exclaimed, and the right gathered around him.
+'This is worse than Polignac or Peyronet!' vociferated Odillon Barrot,
+his trumpet tones rising above all others like a clarion in a tempest.
+Those hated names were greeted by a yell of abhorrence perfectly savage
+from the left; then all was uproar--a dozen voices simultaneously
+shouting at their
+loudest--denunciation--menace--defiance--retort--clenched
+hands--extended arms--furious gesticulations--every one on
+tip-toe--fiery eyes--stamping feet--shouts of 'Order! order!
+order!'--and, amid all, the incessant tinkling of old Sauzet's little
+silver bell, which was just about as effective in restoring peace as it
+would be to quiet the tempest now howling through the streets of Paris.
+At length, in utter consternation and dismay the old President put on
+his hat, and, pronouncing the séance ended, rushed from his chair amid a
+hurricane of uproarious shouts."
+
+"And Odillon Barrot?"
+
+"Odillon Barrot led the opposition members immediately from the Chamber
+to his own house, where they have been ever since in deliberation. It
+was six o'clock when the sitting closed, and they must be in
+consultation now, or Barrot would surely be here, if but for a moment,
+out of respect to his bosom friend, our host. Ah! there he is, just
+entering, surrounded by a perfect army of Republicans--De Courtais,
+Marrast, Lesseps, Duvergier, Flocon, Lamartine, Dupont and a whole host
+besides."
+
+"How excited they look!" exclaimed the journalist. "Ah! Thiers
+approaches them from the other end of the salon!"
+
+"M. Thiers, like the worldly-wise and selfish man he is, has held
+himself aloof from the banquet, and even declined the invitation
+accepted by a hundred of his party; to-day he was absent from the
+Chamber and to-night from the conclave, all with the aspiring, yet vain
+hope, that the King will send for him to form a Ministry."
+
+"And yet, in the Chamber, a few days ago, he said that he was of the
+party of the revolution in Europe."
+
+"True, but he added that he wished the revolution carried on by its
+moderate supporters, and that he should do all he could to keep it in
+the hands of the moderate party."
+
+"'But if it should pass into the hands of a party not moderate,'
+continued the crafty ex-Minister, 'I shall not abandon the cause of the
+revolution. I shall be always of the party of the revolution.' But see,
+he singles out Marrast, of all others!"
+
+"And his old colleague of 'Le National' seems to give him no very
+cordial reception," added the Deputy. "But let us move up and hear the
+determination of the opposition relative to the banquet."
+
+"That's the very question the little historian has just propounded to
+the great journalist. Now for the answer."
+
+"The opposition decide, Monsieur, to abandon the banquet," was the angry
+reply of the editor to the ex-Minister.
+
+"Indeed!" was the bland rejoinder; "and has a manifesto of this decision
+been issued to the people?"
+
+"It has; and it instantly called forth a counter manifesto from the
+electoral committee of the Twelfth Arrondissement, expressing very
+natural astonishment that, at the same time the opposition abandoned the
+banquet, they had not abandoned their seats in the Chamber, and inviting
+them so to do at once."
+
+"And the Ministry?" anxiously asked M. Thiers.
+
+"Will to-morrow be impeached, Monsieur!"
+
+"Ah! indeed! indeed!" cried the smart little aspirant, gleefully
+rubbing his hands.
+
+At that moment General Lamoricière, the brother-in-law of Thiers, who
+owed so much to the house of Orléans, hastily approached.
+
+"I come straight from the Tuileries," he said, with considerable
+excitement. "General Jacqueminot has just issued an order of the day, as
+commander-in-chief of the National Guard, appealing to them as the
+constitutional protectors of the Throne to take no part in the banquet.
+Orders have, also, been issued for the rappel to be beaten at dawn, in
+the Quartier St. Honoré, the scene of the contemplated procession. But
+it's all folly to rely on the National Guard. They are of the people.
+Only the Municipal Guard and the troops of the Line can be relied on in
+the civil conflict, which is sure to come to-morrow."
+
+"And the Ministers, what do they?" asked Thiers.
+
+"Oh! they are not idle," replied the soldier. "The bastilles are armed,
+and those of Montrouge and Aubervilliers are provisioned. The
+horse-artillery at Vincennes are ready, on the instant, to gallop into
+the capital. Seventy additional pieces of ordnance are now entering the
+barrières. The Municipal Guard are supplied with ball-cartridges. The
+troops concentrated at sunrise to-morrow will not be less than one
+hundred thousand strong. With these men in the forts and faithful, the
+city can be starved in three days, National Guard and all, if
+rebellious. Now is the crisis in which to test the remarkable admission
+of M. Duchatel, in May, '45, that the bastilles of Paris were designed
+to 'fortify order.' We shall see, we shall see!"
+
+"And the Marshal Duke of Islay--where is he?" quietly asked Marrast,
+with a significant shrug and smile.
+
+At this mention of his bitter foe, a frown lowered on the fine face of
+Lamoricière, as he briefly and sternly replied:
+
+"With the King, Monsieur--General Bugeaud is with the King. But they
+mistake, Monsieur. Eugène Cavaignac is the man for this emergency.
+Bugeaud is a soldier--a mere soldier--Cavaignac is a statesman--a
+Napoleon! Paris will discriminate between the two one day, and that
+shortly."
+
+And with an abrupt military salute the conqueror of Algeria walked away,
+followed by his little brother-in-law, who seemed yet shorter and more
+insignificant at the side of his towering and graceful form. At the same
+moment, Ledru Rollin entered in great agitation, and, having glanced
+hastily around, as if in search of some one in the assemblage, advanced
+straight to the journalist and grasped his hand.
+
+"By heavens, Armand, I think the hour has arrived!"
+
+"Whence do you come?" was the quick question.
+
+"From the Boulevards, where I left Flocon, Louis Blanc and M. Dantès,
+with the people. I tell you, Armand, the people are ripe--ripe! The
+Ministerial ordinances prohibiting the banquet have kindled a flame
+wherever they have gone. The pitiful manifesto of the opposition and the
+counter manifesto of the Twelfth Arrondissement have only served to fan
+this flame into fury. It has been our care to restrain and direct, not
+to excite. It is dark and cold without, Armand; the winter wind howls
+dismally along the streets, the sleet freezes as it falls and the
+furious blast almost extinguishes the torches by which, at the corners
+and at the cafés, the different manifestoes of the day are being read to
+the eager throngs, on whose faces, in the flare of the blood-red light,
+can be perceived the fury of their hearts. The people, at length, are
+ripe! To-morrow all Paris will be in arms!"
+
+While Ledru Rollin was thus speaking, Louis Blanc entered and quietly
+approached, courteously saluting his acquaintances on his way, and
+stopping to exchange a few words with Madame Dantès, who inquired with
+considerable anxiety for her husband.
+
+"I have this moment left him, Madame," said Louis Blanc. "Be assured, he
+is safe and well. Ah! how glorious to be an object of solicitude to one
+like you!" he added, with a smile.
+
+The lady smiled also, and offered an appropriate jest in reply to the
+gallantry of the distinguished author, as he moved on to join his
+friends.
+
+"The Ministry provokes its fate!" he said, in a low tone, as he
+approached. "'Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.' These
+men suffered seventy reform banquets all over France. The seventy-first
+one they prohibit, and that, too, by the exhumation of an old despotic
+edict of 1790. This is exactly what we would have. It was the first, not
+the last banquet they should have suppressed. Barrot was right to-day,
+in the Chamber, when he said that had this manifestation been suffered
+the people would have become tranquil."
+
+"Tranquil, indeed!" cried Ledru Rollin. "That's exactly what we have
+apprehended! No--no--it is too late! This Reform Banquet was, at first,
+but an insignificant thing. In it we now recognize the commencement of a
+revolution. The various announcements and postponements of this banquet
+have caused an agitation among the masses favorable to our wishes, and
+the threats and obstinacy of the Ministry have completed the work. The
+hopes, fears, doubts and disappointments attending this affair have put
+the mind of all Paris in a ferment, and excited passions of which we may
+take immediate advantage."
+
+"Aye!" cried Louis Blanc, "we may now do what I have always wished and
+counseled--we, the Communists, may now take advantage of a movement, in
+the origin or inception of which we had no hand."
+
+"True, most true!" observed Marrast; "this is the work of the
+Dynastics--Thiers, Barrot and the rest--the commencement of a reform
+under the law which we design to make a revolution paramount to all
+law."
+
+"They begin to fear already that they have gone too far, those discreet
+men!" said Louis Blanc, smiling bitterly. "Did you observe how they
+shuffled to-night at M. Barrot's, and finally resolved to abandon the
+banquet, but, as a sop to the people, pledged themselves to impeach the
+Ministry?"
+
+"Ah! ha! ha!" laughed Ledru Rollin; "just as if their abandonment of the
+banquet is to keep the people away from it to-morrow, any more than the
+Ministerial ordinances! Why, not one man in ten thousand knows of the
+existence of these manifestoes! But the faubourgs have been promised a
+holiday for a fortnight past, and they don't intend to be put off
+again."
+
+"Whether the Dynastics designed or wished to be compromised in this
+affair," remarked Marrast, "they certainly are committed now, and it is
+too late for them to get out of the movement. Indeed, I view it as
+nothing less than a union of all the oppositions against the Crown--aye,
+against the Crown, and for a republic! We comprehend this--they don't.
+They have not, like us, waited seventeen years for a signal for
+revolution;--and now, before God, I believe the hour is at hand! This is
+no accidental insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, '32--no outbreak
+at a funeral--no riot of operatives--no unmeaning revolt, as in '39. It
+is a reform, with the first names in France as its advocates and
+supporters, which we will make a revolution if we can secure the
+National Guard."
+
+"The National Guard is secured already," said Louis Blanc. "Are they
+not of the people? At least twenty thousand of the National Guard are
+Republicans. Of the remaining forty thousand, nearly all are well
+disposed or neutral in feeling. Have I studied the National Guard for
+twenty years in vain, and have all the measures of the Communists to
+secure them, when the crisis came on, proved utterly ineffectual? On the
+National Guard we may rely. The Municipal Guard are picked men, and well
+paid to support the Throne--they will fight even better than the Line.
+With the Line and the National Guard the people must seek to fraternize
+from the beginning--with the other troops they have solely to
+fight--but, after all, general facts and principles only can be laid
+down. Circumstances utterly beyond human control must direct and govern,
+and vary and determine results when the period of action arrives; and
+arrive it may at any hour of the day or night. At this moment Paris
+sleeps on a volcano, the fires of which have long been gathering through
+many a fair and sunny day! God only knows when the volcano will burst;
+but, when the hour comes, let the people be prepared!"
+
+As these enthusiastic words were uttered, the dark eye of the speaker
+flashed and his lip quivered. The silver clock on the mantel, beside
+which the conspirators stood, struck the first quarter after two. The
+night was waning, but the festivity seemed rather to increase than
+diminish within the salons of the magnificent mansion, while the storm
+howled even more drearily without, and the rain, at intervals, in heavy
+blasts, beat even more fiercely against the northern casements.
+
+As Louis Blanc ceased speaking, M. Flocon entered the salon, and, as if
+by some preconcerted arrangement, at once sought his political friends.
+
+"What of the night, watchman?" cried Ledru Rollin, as the editor of "La
+Réforme" approached. "The latest news! for 'That of an hour's age doth
+hiss the speaker,' as the English Shakespeare says. The news! good or
+bad!"
+
+"As I entered," said Flocon, "the house trembled with the jar of a train
+of heavy ordnance, attended by tumbrels and artillery caissons, and
+escorted by a regiment of horse, which rolled along the pavement of the
+Champs Elysées."
+
+"Good!" answered Marrast, with enthusiasm.
+
+"All night," continued Flocon, eagerly, "through darkness and storm,
+whole regiments of infantry have thronged the line of boulevards which
+stretch from the Tuileries to Vincennes, and each soldier bears upon his
+knapsack, in addition to all his arms, an axe to demolish barricades.
+The garrisons of the arrondissements of Paris are already seventy
+thousand strong; and the troops of the Line are concentrating around the
+Palais Bourbon and the Chamber of Deputies."
+
+"Excellent--most excellent!" joyfully exclaimed Louis Blanc. "The
+affront will not be wanting! But where is M. Dantès?"
+
+"He is still with the chiefs of the faubourgs and the committees of the
+Free-masons and workmen, in the Rue Lepelletier, issuing his last
+instructions for the morrow. Messieurs, that man is a magician! His zeal
+in the good cause puts the boldest of us all to the blush. By most
+indefatigable energy and indomitable perseverance, he has brought about
+a systematic, almost scientific organization and fraternity, through
+various modes of rapid intercommunication between the innumerable
+classes of operatives of every description throughout the whole capital
+and its faubourgs, so that, within six hours, he can have in military
+array an armed mass of one hundred thousand blouses upon the boulevards.
+The workshops alone, he tells me, can furnish fifty thousand. The
+rapidity with which he conveys intelligence through this immense army
+and their utter subservience to his will and subordination to his orders
+are all so wonderful that it is impossible to determine which is most
+so. To control a Parisian populace has hitherto been deemed a chimera.
+With M. Dantès it is an existing reality. Not an army in Europe is so
+obedient or so prompt as his army of workmen. The secret is this--they
+know him to be their friend. All over Paris are to be seen his
+workshops, savings banks, hospitals and houses of industry and reform,
+and, in the suburbs, his phalansteries and his model farms. That he has
+the command of boundless wealth is certain; but whose it is, or whence
+it comes, no one can divine; and never did man make use of boundless
+wealth to attain his ends more wisely than he does! Why, I am told that
+the pens of half the littérateurs and feuilletonists of Paris have for
+years past been guided by his will and compensated from his purse to
+accomplish his purposes. 'The Mysteries of Paris' and 'The Wandering
+Jew' are but two of the triumphs of his policy. And his system of
+philanthropy seems not bounded by France, but to embrace all Europe. The
+Swiss Protestant and the Italian patriot have each felt his effective
+sympathy as well as the French workman; and in the same manner as with
+the operatives so has he obtained influence and weight with the National
+Guard, and to such an extent that of the sixty thousand one-half would
+obey his orders with greater alacrity than those of Jacqueminot himself.
+I tell you, Messieurs, he is a magician!"
+
+"Hush! hush!" cried Marrast; "he is entering now!"
+
+"He pauses and looks around him!" said Louis Blanc.
+
+"He looks for us; I will go to him!" remarked Flocon.
+
+"He looks for his wife," replied Louis Blanc. "There, he catches her
+eye. See how eagerly she flies to him!"
+
+"That is the finest pair in Paris," remarked the journalist.
+
+"And the most devoted," added Ledru Rollin. "They have been man and wife
+for some time, it is said, and any one would take them for lovers at
+this moment."
+
+"Have they children?" asked Flocon.
+
+"No; but M. Dantès has by a former wife a son and daughter, who rival
+in good looks the celebrated children of our friend Victor Hugo,"
+returned Louis Blanc.
+
+"I met Arago, Lamartine, Sue, Châteaubriand and some other celebrities
+at his mansion in the Rue du Helder one night, recently," continued
+Marrast, "and I thought I never saw a house arranged with such perfect
+taste. The salons, library, picture-gallery, cabinet of natural history,
+conservatory, and laboratory were superb--everything, in short, was
+exquisite."
+
+"And then one is always sure to meet at Madame Dantès' soirées," added
+Louis Blanc, "exactly the persons who, of all others, he wishes to see,
+and whom he would meet nowhere else, poets, painters, authors, orators,
+statesmen and artists of every description--in fine, every man or woman,
+whether native or foreigner, distinguished for anything, is certain to
+be met with at M. Dantès' house."
+
+"I once met there," said Flocon, "Rachel, the actress, and Van Amburgh,
+the lion-king."
+
+"M. Dantès is a perfect Mæcenas in encouraging merit, as every one
+knows," remarked Marrast; "and he manifests especial solicitude to show
+that he appreciates worth more highly than wealth--genius than station.
+Poverty and ability are sure recommendations to him."
+
+"Madame Dantès is, I am told, as devoted to the good cause as her
+husband," remarked Flocon.
+
+"She is a second Madame Roland!" exclaimed Louis Blanc. "France will
+owe much to such women as she and her friend Madame Dudevant!"
+
+"She differs greatly from Madame George Sand in some respects, I fancy,"
+said Marrast; "but, if she at all rivals that wonderful woman in
+devotedness to the cause of human rights, whether of her own sex or
+ours, she deserves well of France. In her charities, it is notorious,
+she has no rival. Half the mendicants of the capital bless her name, and
+she is at the head of a dozen associations and enterprises for the
+amelioration of the condition of the destitute, suffering and abandoned
+of her sex."
+
+"Upon my word, Messieurs," cried Ledru Rollin, "your praises of M.
+Dantès and Madame, his beautiful wife, are perfectly enthusiastic--so
+much so, that, in your zeal, you utterly forgot another matter quite as
+momentous. I am so unfortunate as to know M. Dantès only as one of the
+great pillars of our noble cause, and a man who, for nearly six years,
+has proven himself an apostle of man's rights, and ready, if need be, to
+become a martyr! That's enough for me to know of him!"
+
+"But who really are M. Dantès and his wife?" asked Flocon.
+
+"Who really are any of us?" laughingly rejoined Louis Blanc.
+
+"Who really is any one in Paris," continued Marrast, "the blood-royal
+always and alone excepted?"
+
+"Of M. Dantès this only is known," said Louis Blanc, "that for five or
+six years past he has been a Deputy from Marseilles, Lyons and other
+southern cities, all of which have been eager to honor themselves by
+returning him as their representative, as one of the boldest and most
+eloquent Republicans in all France; as for Madame Dantès, we know her to
+have once been the Countess de Morcerf, but now the wife of our friend,
+and one of the noblest and most lovely matrons in Paris. What need have
+we to know more? But our friend comes."
+
+While this conversation was proceeding, Dantès and Mercédès had joined
+each other, and their hands were quietly clasped.
+
+"Is all well, Edmond?" was the anxious inquiry of the fond wife, in low,
+soft, musical tones, as she fixed upon his pale face her dark eyes,
+beaming with the tenderest solicitude.
+
+"All is well, love," replied the husband. "You will pardon my protracted
+absence, when I tell you it has been unavoidable--will you not,
+Mercédès?"
+
+"Will I not? What a question! But I have been so anxious for your
+safety, knowing the perilous business in which you are engaged; and the
+night is so tempestuous."
+
+"You forget that I have a constitution of iron, dear," replied Dantès;
+"you forget that I was a sailor once, and the storms were my
+playthings!"
+
+"But you will go home with me now, Edmond, will you not?" she anxiously
+asked, placing her little white hand on his arm and gazing beseechingly
+into his eyes.
+
+"Have I ever passed one night from your arms, my Mercédès, since we
+were wed?" was the whispered response. "Ah! love, any pillow but thy
+soft bosom would be to me a thorny one! You have spoiled me forever!" he
+added, smiling.
+
+"And shall we go now, Edmond?" eagerly asked the delighted woman. "Oh!
+I'm so weary of this fête!"
+
+"I must exchange a few words with our friend Louis Blanc, whom I see
+yonder, with others of our party, and then, dear, we will to our pillow.
+We are both weary. Au revoir!"
+
+"Edmond--Edmond!" cried the lady, as her husband was going, "do you see
+Joliette and Louise in the redowa yonder?"
+
+Dantès looked and, with a well pleased smile, nodded assent; a more
+brilliant and well-matched pair could hardly have been found, Joliette
+in the splendid uniform of an officer of the Spahis, and she in her own
+magnificent beauty, fitly garbed.
+
+M. Dantès was received with marked respect by the knot of Republicans as
+he approached.
+
+"I am delighted to meet you all, and to meet you to-night, or, rather,
+this morning," said Dantès, warmly, "in order that I may render you an
+account of my stewardship for the past six hours. They have been hours
+big with fate; and the first day of Republican France has already
+commenced. Messieurs, we can no longer remain blind to the fact that the
+long looked for--hoped for--expected hour has come--the hour to
+strike--strike home for liberty and for France! To-morrow the streets of
+Paris will swarm with blouses!--the Marseillaise will be
+heard!--barricades rise!--the Ministry be impeached! Next day the
+National Guards will fraternize with the people!--blood will flow!--the
+Ministry resign! On the third, the King abdicates!--the Tuileries are
+surrendered!--a Regency is refused!--a Republic is declared! And this
+day, two weeks hence, liberty will be shouted in the streets of Vienna
+and Berlin, and every throne in Europe will tremble! The honors of
+prophecy are easily won," continued the speaker, with a significant
+smile that lighted up his features, pale with enthusiasm and exhaustion,
+"when the problem of seventeen years approaches solution with
+mathematical certainty!"
+
+"Are our plans all complete?" asked Louis Blanc.
+
+"So far as human forethought or power could render them so, our efforts
+have, I trust, been effectual," was the reply. "Yet the events of every
+hour will induce changes, and render indispensable policy now undreamed
+of. Ah! Messieurs, we must none of us sleep now! Not a moment must
+escape our vigilance! Not an advantage must be sacrificed! We can afford
+to lose nothing! Without leaders, the people are blind! Not, for an
+instant, must they be abandoned! To-morrow, let the masses gather at
+different points! Next day let barricades choke the Boulevards; and, if
+the conflict come not, be it precipitated--provoked! Thursday, an
+hundred thousand men must invest the Tuileries, and a Provisional
+Government be declared in the Chamber of Deputies! The Bourbons will
+then be in full flight, and France will be free! And now, Messieurs,
+will you permit me to suggest the propriety of our separation? Yonder
+Ministerial Secretary has had his eye upon us ever since he entered."
+
+The expediency of the suggestion of M. Dantès was at once perceived; the
+conspirators parted and one after the other, by different routes,
+shortly disappeared. As for M. Dantès, he threw himself carelessly in
+the way of the Ministerial Secretary to whom he had alluded, who was no
+other than our friend Lucien Debray, and saluted him with most marked
+and winning courtesy.
+
+"Will the Ministerial Secretary suffer me to compliment him upon his
+indefatigable industry and exertions to-night to fortify order in Paris
+and sustain the administration?"
+
+Debray bowed somewhat confusedly at this remark, and having returned a
+diplomatic reply, from which neither himself nor any one else could have
+elicited an idea, M. Dantès continued the conversation.
+
+"Let me see, it is now nearly three o'clock," he said, consulting his
+repeater; "at half-past two you received an order, signed by the Duke of
+Montpensier, and directed to the War Ministry, commanding that
+seventy-two additional pieces of artillery be transported from Vincennes
+to Paris before dawn. That order was issued, and the ordnance is now on
+the boulevard!"
+
+"How!" exclaimed the astonished Secretary.
+
+"At Vincennes, the horses of the flying artillery stand harnessed in
+their stalls! All night infantry have been pouring into Paris, and,
+obedient to midnight orders, every railway will disgorge, at dawn,
+additional troops!"
+
+"Are you a magician?" asked the astonished Secretary.
+
+"Shall I reveal to you the Ministerial tactics for the morrow's
+apprehended insurrection?" coolly asked Dantès, with a smile. "The
+salons of the Tuileries have not been deserted to-night. 'Can you quell
+an insurrection, General?' asked the King of the Marshal Duke of Islay.
+'I can kill thirty thousand men,' was the humane answer. 'And I, sire,
+can preserve order in Paris without killing a score,' said Marshal
+Gérard, the hero of Antwerp, 'if I can rely on my men.' 'What is your
+plan, Marshal?' asked the King. Shall I give you the Marshal's reply, my
+friend?"
+
+"You were present--you know all!" exclaimed Debray.
+
+"Not quite all," thought Dantès, "but I shall before we part. Well,"
+continued he, aloud, "the Marshal's strategy was this--exceedingly
+simple and exceedingly efficacious, too, provided, to use the Marshal's
+own words, he can rely on his men. It is this: Occupy the Tuileries, the
+Hôtel de Ville, the Halles, the Louvre and other prominent points with a
+heavy reserve of infantry and artillery, and sweep the boulevards, and
+the Rues St. Honoré, de Rivoli, St. Martin, St. Denis, Montmartre and
+Richelieu with cavalry. A simple plan, is it not? Almost as simple as
+that of the insurrectionists themselves--a barricade on every street and
+one hundred thousand men in the Place du Carrousel!"
+
+"The Government will not yield, Monsieur!" said Debray, firmly. "The
+Minister is unshaken. To crush an unarmed mob cannot severely tax the
+most skillful generals in Europe."
+
+"True, they are unarmed," returned Dantès, with apparent seriousness.
+"Their leaders should have thought of that--arms are so easily
+provided--but then they can rely on their men!"
+
+"We have yet to see that!" replied Debray, with some asperity.
+
+"True, we have yet to see it. It is only a matter of belief now; then it
+will be a matter of knowledge. Seeing is knowing," added M. Dantès, with
+his peculiar smile. "But, pray, assure me, M. Debray, are the Ministry
+and their advisers, indeed, sanguine of the issue to-morrow!"
+
+"They are certain!" replied the Secretary, with energy. Then, feeling
+that he had, perhaps, made a dangerous revelation, he quickly added: "I
+have the honor, Monsieur, to wish you a very good night! It is late!"
+
+"Say, rather, it is early, Monsieur!" replied Dantès. "I have the honor
+to wish you a very good morning!"
+
+The Secretary returned the courtesy, turned away, and, after exchanging
+a few words with M. Thiers, disappeared.
+
+"They are certain, then!" soliloquized M. Dantès, as Debray quitted the
+salon. "I was sure I should know all before he left."
+
+Then, rejoining Mercédès, who was patiently awaiting him, they stepped
+into their carriage, as the drowsy tones of the watchman rose on the
+misty air, "Past four o'clock, and all is well!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE REVOLUTION BEGINS.
+
+
+Tuesday, the 22nd of February, the birthday of the immortal Washington
+and the first of the Three Days of the French Revolution of 1848, broke
+darkly and gloomily on Paris. The night had been tempestuous, and the
+wind still drove the sleet through the leafless trees of the
+Champs-Elysées and howled drearily along the cheerless boulevards.
+
+The streets were dismal, desolate and deserted. Here and there, however,
+through the gray light of the winter dawn, could be caught the semblance
+of a figure closely muffled, whether for concealment, disguise, or
+protection from the biting blast was doubtful, stealing along; these
+figures often met and exchanged ominous signs of recognition.
+
+"Is the procession still to take place?" asked one of another of these
+persons, pausing for an instant as they hurried along.
+
+"Yes!" was the emphatic answer. "Dupont, Lamartine and the sixteen
+others who are faithful are resolute."
+
+"And the rendezvous?"
+
+"Is the Place de La Concorde."
+
+"And the hour?"
+
+"Twelve."
+
+Whereupon the conspirators parted.
+
+Gradually the number of persons in the streets increased as the morning
+advanced. Chiefly, these were artisans, lads, blouses and workmen.
+
+"Whither so early this disagreeable morning?" cried a peaceable-looking
+shopman of the Rue de Rivoli, who was taking down his shutters for the
+day, to a friend who was hurrying by.
+
+"I don't exactly know where I am going," was the reply. "We were all
+roused at daybreak in the Quartier St. Honoré by the rappel, and so I
+happen to be awake."
+
+"And are the National Guard turning out in good numbers?"
+
+"No. They don't turn out at all. The drummers are followed by a crowd of
+gamins in blouses, who shout Vive la Réforme and sing the Marseillaise."
+
+"The National Guard don't turn out!" cried the alarmed shopman; "then
+I'll not take down my shutters!"
+
+And as his friend moved on to the Madeleine, he took the precautionary
+measure he had spoken of.
+
+At nine o'clock troops were in motion all over Paris, and the roll of
+the drum was heard in every street.
+
+At ten o'clock ten thousand men were assembled at the Madeleine.
+
+"Is there to be a banquet?" asked one of another, as they met on the Rue
+Royale.
+
+"No. It is a procession. The people are to march to the Chamber of
+Deputies and sing the Marseillaise."
+
+All the avenues to the Palais Bourbon and part of the Place around the
+Madeleine were now occupied by the 21st Regiment of the Line and mounted
+Municipal Guards. Before the Chamber of Deputies was marshaled a
+squadron of dragoons, and a battalion of the 69th Regiment of
+Cuirassiers stood ready to charge on the throng.
+
+At eleven o'clock two thousand students in blouses from the Parthenon
+were joined by an immense column of workmen from the faubourgs, and,
+having fraternized in the Place de la Concorde, advanced in perfect
+order in procession, led by National Guards, shouting the Marseillaise
+and the Hymn of the Girondins. Slowly and solemnly moved the vast mass
+up the Rue Royale to the Pont de la Concorde, leading to the Place of
+the Chamber of Deputies.
+
+At twelve o'clock the vast arena between the Chamber of Deputies and the
+Madeleine contained thirty thousand people. Along the railing of the
+church was drawn up a regiment of horse. A man in a tri-colored sash
+three times read the summons and ordered the crowd disperse.
+
+The order is disregarded! The charge is sounded! The dragoons rush with
+sheathed sabres on the mass! Again and again they charge, but they cut
+down none!
+
+All at once a heavy cart with a powerful horse is discovered--the people
+seize it--the horse is lashed into fury--he rushes on the double line of
+dragoons and chasseurs--a breach is made--the crowd dash through--some
+rush up the steps of the Chamber of Deputies--they force the gates--they
+even enter the hall--then, suddenly panic-stricken at their own
+audacity, they rush back! At this moment, along the Quai d'Orsay,
+gallops up a strong detachment of the mounted Municipal Guard, led by
+General Peyronet Tiburce Sebastiani, brother of the Marshal and uncle of
+the unhappy Duchess of Praslin. A charge was ordered, the crowd was
+driven over the bridge, and the Municipal Guard, a company of dragoons
+and a squadron of hussars took up a position at the foot of the Obelisk
+of Luxor. "Long live the dragoons!" shouted the people. "Down with the
+Municipal Guard!" accompanied by hootings, groans, shouts and showers of
+stones. The troops, with sheathed sabres, charged. One of the immense
+fountains afforded the gamins a place of shelter. Suddenly the flood of
+water was let on and they fled.
+
+Thus began the revolution.
+
+One o'clock tolled from the tower of the Madeleine. The area was clear.
+Cavalry patrolled the boulevards. Infantry, bearing, besides their
+usual arms, implements for demolishing barricades--axes, adzes and
+hatchets--each soldier one upon his knapsack, followed.
+
+At two o'clock, at the Hôtel des Affaires Étrangères, at the corner of
+the Rue des Capucines and the Boulevard, an immense mass of men ebbed
+and flowed like tides of the sea, and a tempest of shouts, groans and
+choruses to national songs arose.
+
+A commissary of police in colored clothes, and with the tri-colored
+sash, led a body of Municipal Guards into the court. Deliberately they
+charge their muskets with ball. "In the name of the Law!" shouted the
+commissary. "Vive la Ligne!" responded the people, as they slowly
+retired.
+
+"Away," cried a trooper to a blouse, in the Place de la Concorde, at the
+corner, near the Turkish Embassy; "Away, or I'll cut you down!"
+
+"Will you, coward!" replied the artisan, calmly, with folded arms. At
+that moment a body of the people rushed on the Municipal Guards and
+drove them for safety into their barracks; then they fled themselves to
+avoid the fusillade of the enraged troops.
+
+On the Pont de la Concorde the people stopped the carriage of a
+Ministerial Deputy and saluted him with groans. The next moment Armand
+Marrast, of "Le National," approached and was most rapturously cheered.
+
+The money-changers, those seers of Napoleon, scented not yet the
+revolution. On Friday, the three per cents. were 75f. 85c. On Tuesday
+they opened at 73f. 90c. and closed at 74f.
+
+The day advanced. The Republican and Communist power augments in its
+systematized order. Paris swarms with insurgents. Bakers' and gunsmiths'
+shops are plundered. Barricades are thrown up. A column rushes down the
+Champs-Elysées, and, having been repulsed at an escalade of the railings
+of the Chamber of Deputies, retires, shouting the Marseillaise and a
+chorus from the new opera of the Girondins, "Mourir pour la Patrie." At
+dusk a deputation of students, at the office of "Le National," presents
+a petition for the impeachment of the Ministry.
+
+That impeachment had already taken place!
+
+"What news?" shouted a student to a workman, as he hurried along.
+
+"There has been fighting in the Faubourg St. Marceau; half a dozen
+Municipal Guards have been carried wounded to the hospital of
+Val-de-Grace and a captain was killed."
+
+"And is it true that the Guard has been disarmed on the Rues Geoffroi
+and Langevin, and a gunmaker's shop near the Porte St. Martin broken
+into and rifled?"
+
+"I hadn't heard of that," was the hurried reply. "But I hear this, that
+the guard-houses in the Champs-Elysées have been taken, and the troops
+driven off, and that lamps and windows have been torn down."
+
+At that moment another workman rushed along.
+
+"The news!" shouted the student and the first workman.
+
+"The railing of the Church of the Assumption has been torn away by the
+people to supply arms; two women of the people have been crushed by a
+charge of the Municipal Guard; the shop of Lepage, the armorer, in the
+Rue Richelieu, has been entered by means of the pole of an omnibus used
+as a battering ram; and barricades rise on the Rue St. Honoré."
+
+At three o'clock a column of the people dashed down the boulevards,
+smashing lamps and breaking shop windows. In the Rue St. Honoré and the
+Rue de Rivoli an omnibus and two carriages were seized to aid in
+erecting a barricade. A guard-house in the Champs-Elysées was burned.
+The troops at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were increased. No one was
+suffered to pass. A Municipal Guard was dismounted and nearly killed by
+the people. The crowd in the Rue Royale had become so dense that it was
+impossible to pass to the Place de la Concorde. The troops charged. The
+people gave way. Some were wounded badly; but still rose the shouts,
+"Vive la Ligne! Down with the Municipal Guard!"
+
+In the Place Vendôme stood a regiment of the Line. There was the hôtel
+of M. Hebert, the Minister of Justice, and M. Hebert was hated by the
+people. "Down with Hebert, the inventor of moral complicity!" yelled the
+populace, but they made no attack.
+
+It was ten o'clock at night. Many of the shops were closed, but the
+cafés and restaurants were thronged. From time to time the shouts,
+"Down with Guizot!" and "Vive la Réforme!" were heard and, also, the
+roll of drums as a body of troops passed along; knots of individuals
+gathered around the doors of bakers' shops, and, while they eagerly ate
+their bread and sausage, as eagerly denounced Guizot and the Ministry.
+
+But all was comparative order in Paris.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE.
+
+
+It was twelve o'clock at night, on the 22nd of February, 1848.
+
+Lights still gleamed in the vast edifice of "Le National" printing
+office, and in the editorial chamber were assembled the chiefs of the
+revolution.
+
+"All goes well," said Louis Blanc. "The blow is struck; let it only be
+followed up, and the efforts of the past ten years will not prove vain!"
+
+"How true was the opinion of M. Dantès respecting the National Guard!"
+said Marrast.
+
+"How true also respecting the workmen!" said Albert.
+
+"How true respecting the Ministry!" said Ledru Rollin. "But where is M.
+Dantès? Why is he not here?"
+
+At that moment the private door opened, and M. Dantès, Flocon and
+Lamartine entered.
+
+"The news from the Chambers!" cried Marrast, as they approached.
+
+"Three impeachments of the Ministry have been proposed," said Lamartine.
+
+"By whom--by whom?" asked Louis Blanc. "By whom presented?"
+
+"One by Odillon Barrot, one by Duvergier d'Hauranne and one by M. de
+Genoude, Deputy from Toulouse."
+
+"And what said Guizot?" asked Marrast.
+
+"Nothing. He only laughed when the papers were handed him by old
+President Sauzet."
+
+"Ah!" cried Ledru Rollin.
+
+"Few deputies were there," continued Flocon. "The opposition benches
+were vacant. Guizot was there early, pale and troubled, but stern and
+unbending. All the Ministers followed him."
+
+"What was discussed?" asked Marrast.
+
+"The Bordeaux Bank Bill."
+
+"Ah!" cried Ledru Rollin again.
+
+"Yes," continued Flocon, "until five o'clock that bill was discussed.
+Barrot then ascended the tribune and deposited a general proposition to
+impeach the Ministry."
+
+"And what was done with it?" asked Louis Blanc.
+
+"The President raised the sitting without reading it, but announced that
+the bureaux should have it for examination on Thursday."
+
+"Infamous!" cried Ledru Rollin.
+
+"It is all as it should be," said M. Dantès, calmly.
+
+"And the peers--what of them?"
+
+"The Marquis de Boissy made an effort to get a hearing on the state of
+Paris, but, of course, it was in vain."
+
+"Is it true," asked Flocon, "that the rappel has been beaten to-day?"
+
+"It was beaten in the Quartier St. Honoré, at dawn," said Louis Blanc,
+"and this evening, at about five o'clock, in several of the
+arrondissements. But no reliance need be placed on the National Guard.
+They are with us--they are of the people--they shout, 'Vive la
+Réforme!'"
+
+"But the Municipal Guard and the Line? I am told that an immense body of
+them was this evening, at about eight o'clock, reviewed by the King and
+the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier, in the Place du Carrousel," said
+Flocon.
+
+"That's true," said Ledru Rollin; "I witnessed it myself in passing, and
+I could not help saying, 'It is the last.'"
+
+"Six thousand troops of the Line are on the boulevards, from the
+Madeleine to the Porte St. Martin," said M. Dantès. "The Hôtel de Ville,
+the Places de la Bastille, de la Concorde and du Carrousel, and the
+Quays frown with artillery. To-morrow will be a warm day!"
+
+"It has been rather warm to-day in some parts of Paris," said Louis
+Blanc, smiling. "Was there ever a grander spectacle than that in the
+Place de la Concorde at noon? At least one hundred thousand men were
+there assembled. Rushing across the bridge, they gathered around the
+Chamber of Deputies--then from the southern gate of the Tuileries issued
+two bodies of troops, one of mounted Municipal Guards, the other
+infantry of the Line, and, pressing on the dense mass, they drove them
+over the bridge. Only a few old fruitwomen were crushed beneath the
+horses' hoofs, and a few of the troops were wounded by pebbles,
+however."
+
+"At the same time," said Flocon, "all the chains in the Champs-Elysées
+were in requisition for a barricade, as well as all the public
+carriages, and the people sang the Marseillaise, the Parisienne and the
+Hymn of the Girondins. A guard-house was also consumed."
+
+"Have you heard Bugeaud's remark at noon, when looking upon the Place de
+la Concorde?" asked Marrast.
+
+"We have been too busy to-day to hear anything," said Ledru Rollin.
+
+"'Ah! we shall have a day of it,' said the bloodthirsty old hero. 'I
+care not for the day,' said the pale Guizot, 'but the night!'"
+
+"The people made quite a demonstration about Guizot, I hear," said
+Flocon. "They assailed him with a shower of groans, it is said, and some
+of the gamins flung pebbles at his gates."
+
+"The most significant shout before the office of Foreign Affairs was
+this," said Ledru Rollin--"'Countess of Leven, where is the Minister?'"
+
+"And the very moment this was occurring," said Flocon, "I understand
+that M. Thiers, on his return from the Chamber, in passing through the
+Champs-Elysées, narrowly escaped a most unwelcome ovation from the
+people. The two rivals were duly and simultaneously honored it seems."
+
+"Thus much for to-day," said Marrast; "what of to-night?"
+
+"Barricades rise all over Paris," said M. Dantès. "But we can do no
+more. Let us each retire to his home. To-morrow the National Guard will
+fraternize with the people, and the Ministry will resign."
+
+A few words of parting salutation passed, and all departed.
+
+M. Dantès and Lamartine left the office in company.
+
+"What say you, Edmond," asked Lamartine, "will your wife spare you long
+enough from her pillow to make with me a brief tour of the town?"
+
+"Mercédès is rather exacting," said Dantès, with a laugh; "but if your
+fair lady will suffer your absence, mine must do the same, I fear."
+
+"Well, then, let us first to the Hôtel de Ville, that grand centre of
+Paris in all that is revolutionary."
+
+As the two friends passed along, conversing on the events of the day and
+the anticipations of the morrow, they were met, from time to time, by
+knots of men at the corners, eagerly recounting the incidents of the
+hour; the roll of drums was heard in the distance, and occasionally
+there came the heavy and measured tread of infantry, the clatter of
+cavalry and the lumbering of artillery, as they passed on their way. All
+the shops and cafés were closed. Many of the lamps were demolished, and
+others were not lighted, the gas being shut off. A fearful gloom brooded
+over the city. The winter wind swept sharply and cuttingly along the
+deserted streets, and rain, which froze as it fell, at intervals dashed
+down.
+
+The Hôtel de Ville was encompassed by troops as the friends approached
+it.
+
+"Is that a cannon?" asked Lamartine, pointing to a dark object that
+protruded from an embrasure of the edifice.
+
+"It is!" replied Dantès.
+
+"Then the revolution has, indeed, begun! Artillery in the streets of
+Paris!"
+
+"Behind each column of the portico of the Chamber of Deputies this day
+frowned a concealed cannon!" was the significant response.
+
+The friends turned off from the Hôtel de Ville, and, crossing the right
+branch of the Seine, were under the deep shadows of Nôtre Dame. But all
+was tranquil and still. Only the howlings of the wintry blast were heard
+through the towers and architectural ornaments of the old pile. Up the
+Rue St. Jacques, into the Quartier Latin, they then proceeded, but the
+students and the grisettes seemed to be fast asleep. Turning back, they
+passed the Fish Market, and here a large body of cavalry had bivouacked.
+Patrols marched to and fro; officers in huge dark cloaks smoked,
+laughed and chatted, regardless of the morrow. The friends went on. All
+was dark in the faubourg which succeeded. Not a light gleamed, save, in
+some lofty casement, the fainting candle of the worn-out needlewoman or
+of the overtasked student.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Lamartine, as they passed one of these flickering
+lights, "who knows what plotting head and ready hand may be beside that
+candle? Who knows of the weapon burnished, the cartridge filled and the
+sabre sharpened by that light for the morrow?"
+
+"The morrow!" exclaimed M. Dantès; "that morrow decides the fate of
+France!"
+
+And the friends parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE SECOND DAY.
+
+
+The 23d of February dawned on Paris as a city under arms. Artillery
+frowned in all the public places; the barricades of the preceding night
+had been thrown down as fast as erected; National Guards thronged the
+thoroughfares; the people swarmed along the boulevards. In the
+neighborhood of the Porte St. Denis and the Porte St. Martin, barricades
+rose as if by magic, but were as if by magic swept away. Cavalry
+bivouacked in the streets, and ordnance was leveled along their entire
+extent. The avenues were closely invested, and even old men and women
+were arrested on their way to their own thresholds. From time to time
+single shots or volleys of musketry were heard in the distance, and
+wounded men were carried past to the hospitals.
+
+The Government had ordered all public carriages to be cleared from the
+stands, that material for new barricades might not exist when the old
+ones were demolished; but the people were busy, too, for the iron
+railings at the hôtel of the Minister of Marine, in the Place de la
+Concorde, and at the churches of the Assumption and St. Roch had been
+torn away to supply weapons of attack or defence, or implements with
+which to tear up the huge square paving stones of Paris for barricades.
+
+At eleven o'clock the National Guard of the Second Arrondissement
+gathered at the opera house in the Rue Lepelletier, and near the office
+of "Le National." "Vive la Réforme!" "Vive la Garde Nationale!" "Long
+live the real defenders of the country!"--these were the shouts,
+intermingled with the choruses of national songs, that now rose from the
+people and the National Guard.
+
+At twelve o'clock the 2d Legion of the National Guard was at the
+Tuileries to make a demonstration for reform. Its colonel, M. Bagnières,
+declared to the Duke of Nemours that he could not answer for his men. At
+one o'clock, accompanied by an immense multitude, with whom they
+fraternized, they were again on the Rue Lepelletier. A squadron of
+cuirassiers and one of chasseurs advanced to dislodge them.
+
+"Who are these men?" cried the chef d'escadron.
+
+"The people of Paris!" replied the officer of the National Guard.
+
+"And who are you?"
+
+"An officer of the 2d Legion of the National Guard."
+
+"The people must disperse!"
+
+"They will not!"
+
+"I will compel them!"
+
+"The National Guard will defend them!"
+
+"Vive la Réforme!" shouted the people.
+
+The National Guard and the cuirassiers united. The officer, chagrined,
+turned back to his men and vociferated in tones of thunder:
+
+"Wheel! Forward!"
+
+And the whole body resumed its march down the Boulevard.
+
+An hour afterwards a still larger body of troops, Municipal Guards
+mounted and on foot, cuirassiers and infantry of the Line, came down the
+Boulevard and made a half movement on the Rue Lepelletier, but, seeing
+the hostile attitude of the National Guard, continued their march amid
+shouts of "Vive la Réforme!" "Vive la Garde Nationale!" "Vive la Ligne!"
+
+Twice, within an hour afterwards, the same thing occurred.
+
+It was plain that the National Guard fraternized with the people.
+
+The 3d Legion deputed their colonel, M. Besson, to demand of the King
+reform and a change of Ministry. The colonel presented the memorial to
+General Jaqueminot, who promised to place it in the Royal hands.
+
+The 4th Legion marched to the Chamber of Deputies and presented a
+petition for reform.
+
+Col. Lemercier, of the 10th, arrested a man for shouting "Vive la
+Réforme!" The man was liberated by his own troops, with shouts of "Vive
+la Réforme!" The colonel withdrew.
+
+The cavalry legion, the 13th, in like manner repudiated Col. Montalivet.
+
+The Municipal Guard was ordered to disarm the 3d Legion. Both
+advanced--bayonets were crossed--blood was about to flow. At that moment
+Col. Textorix, of the National Guard, rushed up and exclaimed:
+
+"Brothers, will you slay brothers?"
+
+The effect was electrical. The muskets were instantly shouldered and the
+combatants separated.
+
+All over Paris the same scenes took place, with a few exceptions.
+
+"Vive la République!" cried Ledru Rollin to Albert, who was hurrying
+down the Rue Lepelletier, at about noon.
+
+"Vive la République!" was the hearty response. "What of the National
+Guard?"
+
+"The Guard fraternizes with the people," replied Ledru Rollin. "What of
+the blouses and the barricades?"
+
+"Last night, the barricades of yesterday were swept from the streets,
+and even the material of which to build them also, the pavements only
+excepted; yet, at dawn this morning, the whole space between the
+Quartier Saint-Martin des Champs, the Mont de Piété and the Temple, and
+all the smaller streets were choked with barricades."
+
+"And they were at once assailed?"
+
+"By the troops of the Line, the Municipal Guard and the chasseurs of
+Vincennes."
+
+"Who were repulsed?"
+
+"With most obstinate bravery. At the Rue Rambuteau, the 69th Regiment
+was three times driven back; also at the corner of the Rue St. Denis and
+the Rue de Tracy. In the Rue Philippeaux a ball passed through the face
+of a soldier of the 21st of the Line infantry, and then through the head
+of a voltigeur behind him. Sixteen soldiers fell in the attack on the
+barricade of the Rue Rambuteau. A blouse pointed a pistol at an officer
+of the Municipal Guard; the pistol hung fire, and the officer passed his
+sword through his assailant's body. From this you can infer that we have
+had close fighting."
+
+"I have heard that an assault was made on the armory of our friends, the
+Leparge Brothers, for weapons; is it so?"
+
+"There was an assault at about ten o'clock; but the windows were too
+strong to be carried. There has been fighting in the Rue de Petit
+Carrel, and the neighborhood of the Place Royale, I learn. Achmet
+Pacha, son of Mehemet Ali, is fighting for us with the most wonderful
+intrepidity. A chef de bataillon of the 34th was slain by a shot from a
+window, and some offices of the Octroi have been burned. Three men were
+killed at the Batignolles, and their bodies were accompanied by an
+immense throng to the Morgue."
+
+"Have you heard that the 5th Regiment, as in 1830, has joined the
+people, and that, on their way to the Préfecture of Police to liberate
+some of the people who had been arrested, they stopped at the office of
+'La Réforme,' and were eloquently addressed by our friend, Louis Blanc?"
+
+"What did he say to them?"
+
+"He told them the fight was not yet over; that there must still be a
+banquet; and that this time there must be no mistake--the workmen must
+have the freedom they won!"
+
+"Vive Louis Blanc!" cried Albert, and, in a higher state of excitement
+than he had ever before been known to exhibit, he hurried off.
+
+"I am for the Tuileries," said Ledru Rollin, as they parted.
+
+"And I for the Palais Royal," said Albert.
+
+"We meet to-night at the office of 'Le National?'"
+
+"Without fail, at midnight!"
+
+It was on the square at the south end of the Palais Royal that most
+blood was spilled between the people and the troops. The Château d'Eau
+was furiously assailed and obstinately defended--assailed by the people
+and defended by six thousand picked troops. The people triumphed! Of the
+troops, at least a thousand perished, and the remnant fled.
+
+At three o'clock M. Rambuteau, Préfect of the Seine, waited on the King
+and informed him that the National Guard demanded reform, and the
+Municipal Guard a change of Ministry.
+
+The King in dismay convened the Ministry.
+
+"Can the Ministry maintain itself?" asked Louis Philippe.
+
+"That question brings its own answer to your Majesty," replied Guizot.
+"If you doubt the stability of your Ministry, who can trust them?"
+
+"I have thought of the Count Mole," observed the King.
+
+"He is an able man, sire," replied Guizot; "and his political
+connections with M. Barrot and M. Thiers may aid him to form a Ministry.
+But, sire, not an instant is to be lost. Your faithful Ministers will do
+all they can, but a Ministerial crisis cannot be delayed; and, if your
+Majesty will permit the suggestion, the emergency demands that to
+Marshal Bugeaud be given the command of Paris."
+
+"You will proceed to the Chamber to announce that M. Mole is entrusted
+with the formation of a new cabinet," said the King.
+
+And the council closed.
+
+At four, an officer of the staff passed along the boulevards, announcing
+the fall of the Ministry.
+
+Instantly, with the speed of the telegraph, the intelligence flew to
+the obscurest parts of Paris. Its effect was, at first, most cheering.
+Barricades were deserted and arms thrown down; faces brightened, hands,
+almost stained with each other's blood, were clasped; troops and people,
+unwillingly fighting, embraced; all was triumph, joy and congratulation.
+
+"All now is over--all is right at last!" was the exclamation of one man
+of the people to another.
+
+"Guizot has fallen, but the King has sent for Count Mole," replied a
+third, with a dissatisfied air.
+
+"No matter," cried the first speaker, "the system is overturned! What
+care we who is Minister?"
+
+"It is too late," replied the other. "Guizot has been forced away by the
+people--Mole may be forced away, too--so may the King! No more tricks!
+The people now know their power. There shall be no mistake this time!"
+
+And the insurrectionists parted.
+
+As the day closed, barricades rose in the Quartier du Temple, and there
+was fighting between the people and the Municipal Guard. But the
+National Guard came to the rescue, and the latter surrendered.
+
+At nine o'clock Paris was illuminated. White, red, blue--yellow, orange,
+green--these were the tri-colors of the lamps that poured their rich
+effulgence from every window on the gloomy scene without. The streets
+were thronged and the cafés crowded; men of all nations and Parisians
+of all classes were in the streets; the rattle of musketry had ceased;
+the troops were in their barracks and the people at their homes.
+
+At the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue des Capucines, Flocon and
+Louis Blanc met.
+
+"Guizot has fallen!" cried the first.
+
+"And the most intimate friend of the King has succeeded him! What have
+we to hope for from the change?"
+
+"What are we to do?" asked Flocon.
+
+"In one hour the people will sing the Marseillaise before the Hôtel des
+Affaires Étrangères!"
+
+"The 14th Regiment of the Line is there," replied Flocon.
+
+"So much the better! Blood will flow! The revolution will not stop!"
+
+And the conspirators separated.
+
+At ten o'clock, before the official residence of M. Guizot, himself then
+absent, and probably in full flight for the coast, an immense crowd of
+the people with torches was assembled. Their purpose was to sing the
+Marseillaise. The 14th Regiment barred the way--the street was dimly
+lighted--a single row of lamps along the courtyard wall was all the
+illumination--a double line of troops was the defence.
+
+"Let me pass!" cried the officer of the National Guard who led the
+people to the officer who led the troops.
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"In the name of the people, I demand to pass!"
+
+"In the name of the Law, you shall not!"
+
+"The people command! Forward!" cried the National Guard.
+
+"Present! Fire!" shouted the officer.
+
+There was a roll of musketry--a shrill shriek rang along the
+Boulevard--the vast mass recoiled--the smoke floated off--sixty-three of
+the people of Paris lay weltering in their gore!
+
+"The blow is struck at last!" cried M. Dantès, rushing across the
+Boulevard, pale and excited. "To arms, people of Paris, to arms!"
+
+"To arms, to arms! Vengeance for our brothers!" was now the terrible cry
+that burst from the infuriated populace. The congratulation--the
+illumination--all was lost in the wild wish for vengeance.
+
+At eleven o'clock that night an immense multitude, composed chiefly of
+workmen from the faubourgs, was coming down the Boulevard des Capucines.
+It was the largest and most regular throng yet seen. In front marched a
+platoon of men bearing torches and waving tri-color flags. Immediately
+behind walked an officer in the full uniform of the National Guard, with
+a drawn sword in his hand, whose slightest command was implicitly
+observed. Next came a tumbrel bearing the naked corpses of the slain,
+whose faces, mutilated by their wounds and disfigured by blood, glared
+horribly up, with open eyes, in the red torchlight that flared in the
+night blast around! Behind this awful display marched a dense mass of
+National Guards, succeeded by a countless mass of the people armed
+with, guns, swords, clubs and bars of iron, chanting forth in full
+chorus, not the inspiring Marseillaise or the Parisienne, but in awful
+concert sending upon the night air the deep and dreadful notes of the
+death-hymn of the Girondins, "Mourir pour la Patrie," intermingled with
+yells for vengeance.
+
+Down the boulevards approach the multitude--more distinct becomes the
+dirge--more redly glare the torches--and, amid all, more deeply rumble
+the wheels of the death-cart on the pavement!
+
+The funeral column reaches the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue
+Lepelletier--the death-hymn rises to a yell of fury--the officer of the
+National Guard turns the head of the column to the right--before it is
+an edifice conspicuous by its illumination of huge and blood-red
+lamps--it is the office of "Le National"--the crowd halts--one long loud
+shriek of "Vengeance!" goes up--it is succeeded by the thrilling notes
+of the Marseillaise from ten thousands lips, and "Marrast! Marrast!" is
+the shout that follows.
+
+The windows of the front office were thrown up, and the editor,
+surrounded by friends, appeared. His speech was brief but fervid. He
+exhorted the people to be firm--to secure their rights beyond
+recall--and promised them ample retribution for past wrongs and security
+for future rights.
+
+M. Garnier Pages, who stood at the side of Marrast, next addressed the
+people in the same strain, amid thunders of applause.
+
+Making a detour to the office of "La Réforme," the multitude were
+addressed by M. Flocon, its editor; then, proceeding to the Place de la
+Bastille, the corpses were deposited at the foot of the Column of July,
+and the crowd dispersed.
+
+The night that succeeded was an awful one. The streets, which an hour
+before blazed with the illumination, were dark. Barricades rose in every
+direction. At every corner shopmen, workmen, women, clerks and children
+were at work. The crash of falling trees, the clank of the lever and the
+pickaxe, the rattle of paving stones--these were the significant sounds
+that broke the stillness. Every tree on the whole line of the Boulevard
+was felled and every lamp-post overthrown; a barricade of immense
+strength rose at the end of the Rue Richelieu; the troops offered no
+resistance; they piled their arms, lighted their fires and bivouacked
+close beside the barricades. At the Hôtel de Ville the troops of the
+Line and the Chasseurs d'Afrique quietly ate their suppers, smoked their
+pipes and laid themselves down to sleep. On the Boulevard des Italiens
+appeared three regiments of the Line, a battalion of National Guards, a
+regiment of cuirassiers, and three field-pieces, with their caissons of
+ammunition. The horses were unharnessed by the people, the caissons
+opened, the ammunition distributed and the guns dragged off. The troops,
+guards and cuirassiers fraternized.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+ANOTHER MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE.
+
+
+Again it was midnight. Again the chiefs of the revolution of '48
+assembled in conclave. The second of the Three Days had passed, but the
+streets of Paris were all alive with excitement.
+
+Every leader of the reform was there--Ledru Rollin and Flocon excited
+and fiery, Louis Blanc exhausted and agitated, Albert stern and
+collected, Lamartine pale and troubled, Marrast sanguine and
+confident--all of them more or less disturbed but M. Dantès. As for him,
+the same calm smile was on his lip, the same mild light in his eye and
+the same unchanging resolution upon his countenance.
+
+"Who attended the Chamber of Deputies to-day?" asked Marrast. "Did you,
+Lamartine?"
+
+"I did," was the reply, "and witnessed a somewhat stormy sitting. At
+three o'clock, as usual, old Sauzet took the chair. Our friends were
+there in large numbers; the Ministerial benches were also filled.
+Immediately after, M. Guizot entered. He had been saluted with groans by
+the 10th Legion, stationed on guard without, and with cries of 'Down
+with Guizot!' Calm, undisturbed, stony in aspect, though strangely
+pallid, he entered and took his seat. M. Vavin, Deputy for the Seine,
+instantly mounted the tribune. As Deputy of Paris he had, he said, a
+solemn duty to fulfill. For twenty-four hours Paris had been in
+insurrection. Why was this? He called on the Minister of the Interior to
+explain."
+
+"And what said Guizot?" asked Louis Blanc, eagerly.
+
+"He said he thought the public interest did not demand, nor was it
+proper for the Chamber at that time, to enter into debate on the
+subject. The King had called M. le Comte Mole to form a new cabinet."
+
+"And then the left cheered?" exclaimed Flocon.
+
+"Most emphatically," was the reply.
+
+"And what said Guizot then?" asked Ledru Rollin.
+
+"He calmly said that no such demonstrations could induce him to add to
+or withhold a single syllable of what he designed to say, or to
+pretermit a single act he had designed to do. As long as his Ministry
+remained in office he should cause public order to be respected,
+according to his best judgment, and as he had always done. He should
+consider himself answerable for all that might happen, and should in all
+things act as conscience might dictate for the best interests of the
+country."
+
+"A noble answer!" exclaimed M. Dantès, with enthusiasm.
+
+Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc assented.
+
+"And what next?" pursued Flocon.
+
+"After considerable confusion," continued Lamartine, "M. Odillon Barrot
+rose and demanded, in consequence of the situation of the cabinet, a
+postponement of the proposition for its impeachment, fixed for
+to-morrow."
+
+"Ah! And what said the Chamber?" asked Flocon.
+
+"The demand was so loudly reprobated that M. Barrot immediately said he
+made the proposal in entire submission to the majority."
+
+"And what said Dupin?" asked Ledru Rollin, eagerly.
+
+"Dupin said the first thing necessary for the capital was order. Anarchy
+must cease. The Ministry could not at the same time occupy themselves in
+re-establishing order and in caring for their own safety. He demanded
+the adjournment of the impeachment and of all business."
+
+"And what did Barrot reply to that?" asked Louis Blanc.
+
+"M. Barrot was silent; but the Minister of Foreign Affairs at once rose
+and said with much energy that as long as his cabinet remained entrusted
+with the public interest, which would probably be for some hours, it
+would cause the laws to be respected. The cabinet saw no reason for the
+suspension of the labors of the Chamber. The Crown was at that moment
+exercising its prerogative, and it must be respected. So long as his
+cabinet was on those benches, the Chamber need not suspend its labors."
+
+"What was the vote on the question to postpone consideration of the
+impeachment?" asked Flocon.
+
+"Some of the opposition supported the motion, but the whole centre
+opposed it, and it was lost. The Chamber immediately rose in great
+agitation, and M. Guizot disappeared."
+
+"It seems to me that the position of M. Odillon Barrot is a somewhat
+peculiar one at this moment," observed Louis Blanc. "He is neither with
+the Crown nor with the people, and yet both seem to confide in him."
+
+"As I passed his house this evening, at about eight o'clock," said
+Flocon, "a large multitude were in his courtyard shouting, 'Long live
+Odillon Barrot!' A deputation of the people penetrated, I understand,
+even to his private apartment, where he was in consultation with Thiers
+and Dupin. Barrot then urged them to be moderate in their triumph and to
+retire. M. Garnier Pages, who chanced to be there, urged them to do the
+same, and they went off shouting louder than ever."
+
+At that moment one of the reporters of "Le National" hastily entered and
+handed Marrast a note.
+
+"Whence do you come, Monsieur?" asked the editor.
+
+"From the Tuileries, Monsieur," was the reply, and the reporter left.
+
+The editor opened the note and read aloud:
+
+
+     "One o'clock--Count Mole, unable to form a cabinet, has this moment
+     resigned, and the King has sent for M. Guizot, M. Thiers and
+     Marshal Bugeaud.
+
+     "Half-past one o'clock--Marshal Bugeaud's commission as
+     Commander-in-chief of the National Guard and of the troops of the
+     Line, in place of Generals Jaqueminot and Peyronett Tyburce
+     Sebastiani, has just been signed by M. Guizot and his colleagues,
+     the Ministers of War and the Interior, and will appear in the
+     'Moniteur' of this morning. Bugeaud's plan is this: Instant attack
+     with an overwhelming force of artillery, cavalry and infantry of
+     the Line, (which, he asserts, he has now all ready in position in
+     anticipation of this event, and well disposed to act,) on all the
+     barricades. He promises to sweep away every obstruction from the
+     streets before dawn, though at the cost of fifty thousand lives."
+
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed all the conspirators, instantly springing to their feet.
+
+"This, indeed, is resistance!" said M. Dantès. "But Bugeaud can
+concentrate no more troops upon us. Every avenue to Paris will be
+effectually closed before morning and even the telegraph stopped!"
+
+"If this be true, we have not an instant to lose!" said Louis Blanc.
+
+"I had a hint of this," began M. Dantès.
+
+"Stay--stay, Messieurs!" cried Marrast, as the whole company was rushing
+to the door. "Here is another and later dispatch."
+
+
+     "Two o'clock--Marshal Bugeaud has gone to complete his arrangements
+     for instant attack. M. Thiers has arrived, and, with Odillon
+     Barrot, Duvergier de Hauranne and de Remusat, has formed a cabinet.
+     General Lamoricière supersedes Marshal Bugeaud--the latter is
+     recalled and forbidden to fire on the people. He protests with
+     violence, and sheathes his sword in despair."
+
+
+"To be sure he does, the old cut-throat!" cried Ledru Rollin. "The idea
+of being let loose with his mastiffs on the people of Paris, like sheep
+pent up in a fold, was to him a source of rapturous anticipation, and
+his rage at the disappointment is proportional!"
+
+"Messieurs!" cried M. Dantès, "this last step of the Government was all
+that we required to insure our success. Thiers and Barrot mistake if
+they think there is sufficient magic in their names to quell a
+revolution. In fact, neither of them are trusted by the people. It is
+too late! Yesterday this might have been done; but now the demand is not
+reform, but a republic--not 'down with the Ministry,' but 'down with the
+dynasty!'"
+
+The conspirators looked at each other and then at M. Dantès in amazement
+and doubt. It was apparent they were as yet unprepared for language so
+plain.
+
+"M. Dantès is right!" cried Flocon. "To-morrow night when we meet we
+shall all admit it!"
+
+It was now nearly three o'clock, and the Republicans repaired to their
+homes for a few hours' sleep before the exciting scenes anticipated for
+the morrow.
+
+As Louis Blanc and M. Albert passed up the Rue Lepelletier, and came
+opposite the Hôtel of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which, but a few
+hours before, had been the scene of so much confusion and bloodshed,
+they paused and looked around. The pavement was still dark and wet with
+the gore of the slaughtered citizens, but the whole street was deserted
+and silent. Here and there a solitary light might be detected in the
+attic windows of the immense hôtel; but no other sign of life or human
+occupation was to be perceived. True, there was an ominous sound of
+rising barricades in the Boulevard beyond--the crash of trees, the click
+of steel on stone, the lumbering of wheels--and, at intervals, a distant
+shout. But this excepted, all was as quiet in Paris as if the old city
+had never known of insurrection.
+
+"This spot will be noted in the future history of France," said Louis
+Blanc. "Do you know the exact facts of the case, M. Albert? There are so
+many rumors that we can with difficulty get near the truth."
+
+"I was not present when the 14th delivered their fire," was the reply,
+"but I learned from M. de Courtais, who hastened to the spot, that the
+colonel of the regiment, now in prison, asserts that, at the moment of
+the arrival of the crowd, a ball from a musket which accidentally went
+off, broke the leg of his horse, and he, thinking this the signal for an
+attack, at once gave orders to fire. Another story is that one of our
+young blouses blew out an officer's brains with a pistol."
+
+"Many of the troops must have fired in the air," said Louis Blanc,
+looking around him, "for there were two hundred of them in line, I
+understand, and their discharge was delivered across the whole breadth
+of the Boulevard swarming with people."
+
+"It was unfortunate for M. Guizot," rejoined M. Albert, with a sardonic
+smile, "that his hôtel should have witnessed such a scene."
+
+"But fortunate for the cause, nevertheless," replied Louis Blanc. "This
+last movement is called the movement of the journalists, I understand."
+
+"If suspicions are always as correct," said M. Albert, "there will be
+fewer false ones, I fancy."
+
+Louis Blanc made no reply, and the friends walked on up the Boulevard,
+reconnoitering every spot.
+
+At the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre they were stopped by a barricade,
+which was rapidly rising under the united and vigorous exertions of
+several hundred men. Steadily, sternly and silently, all that night they
+toiled, and when the barricade was completed the tri-color flag was
+planted on its summit, and a citizen-soldier stood beside its staff to
+defend it. On the other side of the Boulevard, in the Rue Montmartre,
+rose another barricade entirely finished.
+
+"These men are resolved," said Louis Blanc.
+
+"Desperate, rather," replied Albert. "They have counted the cost and
+prepared to go on with the attempt they have begun at all hazards. It is
+better to fight than starve, they think."
+
+"But do you observe how few of them are armed?" asked Louis Blanc.
+
+"We have provided for that deficiency. You will see arms enough for all
+to-morrow," replied Albert. "Barricades first, arms afterwards!"
+
+And, indeed, while he was yet speaking, a tumbrel loaded with arms of
+every description drove silently up, and each man supplied himself with
+a weapon that suited his fancy. In some instances the taste exhibited
+was ludicrous in the extreme; there were swords without scabbards and
+bayonets without guns--a towering helmet on the head of one man, and
+broad white leather cross-belts on the shoulders of another--daggers and
+knives, sabres and pikes mingled in grotesque confusion. But each
+individual was armed with something, and, to crown all, a small piece of
+ordnance, borne on the shoulders of four stout men, who staggered
+beneath its weight, was now brought up and placed in battery.
+
+"From such men what may we not hope!" exclaimed Louis Blanc. "But it is
+near morning; let us proceed."
+
+"I stop here," quietly said Albert.
+
+"What! Pass the night here?" exclaimed his companion.
+
+"The night is nearly passed now," replied Albert, with a smile. "I will
+sleep a few hours with my men of the barricades, and be ready to help
+them defend their work in the morning."
+
+"You are devoted to the cause, Albert," said Louis Blanc, warmly
+grasping his hand.
+
+"Oh! no more than yourself," was the reply. "We are all devoted to it,
+but each in his own way. You are an author, I am a workman. It is a
+light thing for me to pass a night with only the sky for a canopy. It
+is a light thing for you to pass a night in your study. A change of
+positions would possibly kill us both!"
+
+The friends grasped each other warmly by the hand and parted, the author
+going to his study and the workman to his barricade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE THIRD DAY.
+
+
+The next morning the following placard attracted general attention:
+
+
+     "CITIZENS OF PARIS:
+
+     Orders have been given to cease firing everywhere.
+
+     We have just been charged by the King to form a new Ministry.
+
+     The Chamber will be dissolved and an appeal made to the country.
+
+     General Lamoricière has been appointed Commandant of the National
+     Guard.
+
+     Liberty! Order! Union! Reform!
+                             ODILLON BARROT.
+                             THIERS."
+
+
+Such was the placard which appeared at every corner in Paris on the
+morning of Thursday, February 24th. At three o'clock it had been hastily
+struck at the offices of "La Presse" and "Le Constitutionnel," and given
+into the hands of the bill-posters. At daylight it was read by the
+early passers, and, as soon as read, indignantly torn down with the
+significant murmur, "It is too late!"
+
+At eight o'clock a proclamation to the National Guard, signed by
+Lamoricière and countersigned by Odillon Barrot, was similarly received.
+
+At nine o'clock the 45th Regiment of the Line fraternized with the
+National Guard, the 30th resigned its arms to the people, and the five
+companies of Compiers yielded their quarters with all their arms and
+ammunition at the first summons.
+
+At ten o'clock a proclamation was posted up at the Bourse, signed by
+Odillon Barrot and Thiers, ordering the troops not only to cease firing,
+but to retire to their quarters. Immediately the trumpets sounded a
+retreat, and the most important positions hitherto held by the Line were
+yielded to the people. The men of the barricades could now concentrate
+and advance. Magic there was none in the names of Barrot and Thiers to
+restrain them. Both were viewed as deserters from their cause. The
+latter was openly insulted by the populace wherever he appeared, and the
+former, though at first respectfully listened to, was, at length,
+assailed with murmurs of disapprobation on his way to the Tuileries.
+
+In his editorial sanctum sat our friend Beauchamp, of whom for some time
+we have lost sight, but who has, meanwhile, been most industriously at
+work in his paper, "Le Charivari," in concert with "Le National" and
+other larger sheets, in forwarding the cause of reform and, finally, of
+revolution.
+
+The door opened and Château-Renaud appeared.
+
+"Farewell, Beauchamp!" he exclaimed, "I've not a moment to lose! A
+post-chaise is at the door! Farewell!"
+
+"Off!" cried the journalist, in astonishment. "And whither--and why?"
+
+"Yes, off for England--Italy--America--anywhere but France!" exclaimed
+the young noble.
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Why?" cried the indignant Deputy. "Look around you and then ask what
+there is left in France for me! Beauchamp," continued the young man
+hurriedly and in low tones, "France will have no King at this hour
+to-morrow! Mark the prophecy! The National Guard fraternizes with the
+populace; the Line fraternizes with the Guard. The Government is, of
+course, paralyzed. All is over; six hours hence the Tuileries will be
+ransacked by a drunken mob!--Farewell!"
+
+"One moment! Why do you leave in this way? Why do you not go to Boulogne
+by the cars?"
+
+"And do you not know--you, a journalist--that for three leagues around,
+in every direction, every railway radiating from Paris has been torn up?
+Do you not know that every public conveyance, even to the Mail
+Diligences, has been stopped, and that all the telegraph stations have
+been dismantled--all to prevent the further concentration of troops in
+Paris by the Government?"
+
+"I did hear of this, indeed," said Beauchamp.
+
+"At dawn I was at the railway dépôt, having late last night, with
+extreme difficulty, procured a passport. And whom think you, among
+crowds of others, I encountered there? You would never guess, and I
+haven't time for you to try. Lucien Debray, and with him--but that's
+impossible for you to divine--she who was Madame Danglars, wife of the
+rich banker years ago. Well, the banker is dead and she is immensely
+rich, and I suppose Lucien's spouse into the bargain."
+
+"And where go they?"
+
+"Oh! to England of course--that grand reservoir of all emigrant
+royalists, that asylum for all who love kings! But farewell, farewell!
+If I am not off soon I may have to go without my head! And if you are
+not massacred by your detestable party, I hope to hear of you yet as a
+Cabinet Minister. Despite your abominable principles, you have my best
+wishes! Farewell!"
+
+And with a hearty shake of Beauchamp's hand, the young noble was off for
+an atmosphere more congenial to monarchists than was that of Paris.
+
+Nor was he alone. Thousands fled from Paris in like manner that same
+day, and the only cry that followed them was this:
+
+"Let them go! Let them go!"
+
+The streets of Paris were now choked with barricades--not the mere
+temporary breastworks of the first and second days, which a single
+charge of heavy dragoons would sweep away, but regular systematic,
+scientific structures, erected apparently under the direction of
+military engineers, and calculated upon every principle of art to insure
+resistance. Some of them were of immense size--that, for example, at the
+corner of the Rue Richelieu; some had port-holes from which protruded
+the mouths of ordnance in battery; all were surmounted by a flag,
+tri-color or red, and all were defended by desperate men. Some other
+thoroughfares were crossed by many barricades--the Rue St. Martin, for
+instance, by thirty or forty. The troops assailing these structures were
+mowed down, throughout the day, in a manner which even their opponents
+deemed most merciless. Instances of individual bravery on both sides
+were frequent. In the Rue Mauconseil, a young man exposed himself on the
+top of the barricade, time after time, firing with fatal aim, and every
+time a shower of balls from the troops assailing whistled around him.
+But he stood untouched, and, at length, the officer ordering the troops
+to fire at him no more, he retired at once behind the breastwork. A boy
+in the Rue St. Honoré mounted the barricade, enveloped in a tri-color
+flag, and dared the troops to fire on their colors. He descended
+unharmed. An officer of the Line was summoned to yield his sword. He did
+so, but first broke it in twain across his knee. The same demand was
+made to a lieutenant of the Municipal Guard, with a musket at his
+breast; he was bidden also to shout "Vive la République!" but he only
+cried "Vive le Roi!" as the weapon was wrenched from his grasp! Yet he
+was spared. Arms were demanded from every householder, and when given,
+the gift was endorsed on the door in these words: "Here we were given
+arms." One man received a sword splendidly decorated with gems upon its
+scabbard and hilt. "I want only the blade!" he said, tearing it away
+from its ornaments and grasping the naked steel!
+
+At ten o'clock M. Odillon Barrot, General Lamoricière and Horace Vernet,
+the great marine artist, proceeded on horseback to the barricades to
+induce the people to disperse, but all their eloquent entreaties were
+received only with insults. "No truce--no tricks--no mistake this time!"
+were the decisive shouts with which they were greeted. A second time, in
+the Rue Richelieu, General Lamoricière, accompanied by Moline Saint Gru
+bearing a palm-branch, was equally unsuccessful. "It is too late!" was
+the terrible response from the heart of the barricades, followed by a
+shower of stones, one of which wounded General Lamoricière on the hand.
+A third time, in the Rue Rohan, General Gourgaud, who even promised the
+abdication of the King, met with the same utter defeat, and hastily fled
+from the fury of the monster now thoroughly roused.
+
+At twelve o'clock the rumor sped with lightning rapidity through the
+streets of Paris that the troops, who had ostensibly been ordered to
+their quarters, were, in fact, concentrated around the palace. Instantly
+rose the shout, "To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" and a hundred
+thousand men from all sections of the city marched toward the Palais
+Bourbon and the Tuileries!
+
+The rumor of the concentration at the palace was true. The Place du
+Carrousel was crowded with troops of every arm, including several
+squadrons of cuirassiers, and six pieces of ordnance were in position,
+with their ammunition caissons and their provisions and baggage wagons,
+as if for a siege. The King, attended by his staff and accompanied by
+the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier, now descended into the court to
+pass the troops in review. The Line shouted "Vive le Roi!" as the King
+rode along. The National Guards, with tones and looks of menace and
+defiance, cried "Reform!" The King replied, "Yes, my friends, you shall
+have reform," and sad and dispirited turned away to his apartments; as
+he retired the bitter murmur was heard from his aged lips, "Like Charles
+X."
+
+A deputation of the people had been admitted within the limits of the
+Place du Carrousel to announce the terms they would accept, but after a
+brief parley had retired dissatisfied. The men of the barricades now
+invested the Tuileries and the Palais Royal on every side.
+
+Such was the scene without. Within, all was confusion and dismay. The
+salons were thronged by deputies, peers, generals and marshals; Bugeaud,
+Lamoricière, Dupin, Thiers, de Lasteyrie and many others were there,
+together with all of the Royal family then in the capital, whether male
+or female.
+
+Meanwhile, the rattle of musketry, broken by the occasional roar of
+ordnance, in the direction of the Palais Royal, indicated the severe
+struggle then going on between the people and the troops; from time to
+time, the furious shout of "To the guillotine with Louis Philippe!"
+reached the ear.
+
+"Does your Majesty hear that?" asked the Duke of Nemours coldly of his
+dismayed father. Alas! the old man was no longer the hero of July 3d!
+
+"I do, my son," was the trembling reply. "Do you advise abdication?"
+
+"Is there any other course left?" asked the Duke of Montpensier.
+
+"Any other course!" cried the Queen, indignantly. "Oh! are you my
+son--are you a son of Orléans, and can you talk thus of degradation? Are
+you a soldier and do you fear? Mount!--mount!--charge on the
+rebels!--cut them to the earth!--drench the pavement with their
+blood!--perish, but yield not ignominiously thus!"
+
+"Madame," said M. Thiers, solemnly, "it is too late! There must be an
+abdication in favor of the Count of Paris, and the appointment of the
+Duchess of Orléans as Regent, or all is lost!"
+
+"Then if this must be, let it be done with dignity becoming a monarch,"
+said the noble Queen. "Let us all retire to St. Cloud. There may be
+dictated terms of honorable capitulation. There--"
+
+At that instant in rushed a man breathless, bearing a sheet of paper in
+his hand, and exclaiming:
+
+"Sire--Sire--your troops are delivering their arms to the people! In a
+moment they will stand where you now stand! Sign this paper, or your
+life and the lives of all your family will be sacrificed!"
+
+That man was Émile de Girardin, the editor of "La Presse," and the
+murderer of Armand Carrel, and that paper was an act of abdication.
+
+"Ah! this is a bitter cup," said the old King as he placed his signature
+to the sheet, "and doubly bitter presented by such a hand! Like Charles
+X.!"
+
+At one o'clock, at the Bourse and at the corners of all the principal
+streets, was posted this proclamation:
+
+
+     "CITIZENS OF PARIS: The King has abdicated in favor of the Count of
+     Paris, with the Duchess of Orléans as Regent.
+
+     A General Amnesty.
+
+     Dissolution of the Chamber.
+
+     Appeal to the Country."
+
+
+But the people were now in the midst of the assault on the Palais Royal,
+and to check them was impossible.
+
+The Palais Royal consisted of two portions--the Château d'Eau, or
+palace, and the other part, which though the property of the Orléans
+family was yet rented by private persons, and was occupied for cafés,
+shops, dwellings and places of entertainment--adorned by colonnades and
+arcades, and by trees, statues and fountains in the magnificent
+quadrangle. The property of the citizens was respected--that of the King
+only was assailed. For two hours did the 14th Regiment pour forth its
+fire from the numerous windows of that edifice and from the court
+below. At length, a band of bold Republicans, headed by the chivalric
+Étienne Arago, musket in hand, charged from the side of the Café de la
+Régence, followed by a detachment of the National Guard, and, driving
+the troops into the building, surrounded it with straw which they set on
+fire. The vast edifice was instantly filled with smoke and flame. The
+defence ceased. The soldiers rushed out and were instantly slain. The
+commander of the detachment was pierced by a bayonet. The multitude
+rushed in, and the building was sacked. The richest and most costly
+furniture and decorations were at once torn down, dashed to pieces and
+thrown from the windows by the infuriated populace.
+
+Within the Palace of the Tuileries is a subterranean passage,
+constructed for the infant King of Rome and his nurses, which, plunging
+beneath the pavements, and passing along the whole length of the
+gardens, under the terrace beside the river bank, suddenly emerges at
+the gate of the Place du Carrousel, in front of the obelisk. Into this
+passage, in wild panic, descended the King and Queen of France, with all
+their children and grandchildren, immediately upon the signing of the
+abdication, and just as the doors were about to be forced. Emerging from
+the passage, the King, leaning on the arm of his faithful wife, Marie
+Amélie, and followed by the Royal party, crossed the Place de la
+Concorde as far as the asphalt pavement. The Royal party now consisted
+of the King and Queen, the Duchess of Nemours and her children, the
+Princess Clémentine and her husband, the Duke Augustus of Saxe-Coburg,
+and the Duke of Montpensier with his young and lovely Spanish bride, now
+enceinte and far advanced. Ignorant of the language, only sixteen years
+of age, a stranger to the customs and people of the country, and in her
+delicate situation, the position of this young creature was peculiarly
+trying. At one moment she clung with terror to her young husband's arm,
+which she refused for an instant to resign, and the next laughed at her
+own terror, saying that one who in her infancy had twice, in Madrid,
+been saved by being carried off in a sack ought not now to fear when she
+had feet to carry herself away and was suffered to use them! It is said
+that the fair Senora was forgotten in the hurry of the flight and almost
+left behind!
+
+As soon as the Royal party were perceived, they were surrounded by a
+troop of National Guards as an escort, and a large number of officers of
+the Line in various uniforms. The King leaned on the Queen, as if for
+support, while she boldly advanced with a firm step and stern look. Both
+were in deepest mourning for the recent death of the beloved sister of
+the King, the Princess Adelaide.
+
+Upon this melancholy procession the people gazed with mingled curiosity,
+amusement, gratification and regret.
+
+"They are going to the Chamber of Deputies to complete the abdication!"
+cries one.
+
+"Vive la Réforme!" shouts another.
+
+"Vive la France!" shouts a second.
+
+"Vive le Roi!" in suppressed tones falters a third.
+
+"See the poor young Duchess!" cried a woman, who was availing herself of
+her peculiar rotundity as a battering-ram to force her way through the
+crowd.
+
+"She had better have remained at home!" sneered a Dynastic bitterly.
+
+"The poor little children!" exclaimed a young woman more remarkable for
+prettiness than neatness, and more remarkable still for the scantiness
+of her attire, nearly all of which had been torn from her rounded
+shoulders in the throng.
+
+The spirit which pervaded the mass was, evidently, by no means
+unfriendly to the Royal family, and it was as evidently misunderstood by
+them, for, suddenly, as if by fatality, on the very spot where Louis
+XVI. was beheaded, just beyond the Pont Tournant, on the pavement of the
+Obelisk of Luxor, the whole party, with no apparent necessity, came to a
+dead and complete halt. Instantly the multitude was crowded upon them,
+and this augmented their terror. The King dropped the Queen's arm and
+hastily raising his hat cried, "Vive la Réforme!" All was in a moment
+uproar and confusion. The Queen in terror at finding her husband's arm
+was gone turned hurriedly on every side.
+
+"Fear not, Madame," said a mild voice beside her. "The people will do
+you no harm."
+
+This was M. Maurice, editor of "Le Courrier des Spectacles."
+
+"Leave me, leave me, Monsieur!" she exclaimed, in great excitement,
+evidently mistaking the words. Then regaining her husband, she again
+grasped his arm, and the mass at the same time opening its ranks, the
+two hastened on to a couple of those little black one-horse vehicles,
+chancing there to stand, which run to St. Cloud. In one of these already
+sat the Duchesses of Montpensier and Nemours with two of the children.
+In the other stood the two remaining children. Into the latter hurriedly
+stepped the Royal pair. The door was instantly closed and the vehicle
+drove off at a furious rate, surrounded by an escort of dragoons,
+cuirassiers and National Guards, two hundred in number, taking the
+water-side toward St. Cloud. The other carriage, similarly escorted,
+followed at a like rapid pace, the children standing at the windows,
+their faces pressed to the glass, gazing eagerly, with the innocent
+curiosity of infancy, on a scene from which their future fate would take
+shape.
+
+"He is gone!" shouted a stentorian voice, breaking the momentary
+stillness as the carriages, surrounded by their escort, swept from the
+view.
+
+"Let him go! Let him go!" was the stern and significant response. "We
+are not regicides!"
+
+"To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" was now the tremendous shout which
+rose from the multitude, as they rushed toward the deserted palace.
+
+But the Tuileries had already fallen. It was no longer the
+dwelling-place of kings.
+
+Even before the Royal abdication was declared, even before it was
+signed, the troops of the Line in the courtyard of the palace--infantry,
+artillery, dragoons--to the number at least of twenty-five thousand,
+were summoned to surrender their posts, while the fraternal shout, "Vive
+la Ligne!" elicited from the lips of many of the soldiers the answering
+cry of "Vive la Réforme!" In vain was it that Marshal Bugeaud, the
+veteran of a hundred battles, menaced and blasphemed. In vain did his
+old protégé and subaltern, but now bitter foe, General Lamoricière,
+dashing from one end of the line to the other on his white horse,
+entreat and persuade with his eloquent tongue. The people insisted--the
+National Guard fraternized--the Line wavered. And yet most imminent at
+that moment was their own peril.
+
+The 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 6th and 10th Legions of the National Guard
+invested the Tuileries, and others were on the march, accompanied by
+countless masses of the people. Within the courtyard were twenty-five
+thousand of the best troops in the world of every arm, and a park of
+ordnance charged to the muzzle frowned upon the dense masses which
+swarmed the Place du Carrousel. The watchful artilleryman stood at his
+cannon's breech, with the lighted linstock in his hand, which he kept
+alive by constant motion. He awaited but a word from the pale, firm lips
+of General Lamoricière, and that vast and magnificent space now
+swarming with life would have been swept as if by destruction's besom.
+Death in all its most horrid forms would have been there. That pavement
+would have run with gore! The façades of those splendid edifices would
+have been polluted with shreds and fragments of human flesh, and
+spattered with human blood. Yet dreadful would have been the sure
+retribution! Indiscriminate massacre of all unfortunate souls within
+that Royal palace would have been inevitable and instantaneous. Yet,
+such a catastrophe might be precipitated by a single word!--the
+avalanche might be started by a single breath; and blood once shed,
+Paris would be deluged!
+
+"In the name of the people I demand to speak with the commandant of the
+Tuileries!" shouted a young man in the uniform of an officer of the
+National Guard, advancing to the iron railing of the court near the Rue
+de Rivoli.
+
+It was Lieutenant Aubert Roche. The commandant was sent for and
+immediately arrived.
+
+"Monsieur, you are lost!" cried the young man.
+
+"You are surrounded by sixty thousand men of the National Guard, and one
+hundred thousand of the people of Paris!"
+
+"What is demanded?" was the trembling response.
+
+"That you evacuate the Tuileries!--resign it to the National Guard!"
+
+"The troops shall be withdrawn, Monsieur. Orders for their retirement
+to the palace shall be issued instantly."
+
+"That will not do! The palace must be evacuated," insisted the
+Lieutenant, "or the people will raze it to the ground!"
+
+"Come with me, Monsieur," said the commandant.
+
+The gate was immediately opened, and Lieutenant Roche, accompanied by M.
+Leseur, chef de bataillon, bearing a flag of truce, followed the
+commandant to the Pavillon de l'Horloge, where stood the Duke of
+Nemours, pale with excitement, surrounded by generals.
+
+"Monseigneur," said the commandant, "suffer me to present a deputation
+from the people."
+
+"Messieurs, what do the people demand?" asked the Duke in trembling
+tones.
+
+"The evacuation, this instant, of this palace, and its delivery to the
+National Guard!"
+
+"And if we do not comply?" asked Marshal Bugeaud, calmly.
+
+"Then, Monsieur, you all are lost!" was the bold answer. "This palace is
+surrounded by one hundred and sixty thousand men. The combat once begun
+must be exterminating--must be a massacre! The 5th Legion of the
+National Guard, to which I belong, is, at this moment, sacking the
+Palais Royal. It may be here before we part!"
+
+"The troops shall retire, Monsieur," said the Duke; and on the instant
+orders for the retreat were issued.
+
+The artillery went by the railing of the palace, and the staff and the
+Duke of Nemours by the Pavillon de l'Horloge, their well-trained horses
+descending the flight of steps. The cavalry followed, succeeded by the
+infantry.
+
+The National Guards were then introduced by Lieutenant Roche, and
+entered the court of the Tuileries by the gate of the Rue de Rivoli,
+their muskets shouldered, with the stock in the air. At the same moment
+the abdication of the King was declared. General Lamoricière had
+resigned. The Ministry was dissolved. There was a tremendous shout, and
+the conquerors of the Palais Royal rushed in to take possession of the
+Tuileries!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE LAST SESSION OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES.
+
+
+The usual hour for the opening of the Chamber of Deputies was three
+o'clock; but the startling events of the last two days, and especially
+of the last two hours, demanded that it should be convened earlier.
+
+At one o'clock the President of the Chamber, Sauzet, took the chair. On
+the left bank of the Seine all the approaches were open, save the
+bridges of the Place de la Concorde, where strong detachments of cavalry
+were posted on guard.
+
+Within the Chamber all was solemnity. About three hundred members were
+present. The opposition seemed joyous and confident, though anxious. The
+conservative party was troubled. The Ministerial benches were deserted.
+
+At half-past one the President turned round in his chair, and kept his
+eye fixed upon a side door, as if expecting some one to enter. Suddenly
+a bustle was heard in that direction, and the Duchess of Orléans, in
+deep mourning, attended by her two sons and followed by the Dukes of
+Montpensier and Nemours, entered. The latter was received with marked
+expressions of dislike. The Count of Paris, garbed in complete black,
+was conducted through the crowd to the space in front of the President's
+chair; the Duchess followed and seated herself in a fauteuil upon the
+same spot. On each side of her was one of her sons, and behind her stood
+her brothers, the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier. This position was
+subsequently changed for one more distant, but otherwise remained
+throughout relatively the same.
+
+Being seated, the Duchess rose and bowed repeatedly to the assembly. At
+the same moment an immense multitude of National Guards and the people
+rushed in through the passages, and despite the shouts of the officers,
+"You cannot enter!" the space beneath the tribune was instantly and
+densely thronged. At the same time the public tribunes were invaded by a
+second body of the people.
+
+For some minutes the greatest uproar prevailed. At length it
+comparatively ceased, and, in a moment of quiet, M. Dupin, who had
+accompanied the Duchess of Orléans to the Chamber, ascended the tribune.
+The stillness was instantly as great as had been the previous agitation.
+
+"The King has abdicated," said M. Dupin. "The Count of Paris is
+nominated as his successor and the Duchess of Orléans as Regent."
+
+"It is too late!" shouted a man from the gallery of the people.
+
+"The Count of Paris is proclaimed King by the Chamber and the Duchess of
+Orléans Regent!' exclaimed the President.
+
+"No--no--no!" was the almost unanimous shout that now rose in the
+Chamber.
+
+"I demand," cried M. Lamartine, "that the Royal family withdraw!"
+
+The question was put, and the Duchess and her sons, after great
+hesitation, were drawn away to a side door, at the further end of the
+hall. At the same moment a new crowd of the people rushed in and took
+seats beside the opposition members, by whom they were welcomed.
+
+"I demand to speak!" cried M. Marie. "By the law of 1842, the Duke of
+Nemours is Regent. How can the King abrogate that law? I demand a
+provisional government!"
+
+"A provisional government!" cried M. Crémieux. "We made a mistake in
+'30. Let there be no mistake in '48!"
+
+"A provisional government," said the Abbé Genoude, a Legitimist; "but
+it must be the will of the people!"
+
+M. Odillon Barrot, who had been long expected, now entered and
+immediately mounted the tribune.
+
+"The crown of July rests on the head of a woman and a child!" cried the
+great lawyer.
+
+The Duchess of Orléans instantly rose, as if about to speak, but, at the
+urgent solicitation of those around her, resumed her seat.
+
+"I call on the country to rally around this woman and this child," cried
+M. Barrot, "the two-fold representative of the principles of July, '30!"
+
+The voice of the speaker was drowned in shouts of dissent and of "Vive
+la Réforme!"
+
+"I dissent from the opinion of M. Odillon Barrot!" cried the Marquis de
+la Rochejacquelin. "If he is right, the people are nothing!"
+
+"Order--order!" cried the President, putting on his hat, but he was at
+once induced to remove it.
+
+At this moment another vast crowd burst into the Chamber, garbed in a
+style so heterogeneous as to be grotesque--some with blouses--some with
+dragoon helmets on their heads, some with weapons and many with flags.
+
+"Down--down--down with the Throne!" was the terrible cry of this
+infuriated mass.
+
+"I demand that the sitting be suspended!" cried M. de Mornay.
+
+"There can be no session at such a moment," said the President, putting
+on his hat.
+
+"Off--off--off with your hat, President!" cried the populace; and
+several of their muskets were at once pointed at the President. The hat
+was removed.
+
+The scene was chaos!
+
+"Beware!" shouted M. Chevalier, editor of the Historical Library.
+"Beware how you make the Count of Paris King! A provisional government
+we must first have!"
+
+"What right have you to speak?" shouted a man. "You are not a deputy!"
+
+"In the name of the people, silence!" roared a terrific voice that
+drowned every other.
+
+It was the voice of Ledru Rollin.
+
+Many of the deputies now withdrew, and their places were filled by the
+people. The Duchess of Orléans sat calmly amid the uproar, and the Duke
+of Nemours with equal calmness stood behind her chair.
+
+"The throne has been tumbled from the windows of the Tuileries and is
+now burning in the Place de la Bastille!" cried M. Dumoulin, who
+commanded the Hôtel de Ville in July of '30, displaying the tri-color
+flag.
+
+"No more Bourbons! Down with the Bourbons! Down with the traitors! A
+provisional government!" shouted the people.
+
+"Aye, a Republic!" cried M. Chevalier.
+
+Crémieux, Ledru Rollin and Lamartine were at the same time in the
+tribune.
+
+"In the name of the people, silence!" again roared the awful voice of
+Ledru Rollin.
+
+"A provisional government!" shouted one of the people.
+
+"You shall have a provisional government!" exclaimed M. Maguin.
+
+"In the name of the people--in the name of the people of Paris in arms,"
+again began Ledru Rollin, "I protest against this King and this Regency.
+The constitution of '9 demands the will of the people to fix a Regency.
+Yet the law of '42 makes the Duke of Nemours Regent, and now it is the
+Duchess of Orléans. I protest against it all! I demand a provisional
+government!"
+
+"Question--question!" shouted M. Berryer. "A provisional government!"
+
+"In 1815," continued Ledru Rollin, "Napoleon abdicated in favor of the
+King of Rome. The King of Rome was refused. In 1830, Charles X.
+abdicated in favor of his grandson. The grandson was rejected. In 1848,
+Louis Philippe abdicates in favor of his grandson--the Count of Paris!"
+
+"Question--question!" again vociferated M. Berryer. "We all know those
+histories!"
+
+"In the name of the people," continued Ledru Rollin, "I demand a
+provisional government, named by the people--not by the Chamber--but by
+the people!"
+
+Tremendous shouts followed, and M. Lamartine, who had stood beside
+Rollin in the tribune, now took his place amid renewed shouts.
+
+After an eloquent speech on the same side as his friend, he concluded by
+demanding a provisional government, with an appeal to "the people--the
+entire people--all who by the title of man have rights as men."
+
+While Lamartine was yet speaking, a violent knocking was heard at the
+door of the Chamber, which was forcibly burst open and a vast crowd
+rushed in.
+
+"Down with the Chamber! Down with the Deputies!" shouted the populace,
+and muskets were instantly leveled at Lamartine, and, also, at the Royal
+party.
+
+"It is Lamartine! it is Lamartine!" was the cry of terror that rose from
+his friends.
+
+The muskets were lowered.
+
+The Duchess and her party were at once withdrawn from the Chamber by a
+side door, and having first retired to the Hôtel des Invalides, next
+fled to the Rhine; the Duke of Nemours fled to Boulogne and thence to
+England.
+
+"Silence--silence--silence!" shouted the President, violently ringing
+his bell. But the uproar only increased. "I pronounce this session
+closed!" cried the President, and putting on his hat he instantly left
+the chair.
+
+Here ends the Chamber of Deputies.
+
+A large number of the members withdrew with the President, but the
+opposition remained, and with them the people and the National Guards.
+
+After the noise incident to this departure had subsided, the venerable
+M. Dupont de l'Eure, a gray-headed old man of eighty, was, by unanimous
+acclamation, placed in the President's chair. Lamartine still remained
+in the tribune, and repeatedly strove to make his voice heard, but in
+vain.
+
+"In the name of the people, silence, and let Lamartine speak!" at length
+was heard in the thunder tones of Ledru Rollin, rising above all other
+sounds.
+
+Silence for a moment being obtained, Lamartine exclaimed:
+
+"Citizens!--a provisional government is declared! The names of the
+members will now be announced by the President!"
+
+Lamartine then descended from the tribune; applause and uproar
+succeeded.
+
+"The names of the members nominated for a provisional government I will
+now read to you," said the aged President, rising and displaying a
+paper.
+
+The following names were then read, and were repeated as they came one
+after the other from the speaker's mouth by the reporters in loud tones:
+Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Arago, Dupont de l'Eure, Marie, Georges
+Lafayette; all were received with general approbation.
+
+"The members of the Provisional Government must be conducted by the
+people to the Hôtel de Ville and installed!" cried a voice from the
+crowd.
+
+"Let us adjourn to the Hôtel de Ville, Lamartine at the head!" said M.
+Bocage.
+
+Immediately Lamartine, accompanied by a large number of citizens,
+withdrew. But a great multitude still remained upon the benches and in
+the semi-circle of the Chamber.
+
+"Citizens!" cried Ledru Rollin, "in nominating a provisional government
+you perform a solemn act--an act which cannot be performed in a furious
+manner. Let me once more repeat to you the names you have chosen, and as
+they are repeated, you will say 'yes' or 'no,' precisely as they please
+you; I call on the reporters of the public press to note the names and
+the manner in which they are now received, that France may know what is
+here done."
+
+The names of Dupont de l'Eure, Arago, Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Crémieux,
+Garnier Pages and Marie were then read out, and all, except the last
+two--which were received with a few negatives--were confirmed by
+unanimous acclamation. The names were then engrossed in capitals on a
+sheet of paper and borne around the Chamber on the bayonet of a National
+Guard that all might read for themselves.
+
+"I have one more word to say," cried Ledru Rollin. "The Provisional
+Government has immense duties to perform. We must now close this
+meeting, that the Government may be able to restore order--stanch the
+flow of blood, and secure to the people their rights."
+
+"To the Hôtel de Ville!--to the Hôtel de Ville!" responded the people in
+a tremendous shout. "Vive la République!--to the Hôtel de Ville!"
+
+Headed by Ledru Rollin the excited multitude withdrew, and at four
+o'clock all was as silent in the Chamber of Deputies as if not a voice
+had resounded or a footstep had echoed within its walls for centuries.
+In the distance, however, could be heard the repeated shout:
+
+"Vive la République!--to the Hôtel de Ville!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE SACK OF THE TUILERIES.
+
+
+Scarcely had the carriages conveying the Royal family disappeared on
+their flight toward St. Cloud, when the whole mass of the populace
+poured as with one simultaneous purpose into the deserted palace. The
+Palais Bourbon had already been sacked; a like fate might be supposed to
+await the Tuileries; but the Tuileries belonged to France, not to the
+House of Orléans, and a certain respect was observed for everything but
+the insignia of Royalty. For these was shown no regard. The throne
+itself of the state reception-room--that throne on which sat Louis
+Philippe for the first time, as King of the French, ere the Tuileries
+became his throne--was torn from its base, and, having been hurled first
+in derision from the windows into the court, was borne in mock triumph
+on the shoulders of men, who shouted that now the throne was indeed
+supported by the people, to the Place de la Bastille, and there
+consumed to ashes. In the courtyard, in the Rue de Rivoli and on the
+quays, huge fires roared, fanned into fury by a hurricane of wind, and
+fed by richly carved furniture, gilded chairs, canopies, pianos, sofas,
+beds, costly paintings, splendid works of art and the Royal carriages
+glittering with gold. The magnificent tapestries of the Gobelins were
+borne as streamers, in frantic fury, along the boulevards; mischievous
+gamins were frolicking about in the long scarlet robes worn upon Court
+occasions, which they had filched from the Royal wardrobe; the
+escritoire of the King, the key having been found in a tea-cup, was
+ransacked, and private letters, books and the garments of ladies were
+strewn about the court and gardens of the Tuileries. The cellars of the
+palace were soon filled with the insurgents; but they declared the wine
+bad, as it never remained long enough in the cellars of kings to get
+good! Destruction, not pillage, seemed the order of the hour, and to
+guard against robbery the people took upon themselves the arrest and
+punishment of offenders. The walls bore the menace, "Robbers shall die!"
+In several instances the threat was carried into immediate execution,
+and bodies, suffered to lie on the spot upon which they had been cut
+down, bore on their breasts the label "Thief!" in terrible warning.
+Sentinels also stood at the gates, and no one was allowed to leave the
+palace without rigorous search.
+
+In the apartments of the Duchess of Orléans, the table was found spread
+for the dinner of herself and her children; upon the table were the
+little silver cups, forks and spoons of the young Princes, and on the
+floor were scattered their costly toys. The latter were gathered
+carefully up by a workman in a blouse, and as carefully concealed in a
+corner. The former, together with all jewels and other valuables found
+in the apartments of the Duchess, were deposited in a bathing-tub, on
+which a workman seated himself as guard and suffered no one to approach
+until the aforesaid valuables could be conveyed by a detachment of the
+Polytechnic School to the Government treasury. The story runs that, on
+the night succeeding the sack of the Tuileries, the conquerors chose a
+king and queen, and that, in the palace hall, was spread a banquet
+composed of the viands found in the Royal kitchen and the wines found in
+the Royal cellars. The queen, who was a soubrette more noticeable for
+beauty than for cleanliness of person, garbed in Royal robes which she
+well became, and with a coronet upon her stately brow, was seated in a
+chair of state and received the most extravagant homage from her willing
+subjects, while groups of gamins, in the long crimson liveries of the
+Royal household, boisterously frolicked before the sans culotte court
+amid roars of merriment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+A MEMORABLE NIGHT.
+
+
+Generally, the rogues throughout Paris, intimidated by the awful,
+immediate and certain penalty for crime, forsook, for the time, their
+calling. A man who attempted to fire the Palais Royal was shot at the
+Préfecture. Another, for a like attempt on buildings in the Rue Monceau,
+met a like fate. In the Rue Richelieu lay the bodies of two thieves,
+each with a ball through the breast, and over the aperture the word
+"Thief" on a label. In like manner were eight more robbers executed at
+once on the Place de la Madeleine. A woman of the street wrested a
+bracelet from a lady's wrist; she was instantly seized by the bystanders
+and shot. But for this summary punishment of malefactors by the people,
+dreadful that night would have been the state of Paris, without laws to
+enforce or a police to enforce them. It is true the Château of Neuilly
+was sacked and burned, as well as the splendid villa of the Baron
+Rothschild at Parennes; but both were supposed to be the property of the
+King. It is true, also, that some rails on the Northern Railway were
+torn up, and a viaduct between Paris and Amiens, and another between
+Amiens and the frontier of Belgium were demolished; and that the
+railway stations at St. Denis, Enghien and Pontoise and the bridge at
+Asnières had been destroyed; but all this was done to prevent the
+concentration upon the citizens of Paris of additional Royal troops.
+
+A workman entered a house and demanded bread. Meat and wine were offered
+him. "No," was the reply, "bread and water are all I want."
+
+Yet such was the scarcity of food that horses were killed and eaten at
+the Hôtel de Ville, on the third day of the Revolution.
+
+"Arms--arms!" shouted a band of workmen, entering a house on the Rue
+Richelieu. The proprietor, alarmed, shouted for help. "Do you think us
+robbers?" was the indignant reply. "Give us your weapons!"
+
+The weapons were given and the band retired; on the door they wrote,
+"Here we received arms!"
+
+At five o'clock, on the evening of the 24th of February, a proclamation
+to the citizens of Paris, issued by the Provisional Government then in
+session at the Hôtel de Ville, declared the Revolution
+accomplished--that eighty thousand of the National Guard and one hundred
+thousand of the people were in arms--that order as well as liberty must
+now be secured, and the people, with the National Guard, were appointed
+guardians of Paris.
+
+The effect of this proclamation was magical. Never was Paris so well
+protected as on that night of the 24th of February, when, filled with
+barricades, she had no police and was guarded by her citizens.
+
+And how was constituted the Provisional Government whose power was thus
+implicitly obeyed? It was founded by the people who obeyed it. This was
+the only secret.
+
+From the Chamber of Deputies to the Hôtel de Ville proceeded the members
+of the Provisional Government. They marched under a canopy of sabres,
+pikes and bayonets into halls stained with blood and encumbered with the
+slain, and there, at a small table, while the conflict between the two
+Republics had already commenced, within an hour had they organized their
+body by the nomination of Armand Marrast, of "Le National," Ferdinand
+Flocon, of "La Réforme," Albert, a workman, and Louis Blanc, the editor
+and author, as Secretaries of the Government; their first official act
+was to issue a proclamation to the people.
+
+The scenes witnessed the night which succeeded in Paris will never be
+forgotten by those who witnessed them. Patrols promenaded the streets,
+the men of the barricades slept upon their weapons, beside their works,
+and through all that night ceaselessly toiled the press to spread over
+all the world the news of the great events of the three past days in
+Paris.
+
+Upon the door of an edifice situated in the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau--a
+street which was filled with barricades of immense size and
+strength--was posted a printed placard, "The Provisional Government,"
+lighted by a single lamp. Entering the door with a vast multitude, and
+ascending the dark and winding staircase, you found yourself in a large
+room, dimly lighted and crowded with armed men.
+
+It was the editorial apartment of the office of "La Réforme."
+
+At a large and massive table sat a dozen persons most industriously
+employed in writing. Around them, looking on, rose the rough, stern
+faces of the men of the barricades, seeming still more rough and stern
+by reason of the shadowy light; in the hands of all were weapons.
+
+"A copy of the names of the members of the Provisional Government!" was
+the incessant demand of these armed men, a demand which the dozen
+writers at the table were unable even by most indefatigable industry to
+supply as fast as made. And as fast as the demand was satisfied, the
+armed men would hurry away, only to leave room for the crowds constantly
+entering.
+
+"A copy for the Hôtel de Ville!" cried one.
+
+"A copy for the Place Vendôme!" shouted another.
+
+"A copy for the Palais Bourbon!" screamed a third.
+
+"Are there no printed copies left?" asked many.
+
+"They were gone long ago--twenty thousand copies," was the reply. "You
+will see one at every corner. The demand was not expected. The printers
+have just gone to sleep. They had not rested for fifty-two hours."
+
+"Will 'La Réforme' appear in the morning?" asked another.
+
+"Perhaps so," was the answer. "But all the people are worn out--writers
+and compositors. Here is your copy of the names."
+
+"Many thanks. Vive la République!"
+
+With this shout, in concert with the same which constantly issued from a
+hundred lips, the citizen folded up his precious document, and carefully
+depositing it in his cap hurried off to communicate its contents to his
+comrades of the neighboring barricade.
+
+In another apartment of that same edifice were a large number of the
+Republican party connected with "La Réforme."
+
+"The Provisional Government is now in session," said one. "They will,
+doubtless, make immediate provision for departments of State so
+important as the post-office and the préfecture of police. Early
+to-morrow a proclamation----"
+
+"To-morrow may be too late," interrupted a large and muscular man. "The
+post-office is more active than ever to-night. Every moment couriers are
+arriving and departing. That powerful instrument remains in the hands of
+the foes of our cause! Who may estimate the injury, the irreparable
+injury which they may this night accomplish by its means!"
+
+This man was Étienne Arago, brother of the great astronomer, and, for
+sixteen years, celebrated as one of the boldest members of the
+Republican party, as well as one of the bravest men in Paris.
+
+"And the préfecture of police," observed another--"the present utter
+derangement of all its functions may lead to most serious results.
+Already those foes of freedom, Guizot and his colleagues, have been
+suffered to secure their escape from the just indignation of an outraged
+people. Delessert, the Préfect, has also fled!"
+
+The man who said this was Marc Caussidière, a well-known Republican.
+
+"Citizens!" cried M. Gouache, "this state of things must continue no
+longer. In the name of the people, I demand that Étienne Arago
+immediately assume the charge of the post-office, as its director, and
+that Marc Caussidière fill the position of Préfect."
+
+This demand was confirmed by acclamation, and committees for the
+installation of the nominees into office at once accompanied them to
+their respective departments.
+
+The immense edifice of the post-office was surrounded by people, and its
+numerous windows were flashing with lights. Within the utmost activity
+seemed to prevail, and without couriers were leaving and arriving every
+moment, and mail coaches were dashing up to discharge their burdens, or,
+having received them, were dashing off.
+
+"In the name of the people, entrance for Citizen Étienne Arago,
+Republican director of the post-office!" shouted one of the committee.
+
+Instantly a passage through the immense crowd in the courtyard was
+cleared by the National Guard, and the director entered with his escort.
+
+"In the name of the people, Citizen Dejean, you are dismissed," said
+Étienne Arago, entering the private cabinet of the Director General.
+
+"And who is to be my successor?" asked the astonished Count, rising to
+his feet.
+
+"In the name of the people, I am sent to displace and to succeed you,"
+was the answer.
+
+"But your commission, Monsieur?"
+
+"Is here," pointing to the committee.
+
+"Before I resign the direction of this department," said the Count after
+some hesitation, "I must ask of you for some record of this act, bearing
+your signature, to be deposited in the archives of the office."
+
+"Certainly, Monsieur, your request is but reasonable," answered Arago,
+seating himself in the official chair. And writing a few lines to which
+he affixed his signature, he coolly handed the document to his
+astonished predecessor. It contained notice of his own appointment by
+the people, in place of the Count Dejean, dismissed.
+
+The Count read and folded the paper, and having made a copy of it, which
+he laid carefully in his porte-monnaie, he placed the original on file
+among the papers of the day belonging to the department. Then,
+courteously bowing, he took his hat and cane and marched out of the
+building.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.
+
+
+In the Hôtel de Ville, closely closeted, sat the Provisional Government
+of France. Over that stern old citadel, over the dismantled Palace of
+the Tuileries, from the tall summit of the Column of Vendôme, over the
+Hôtel des Invalides and in the Place de la Bastille is seen a blood-red
+banner, streaming out like a meteor on the keen north-western blast.
+Eighty thousand armed men invest the Hôtel de Ville, and wave on wave,
+wave on wave, the living and stormy tide eddies and welters and dashes
+around that dark old pile. All its avenues are held; its courts are
+thronged; ordnance frowns from its black portals and against its gates;
+drums roll--banners stream--bayonets glitter; and from those tens of
+thousands of hoarse and stormy voices goes up but one shout of menace
+and command:
+
+"Vive la République! Vive la République! No kings! No Bourbons!
+Down--down forever with the kings!"
+
+And upward to that dark old pile of despotism, as to the temple of
+Liberty herself, are turned those tens of thousands of swarthy faces,
+dark with the smoke of battle, yet livid with excitement and
+exhaustion--and as they realize that within those walls the question of
+their fate and that of their country is then being settled--that from
+that night's counsels in that vast and ancient edifice are to flow peace
+and prosperity, and freedom and plenty, or else all the untold terrors
+of anarchy, civil war, bloodshed, violence and strife--what wonder that
+the sitting of the council seemed endless and their own impatience
+became intolerable--that all imaginable doubts and fears and absurd
+apprehensions took possession of their inflamed imaginations?--that at
+one time the rumor should fly, and win credence as it flew, that the
+Provisional Government were consulting with the friends of Henry V.--or
+again, that they were considering the question of a Regency--and that
+under such influences they should roar and yell, and thunder for
+admission at the gates, and burden the air with their shouts?
+
+"No Bourbons! No kings! No Regency! Death--death to all kings! La
+République! La République! La République!"
+
+At times, in terrific concert, would the thousands of uplifted throats
+roar forth the chorus of that startling canticle of '92:
+
+
+     "Vive la république! Vive la république!
+     Debout, peuple Français! debout, peuple héroïque!
+     Debout, peuple Français! Vive la république!"
+
+
+Then the song would change and the mournful notes of the "Death Hymn of
+the Girondins,"--"Mourir Pour la Patrie"--would swell in wild yet solemn
+cadence on the wintry blast:
+
+                DEATH HYMN OF THE GIRONDINS.
+
+          By the voice of the signal cannon,
+           France calls her sons their aid to lend;
+          "Let us go," the soldier cries, "to battle!
+           'Tis our mother we defend!"
+     To die on Freedom's Altar--to die on Freedom's Altar!
+     'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter!
+
+          We who fall afar from the battle,
+           Lone and unknown obscurely die,
+          But give at least our parting blessings
+           Unto France and Freedom high.
+     To die on Freedom's Altar--to die on Freedom's Altar!
+     'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter!
+
+
+And thus all that terrible night, even until the morning's dawn,
+thronged those men of the barricades around the Hôtel de Ville, and all
+the night, even until the morning's dawn, calmly continued those men of
+the Provisional Government of the French Republic, amid menace and
+mandate, uproar and confusion, in their noble, yet arduous work. At
+midnight a proclamation of the Provisional Government was read by
+torchlight to the excited masses by Louis Blanc, from the steps of the
+Hôtel de Ville, declaring for a government of the people by itself, with
+liberty, equality and fraternity for its principles, while order was
+devised and maintained by the people--which served somewhat to allay
+their apprehensions and distrust. This proclamation appeared in all the
+morning journals, and was placarded all over the city the next day.
+
+That day was Friday, the 25th of February. But still the Provisional
+Government remained in session, and still the armed masses of the
+barricades, in congregated thousands, rolled in tumultuous billows
+around the Hôtel de Ville. At length the populace, exasperated by
+impatience, hunger and sleeplessness, with brandished bayonets rushed
+into the very chamber of council, with furious cries, and with threats
+which were well nigh accomplished. Again and again, at the entreaty of
+his colleagues, did the brave, the eloquent, the wise Lamartine present
+himself upon the steps of the Hôtel de Ville to assuage and quiet the
+rising tempest. Again and again, throughout that fearful day, did he
+come forth, single-handed, to wrestle with violence, turbulence, anarchy
+and strife; and again and again, beneath the magic of his eloquent
+tongue, the storm lulled, the tempest ceased. Again and again,
+throughout all that fearful day, were the acts of that noble Government
+matured and sent forth. Proclamation followed proclamation, and no
+branch of society seemed forgotten.
+
+The names of the members of the Provisional Government were again
+published. Caussidière and Sobrier were confirmed in the police
+department, and Étienne Arago in that of the post-office. Merchants of
+provisions were recommended to supply all who were in need; and the
+people were recommended to still retain their arms. The Chamber of
+Deputies was dissolved, the Peers were forbidden to meet, and the
+convocation of a National Assembly was promised. To all laborers labor
+was guaranteed and compensation for labor. At noon the garrison of the
+fort of Vincennes was announced to have acknowledged the Republic, just
+as the people were about to march upon it. To insure order and
+tranquillity, the Municipal Guard was disbanded, and the National Guard
+entrusted with the protection of Paris under M. Courtais, the
+commandant, who was ordered immediately to recruit twenty-four
+battalions for active service. All articles pledged at the
+Mont-de-Piété, from February 4th, not exceeding in value ten francs,
+were ordered to be returned, and the Tuileries was decreed the future
+asylum of invalid workmen. An attack on the machinery of some of the
+printing offices was checked by a proclamation.
+
+General Bedeau was appointed Minister of War, General Cavaignac Governor
+of Algeria, and Admiral Baudin to the command of the Toulon fleet. On
+the part of the army Marshal Bugeaud and on the part of the clergy the
+venerable Archbishop of Paris gave in their adhesion to the Republic,
+while the entire press, Bourgeoisie and the Provinces hesitated not an
+instant. Indeed, from all quarters came in adhesions to the Republic.
+The Bonapartes were among the first. Barrot and Thiers also came, but
+too late to save themselves from contempt. Mr. Rush, the American
+Minister, the first of foreign ambassadors acknowledged the Republic.
+The son of Mehemet Ali was next. The Papal Nuncio succeeded, together
+with the Ministers of the Argentine Republic and Uruguay. Next came the
+ambassador of England; but those of Austria, Prussia, Russia and Holland
+awaited instructions from home--little dreaming of the news they were
+about to receive! The city of Rouen sent three hundred of its citizens
+as a deputation, with abundant supplies of arms, by the morning cars of
+the railway.
+
+At about noon, the Pont Louis Philippe was destroyed by fire. Henceforth
+it is to be "Le Pont de la Réforme." And so with all other names. Royal
+is to give place to République, and "Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité" is
+to be again inscribed on all public monuments.
+
+The children of citizens killed in the Revolution were declared adopted
+by the country. The civil, judicial and administrative functionaries of
+the Royal Government were announced released from their oaths of office,
+the colonels of the twelve legions of National Guards were dismissed,
+and all political prisoners set free. Every citizen was declared an
+elector, and absolute freedom of thought, the liberty of the press, and
+the right of political and industrial associations secured to all were
+proclaimed.
+
+A warrant for the arrest of the late Ministers was issued by the new
+Procureur-General, M. Portalis, based on an act of accusation presented
+to the Court of Appeals. But all of them had fled. Guizot is said to
+have escaped from the Foreign Office in a servant's livery. When the
+people broke into his hôtel, they found only his daughter, and retired.
+The other members of the Ministry are said to have leaped from a low
+window of the Tuileries, and to have escaped at the moment of the King's
+abdication. M. de Cormenin was appointed Conseilleur d'État and M.
+Achille Marrast Procureur-General to the Court of Appeals in Paris, in
+place of the refugees.
+
+Such were some of the acts of the seven men constituting the Provisional
+Government of the French Republic, during their first extraordinary
+session of sixty-four hours--from the hour of four o'clock in the
+afternoon of Thursday after the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies
+to the hour of four o'clock in the morning of Sunday, the 27th of
+February, when the people of Paris consented to retire to their homes.
+But during all of this period, night and day without intermission, every
+moment was the Hôtel de Ville surrounded by tumultuous masses infuriated
+by suspicion, apprehension and distrust. For two whole days and two
+whole nights armed men incessantly inundated the square, the courts and
+halls of the Hôtel de Ville. They insisted on giving to the Republic the
+character, the attitude and the emblems of the first Revolution--they
+insisted on a Republic violent, sweeping, dictatorial and terrorist, in
+language, in gesture and in color, in place of that determined on,
+moderate, pacific, legal, unanimous and constitutional. At the peril of
+their lives the Provisional Government resisted this demand. Twenty
+times during those sixty-four hours was Lamartine taken up, dragged,
+carried to the doors and windows or to the head of the grand staircase,
+into the courts and the square, to hurl down with his eloquence those
+emblems of terrorism, with which it was attempted to dishonor the
+Republic. But the vast and infuriated mass refused to listen, and
+drowned his voice in clamor and vociferation. At length, when well-nigh
+exhausted in defence of the emblem of a moderate Republic, he exclaimed:
+"The red flag has been nowhere except around the Champ-de-Mars, trailed
+in the blood of the people, while the tri-color has been around the
+world with our navy, our glory and our liberties!"
+
+The furious and hitherto obdurate and bloodthirsty populace became
+softened--tears were shed, arms were lowered--flags were thrown away,
+and peaceably they departed to their homes. Never--never was there a
+more glorious triumph of eloquence--of patriotism!
+
+It was on the morning of Sunday, the 27th day of February, that the
+Provisional Government deemed it prudent and proper for them to bring to
+a close their initiative labors, and once more, for the last time,
+Lamartine descended the steps of the great staircase of the Hôtel de
+Ville, and, presenting himself in front of the edifice surrounded by his
+colleagues, announced to the vast assembly the result of their
+protracted toil:
+
+Royalty abolished--
+
+A Republic proclaimed--
+
+The people restored to their political rights--
+
+National workshops opened--
+
+The army and National Guard reorganized--
+
+The abolition of death for political offences.
+
+With louder and more prolonged acclamations than any other decree was
+this last received. And, instantly, in accordance with this
+proclamation, the director of criminal affairs, on the order of M.
+Crémieux, Minister of Justice, dispatched on the wings of the wind, all
+over France, the warrant to suspend all capital executions which were to
+have taken place, in virtue of Royal decrees, until the will of the
+National Assembly, at once to be convened, should be promulgated on the
+subject of the penalty of death. The effects of this decree, as it sped
+on the lightning's wings, like a saving angel, all over France, may be
+imagined perhaps, but portrayal is impossible! Who can imagine even the
+joy, the rapture it brought to many a dungeon-prisoner, who was counting
+the hours that yet remained to him of life and preceded his awful doom,
+or to those who sorrowed over his untimely--perchance his unjust fate!
+
+Leaning on the arm of Louis Blanc, the youngest member of the
+Government, the venerable Dupont de l'Eure, the eldest, accompanied by
+the other members, now appeared on the balcony of the room formerly
+called the Chamber of the Throne, but now the Chamber of the Republic!
+Lamartine then advanced a step before his colleagues, and in a brief and
+eloquent address proclaimed to that immense throng the existence of the
+Republic.
+
+The announcement was received with, acclamations of joy, and shouts of
+"Vive le Gouvernement!"--"Vive Lamartine!"--"Vive Louis Blanc!" mingled
+with those of "Vive la République!" loudly rose.
+
+From the Hôtel de Ville, the Provisional Government proceeded in a body,
+despite the rain which fell in torrents, accompanied by the people, to
+the Place de la Bastille, there officially to inaugurate the Republic,
+agreeably to announcement.
+
+At the appointed hour, the Place de la Bastille was thronged. The
+National Guard, consisting of two battalions from each of the twelve
+legions of Paris, together with the Thirteenth Legion of cavalry and two
+battalions of the Banlieu, were drawn up from the Church of the
+Madeleine to the Column of July. And, there, at the base of that column
+erected in commemoration of the Revolution which had made Louis Philippe
+King of the French, his downfall was commemorated, and on the ruins of
+the throne then established was now inaugurated a Republic!
+
+During the ceremony of the inauguration, the "Marseillaise" was sung by
+the National Guard and the people, and, at its conclusion, about the
+hour of three, the troops filed off before the Column of July to the
+thrilling strains of the "Marseillaise" and the "Mourir Pour la Patrie"
+of the Girondins. The members of the Provisional Government, preceded by
+a detachment of the National Guard and accompanied by the pupils of the
+Polytechnic School and the Military School of St. Cyr, then descended
+the boulevards, followed by the whole of the military and civic array,
+who chanted the national songs. The effect was stupendous. Hour after
+hour the immense procession moved on like a huge serpent through the
+streets of Paris; and, at length, when its head was at the Hôtel de
+Ville, its extremity had hardly left the Column of July.
+
+It was night, on Sunday, the 27th of February, when the members of the
+Provisional Government, for the first time during four days, returned to
+their homes. But their work was accomplished. A Republic was gained,
+proclaimed and inaugurated!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+DANTÈS AND MERCÉDÈS.
+
+
+It was a tempestuous night. The wind howled dismally through the streets
+of Paris, and the rain and sleet dashed fiercely against the casements.
+At intervals a wild shout might be caught as the blast paused in its
+furious career, and then a distant shot might be heard. But they passed
+away, and nothing save the wail of the storm-wind or the rushing sleet
+of the winter tempest was distinguished.
+
+But, while all was thus wild, dark and tempestuous without, light,
+warmth, comfort and elegance, rendered yet more delightful by the
+elemental war, reigned triumphant within a large and splendidly
+furnished apartment in the noble mansion of M. Dantès, the Deputy from
+Marseilles, in the Rue du Helder. Every embellishment which art could
+invent, luxury court, wealth invoke, or even imagination conceive,
+seemed there lavished with a most prodigal hand. The soft atmosphere of
+summer, perfumed by the exotics of a neighboring conservatory, delighted
+the senses, the mild effulgence of gaslight transmitted through opaque
+globes of glass melted upon the sight, while sofas, divans and ottomans
+in luxurious profusion invited repose. To describe the rare paintings,
+the rich gems of statuary and the other miracles of art which were there
+to be seen would be as impossible as it would be to portray the
+exquisite taste which enhanced the value of each and constituted more
+than half its charm.
+
+Upon one of the elegant sofas reclined Edmond Dantès, his tall and
+graceful figure draped in a dressing robe, while beside him on a low
+ottoman sat his beautiful wife, her arm resting on his knee, and her
+dark, glorious eyes gazing with confiding fondness into his face.
+
+Mercédès was no longer the young, light-hearted and thoughtless being
+who graced the village of the Catalans. Many years had flown since then
+and many sorrows passed over her. Each of these years and each of these
+sorrows, like retiring waves of the sea, upon the smooth and sandy
+beach, had left behind its trace. No, Mercédès was not now the young,
+light-hearted and thoughtless girl she once was; but she was a being far
+more perfect, far more winning, far more to be loved--she was a matured,
+impassioned, accomplished, and still, despite the flight of years, most
+lovely woman. She was one who could feel passion as well as inspire it,
+and having once felt or inspired it, that passion, it was plain, could
+never pass lightly away. Her face could not now boast, perhaps, that
+full and perfect oval which it formerly had, but the lines of care and
+of reflection, which here and there almost imperceptibly appeared,
+rendered it all the more charming. In the bold yet beautiful contour of
+those features, in the full red lips, in the high pale forehead and,
+above all, in those dark and haunting eyes lay a depth of feeling and
+profundity and nobleness of thought, which to a reflective mind have a
+charm infinitely more irresistible than that which belongs to mere
+youthful perfection. There was a bland beauty in the smile which slept
+upon her lips, a delicacy of sentiment in the faint flush that tinged
+her soft cheek, and a deep meaning in her dark and eloquent eye which
+told a whole history of experience even to a stranger; while the full
+and rounded outline of the figure, garbed in a loose robe of crimson,
+which contrasted beautifully with her luxuriant dark tresses, had that
+voluptuous development and grace which only maturity and maternity can
+impart to the female form. In short, never had Mercédès, in the days of
+her primal bloom, presented a person so fascinating as now. She was a
+woman to sigh for, perchance to die for, and one whom a man would
+willingly wish to live for, if he might but hope she would live for him,
+or, peradventure, he might even be willing not only to risk, but
+ultimately to resign his life, would that fair being not only live for
+him, but love him with that entire and passionate devotedness which
+beamed from her dark eyes up into his who now gazed upon her as she sat
+at his feet. As for him, as for Edmond Dantès, his figure had now the
+same elegance, his hand the same delicate whiteness, his features the
+same spiritual beauty, his brow the same marble pallor, and his eye
+which beamed beneath its calm expanse the same deep brilliancy which,
+years before, had distinguished him from all other men and made the
+Count of Monte-Cristo the idol of every salon in Paris and the hero of
+every maiden's dream. Yet that face was not without its changes. Tears,
+care, thought and sorrow had done their work; in the deep lines upon his
+brow and cheek, in the silvery threads which thickly sprinkled his
+night-black hair, and, more than all, in the mild light of those eyes
+which once glowed only with vindictive hate or gratified revenge and in
+the softened expression of those lips which once, in their stern beauty,
+had but curled with scorn or quivered with rage could be read that the
+lapse of time, though it might, indeed, have made him a sadder man, had
+made him also a better one.
+
+The husband and wife were alone. They still loved as warmly as ever,
+and, if possible, more fondly than when first they were made one.
+
+Dantès stretched himself out on the sofa, and Mercédès, dropping lower
+upon the low ottoman at his side, passed her full and beautiful arm
+around his waist and pressed her lips to his forehead. He returned the
+embrace with warmth, and placing his own arm about her form, drew it
+closely to his bosom. Thus they remained, clasped in each other's arms,
+and thus they fixed on each other eyes beaming with love, passion,
+bliss, happiness unutterable.
+
+"My own Edmond!" murmured Mercédès. "At length you are again with
+me--all my own!"
+
+"Am I not always your own, dearest?" was the fond reply.
+
+"But during the week past, I might almost say during the month past, you
+have been compelled to be so often absent from me."
+
+"Ah! love, you know I was not willingly absent!" was the quick answer.
+
+"No--no--no--but it was hardly the more endurable for that," said the
+lady, with a smile. "Oh! the anxiety of the last three days and nights!
+Dearest, I do believe I have not slept three hours during the whole of
+those three days and nights!"
+
+"And I, dear, have slept not one!" was the laughing rejoinder.
+
+"But all is over now, is it not?"
+
+"In one sense all is over, and in another all now begins. The monarchy
+is ended in France, I believe, forever. The Republic has begun, and, I
+trust, will prove lasting."
+
+"And all the grand objects for which you have been striving with your
+noble colleagues for years and years are at length accomplished, are
+they not?"
+
+"That is a question, love, not easily answered. That the cause of man
+and France has wonderfully triumphed during the past three days is, no
+doubt, most true. But this victory, love, I foresaw. Indeed, it was but
+the inevitable result of an irresistible cause. It was neither chance,
+love, nor a spontaneous burst of patriotism that, on the first day,
+filled the boulevards with fifty thousand blouses, which on the second
+won over to the people eighty thousand National Guards, and on the third
+choked the streets of Paris with barricades constructed by engineers and
+defended by men completely armed. The events of the last three days,
+Mercédès, have been maturing in the womb of Providence for the past ten
+years. It is their birth only which has now taken place, and to some the
+parturition seems a little premature, I suppose. This banquet caused the
+fright that hastened the event," added Dantès, laughing.
+
+"You are very scientific in your comparisons," replied Mercédès,
+slightly blushing, "and I suppose I must admit, very apt. But tell me,
+love, is all over? That is, must you be away from me any more at night,
+and wander about, Heaven only knows where, in this dark and dangerous
+city, or Heaven only knows with whom or for what?"
+
+Dantès kissed his fair wife, and, after a pause, during which he gazed
+fondly into her eyes, replied:
+
+"I hope, I trust, I believe, dear, that all is over--at least all that
+will take me from you, as during the past week. France has or will have
+a Republic. That is as certain as fate can make it. But first she will
+have to pass through strife and tribulation--perhaps bloodshed. The end
+surely, love, is not yet. But France is now comparatively free. The
+dreadful problem is now nearer solution than it ever was. Labor will
+hereafter be granted to all, together with the adequate reward of labor.
+Destitution will not be deemed guilt. The death-penalty is abolished.
+The rich will not with impunity grind the poor into powder beneath their
+heels. Asylums for the suffering, the distressed, the abandoned of both
+sexes will be sustained. The efforts which, as individuals, we have some
+of us made for years to ameliorate the condition of mankind, to assuage
+human woes and augment human joys, will henceforth be encouraged and
+directly aided by the State. This Revolution, love, is a social
+Revolution, and during the sixty-four hours the Provisional Government
+was in session, in the Hôtel de Ville, I became thoroughly convinced
+that the thousands and tens of thousands who, with sleepless vigilance,
+watched their proceedings, had learned the deep lesson too well to be
+further deceived, and that the fruits of the Revolution they had won
+would not again be snatched from their lips."
+
+"And the result of this triumph of the people you believe has advanced
+the cause of human happiness?" asked Mercédès.
+
+"Most unquestionably, dear, and most incalculably, too, perhaps."
+
+"All your friends are not as disinterested as you have been, Edmond,"
+said Mercédès.
+
+"And why think you that, dear?"
+
+"For six full years I know you have devoted all your powers of mind and
+body and all your immense wealth to one single object."
+
+"And that object?"
+
+"Has been the happiness of your race."
+
+"Well, dear?"
+
+"And now, when a triumph has been achieved--now, when others, who have
+been but mere instruments--blind instruments, many of them, in your
+hands to accomplish they knew not what--come forward and assume place
+and power--you, Edmond, the noble author and first cause of all, remain
+quietly in seclusion, unknown, unnamed, unappreciated and uncommended,
+while the others reap the fruits of your toil!"
+
+"Well, dear?" said Dantès, smiling at the warmth of his wife in his
+behalf.
+
+"But it is not 'well,' Edmond. I say no one is as disinterested as you."
+
+"Ah! love, what of ambition?"
+
+Mercédès smiled.
+
+"Let me tell you all, love, and then you will not, I fear, think me
+disinterested," said Dantès seriously. "I should blush, indeed, at
+praise so little deserved. You know all my early history. I suffered--I
+was wronged--I was revenged. But was I happy? I sought happiness. All
+men do so, even the most miserable. Some seek happiness in gratified
+ambition, some in gratified avarice, some in gratified vanity, and some
+in the gratification of a dominant lust for pleasure or for power. I
+sought happiness in gratified revenge!"
+
+Mercédès shuddered, and, hiding her face on the bosom of her husband,
+clung to it more closely as if for protection. Dantès drew her form to
+his as he would have drawn that of a child, and continued:
+
+"I sought happiness in vengeance for terrible wrongs, and to win it I
+devoted a life and countless wealth. What was the result?
+Misery!--misery!--misery!"
+
+"Poor Edmond!" murmured Mercédès, clinging to him closer than ever.
+
+"At length I awoke, as from a dream. I saw my error. My whole life had
+been a lie. I saw that God by a miracle had bestowed on me untold riches
+for a nobler purpose than to make his creatures wretched. I saw that if
+I would be happy I must make others happy, and to this end--the
+happiness, not the misery, of my race--must my wealth and power be
+devoted. To this end, then, did I devote myself, and to this end, for
+six years, have I been devoted--to make myself happy by making others
+happy--you among the rest, dear, dear Mercédès," he added, pressing her
+to his bosom. "And am I then so disinterested?"
+
+"But why should you achieve triumphs for others to enjoy, Edmond?" asked
+the wife.
+
+"You refer to the Provisional Government," said Dantès with a smile.
+"Well, I see I must tell you all, even though by the revelation I prove
+myself utterly unworthy of the praise of disinterestedness. I may tell
+you, love--you my second self--without danger of being charged with
+egotism, what I might not say to others. Our friend Lamartine is the
+actual head of this Government. I had but to assent to the urgent
+entreaties to secure that position for myself. These appointments seem
+the result of nomination by the people. Yet they are not!"
+
+"And why did you refuse to head the Government, Edmond?"
+
+"I am ashamed to confess to you that I feared to accept," said Dantès
+after a pause. "My own selfishness, not, alas! my disinterestedness, has
+kept me from the post of peril. Perhaps, indeed, I can do far more for
+the cause of my race as I am than I could by sacrificing myself for
+office and position; at least, I hope so."
+
+"Is the position of your friends then so perilous?" asked Mercédès.
+
+"Dearest, they stand upon a volcano!" said Dantès, solemnly.
+
+"Ha!" cried the lady in alarm.
+
+"Mercédès--Mercédès!" continued Dantès with enthusiasm, "I sometimes am
+startled with the idea that to me have been entrusted the awful powers
+of foreknowledge, of prophecy, so fearfully true have some of my
+predictions proved! The events of the past week I foresaw and foretold,
+even to minute circumstances and the hours of their occurrence. And
+now--glorious as is the triumph that France and the cause of man have
+achieved--I perceive in the dim future a sea of commotion! All is not
+yet settled. Within one month, revolution will succeed revolution
+throughout Europe! Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid, perhaps also St.
+Petersburg, London, and all the cities of Italy, will be in revolt. All
+Europe must and will feel the events of the past week in Paris. Europe
+must be free!"
+
+"And our friends--Lamartine--Louis Blanc?"
+
+"Within six months Louis Blanc will be an exile, and Lamartine--he may
+be in a dungeon or on a scaffold!"
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Mercédès, clinging yet more closely to her husband.
+
+"But the cause of human happiness, human right and human freedom will
+live forever! That must be, will be eternal--as eternal, my adored
+Mercédès, as is our own deathless love!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+ESPÉRANCE AND ZULEIKA.
+
+
+During the whole period of the memorable Revolution Zuleika never once
+saw her brother, though she was burning with a desire to have an
+interview with him on the subject that had caused the separation between
+her young Italian lover and herself. Espérance made his home behind the
+barricades, from the time the struggle began until the people finally
+triumphed; gun in hand, he fought as heroically as the most devoted
+workman, fearlessly exposing himself whenever the troops pressed his
+comrades in arms and always in the thick of the fight. Begrimed with
+dust and powder, his garments torn by bullets and bayonet thrusts, his
+hat battered and rent, he encouraged the people by word and example,
+constantly shouting "Vive la République," and contending for liberty
+with the bravery of a lion and a persistency that never flagged. He,
+however, escaped without a single scratch, returning to the paternal
+mansion utterly worn out, but altogether unhurt, proud of having done
+his duty as a man and a patriot, and of having sustained the glorious
+cause for which his father was working heart and soul.
+
+As he was slowly and wearily wending his way homeward, he suddenly
+encountered M. Dantès and his friend Lamartine in the Rue Richelieu; his
+gun was on his shoulder, and in his tattered attire, with the dust and
+powder on his face and hands, he had the exact appearance of an
+insurrectionist and a barricader. He touched his hat in military fashion
+to M. Dantès and his illustrious companion, and was about passing on
+when his father recognized him and, ragged and begrimed as he was, threw
+his arms enthusiastically about his neck. M. Lamartine watched the
+Deputy from Marseilles and could not restrain an expression of
+astonishment at his singular behavior. M. Dantès smiled and, taking
+Espérance by the hand, said:
+
+"M. Lamartine, you will, I know, make every allowance for me when you
+learn that this young man, who has been fighting behind the barricades
+with the people, is my son!"
+
+The head of the Provisional Government instantly grew as enthusiastic as
+M. Dantès himself; he grasped Espérance's free hand and, shaking it with
+the utmost cordiality, exclaimed:
+
+"Your son, M. Dantès! Let me congratulate you! Why he is a perfect
+hero!"
+
+"I have but followed my father's teachings and done what he would have
+done had he been my age and unable to serve the great cause of human
+freedom in a more effective way!"
+
+M. Dantès' eyes sparkled with joy and a faint shade of color appeared
+upon his pale cheeks.
+
+"What is your name, young patriot?" asked M. Lamartine, his excitement
+and enthusiasm continuing to hold possession of him.
+
+"Espérance," was the reply.
+
+"Espérance--hope--the name is both appropriate and auspicious; with such
+heroic young men as you fighting for our cause there is, indeed, hope,
+and of the brightest and best kind!" cried Lamartine.
+
+"Nay, nay," said M. Dantès, "do not flatter the boy; he has but done his
+duty."
+
+"Believe me, I do not flatter him," returned Lamartine; "I have simply
+told him the truth; in time he will rival the devotion and achievements
+of his noble father!"
+
+"Enough, enough," said the Deputy, modestly; "we deserve only the credit
+of executing God's will--we are merely instruments in His omnipotent
+hand!" he added, impressively.
+
+"And such instruments are exactly what we need in the present crisis.
+God grant us plenty of them!"
+
+The next morning Zuleika encountered Espérance on the stairway; she led
+him into the salon, and, when they were seated, said:
+
+"My brother, I have a question to ask of you."
+
+A shadow crossed the young man's brow, and he quickly asked:
+
+"Is it about the Viscount Massetti?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I must refuse to answer!"
+
+"But the matter concerns my happiness, nay, my very life itself; think
+of that before you finally refuse to answer my question!"
+
+Espérance hastily and excitedly arose from his chair and stood in front
+of his sister.
+
+"Zuleika," said he, in an agitated tone, "beware of that man--beware of
+Giovanni Massetti!"
+
+"Beware of Giovanni, Espérance--and why?"
+
+The young man began to pace the salon with short and nervous steps; his
+hands twitched convulsively, and his face had suddenly assumed the
+whiteness of chalk.
+
+"Zuleika, Zuleika," he murmured, "I cannot, I cannot tell you why! It
+would crash you to the very earth and make you blush with shame that you
+had ever listened to the seductive tones of that doubly false Italian's
+voice!"
+
+"But, Espérance," said Zuleika, "papa certainly knows all about
+Giovanni; if he did not altogether approve of his character and conduct,
+he would never have consented to admit him as a suitor for my hand!"
+
+"A suitor for your hand, Zuleika! My God! has he then dared----"
+
+"He has done nothing that an upright and honorable man should not do!"
+interrupted Zuleika, warmly. "He did not even call here until he had
+written to papa and obtained his full permission to do so."
+
+"Zuleika," said Espérance, approaching his sister and taking her hand,
+"no doubt Giovanni Massetti has conducted himself in all respects
+toward you like a perfect gentleman, but, nevertheless, he is not fit to
+be my sister's husband."
+
+"But papa----"
+
+"Has been deceived, as have many others, in regard to the true character
+and standing of this so-called Roman nobleman."
+
+"And is he not a nobleman?"
+
+"Once more I must refuse to answer any question in regard to him. I can
+only tell you to beware and shun him as you would a venomous serpent."
+
+"Espérance, I love him!"
+
+"Love him!--you love him, Zuleika! Oh! this is, indeed, torture!"
+
+The young man dropped his sister's hand and flung himself upon a divan.
+He was a prey to the most intense excitement.
+
+Zuleika, deeply affected to see him thus, and remembering Giovanni's
+mysterious behavior, together with his strange and ominous words, when
+she had questioned him in regard to his quarrel with Espérance, felt for
+a moment shaken and uncertain. She also recollected that, at the time of
+the inexplicable difficulty between the two young men, she had heard
+rumors to the effect that a youthful member of the Roman aristocracy had
+abducted a beautiful peasant girl, in which affair he had been assisted
+by the notorious brigand Luigi Vampa; the matter, however, had almost
+immediately been hushed up and she had learned none of the
+circumstances. Could it be possible that Giovanni Massetti was the
+youthful aristocrat alluded to by the gossips and scandalmongers of the
+Eternal City--that he was the abductor of the unfortunate peasant girl?
+She could not entertain such an idea, and yet that abduction, in spite
+of all her efforts, would associate itself with her Italian lover in her
+mind.
+
+She arose from her chair and, going to the divan, seated herself beside
+Espérance, determined to make a final attempt to draw his secret from
+him. Throwing her arms tenderly about his neck she said, in a coaxing
+tone:
+
+"If any sound reason exists why I should not love Giovanni Massetti, and
+you know it, your plain duty as my brother is to tell me. Will you not
+tell me, Espérance?"
+
+Instead of replying, the young man buried his face in his hands and
+fairly sobbed in his anguish. Zuleika was filled with pity for him, and,
+as she gazed at him, tears came into her eyes; but still bent on
+discovering the nature of the obstacle that had so suddenly loomed up
+between Giovanni and herself, she continued after a pause, in the same
+coaxing voice:
+
+"Espérance, I am no longer a child and should not be treated as one.
+What I ask of you is only reasonable and just. If I stand on the brink
+of a gulf I cannot see, it is your duty to inform me not only of my
+danger but also of its nature. Am I not right?"
+
+Heaving a deep sigh, Espérance replied:
+
+"Yes, you are right, Zuleika; it is my duty to tell you all--and yet I
+cannot!"
+
+"At least, tell me why you are compelled to maintain silence on a
+matter of so much importance."
+
+"Did you question the Viscount?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"And what answer did he return?"
+
+"Like you, he refused to answer."
+
+"Ah! then he has some sense of shame left!"
+
+"Shame?"
+
+"Yes, shame! And what did you do when he refused to speak?"
+
+"I left him."
+
+"And you will not see him again?"
+
+"Not until he has decided to tell me all."
+
+"Then you will never put eyes upon him more; he dare not tell you!"
+
+"Dare not! And why?"
+
+"Because, did you know the depth of his infamy, you would spurn him from
+you!"
+
+Suddenly a grave suspicion stole into Zuleika's mind and made her
+tremble from head to foot. Might it not be that Espérance had been as
+deeply involved in the mysterious and infamous affair of which he
+declined to speak as Giovanni Massetti himself? The thought was torment,
+and totally unable to restrain her keen anxiety to be instantly informed
+upon this topic, Zuleika gasped out:
+
+"Were you not, Espérance, as guilty as your former friend?"
+
+The young man leaped to his feet as if a tarantula had bitten him.
+
+"No, no!" cried he. "I was innocent of all blame in the matter! Luigi
+Vampa----"
+
+He abruptly checked himself and stood staring at his sister, as if in
+dismay at having unguardedly uttered the brigand's name.
+
+But Zuleika said nothing. Giovanni Massetti also had protested his
+innocence, and the young girl knew not what to believe. Luigi Vampa? So
+then he had been a party to this mysterious and terrible business,
+whatever it was! And again she thought of the abduction of the beautiful
+peasant girl. Could that be the fearful secret? Yes, it must be. Luigi
+Vampa had assisted in that abduction, if report could be relied on, and
+the chief criminal had been a youthful member of the Roman aristocracy.
+Oh! it was all plain now. Zuleika shuddered and felt her heart grow
+heavy as lead, while a sharp, killing pang ran through it. Had Espérance
+been misled by Vampa and the Viscount? Had he discovered too late the
+infamy of the affair and challenged Massetti on that account? This was,
+doubtless, the solution of the whole enigma, and yet Zuleika hesitated
+to accept it as such. No, no, she could not accept it without further
+and more convincing proof! But how was that proof to be obtained?
+Neither the Viscount nor her brother would speak; it was evident that
+their lips were sealed; possibly an oath to maintain silence had been
+extorted from them under terrible circumstances--an oath they feared to
+break even to clear themselves from a foul suspicion. But Vampa? He
+might, perhaps, be induced to give the key to the mystery. Vampa,
+however, was far away in Rome and inaccessible. Zuleika made a wild
+resolve--she would write to the brigand and throw herself upon his
+generosity; then she decided that the plan was impracticable; her letter
+would never reach Vampa--it would be seized by the Roman authorities and
+might cause additional trouble by reviving a smothered scandal--and even
+should it reach the brigand, would he answer it? The chances were a
+hundred to one that he would not. At this instant an inspiration came to
+the tortured girl like a flash of lightning. Her father had known Vampa
+in the past, and, perhaps, still possessed some influence over him. She
+had heard the story of Albert de Morcerf's adventure in the catacombs of
+Saint Sebastian, and was aware that the brigand chief had released him
+from captivity without ransom at her father's simple solicitation. Would
+not Vampa answer her questions if M. Dantès could be influenced to write
+him and ask them? She had full faith in her father's power to get a
+letter to the bandit notwithstanding all the vigilance of the Roman
+authorities. Yes, she would go to him, tell all her suspicions without
+reserve and beg him to write the letter; it was hardly likely he would
+refuse; he could not, he must not. Thus resolved, Zuleika looked her
+brother full in the face and said, calmly:
+
+"I see I torture you with my questions, Espérance, that for some reason
+best known to yourself you cannot answer them, and that it is useless
+to torment you further. But something must be done and that at once. I
+am going to my father!"
+
+Espérance caught her wildly by the arm.
+
+"You are mad!" cried he.
+
+"It is you who are mad--you and Giovanni! I tell you, I am going to my
+father; if you are innocent, you have nothing to fear from any
+revelation I may make!"
+
+With these words she freed herself from her brother's grasp and quitted
+the salon, leaving Espérance standing in the centre of the apartment as
+if he were rooted to the spot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+CAPTAIN JOLIETTE'S LOVE.
+
+
+In a small but cosy and elegant suite of apartments in a mansion on the
+Rue des Capucines resided Mlle. Louise d'Armilly and her brother Léon;
+as has already been stated, the celebrated cantatrice had retired from
+the boards in consequence of having inherited a fortune of several
+millions of francs from the estate of her deceased father, who, rumor
+asserted, had been a very wealthy Parisian banker; Léon had abandoned
+the stage simultaneously with his sister, who had invited him to share
+her suddenly acquired riches, for, strange to say, the banker had not
+bequeathed to him a single sou.
+
+The immense inheritance had been a complete surprise to Mlle. d'Armilly,
+and for some time she had hesitated to accept it, as a condition imposed
+by the will was her immediate withdrawal from her operatic career, and
+the prima donna was as ambitious as gifted; but, finally, she had
+yielded to the persuasive eloquence of the notary and the earnest
+entreaties of her friends, canceling all her engagements, and with them
+abandoning her bright professional future.
+
+The director of the Académie Royale demanded a large sum to release the
+artiste from her contract with him, and this was paid by the notary with
+an alacrity that seemed to suggest he was not acting solely according to
+the directions of the will, but was influenced by some personage who
+chose to remain in the background; the notary also paid all other
+demands made by the various operatic managers who claimed they would
+lose by Mlle. d'Armilly's failure to appear; these amounts were not
+deducted from the legacy, a circumstance that gave additional color to
+the supposition that the will of the deceased banker was not the sole
+factor in the celebrated cantatrice's good luck.
+
+One evening, shortly after Paris had again quieted down, Mlle. d'Armilly
+was seated in the little apartment that served her as a salon, and with
+her was her brother Léon. The contrast between the pair seemed
+intensified in private life. Louise had that dark, imperious, majestic
+beauty usually possessed by brunettes; her figure was full and finely
+developed, her black eyes had the deep, intense fire of passion, and her
+faultless countenance, glowing with health and loveliness, indicated at
+once firmness, decision and caprices without number. Léon, on the
+contrary, was delicate and feminine in appearance; he had exceedingly
+small feet and hands, and a single glance at his strikingly handsome
+face was sufficient to convince any experienced judge of human nature
+that he possessed a mild and yielding disposition. The young man bore
+not the remotest family likeness to his sister, and it was difficult to
+realize that they could be in any way related.
+
+Léon quitted his sister and, going to a piano that stood in one corner
+of the apartment, softly opened it and commenced lightly running his
+fingers over the keys; then he seated himself at the instrument and
+played an air from "Lucrezia Borgia" with brilliancy and effect that
+only a finished performer could attain. At the first notes Louise arose
+and approaching the piano stood beside the player, her eyes sparkling
+with appreciation and delight. So absorbed were the brother and sister
+that they did not hear a soft knock at the door, and only at the
+conclusion of the air did they realize that a visitor was in the
+apartment. Léon sprang from the instrument in confusion, behaving like a
+startled girl, but Mlle. d'Armilly, with perfect self-control, turned to
+the new comer and said, in a tone of mingled coquetry and merriment:
+
+"So, so, Captain Joliette, your military career has accustomed you to
+surprising the enemy to such an extent that it has become second nature
+with you, and you cannot avoid carrying your favorite tactics even into
+private life!"
+
+Captain Joliette, for it was, indeed, he, bowed and answered with a
+smile:
+
+"You must allow me solemnly to protest against classing yourself and
+your brother with the enemy! You are, both of you, very dear friends!"
+
+"Especially Louise!" said Léon, with a sly look and a pretty little
+ringing laugh.
+
+"Léon, Léon, when will you learn wisdom!" exclaimed Mlle. d'Armilly, a
+blush mantling her visage, and adding to its voluptuous beauty.
+
+"Never, I suppose!" returned her brother, still laughing. "But I am
+already well acquainted with the value of discretion and, therefore,
+will withdraw!"
+
+As he uttered those words, Léon kissed the tips of his fingers to Louise
+and Joliette, and lightly ran from the salon. When he had disappeared
+the Captain folded Mlle. d'Armilly in his arms and kissed her tenderly
+upon the forehead.
+
+"Oh! Louise," said he, enthusiastically, "I love you more and more every
+day!"
+
+The former artiste gently disentangled herself from his embrace and,
+smiling archly, led him to a chair; then she sat down upon another at a
+short distance from him.
+
+"No, no," said Joliette, warmly; "come and sit beside me on the sofa.
+Even Léon sees that I adore you, and all my friends in Paris are aware
+that I am seeking your hand in marriage. Why will you be so formal and
+distant with me!"
+
+She arose and did as he requested; Joliette, seated at her side, put his
+arm about her waist. Louise did not resist, but still maintained an air
+of coquetry that was displeasing to the ardent young soldier.
+
+"Albert," she said, in a low, musical voice, "do you, indeed, love me as
+you say?"
+
+"Love you, Louise!" cried Joliette. "I would lay down my life for you!"
+
+"Are you quite sure you love me for myself and not because of the
+resemblance you say I bear to the woman you once so ardently admired?
+What was her name?--ah! Eugénie Danglars!" said she, looking at him with
+a piercing gaze.
+
+"Quite sure, Louise, quite sure. Besides, Mlle. Danglars has
+disappeared, has not been seen or heard of for several years, and, no
+doubt, is dead."
+
+"And yet you do not mourn for her! How strange!"
+
+"I never loved her as I love you, Louise. Eugénie Danglars was a
+capricious and eccentric girl, and had she lived would have been a
+capricious and eccentric woman. It was well for me she vanished when she
+did! But, by the way, another singular and inexplicable coincidence is
+that Louise d'Armilly, the name you bear, was also the name of Mlle.
+Danglars' music teacher. I cannot understand it at all!"
+
+"There is no necessity for you to understand it. Anyhow, it is a
+coincidence, as you say--nothing more."
+
+"Well, Louise, let us speak no further about either the resemblance or
+the coincidence. Suffice it that I love you, and you alone--that I love
+you for yourself."
+
+"Your words make me very happy, Albert," replied Mlle. d'Armilly, and
+her full red lips looked so luscious, ripe and alluring, that Joliette
+could not resist the temptation to bestow a long, burning kiss upon
+them.
+
+"Be my wife, then, dearest Louise," cried the Captain, "and I will
+prolong your happiness until death shall strike me down!"
+
+"Ah! Albert, men are so fickle; they become infatuated with women and
+declare and, no doubt think, they could pass their lives at their
+charmers' feet; but possession dulls the lustre of the brightest jewel,
+and the devoted lover is speedily replaced by a careless, if not
+faithless husband, who, instead of making his wife happy as he has sworn
+to do, forsakes her side to bask in the smiles of sirens."
+
+"It will never be so with me, my own, my love!" protested Joliette,
+kissing her again and again. "I swear it."
+
+"I know the value of a lover's oath, Albert," murmured Louise, with a
+meaning look. "When I was the brightest operatic star of the day many of
+them were breathed in my ear, but they were 'trifles light as air,'
+forgotten as soon as uttered. Besides, should I consent to become your
+wife, you would be forced to leave me in France and return to Africa in
+obedience to the call of duty; the lovely women of Algeria are prodigal
+of their beauties and endearments, and under the spell of some subtle
+Arab enchantress you would either forget poor Louise d'Armilly
+altogether, or remember her only as a clog upon your pleasures and
+amorous delights."
+
+"Nay, nay, you wrong me; among all the dusky sirens of Algeria there
+exists not one who could make me forget you for a single instant; they
+are brazen, shameless women, who love with a recklessness and boldness
+that can only disgust a Frenchman."
+
+"But they can dazzle even a Frenchman, render him delirious with passion
+and, ere he is aware, weave a web around him through which he cannot
+break. My heart tells me you are as susceptible to feminine wiles as the
+rest of your countrymen, and that, perhaps, you have already had
+half-a-dozen love-affairs in Algeria."
+
+"Oh! Louise, Louise, it grieves me to the soul that you can thus doubt
+me. Give me a chance to prove my love and you shall be more than
+satisfied that I can be loyal and true."
+
+Mlle. d'Armilly gazed at him with a singular expression on her dark
+beautiful countenance; it thrilled him to the very marrow of his bones,
+and caused his arm that was about her waist to tremble violently; at
+that moment the former cantatrice resembled Eugénie Danglars more than
+ever; her breath, was hot and convulsive as it struck his cheek, and a
+faint suspicion that all was not right--that she was playing a rôle with
+him, shot across his mind for the first time; with this suspicion came
+jealousy, and, releasing her waist, he said, in a gasping tone:
+
+"You have another lover, Louise, a lover you prefer to me--am I not
+right?"
+
+Mlle. d'Armilly laughed a short, nervous laugh, and answered in a voice
+that seemed to mock him:
+
+"I have had hosts of ardent admirers in my time. Do you refer
+particularly to any individual?"
+
+"I know not; I am beside myself with passion for you, and the mere fancy
+that another man may have the first place in your heart is unbearable to
+me! But there is one conclusive way in which you can prove my
+suspicion--my jealousy--groundless; marry me!"
+
+"Albert," replied Louise, with a renewal of the singular expression of
+countenance that had so agitated him, "I shall never marry any one; I
+cannot--I dare not!"
+
+The young man was startled as if by an electric shock; he drew back and
+gazed at her with wide-opened eyes, speechless from astonishment.
+
+After a brief pause, Mlle. d'Armilly continued, in a dry, hard tone:
+
+"You do not understand me and I cannot expect you to, for I can neither
+tell you my motives nor lay bare my sad history to you; you must be
+content with my decision--I shall not marry!"
+
+Captain Joliette, strong man as he was, could not control his emotion;
+he buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud. The young woman gazed
+at him half pityingly, half triumphantly; she felt compassion for her
+stricken lover, but, above all, gloried in the overwhelming power of her
+charms that could so subdue a manly, victorious young soldier and make
+him her helpless slave.
+
+"Is there then no shadow of a hope?" at length asked Joliette, in a
+hoarse whisper.
+
+"Not the shadow of a hope!" replied Mlle. d'Armilly, firmly. "You can be
+my friend, my brother, if you will, but never my husband."
+
+The young man recoiled in horror at the suggestion that seemed to be
+conveyed by this permission.
+
+"What do you mean by friend?" he asked, a cold shiver passing through
+him.
+
+Louise laughed a short, nervous laugh, and, looking him full in the
+eyes, replied:
+
+"You know what I mean. I love you better than any man I ever met, save
+one."
+
+Captain Joliette slowly arose to his feet and stood staring at her, his
+passion and his scruples waging a bitter battle within him for the
+mastery. The temptress half reclined on the sofa, a miracle of seductive
+grace and voluptuous beauty. He moved toward her as if to seize her in
+his arms; then, suddenly checking himself, he asked, with a convulsive
+gasp:
+
+"And that man--that one?"
+
+"Was separated from me forever through the vile machinations of that
+mysterious and cold-blooded fiend, the Count of Monte-Cristo!"
+
+"The Count of Monte-Cristo?" exclaimed the young man, lost in amazement.
+
+"Yes, the Count of Monte-Cristo, who afterwards disappeared from Paris
+and has not since been heard of."
+
+"You mistake; the Count of Monte-Cristo is in Paris now; he calls
+himself Edmond Dantès and is the celebrated Deputy from Marseilles over
+whom everybody has gone wild for some time past."
+
+Mlle. d'Armilly's eyes flashed with fury.
+
+"Then I will have my revenge upon him at last!" she cried. "I will amply
+repay him for introducing the so-called Prince Cavalcanti into my
+father's house and thus breaking off the match between Albert and
+myself."
+
+"Albert?"
+
+"Yes; Albert de Morcerf."
+
+"Now, Eugénie Danglars, I know you and it is useless for you to attempt
+the denial of your identity longer!"
+
+The young woman leaped up from the sofa, with terror pictured upon her
+visage, and, seizing Captain Joliette by the arm with a powerful grasp,
+cried out:
+
+"And how, pray, do you know I am Eugénie Danglars?"
+
+"You unwittingly betrayed yourself by revealing the names of
+Monte-Cristo and Cavalcanti. Besides, Eugénie, look at me well--I am
+Albert de Morcerf!"
+
+With a wild cry the retired prima donna sank back upon the sofa.
+
+"You Albert de Morcerf!" she exclaimed. "I cannot believe it!"
+
+"But my mother, the former Countess de Morcerf, who is now the wife of
+Edmond Dantès, will vouch for my identity."
+
+The young woman passed her hand across her forehead as if dazed.
+
+"If you are Albert de Morcerf, you must despise me after what has taken
+place this evening," she said, bitterly.
+
+"Despise you? No, I pity and forgive you."
+
+"Albert," said she, softly, "come here and sit beside me on this sofa; I
+have something to say to you."
+
+The soldier obeyed; when he was seated, he said:
+
+"Eugénie, why did you tell me I could be your friend?"
+
+"Simply because I have long suspected your secret and wished to
+ascertain the real nature of your feelings toward me. You not only
+resisted a terrible temptation, the most terrible temptation to which a
+young, ardent and passion-smitten man can be exposed, but by your honor
+conclusively established the purity and sincerity of your love. Oh!
+Albert, Albert, are you satisfied with my explanation and do you still
+think me worthy of you?"
+
+"My own Eugénie, my happiness is far too great for words!" murmured the
+delighted young man, gathering his beautiful companion in a warm embrace
+and repeatedly kissing her ripe lips and blushing cheeks.
+
+It was soon known throughout Paris that Captain Joliette and Albert de
+Morcerf were identical, and that Mlle. d'Armilly was in reality no other
+than Mlle. Eugénie Danglars, daughter of Baron Danglars, the once famous
+and opulent Parisian banker; the report also was current that Albert and
+Eugénie were engaged and would shortly be united in the bonds of
+matrimony. Another bit of gossip was to the effect that the former
+cantatrice's brother Léon was not a man but a woman; in short, the real
+Louise d'Armilly, who had loaned her name to Eugénie Danglars and
+assumed male attire solely for professional purposes. This story was
+speedily confirmed, for Léon soon vanished and in his place appeared a
+most attractive and fascinating lady, who very quietly assumed, or
+rather resumed, the name of Louise d'Armilly. Still another rumor was
+that the wealth so strangely inherited by the former prima donna was not
+a legacy at all, but a gift from the mysterious Count of Monte-Cristo,
+who had thus striven to make amends to the daughter for the misfortunes
+he had, while pursuing his scheme of wholesale vengeance, so
+remorselessly heaped upon the head of the father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+ZULEIKA GOES TO M. DANTÈS.
+
+
+M. Dantès was sitting alone in his library, busily engaged in reading a
+favorite work on the subject of political economy, and from time to time
+making copious notes. It was after midnight, and the vast mansion on the
+Rue du Helder was as silent as the tomb; the lamp on the Deputy's table
+burned brightly, but a large metallic shade concentrated the light and
+reflected it upon the table, so that the other portions of the apartment
+were shrouded in almost complete darkness.
+
+As M. Dantès read a shadow suddenly fell on the page of his book, and
+quickly looking up he saw his daughter Zuleika standing beside him;
+tears were in her eyes and a look of melancholy rested upon her
+countenance.
+
+"Why child," said her father, in a startled tone, "what is the matter
+with you? You are weeping and seem very sad. Has anything happened to
+young Massetti?"
+
+"Not that I am aware of, papa," answered Zuleika, in a low voice. "But,
+nevertheless, it is of him I wish to speak."
+
+M. Dantès pushed his book from him, motioned his daughter to a seat and
+prepared to listen as she did not begin at once, but seemed to
+hesitate, he said, kindly:
+
+"I am waiting, little one; proceed."
+
+Thus encouraged, Zuleika summoned up all her strength and, with downcast
+eyes, commenced:
+
+"Papa," said she, "in the first place let me assure you that this is no
+mere lovers' quarrel, but a matter of the utmost importance that demands
+immediate action."
+
+M. Dantès knitted his brows.
+
+"Has the Viscount been guilty of any impropriety toward you?" he asked,
+fiercely.
+
+"No, papa, not toward me, but I fear he may have been guilty of
+impropriety, or, at least, of indiscretion, with regard to another in
+the past."
+
+"A woman, no doubt."
+
+"Yes, papa, a woman--a Roman peasant."
+
+"I heard of some such thing while you were at the convent school in
+Rome, but dismissed it as a slander."
+
+"There may, however, be some truth in it."
+
+"But, now I recollect, Giovanni's name was not associated with the
+scandal; it was a mere inference on my part that connected him with the
+youthful member of the Roman aristocracy mentioned by the gossips."
+
+"Perhaps I am unjust, papa, in reviving your suspicions, but Giovanni's
+strange behavior when I asked him the cause of his quarrel with
+Espérance and of the continued coldness between them, forced me to think
+there was something wrong."
+
+"His quarrel with Espérance? Ah! now I remember, there was a quarrel,
+but I imagined it was settled, and that their relations were altogether
+friendly."
+
+"They are enemies, papa, or seem to be, and that is not all--Espérance
+accuses Giovanni of having been guilty of some infamous deed."
+
+"You have spoken to Espérance then on the subject?"
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He dealt in vague denunciations, and positively refused to give me any
+definite information."
+
+"That is singular."
+
+"But what is still more so is that both Giovanni and Espérance seem
+bound by some fearful oath not to disclose the dread secret in their
+possession."
+
+"Bound by an oath?"
+
+"Yes, papa; but why both of them should have been so bound, unless they
+were accomplices, I cannot see; I even went so far as to accuse
+Espérance of complicity, whereupon he grew as white as chalk and
+protested his entire innocence, and in his confusion uttered the name of
+Luigi Vampa."
+
+"Zuleika, Zuleika, you certainly misunderstood your brother; he could
+not have mentioned the name of that man! Do you know who this Luigi
+Vampa is?"
+
+"Perfectly, papa; Luigi Vampa is a notorious Roman brigand."
+
+"Exactly, my child, and therefore could not possibly have had any
+dealings either with the Viscount or Espérance."
+
+"But I am sure of the name, nevertheless. Espérance said Luigi Vampa."
+
+M. Dantès was evidently startled; he arose to his feet and paced the
+library excitedly. Zuleika had expected this, and hence was not
+surprised. At last her father resumed his seat, and when he again came
+within reach of the lamp's rays she saw that his visage was even more
+pallid than usual and that he was not a little agitated. She waited for
+him to speak, and in a few seconds he did so.
+
+"Zuleika," said he, in a tone of decision, "I will see both the Viscount
+and my son in regard to this matter, for now that Luigi Vampa seems to
+have had a share in it, close investigation is imperatively demanded."
+
+"You may interrogate them, papa, but I am convinced in advance that you
+will derive no information from either of them. The strange power that
+holds sway over them you cannot break, but there is one thing you can
+do."
+
+"What is that, Zuleika?"
+
+"Write to Luigi Vampa!"
+
+"Write to Vampa? Why should I do that?"
+
+"Because I feel assured that he is in possession of the full details of
+the terrible secret, whatever it may be, and will communicate them to
+you if you ask him to do so."
+
+M. Dantès gazed at his daughter curiously.
+
+"What makes you think I have such influence over this Roman brigand?"
+he asked, sharply.
+
+"Oh! papa, do not be angry with me!" cried Zuleika; "but I have heard
+how Vampa released the Viscount de Morcerf at your simple solicitation
+without a single franc of ransom, though he had previously demanded a
+very large amount from the unfortunate man as the price of his liberty.
+I have heard this, and the natural inference I drew was that, if the
+brigand chief went so far as to surrender his prey to you, he would
+certainly answer your letter and tell you all he knew about the matter
+that so closely concerns my happiness and Espérance's good name."
+
+"I am not angry with you, my child," replied the Deputy, in a milder
+tone, "for I know how deeply you have this affair at heart. I will write
+to Luigi Vampa as you desire, this very night, and in two weeks at the
+furthest his answer may be expected, but to-morrow I will talk with
+Espérance and then will question the Viscount. Rest assured that this
+matter shall be sifted to the bottom. I know the extent of your love for
+Giovanni Massetti; I also feel confident that I am not deceived in him,
+and that he will be amply able to prove himself entirely worthy of your
+hand. I have seen too much of men, Zuleika, and studied them too deeply,
+to be deceived in reading character."
+
+"Oh! thank you, thank you ever so much, papa, both for your promise, and
+your kind, encouraging words. I, too, have full faith in Giovanni, but
+still I cannot rest satisfied until his record is entirely and
+conclusively cleared. No one must have the power to breathe even a
+suspicion against the good name of your daughter's husband!"
+
+"Spoken like a girl of spirit!" said M. Dantès, his eyes sparkling with
+enthusiasm and admiration. "Now leave me, and I will write to Vampa."
+
+Zuleika kissed her father and quitted the library with a much lighter
+heart than she had entered it.
+
+M. Dantès, by the exercise of his iron will, had managed to control
+himself in her presence, but now that she had gone he gave free course
+to his emotions. For a full hour he sat leaning on his writing-table,
+his frame convulsed with anguish, and his mind filled with sad
+forebodings. He did not for an instant doubt that both Espérance and the
+Viscount could clear themselves from any criminal or dishonorable
+charge, if they would consent to open their lips, but their silence and
+Zuleika's belief that they were bound by some fearful oath gave him
+great uneasiness. Besides, his son had mentioned Luigi Vampa's name, and
+the thought that the young man was involved in some complication with
+the Roman bandit sent a chill to his heart. He was convinced that
+whatever had occurred had been merely the result of the folly and
+headlong disposition of youth, but this was scarcely a consolation, for
+he well knew to what length young men sometimes allowed themselves to be
+carried, especially in what they considered a love-affair.
+
+In addition, the more he thought of the half-forgotten Roman scandal,
+the more clearly its particulars returned to him. He remembered that a
+young and handsome peasant girl had been mysteriously abducted, and that
+eventually she had been brought back to her home by one of the shepherds
+known to be in league with Luigi Vampa and his band. She asserted that
+she had been carried off to the bandits' haunt by her youthful lover,
+who had passed for a peasant lad, but was in reality a nobleman. This
+was all M. Dantès could distinctly recall, though he was certain he had
+heard other details that had slipped his memory. At the period of the
+abduction, he now remembered, both Espérance and the Viscount were
+temporarily absent from Rome; then followed their return and the quarrel
+that had almost resulted in a duel, but had suddenly been patched up
+without apparent reason. Had Espérance and the Viscount been concerned
+in the abduction? That was a question that only they or Luigi Vampa
+could answer, and it was evident the young men would not speak. Vampa
+then must be made to speak for them; that was the sole course left to
+pursue, for the peasant girl had disappeared immediately after her
+return, and her whereabouts were a mystery.
+
+M. Dantès drew writing materials before him and wrote his letter to the
+brigand chief; it was brief, but to the point. When it was finished, it
+bore the signature, "Edmond Dantès, Count of Monte-Cristo." The Deputy
+placed it in the drawer of his table to go by mail the following
+morning, having first folded and sealed it. "Thomson and French, Rome,"
+was the direction it bore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+TWO INTERVIEWS.
+
+
+The morning following the events detailed in the last chapter, as
+Espérance was in his dressing-room preparing to take a short stroll
+through Paris, Ali knocked at the door and signified that M. Dantès
+wished to see him at once in the library. As such a summons was
+something unusual, the young man immediately concluded that Zuleika had
+been in consultation with her father and that he would now have to
+submit to a close and rigid examination; he had expected such an
+examination, but, nevertheless, the summons filled him with dismay and
+he grew pale as wax, his limbs trembling beneath him and his hands
+working nervously; however, he braced up as well as he could, and with
+as firm a step as it was possible for him to assume walked toward the
+library. On the threshold he paused, and his courage so utterly forsook
+him that he was tempted to take refuge in flight, but the thought
+flashed through his mind that this would be cowardly, and, making a
+supreme effort to control himself, he entered his father's presence.
+
+M. Dantès, who was seated at his writing-table examining a curious
+manuscript written in Arabic characters, looked up as he came in and
+fixed his eyes searchingly upon his son's countenance, noting its
+extreme pallor and remarking with manifest uneasiness the difficulty
+Espérance experienced in maintaining a firm demeanor. Motioning the
+young man to a seat, he said:
+
+"My son, I have sent for you on a matter of the utmost importance, and I
+sincerely hope you will see fit to tell me in all frankness whatever you
+may know in regard to it."
+
+Espérance partially closed his eyes as if suffering intensely, bringing
+his teeth firmly together and compressing his lips. As he did not speak,
+M. Dantès continued:
+
+"I have every reason to believe that the revelation I am about to ask of
+you will be exceedingly painful for you to make, but you must consider
+that your sister's happiness is deeply concerned and that, for that
+reason, no matter what may be your motives, you have not the right to
+maintain silence."
+
+"I know what you mean, father," replied Espérance in an unsteady voice,
+"but, notwithstanding the pain it gives me to do so, I must ask you,
+nay, entreat you not to question me, for I cannot answer you!"
+
+M. Dantès cast upon his son a glance that seemed to pierce him through
+and through; the young man quailed beneath it and again partially closed
+his eyes, while a faint blue shade was mixed with the waxen pallor of
+his visage. The Deputy, though he had made a profound and exhaustive
+study of men and their varied motives, though he was a skilled anatomist
+of the human heart and a ready reader of the human countenance,
+acknowledged to himself that this time he was completely baffled. Was it
+fear or guilt that Espérance exhibited? He could not tell; but it was
+abundantly evident that the young man was not acting a part, that he
+keenly felt the suspicions to which he was exposing himself by his
+inexplicable conduct. At length M. Dantès said, in a mild but determined
+tone:
+
+"Espérance, my son, you can, at least, enlighten me upon a few points,
+and I request, nay, I command you to do so. Are you bound by oath to
+preserve silence concerning this matter?"
+
+"I am bound by a most solemn oath!" answered the young man with a
+shudder.
+
+"And is Giovanni Massetti likewise so bound?"
+
+"He is!"
+
+"I will not ask you who administered that oath to you or under what
+circumstances it was taken, although as your father I have a right to do
+so and to compel you to answer; neither will I interrogate you further
+in regard to the main question at issue, the complication in which you
+and the Viscount seem to be so hopelessly involved; but I insist that
+you inform me whether any guilt or stain of dishonor rests upon you!"
+
+"Father," said Espérance, rising and lifting his right hand toward
+heaven, "I solemnly swear to you that whatever wrong may have been done,
+whatever crime may have been committed, I am entirely guiltless and that
+there is not the slightest stain of dishonor upon me!"
+
+"I believe you, my son," said M. Dantès, in a tone of conviction, "and
+this unequivocal assurance from your own lips removes the weight of a
+mountain from me. Now, tell me, is the Viscount Massetti as blameless in
+this affair as you are?"
+
+"The so-called Viscount Massetti is a black-hearted villain!" cried
+Espérance, excitedly. "He is guilty of a foul and revolting crime, a
+crime that should condemn him to a life of penal servitude!"
+
+"But may you not be mistaken, may you not be the victim of some
+delusion?" asked M. Dantès, anxiously.
+
+"I am neither mistaken, father, nor the victim of a delusion," replied
+Espérance, positively. "The charges that I make against that miserable
+apology for a man I can fully substantiate should the proper opportunity
+ever be offered me!"
+
+"Zuleika informed me that, while you were speaking with her upon this
+mysterious subject, the name of Luigi Vampa escaped your lips. Does that
+notorious brigand posses a knowledge of this unfortunate matter?"
+
+Espérance became violently agitated and instantly answered:
+
+"That is a question my oath forbids me to reply to!"
+
+"So be it," said M. Dantès; "but I have written him and he will reply
+for you!"
+
+"You have written to Vampa!" exclaimed the young man, with a
+terror-stricken look. "Then all is lost!"
+
+M. Dantès smiled, and, rising, placed his hand on his son's shoulder.
+
+"Espérance," said he, calmly, "if neither crime nor dishonor attaches to
+you in this affair, as you have sworn, you have nothing whatever to
+fear, and, besides, Vampa's disclosures may relieve you of some portion
+of your heavy burden."
+
+"Oh! God!" groaned the young man, "if Vampa speaks how shall I be able
+to prove my innocence!"
+
+"My son," said M. Dantès, impressively, "God, whose name you have
+invoked, will not desert you in your hour of need!"
+
+Bowing his head in his hands and trembling like an aspen leaf, Espérance
+quitted the library with a convulsive sob, as if the last ray of hope
+had been withdrawn from his life and all was darkness and despair.
+
+M. Dantès threw himself in his chair and for an instant was plunged in
+absorbing thought; then he arose and putting on his hat and cloak left
+the library; a few moments later he had quitted the mansion by a private
+door.
+
+Closely muffling his face in the folds of his cloak, that he might not
+be recognized, the Deputy from Marseilles passed hurriedly from street
+to street until he stood before a massive building in the Rue Vivienne.
+He rang the bell, and, when the concierge appeared, said to her:
+
+"Is the Viscount Massetti at home?"
+
+The woman, a large, fat, lumbering creature, cast a sleepy glance, that
+was half-curious, half-suspicious, at him and answered:
+
+"Yes, Monsieur; but he bade me deny him to everybody."
+
+"He will see me, however, my good woman," said M. Dantès. "Take my card
+to him."
+
+The fat concierge took the card and glanced at it; when she read "Edmond
+Dantès, Deputy from Marseilles," she stared at the famous Republican
+leader like one possessed; then, filled with awe, she hastened away and
+climbed the stairs as fast as her cumbersome legs would let her. She
+returned, panting and puffing, followed by the Viscount's valet, who,
+with much ceremony and obsequiousness, conducted the distinguished
+visitor to his master's apartments.
+
+The salon into which M. Dantès was ushered was large and sumptuously
+furnished; evidences of wealth and luxury were visible on every side,
+while everything displayed the utmost taste and elegance.
+
+"To what am I indebted for the honor of this unexpected visit, my dear
+Count?" said Massetti, rising from a handsomely carved, red velvet
+upholstered arm-chair, in which he had been indolently reclining, and
+coming forward to greet his guest.
+
+"To a matter that concerns both of us deeply," replied the Deputy, in a
+meaning tone.
+
+A shadow crossed the Viscount's handsome visage, but it was gone in an
+instant, and he said, with the utmost politeness:
+
+"Pray be seated, my dear Count, and before proceeding to business
+refresh yourself with a glass of rare old Burgundy. Here, Stephano, wine
+and glasses."
+
+M. Dantès sat down in an arm-chair precisely resembling that from which
+the Viscount had arisen; Massetti resumed his seat and the valet brought
+the old Burgundy and glasses, placing the decanter and drinking vessels
+on a small table of glistening ebony between his master and the Deputy.
+After they had duly drunk each other's health, M. Dantès said:
+
+"I regret, my dear Viscount, that I am compelled to disturb you, but my
+business was too urgent for delay."
+
+"You don't disturb me in the least. Pray proceed."
+
+"You remember your conversation with my daughter just before you and she
+parted, do you not?"
+
+"I remember it," replied the Viscount, coloring slightly and evidently
+growing ill at ease.
+
+"In that case, neither preface nor explanation is necessary. I called to
+ask you a few plain questions."
+
+The Italian was now a prey to singular excitement; he grew pale and
+flushed by turns, finally rising and pacing the salon in great
+agitation.
+
+"Count," said he, abruptly, when he could command his voice, "you are a
+man of the world and a cosmopolitan, and, of course, you know that one
+often commits folly, especially when the ardent and uncontrollable blood
+of youth is rushing through his veins. With this explanation, imperfect
+though it be, I must ask you to rest satisfied, for it is utterly out of
+my power to give you any other, or to enter into the details of the
+unfortunate affair which has brought you here. I assure you, however,
+that I am altogether blameless in the matter; investigation will
+abundantly establish the truth of what I say."
+
+"I will make that investigation."
+
+"I regret that I can neither empower you to do so nor aid you in it!"
+
+"What am I to understand by that?"
+
+"Simply what I say."
+
+"You are, doubtless, aware that my son makes grave accusations against
+you, that he accuses you, in fact, of a dastardly crime."
+
+"Espérance is mistaken, my dear Count; I swear to you that he is
+mistaken and that I am as innocent as he is!"
+
+"But Luigi Vampa may have a different tale to tell!"
+
+"Luigi Vampa!" cried the Viscount, coming instantly to a dead halt, and
+a sudden pallor overspreading his entire visage.
+
+"Yes, Luigi Vampa; I have written to him and in two weeks will have his
+answer!"
+
+"For Espérance's sake, for my sake, for your daughter's sake, destroy
+that answer as soon as received and without reading it!" exclaimed the
+young Italian, wildly, his pallor increasing to such a degree that his
+face resembled that of a corpse.
+
+"Should I be mad enough to do so," said M. Dantès, calmly, "with it all
+hope of your marriage with Zuleika would perish!"
+
+"Oh! do not say that, do not say that!" groaned Massetti. "What would
+life be worth to me without Zuleika's love!"
+
+"Then deserve that love by clearing yourself, by proving that your
+record will bear the light of day!"
+
+"I have sworn to you that I am innocent! Is not that enough?"
+
+"No," replied M. Dantès, coldly. "I must have proof to support your
+oath."
+
+"Then you believe me guilty in spite of all! This is the worst blow
+yet!"
+
+"It is in your power to completely justify yourself; at least, so you
+give me to understand, and yet your refusal will forever separate you
+from the woman you love!"
+
+"You fill me with despair!" said Massetti, in a smothered voice, sinking
+upon a sofa. "I fain would reveal everything to you, but an awful oath
+of silence stands between me and the revelation."
+
+"Then I must wait for Vampa's answer, and shape my course by that!" said
+M. Dantès, firmly.
+
+"That answer will destroy both Espérance and myself!" replied the
+Viscount, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"We shall see," returned the Deputy, rising and resuming his cloak; as
+he stood at the door of the salon with his hat in his hand, he added: "I
+thought you all a man should be, Viscount, and that you would make
+Zuleika happy, but my convictions have been sadly shaken. I came here
+thinking that love for woman was all powerful in the heart of man, that
+it would induce you to speak, even in the face of an oath, perhaps
+violently and iniquitously administered; I was wrong; farewell!"
+
+M. Dantès turned slowly and took his departure, leaving Giovanni
+Massetti on the sofa plunged in grief and dismay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+VAMPA'S ANSWER.
+
+
+As the time for the arrival of Luigi Vampa's answer to M. Dantès' letter
+approached, Espérance grew more and more uneasy and serious; he spent
+the greater portion of every day from home, apparently for the purpose
+of avoiding his father and sister; when he returned he was moody,
+depressed and silent, and far into the night he could be heard pacing
+his chamber as if unable to sleep from excitement and anxiety.
+
+Zuleika endeavored to comfort him, but all her efforts were fruitless.
+She, poor girl, was herself overwhelmed with her own distress, though
+she strove to bear up against it. Massetti had neither written to nor
+attempted to see her since their separation, a circumstance she could
+not reconcile with his protestations of ardent love for her, and this
+served vastly to augment her sadness and anguish, though she still
+believed in her soul that the Viscount was entirely innocent of the
+crime laid to his charge.
+
+M. Dantès, who had plunged into politics deeper than ever since the
+success of the Revolution, was frequently in consultation with the
+Republican leaders, and many of them visited him at his residence and
+were closeted with him for hours at a time; but, though seemingly
+engrossed in State affairs, the Deputy did not lose sight of his son and
+daughter, or of the mysterious complication that Vampa was expected to
+make clear. Ali had strict orders to watch both Zuleika and Espérance,
+and to report to his master whatever they did when at home in his
+absence, but the faithful Nubian found nothing amiss, save that the
+young people seemed burdened with a sorrow he could not fathom.
+
+At length, when the two weeks that it would take to hear from Rome had
+expired, M. Lamartine called one morning at the mansion in the Rue du
+Helder, and having finished his business with M. Dantès was invited by
+his host to remain to lunch. The repast was served in the
+salle-à-manger, Espérance and Zuleika partaking of it with their father
+and his illustrious guest. When the edibles had been removed and the
+party were taking wine at the dining-table, M. Dantès, suddenly
+remembering that he had an engagement, begged M. Lamartine to excuse him
+and remain with his son and daughter until his return, that would be in
+half an hour at the utmost. This arrangement effected, the Deputy arose
+from his chair, threw his cloak over his arm and was about to take his
+departure, when Ali appeared on the threshold of the open doorway,
+bearing in his hand a letter. Instantly divining that this was Vampa's
+answer, upon which hung Massetti's fate and his own, Espérance leaped to
+his feet and fixed his wild and staring eyes on the ominous missive as
+if he would read its contents through its folds. Zuleika retained her
+seat, but lifted her hands in terror and stared at the letter with
+pallid cheeks and blanched lips. Even Lamartine turned in his chair and,
+holding his glass in his hand, gazed wonderingly at the Nubian and the
+epistle. M. Dantès alone seemed unmoved, and his pale countenance gave
+no sign of the emotion struggling in his breast; he stood like a man of
+iron, and extending his hand took the letter without a tremor. It was
+enclosed in a curiously-fashioned envelope, evidently made by the writer
+himself, and bore the Roman postmark; the direction, written in bold,
+scrawling, but perfectly legible characters, read: "M. Edmond Dantès,
+Deputy from Marseilles, No. 27 Rue du Helder, Paris, France. Personal
+and private." This direction was in French.
+
+Ali having retired, the Deputy calmly broke the seal and hurriedly ran
+his eyes over the missive. Espérance and Zuleika eagerly and
+breathlessly watched his countenance while he read, but it was as
+impassable as a countenance chiseled from marble; when he had finished
+he turned to Espérance and without a word handed him the letter. For a
+moment the young man trembled so he could not read; cold perspiration
+stood in heavy beads upon his forehead, and vivid flashes of red passed
+before his eyes like sheets of lurid lightning. What thoughts, what
+suspicions, what dread shot through his tortured mind in that brief
+moment, making it seem an eternity of suffering! At last, steadying and
+controlling himself by a supreme effort, he read the missive from which
+he had feared such terrible consequences. It was in Italian, and ran as
+follows:
+
+
+     HIS EXCELLENCY, THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO: You ask me to answer
+     your questions, and I comply. Pasquale Solara's daughter,
+     Annunziata, was abducted, from her father's peasant-home by
+     Giovanni Massetti, known as the Viscount Massetti, who is, no
+     doubt, the person to whom you allude as now in Paris, for he has
+     disappeared from Rome. You are right in assuming that he had aid.
+     He was assisted by a young Frenchman, and that young Frenchman was
+     your son, Espérance. Annunziata suffered the usual fate of abducted
+     peasant girls, and was deserted by her dastardly abductor in a
+     fastness controlled by my band. When the abduction took place,
+     Annunziata's brother strove to rescue her, but was attacked and
+     killed by Massetti. Through my means the girl was returned to her
+     home, but she was miserable there and fled; she is now in an asylum
+     for unfortunate women founded at Civita Vecchia by the Order of
+     Sisters of Refuge, and superintended by a French lady, a Madame
+     Helena de Rancogne, who, as is said, was formerly called the
+     Countess of Monte-Cristo.[1] It is due to your son to say that he
+     was entirely misled in regard to the abduction of Annunziata
+     Solara, and is altogether innocent of crime or intention to commit
+     it. The whole burden of guilt rests upon the shoulders of the
+     Viscount Massetti, who, I believe, compelled your son at the
+     pistol's mouth to take a fearful oath of silence.
+                                                      LUIGI VAMPA.
+
+
+When Espérance had read this letter that so effectually cleared him, and
+was such a fearful arraignment of the Viscount Massetti, he restored it
+to his father and sank into his chair utterly overcome by the terrible
+excitement and mental strain through which he had passed. M. Dantès
+forced him to swallow a glass of wine that partially restored him; then,
+turning to M. Lamartine, who had been an astonished spectator of this
+strange and to him incomprehensible family scene, he said:
+
+"My dear friend, you are amazed, and you have a right to be. This letter
+that has caused my son and daughter so much emotion comes from a Roman
+brigand chief, no other than Luigi Vampa, whose name is notorious
+throughout Europe. You will understand its importance when I inform you
+that it conclusively clears my son of an exceedingly grave charge."
+
+M. Lamartine arose and took Espérance by the hand.
+
+"I heartily congratulate you," said he.
+
+"And Giovanni Massetti?" asked Zuleika, in a tremulous voice.
+
+"Giovanni Massetti is unworthy of my daughter's hand!" replied M.
+Dantès.
+
+"Let me see that letter," said Zuleika, her cheek growing paler and her
+heart beating tumultuously.
+
+Her father gave it to her. She took it and read each line with an
+intensity of interest that was painful to behold. When she had reached
+the end, her eyes suddenly lighted up and the color came rushing back to
+her pallid cheeks.
+
+"Espérance," she said, facing her brother with an air of resolution
+beneath which he quailed, "Luigi Vampa has not told all! Something he
+has kept back, and that something you know. What is it? Speak!"
+
+"Luigi Vampa has told the truth!" replied the young man, doggedly.
+
+"Yes, but not the whole truth. What has he kept back?"
+
+Espérance shook his head.
+
+"He has told the truth!" he repeated.
+
+"Did the Viscount Massetti administer the oath of silence to you?"
+
+"He did."
+
+"Then who administered that oath to Giovanni?"
+
+The young man did not answer.
+
+"There is some mystery about this complicated affair yet unexplained,
+and until it is explained I cannot believe Giovanni Massetti guilty!"
+
+"Come, come, my daughter," said M. Dantès, soothingly, "your heart
+speaks and not your mind."
+
+"My heart and mind both speak, papa," replied Zuleika, "and both say
+that Giovanni Massetti is innocent."
+
+"Let him prove it then."
+
+"I feel certain that he can and will."
+
+"Well, well, child, go to Madame Dantès and take counsel of her. Only a
+woman can heal a young girl's love wounds."
+
+Zuleika quitted the salle-à-manger, her countenance yet bearing the
+stamp of an inflexible belief and a fixed determination.
+
+"Espérance," said M. Dantès, "your honor is unstained and you are
+restored to my heart. I thank God for the blessings of this day!"
+
+"You are a true father, Edmond, as well as a true patriot," said M.
+Lamartine, "and I feel assured that your son will be worthy of you and
+of our beloved France."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That very day Giovanni Massetti received an unsigned little note,
+written in a tiny feminine hand. It was phrased thus:
+
+
+     "I believe you innocent in spite of all! Prove to me and to the
+     world that you are so."
+
+
+Enclosed in this little note was Luigi Vampa's letter to M. Dantès.
+
+The next morning it became known that the Viscount Massetti had
+disappeared from Paris. Gossip assigned a thousand scandalous motives
+for his sudden flight, but gossip could form no idea as to whither he
+had fled. Zuleika[2] however, knew that he had returned to Italy to
+clear his name and prove himself worthy of her love!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The exceedingly romantic history of Madame de Rancogne will be found
+in that fascinating and absorbing novel, "The Countess of Monte-Cristo,"
+published by Messrs. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, a wonderful book that
+everybody should read.
+
+[2] A full account, from this point, of the life and remarkable career
+of "Zuleika, the Daughter of Monte-Cristo," will be found in the
+brilliant, original, and absorbing novel just published by T. B.
+Peterson & Brothers, Philadelphia, in uniform style with "Edmond
+Dantès," entitled "MONTE-CRISTO'S DAUGHTER," being the Sequel to
+Alexander Dumas' famous novel, "The Count of Monte-Cristo," and
+Conclusion of "Edmond Dantès." "MONTE-CRISTO'S DAUGHTER" will be found
+to be of unflagging interest, abounding in ardent love scenes and
+stirring adventures, while the Count of Monte-Cristo figures largely in
+it, and many of the original Monte-Cristo characters are also introduced
+into the volume, making it in point of brilliancy, power, and absorbing
+interest fully equal to its famous predecessors.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Edmond Dantès, by Edmund Flagg
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Edmond Dantès, by Edmund Flagg
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Edmond Dantès
+
+Author: Edmund Flagg
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23183]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDMOND DANTÈS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sigal Alon, Fox in the Stars, Martin Pettit
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1><span class="smcap">Edmond Dant&egrave;s.</span></h1>
+
+<h3>THE SEQUEL TO</h3>
+
+<h2>ALEXANDER DUMAS'</h2>
+
+<h4>CELEBRATED NOVEL OF</h4>
+
+<h2>THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO.</h2>
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>Edmund Flagg</h2>
+
+<h4>AN ENTIRE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION.</h4>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Edmond Dant&egrave;s</span>," one of the greatest novels ever written, is the sequel
+to Alexander Dumas' world-renowned chef-d'&oelig;uvre, "The Count of
+Monte-Cristo," taking up the fascinating narrative where the latter ends
+and continuing it with marvellous power and absorbing interest. Every
+word tells, and the number of unusually stirring incidents is legion,
+while the plot is phenomenal in its strength, merit and ingeniousness.
+The superb book deals with the exciting career of Edmond Dant&egrave;s, who
+first figures as the Count of Monte-Cristo, and then as the Deputy from
+Marseilles takes an active part in the French Revolution of 1848.
+Dramatic and graphic scenes abound, the reader finding startling
+surprises at every turn. Love, philanthropy, politics and bloodshed form
+the staple of the novel and are handled with extraordinary skill.
+Besides the hero, Hayd&eacute;e, Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, Valentine de Villefort, Eug&eacute;nie
+Danglars, Louise d'Armilly, Zuleika (Dant&egrave;s' daughter), Benedetto,
+Lucien Debray, Albert de Morcerf, Beauchamp, Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud, Ali,
+Maximilian Morell, Giovanni Massetti, and Esp&eacute;rance (Dant&egrave;s' son) figure
+prominently, while Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc and hosts of
+revolutionary leaders are introduced. "<span class="smcap">Edmond Dant&egrave;s</span>" will delight all
+who read it.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">New York</span>:<br />
+WM. L. ALLISON COMPANY<br /><span class="smcap">Publishers</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smaller">COPYRIGHT</span>:&mdash;1884.<br />T. B. PETERSON &amp; BROTHERS.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1>EDMOND DANT&Egrave;S.</h1>
+
+<h3>AN ENTIRE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION.</h3>
+
+<p><i>"Edmond Dant&egrave;s" the Sequel to Alexander Dumas' masterpiece, "The Count
+of Monte-Cristo," is a novel that will delight, entertain and instruct
+all who read it. It has wonderful fascination, absorbing interest and
+rare merit, combined with remarkable power, amazing ingenuity and
+thorough originality. In it the narrative is taken up immediately at the
+close of "The Count of Monte-Cristo," and continued in a style of
+exceeding cleverness. There is a terrible volcanic tempest on the
+Mediterranean, in which Monte-Cristo and Hayd&eacute;e are wrecked, a vivid
+picture of the French Revolution of 1848 is given and the love affair of
+Zuleika and Giovanni Massetti is recounted in a manner unsurpassed for
+novelty and excitement. The central figure is Edmond Dant&egrave;s, and about
+him are grouped Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, Eug&eacute;nie Danglars, Louise d'Armilly, Valentine
+de Villefort, Esp&eacute;rance (the son of Monte-Cristo), Benedetto, Albert de
+Morcerf, Maximilian Morrel, Ali and the other old friends of
+"Monte-Cristo" readers, as well as numerous political leaders famous in
+French history, namely, Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, Armand
+Marrast, Flocon, Albert and others. Thiers, Guizot, Odillon Barrot,
+General Lamorici&egrave;re, General Bugeaud and other noted historical
+characters are introduced, as well as Lucien Debray, Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud,
+Beauchamp, etc. No one can afford to miss the opportunity to read
+"Edmond Dant&egrave;s," which is published only by T. B. Peterson &amp; Brothers,
+who also issue the only correct, complete and unabridged editions of the
+other volumes of the great "Monte-Cristo" Series, namely, "The Count of
+Monte-Cristo," "The Countess of Monte-Cristo," "The Wife of
+Monte-Cristo, Hayd&eacute;e," and "The Son of Monte-Cristo, Esp&eacute;rance."</i></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;STORM AND SHIPWRECK</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE ISLAND</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE CONFLAGRATION</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE NEWS FROM ALGERIA</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;EDMOND DANT&Egrave;S, DEPUTY FROM MARSEILLES</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE MYSTERY THICKENS</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;DANT&Egrave;S AND HIS DAUGHTER</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;A VAST PRINTING HOUSE</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;ARMAND MARRAST</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE COMMUNISTS</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;"WAIT AND HOPE"</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE MYSTERIOUS PRIMA DONNA</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE ITALIAN LOVER</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE MINUTE VIALS</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE UNKNOWN NURSE</li>
+<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;A NOTABLE F&Ecirc;TE</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE REVOLUTION BEGINS</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE SECOND DAY</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;ANOTHER MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE THIRD DAY</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE LAST SESSION OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE SACK OF THE TUILERIES</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;A MEMORABLE NIGHT</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;DANT&Egrave;S AND MERC&Eacute;D&Egrave;S</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;ESP&Eacute;RANCE AND ZULEIKA</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;CAPTAIN JOLIETTE'S LOVE</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;ZULEIKA GOES TO M. DANT&Egrave;S</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">XXX.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;TWO INTERVIEWS</li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">XXXI.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;VAMPA'S ANSWER</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1>EDMOND DANT&Egrave;S.</h1>
+
+<h3>THE SEQUEL TO</h3>
+
+<h2>THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO.</h2>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>STORM AND SHIPWRECK.</h3>
+
+<p>The Count of Monte-Cristo, with the beautiful Hayd&eacute;e clinging lovingly
+about his neck, her head pillowed upon his shoulder, stood on the deck
+of his superb yacht, the Alcyon, gazing at the fast-vanishing isle where
+he had left Maximilian Morrel and Valentine de Villefort.</p>
+
+<p>It was just daybreak, but by the faint glimmering light he could plainly
+distinguish the figures of a man and a woman upon the distant beach.
+They were walking arm in arm. Presently another figure, a man's,
+approached them and seemed to deliver something.</p>
+
+<p>"Look," said the Count to Hayd&eacute;e, "Jacopo has given Maximilian my
+letter; he reads it to Valentine, and now they know all. Jacopo points
+toward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> the yacht; they see us and are waving their handkerchiefs in
+token of adieu."</p>
+
+<p>Hayd&eacute;e raised her head and glanced in the direction of the Isle of
+Monte-Cristo.</p>
+
+<p>"I see them, my lord," she replied, in a joyous tone; "they are happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the Count, "they are happy, but they deserve their
+happiness, and all is well."</p>
+
+<p>"They owe their happiness to you, my lord," resumed Hayd&eacute;e, meekly.</p>
+
+<p>"They owe it to God," answered Monte-Cristo, solemnly; "I was but His
+humble instrument, and He has allowed me in this to make some slight
+atonement for the wrong I committed in taking vengeance into my own
+mortal hands."</p>
+
+<p>Hayd&eacute;e was silent. She knew the sad history of Edmond Dant&egrave;s, and was
+aware of how remorselessly the Count of Monte-Cristo had avenged the
+wrongs of the humble sailor of Marseilles. This she had learned from her
+lord's own lips within the past few days. The strict seclusion in which
+she had lived in Paris had necessarily excluded her from all personal
+knowledge of the Count's subtle war upon his enemies; true, she had
+emerged from her retirement to testify against Morcerf at his trial
+before the House of Peers, but at that time she was ignorant of the fact
+that by causing the foe of her family to be convicted of felony, treason
+and outrage she had simply promoted Monte-Cristo's vengeance on Fernand,
+the Catalan. But, though silent, the beautiful Greek girl, with her
+thoroughly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> oriental ideas, could not realize that the man who stood
+beside her, the being she almost worshiped, had been guilty of the least
+wrong in avenging himself. Besides, she would never have admitted, even
+in the most secret recesses of her own heart, that Monte-Cristo, who to
+her mind symbolized all that was good, pure and heroic in human nature,
+could have been wrong in anything he did.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the Count also had been silent, and a shade of the deepest
+sadness had settled upon his pallid but intellectual visage. He gazed at
+the Isle of Monte-Cristo until it became a mere dot in the distance;
+then, putting his arm tenderly about his lovely companion's waist, he
+drew her gently toward the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>As they vanished down the companion-way, Bertuccio and the captain of
+the Alcyon, followed by Ali, the Nubian, advanced to the prow of the
+yacht.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain," said Bertuccio, "can you tell me whither we are bound? I feel
+an irresistible desire to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered the captain, "I can tell you. The Count ordered me to
+make with all possible speed for the Island of Crete."</p>
+
+<p>Bertuccio gave a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"I feared we were bound for Italy," he said. "But," he added, after an
+instant's thought, "why should we go to Rome? Luigi Vampa is amply able
+to care for all the Count's interests there, if, indeed, any remain now
+that the Baron Danglars has been attended to."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p><p>The captain, who was an old Italian smuggler, placed his finger
+warningly upon his lips and glanced warily around when Luigi Vampa's
+name was mentioned, but said nothing. Bertuccio took the hint and the
+conversation was dropped.</p>
+
+<p>Pressing onward under full sail, the magnificent yacht shot over the
+blue waters of the Mediterranean with the speed of an eagle on the wing.
+It sped past Corsica and Sardinia, and soon the arid, uninviting shores
+of Tunis were visible; then it passed between Sicily and Malta, steering
+directly toward the Island of Crete.</p>
+
+<p>Up to this time the weather had been of the most delightful description.
+Not a cloud had obscured the sky, and during the entire voyage the
+unruffled surface of the Mediterranean had resembled that of some
+peaceful lake. It was now the tenth of October, and just cool enough to
+be pleasant; the spice-laden breezes from the coast of Africa reached
+the yacht tempered by the moist atmosphere of the sea, furnishing an
+additional element of enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>The Count of Monte-Cristo and Hayd&eacute;e, who seemed inseparable, came on
+deck every morning at dawn, and each evening walked back and forth,
+admiring the gorgeous sunset and watching the shades of night as they
+gradually settled down upon the wide expanse of the waters.</p>
+
+<p>It required no unusual penetration to see that they were lovers and that
+their delight in each other's society was unalloyed. Hayd&eacute;e clung to the
+Count, who, with his arm wound about her slender<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> waist, looked down
+into the liquid depths of her eyes with a smile of perfect content,
+while his free hand ever and anon toyed with her night-black tresses.</p>
+
+<p>One evening as they were walking thus&mdash;it was the evening of the
+fifteenth of October, and Crete was distant but two days'
+sail&mdash;Monte-Cristo tenderly took Hayd&eacute;e's hand in his and said to her in
+a tone of ineffable softness:</p>
+
+<p>"Hayd&eacute;e, do you remember what you said to me on the Isle of Monte-Cristo
+just before we parted from Valentine and Maximilian?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! yes, my lord," was the low reply. "I said I loved you as one loves
+a father, brother, husband&mdash;I loved you as my life."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you now regret those words?"</p>
+
+<p>"Regret them! Oh! my lord, how could I do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I asked you," said the Count, slowly, "because we are nearing our
+destination. In two days we shall land upon the shore of Crete, and,
+once there, it is my intention to make you my wife, provided your
+feelings toward me are still unchanged. Marriage, my child, is the most
+important step in life, and I do not wish you to take that step without
+fully understanding the promptings of your own dear heart. Only misery
+can follow the union of two souls not in perfect accord, not entirely
+devoted the one to the other. I am much older than you, Hayd&eacute;e, and my
+sufferings have aged me still more than years. I am a sad and weary
+man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> You, on the contrary, stand just upon the threshold of existence;
+the world and its pleasures are all before you. Think, my child, think
+deeply before you pronounce the irrevocable vow."</p>
+
+<p>Hayd&eacute;e threw herself passionately upon Monte-Cristo's breast.</p>
+
+<p>"My lord," she cried, in accents broken by extreme agitation and
+emotion, "am I not your slave?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Hayd&eacute;e," answered the Count, his bosom heaving and his eyes
+lighting up with a strange flash, "you are free, your fate rests in your
+own hands."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said the young girl, ardently, "I will decide it this very
+instant. I accept my freedom that I may voluntarily offer myself to you,
+my love, my husband. You have suffered. Granted. So have I. Your
+sufferings have aged you; mine have transformed a child into a woman&mdash;a
+woman who knows the promptings of her heart, who knows that it beats for
+you, and you alone in all the world. My lord, I resign myself to you. Do
+you accept the gift?"</p>
+
+<p>As Hayd&eacute;e concluded, her beautiful eyes were suffused with tears and her
+whole frame quivered with intense excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo bent down and kissed her upon the forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Hayd&eacute;e, my own Hayd&eacute;e," he said, with a slight tremor in his manly
+voice, "I accept the gift. Be my wife, the wife of Monte-Cristo, and no
+effort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> of mine shall be wanting to assure your happiness."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there was a sinister flash in the heavens, that were as
+yet without a cloud. The livid light shot downward to the water and
+seemingly plunged to the depths of the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>The Count gave a start and drew his beloved Hayd&eacute;e closer to him; the
+frightened girl trembled from head to foot and clung to him for
+protection.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! my lord, my lord," she murmured, "does Heaven disapprove of our
+plighted troth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Calm yourself, Hayd&eacute;e," answered Monte-Cristo. "The lightning is God's
+seal, and He has set it upon our betrothal."</p>
+
+<p>The flash was now repeated and was succeeded by several others of
+increased intensity, but as yet no thunder rolled and there was not the
+slightest indication of an approaching storm.</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo took Hayd&eacute;e's hand and led her to the side of the yacht.
+Not a single wave wrinkled the surface of the sea for miles and miles;
+the water seemed asleep, while down upon it the moon poured a flood of
+silvery radiance. The stars, too, were beaming brightly. Still, however,
+the intense lightning shot athwart the placid sky. It had become almost
+incessant. Monte-Cristo could not account for the bewildering
+phenomenon. He summoned the captain of the Alcyon and said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Giacomo, you have sailed the Mediterranean all your life, have you
+not?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p><p>"All my life, Excellency," replied he, touching his cap.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever before seen lightning such as this on a calm night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly cannot be heat-lightning."</p>
+
+<p>"I think not, Excellency. Heat-lightning has a quicker flash and is much
+less intense."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose it portends?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can form no idea, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! my lord," said Hayd&eacute;e, "a terrible storm is coming, I am sure; I
+feel a premonition Of approaching danger. I pray you, guard against it."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, my child," returned Monte-Cristo, with a laugh that, in spite
+of all his efforts at self-control, betrayed nervous agitation and an
+undefinable dread. "The sky is clear, the moon is shining brilliantly
+and the sea is altogether tranquil; if a storm were coming it would not
+be so. Banish your fears and reassure yourself; the lightning is but a
+freak of nature."</p>
+
+<p>The captain, too, was disturbed, though he could give himself no
+satisfactory reason for his uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>Ali, with the characteristic superstition of the Nubian race, had
+prostrated himself upon the deck, and was making signs the Moslems of
+his country use to drive away malignant spirits.</p>
+
+<p>The night, however, passed without accident, though the singular
+lightning continued for several hours.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>Next morning the sun rose, encircled by a ruddy band, fringed on the
+outer rim with a faint yellow, while its beams had a sullen glare
+instead of their normal brilliancy. The lightning of the previous night
+was absent, but soon another and not less disquieting phenomenon
+manifested itself; as far as the eye could reach the sea seemed boiling,
+and, at intervals, a puff, as if of vapor, would filter through the
+waves, rising and disappearing in the heavens. Meanwhile the wind had
+fallen, and amid an almost dead calm the sails of the Alcyon hung
+listlessly, with only an occasional flapping. The yacht moved forward,
+indeed, but so slowly that it scarcely appeared to move at all.</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo and Hayd&eacute;e came on deck at dawn, but the young girl
+displayed such terror at the unwonted aspect of the sun and the sea that
+the Count speedily persuaded her to return with him to the cabin. There
+she cowered upon a divan, hiding her face in her hands and moaning
+piteously. Her fianc&eacute;, distressed at her condition, endeavored to soothe
+and comfort her, but utterly without avail; her fears could neither be
+banished nor allayed. At length he threw himself on a rug at her feet,
+and, disengaging her hands from her face, drew them about his neck;
+Hayd&eacute;e clasped him frantically and clung to him as if she deemed that
+embrace a final one.</p>
+
+<p>As they were sitting thus, the Alcyon received a sudden and violent
+shock that shook the noble yacht from stem to stern. Instantly there was
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> sound of hurrying feet on deck, and the captain could be heard
+shouting hoarsely to the sailors.</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo leaped up and caught Hayd&eacute;e in his arms. At that moment Ali
+darted down the companion-way and stood trembling before his master.</p>
+
+<p>"What was that shock?" demanded the Count, hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>The agitated Nubian made a sign signifying he did not know, but that all
+was yet safe.</p>
+
+<p>"Remain with your mistress, Ali," said Monte-Cristo. "I am going to see
+what is the matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! no, no," cried Hayd&eacute;e, imploringly, as the Count placed her again
+on the divan and was moving away. "Oh! no, no; do not leave me, my lord,
+or I shall die!"</p>
+
+<p>Ashy pale, Hayd&eacute;e arose from the divan, and cast herself on her knees at
+Monte-Cristo's feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Swear to me, at least, that you will not needlessly expose yourself to
+danger," she uttered, in a pleading tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I swear it," answered the Count. "Ali will faithfully guard you while I
+am gone," he added, "and ere you can realize my absence, I shall be
+again at your side."</p>
+
+<p>With these words he tore himself away and hastened to the deck.</p>
+
+<p>There a scene met his eye as unexpected as it was appalling. The entire
+surface of the Mediterranean was aglow with phosphorescence, and the sun
+was veiled completely by a heavy cloud that seemed to cover the whole
+expanse of the sky. This cloud<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> was not black, but of a bloody hue, and
+the atmosphere was so densely charged with sulphur that it was almost
+impossible to breathe. The sea was boiling more furiously than ever, and
+the puffs of vapor that had before only occasionally filtered through
+the waves now leaped up incessantly, each puff attended with a slight
+explosion; the vapor was grayish when it first arose from the water, but
+as it ascended it became red, mingling at length with the bloody cloud
+that each moment acquired greater density. The wind blew fitfully,
+sometimes amounting to a gale and then utterly vanishing without the
+slightest warning. Soon the bloody cloud seemed to settle of its own
+weight upon the sea, growing so thick that the eye could not penetrate
+it, and a few feet from the yacht all was inky darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo hurried to the captain, who was endeavoring to quiet the
+superstitious fears of the sailors. Drawing him aside, he said, in a low
+tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Giacomo, we are in frightful danger. This elemental disturbance is
+volcanic, and how it will end cannot be foretold. No doubt an earthquake
+is devastating the nearest land, or will do so before many hours have
+elapsed. At any moment rocks or islands may arise from the sea, and
+obstruct our passage. All we can do is to hold ourselves in readiness
+for whatever calamity may happen, and make for Crete as rapidly as
+possible, with the hope of eventually getting beyond the volcanic zone.
+Do not enlighten the crew as to the cause of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>disturbance; did they
+know, or even suspect it, they could not be controlled, but would become
+either stupefied or reckless. Try to convince them that we are simply in
+the midst of a severe electrical storm that will speedily exhaust its
+fury and subside. Now, to work, and remember that everything depends
+upon your courage and resolution."</p>
+
+<p>Giacomo rejoined the sailors, who were huddled together at the stern of
+the yacht like so many frightened sheep. He spoke to them, doing his
+utmost to reassure them, and ultimately succeeded so well that they
+resumed their neglected duties with some show of alacrity and even
+cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Monte-Cristo, with folded arms and an outward show of
+calmness, was pacing the deck as if nothing unusual were in progress,
+and his demeanor was not without its effect on the sailors, who looked
+upon him with a species of awe and admiration. At times he went below to
+cheer the drooping spirits of his beloved Hayd&eacute;e, but speedily returned
+that the influence of his presence might not be lost.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the day passed. A night of painful suspense succeeded it, during
+which not a soul on board the Alcyon thought of sleeping. Nothing,
+however, occurred, save that the intense lightning of the previous night
+was renewed. Toward eleven o'clock the breeze freshened to such an
+extent that the yacht sped along on her course with great fleetness.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the sun arose amid a purple haze, and the Mediterranean
+presented a more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>tumultuous and threatening aspect than it had the
+preceding day. The breeze was still blowing stiffly, and the lightning
+continued. Giacomo informed Monte-Cristo that unless a calm should
+suddenly come on they would certainly arrive at Crete by noon. The
+sailors, he added, were in good spirits, and might be relied upon,
+though they were much fatigued by reason of their unceasing labor.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock the man at the wheel hurriedly summoned the captain to
+his side, and, with a look of terror and bewilderment, directed his
+attention to the compass, the needle of which no longer pointed to the
+north, but was dancing a mad dance, not remaining stationary for a
+single instant. To complicate the situation still further, the sun was
+suddenly obscured, absolute darkness invading both sea and sky. Only
+when the vivid lightning tore the dense clouds apart were those on board
+the Alcyon enabled to catch a glimpse of what was going on about them,
+and that glimpse was but momentary. Thunder peals were now added to the
+terrors of the time, while the yacht tossed and plunged on angry,
+threatening billows. Showers of sparks and glowing cinders, as if from
+some mighty conflagration, poured down into the water, striking its
+surface with an ominous hiss; they resembled meteors, and their
+brilliancy was augmented by the surrounding gloom. Rain also began to
+descend, not in drops, but in broad sheets and with the roar of a
+cataract; in a moment everybody on the Alcyon's deck was drenched to the
+skin.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p><p>Hayd&eacute;e had not ventured from the cabin since the first day of the
+elemental commotion; in obedience to his master's commands, Ali
+constantly watched over her whenever the Count was facing the strange
+storm with Giacomo and the sailors.</p>
+
+<p>As the captain approached the man at the wheel, Monte-Cristo fixed his
+eyes upon the old Italian's countenance and saw it assume a deathly
+pallor as he noticed that the needle of the compass could no longer be
+depended on.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant the Count was beside him and realized the extent of the
+new evil that had befallen them.</p>
+
+<p>"We can steer but by guess now," said Giacomo, in a low, hoarse whisper.
+"God grant that we may be able to reach our destination."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, a loud crash was heard, and the rudder, torn from its
+fastenings by the violence of the tempest, swept by them, vanishing amid
+the darkness. The man at the wheel gazed after it, uttering a cry of
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>"We are completely at the mercy of the wind and waves!" said
+Monte-Cristo, in an undertone. "Can nothing be done?" he added,
+hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, Excellency," returned the captain. "A temporary rudder might
+be rigged were the sea calmer, but, boiling and seething as it is, such
+a thing is utterly impossible."</p>
+
+<p>A panic had seized upon the sailors as they witnessed the catastrophe
+that rendered the Alcyon helpless, but this immediately gave place to
+stupor, and the men stood silent and overwhelmed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p><p>Bertuccio, from the time the dread storm had broken forth, had been
+gloomy and uncommunicative; he had held persistently aloof both from
+Monte-Cristo and the crew. In the general turmoil and confusion his
+bearing and behavior had passed unnoticed even by the vigilant eye of
+the Count.</p>
+
+<p>The steward now approached his master, and, taking him aside, whispered
+in his ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven's vengeance is pursuing the Alcyon and all on board because of
+my crimes! I feel it&mdash;I know it!"</p>
+
+<p>The steward's face was as white as a sheet, but his eye betokened fixed
+resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"Not another word of this," cried Monte-Cristo, sternly. "Should the
+superstitious sailors hear you, they would demand with one voice that
+you be cast into the boiling sea."</p>
+
+<p>"And they would be right," rejoined Bertuccio, doggedly. "If I remain
+where I am, the Alcyon's doom is sealed. On the other hand, the moment
+you are rid of me the storm will cease as if by magic, and you will be
+saved."</p>
+
+<p>"Be silent!" commanded Monte-Cristo. "You are a Corsican&mdash;show a
+Corsican's courage!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will!" was the determined reply, and the steward walked with a firm
+tread to the side of the yacht.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" said the Count, hurrying after him and placing his
+hand on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall see!" answered Bertuccio.</p>
+
+<p>Shaking off Monte-Cristo's grasp, he leaped upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> the bulwarks and
+suddenly sprang far out amid the seething waves. The Count uttered a cry
+of horror that was echoed by the captain. As for the crew, so utterly
+stupefied were they that they did not seem to comprehend the suicidal
+act. For an instant Monte-Cristo and Giacomo saw the steward whirling
+about amid the tumultuous flood; then he was swept away, and vanished in
+the impenetrable darkness beyond.</p>
+
+<p>The force of the wind had meanwhile augmented until a perfect hurricane
+was raging about the Alcyon; the noise was deafening, and the sails
+swelled to such an extent that they threatened to snap asunder. Suddenly
+they gave way, and the tattered shreds flew in all directions, like
+white-winged sea-fowl. Simultaneously the mast toppled and went by the
+board. The yacht, now a helpless wreck, pitched and tossed, but still
+shot onward, impelled by the wild fury of the gale. Gigantic waves at
+intervals swept the deck, each torrent as it retreated carrying with it
+all it could tear away, and making huge gaps in the bulwarks, to which
+the sailors were clinging with all the energy of desperation.
+Monte-Cristo had grasped the stump of the mast, and the captain clung
+with all his strength to the remains of the wheel. The lightning had
+become terrific, and the almost continuous roar of the thunder was
+sufficient to drown the mad din of the waters.</p>
+
+<p>All at once the jagged outlines of a gigantic rock loomed up, directly
+in the course of the fated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> vessel; in another instant the Alcyon struck
+and remained fast, while a vivid flash of lightning revealed what
+appeared to be an island, about a quarter of a mile away. But though the
+wreck of the yacht was motionless, the furious sea continued to break
+over the deck, and it seemed only a question of a few moments when the
+battered and torn hull of the Alcyon would go to pieces. The boat the
+vessel carried had long since been wrenched from its fastenings and
+swept into the whirlpool.</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo, quitting the stump of the mast, darted down the
+companion-way into the cabin, and quickly returned to the deck bearing
+in his arms the swooning form of his adored Hayd&eacute;e. Ali followed him.
+The Nubian seemed to have entirely recovered from his fear, and
+manifested both alertness and decision.</p>
+
+<p>Shifting his lifeless burden to his left arm and grasping her firmly,
+Monte-Cristo advanced to the side of the Alcyon. Pausing there for an
+instant, he said, addressing Giacomo and the crew:</p>
+
+<p>"The yacht cannot hold together much longer; if we remain where we are
+we shall inevitably be ground to powder on the rock with our vessel.
+There is an island some distance to the right of us, and, sustained by
+Providence, we may succeed in reaching it by swimming. For my part, I
+shall try the venture and endeavor to save this lady. You, men, are
+untrammeled and stand a better chance of success than I do. I advise you
+all to follow my example; to cling further to the wreck is death!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p><p>With these words the Count made his way to a gap in the bulwarks and,
+grasping Hayd&eacute;e tightly, leaped with her into the midst of the angry
+sea. Ali followed his master, and soon they were seen far in the
+distance, struggling and battling with the waves.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ISLAND.</h3>
+
+<p>It was the month of December, but on the little Island of Salmis in the
+Grecian Archipelago the temperature was as mild and genial as that of
+June. The grass was rank and thick, while the blooming almond trees
+filled the atmosphere with fragrance. On a narrow strip of sandy beach
+three or four fishermen were preparing their nets and boats for a
+fishing expedition to the waters beyond. They chatted as they toiled.
+The eldest of them, a man about sixty, with silvered locks and a long
+gray beard, said:</p>
+
+<p>"You may talk of storms as much as you please, but I maintain that the
+most severe tempest ever experienced in this neighborhood was the one I
+witnessed ten years ago last October, when we had the earthquake and the
+strange man, who now owns this island, was washed ashore."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><p>"The Count of Monte-Cristo you mean?" remarked one of the party.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the Count of Monte-Cristo, who has done so much for us all and
+whose wife is nothing less than an angel of goodness and charity."</p>
+
+<p>"You rescued him, did you not, Alexis?"</p>
+
+<p>"I found him lying upon the beach, with the lady who is now his wife
+tightly clasped in his arms, so tightly that I had no end of trouble to
+separate them. Both were unconscious at the time, and no wonder, for the
+sea was furious and they must have been dashed about at a fearful rate.
+It was a miracle they escaped with their lives. Near them lay that
+dark-skinned African, their servant, who styles himself Ali, as well as
+the corpses of several sailors. The African, however, revived just as I
+approached him. He's a man of iron, I tell you, for he immediately
+leaped to his feet and helped me to restore his master and mistress.
+When they came to, I took the whole party to my hut and cared for them.
+The next day I rowed the Count and the African out to the wreck of their
+vessel on that rock you see away over there, and they brought back with
+them a fabulous amount of money and jewels that they found in the
+strangest closets I ever saw in the cabin. Then the Count bought this
+island and has lived here ever since. He took the lady to Athens and was
+married to her there, and on his return he had the palace they now
+occupy built in the midst of the palm grove."</p>
+
+<p>By this time the fishermen had completed their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> preparations and,
+leaping into their boats, they started on their expedition.</p>
+
+<p>The palace in the palm grove to which old Alexis had alluded was,
+indeed, a magnificent dwelling, suitable in every respect for the
+residence of an oriental monarch. It was built in the Turkish fashion
+and its exterior was singularly beautiful and imposing. Huge palm trees
+surrounded it; they were planted in regular rows upon a vast lawn that
+was adorned with costly statues and fountains, while at intervals were
+scattered great flower beds filled with choice exotics and blooming
+plants of endless variety. A wide graveled walk and carriage-road led to
+the palace, the main entrance to which was flanked on either side by
+columns of dark-veined marble. The edifice itself was of green stone,
+and sparkled in the sunlight like a colossal emerald. It was surmounted
+by three zinc-covered domes, above each of which towered a gilded
+crescent.</p>
+
+<p>Within all was elegance and luxury. There were immense salons, with
+marble floors, and walls covered with Smyrna hangings of the most
+beautiful description that of themselves must have cost a fortune. These
+salons were furnished with rich divans, tables of malachite, cabinets of
+ebony, and oriental rugs of the most artistic and complicated
+workmanship. There were dazzling reception rooms filled with exquisite
+statues and superb paintings, the works of the greatest sculptors and
+artists of the east and west, of the past and the present. Figures by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+Thorwaldsen, Powers and other modern celebrities of the block and chisel
+stood beside antique masterpieces framed by the genius of Phidias and
+his brother sculptors of old Greece and Rome, masterpieces that had been
+torn from the ruins of antiquity by the hand of the untiring and
+enterprising excavator. Among the paintings were fine specimens of the
+skill of Albert D&uuml;rer, Murillo, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds and other votaries of the brush whose names are immortal. These
+paintings did not hang on the walls, for they were covered with rich
+tapestry from the looms of Benares and the Gobelins, but rested on
+delicately fashioned easels, themselves entitled to a high, rank as
+works of art. In the salons were statues by Michael Angelo, Pierre Puget
+and Pompeo Marchesi, and paintings by Claude Lorraine, Titian, Sir
+Thomas Lawrence, Correggio and Salvator Rosa.</p>
+
+<p>The vast library was encircled by lofty bookcases of walnut and ebony,
+filled with rare and costly volumes from the curiously illuminated
+missals of monkish days to the latest scientific works, together with a
+liberal sprinkling of poetry and fiction; upon tables, stands and
+mantels were superb ornaments in brass repouss&eacute; work and grand old
+fa&iuml;ence, including some wonderful specimens of ancient Chinese crackle
+ware, the peculiar secret of the manufacture of which had been lost in
+the flight of ages.</p>
+
+<p>At an exquisite desk of walnut, carved with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> grotesque images, sat the
+Count of Monte-Cristo; he was busily engaged in writing, and beside him
+lay a huge pile of manuscript that was ever and anon augmented by an
+additional sheet, hastily scrawled in strange, bewildering Semitic
+characters.</p>
+
+<p>The Count showed but small trace of the passage of years; he did not
+look much older than when he left the Isle of Monte-Cristo with Hayd&eacute;e
+on that voyage which was destined to result so disastrously for the
+Alcyon and her ill-fated crew. To be sure, his hair was slightly flecked
+with gray, but his visage still retained its full outline, and not a
+wrinkle marred its masculine beauty. He was clad in an exceedingly
+picturesque costume, half Greek and half Turkish, while upon his head
+was a red fez from the centre of which hung down a gilt tassel.</p>
+
+<p>As he wrote his eyes sparkled and he seemed filled with enthusiasm. At
+length he threw aside his pen, and rising began to pace the vast
+apartment with long strides. "Alas!" he muttered, "perhaps after all I
+am only a vain dreamer, as hosts of others have been before me. But no,
+my scheme is feasible and cannot fail; it is based on sound principles
+and a thorough knowledge of mankind; besides, the immense wealth that an
+all-wise God has placed at my disposal will aid me and form a mighty
+factor in the cause. In the past I used that wealth solely for my own
+selfish ends, but now all is different; I have no thought of self&mdash;the
+philanthropist has replaced the egotist; I have aided the poor, relieved
+the stricken and brought joy to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> many a sorrowing home, but hitherto I
+have acted only in isolated cases; now I meditate a grand, a sublime
+stroke&mdash;to give freedom to man throughout the entire length and breadth
+of the Continent of Europe. If I succeed, and succeed I must, every
+down-trodden human being from the coast of France to the Ural Mountains,
+from the sunny Mediterranean to the frozen Arctic Ocean, will reap the
+benefit of my efforts and shake off the yoke of tyranny. Where shall I
+begin? Ah! with France, my own country, the land that gave me birth. I
+shall thus return good for evil, and Edmond Dant&egrave;s, the prisoner of the
+Ch&acirc;teau d'If, will free the masses from their galling chains. My most
+potent instrument will be the public press; by means of journals I will
+found, or buy, the minds of all Europeans shall become familiarized with
+the theory of universal liberty and ripened for sweeping revolutions and
+the establishment of republics; I will also call fiction to my aid;
+struggling novelists and feuilletonists shall receive liberal subsidies
+from my hand on condition that they disseminate my ideas, theories and
+plans in their romances and feuilletons; thus will I reach thousands
+upon thousands who hold themselves aloof from politics, and almost
+insensibly they will be transformed into zealous, active partisans of
+the order of things that is to be; poets, too, shall sing the praises of
+freedom louder and more enthusiastically than ever before; in fine, no
+instrument, no means, however humble and apparently insignificant, shall
+be neglected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> when the proper moment arrives, but until it does arrive I
+must wait, wait patiently, wait though while waiting an internal fire
+consume me, and my veins throb with anxiety and expectation to the point
+of bursting."</p>
+
+<p>He sank into a chair, and, burying his face in his hands, was lost in
+profound thought.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, a lovely woman, leading a beautiful girl of eight years and a
+handsome boy of nine, had noiselessly entered the apartment. It was
+Hayd&eacute;e, the wife of Monte-Cristo, Hayd&eacute;e grown mature and more beautiful
+than ever. Her night-black tresses were gathered in two wide braids at
+the back of her shapely head, so long that they reached below her waist.
+Her eyes were as bright as stars, and her slender hands, tipped with
+their pink nails, as white as the lily; her tiny feet, encased in
+Cinderella slippers of rose-hued satin, peeped out from beneath ample
+Turkish trousers, which were semi-transparent and disclosed the outlines
+of her beautifully turned limbs; she wore a close-fitting gilet of
+pearly silk, adorned with gilt fringe and cut low, displaying her snowy
+neck and magnificent shoulders; her arms were encompassed but not hidden
+by flowing sleeves of filmy gauze as fine as the tissue of a spider's
+web; about her neck flashed a collar of brilliant diamonds of enormous
+value, and on her tapering fingers were rings of emerald, ruby and
+sapphire; on her head was a red fez, precisely similar to her husband's;
+her countenance, a perfect revelation of angelic beauty, was wreathed
+in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> sunny smiles that betokened thorough happiness and contentment.</p>
+
+<p>The little girl, Zuleika, the daughter of Monte-Cristo, was her exact
+image, a reproduction of her lovely mother in miniature, a promise of
+rare delight for the future. The child's costume was also modeled after
+Hayd&eacute;e's, but with modifications suited to her tender years. Zuleika was
+of a gentle, loving disposition, but a vein of romance and poetry had
+already developed itself in her notwithstanding her extreme youth. She
+sighed for the unknown delights of the sea, and the wail of the surf
+sounded to her like the most delicious of mysterious harmonies. Her
+infant imagination peopled the watery realm with spirits of good and
+evil always in contention, and the great ships, with their huge white
+sails, that she saw in the distance from the sandy beach of the Island
+of Salmis, were in her eyes the mighty birds of Arabian story.</p>
+
+<p>The boy, Esp&eacute;rance, the son of Monte-Cristo, resembled his father both
+in disposition and appearance; his youthful soul was full of noble
+aspirations, while his daring and bravery filled even the hardy
+fishermen of the coast with wonder and amazement. He was a very manly
+and handsome child; quick, enthusiastic and energetic; his father's hope
+and his mother's idol; though Hayd&eacute;e saw, with extreme uneasiness, that
+the little lad was wise beyond his years, and was already devoted to
+Monte-Cristo's somewhat visionary schemes, which he appeared to grasp in
+all their complicated details. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> attire was that of a Greek fisher
+boy; his trousers, rolled up above his knees, displayed his naked legs
+and bare feet; in one hand he held a rough sea cap that he had removed
+from his head at the door of the library. Esp&eacute;rance loved, above all
+other things, to be with the fishermen on the beach, and his joy knew no
+bounds when he was permitted to accompany them on their fishing
+expeditions to the waters beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Hayd&eacute;e remained silently gazing at Monte-Cristo for a moment; then,
+advancing into the middle of the room, she stood beside him with the
+children. Zuleika, dropping her mother's hand, sprang lightly upon her
+father's knees, and, clasping him about the neck with her chubby arms,
+kissed him rapturously.</p>
+
+<p>The Count started from his deep reverie and returned his daughter's
+kiss; then, looking up, he perceived Hayd&eacute;e and Esp&eacute;rance.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! my loved ones," said he, "so you are all here!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, papa," returned Zuleika, in a clear, crystal voice, that sounded
+like the tinkle of a fairy bell, "we are all here&mdash;mamma, Esp&eacute;rance and
+'Leika!"</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo smiled faintly, and patted the little girl tenderly on the
+cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Hayd&eacute;e," said he, "fortune favors us in our children; they are, indeed,
+a blessing to us."</p>
+
+<p>"A veritable blessing, my lord," answered the lovely Hayd&eacute;e, "but still
+I cannot help feeling some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> terror at the thought that Esp&eacute;rance may one
+day be drawn into those political struggles you have so often foretold,
+and in which it is your intention to act a prominent part."</p>
+
+<p>"Papa will lead the people to victory, and I will fight by his side!"
+cried Esp&eacute;rance, proudly.</p>
+
+<p>Hayd&eacute;e gazed sadly at the enthusiastic boy, and tears came into her
+gazelle-like eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! my lord," she said to her husband, "teach Esp&eacute;rance the arts of
+peace, implant in his boyish bosom, while there is yet time, the love of
+home and domestic joys."</p>
+
+<p>The Count glanced admiringly at the little lad, who stood with dilated
+nostrils and eyes flashing fire; then, turning to Hayd&eacute;e, he said in an
+impressive tone:</p>
+
+<p>"My beloved wife, Esp&eacute;rance is but an infant, and it may be years ere
+Europe shall awake from her lethargy and strive to overturn the thrones
+of her despots; before that period, the period of revolution and
+bloodshed, our son may change his opinions and cease to be the ardent
+Republican he is now."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," protested the enthusiastic boy; "I will be a Republican all my
+life!"</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo smiled sadly, and, drawing the lad to his knee, said to
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance, my son, you are yet too young to know the ways of the world
+and the snares that monarchs set for the inexperienced and unwary. There
+are temptations at their command capable of winning over even the most
+zealous enemies, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> they never hesitate to use them when the
+opportunity offers. At the proper time I will instruct you fully about
+all this; now, you cannot understand it."</p>
+
+<p>As Monte-Cristo ceased to speak, Ali entered the library, followed by
+three native servants attached to the palace. The Nubian bowed low
+before his master and reverently kissed Hayd&eacute;e's hand; the servants did
+likewise. Then Ali handed the Count a sealed letter, making signs to the
+effect that he had found it tied with a cord to one of the palm trees on
+the lawn.</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo opened the letter and glanced at the signature; as he did
+so a look of surprise and annoyance settled upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>The note was written in the French language, and read as follows:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Count of Monte-Cristo</span>: I am in hiding on the Island of Salmis and
+must see you without delay. Meet me at midnight in the almond grove
+near the eastern shore. Be sure to come alone.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Benedetto</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"Humph!" said the Count to himself as he finished reading this singular
+epistle. "I thought I was rid of that scoundrel forever, but it seems
+that the galleys at Toulon cannot hold him. Well, I suppose I must meet
+him; otherwise he may take a notion to come here, which would be both
+inconvenient and disagreeable. I imagine he wants a little money to
+enable him to escape to the east; if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> that is all, I will gladly give it
+to be rid of his presence, on the island. I prefer not to have as a
+neighbor a thief and an assassin, even if he did shine so brilliantly
+once in aristocratic Parisian society as the Prince Cavalcanti!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter, my lord?" asked Hayd&eacute;e, noticing the expression on
+Monte-Cristo's countenance. "From whom is the letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! it is nothing," answered the Count, with a smile. "A poor fellow
+wishes my assistance, and is too modest to ask it in person; that's
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>Hayd&eacute;e was not satisfied with this indefinite reply; she knew that the
+contents of the letter so strangely conveyed to her husband had vexed
+and troubled him; but she also knew that Monte-Cristo could be as silent
+as the tomb about anything he wished to keep secret, and, therefore,
+judged it useless to attempt further questions. Besides, a singular
+presentiment of evil had taken possession of her at the sight of the
+ominous note, and she felt certain that some disaster was threatened;
+hence, she determined to be watchful and keep strict guard over her
+children until the mystery, whatever it was, should be cleared up.</p>
+
+<p>As the clock in his library struck the quarter before midnight,
+Monte-Cristo arose from the chair in which he had been sitting; donning
+his fez and a light cloak, he prepared to go to the almond grove on the
+eastern portion of the island, the spot Benedetto had appointed for
+their meeting; prior to setting out he slipped into his pocket a
+well-filled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> purse, and thrust a loaded revolver into the belt he wore
+about his waist.</p>
+
+<p>"The scoundrel was anxious that I should come alone, but he did not
+prohibit me from arming myself," muttered he, with a grim smile, "and I
+have seen too much of Signor Benedetto to care to leave the game
+entirely in his hands!"</p>
+
+<p>Quitting the palace by a private door, after making sure that everybody
+was asleep and that he was unobserved, Monte-Cristo bent his steps in
+the direction of the almond grove. It was a moonless night and very
+dark; the air was rather chill, while the roar of the surf sounded
+louder than usual in the crisp, bracing atmosphere. The Count gathered
+his cloak tightly about him and walked steadily onward, notwithstanding
+the thick darkness. At length the heavy odor of the almond blossoms
+warned him that he was approaching his destination, and he paused to
+survey the scene.</p>
+
+<p>About fifty yards away the almond grove loomed up, casting a denser
+shade upon the surrounding blackness. The Count hastened his steps and
+in a few seconds stood among the trees. As he paused the figure of a man
+emerged from behind a huge fragment of rock and thus hailed him:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the Count of Monte-Cristo?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am," was the firm reply.</p>
+
+<p>"And are you alone, as I recommended?"</p>
+
+<p>"Entirely alone. Now, if you have finished your questions, pray who are
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you ask?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p><p>"Merely for form's sake."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I am Benedetto."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. As it was too dark for me to distinguish your features, I
+simply wanted to identify you. Now, state your business as briefly as
+possible."</p>
+
+<p>"I escaped from Toulon long ago, and, after wandering all over Europe,
+settled in Athens, where I remained until a week since, when the result
+of a difficulty compelled me to quit the city."</p>
+
+<p>"An assassination?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, an assassination!"</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo shuddered to hear the cold-blooded villain talk so calmly
+of his foul crime, but, conquering his aversion, he said between his
+teeth:</p>
+
+<p>"Proceed."</p>
+
+<p>"I fled from Athens under cover of the night and the next morning hired
+a fisherman to bring me here in his boat, thinking that the island was
+inhabited only by a few poverty-stricken wretches who gained a scanty
+subsistence from the sea. On my arrival I was filled with terror at
+beholding your magnificent palace, which I was told belonged to a great
+lord. I naturally imagined that no one could inhabit such a dwelling
+save some high official of the Greek Government, and, without making
+further inquiries, again secured the services of the fisherman, who took
+me to the neighboring Island of Kylo. There I was in safety, for I fell
+in with a band of stout-hearted men, of whom I eventually became the
+chief."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p><p>"Bandits, no doubt!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, bandits, if you will, but valiant men all the same. We prospered
+exceedingly and imagined that our career could be continued with
+impunity as long as we might desire; in this, however, we were sadly
+mistaken, for one fatal night the Greek soldiery suddenly descended upon
+us and hemmed us in on every side ere we were aware of their presence.
+We fought none the less desperately on that account, and in the
+sanguinary conflict all my companions were slain. I was grievously
+wounded and left for dead, but the following day managed to crawl to the
+beach and contrived to be conveyed hither, having learned by accident
+that the great lord of the Island of Salmis was no other than my old
+friend of happier days, the Count of Monte-Cristo, in short, yourself.
+Now, you know my story. I am a fugitive here as in France, and need your
+aid to enable me to escape."</p>
+
+<p>"You want money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"How much?"</p>
+
+<p>"A million of francs!"</p>
+
+<p>"Man!" cried Monte-Cristo, breathless with astonishment at Benedetto's
+audacious demand, "you are out of your senses! I will give you a
+thousand francs, but not a sou more!"</p>
+
+<p>"Beware how you trifle with a desperate man!" hissed Benedetto.</p>
+
+<p>"What have I to fear?" said Monte-Cristo, calmly. "You are alone."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p><p>"I am not alone, Count of Monte-Cristo; my stout-hearted friends of the
+Island of Kylo are with me, and ready to support my demand!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you lied to me; your story was a base fabrication."</p>
+
+<p>"Partly, Count; but enough of this&mdash;I want the million of francs; it is
+a small sum for you to spare an old friend, who did you as much service
+as Prince Andrea Cavalcanti! Are you going to give me the money?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not!" replied Monte-Cristo, drawing his revolver from his belt and
+cocking it.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho! ho!" laughed Benedetto, mockingly, "that's your game, is it? Again
+I tell you to beware how you trifle with a desperate man!"</p>
+
+<p>At the repetition of this phrase, as if it had been a preconcerted
+signal, a dozen stalwart figures started up from the darkness and
+surrounded Monte-Cristo, who instantly discharged his weapon right and
+left among them. Several of the bandits fell, pierced by the balls, and
+Benedetto, with a loud oath, leaped at the Count's throat, brandishing a
+long, keen-bladed dagger above his head.</p>
+
+<p>Raising his empty revolver, Monte-Cristo with a hand of iron struck his
+on-coming assailant full in the face, stretching him instantly at his
+feet; but scarcely had he accomplished this when three of the bandits
+sprang upon him and hurled him to the earth beside Benedetto.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," cried one of the miscreants with a frightful curse, at the same
+time placing the muzzle of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> pistol at the Count's temple, "now, my
+lord of Salmis, your time has come!"</p>
+
+<p>As he was about to fire, there arose a tremendous shout, and, headed by
+Ali, who swung aloft a Turkish yataghan, the entire force of
+Monte-Cristo's servants, armed to the teeth, swept down upon the
+astonished bandits. At the same instant a pistol-shot rang out, and the
+man who had threatened to take the Count's life fell to the ground a
+corpse. As Monte-Cristo regained his feet he saw Esp&eacute;rance standing a
+short distance away, the smoking weapon with which he had just killed
+his father's would-be murderer still clenched in his boyish hand. The
+struggle that ensued was of short duration, for the bandits, finding
+themselves outnumbered, speedily fled to their boats, leaving their
+wounded comrades behind them.</p>
+
+<p>When the Count realized that Esp&eacute;rance, his beloved son, had saved him
+from death, he rushed to the heroic lad, took him in his arms and bore
+him beyond the reach of danger; this done, he returned to aid Ali and
+the servants, but they were already victors and in full possession of
+the field.</p>
+
+<p>A search was made for the body of Benedetto, but it had disappeared.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CONFLAGRATION.</h3>
+
+<p>As the Count of Monte-Cristo, Esp&eacute;rance, Ali and the servants approached
+the palace on their return from the struggle with the bandits in the
+almond grove, their ears were suddenly saluted by loud cries of terror.
+They came from the library and thither Monte-Cristo hurried, followed by
+his son. On the floor in the centre of the apartment Hayd&eacute;e lay in a
+swoon, and bending over her mother was Zuleika, screaming and wringing
+her little hands. The Count raised his wife and placed her upon a divan,
+while Esp&eacute;rance brought a water-jar and bathed her temples with its
+cool, refreshing contents, Zuleika meanwhile holding her mother's hands
+and sobbing violently.</p>
+
+<p>At last Hayd&eacute;e recovered consciousness, and opening her eyes gazed
+wildly around her; seeing her husband, Esp&eacute;rance and Zuleika safe beside
+her, she uttered a faint sigh of relief. It was several moments longer
+before she could speak; then she exclaimed in a tremulous voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! my lord, did you meet that terrible man?"</p>
+
+<p>"What man, Hayd&eacute;e?" asked the Count. "Do you mean Benedetto?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know his name; I never saw him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> before," answered Hayd&eacute;e; "but
+his face was all battered and bleeding; on his uncovered head the locks
+were matted and unkempt, and his garments were torn as if in wrenching
+his way through a thicket of tangled briers."</p>
+
+<p>"Benedetto, it was Benedetto!" cried Monte-Cristo. "You do not mean to
+say he was here, in this room?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was here and only a short time ago," replied Hayd&eacute;e, with a shudder.
+"I was standing at the window with Zuleika when he rushed by me like a
+whirlwind, and going to your secretary endeavored to open it, but in
+vain; then with a cry of rage he ran to the window, leaped out into the
+darkness and was gone! I know nothing further, for as he vanished I fell
+to the floor in a swoon."</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo touched a bell and almost immediately Ali stood bowing
+before him, as calm and unmoved as though nothing unusual had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>"Ali," said the Count, "post all the servants within and without the
+palace, and let the strictest watch be kept until dawn. The chief of the
+bandits, who is no other than the former Prince Cavalcanti, was here in
+our absence and must yet be hovering in the vicinity. See that he does
+not effect another entrance, as his purpose is robbery if not murder!"</p>
+
+<p>Ali signified by his eloquent pantomime that he had already taken it
+upon himself to station the servants as his master directed, and that it
+would be utterly impossible for any one to approach the palace without
+being seen and seized.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p><p>As the faithful Nubian turned to retire, Monte-Cristo noticed that his
+right hand was bandaged as if wounded, and inquired whether he had been
+hurt in the conflict with the bandits. Ali explained that a dagger
+thrust had cut his palm, but that the wound had been properly cared for
+and would soon heal.</p>
+
+<p>When the Count and his family were once more alone together, Hayd&eacute;e
+threw herself at her husband's feet and humbly demanded pardon.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you done to require pardon?" asked Monte-Cristo, in
+astonishment. "Speak, but I forgive you beforehand.'</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! my lord," said Hayd&eacute;e, still maintaining her kneeling posture
+despite her husband's efforts to raise her, "oh! my lord, I have been
+guilty of a despicable act, but my love for you and fears for your
+safety must be my excuse. You left the letter you received so strangely
+this morning lying upon your secretary. I opened it and hurriedly made
+myself acquainted with its contents, for I had a premonition that some
+terrible danger threatened you. Oh! my lord, pardon, pardon!"</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo raised her to her feet, and imprinted a kiss upon her
+pallid brow.</p>
+
+<p>"So then, it is to you, Hayd&eacute;e, that I owe my timely rescue from the
+hands of Benedetto and his band of cut-throats! Had you committed even a
+much more serious fault than peeping into my correspondence, that would
+be more than sufficient to secure my full forgiveness. But do you know
+that Esp&eacute;rance shot and killed the miscreant who held<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> his pistol to my
+temple and was about to blow out my brains?"</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance?" said Hayd&eacute;e in bewilderment. "Did he not remain behind with
+Zuleika and myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, mamma," said the boy, holding his head proudly erect. "I could not
+remain behind. I knew papa was in danger, and, taking a pistol that I
+had seen Ali load this morning from the cabinet of fire-arms, I followed
+the servants, arriving at the almond grove just in time."</p>
+
+<p>Hayd&eacute;e ran to her son, and, taking him in her arms, pressed him fondly
+to her heart, kissing him again and again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Esp&eacute;rance," she cried, "had I known you were in the midst of those
+bloodthirsty cut-throats I should have died of terror! But you have
+saved your father's life, my son, and I bless you for it!"</p>
+
+<p>"He is a little hero," said Monte-Cristo, impressively.</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika had thrown herself upon the divan, and, utterly worn out by the
+excitement through which she had passed, was already wrapped in a deep
+slumber. The Count, Hayd&eacute;e and Esp&eacute;rance, however, could not resign
+themselves to sleep, and when the gray light of dawn appeared in the
+eastern sky, they were still in the library and still watching.</p>
+
+<p>Benedetto had not been seen again, and a diligent search of the entire
+island, made by Ali and the servants, failed to reveal even the
+slightest trace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> of him. He had evidently succeeded in finding some
+fisherman's skiff and in it had made his escape.</p>
+
+<p>This view of the case was confirmed a few hours later, when old Alexis
+came to the palace and informed Monte-Cristo that his smack had vanished
+during the night, having, in all probability, been carried off by
+thieves.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew," said the fisherman, "that the Island of Kylo was infested by
+bandits, but I had no idea they would venture here. Now, however, I
+thought I had better put you on your guard."</p>
+
+<p>"I am much indebted to you, Alexis," said the Count; then, slipping a
+purse of money into his hand, he added: "Take that and provide yourself
+with a new boat."</p>
+
+<p>Alexis touched his cap, bowed and was about to withdraw when
+Monte-Cristo said to him, assuming a careless tone:</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, my good fellow, have you ever chanced to meet any of the
+bandits you mentioned?"</p>
+
+<p>"Often, Excellency," replied Alexis.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of men are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bold, bad wretches, whose hands have been more than once stained with
+innocent blood."</p>
+
+<p>"What is their strength?"</p>
+
+<p>"They number about fifty."</p>
+
+<p>"Do any women dwell among them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Excellency, their wives and sweethearts."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is the leader of the band?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p><p>"A strange, morose man, who has not been long in their midst."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he a Greek?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Excellency, he is a foreigner."</p>
+
+<p>"A Frenchman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite likely, though I am not sure."</p>
+
+<p>"What is his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"He calls himself Demetrius."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he ever question you about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did you reply?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told him you were the Count of Monte-Cristo."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! What did he say then?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said he had heard of you before."</p>
+
+<p>"That will do, Alexis; I have all the information I require."</p>
+
+<p>The fisherman again touched his cap, and, making a low bow, took his
+departure.</p>
+
+<p>Under ordinary circumstances Monte-Cristo would not have been disturbed
+by the presence of bandits so near the Island of Salmis, but it became
+an altogether different thing when those bandits were led by Benedetto.</p>
+
+<p>A month passed, but in it nothing occurred calculated to break the
+tranquillity of the Count and his family. The bandits had not reappeared
+and Benedetto had given no sign of life. The faithful Ali no longer
+deemed it necessary to maintain his precautions against surprise, and
+the strict watch that had been kept up day and night ever since the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+conflict in the almond grove was abandoned. Hayd&eacute;e, Zuleika and
+Esp&eacute;rance resumed their usual mode of life, having apparently dismissed
+the robbers from their minds, while even Monte-Cristo seemed free from
+all uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>One night, while the Count was writing at a late hour in the library, he
+yielded to fatigue and fell asleep over his papers. His slumber was
+troubled with a strange and vivid dream.</p>
+
+<p>A man in the picturesque garb of a Greek peasant, and wearing a mask on
+his face, suddenly stood before him, with his arms folded upon his
+breast. Monte-Cristo saw him distinctly, though unable to stir either
+hand or foot. The singular visitant surveyed the Count long and
+steadily. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but as to his
+identity the sleeper could form no idea. At last he slowly removed the
+mask, and recognition was instantaneous. The man was Danglars. He raised
+his right hand, and, pointing with his forefinger at the Count, said
+deliberately, with a hiss like some venomous serpent:</p>
+
+<p>"Edmond Dant&egrave;s, there is a bitter account open between us, and I am here
+to force you to a bitter settlement!"</p>
+
+<p>The light of the huge lamp, suspended from the ceiling, fell full upon
+Danglars' countenance; it was as bloodless as that of a corpse, and the
+eyes shone with a remorseless, vindictive glare. The banker continued in
+the same hissing tone, his words penetrating to the very marrow of the
+slumberer's bones:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p><p>"Count of Monte-Cristo, for by that name it still pleases you to be
+called, listen to me. By the most ingenious and fiendish combinations
+possible for a human being to contrive, you wrecked my fortune and with
+it my hopes. You drove me ignominiously from Paris; in Rome you caused
+me to be starved and robbed by Luigi Vampa and his brigands; then with
+the malevolent magnanimity of an arch-demon you sent me forth into the
+world a fugitive and an outcast. Count of Monte-Cristo, Edmond Dant&egrave;s,
+low-born sailor of Marseilles, modern Mephistopheles as you are, I will
+be even with you! You have had your vengeance; now you shall feel mine!
+Here in the Grecian Archipelago, on the Island of Salmis, I will torture
+you through your dearest affections, and grind you to dust beneath my
+heel!"</p>
+
+<p>As Danglars finished, his features changed and became those of
+Villefort, while his Greek peasant's garb was transformed into the
+sombre habiliments of the Procureur du Roi. Villefort's face wore the
+look of madness, but there was a freezing calmness in his voice as he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Edmond Dant&egrave;s, Count of Monte-Cristo, gaze upon the ruin you have made.
+Through you I was dragged down from my high position, exposed,
+humiliated and deprived of reason. But although the mere wreck of my
+former self, I am not utterly powerless, as you shall learn to your
+cost. You raised up my infamous son, Benedetto, to be the instrument of
+my destruction. Now, he shall work yours, and avenge his unhappy
+father!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p><p>The apparition paused, sighed deeply, and then resumed in a tone of
+still greater menace:</p>
+
+<p>"Count of Monte-Cristo, look well to your beloved wife, Hayd&eacute;e, look
+well to your heroic son, Esp&eacute;rance, look well to your darling daughter,
+Zuleika, for this night they are in frightful danger! Look well to your
+fabulous riches, for they are threatened; look well to your stately and
+magnificent palace, for already the element that shall devour it is
+noiselessly and stealthily at work! Count of Monte-Cristo, farewell!"</p>
+
+<p>A heart-rending shriek rang in the sleeper's ears, a mighty flash
+dazzled his eyes, and, with a grim smile upon his pallid countenance,
+Villefort vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo awoke with a quick start and passed his hand across his
+forehead, as if dazed; then he leaped to his feet and glanced
+breathlessly about him. Danglars and Villefort had been only the idle
+coinage of his brain, but the heart-rending shriek, the mighty flash,
+they were, indeed, stern realities&mdash;the shriek was Hayd&eacute;e's, and the
+flash was fire!</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" cried Monte-Cristo, standing for an instant rooted to the
+spot, "can it be possible that this dream is the truth after all, and
+that I am even now to feel the vengeance of those two men?"</p>
+
+<p>He sprang into the spacious hall that was as light as day, and, as he
+did so, the figure of a man rushed by him&mdash;it was Benedetto, and in his
+hand he held a long knife dripping with blood. The Count turned and
+pursued him, snatching a dagger from a table as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> he ran. At the door
+leading to the lawn, he grasped him firmly by the shoulder and held him.</p>
+
+<p>"Murderer!" he shouted, "whose blood is that upon your knife?"</p>
+
+<p>"The blood of Hayd&eacute;e, the Greek slave!" hissed Benedetto, with a glare
+of ferocious triumph, "the blood of Hayd&eacute;e, your wife! Edmond Dant&egrave;s, I
+am even with you!"</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo struck at the assassin with his dagger, but Benedetto
+eluded the blow, and raising his own weapon inflicted a frightful gash
+upon the Count's cheek.</p>
+
+<p>A terrible struggle ensued. Monte-Cristo was possessed of wonderful
+strength and activity, but in both these respects the two desperate
+antagonists seemed fairly matched. Three times did the Count bury his
+dagger in Benedetto's body, but, though the assassin's blood gushed
+copiously from his wounds, he continued to fight with the utmost
+determination. At length the men grappled in a supreme, deadly effort,
+but Monte-Cristo, making a false step, slipped on the blood-spattered
+marble floor, and Benedetto, with the quickness of thought, hurling him
+backward, freed himself and bounding through the open doorway vanished
+in the darkness beyond.</p>
+
+<p>The Count uttered a groan of despair as he saw Hayd&eacute;e's self-confessed
+murderer escape him, and staggered to his feet; the fierce conflict with
+Benedetto had exhausted him, and he stood for an instant panting and
+breathless. The shrieks had now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> grown fainter and the hall was full of
+smoke. During all this time neither Ali nor any of the servants under
+him had appeared, a circumstance that, to Monte-Cristo, seemed
+inexplicable. He, however, did not pause to give it thought, but dashed
+up the stairway and strove to reach his wife's apartment; blinding,
+stifling clouds of smoke, through which penetrated the glare of the
+conflagration, drove him back again and again, but he renewed his
+attempts to force a passage with undaunted energy and courage. Finally,
+compressing his lips and holding his nostrils with the thumb and
+forefinger of his right hand, he gave a headlong plunge, and succeeded
+in reaching Hayd&eacute;e's door; it was open, displaying a scene that caused
+the Count's heart to sink within him; the whole chamber was one sea of
+flame; fiery tongues, like so many writhing and hissing serpents, were
+licking and consuming the costly tapestry, the richly carved furniture
+and the magnificent objects of art; the curtains of the bed were
+blazing, and upon the couch lay the senseless form of the wife of
+Monte-Cristo, the pallor of her faultless countenance contrasting
+painfully with the ruddy glow of the devouring element. In Hayd&eacute;e's
+breast was a gaping wound, from which her life blood was slowly oozing
+in ruby drops.</p>
+
+<p>Rendered utterly reckless by the terrible sight, the Count madly rushed
+to the couch, tore his beloved Hayd&eacute;e from it, and, clasping her tightly
+against his bosom, staggered into the corridor with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> his precious
+burden. There the smoke had increased in volume and density, but,
+summoning all his resolution and endurance to his aid, he plunged
+through it, and finally was successful in reaching the library.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with the swiftness of a flash of lightning, the husband was
+replaced by the father, and Monte-Cristo, for the first time since
+Hayd&eacute;e's shrieks had awakened him from his dream, thought of his
+children. Where were they and what had happened to them? The Count felt
+a cold perspiration break out upon his forehead, and a feeling of
+unspeakable dread took entire possession of him. Hayd&eacute;e demanded
+immediate attention, but Esp&eacute;rance and Zuleika must instantly be found
+and rescued. At the top of his voice Monte-Cristo shouted for Ali, but
+no reply was returned. Fearing to leave Hayd&eacute;e for even a moment, the
+Count strode about the library like a caged wild animal, still holding
+her in his arms. He shouted again and again until he was hoarse, calling
+distractedly upon Esp&eacute;rance, Zuleika and all the servants in turn.</p>
+
+<p>At last an answering shout came suddenly from the lawn, and old Alexis,
+followed by several fishermen, leaped into the library through an open
+window.</p>
+
+<p>Resigning Hayd&eacute;e to Alexis, the Count, accompanied by the fishermen,
+fairly flew to the apartment of his children, situated on a corridor in
+another portion of the palace. There Esp&eacute;rance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> and Zuleika were
+discovered gagged and bound; they lay upon the floor of their chamber,
+while Ali, who had been treated in like manner, was extended near them.
+To release the prisoners was but the work of a moment, and then it was
+learned that all the servants under Ali were confined in their
+dormitory. They, as well as Monte-Cristo's children and the Nubian, had
+been suddenly seized by a party of rough-looking Greeks, evidently a
+portion of Benedetto's band.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the flames had spread from Hayd&eacute;e's chamber to the adjoining
+quarters of the edifice, and the entire palace seemed doomed, for to
+check the conflagration appeared impossible, but so happy had the Count
+been made by the recovery of his son and daughter, unharmed, that he
+gave himself no concern about the probable destruction of his
+magnificent property.</p>
+
+<p>Seizing his children, he directed Ali and the fishermen to release the
+captive servants, and hastily returned to the library. As he entered the
+room Hayd&eacute;e uttered a low groan and opened her eyes; she was lying on a
+divan, where old Alexis had placed her. Esp&eacute;rance and Zuleika sprang to
+her side; she took each by the hand, and as she did so they saw the
+wound in her breast. Zuleika burst into tears. Esp&eacute;rance compressed his
+lips and grew deadly pale.</p>
+
+<p>"My loved ones," said Hayd&eacute;e, faintly, "I feel that I am about to leave
+you forever, perhaps in a few moments. Be good children and obey your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+father in all things. Esp&eacute;rance, Zuleika, stoop and kiss me."</p>
+
+<p>They did as she desired; her lips were already purple and cold; the
+stamp of death was upon her features. Suddenly her frame was convulsed
+and her eyes assumed a glassy look.</p>
+
+<p>"Monte-Cristo, my husband, where are you?" she said, in a broken voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Hayd&eacute;e," answered the Count, approaching.</p>
+
+<p>He strove to appear calm, but could not control his emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"Nearer, nearer, Edmond," said Hayd&eacute;e, growing weaker and weaker.</p>
+
+<p>The Count sank on his knees beside his dying wife and put his arms about
+her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Hayd&eacute;e, Hayd&eacute;e," he sobbed; "thrice accursed be the infamous wretch
+who has done this!"</p>
+
+<p>"Edmond, my children, farewell," gasped Hayd&eacute;e; "I am going to a better
+land!"</p>
+
+<p>The death rattle was in her throat; she raised herself with a mighty
+effort, gazed lovingly at her husband and children, and strove to speak
+again, but could not; then a flickering shade of violet passed over her
+countenance, and she fell back dead.</p>
+
+<p>Esp&eacute;rance and Zuleika stood as if stunned; Monte-Cristo was overwhelmed
+with grief and despair.</p>
+
+<p>"The whole palace is in flames! Save yourselves,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> save yourselves!"
+cried a fisherman, rushing into the library, followed by his companions,
+Ali and the servants.</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo leaped to his feet, seizing the corpse of Hayd&eacute;e and
+raising it in his arms. Ali grasped Esp&eacute;rance and Zuleika, and the
+entire party hastened from the burning edifice. They were not an instant
+too soon, for as they quitted the library the tempest of fire burst into
+it, accompanied by torrents of smoke. The fishermen and servants,
+commanded by the Nubian, had made every effort to save the doomed
+mansion, but in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Monte-Cristo and his children found refuge in the hut of Alexis, to
+which Hayd&eacute;e's body was reverently borne.</p>
+
+<p>The wife of Monte-Cristo was buried on the Island of Salmis, and over
+her remains her husband erected a massive monument.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly afterwards the Count, Esp&eacute;rance and Zuleika, attended by the
+faithful Ali, quitted the Island and took passage on a vessel bound for
+France.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE NEWS FROM ALGERIA.</h3>
+
+<p>Beauchamp, the journalist, sat at his desk in his editorial sanctum
+early one bright morning in the autumn of 1841. He had gone to work long
+before his usual hour, for important movements were on foot, the
+political atmosphere was agitated and Paris was in a state of feverish
+excitement; besides, Beauchamp had that day printed in his journal a
+dispatch from Algeria that would be certain to cause a great sensation,
+and, with the proper spirit of pride, the journalist desired to be at
+his post that he might receive the numerous congratulations his friends
+could not fail to offer, as the dispatch had appeared in his paper
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>The sanctum had not an attractive look; in fact, it was rather
+dilapidated, while, in addition, the disorder occasioned by the previous
+night's work had not been repaired, and all was chaos and confusion.</p>
+
+<p>Beauchamp was busily engaged in glancing over the rival morning papers
+when Lucien Debray entered and seated himself at another desk. The
+Ministerial Secretary smiled upon the journalist in a knowing way, and
+the latter, nodding to him with an air of triumph, silently pointed to
+the pile of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> journals he had finished examining. Lucien took them up,
+and without a word began scanning their contents.</p>
+
+<p>"Glorious news that from the army in Algeria!" cried Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud,
+rushing into the sanctum.</p>
+
+<p>"Glorious, indeed!" replied the editor, looking up from the paper over
+which he was hurriedly skimming. On the huge table at his side, as well
+as beneath it, and under his feet and his capacious arm-chair, nothing
+was to be seen but newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>"Take a chair, Renaud, if you can find one, and help yourself to the
+news. You see I have Lucien similarly engaged yonder."</p>
+
+<p>The Ministerial Secretary glanced up from his papers, returned his
+friend's salutation and resumed his reading. He was dressed with his
+customary elegance and richness, but his form and face were fuller than
+when last before the reader, and his brown hair was besprinkled with
+gray.</p>
+
+<p>"I congratulate you, Beauchamp, on being the first to give the news,"
+continued Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud. "Not a paper in Paris but your own has a line
+from the army this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather congratulate me and my paper on having a friend at court."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! and that explains the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that an
+opposition journal has intelligence, which only the Bureau of War could
+have anticipated! Treason&mdash;treason!"</p>
+
+<p>The editor and the Secretary exchanged significant smiles.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p><p>"Oh! I don't doubt that your favors are reciprocal," continued the
+young aristocrat, laughing. "I've half a mind to be something useful
+myself&mdash;Minister&mdash;editor&mdash;anything but an idler and a law-giver&mdash;just to
+experience the exquisite sensation of a new pleasure&mdash;the pleasure of
+revealing and publishing to the world something it knew not before. Why,
+you two fellows, in this dark and dirty little room, are the two
+greatest men in Paris this morning&mdash;or were, rather, before your paper,
+Beauchamp, laid before the world what only you and Lucien knew
+previously. Oh! the delight, the rapture of knowing something that
+nobody else knows, and then of making the revelation!"</p>
+
+<p>"And this news from Algeria is really important," remarked the editor.</p>
+
+<p>"Important! So important that it will be before the Chambers this
+morning," replied the Secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"So I supposed," said the Deputy, "and called to learn additional
+particulars, if you had any, on my way to the Chambers."</p>
+
+<p>"We gave all we had, my dear Lycurgus, and for that were indebted to an
+official dispatch, telegraphed to the War Office, and faithfully
+re-telegraphed to us by our well-beloved Lucien."</p>
+
+<p>"It's true, then, as I have sometimes suspected, that the wires radiate
+from the Minister's sanctum to the editor's?" was the laughing
+rejoinder.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be so, or there's witchcraft in it. There's witchcraft, at any
+rate, in this new invention. Speed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> secrecy, security and surety&mdash;no
+eastern genius of Arabian fiction can be compared to the electric
+telegraph; and how Ministers or editors continued to keep the world in
+vassalage, as they always have done, without this ready slave, seems now
+scarce less wonderful than the invention itself. Instead of detracting
+from the power of the press, the telegraph renders it more powerful than
+ever."</p>
+
+<p>"But affairs in Algeria&mdash;is not the news splendid!" cried the editor.
+"Why did we not all become Spahis and win immortality, as some of our
+generals have?"</p>
+
+<p>"As to immortality," said the Secretary, "we should have been far more
+likely to win the phantom as dead men than as living heroes."</p>
+
+<p>"Debray was at the raising of the siege of Constantine," said Beauchamp
+laughing, "and knows all about the honors of war."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, and all about the raptures of starvation, of cold and
+hunger, after victory, and the ecstatic felicity of being pursued by six
+Bedouins, and after having slain five having my own neck encircled by
+the yataghan of the sixth!"</p>
+
+<p>"And how chanced it that you saved your head, Lucien?" asked the Count.</p>
+
+<p>"Save it&mdash;I didn't save it; but a most excellent friend of mine&mdash;a
+friend in need&mdash;galloped up and saved it for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," replied Beauchamp, "our gallant friend, Maximilian Morrel, the
+Captain of Spahis&mdash;now colonel of a regiment, and in the direct line of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+promotion to the first vacant b&acirc;ton&mdash;eh, Lucien? A lucky thing to save
+the head of one of the War Office from a Bedouin's yataghan. Up&mdash;up&mdash;up,
+like a balloon, has this young Spahi risen ever since."</p>
+
+<p>"You are wrong, Beauchamp. Not like a balloon. Rather like a planet.
+Maximilian Morrel is one of the most gallant young men in the French
+army, and step by step, from rank to rank, has he hewn his own path with
+his good sabre, in a strong hand, nerved by a brave heart and proud
+ambition, to the position he now holds."</p>
+
+<p>"His name I see among the immortals in the dispatch of this morning.
+Well, well, Morrel is a splendid fellow, no doubt, but it's a splendid
+thing to have friends in the War Office, nevertheless, who will give
+that splendor a chance to shine&mdash;will plant the lighted candle in a
+candlestick, and not smother its beams under a bushel."</p>
+
+<p>"Morrel has now been in Africa five whole years," said the Secretary&mdash;"a
+few months only excepted after his marriage with Villefort's fair
+daughter, Valentine, (as was said) when he was indulged with a furlough
+for his honeymoon."</p>
+
+<p>"She is not in Paris?" asked Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"No; she leads the life of a perfect recluse with her child, during her
+husband's absence, at his villa somewhere in the south&mdash;near Marseilles,
+where the department forwards her letters."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet she is said to be a magnificent woman," remarked the Count.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p><p>"Wonderful!" cried Beauchamp. "A magnificent woman and a recluse!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! but it was a love-match of the most devoted species, you must
+remember."</p>
+
+<p>"True; she was to have married our friend, Franz d'Epinay."</p>
+
+<p>"And died to save herself from that fate, I suppose&mdash;and afterwards was
+resurrected and blessed Morrel with her hand and heart, and the most
+exquisite person that even a jaded voluptuary could covet.
+Happy&mdash;happy&mdash;happy man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Apropos of dying," said the Secretary, "do you remember how fast people
+died at M. de Villefort's house about that time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Horrible! A whole family of two or three generations, one after the
+other! First M. and Madame de Saint-M&eacute;ran&mdash;then Barrois, the old servant
+of M. Noirtier&mdash;then Valentine, and, last of all, Madame de Villefort
+and Edward, her idol. No wonder that M. le Procureur du Roi himself went
+mad under such an accumulation of horrors! By the by, Debray, is M. de
+Villefort still an inmate of the Maison Royale de Charenton?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing to the contrary," replied the Secretary, who had resumed
+his paper, and to whom the subject seemed not altogether agreeable. "He
+is an incurable." Then, as if to turn the subject, he continued:
+"Apropos of the immortals of Algeria, here is a name that seems destined
+even to a more rapid apotheosis than that of the favored Morrel."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p><p>"You mean Joliette?" said the editor. "Who, in the name of all that is
+mysterious and heroic, is this same Joliette? I have found it impossible
+to discover, with all the means at the command of the press."</p>
+
+<p>"And I, with all the means at the command of the Government. All we can
+discover is this&mdash;that he is a man of about twenty-five; that he
+enlisted at Marseilles, and in less than three years has risen from the
+ranks to the command of a battalion. His career has been most
+brilliant."</p>
+
+<p>"And to whose favor does he owe his wonderful advancement, Beauchamp?"
+asked the Deputy, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"To that of Marshal Bugeaud, Governor-General of Algeria."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who has indulged him with an appointment in every forlorn hope!"</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent!" cried the Count. "What more could a man resolved to be a
+military immortal desire? Immortality the goal&mdash;two paths conduct to
+it&mdash;each sure&mdash;death&mdash;life!&mdash;the former the shorter, and, perhaps, the
+surer! But there is one name I never see in the war dispatches. Do you
+ever meet with it, Messrs. editor and Secretary&mdash;I mean the name of our
+brilliant friend, Albert de Morcerf? The rumor ran that, after the
+disgrace and suicide of the Count, his father, he and his mother went
+south, and he later to Africa."</p>
+
+<p>"I have hardly seen the name of Morcerf in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> print since the paragraph
+headed 'Yanina' in my paper, about which poor Albert was so anxious to
+fight me."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I," said Debray. "But where now is Madame de Morcerf? Without
+exception, she was the most splendid specimen of a woman I ever saw!"</p>
+
+<p>"High praise, that!" cried the Count, laughing. "Who would suppose our
+cold, calculating, ambitious, haughty, talented and opulent diplomat and
+aristocrat had so much blood in his veins? When before was he known to
+admire anything, male or female&mdash;but himself&mdash;or, at all events, to be
+guilty of the bad taste of expressing that admiration?"</p>
+
+<p>"Debray is right," replied the journalist, somewhat gravely. "Madame de
+Morcerf was, indeed, a noble and dignified woman&mdash;accomplished, lovely,
+dignified, amiable&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!&mdash;stop!&mdash;in the name of all that's forbearing, be considerate of
+my weak nerves! You, too, Beauchamp. Well, she must have been a paragon
+to make the conquest of two of the most inveterate bachelors in all
+Paris! But where is this marvel of excellence&mdash;pardon me, Beauchamp,"
+perceiving that the journalist looked yet more grave, and seemed in no
+mood for bantering or being bantered&mdash;"where is Madame de Morcerf at the
+present time?"</p>
+
+<p>"At Marseilles, I have heard."</p>
+
+<p>"And is married again?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p><p>"No. She is yet a widow."</p>
+
+<p>"And is a recluse, like Morrel's beautiful wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"So says report. They dwell together."</p>
+
+<p>"How romantic! The young wife, whose hero-husband is winning glory amid
+the perils of war and pestilence, pours her griefs, joys and
+anticipations into the bosom of the young mother, who appreciates and
+reciprocates all, because she has a son exposed to the same perils&mdash;and
+both beautiful as the morning! A charming picture! Two immortals in
+epaulets and sashes in the background are only wanted instead of one.
+But I must to the Chambers. M. Dant&egrave;s is expected to speak in the
+tribune this morning upon his measure for the workmen."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Count, who this M. Dant&egrave;s really is?" asked Debray.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a question for a Ministerial Secretary to ask a member while a
+journalist sits by! I only know of M. Dant&egrave;s that he is the most
+eloquent man I ever listened to. I don't mean that he's the greatest
+man, or the profoundest statesman, or the wisest politician, or the
+sagest political economist; but I do mean that, for natural powers of
+persuasion and denunciation&mdash;for natural oratory&mdash;I have never known his
+rival. If Plato's maxim, 'that oratory must be estimated by its
+effects,' is at all correct, then is M. Dant&egrave;s the greatest orator in
+France, for the effect of his oratory is miraculous. There is a sort of
+magic in his clear, sonorous, powerful, yet most exquisitely modulated
+voice,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> and the wave of his arm is like that of a necromancer's wand."</p>
+
+<p>"You are enthusiastic, Count," observed Beauchamp, "but very just. M.
+Dant&egrave;s is, indeed, a remarkable man, and possessed of remarkable
+endowments, both of mind and body. His personal advantages are
+wonderful. Such a figure and grace as his are alone worth more than all
+the powers of other distinguished speakers for popular effect. 'The eyes
+of the multitude are more eloquent than their ears,' as the English
+Shakespeare says."</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw such eyes and such a face," remarked Debray, "but once in
+my life. Do you remember the Count of Monte-Cristo, Messieurs?"</p>
+
+<p>"We shall not soon forget him," was the reply. "But this man differs
+greatly from the Count in most respects, though certainly not unlike him
+in others."</p>
+
+<p>"True," replied the Secretary; "in manners, habits, costume and a
+thousand other things there is a marked difference. Besides, the Count
+was said to be incalculably rich, while the Deputy has every appearance
+of being in very moderate circumstances. But he leads a life so retired
+that he is known only in the Chambers and in his public character. I
+allude to the Deputy's person, when I speak of resemblance to that
+wonderful Count, who set all Paris in a fever, and, more wonderful
+still, kept it so for a whole season. There is I know not what in his
+air and manners that often recalls to me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> that extraordinary man. There
+are the same large and powerful eyes, the same brilliant teeth for which
+the women envied the Count so much, the same graceful and dignified
+figure, the same peculiar voice, the same good taste in dress, and,
+above all, the same colorless, pallid face, as if, to borrow the idea of
+the Countess of G&mdash;&mdash;, he had risen from the dead, or was a visitant
+from another world, or a vampire of this. Her celebrated friend, Lord
+B&mdash;&mdash;, she used to say, was the only man she ever knew with such a
+complexion."</p>
+
+<p>"But, if I recollect rightly," said Beauchamp, "the Count of
+Monte-Cristo was somewhat noted for his profusion of black hair and
+beard. The Deputy Dant&egrave;s is so utterly out of the mode, and out of good
+taste, too, as to wear no beard, and his hair is short. His face is as
+smooth as a woman's, and he always wears a white cravat like a cur&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>"But he is, nevertheless, one of the handsomest men in Paris," added the
+Count&mdash;"at least the women say so. You might add, the Deputy has many
+gray hairs among his black ones, and many furrows on his white brow,
+while Monte-Cristo had neither. Besides, M. Dant&egrave;s has a handsome
+daughter and a son who resembles him greatly, both well grown, while the
+Count was childless."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, be his person and family what they may," said the
+Secretary, rising, "I wish to God the Ministry could secure his talents.
+I tell you, Messieurs, that man's influence over the destinies of France
+is to be almost omnipotent. His <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>powerful mind has grasped the great
+problem of the age&mdash;remuneration for labor. The next revolution in
+France will hinge upon that&mdash;mark the prediction&mdash;and this man and his
+coadjutors, among whom Beauchamp here is one, are doing all they can to
+hasten the crisis. The whole soul of this remarkable man seems devoted
+to the elevation of the masses&mdash;the laboring classes&mdash;the people&mdash;and to
+the amelioration of their condition. His efforts and those of all like
+him cannot ultimately succeed. But they will have a temporary triumph,
+and the streets of Paris will run with blood! These men are rousing
+terrible agencies. They are evoking the fiends of hunger and misery,
+which will neither obey them nor lie down at their bidding."</p>
+
+<p>"And the magicians who have summoned these foul fiends will prove their
+earliest victims!" said Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud, in some excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Messieurs, listen a moment!" cried Beauchamp, rising. "Pardon me, but
+this discussion must cease, at least here. It can lead to no good
+result. As the conductor of a reform journal, I entirely differ with you
+both. But let not political differences interfere with our personal
+friendship. Come, come, old friends, let us forsake this place, redolent
+with politics, having a very atmosphere of discussion, and repair to the
+Chambers, taking V&eacute;ry's on our way."</p>
+
+<p>"Agreed!" cried the Deputy and the Secretary, and the three left the
+journalist's sanctum arm in arm.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>EDMOND DANT&Egrave;S, DEPUTY FROM MARSEILLES.</h3>
+
+<p>Beauchamp, Lucien Debray and Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud were not the only persons
+puzzled with regard to the enigmatical M. Dant&egrave;s; all Paris was more or
+less bothered about him; his entire career prior to his appearance at
+the capital as the Deputy from Marseilles seemed shrouded in
+impenetrable mystery, and this was the more galling to the curious
+Parisians as his wonderful oratorical powers and his intense
+republicanism rendered him the cynosure of all eyes and made him the
+sensation of the hour. The Government had instituted investigations
+concerning him, but without result; even in Marseilles his antecedents
+were unknown; he had come there from the east utterly unheralded,
+attended only by a black servant, and bringing with him his son and
+daughter, but almost immediately he had plunged into politics, winning
+his way to the front with startling rapidity. From the first he had
+ardently espoused the cause of the working people, and such was his
+personal magnetism that he had made hosts of admirers, and had been
+chosen Deputy with hardly a dissenting voice. Some of the inhabitants of
+Marseilles, indeed, remembered a youthful sailor named Edmond Dant&egrave;s,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+but they asserted that he had been dead many years, and that the Deputy
+was unlike him in every particular.</p>
+
+<p>As the young men passed the Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais, on their way to the
+Chamber of Deputies, after a glass of sherry and a biscuit at V&eacute;ry's,
+their attention was attracted by a crowd gathered around an immense
+poster spread upon the bill-board. There seemed no little excitement
+among the throng, a large proportion of whom appeared to be artisans and
+laborers, and loud expressions of admiration, accompanied by animated
+gestures, were heard. Nor were there wanting also words of deep
+denunciation and of significant threatening.</p>
+
+<p>"Down! down with the tyrants! Bread or blood! Wages for work! Food for
+the laborer!" and other cries of equally fearful significance were
+audible.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear that, Beauchamp?" said Debray, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Undoubtedly," was the equally quiet reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Those laborers have deserted the daily toil which would give them the
+bread they so fiercely demand, in order to discuss their imaginary
+misery, and denounce those who are richer than themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"But what brings them to the theatre at this hour?" asked
+Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud.</p>
+
+<p>"The new play," suggested Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! the new play. 'The Laborer of Lyons,' is it not?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p><p>"Yes," said Debray, "and one of the most dangerous productions of the
+hour."</p>
+
+<p>"It is evidently from the pen of one unaccustomed to dramatic
+composition, yet familiar with stage effect," added the journalist. "And
+yet, without the least claptrap, with but little melodramatic power,
+against strong opposition and bitter prejudices, and without claqueurs,
+its own native force and the popularity of the principles it supports
+have carried it triumphantly through the ordeal of two representations.
+It will, doubtless, have a long run, and its influence will be
+incalculable in the cause it advocates&mdash;the cause of human liberty and
+human right."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt it will exert a most baneful influence," bitterly rejoined
+Debray. "Without containing a syllable to which the Ministry can object,
+at least sufficiently to warrant its suppression, it yet abounds with
+principles, sentiments and theories of the most incendiary description,
+well calculated to rouse the disaffection of the laboring classes to
+frenzy. Its inevitable effect will be to give them a false and
+exaggerated idea of their wrongs and their rights, and to stimulate them
+to revolution. Oh! these men have much to answer for. They are drawing
+down an avalanche."</p>
+
+<p>"They are the champions of human liberty," said Beauchamp, warmly, "and
+will be blessed by posterity, if not by the men of the present
+generation."</p>
+
+<p>"Truce to politics, Messieurs!" cried the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>Deputy, observing that his
+friends were becoming excited. "I had heard of this play and its
+powerful character. Who's the author, Beauchamp?"</p>
+
+<p>"The production is attributed to M. Dant&egrave;s, the Deputy from Marseilles,
+with what truth I know not; but he is fully capable of composing such a
+drama. To-morrow night, it is supposed, the author, whoever he may be,
+will be compelled by the people to appear and claim the laurels ready to
+be showered on him in such profusion. But it is nearly three o'clock,"
+continued Beauchamp, "and M. Dant&egrave;s is expected to speak in the early
+part of the sitting."</p>
+
+<p>"To the Chamber, then," said the others, and the trio mingled with the
+crowd hurrying in the same direction.</p>
+
+<p>"What a glorious thing is popularity!" exclaimed the Count.</p>
+
+<p>"What a glorious thing to be the champion of the people!" rejoined
+Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"And how glorious is that champion's glorious career!" cried the
+Secretary. "Let the hydra alone. Like the antique god of mythology, it
+eats up its own children as soon as they get large enough to be eaten.
+It is a fickle beast, and the idol of to-day it crushes to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>The hall of the Chamber of Deputies was crowded when the three friends
+entered. Although the hour for the President to take the chair had not
+yet arrived, the benches were full, and the galleries, public and
+private, were overflowing. Strong <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>agitation was visible among the
+Ministerial benches of the extreme left. The Premier himself was
+present, although his cold countenance, like the surface of a frozen
+lake, betrayed neither apprehension nor the reverse. Self-reliant,
+self-poised, calm, seemingly insensible to surrounding objects and
+events, this man of iron, with a heart of ice and a brain of fire,
+glanced quietly and fixedly around him, with his cold, dark eye, which,
+from time to time, rested on the Communist benches of the extreme right,
+unmoved by the stern glances hurled at him by his many fierce opponents
+and the almost tumultuous excitement by which they were agitated.</p>
+
+<p>At length President Sauzet took the chair. The house came to order, and
+the sitting opened with the usual preliminary business. A large number
+of petitions from the workmen of Paris for employment by the Government
+were presented and referred, and one immense roll containing a hundred
+thousand names, which came from the manufacturing districts, was brought
+in on the shoulders of two men and placed in the area before the
+President's chair, escorted by a deputation from the artisans; it was
+received with an uproar of applause from the centre of the extreme right
+of the benches, and from the throngs of blouses in the galleries. The
+tumult having, at length, subsided, the order of the day was announced
+to be the discussion of the bill introduced by M. Dant&egrave;s, having for its
+purpose the general amelioration of the condition of the industrial
+classes in the Kingdom; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> M. Dant&egrave;s was himself announced to be the
+first on the list to occupy the tribune. A deep murmur of anticipation
+ran around the vast hall at this announcement. The multitudes in the
+galleries leaned forward to gain a better view of this idol, and to
+catch every syllable that might fall from his lips; and every eye among
+the members was turned to the seat of M. Dant&egrave;s, on the centre right of
+the benches.</p>
+
+<p>A tall figure in black, with a white cravat, rose and advanced to the
+tribune slowly, amid a stillness as hushed and breathless as the prior
+excitement had been noisy. In age, M. Dant&egrave;s seemed about fifty or
+fifty-five. His form was slight and his movements were graceful and
+dignified. His face was livid and as calm as marble; but for the large
+and eloquent eye, dark as night, one might have thought that broad white
+brow, that massive chin, those firmly compressed lips and that colorless
+mouth were those of a statue. Yet in the furrows of that forehead and
+the deep lines of that face could be read the record of thought and
+suffering. The busy plowshare had turned up the deep graves of departed
+passions. No one could gaze or even glance at that face and not perceive
+at once that it was the visage of a man of many sorrows&mdash;yet of a man
+proud, calm, self-possessed, self-poised and indomitable. His hair,
+which had been raven black, now rested in thin waves around his
+expansive forehead and was sprinkled with gray, while his intellectual
+countenance wore that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>expression of weariness and melancholy which
+illness, deep study and grief invariably trace.</p>
+
+<p>Mounting the steps of the tribune with slow and deliberate tread, he
+drew up his tall figure, and resting his left hand, which grasped a roll
+of papers, upon the marble slab, glanced around on the turbulent billows
+of upturned and excited faces, as if at a loss how to address them.
+Having read the bill, after the usual prefatory remarks, he began by
+laying down the platform which he proposed occupying in its advocacy and
+support, consisting, of course, of abstract, self-evident propositions,
+which none could have the hardihood to gainsay, yet, when once admitted,
+the deductions inevitably flowing therefrom none could resist. The
+propositions seemed safe and indisputable, but the deductions evolved
+from those propositions were as frightful to the legitimist as they were
+delightful to the liberal. That each man is born the heir to the same
+natural rights&mdash;that each man, alike and equally with all others, has a
+birthright of which he cannot be divested and of which he cannot divest
+himself, to act, to think and to pursue happiness wherever he can find
+it without infringement on the rights of his fellow beings&mdash;none were
+disposed to deny. That each human animal, as each animal of inferior
+grade, has, also, the right of subsistence, drained from the bosom of
+the earth, the great mother of us all, which without his foreknowledge
+or wish gave him being, seemed, also, indisputable. But when from these
+propositions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> were deduced that crime is rather the result of misery
+than depravity, and that the office of government is more to prevent
+crime by creating happiness than to punish it by creating misery, and
+that for the natural rights resigned by the individual in entering into
+and upholding the social system human government is bound to afford
+employment and subsistence to each of its members, that labor and its
+produce should be in partnership, that competition should be abolished,
+and work and wages so distributed by the State as to equalize the
+condition of each individual in the community, and, finally, that the
+claims of labor are not satisfied by wages, but the workman is entitled
+to a proprietary share in the capital which employs him, inasmuch as all
+the woes and miseries of the laborer arise exclusively from the
+competition for work&mdash;when these deductions were advanced the opulent
+and the conservative started back in terror and dismay. Distribution of
+property, universal plunder, havoc, bloodshed, sans culottism, a red
+republic and the ghastly shapes of another Reign of Terror rose in
+frightful vividness before the fancy. As the speaker proceeded to
+illustrate and sustain his positions, which were those of the Communist,
+Socialist, Fourierist, call them which we may, and poured forth a fiery
+flood of persuasion, invective, denunciation and shouts of applause,
+mingled with cries of rage and dismay, rose from all quarters of the
+hall. Unmoved and undaunted, that marble man, livid as a spectre, his
+dark eyes blazing, his thin and writhing lip<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> flecked with foam, his
+tall form swaying to and fro, rising, bending&mdash;now thrown back, then
+leaning over the marble bar of the tribune&mdash;continued to pour forth his
+scathing sarcasm, his crushing invective, his eloquent persuasion and
+his unanswerable argument in tones, now soft and tuneful as a silvery
+bell, then sad and pitiful as an evening zephyr, then clear, high and
+sonorous as a clarion, then hoarse and deep as the thunder, for a period
+of four hours, unbroken and continuous, without stop or stay.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this speech, as the orator, pale, exhausted, shattered,
+unstrung, with nerves like the torn cordage of a ship that has outridden
+the tempest, descended from the tribune, baffles all description.
+Fearful of its influence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at once arose,
+and in order to divert the attention of the Chamber asked leave to lay
+before it the late dispatches from the seat of war, setting forth the
+glorious triumphs of the French arms in Algeria. This intelligence,
+which, at any other time, would have been received with rapturous
+enthusiasm, was listened to under the influence of a counterirritant
+already at work, with comparative calmness, and its only effect was to
+cause a postponement of the vote on the laborers' bill upon the plea of
+the lateness of the hour, although not without strenuous opposition from
+the extreme right. The rejoicing of the galleries at the triumph of
+their champion and their fierce applause knew no bounds at the close of
+the sitting, and their idol escaped being borne in his chair to his
+lodgings only by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> gliding through a private exit from the hall to the
+first carriage he could find.</p>
+
+<p>"What think you?" cried Beauchamp, triumphantly, to the Ministerial
+Secretary, as they were pressed together for an instant by the excited
+throng on the steps as they left the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Think, Monsieur!" was the bitter rejoinder of the Secretary, whose
+agitation completely overcame his habitual and constitutional
+self-possession, "I think Paris is on the eve of another Reign of
+Terror!"</p>
+
+<p>Beauchamp laughed, and the friends were drawn apart by the conflicting
+billows of the crowd.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MYSTERY THICKENS.</h3>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s' wonderful speech was the principal topic of conversation in
+every quarter of Paris, exciting comment of the most animated
+description. Of course, the workmen and their friends were delighted
+with it, and could not find words strong enough to adequately express
+their enthusiastic admiration for the gifted orator. Those belonging to
+the Government party, on the other hand, denounced the speaker as a
+demagogue and the speech as in the highest degree incendiary and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+dangerous. Strange to relate, whoever spoke of the oration always
+mentioned the new play, "The Laborer of Lyons," attributing its
+authorship to the mysterious Deputy from Marseilles, and the drama
+received cordial endorsement or scathing censure, according to the
+political opinions of those who alluded to it.</p>
+
+<p>For these reasons curiosity in regard to M. Dant&egrave;s ran higher than ever,
+but instead of decreasing as he became more prominent, the mystery
+surrounding him seemed only to thicken. Nevertheless, the Deputy was the
+lion of the hour, or rather would have been, had he permitted himself to
+be lionized, but this he persistently declined to do, holding aloof from
+society and mingling with none save his political associates, though
+even to them he was a problem they could not solve; they, however,
+recognized in him a powerful coadjutor, and with that were forced to be
+content.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">The Hall of the Chamber of Deputies</span> was last evening thronged to
+overflowing. It had been understood that M. Dant&egrave;s was to advocate
+the People's Bill, and, as usual, it had but to be known that this
+distinguished orator was to occupy the tribune to draw out all
+classes of citizens. Nor was the vast multitude disappointed. A
+more powerful speech has never been heard within those walls. More
+than four hours was the audience enchained by the matchless
+eloquence of this remarkable man, which was received with thunders
+of applause. A report of this speech will be found under the
+appropriate head."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p><p>"<span class="smcap">The New Play</span> entitled, 'The Laborer of Lyons,' recently produced
+at the Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais with triumphant success, and which has
+caused such a deep and universal sensation, is repeated to-night.
+There is reason to anticipate that the author, who is supposed to
+be a celebrated orator of the opposition, may be induced to comply
+with the call, which will be again renewed, to avow himself."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Such were two paragraphs which the following morning appeared in
+Beauchamp's journal, and similar notices of both speech and drama were
+published in every other opposition sheet in Paris. In the Ministerial
+organ, on the contrary, and in all the papers of like political bias,
+appeared the following and similar paragraphs:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">The Speech of M. Dant&egrave;s</span>, last evening, in the Chamber of Deputies,
+was one of the most dangerous diatribes to which we ever
+listened&mdash;dangerous for the insidious and sophistical principles it
+advanced, and the almost fiend-like eloquence with which they were
+urged. Where are these things to stop? At what terrible catastrophe
+do these men aim? What crisis do they contemplate?"</p></blockquote>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">The New Drama</span> at the Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais, called 'The Laborer of
+Lyons,' which is to-night to be repeated, is calculated and seems
+to have been designed by its reckless author to produce the very
+worst effects among the laboring classes. We deeply regret that it
+has been suffered by the censors to be brought out."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The multitude called forth by paragraphs like these to witness the new
+play was, of course, immense. Long before the time for the curtain to
+rise,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> the vast edifice was crowded to its utmost capacity with an eager
+and enthusiastic assemblage. Not only were the galleries, parquette and
+lobbies filled with blouses, but the boxes were glittering with a
+perfect galaxy of fashion, loveliness and rank. Conspicuous in the
+orchestra stalls were the three friends&mdash;the Secretary, the journalist
+and the Deputy. In a small and private loge in the second tier,
+concealed from all eyes by its light curtain of green silk, and its
+position, but himself viewing everything upon the stage or in the house,
+sat the author of the play, calmly awaiting the rising of the curtain.</p>
+
+<p>The performance at length began, and the piece proceeded to its
+termination amid thunders of applause, which, as the curtain finally
+descended on the last scene of the last act, became perfectly deafening,
+accompanied by cries for the author. But no author appeared behind the
+footlights or in the proscenium box; and, at last, the uproar becoming
+redoubled, the manager came forward, and, in the author's behalf,
+tendered grateful acknowledgments for the unprecedented favor, even by a
+Parisian audience, with which the production had been received, but, at
+the same time, entreated the additional favor that they would grant the
+author's request, and permit his name, for the present, to remain
+unknown. He would, however, venture to reveal this much, that the author
+was a distinguished friend of the people. The earthquake of applause
+which succeeded this announcement was almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> frightful, and while the
+scene was at its height, the three friends with great difficulty managed
+to extricate themselves from the multitude which wedged up the lobbies,
+and to make their escape.</p>
+
+<p>"A friend of the people!" cried Debray, bitterly, as his coup&eacute;,
+containing himself and companions, drove off to V&eacute;ry's. "From such
+friends let the people be saved, and they may save themselves from their
+foes."</p>
+
+<p>"And the play, what think you of that?" cried Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"That it is a most able and abominable production, eminently calculated
+to cause exactly the evils which we have this night perceived&mdash;to excite
+and rouse the worst passions of the mob, and render the masses
+dissatisfied with their inevitable and irredeemable lot, and as
+dangerous as wild beasts to all whose lot is more favored."</p>
+
+<p>"Man has rights as man, and men in masses have rights, and one of those
+rights is to know actually what those rights are," said Beauchamp. "The
+most melancholy feature in the oppression of man is his ignorance that
+he is oppressed. Enlighten him as to those rights, elevate his mind to
+appreciate and value them, and then counsel him firmly and resolutely to
+demand those rights, and quietly and wisely to obtain them."</p>
+
+<p>"Aye! but will he obey such counsel?" exclaimed Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud. "Will
+not the result of such enlightenment and excitement prove, as it ever
+has proved, anarchy, revolution, guilt, blood? Who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> shall restrain the
+monster once lashed into madness?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you can surely perceive no such design in this play, and no such
+effect," rejoined Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"In the abstract," replied the Count, "this production is
+unexceptionable&mdash;most beautiful, yet most powerful. How it could have
+been the work of an unpracticed pen, embodying as it does passages of
+which the first dramatists of the romantic school might be proud, I
+cannot imagine. Besides, there seems familiar acquaintance with stage
+effect and the way in which it is produced. But that might have been,
+and probably was, the result of some professional player's suggestions."</p>
+
+<p>"And, then, the profound knowledge of the human heart evinced&mdash;its
+passions, motives and principles of action," added the journalist.
+"There seems an individuality, a personality in the production, which
+compels the idea that the author is himself the hero, that he has
+himself experienced the evils he so vividly portrays, that the drama is
+at once the effusion of his own heart and the embodiment of his own
+history. Can that man be M. Dant&egrave;s?"</p>
+
+<p>"If it be he," cried the Secretary, "there is more reason than ever to
+call him the most dangerous man in Paris. What with his speeches in the
+Chamber and his plays at the theatre, all tending to one most
+unrighteous end, and all aiming to inflame such an explosive mass as the
+workmen of Paris, he may be regarded as little less than the very agent
+of the fiend to accomplish havoc on earth!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p><p>"Yet, strange to say, my dear Secretary," said the journalist,
+laughing, "you have not yet estimated the tithe of this man's influence
+for good, or, as you think, for evil. Rumor proclaims him to be as
+immensely opulent as appearances would indicate him to be impoverished.
+That his whole soul, as you say, is devoted to the people, with all his
+wonderful powers of mind and person, is undoubted. That he has availed
+himself of that grand lever, the press, to accomplish his purposes, be
+they good or bad, seems equally certain. 'La R&eacute;forme,' the new daily, is
+undoubtedly under his control, if not sustained by his pen and his
+purse, for it has a wider circulation than all the other Parisian papers
+put together. It goes everywhere&mdash;it seeks the alleys, not the
+boulevards, finds its way to the threshold of all, whether paid for or
+not."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" cried Debray, in great agitation. "Is it so?"</p>
+
+<p>"And, then, not only is the public press subsidized by this man, if
+report is not even falser than usual, but a whole army of pamphleteers,
+journalists, litt&eacute;rateurs and students await his bidding, as well as
+some of the most distinguished novelists and dramatists of the nation
+and age!"</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" exclaimed the Count. "Can this be so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay&mdash;nay," replied Beauchamp, "I make no assertions, I merely retail
+rumors. But what cannot uncounted wealth achieve, directed by genius and
+intelligence?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p><p>"But is this man actually so wealthy?" asked Debray, pale with
+agitation. "His manners, dress, equipage, residence and mode of life
+would indicate just the reverse."</p>
+
+<p>"I know not&mdash;no one knows," said Beauchamp. "It is only known to myself
+and to a few others that he dwells in the mansion No. 27 Rue du Helder,
+formerly the residence of the Count de Morcerf, and that his private
+apartment is that pavilion at the corner of the court, where at
+half-past ten, on the morning of the 21st of May, 1838, we breakfasted
+with our amiable friend Albert, and were met by that remarkable man, the
+Count of Monte-Cristo."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember that morning well," said Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything, it is said, remains in that once splendid mansion precisely
+as when it was deserted by the Countess and her son, at the time of the
+suicide of the Count&mdash;everything except that glorious picture of the
+Catalan fisherman by Leopold Robert, in Albert's exquisite chamber,
+which alone he took with him."</p>
+
+<p>"It is strange that a man so opulent as you represent M. Dant&egrave;s to be,
+should adopt his magnificence at second hand," observed Debray, coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"But I do not represent him as opulent, my dear Lucien; and he certainly
+is the last man either to invent magnificence or to adopt it. Why, he is
+as plain in manners and mode as St. Simon himself. His dress you have
+seen; as to equipage his only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> conveyance is a public fiacre; as to
+diet, household arrangements and everything else of a personal nature,
+nothing can be more republican and less epicurean than is witnessed at
+his house. His study, Albert de Morcerf's pavilion, is said to be the
+only sumptuous apartment in the whole establishment; and that
+sumptuousness is of a character entirely literary and practical. His
+retinue consists of three servants, called Baptistin, Bertuccio and Ali,
+the latter being a Nubian, although fame gives him a perfect army of
+servitors prompt to execute his bidding. But I will not indulge your
+skeptical and sarcastic nature, Lucien, with a detail of all that rumor
+says of this wonderful man. I will only say that all he is, and has or
+hopes for seems devoted to one single object&mdash;the welfare of his race."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he a wife?" asked Debray.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a widower, with two children, a young girl, called Zuleika, and a
+youthful son, called Esp&eacute;rance. But my acquaintance with him is wholly
+of a public character. I have never been in his house, and very few
+there are who have been. But here we are."</p>
+
+<p>And the coup&eacute; stopped at V&eacute;ry's.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>DANT&Egrave;S AND HIS DAUGHTER.</h3>
+
+<p>Even in the immediate vicinity of the Morcerf mansion, No. 27 Rue du
+Helder, no one was aware that its new tenant was M. Dant&egrave;s, the famous
+Deputy from Marseilles. All the neighbors knew was that the palatial
+edifice had been purchased by a stranger, who said he was acting for his
+master, a man of great wealth lately arrived from the east. No repairs
+or alterations had been made, while the Morcerf furniture was bought
+with the house, the only new articles making their appearance being
+several huge bookcases and a number of large boxes evidently containing
+books, together with a host of traveling trunks filled, as was to be
+presumed, with the wardrobe of the family. The servants took possession
+during the day and were duly noted, but how or when the proprietor came
+could not be ascertained, while after his installation glimpses of him
+were exceedingly rare.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, however, a beautiful girl, with an oriental look
+notwithstanding her tasteful and elegant Parisian attire, would be seen
+for a moment at the windows, but she invariably vanished on realizing
+that she was observed. Sometimes, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> handsome young man stood at her
+side, but he also seemed anxious to avoid the scrutiny of the curious,
+although he evinced less timidity than his companion, always withdrawing
+slowly and with great deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>It was after midnight. On the second floor of the pavilion once
+inhabited by the Viscount Albert de Morcerf was now a spacious library.
+The walls were lined with tall book-shelves, mounting to the lofty
+ceiling, and groaning under ponderous piles of volumes, from the huge
+black letter folio of the Middle Ages to the lightest duodecimo of the
+day; while in all parts of the chamber, on the floor, tables and chairs,
+and in the deep embrasures of the windows, were scattered huge masses of
+papers, pamphlets, manuscripts and charts. Over the bookcases stood
+marble busts of Danton, Mirabeau, Napoleon, Armand Carrel, the Duc de
+St. Simon and other great men whose names are identified with France;
+between the windows looking out on the garden, shrouded in shrubs and
+creeping plants, hung a full-length and magnificent picture of Fourier.
+Near the centre of the apartment stood a vast table covered with books,
+papers, manuscripts and writing materials, beside which stood one of
+those sombre and massive arm-chairs, on the possession of which the
+former proprietor had so felicitated himself, bearing on a carved shield
+the fleur-de-lis of the Louvre, and in whose sumptuous and antique
+embrace had, perhaps, reposed a Richelieu, a Mazarin or a Sully. The
+windows were hung with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> heavy tapestry of ancient pattern and rich dye,
+and also the walls, save where covered with books. A soft and summery
+atmosphere, the warmth of which emanated from concealed furnaces,
+neutralized the chill of an autumnal night, and the mellow chiaro-oscuro
+of a vast astral diffused its lunar effulgence on all around.</p>
+
+<p>Within this chamber was a man, who, with arms crossed upon his bosom and
+eyes fastened in profound and seemingly mournful contemplation upon the
+floor, slowly paced from one extremity of the spacious apartment to the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>This man was M. Dant&egrave;s, representative of Marseilles in the French
+Chamber of Deputies.</p>
+
+<p>"At last, at last," he murmured, "the avenging Nemesis ceases to gnaw!
+At length the angel Peace begins to smile! The tempest, which, for
+nearly thirty years, has raved and swelled in my heart, begins to lull!
+At length I commence to live&mdash;at length I realize and pursue life's true
+end. Let me reflect," he continued, after a pause, "let me review the
+past. The past! alas! my past is a painful blank! At twenty, from the
+very marriage-feast, from the side of her whom more than life I loved, I
+was torn by the envy of one man and the jealousy of another, and then,
+by the ambition of a third, to whom nothing was crime if it but
+ministered to that unhallowed impulse, I was plunged into a dungeon,
+whose counterpart only the vaults of hell can furnish. For fourteen long
+years I was the tenant of a sombre tomb. The agony, the despair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> of
+those awful years&mdash;oh! God! oh! God!" and he shuddered and clasped his
+hands over his head as if to crush the recollection.</p>
+
+<p>After a pause he resumed: "And then those daily vows of vengeance! oh!
+vain and impotent vows as then they seemed! vows of awful agony, of
+fiendish retribution, though at that time I knew not all! I knew not
+that a venerable father had pined and died of starvation through the
+wrong done to me! I knew not that the woman I loved had become the bride
+of my destroyer! Yet those vows, awful and blasphemous as they were,
+those vows of vengeance have been terribly, dreadfully fulfilled! As the
+destroying angel of God's retributive providence, I was endowed with
+superhuman powers to walk the earth, to administer His justice and to
+execute His decrees. For fourteen years was that vengeance prepared, yet
+delayed. At last, it fell&mdash;it fell. All who had wronged me met their
+dreadful doom. Ambition was changed to madness. Avarice was tortured
+with bankruptcy. Falsehood sought refuge in self destruction; and
+all&mdash;all&mdash;all&mdash;even the meanest of those who had contributed to blight
+my life&mdash;perished miserably at my will! And did the guilty suffer alone?
+Alas! impious, remorseless, horrible revenge! The innocent and the
+criminal suffered alike. A might approaching omnipotence was vouchsafed
+me, but no power of omniscience to direct my hand or stay its effects.
+Blind and mad I knew not what I did. Those I most loved fell beneath the
+blow which crushed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> those I most abhorred, and shared the same fate. The
+terrible agencies I had summoned as my slaves became my masters. The
+fiends which, as ministers of God's justice, garbed in the guise of
+angels of light, I had, by hideous necromancy, evoked to aid me in
+righteous retribution, proved the dark demons of hell and derided all
+orders to accomplish my bidding. The awful engines I had set in motion I
+found myself powerless to arrest or control. Effects ceased not with the
+causes in which they had their origin. The stroke of vengeance, aimed at
+foes, recoiled on friends&mdash;recoiled on myself. And when I fain would
+stop, when I would arrest the awful havoc which my will had commenced,
+the dark ministers I had called up howled in my ears, 'On! on! on!
+vengeance is thine! vengeance is thine!' They mocked my terror and
+laughed at my apprehensions.</p>
+
+<p>"At last there seemed a pause. Fate appeared to have done her worst, to
+have executed her decrees. The blind agencies of vengeance blasted no
+more, because there seemed no more to blast. The misery I had caused I
+strove to alleviate, the innocent hearts I had crushed I endeavored to
+heal; rejoicing in the joy I had created and the affection I gratified,
+once more I loved&mdash;loved, but, oh! not as I first had loved&mdash;not with
+that deep, adoring, delirious passion of my youth, and yet with a
+subdued, fraternal feeling I loved; in the calm and sweet seclusion of a
+favored clime, parted from the world with all its miseries and its
+crimes, environed by all that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> man or nature could contribute to human
+bliss, I began to dream of happiness, in the happiness I had created.
+But, alas! I forgot that man's happiness lies not in his own hand, but
+in the hand of his Maker. I forgot that an omniscient eye pursued me,
+that a blasphemed and omnipotent Power was over me. The blow
+paused&mdash;hovered&mdash;fell, not upon me, not on the guilty, but again it fell
+on the innocent; and she, who was my only hope, my beloved Hayd&eacute;e, my
+wife, was snatched from my heart, ruthlessly murdered by that fiend,
+Benedetto!"</p>
+
+<p>The unhappy man pressed his hand to his forehead, and for some time
+paced the chamber in silence; then, approaching a small alcove at one
+extremity of the apartment, he raised the heavy and sumptuous hangings
+and revealed a small silver casket of exquisite workmanship and
+appointments, that sparkled as the mellow light poured in upon it. M.
+Dant&egrave;s knelt beside the ebony table on which this casket rested, and for
+some moments seemed absorbed in prayer; then, rising and taking the
+casket in his hands, he touched a spring, when the lid flew open,
+disclosing a miniature portrait of Hayd&eacute;e, set in a frame of gold,
+ornamented with flashing diamonds and emeralds; he gazed long and
+lovingly at this portrait, that seemed designed to show how exquisitely
+fair God's creatures may be, after which he kissed it reverently, closed
+the casket, restored it to the table, and slowly dropped the hangings to
+their place. Resuming his walk, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> said, mournfully: "But the deepest
+wound will close; the heaviest grief, the bitterest woe, becomes
+assuaged. Time, the comforter, soothes and consoles. From this stroke of
+bereavement I at length awoke, and, at the same moment, awoke to the
+conviction that my whole past had been an error; that my life had been a
+lie; that the years which had succeeded my imprisonment had been more
+utterly lost than those passed within my dungeon itself; and there came
+to me the conviction that time, talent, power and wealth had been worse
+than wasted&mdash;that the wondrous riches, undreamed of save in the wildest
+flights of oriental fiction, and by a miracle bestowed upon me, were
+designed for nobler, holier purposes than to subserve a fiendish and
+blasphemous vengeance for even unutterable wrongs, or to minister to the
+gratification of pride, and the satisfaction of selfish tastes and
+appetites, however refined and sublimated.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked around me&mdash;the world was full of misery&mdash;and the same
+disposition which had plunged me into a dungeon was crushing the hearts
+and hopes of millions of my race. My bosom softened by bereavement
+yearned toward my suffering fellows, and the path of duty, peace and
+happiness seemed open to my desolate and despairing heart. Resolution
+followed conviction; the world was my field; liberty, equality and
+fraternity were my objects. Not France alone, with her miserable
+millions, but Russia with her serfs, Poland with her wrongs, the
+enslaved Italian, the oppressed German, the starving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> son of Erin, the
+squalid operative of England, the priest-ridden slave of Jesuit Spain,
+and the oppressed but free-born Switzer. Great men and good men I found
+had already, with superhuman skill, constructed a system, a machine for
+the amelioration of mankind's condition, which needed only the
+co-operation of boundless wealth to set it in motion. That wealth was
+mine! The common house for the laborer, the asylum for the insane, for
+the orphan, the Magdalen, the destitute, the sick, the friendless, the
+deserted, the bereaved, or the asylum for the victim of his own vices,
+or the vices of others, for the depravity which originates in misery,
+ignorance or fate&mdash;all these my riches could sustain. Around me, in the
+accomplishment of this design, the uncounted wealth intrusted to my
+stewardship has already gathered the mightiest minds in every department
+of intellect, and the best hearts; and if but a few years are vouchsafed
+us to carry out the system we have adopted, all Europe, despite her
+throned and sceptred tyrants, impiously claiming the right to oppress by
+the will of God, shall be free! Silently but surely, the principle of
+human liberty is ceaselessly at work, undermining thrones and
+overthrowing dynasties. The hush that precedes the tornado even now
+broods over Europe; nations slumber the heavy sleep that preludes the
+earthquake. The hour of revolution is at hand&mdash;of social regeneration,
+disenthrallment, redemption, over all the world. In every capital of
+Europe the mine is prepared&mdash;the train laid to be lighted, and from this
+solitary chamber the free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> thought on the lightning's pinion flies to
+Vienna, St. Petersburg, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, London, over mountain and
+plain&mdash;over sea and land&mdash;through the forest wilderness and the thronged
+city; taken up by the press, it makes thrones totter and tyrants
+tremble&mdash;tremble at an influence which emanates they know not whence and
+contemplates a purpose they know not what&mdash;an influence whose mystery
+they are impotent to penetrate, and whose shadowy but awful right they
+are powerless to resist!"</p>
+
+<p>At that instant the silvery tinkle of a bell was heard at the table, and
+a low and continuous whizzing as of clockwork at once commenced. The
+Deputy advanced hastily to the table. The register of the electric
+telegraph like a living thing was unfolding the secrets of events at
+that moment transpiring at the furthest extremity of the Kingdom!
+Eagerly seizing the slip of paper which was gliding through the machine,
+he glanced over the cabalistic cipher there traced.
+"Lyons&mdash;Marseilles&mdash;Rome&mdash;Algeria," he murmured. "All goes well." And
+while the wonderful register, like a thing of life, still whizzed,
+clicked and delivered its magic scroll, covered with characters
+unintelligible to all but him for whose eye they were designed, he
+touched a spring, and a row of ivory keys resembling those of a
+piano-forte was revealed. Then rapidly touching them with the fingers of
+one hand, while he held up before him the endless slip of paper in the
+other as it was evolved, he transferred its <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>cabalistic contents,
+character by character, to their distant destination.</p>
+
+<p>And when the day dawned on Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Madrid, the
+intelligence thus concentrated, and thus distributed in that solitary
+chamber, was laid by the press before a hundred thousand eyes, in a
+language which each could comprehend, for in every capital of Europe
+unbounded wealth had established a press which groaned in unceasing
+parturition for human rights, causing princes to tremble and ministers
+to wonder and grow pale; over each press, thus set in motion as if
+literally by an electric touch a thousand miles away, presided men of
+the greatest powers and most varied attainments which philanthropy or
+covetousness could enlist, while the result of their labors was sown
+broadcast among the poorest and humblest, without price or compensation,
+pouring light upon their darkened understandings and giving them
+knowledge of their rights.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was the newspaper press alone active. The feuilleton press was also
+at work; and magazines, reviews, pamphlets, whole libraries of volumes,
+were flung like Sibylline leaves on the four winds of heaven. Fiction,
+the drama, religion, art, literature, moral and mechanical science&mdash;all
+departments of intellect&mdash;silently, unseen, yet surely exerted their
+omnipotent influence for the attainment of one single glorious end&mdash;the
+happiness, rights, freedom of man; all this was under the guidance of
+one powerful mind and benevolent heart, wielding the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> resistless
+necromancy of countless and exhaustless treasure! Not a point in all
+Europe whence influence could radiate and be distributed was there at
+which this man, in one brief year, had not set in motion the press and
+the telegraph, those tremendous levers of the age to move the world, and
+all the more powerfully to move it because oft unseen. Not a court was
+there of emperor or prince, czar or kaiser, king, duke or potentate in
+which dwelt not his emissary, who suspected, least of all, knew
+everything that occurred, and, on the lightning's wing, dispatched it to
+its destination, so that the most important decrees of the
+cabinet-council of Vienna were exposed to the whole world by the
+Parisian press long before they had been communicated by Metternich to
+his sovereign. And thus, often, the ruler first learned the purposes of
+the Minister. Not a city or village was there in all Europe which
+nourished not in its bosom the germ of reform and revolution, while the
+great principle of association combined, embodied, and concentrated into
+a focus energies and influences which would otherwise have proved
+comparatively powerless.</p>
+
+<p>The click and buzz of the register ceased&mdash;the engine had revealed its
+secret&mdash;the shadowy tale had been caught up as it fell and given to the
+press of all Europe, thence to be laid before men's minds.</p>
+
+<p>Exhausted by the severe mental toil, and by the lateness of the hour,
+the Deputy sank back into his arm-chair and clasped his hands.
+"Glorious,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> omnipotent science!" he exclaimed in low and trembling, yet
+eager and enthusiastic tones. "Wealth must yield in power to thee, for
+what wealth can rival thy achievements or secure thy results? Thou hast
+girt the earth with web-work, forced the lightning to syllable the
+unspoken thought and made man's mind ubiquitous like God's; ere long,
+thou wilt have knit together with thy magic spells a world of mankind
+into one vast brotherhood!"</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s ceased and, closing his eyes wearily, continued to think over
+the possibilities of the future. As he sat there motionless and
+seemingly asleep, a light footfall was heard in the apartment and his
+daughter stood before him. Zuleika was now sixteen, tall and matured
+beyond her years; she greatly resembled her dead mother, Hayd&eacute;e, the
+beautiful Greek, and the half-oriental costume she wore helped to render
+the resemblance still more striking; her abundant hair was the hue of
+the raven's wing, her feet and hands were those of a fairy, while her
+large and expressive eyes flashed like diamonds, and her parted lips, as
+red as rubies, disclosed perfect teeth of the whiteness of pearls. A
+shade of anxiety settled upon her handsome countenance as she bent over
+her weary father. The Deputy opened his eyes and glanced at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you up so late, my child?" he asked, fondly. "I thought you
+were sleeping soundly long ere this."</p>
+
+<p>"I was waiting for you, papa," replied Zuleika, in a low, musical voice,
+that sounded like a chime of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> tiny bells; "I could not retire to my
+couch while you were toiling."</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s pointed to a stool; the young girl brought it and seated
+herself at his feet; he drew her to his knee, smoothing her tresses
+gently and affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>"So you would not desert me, darling?" he said, with a glad smile.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, dear papa," answered she, nestling closer to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you always love me as you do now, Zuleika?" asked the father,
+looking down into the liquid depths of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! papa, what a question, what a singular question!" said the girl,
+springing to her feet, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissing
+him again and again.</p>
+
+<p>"But love of another kind and for another will come along after awhile,"
+said the Deputy sadly, "and then you will forget your father."</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika blushed and hung her head in maidenly modesty; then she
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, papa; never will I forget you whatever may happen!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! my darling, you know not what you are saying; it is only natural
+for a woman to cast her father aside and cleave unto her husband."</p>
+
+<p>"But, papa, I have not even a lover yet, and, besides, I am not a woman;
+I am merely a little girl and your own, true, loving daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, but you must remember that last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> year, young as you were
+then, you attracted marked attention from several youthful Romans of the
+best families in the Eternal City, and that one of them, the Viscount
+Giovanni Massetti, went so far as to ask me for your hand."</p>
+
+<p>At the mention of Massetti's name the blush upon Zuleika's cheek
+deepened. She trembled slightly, but said nothing; her heart fluttered
+painfully, but the pain was not altogether disagreeable. The young
+Viscount was evidently not unpleasing to her.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s resumed, looking at her fixedly the while:</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, as you were then attending the convent school I felt it my
+duty to deny Giovanni Massetti's solicitation, nay, his ardent,
+impetuous prayer, but I did not deprive him of all hope; I gave him
+permission to urge his suit with you personally after a year from that
+time had elapsed. Did I do right?"</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika maintained silence, but blushed and trembled more than ever,
+while her heart fluttered so that she placed her hand upon her breast to
+still it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, my daughter, answer me," said the Deputy, kindly, "did I do
+right? Tell me what your little heart says."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know, oh! I do not know!" cried Zuleika, bursting into tears.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there now," said her father, soothingly; "I did not mean either
+to frighten or wound you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> If the Viscount is displeasing to you I will
+answer his letter to-morrow and tell him as gently as possible that he
+has no hope of winning your hand."</p>
+
+<p>"What! have you received a letter from Giovanni?" exclaimed Zuleika,
+with sudden interest, her tears vanishing instantly and her pretty face
+brightening up.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho! ho!" said M. Dant&egrave;s to himself, "Mademoiselle has waked up in
+earnest now." Then he added aloud: "Yes, one came this afternoon. The
+Viscount is in Paris, and has claimed the privilege I accorded him a
+year ago, provided you interposed no objection. However, the matter can
+speedily be settled. Young Massetti is a man of honor, and will not for
+an instant think of troubling with his attentions a lady to whom they
+cannot prove acceptable."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! papa, papa, don't tell him that; he wouldn't come here if you did;
+besides, did&mdash;did&mdash;did I ever tell you that Giovanni's attentions would
+prove unacceptable to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not in so many words," answered M. Dant&egrave;s, archly, "but I inferred
+as much from your manner and tears just now. So I am to understand that
+you do not want me to reply to the Viscount's letter, am I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! yes, I want you to reply to his letter, but&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But what, darling?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish you to tell him there is no hope!"</p>
+
+<p>"You think there is hope, then?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p><p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;am afraid so, dear papa!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yet a moment ago you told me you had no lover, and were merely a little
+girl!"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know then that Giovanni was in Paris, and I&mdash;I&mdash;thought he
+had forgotten all about me."</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s smiled as he said:</p>
+
+<p>"That makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it, Mademoiselle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Zuleika, innocently; then she added in a tone of great
+earnestness: "Write to Giovanni in the morning, and&mdash;and tell him I
+shall be delighted to see him."</p>
+
+<p>"I will write and inform him that, so far as I have been able to
+discover, my daughter does not object to receiving a visit from him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! that would be too cold and formal, and Giovanni is such an old
+friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," said M. Dant&egrave;s, "I will so frame my reply as to give
+entire satisfaction both to you and him. Now, my child, kiss me and
+retire to your couch, for it is very, very late."</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika embraced her father and kissed him repeatedly; then, with
+beaming eyes and a countenance overflowing with happiness she ran
+lightly from the apartment.</p>
+
+<p>As she tripped joyously away, M. Dant&egrave;s arose from his arm-chair and
+gazed after her with a look of the utmost sadness.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! my daughter, my daughter," he murmured, "soon will you also quit
+me, and then I shall be alone, indeed! True, Esp&eacute;rance will remain,
+but,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> generous, manly and heroic as he is, he can never fill the void
+Zuleika will leave. Oh! Hayd&eacute;e, Hayd&eacute;e, my beloved wife, why were you
+torn so ruthlessly from your husband's heart!"</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika's dreams that night were rose-hued and delicious, and in all of
+them the central figure was the youthful Roman Viscount.</p>
+
+<p>When day dawned M. Dant&egrave;s was still pacing his library.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A VAST PRINTING HOUSE.</h3>
+
+<p>A street somewhat famous in Paris is the Rue Lepelletier, famous not for
+its length, for its breadth, for the splendid edifices it exhibits, or
+for the scenes and events it has witnessed, but famous for the exploits
+beheld by its neighbors, and the magnificent structures by them
+displayed. Not that the Rue Lepelletier can boast no fine edifices, for
+the grand opera-house would give the loud lie to such an assertion. And
+then there is the Foreign Office near by, the H&ocirc;tel of the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue des
+Capucines, and other noted places.</p>
+
+<p>But there is one structure on the Rue Lepelletier not very noticeable
+save for its immense size and its ancient and dingy aspect, which has
+witnessed more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> scenes and events, and is more important than all its
+more splendid neighbors put together.</p>
+
+<p>This edifice is of brick, five stories in height, and, as has been
+intimated, is time-stained, storm-stained, smoke-stained and stained, it
+would seem, by all other conceivable causes of stain, so begrimed and
+dingy, yet so venerable and imposing, does it seem.</p>
+
+<p>This vast and ancient pile can be said to represent no order of
+architecture. Architectural elegance appears not to have been thought of
+when it was designed, and yet the fa&ccedil;ade of the old building seems to
+bear the same relation to the building itself as the face of an old man
+bears to his body, and that face is full of character, as are the faces
+of some men&mdash;sombre, sedate, serious, almost sinister in aspect. This
+old face, too, seemed full of apertures, through which unceasing and
+sleepless espionage could be kept up on the good citizens of the good
+City of Paris. Doors, and especially windows, numberless, opened and
+looked upon the street, and on a cul de sac at one end of the edifice.</p>
+
+<p>One of the doors opening on the cul de sac, at its further extremity,
+was broad, low, dark and sombre; like the gates of hell, as portrayed by
+the English bard, it "stood open night and day." If you entered this
+door and advanced, you would immediately find yourself ascending a
+narrow, gloomy and winding flight of stairs. Having with difficulty
+groped your way to the top, without having broken your neck, by having
+first reached the point from which you started, to wit, the bottom; or
+your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> shins, by stumbling against the steps&mdash;having, I say, accomplished
+the ascent to the first landing, your further passage is effectually
+stopped by a massive door, which resists all your efforts to open it;
+and, as you are contemplating the dangerous descent which you now think
+you are immediately and inevitably forced to make, an ivory bell-handle
+against the wall, beside the door, arrests your attention, with the
+words around it, which, with difficulty, you decipher by the dim light,
+"Editor's Room&mdash;No Admittance," followed by the encouraging, but
+somewhat contradictory word, "Ring," which, doubtless, means this: "If
+you are a particular friend of the editor, or have particular business
+with him as a journalist, ring the bell, and perhaps you may be
+admitted." Supposing either of these positions yours, you "ring the
+bell," and immediately you are startled by the tinkling of a small bell
+in the darkness close beside you, and the ponderous door, firm as a
+barricade till then, is now opened by unseen hands&mdash;by the same hand,
+indeed, and by the same action of that hand which caused the bell to
+tinkle.</p>
+
+<p>You enter the door, and find yourself in a corridor or passage, long and
+dark, for everything in this building is dark, and gaslight is the only
+light eighteen hours in the twenty-four; you find yourself in a
+corridor, I say, running the entire depth of the building, and bringing
+you back again toward the Rue Lepelletier, which you left on entering
+the cul de sac, to seek the low entrance below. As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> you traverse the
+endless gallery, your attention is arrested by a deep hum, as of many
+voices at a distance, with which the entire structure seems pervaded,
+accompanied by a heavier sound, which rises and falls with measured
+stroke. This mysterious hum might have been heard when you first
+approached or entered the building; but the silence and solitude of the
+corridor have caused you to notice it now for the first time, and to
+wonder at its cause.</p>
+
+<p>Now had you the power of those magicians, necromancers, clairvoyants and
+demi-devils, whether of the flesh or the spirit, who, at a glance, can
+gaze through massive walls and peer down the chimneys of a great city,
+and who, almost without glancing at all, can see through partitions,
+key-holes and iron doors, your wonder at the cause of these unknown
+sounds would instantly cease, while it would be yet more excited by
+those causes themselves, for the vast building all around you, and
+through which you are passing, and which envelops you in its ceaseless
+hum, like the voice of a great city, would seem to you nothing less than
+a leviathan of life and action&mdash;a Titan&mdash;a Frankenstein&mdash;a mental and
+material giant, with its acoustic tubes, like veins and arteries,
+running all over the structure, just beneath the surface of the walls,
+and uniting in every apartment; with its electric wires, like bundles of
+nerves, which, having webbed the whole body with network, converge into
+a focus-tube, and thence pass down into the vaults, through the massive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+foundations, and beneath, the pavements of the thronged streets of the
+metropolis, and thence, rising again to the surface, branching on
+distinct, diverse and solitary routes without the suburbs all over
+Europe. You would see, too, the mighty heart of this Titan, whose heavy
+heavings you have felt, heard and wondered at&mdash;<span class="smaller">THE PRESS</span>&mdash;in its
+subterranean tenement, amid smoke and flame. <span class="smcap">The press</span>; which, like the
+animal heart, receives eventually all that the veins convey to it, and
+flings forth everything in modified form through lungs and arteries.
+Tireless and untired in its action, never ceasing, never resting, for as
+well might a man think to live when his heart had ceased to beat, as a
+printing office exist when the throbbings of its press were no longer
+felt; and as well could a man be supposed to live without breath as a
+printing-office of the nineteenth century without its lungs, the steam
+engine, or its breath of life, the subtle fluid by which it is moved.</p>
+
+<p>But to drop metaphor. In the basement of the building you would find the
+press-room, with its steam engine, its furnaces, its presses, its dark
+demi-devils, and ghostly and ghastly gnomes and genii groping or
+flitting about amid the glare and gloom, begrimed and besmoked,
+seemingly at work at unhallowed yet supernatural toil, which toil, as if
+a punishment for sin, like that of Sisyphus, or the daughters of Danae
+in the heathen Tartarus, was eternal. The press never stops.</p>
+
+<p>On the first floor you would perceive the financial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> and publishing
+department in all its endless ramifications, with the separate bureaus
+for folding, enveloping, mailing, etc.</p>
+
+<p>On the second floor&mdash;but that you will shortly behold, and it will
+describe itself.</p>
+
+<p>On the third floor you would discover immense magazines of
+material&mdash;paper, ink, of every hue and quality, and type of every known
+description; and all in quantities seemingly as useless as incalculable.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth and fifth floors you would find the composition rooms,
+whence fly the winged words all over the world, peopled by its whole
+army of compositors; while from the long platoons of cases,
+"click&mdash;click&mdash;click" is heard, the sole and unceasing sound which alone
+in those apartments is ever suffered to fall on the ear. If we add that
+the entire structure is warmed in winter by heated air, conveyed in
+tubes from the furnaces of the press, our description will be complete,
+and we may say such is the printing office of the nineteenth century in
+Paris. How changed from that of German Guttenberg or English Caxton,
+three hundred years before! Such is it by daylight. Flood every object
+and apartment with gaslight, and you have the scene at night&mdash;through
+all the night, for couriers and dispatches never cease to arrive&mdash;and
+the journal issues with the dawn&mdash;and the workmen are relieved by
+constant and continuous relays. Such an office gives employment to
+hundreds and bread to thousands. It demands twenty editors, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>exclusive
+of their chief, twenty reporters, exclusive of the same number in the
+commercial and mercantile corps; twenty-five clerks and bureau agents,
+sixty carriers, twenty mechanicians and margers, sixty folders, twenty
+pressmen, seventy correctors and compositors and five hundred
+distributors, besides a numberless and nameless army of attach&eacute;s and
+employ&eacute;s too numerous to be specified. The aggregate compensation of
+this army is ten thousand francs per day, the annual income is nine
+millions of francs, the circulation is ninety thousand copies daily, and
+each number is read by half a million people, and through their
+influence by half a million more.</p>
+
+<p>The daily tax of the Government is nine thousand francs. The press has
+been called the Third Estate of France. It is not! Nor is it the
+second&mdash;nor is it the first! It combines all three. Nay, the power of
+all three united equals not its tithe; and its position&mdash;its
+rank!&mdash;royalty itself bows to the press! Ask the history of the past ten
+years. Point to the man of power or position in the court or State, who
+owes it not to the press! Where is the statesman who is not, or has not
+been, a journalist, or the savant, the philosopher, the philanthropist,
+the poet, the orator, the advocate, the diplomat, even the successful
+soldier? The sword and the pen are emblems of the power of France&mdash;its
+achievements and its continuance; Sir Bulwer Lytton says,</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"The pen is mightier than the sword!"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p><p>But I have left you, dear reader, perambulating the dim corridor&mdash;so
+dim that your eyes can hardly decipher, although it is now high noon,
+the various signs upon the series of doors in the wall on your left,
+designating the various rooms of the editorial corps, for to the
+editorial department is devoted the second floor of this extensive
+edifice. The last door in this prolonged series bears the name of the
+chief journalist. You ring a bell, are bid to enter, and the apartment
+is before you. Immense windows, rising from the floor to the ceiling,
+and opening upon a balcony, which overhangs the Rue Lepelletier, afford
+abundance of light for your eye to detect everything in the room by day,
+and an immense chandelier with gas-burners and opaque shades, pouring
+forth its flood of mellow radiance, would facilitate the same
+investigation yet more at night. Beneath the chandelier is spread the
+immense oval slab of the table. At it sits a man writing. Well, let him
+write on, at least for the present. Beside him, pile upon pile, pile
+upon pile, rise papers, wave after wave, flood upon flood, nothing but
+papers; on the floor beneath his feet, on the table and under the table,
+before him, behind him, and all around him, naught but papers, papers,
+rising, rising, as if in wrathful might and stormy indignation, while
+the very walls are lined with papers in all languages, from all climes
+and governments, and of every age and dimension, deposited in huge folio
+volumes and arranged in huge closets, along one whole side of the room.
+From<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> the four continents, yea, and from the islands of the sea
+likewise, has this vast army come. In those tall closets extending from
+floor to ceiling might be found the full files for years of every
+leading paper in every part of Christendom, affording a treasury of
+reference, universal, unfailing, exhaustless, of knowledge of every
+conceivable description, rapidly found by means of exact and copious
+tables of contents.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the other side of the apartment extend ranges of shelves, from
+floor to ceiling, filled with ponderous tomes in black substantial
+binding, seeming to belong to that class of standard works chiefly
+valuable for reference as authorities, and bearing ample testimony in
+their wear and tear, and their soiled appearance, to having been
+faithfully fingered. No thin, delicate and perfumed duodecimo is there,
+resplendent in gold and Russia, with costly engravings on steel, and
+letter-press in gilt or hot-pressed post. No, the books, the table, the
+journalist and the whole chamber bear the dark, stern, toil-soiled
+aspect of labor, the severe air of practical utility. The only
+ornaments, if such they can be styled, are busts&mdash;the busts of the
+silver-tongued Vergniaud and a few of his political brothers&mdash;the victim
+Girondins of '92 being conspicuous. Here, too, in a prominent niche is
+the noble front of Armand Carrel, the brave, the knightly, the
+chivalric, the true Republican, the true statesman, the true journalist,
+the true man&mdash;Armand Carrel, who, with Adolphe Thiers, his associate,
+sat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> first in this apartment as its chief&mdash;Armand Carrel, who fell years
+ago before the pistol of &Eacute;mile de Girardin, a brother journalist, the
+founder of the cheap press, the hero of scores of combats before and
+since, yet almost unscathed by all.</p>
+
+<p>Such are some of the ornaments of the chief editor's sanctum. At the
+further extremity of the apartment, the wall is covered with maps and
+diagrams, as well as charts of the prominent cities and points in
+Europe; and a large table beneath is heaped with books of travel,
+geographical views, and historical scenes arranged with no regard to
+order, and seeming to lie precisely as thrown down after having been
+used.</p>
+
+<p>In a word, the whole room bears unmistakable evidence of stern,
+practical thought. In it and about it display is everywhere scrupulously
+eschewed. Practical utility is the only question of interest as touching
+the instruments of an editor, as of those of a carpenter; and the
+workshop of the journalist bears no inconsiderable similarity to that of
+the artisan in more respects than one. To each a tool is valuable, be
+that tool a book or a chisel, only for its usefulness, and the facility
+and rapidity with which it will aid the possessor to accomplish his
+ends, and not for its beauty of form, or costliness of material or
+construction.</p>
+
+<p>In one respect only was there variance from this settled custom to be
+perceived, and that was in that delicate mechanism embodying the
+triumphs of modern science, which facilitates <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>transmission of thought,
+and which, by skillful adaptation, made this one chamber a focus to
+which ideas and feeling in every other apartment of that vast
+establishment converged, and which enabled one man, without rising from
+his chair, to issue his orders to every department, from press-room to
+composing-room, from foundation stone to the turrets of that tall pile,
+everything being governed by the will and impulse of a single mind.
+Indeed, to such an extent is labor-saving carried in the Parisian
+printing office that the compositor may never have seen the journalist
+whose leaders he has spent half his life in setting up, for copy, proof
+and revise glide up or down as if by the agency only of magic, and the
+real actors rarely meet.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>ARMAND MARRAST.</h3>
+
+<p>The journalist who now occupied the editorial chair was seemingly about
+thirty-five years of age, and one whom the ladies would call "a
+fine-looking man." His stature was about the average, his shoulders
+broad and his form thick-set. His face was long and thin, his forehead
+full and capacious, though not high, and was furrowed by thought. His
+beard, which, like his hair, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> black, encircled his chin, and a
+moustache was suffered to adorn his lip. His dress was black and a plain
+stock, without a collar, surrounded his throat. His eyes were large,
+black, and piercing, and the expression of his countenance was
+contemplative and sad.</p>
+
+<p>Such is a hasty limning of the personal outlines of the first journalist
+in Paris, the chief editor of the chief organ of the democracy in
+Europe, Armand Marrast, of "Le National."</p>
+
+<p>An air of depression, exhaustion and regret was upon his face as he sat
+beside the table, with a pen in his hand and paper before him, in a
+thoughtful mood, as if planning a leader for his journal, of which but a
+single line was written. Whatever were his reflections, they were
+evidently far from pleasant; but the single line traced at the head of
+the paper indicated the source of his uneasiness. It read:</p>
+
+<p>"Again the House of Orl&eacute;ans triumphs!"</p>
+
+<p>Throwing down his pen, he folded his arms, and began hastily pacing the
+chamber.</p>
+
+<p>"Again the House of Orl&eacute;ans triumphs!" he bitterly exclaimed. "Aye,
+again and again! It is thus forever, and thus forever seems likely to
+continue. Every measure, however imperative, of the opposition,
+ignominiously fails&mdash;every measure of the Government, however infamous,
+succeeds. And so it has been for twelve years. Ah! what a barren sceptre
+did the Three Days of '30 place in the hands of the French people! The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+despotism of a Citizen King has been as deadly as that of the
+Restoration, and more insulting. For twelve years his acts have been but
+a continuous series of infringements upon the rights, and insults to the
+opinions, of the men of July. The Republican party is trampled on.
+Freedom of the press, electoral reform, rights of labor, restriction of
+the Royal prerogative, reduction of the civil list, all these measures
+are effectually crushed. The press is fettered, and its conductors are
+incarcerated. Out of a population of thirty-three millions, but two
+hundred thousand are electors. Out of four hundred and sixty deputies,
+one-third hold places under the Government, the aggregate of whose
+salaries would sustain thousands of starving families at their very
+doors. Paris, despite every struggle of freedom, is, at this hour, a
+Bastille. The line of fortification is complete. Wherever the eye turns
+battlements frown, ordnance protrudes, bayonets bristle. Corruption
+stalks unblushingly abroad in the highest places, and the frauds of
+Gisquet all Paris knows are but those of an individual. The civil list,
+instead of being reduced, is every year enlarged. A Citizen King
+receives forty times the appropriation received by the First Consul,
+while his whole family are quartered on the State. The dotation to the
+Duke of Orl&eacute;ans, on his marriage, would have saved from starvation
+hundreds of thousands whose claim for charity far exceeded his. Thank
+God, his own personal unpopularity defeated the dotation designed for
+the Duke of Nemours.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> But the appanages were granted because the King's
+life was attempted by an assassin. A Citizen King, indeed! This man
+cares only for his own. He would be allied to every dynasty in Europe.
+His policy is unmixed selfishness. His love for the people who made him
+their monarch is swallowed up in love for himself. Millions have been
+wrung from the sweat of toil to accomplish a worse than useless
+conquest, thousands of Frenchmen have been sacrificed on the burning
+sands of Africa, and all for what?&mdash;that a throne might be won for a
+boy&mdash;a boy without ability, or experience, and now the Duke of Aumale is
+Governor-General of Algeria, while hundreds of brave men are forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>As these last words, which indicated the cause of the present agitation,
+were uttered by the excited journalist a door at the further end of the
+apartment softly opened, and a young man of very low stature and boyish
+in aspect entered. He seemed, at a first glance, hardly to have attained
+his majority, though actually he was ten years older. His face was
+round, yet pale, his lips full, his brow commanding, his eye large, dark
+and thoughtful, and His characteristic expression mild and benevolent.
+He wore a dark frock coat, buttoned to the chin, and a plain black
+cravat was tied around his neck.</p>
+
+<p>The journalist was so deeply absorbed in his meditations that for some
+moments he seemed unaware that he was no longer alone, and he might have
+remained yet longer in that ignorance had not the guest approached and
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p><p>"Algeria!"</p>
+
+<p>The journalist raised his head and hastily turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Louis, is it you?" he said, cordially extending his hand; "I'm glad
+you've come. But why did I not hear you?"</p>
+
+<p>"For two reasons, my dear Armand," said the visitor, seating himself in
+an editorial chair: "one, that I came in by the private entrance, and
+the other, that you were too zealously engaged in cursing the recent
+appointment of the King to hear anything short of a salvo of artillery."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that cursed appointment! What next I wonder? Thank God, the old man
+has no more sons to make governors, although he'll never be satisfied
+till each one of them has a crown on his head, by his own right or the
+right of a wife."</p>
+
+<p>"And what care we whom the boys marry, so long as marriage takes them
+out of France? Montpensier can find favor in the eyes of the Spanish
+Infanta, Christina's sister, and thus balk England; be it so, yes, be it
+so, especially since it can't be helped or prevented."</p>
+
+<p>"But this affair of Algeria, Louis&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Is a very different affair you would say. No doubt, no doubt. As to
+Algeria, I have always viewed it as a very costly bauble for France, 'an
+opera-box' as the Duke of Broglie once said, 'rather too expensive for
+France.'"</p>
+
+<p>"But then it has been a splendid arena for French valor. It has given
+the rough old Bugeaud a Marshal's b&acirc;ton, and has made the gallant
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>Lamorici&egrave;re, his sworn foe, a general officer, thanks to his own
+intrepid conduct and the court influence of his brother-in-law, Thiers."</p>
+
+<p>"In the late dispatch appear the names of some new candidates for
+advancement, I perceive."</p>
+
+<p>"You allude to Morrel and Joliette among others, I suppose. Morrel has
+received a regiment, and Joliette is Chef d'Escadron of Spahis. Luckily
+for aspirants, and thanks to disease and slaughter, there is no lack of
+vacancies."</p>
+
+<p>"The name of Morrel I have seen before in the 'Moniteur,' but
+Joliette&mdash;who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"A sort of prot&eacute;g&eacute; of Bugeaud, 'tis said. He is reported to have
+enlisted at Marseilles, and in three years has risen to his present
+position from the ranks. He is of a good family, rumor says, but,
+suddenly reduced by some calamity, he became a soldier."</p>
+
+<p>"He must be a brave fellow, Armand! As I said before, Algeria has been a
+fine field for the development of military genius. My chief objections
+to French conquests are these&mdash;they have drained millions from France
+which should have been devoted to the cause of labor, and have tended to
+dazzle the masses with the glory of the achievements of French valor
+abroad; thus while thousands of the young and enterprising have been
+lured away to fill up the ranks, and to seek fame and fortune, the minds
+of those remaining have been withdrawn from their own wrongs, oppression
+and suffering, and from efficiently concerting to sustain the measures
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> their friends for their relief. There is not a race in Christendom
+so fond of military glory and achievement as the French. Dazzled by
+this, the people, the masses&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The people, the masses!" impatiently interrupted the journalist. "You
+know me, Louis; for years you have known me well, for years have we
+devoted every energy of heart and soul to the cause of the people, and
+for years, ever since we came to man's estate, have we been equal
+sufferers in the same cause&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sufferers in the cause of the people of France, in the cause of man, we
+both, doubtless, have been, but not equal sufferers. What have been my
+sacrifices or sufferings, my dear Armand, compared to yours? In that
+dark hour when Armand Carrel fell&mdash;fell by an ignoble bullet in an
+ignoble cause&mdash;fell in bitterness and without a hope for liberty in his
+beloved France&mdash;I felt impelled to come forward and exert myself for the
+welfare of my race, and endeavor to aid others in filling the gap
+created by his loss. To France, to my country, did I then, though but a
+boy, devote myself&mdash;France, my country!&mdash;for such I feel her to be,
+though I was born in Spain and my mother was a Corsican. Since that hour
+my pen has been dedicated to the cause of the people, the dethronement
+of the Bourgeoisie and the organization of labor. As to sacrifice or
+suffering, I have sacrificed only my time and toil at the worst. I have
+not been deemed worthy of suffering even a fine for a newspaper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> libel,
+and my paper has never been thought worth suppression!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what have I accomplished, Louis?" asked Marrast, gloomily. "My life
+seems almost a blank."</p>
+
+<p>"With Armand Carrel, you have for fifteen years been the champion of
+Republicanism in France, and with you, as leaders, has all been
+accomplished that now exists. When Carrel died, on you fell his mantle.
+As editor of 'La Tribune,' your boldness and charging Casimir Perier and
+Marshal Soult with connivance in Gisquet's scandalous frauds brought
+upon you fine and imprisonment. Your boldness and patriotism during the
+insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, 1832, once more caused your
+paper to be stopped and your presses to be sealed. In April, '34, your
+press was again stopped, and you, with Godefroi Cavaignac, were thrown
+into Saint&eacute; P&eacute;lagie, whence you so gallantly escaped, though to become
+an exile in England. Again, in '35, you were sentenced to
+transportation. So much for sufferings; as to sacrifices&mdash;why, you have
+been utterly ruined by fines!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Louis, well," was the sad answer, "granting all this, my
+sacrifices and sufferings are only the more bitter from the fact of
+having been utterly in vain, entirely useless. You, Louis, have been
+wiser than I. Your journal is well named 'Bon Sens.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly wiser," was the reply, "and possibly less bold. But does not
+discretion sometimes win<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> what boldness would sacrifice? In rashly
+struggling for all we sometimes lose all. Prudence and perseverance, my
+dear Armand, are invaluable."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COMMUNISTS.</h3>
+
+<p>At this moment the private door opened, and three men entered the
+editorial sanctum.</p>
+
+<p>Marrast quickly turned, and his friend was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! Albert, Flocon, Rollin!" he cried. "Welcome, welcome! Our friend,
+Louis Blanc, was just about wasting on me a sermon upon patience, but
+now he'll have an audience worthy of the subject. Be seated and listen!"</p>
+
+<p>"Patience!" exclaimed Flocon. "Well, I'm sure we need it."</p>
+
+<p>"That we do, in our present low estate," echoed Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>Albert said nothing, but smiled with sarcastic significance.</p>
+
+<p>When the salutations were over and the party, all but Marrast, who
+restlessly paced the room, were seated, Louis Blanc looked around on his
+friends with a sad smile, and continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Marrast is right, Messieurs. I was, indeed, preaching patience. I was
+endeavoring to soothe his irritation and chide his depression with a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>sermon; since we are all old friends and fellow-sufferers in the good
+cause and have a common interest in knowing the reasons of failure and
+the means of triumph, I will by your leave proceed."</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, dear Louis, go on!" cried Marrast, kindly. "But you are the most
+youthful sage I ever listened to."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Louis, proceed; you look like a cur&eacute;," said Rollin, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"I subscribe to Louis Blanc's creed, be it what it may," added Flocon,
+briskly.</p>
+
+<p>"And so do I," said Albert, gravely, in a deep tone.</p>
+
+<p>Of the new visitors, Ledru Rollin was a man of medium stature, about
+thirty-five years of age and dressed in the extreme of the mode. His
+complexion and hair were light, his eyes large, blue and protruding, his
+mouth prominent, and his full cheeks covered with whiskers, which like
+those of Marrast, were closely trimmed and met beneath his chin. His
+head and shoulders were thrown back, and his air was bold and
+independent. He was a lawyer of talent, who had gained celebrity as
+advocate of the accused on many occasions of State prosecutions.</p>
+
+<p>Flocon was an older man than Rollin, and his countenance bore the wary,
+vigilant and suspicious look which experience alone gives. He was low in
+stature, thick-set and close-knit in figure; his eyes seemed always half
+closed; his brow was broad and massive; his face was long; a moustache
+was on his lip, and his hair was closely cut. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> outline of his head
+and the expression of his face seemed those rather of one born on the
+banks of the Rhine than on the banks of the Seine, so calm and
+passionless did they appear. His dress was plain but neat. Flocon was
+the chief editor of "La R&eacute;forme," the name of which indicates its
+character. It was this man who, in February, 1833, repressed the
+violence of his partisans and saved the office of the "Gazette de
+France," yet the very next day published his celebrated letter to the
+Legitimists, which, for audacity, force and pungency was only equaled by
+the paralyzing effect it produced. The fines, imprisonments and civil
+incapacities to which this man had been subjected for assaults upon a
+government he deemed corrupt, for the ten years preceding, had been
+literally numberless.</p>
+
+<p>Albert was a man of fifty or more, with a large head, square German face
+and forehead, a large hazel eye, fixed and unexcitable, hair closely
+cut, and beard upon his chin and lip. His dress was a long iron-gray
+frock coat, buttoned closely to his chin. His face was rather thin, and
+his complexion bronzed. His name had for years been identified with
+reform; and though a manufacturer himself, of the class of workmen,
+being proprietor and chief engineer of a large machine factory at Lyons,
+he had established and sustained in that city a paper to advocate his
+principles, named "La Glaneuse," the prosecution of which by the
+Government for libel and the fining and imprisonment of its editor
+formed an originating cause of the revolt in Lyons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> of April, 1834. For
+the part played by this man in the revolt thus arising, he was sentenced
+to transportation, a penalty afterwards commuted to fine and
+imprisonment. He was a man of few words, remarkably few, but of deep
+thought and prompt action, and, in moments of crisis and emergency, a
+man of unshaken and inflexible nerve. To the casual observer, he seemed
+only a silent man, or a sullen one, astute or stolid; in times of peril
+he was a man of iron, but a man of action and passion, too, moving with
+resistless might. To rouse his powers, mental or physical, demanded,
+indeed, circumstances of unusual import, but once roused they were
+irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the personages now assembled in the office of "Le National;"
+and, of those five men, all were connected with the press, directly, as
+editor or proprietor, save only Ledru Rollin, and he was a writer for
+"La R&eacute;forme," as well as an advocate.</p>
+
+<p>The name of Louis Blanc's paper was, as has been said, "Le Bon Sens."</p>
+
+<p>But to return to the narrative.</p>
+
+<p>"And you really wish a sermon from me, old comrades, with patience as
+the text?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aye&mdash;aye&mdash;aye!" exclaimed all.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose I add to it this line I find on the paper before me on the
+table, that our good Marrast had just written as the text for a
+paragraph which would probably have cost him another fine and
+imprisonment, had the paragraph been completed and published?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p><p>"Read! read!" cried Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"With your permission, Armand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," replied the editor, still continuing his promenade.</p>
+
+<p>"'Again the House of Orl&eacute;ans triumphs!'" read Louis Blanc, aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"And is it not true&mdash;the accursed tyrants?" vociferated Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, true!" was the mild answer; "alas, too true! That perfidious House
+does triumph, and for that very reason the fact should never be
+acknowledged by its opponents."</p>
+
+<p>Rollin shook his head, and, throwing himself back in his capacious
+chair, folded his arms, sunk his chin upon his breast and closed his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Marrast continued his walk.</p>
+
+<p>Flocon remained silent and thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>Albert gave a significant smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Oppose ceaselessly, but quietly, every act of despotism this Bourgeois
+Government may attempt; but, be the result what it may, never admit
+yourselves discouraged, depressed, dismayed, defeated. From every fall
+rise like Antaeus, with renewed vigor. Nor is it wise or prudent in
+those engaged in a great and glorious cause to provoke danger, to brave
+penalty, when nothing of good to that cause can reasonably be expected.
+Prudence, policy, patience and perseverance accomplish more than
+rashness, yet are not inconsistent with intrepidity, boldness,
+patriotism and philanthropy the most exalted. Comrades, what says the
+past, the past ten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> years, in whose events we have all so intimately
+mingled? Shall I tell you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aye! 'L'Histoire de Dix Ans,'" said Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"We are all sure of being immortal there, in that same book of yours!
+Eh! Louis?" cried Rollin, opening his large blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Louis Blanc smiled and continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I convince you, comrades, by the history of the past ten years,
+the scenes we have all witnessed, the events we have all deplored, the
+defeats we have all sustained, the insulting ovations we have all been
+forced to behold and the unceasing triumphs and tyranny of the House of
+Orl&eacute;ans that, had patience and prudence been our motto, these defeats
+and triumphs would never have been witnessed, because these premature
+revolts would never have been made?"</p>
+
+<p>Albert bowed and gave his peculiar smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Our friend Albert smiles, and well he may. He has had a sad experience
+in this error of premature outbreaks. In April, 1834, he exerted every
+energy to restrain the revolt in Lyons, as chief of the Soci&eacute;t&eacute; des
+Droits de l'Homme, and as the undoubted friend of the operatives. But
+his efforts were futile. Exasperated, urged on by less experienced
+leaders, they were in full tide of revolution, and could no more be
+restrained in their unwise rising than could the mountain cataract in
+mad career be dammed. The result was, of course, defeat&mdash;most disastrous
+defeat. Hundreds of the people perished, and our friend was imprisoned
+and fined for taking part in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> a movement, which he had in vain attempted
+to quell, and then, with the certainty of defeat, had joined, rather
+than desert the people who trusted and relied on him."</p>
+
+<p>"A noble act!" cried Marrast, as he paced the room.</p>
+
+<p>Albert quietly smiled, but otherwise his countenance remained unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>"And was it not a most noble and a most wise act," continued the author
+of "The Ten Years," "when our friend Flocon, by an energetic and
+eloquent harangue, restrained the indignant people from razing to the
+ground the office of the 'Gazette de France,' the organ of the Duchess
+of Berri, and his bitter foe? Terribly would that rash act have recoiled
+on us, and yet, at the same time, with this most patriotic and prudent
+deed before us, a wilder measure than even that was adopted, and it was
+quelled only by force. You all remember the events. In February, '33,
+Eug&egrave;ne Brifault, in his 'Corsair,' alluded jestingly to the mysterious
+pregnancy of the mother of Henry V., Duke of Bordeaux, as did every one,
+she then being imprisoned at Baye because of her prior conspiracy to
+place her son on the throne, and her secret marriage in Italy being
+unrevealed. The Legitimists of 'Le Revenant' challenged; the allusion
+was repeated, and a second trial and a death ensued. 'Le National' and
+'La Tribune,' regarding these repeated challenges as a menace to the
+Republicans, hurled defiance at the Legitimists, and demanded twelve
+distinct <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>rencontres in behalf of as many names of our friends posted at
+their offices, among which those of Armand Carrel, Godefroi Cavaignac
+and Armand Marrast were conspicuous. The challenge is accepted&mdash;the
+names of twelve Legitimists are furnished&mdash;Armand Carrel selects Roux
+Laborie&mdash;they fight, and Carrel is dangerously wounded&mdash;the police then
+interfere&mdash;the affair ends with Flocon's terrific and audacious defiance
+flung down at the whole Legitimist and Orl&eacute;ans parties in the columns of
+'La R&eacute;forme.' Now, what to Republicans were the quarrels of Legitimists
+and Orl&eacute;anists? If we were to be ruled by a king, what cared we whether
+that king were Henry V. or Louis Philippe? How would the sacrifice of
+Carrel, Marrast, Cavaignac, or of any of those twelve brave men have
+been repaid, or made up? And afterwards, alas! in July of '36, when
+Armand Carrel, causelessly assuming a quarrel not his own, because of a
+fancied attempt to degrade the press, by rendering its issues
+accessible, by cheapness, to the masses, was slain in the Bois de
+Vincennes by the vulgar bullet of &Eacute;mile de Girardin, of 'La Presse.'
+What reparation to our cause was it that our champion had died like a
+hero, and Ch&acirc;teaubriand, Arago, Cormenin and B&eacute;ranger wept around his
+grave? Alas! that inestimable life belonged to his country and his race,
+and not to himself, to fling away in an obscure quarrel."</p>
+
+<p>"But we are not all of us Armand Carrels," said Rollin.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p><p>"And yet, to the great cause of human liberty, and the amelioration of
+man's condition, to which each of us stands sworn, are pledged our
+lives. To hazard that cause, by the sacrifice of those lives, or by
+rashly and unwisely attempting its advancement, makes us violators of
+our vows, quite as much in reality as if we had become traitors."</p>
+
+<p>"But the instances you cite are those only of individual rashness,
+Louis, and not of the people, or of their leaders acting in concert,"
+remarked Marrast.</p>
+
+<p>"True, concert of action has been chiefly needed, but I have only to
+recall the dates and places of our repeated attempts and defeats, for
+the past ten years, to convince you all that those attempts were
+premature, and had they not been so, they might have been
+successful&mdash;that they have frittered away energies which, properly
+concentrated and directed, might have achieved a revolution; and that
+while they have betrayed our designs and depressed our friends, have
+enabled our foes insultingly to triumph and caused them to be on the
+constant qui vive to anticipate our movements. What but premature and
+undigested uprisings were the conspiracy of the bell-tower of N&ocirc;tre
+Dame, in January of '32, when 'Le National' was seized&mdash;or the
+disturbances in La Vend&eacute;e&mdash;or those in Grenoble&mdash;or those in
+Marseilles&mdash;or those in the Rue des Prouvaires&mdash;or those in April,
+during the cholera, when Casimir Perier died&mdash;or those of the 5th and
+6th of June, on the occasion of General Lamarque's funeral, on pretence
+of avenging upon the Government the affront<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> offered during the
+obsequies of Casimir Perier, the victim-Premier of the cholera? For the
+part taken by 'La Tribune,' then conducted by Marrast, in this revolt,
+its press was seized and sealed. The same was the fate of 'La
+Quotidienne,' and the same would have been the fate of 'Le National,'
+but for its barricades. Well do I remember the meeting of our friends in
+this very apartment on the night after General Lamarque's funeral. The
+great shade of the venerable warrior seemed among us, repeating for our
+counsel and imitation his last impressive words, 'I die but the cause
+lives!' But, alas! we observed it not. Doubt, dissension, dismay and
+despair were in our midst. All was dark&mdash;all was defiance and
+denunciation, crimination and recrimination&mdash;brother's hand raised
+against brother. Armand Carrel that night sat in this chair, but he was
+not the man to command his own will or opinions; how could he then bring
+to obedience and concert the conflicting impulses of others? Armand
+Carrel was a wonderful man. His motto, like that of Danton, was this:
+'Audacity, audacity, always audacity!' Yet with all the audacity of
+Danton, he had little of his firmness. An officer under the Restoration,
+a conspirator at Bifort, in arms in Spain against the white flag, three
+times a prisoner before a council of war&mdash;in 1830 he was with Thiers,
+the founder of this journal; but everywhere he carried the exactitude of
+the camp; even in dress, manner and bearing he was a soldier&mdash;lofty,
+haughty, seemingly overbearing, yet, at heart, noble and generous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> and
+to his friends accessible in the extreme. To his military notions,
+nothing could be accomplished without soldiers, and for the people to
+carry a revolution against soldiers seemed to him absurd."</p>
+
+<p>"Armand Carrel would have been, nevertheless, a good revolutionist,
+Louis," said Marrast; "but he was a bad conspirator. He had no faith in
+the people, no confidence in the efforts of undisciplined and unarmed
+masses."</p>
+
+<p>"And therein," said Rollin, "he greatly erred."</p>
+
+<p>"Although we can as yet boast of having accomplished but very little by
+them, Ledru," added Flocon, with a meaning smile. "The masses are easily
+roused, but they don't stay roused, and then they often get
+unmanageable, even by those by whose summons they were stirred up. They
+fight well, but, somehow or other, they always get beaten; they succumb
+at last, and bow their necks to the yoke lower than ever."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not the people," said Louis Blanc, "it is we the leaders, who are
+to be blamed. We rouse them before we are ready for them&mdash;before we have
+prepared them or anything else for a result; and then it is not strange
+that they only rush bravely on to death and defeat. We seize on the
+occasion of a funeral for an outbreak without organization, and the
+cuirassiers of the military escort trample our ranks beneath their
+horses' hoofs. But for unusual efforts, such would have been the case at
+the funeral of Dulong, the Deputy who fell in a duel with General
+Bugeaud, in January of '34."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p><p>"What were the circumstances?" asked Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"Armand recollects them better than I," replied Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"The circumstances were these, as I remember them," said Marrast.
+"General Bugeaud remarked in the course of a speech in the Chamber that
+'obedience is always a soldier's duty.' 'What if the order be to become
+a turnkey?' asked Dulong, in allusion to the General's position in
+relation to the Duchess of Berri, during her pregnancy and confinement
+at Baye. Armand Carrel endeavored to pacificate, but the effort failed.
+They met in the Bois de Boulogne at ten o' clock in the morning; the
+weapons were pistols; the distance forty paces. Bugeaud fired almost as
+soon as he turned, advancing only a few steps; his ball entered above
+Dulong's right eye, and at six o'clock that evening he was dead."</p>
+
+<p>"There was a splendid ball at the Tuileries that night, was there not?"
+asked Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"There was, and this, with other things, excited in the masses the idea
+that their champion was the victim of a Royalist conspiracy, which all
+the influence of Armand Carrel and Dulong's uncle, Dupont de l'Eure was
+hardly sufficient to suppress. But Dupont immediately resigned his seat
+in the Chamber. He would sit no longer in a body one man of which he
+deemed the murderer of a beloved nephew. The obsequies were grand.
+Armand Carrel pronounced the eulogy, and two hundred and thirty-four
+deputies wet the grave with their tears. The people were greatly
+excited, and, as has been said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> were with great difficulty restrained
+by Carrel and Dupont. Had they been suffered to revolt, the only result
+which could have followed would have been a terrific outpouring of their
+blood, furnishing another instance, I suppose, of the evil of
+impatience; is it not so, Louis?"</p>
+
+<p>"Undoubtedly," was the reply; "and only two months after that other
+instance actually occurred, for our warning, in the revolt at Lyons,
+with which we are all familiar, and in which we were all actors, most of
+us to our sorrow. This was in April. Albert's journal, 'La Glaneuse,'
+had been seized for libel on the Government, and the editor fined and
+imprisoned. Next a reform banquet of the operatives was forbidden,
+although but a year before Garnier Pages had been suffered to banquet
+the Lyonnese to the number of two thousand, and although at no period
+had so many gorgeous festivities and public balls been given by the rich
+Royalists, as if in premeditated scorn of the banquet prohibited to the
+poor Republicans. The result was so prompt as to seem inevitable; there
+was a strike of the operatives, an insurrection of the people. Albert
+was sent to Paris as an envoy, to find a man to lead the revolt. MM.
+Cabet and Pages were deemed too moderate. Cavaignac would go only with
+Cabet. Lafayette was too feeble, but gave his name and letters. Carrel
+and Marrast were not members of the Soci&eacute;t&eacute; des Droits de l'Homme, and
+Albert had been cautioned that Carrel was too moderate. Thiers had
+denounced 'La Tribune,' and Marrast's friends<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> were hiding him from the
+police. In despair concerning his mission, the envoy was about returning
+home, when he was sent for to Armand Carrel's house, and Carrel offered
+to go to Lyons and lead the revolt, provided Godefroi Cavaignac would
+accompany him. Now these friends had long been at feud, but all private
+grievances were forgotten in this crisis of the cause, and Albert is
+just about preceding them in the post-chaise, to announce their coming,
+when, lo! the telegraph says, 'Order reigns in Lyons!' Here, then, after
+a terrific slaughter, was recorded another fruitless revolt, because a
+premature one. Nay, it was infinitely worse than fruitless. Not only did
+the Republicans utterly fail in their attempts, not only were they
+cruelly crushed by the Royal mercenaries, but they were openly derided
+in their defeat, and the cause was gloomier than ever. The slaughter of
+women and children in the streets of Lyons, and on their own
+hearthstones, in the course of this insurrection, was hideous, and is
+graphically portrayed in the memorial of our friend Ledru Rollin, as
+advocate in the matter. But, as if all this were not enough for our
+persecuted cause, the decease of the great and good Lafayette, the idol
+of freemen all the world over, took place in the following May. Alas!
+his sun went down in clouds. His end was dark. Bitter maledictions
+quivered on his dying lips. He had lived to mourn that July day, only
+three years before, when, on the steps of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, he had,
+with his own hands, been called to invest a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> cold-blooded, perfidious,
+selfish, and most ungrateful tyrant with Royal robes. Alas! there was
+order in Lyons&mdash;Lafayette was in his grave&mdash;peace reigned in Paris&mdash;the
+House of Orl&eacute;ans triumphed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Those were dark days," said Marrast, sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"They were, dear Armand, dark, indeed, for you and your friends, for
+your journal had been suppressed, and you were an inmate, with
+Cavaignac, of Saint&eacute;-P&eacute;lagie."</p>
+
+<p>"Whence you both, bravely and boldly effected your escape more than a
+year afterwards and fled to England, to the most glorious discomfiture
+of the knaves who put you there!" cried Rollin. "Vive la R&eacute;publique!
+yet, Messieurs! We've all seen dark days, and the present is none of the
+brightest; and we've all come together at these old headquarters of
+liberty just to be unhappy together, just to help each other be
+miserable, which, in fact, is vastly happier unhappiness than being
+miserable alone. At all events, that's what I want. But it can't always
+be right. I predict a revolution before another ten years shall have
+rolled round, which shall make immortals of us all&mdash;that revolution for
+which we have been waiting, watching, toiling and writing, lo! now these
+thirteen years and upward, for the which waiting, watching, toiling and
+writing we have some of us been fined, who had money enough to pay a
+fine, and others imprisoned and hunted about and persecuted. Why,
+there's Albert and Flocon haven't been able to get a franc cleverly warm
+in their pockets these ten years, before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> forth it was drawn in the form
+of a fine; while as for Marrast, he has the perfect air and bearing of a
+bandit, so often has he seen the inside of a dungeon; and our friend
+Albert isn't much better looking. As for Louis and myself, why, we never
+knew what it was to have a franc get warm in our pockets, so we escaped
+having any drawn forth by Ministers, and they have never thought us
+worth prosecuting or imprisoning. But they may change their minds when
+Louis' book, that is to make us all immortal, comes out. Eh, Louis?"</p>
+
+<p>Louis Blanc smiled, but made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is only meet, I suppose, that I should receive my share of the
+blows," said Marrast. "I'm sure I'm not very delicate or very
+ceremonious in bestowing them. Besides, every one of my predecessors has
+endured the same&mdash;Carrel, Thomas, Bastide; while poor Rouen, the
+proprietor, would have been ruined, indeed, a dozen times with fines,
+but for his enormous profits. Why, this old office has been a perfect
+butt for Ministers to fire at&mdash;it has received a dozen fusillades, at
+least; but it stands yet, and, strange as may have been the scenes it
+has witnessed, it will witness yet other and stranger ones, and we shall
+all be witnesses thereof, and actors in them, too, or greatly do I err."</p>
+
+<p>"So be it, with all our hearts!" was the general shout.</p>
+
+<p>"Apropos of State prosecutions against 'Le National,'" said Louis Blanc,
+"that was a most exciting time when Rouen was brought by Thiers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> before
+the Court of Peers, for a libel on that most august and erudite body."</p>
+
+<p>"Aye! and a most, liberal, honest and honorable conclave&mdash;the
+thrice-sodden and most solemn knaves and mules!" cried Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"Rouen at the bar demanded Armand Carrel for his defence," continued
+Louis Blanc. "To refuse was impossible, but a bitter pill must it have
+been to Thiers and Mignet to consent. They must have foreseen what came.
+Both, now in the Ministry, only four years before both had been in 'Le
+National'&mdash;Thiers as the colleague of Carrel, and Mignet as a
+collaborateur. The files of the journal were produced, and, lo! there
+stood paragraphs proven to have emanated from the pens of the
+prosecutors far more libelous and venomous on the august peers than
+anything Rouen had published. You all remember the scene that ensued and
+won't forget it soon."</p>
+
+<p>"No; nor shall we soon forget that noble passage in Armand Carrel's
+defence," said Flocon, "in which he evoked the shade of Marshal Ney, and
+from the wild excitement that followed, one would suppose that it had
+really risen in the hall, bleeding and ghastly, and pointing to its
+wounds, like the ghost of Banquo, to blast his hoary, jeweled and noble
+assassin, who, seated on those very seats, had sentenced him to an
+infamous doom. Carrel was instantly stopped, but General Excelmens rose
+in his seat and pronounced the charge true. It was then reiterated with
+tremendous applause from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> galleries. How Carrel escaped punishment
+for contempt is not known. Rouen was convicted of libel on the peers, of
+course; his sentence was a fine of ten thousand francs and imprisonment
+for two years."</p>
+
+<p>"But of what words did this famous libel actually consist?" asked Ledru
+Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"Louis can tell you better than I," said Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the words were severe enough, no doubt," replied Louis Blanc, "but
+Thiers and Mignet had themselves expressed the same ideas a hundred
+times, though in less powerful and pointed language. The passage which
+seems particularly to have given offence was this, that in the eyes of
+eternal justice and those of posterity, as well as in the testimony of
+their own consciences, these renegades from the Revolution, these
+returned emigrants, these men of Ghent, these military and civil
+parvenus, these old Senators and spoiled Marshals of Bonaparte, these
+Procureur Generals, these new-made nobles of the Restoration, these
+three or four generations of Ministers sunk in public hatred and
+contempt, and stained with blood&mdash;all these, seasoned with a few
+notabilities, thrown in by the Royalty of the 7th of August, on
+condition they should never open their lips save to approve their
+master's commands&mdash;all this farrago of servilities was not competent to
+pronounce on the culpability of men seeking to enforce the results of
+the Revolution of July!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was not until the commencement of 1835, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> think," said Marrast,
+"that Ministers opened a general onslaught upon the Parisian press. 'Le
+R&eacute;publicain' was interdicted that year. It was then, too, that the laws
+against public criers and newspaper hawkers were instituted. As far back
+as '33, however, Rodde had braved all such prohibitions by selling and
+with impunity, too, his own paper in the streets. In May of '35 came on
+the general prosecution of the press. Rollin was advocate in the
+defence. There were warm words between Armand Carrel and his friend
+Dupont, the lawyer, and there was at one time apprehension of a duel."</p>
+
+<p>"The position of Armand Carrel with Thiers, his former colleague, was,
+at that time, a singular one," remarked Rollin. "Each seemed to be on
+the constant search for opportunities to exasperate the other. The
+editor assailed the Minister in his columns, and the Minister retaliated
+by an arrest. Carrel censured and ridiculed Thiers, though he respected
+his abilities, and Thiers feared and hated Carrel, though he admired his
+talents."</p>
+
+<p>"It was about this time that Fieschi exploded his infernal machine at
+the King, was it not?" asked Flocon. "Thiers arrested Carrel then, I
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"It was on the 28th of July of '35, at ten in the morning, on the
+Boulevard du Temple. This was the second attempt on the King's life, the
+first having been that of Bergeron, in November of '33. Carrel was
+arrested as an accomplice, it was pretended, for every one of these
+attempts has been attributed to the whole body of the Republicans,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+while they were utterly ignorant of them until they took place, and then
+bitterly denounced them. But the Government has made capital out of all
+these insane attempts, and against the opposition, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard it asserted," said Rollin, "that the Government got up some
+of those little exhibitions of fireworks for that very purpose. They are
+quite harmless, so far as the old man is concerned&mdash;wonderfully so&mdash;and
+Fieschi was made a perfect fool of, so ridiculously lionized was he by
+King, Court and Ministers. Our friend Marie was advocate for that
+wretched old man, P&eacute;pin, Fieschi's accomplice, more a ghost than a
+living creature."</p>
+
+<p>"You are entirely right, friend Rollin," said Louis Blanc, "in the idea
+that every one of these attempts strengthens the Government and recoils
+on the opposition. No one should so vigilantly and vigorously watch for
+and suppress such attempts as we. Heaven defend the old despot from the
+assassin's weapon, as it seems well inclined to do, or the deed will
+surely be attributed to us. Every unsuccessful attempt at assassination
+is viewed like an unsuccessful attempt at revolt on the part of the
+opposition, and injures our cause accordingly. Better never to attempt
+than never to succeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it true, Louis, as was reported," asked Marrast, "that as
+soon as the smoke of Fieschi's explosion swept off, and the old man
+found himself standing unharmed amid a heap of slain and mangled,
+Marshal Mortier and Colonel Rieussec being among the killed, his first
+exclamation was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> this, with, ill-concealed gratification, 'Now I shall
+get my appanages and the dotations for the boys.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is more probable," said Louis Blanc. "That old man has but one
+impulse&mdash;selfishness, and but one attachment&mdash;to his family&mdash;his family,
+because it is his. His purse and family have for years been his sole
+objects of love. To aggrandize his own has been for years his sole end
+and aim. He parcels out the thrones and kingdoms of Europe among his
+children as if it were but a family estate."</p>
+
+<p>"What thoughtful selfishness!" exclaimed Flocon; "and at a moment, too,
+when he had but just escaped an awful death, and all around him flowed
+the blood and lay scattered the lacerated limbs of his faithful
+servants, either dead or dying with groans and shrieks of most agonizing
+torture, and all because of himself; how disgraceful that, at such a
+terrible moment, his first thought should have been of the few more
+francs his trembling hand was striving to tear from a people by whom he
+had already been made the richest man in Europe, and which the
+occurrence of this dreadful event might serve to win for him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Rollin, "whether this event aided to win the appanages and
+dotations, and was so designed, or not, it is very sure the aforesaid
+appanages and dotations were secured. No wonder that such attempts
+succeed each other so rapidly&mdash;one every year, at the least! When was
+the next, Louis&mdash;that of Alibaud, I think?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p><p>"That took place about sunset on the 25th of June, '36," was the reply.
+"Alibaud discharged a walking-stick-gun at the King, as he left the
+Tuileries, on his way to Neuilly, at the corner of the Porte Royale.
+That Alibaud was a mere boy, and a very interesting and intelligent boy,
+too; but for some mysterious cause he did not find favor with the court,
+as did Fieschi. He evidently attempted the assassination from
+conviction, from a feeling of manifest destiny. After his failure, he
+only wished to die, and to die at once. All who have succeeded Alibaud
+have been but vulgar cut-throats."</p>
+
+<p>"In what year was the insurrection of Armand Barbes and Martin Bernard?"
+asked Flocon. "That proved most disastrous to our cause."</p>
+
+<p>"That was in '39, May, I think," answered Rollin. "Barbes, Blanqui and
+Bernard were arraigned as leaders. Marie and myself were advocates for
+Barbes. Blanqui was sentenced to death and Barbes to the galleys for
+life. But we obtained commutation of penalty for both."</p>
+
+<p>"And where is to be the end of all these things?" asked Marrast,
+gloomily, as he continued pacing the chamber with folded arms, his head
+resting on his bosom. "Are the ten years on which we have now entered to
+be characterized by the fruitless efforts of the past? Are the people of
+France again, and again, and again to strike for freedom, only to be
+stricken into the dust and trampled beneath the armed heel of a despot's
+myrmidons? Are the streets of Lyons, Paris and Marseilles again<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> to be
+drenched with the life-blood of their dwellers, poured out as freely as
+water and as fruitlessly? Are we all again, for full ten years, to toil,
+strive, struggle and suffer; to be hunted down like the vilest
+criminals, and, like criminals, plunged into the most pestilential
+dungeons; to be stripped like slaves of our hard-won earnings, and to be
+deprived of the most humble franchises of men claiming at all to be
+free; to be treated with scorn and contumely, and to be debarred the
+exercise of those common rights, which, like air and water, belong to
+all; I say, brothers, are all these scenes to be repeated during the ten
+years on which we have now entered, as they have been witnessed during
+the ten years now past?"</p>
+
+<p>"You speak sadly, Armand," observed Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so sadly as I feel. I have listened with attention to the
+recapitulation of the political events of the past ten years in France;
+and most plainly, and as sadly as plainly, does the result prove that
+every movement in our cause has been as premature as it has been
+unsuccessful."</p>
+
+<p>"May we not gather wisdom, which shall conduct us to success in the
+future, from the very errors and disasters of the past?" remarked
+Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas!" despondingly replied Marrast, "what is there in our present to
+promise a bright future more than was in our past to promise us a bright
+present? Our great leaders of another generation have all left us, one
+after another&mdash;all have dropped into their graves. The cold marble has
+closed over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> their venerable brows, and they rest well. Yet they died
+and made no sign of hope. On us, young, inexperienced and rash, has
+devolved their task; but the mantle of their power and virtue has not,
+alas! descended with that task to aid in its momentous accomplishment.
+General Lamarque's sun went down in clouds. Midnight, deeper than
+Egyptian darkness, brooded over the delirious deathbed of Lafayette.
+Armand Carrel fell without hope; and are we wiser than they? How often,
+oh! how often have I listened to the words of wisdom that fell from
+those eloquent lips, even as a boy reverently listens to a parent&mdash;for
+such was Armand Carrel to me. Upon this very spot have I stood, in that
+very chair has he sat, that chair, which, with mingled shame and pride,
+I reflect is now filled by me&mdash;shame, that it is filled in a manner so
+unworthy of him&mdash;pride, that I should have been deemed fit, after him to
+fill it at all&mdash;in that very chair, I say, has his noble form reclined,
+when he for hours, even from night till the next day's dawn, dwelt with
+sorrowful eloquence upon his country's present, and looked forward with
+gloomy foreboding and prediction for the future. It almost seems to me
+that this mighty shade is with us now!"</p>
+
+<p>"And why was all this despondency, my dear Armand?" remarked Louis
+Blanc, mildly. "Was it not because our noble and gifted friend was
+essentially a soldier, not a civilian, not a statesman, not a
+revolutionist? Had Armand Carrel gone to Algeria, he would have died&mdash;if
+died he had not in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> an unknown duel, with an unknown bravo&mdash;he would
+have died a Marshal of France&mdash;a Bugeaud, a Chaugarnier, a Bedeau, a
+Cavaignac, a Clausel, a Lamorici&egrave;re. Carrel had no faith in the masses
+to achieve a revolution. He never believed that they could even
+withstand a single charge of regular troops, much less repel and
+overcome it."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even with barricades?" asked Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"Not even in defence of barricades," continued Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"Regular troops have much to learn," added Rollin, with a significant
+smile. "They will see the day&mdash;aye! and we all shall see it and rejoice
+at its coming, despite all melancholy prognostications, when the people
+of Paris will dictate abdication to the king of the barricades, from the
+top of the barricades, the people's throne! Nor will that event tarry
+long!"</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt it not, I doubt it not, Ledru!" exclaimed Louis Blanc, rejoiced
+that one of the youngest and least stable of their number appeared free
+from the apprehensions of one of the most influential and seemingly most
+reliable. "I accept the omen indicated by your enthusiasm. But I
+accounted for the vacillation and distrust of our lamented friend,
+Armand Carrel, by reverting to the fact that he relied entirely on
+regular troops, military skill, scientific tactics and severe
+subordination. Now, all of these belonged to our oppressors and none of
+them to us; and, inasmuch as he could not perceive that enthusiasm,
+passion for freedom,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> love of country and family, and the very wrath and
+rage of desperation itself sometimes not only supply the place of
+discipline, arms and the knowledge requisite to use them, but even
+enable vast masses to break down and crush beneath their heel the
+serried ranks of veteran troops, he could only despair at the prospects
+apparently before him. Besides, Armand Carrel, like all military men,
+was a man of action, not reflection&mdash;of execution, not contrivance&mdash;a
+soldier, not a conspirator. At the head of ten thousand veteran troops,
+he would have charged on thrice their number without discipline, with
+the confident assurance of sweeping them from his path as the chaff of
+the threshing floor is swept before the blast; but, with an
+undisciplined mob, as he contemptuously called the masses, he would have
+moved not a step. The larger the multitude, the less effective and the
+more impossible to manage he would have deemed it. A revolution
+accomplished by means of the three arms of the military
+service&mdash;artillery, cavalry and infantry&mdash;horse, foot and dragoons, he
+could readily conceive; but a revolution conducted to a successful issue
+only by means of pikes, axes, muskets and barricades, never, to the hour
+of his death, despite the victory of the Three Days, could Carrel
+comprehend."</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," said Flocon, "it must not be forgotten that Armand Carrel,
+though a most devoted friend to Republicanism, was never a member of the
+Soci&eacute;t&eacute; des Droits de l'Homme&mdash;was never, as we all now are&mdash;a
+Communist, a Socialist, a Fourierist, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> friend to the laborer. No
+wonder he hoped so little for the people, and trusted to accomplish so
+little through them."</p>
+
+<p>"There can be no doubt that the social principle which Republicanism is
+now unconsciously assuming all over France," mildly remarked Louis
+Blanc, "is lending to the cause incalculable strength. How terribly
+impressed with a conviction of the justice of the cause in which they
+perished must have been the unhappy insurgents of Lyons, when, with this
+motto on their banner: 'To live toiling or die fighting,' they marched
+firmly up to the cannon's mouth and fought, and, thus fighting, fell.
+Yet this conviction is not peculiar to the workmen of Lyons. It pervades
+all Paris, all France, and needs only to be roused to act with an energy
+which no human power can resist. Social Republican will be the type of
+the next revolution in France&mdash;it must be. The French people have been
+dazzled by the mirage of liberty ever since '89,&mdash;but it has been only a
+mirage. On the last three days of July, '30, the people of Paris drove
+out one Bourbon to enthrone another. True, 'The State is myself,' was
+not the despotic motto he assumed, as did one of his successors, but it
+was 'Me and my family,' which has proved equally selfish, if not so
+absolute, and far more dangerous to freedom. With Lafayette and Benjamin
+Constant, the Citizen King they had made, quarreled as soon as on his
+throne, and Lafitte and Dupont de l'Eure, his supporters, were banished
+from the Court. Casimir Perier was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> called to crush the Liberals. Armand
+Carrel assailed the act, and urged a republic. 'Le National' was
+prosecuted, and insurrections followed. Thus was the Revolution of the
+Three Days won by the people to be seized and enjoyed by the
+Bourgeoisie. The next revolution will be won by the people, too, but the
+people will enjoy it!"</p>
+
+<p>"And how progresses our principles, Louis, among the people?" asked
+Marrast, who had listened attentively to every word that had been
+uttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Never so gloriously as now, Armand, never! Never has there been such a
+diffusion of information upon the subject of the rights of labor as now.
+Pagnerre tells me every day that volumes, tracts and pamphlets on this
+topic disappear like magic from his shelves."</p>
+
+<p>"Has not the Minister a hand in this mysterious disappearance of
+Communist literature?" asked Rollin. "We all know he is quite frantic on
+the topic of popular education."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! yes, we all understand Guizot's love for the people! His system of
+education promulgated in 1833 was so very beautiful that it was almost a
+pity it was utterly impracticable. But Guizot has very little to do with
+Pagnerre's book-shelves, or with Pagnerre in any way, except to
+prosecute him from time to time for publishing Cormenin's withering
+tracts designed for the Minister himself, and yet it would almost seem
+there was a design to exhaust the market of the publications of our
+friends; only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> the great mass of them go to the provinces and large
+quantities abroad. My own little brochure, 'The Organization of Work,'
+after having fallen stillborn from the press, died a natural death and
+been laid out in state for a year or two on Pagnerre's shelves, all at
+once is resurrected, runs through half a dozen large editions, and is
+translated into half a dozen languages. The same is true of Lamartine's
+'Vision of the Future,' and the same of Cormenin's tracts, and of the
+ten thousand brochures on this same subject of Communism in all its
+different shades and phrases, and in every variety of size, form and
+style of writing and appearance. These publications are adapted to every
+taste and comprehension. The workman is suited as well as the savant.
+All this savors of magic. Even my most sanguine anticipations are
+surpassed by reality. There will never long lack a supply for a demand,
+be that demand what it may. A demand for Fourier literature has turned
+all the pens in Paris hard at work upon it&mdash;novelists, essayists,
+pamphleteers&mdash;while the Porte St. Antoine, the Porte St. Martin and all
+the minor theatres, where are found the masses, swarm with melodramas,
+farces and vaudevilles on the same subject, and none of you have
+forgotten the powerful play, entitled 'The Laborer of Lyons,' attributed
+to M. Dant&egrave;s, recently produced with such success on the boards of the
+Fran&ccedil;ais itself."</p>
+
+<p>"And who is this M. Dant&egrave;s," asked Ledru Rollin, "if you will suffer me
+to interrupt?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p><p>"Decidedly the most remarkable man in the French Chamber of Deputies,"
+replied Marrast. "In powers of natural eloquence I never saw his rival."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor is that all," added Louis Blanc. "Unlike most men noted as mere
+orators, he is a sound logician, as well as a polished rhetorician. As a
+political economist he has few equals. To that subject he seems to have
+devoted much study, while his familiarity with the political history of
+France and of the times generally all over Christendom seems boundless.
+In debate, you observe he is never at a loss for fact or argument, let
+the discussion take what direction it may."</p>
+
+<p>"And he has celebrity also as a writer, has he not?" asked Ledru Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"The author of 'The Laborer of Lyons' must be a man of distinguished
+literary genius," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Better than all," said Flocon, "he is devoted heart and soul to the
+good cause."</p>
+
+<p>"Such devotedness to a cause I never witnessed," said Marrast. "He puts
+us all to the blush. With him it appears a matter of direct individual
+interest. He is perfectly untiring. He is like one impelled by his fate.
+Love or vengeance could not force onward a man to the attainment of an
+object more irresistibly than he seems forced, and that, too, without
+the slightest apparent stain of personal interest or ambition. That man
+appears to me a miracle&mdash;a pure philanthropist. He strives, struggles,
+suffers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> sacrifices, and all with the sole object of ameliorating the
+condition of his race."</p>
+
+<p>"It is, indeed, wonderful," said Rollin, thoughtfully. "Do you know,
+Marrast, anything of his past history?"</p>
+
+<p>"Little, if anything. Of himself he never speaks, and I can gather
+nothing from others. Even his constituents had known nothing of him but
+a few months before he became their representative in the Chamber. His
+popularity with them he owes to his efforts to ameliorate their
+condition. At his own expense he established among them a Phalanstrie,
+which is now in most successful operation."</p>
+
+<p>"He is rich, then?" asked Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"Seemingly not, to judge from his habits of life," replied Marrast. "Not
+a man in the Chamber is more Republican in garb, manner, equipage or
+residence than he, and yet he may be rich."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he married?" asked Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"He has been, I am told," said Marrast. "But we interrupt you, Louis.
+You were alluding to the unusual influences now at work for our cause."</p>
+
+<p>"I was about speaking of the newspaper press," said Louis Blanc. "Never
+has there been known such a revolution in favor of Reform and Communist
+journals, and to none is this better known than to some of ourselves.
+There's Flocon's new journal, 'La R&eacute;forme,' that has leaped at once into
+a circulation never before achieved but by long years of toil and
+enterprise. The old 'National,' we need but to look around us to be
+sure, was never more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> prosperous than now, while I am free to confess
+that my journal, 'Le Bon Sens,' which has been a sickly child ever since
+its birth, has, within three months, tripled its number of readers, or,
+at least, its payers. The same is in the main true of 'Le Monde,' by La
+Croix, 'Le Journal du Peuple,' by Dubose, 'Le Courier Fran&ccedil;ais,' by
+Chatelain, 'La Commerce,' by Bert, 'La Minerve,' by Lemaine, 'La
+Presse,' by Girardin, and all the journals in Paris which diffuse true
+ideas upon labor and the rights of the people, be they in other respects
+what they may. Even the 'Charivari,' which views the old King and his
+Ministers as fair butts of ridicule, perceives a marked increase in its
+patronage since it commenced that course, which sudden popularity
+naturally excites it to increase of zeal in the same path. Besides all
+this, an army of new papers, aiming to aid the great cause, have not
+only sprung up of late, like mushrooms, in Paris, but all over France,
+and even all over Europe; and so far appear they from interfering with
+each other's prospects that the more there are the better they seem
+sustained and the more ably conducted. A swarm of new and unknown
+writers for the press on this great subject seems all at once to have
+appeared from unseen hiding-places."</p>
+
+<p>"This is very strange, Louis," said Marrast, "and yet it is, doubtless,
+very true. I had observed what you remark myself, although I have viewed
+the movement less hopefully for the cause of the Republic than you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p><p>"Depend upon it, Armand," said Louis Blanc, smiling, "that
+Republicanism and Socialism are identical terms, as much so as Communism
+and despotism are antagonistic terms."</p>
+
+<p>"But how do you account for this wonderful change, this unprecedented
+fever for Fourierism?" asked Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't pretend to account for it at all. The merits of the cause have,
+perhaps, begun to be properly appreciated. Unusual efforts have been
+made by our friends of late. Whole nations and epochs are sometimes
+seized with a contagious mania for peculiar species of literature, as
+for everything else. But I will hint to you a suspicion which I have
+recently entertained, namely, that, after all, the rapid sale and ready
+market for every species of Fourier literature is not an unerring
+indication of the amount of reading of such literature, or the demand
+that actually exists of buyers as well as readers&mdash;individual ones at
+least. As for the journalistic literature, that I have learned is,
+without doubt, gratuitously distributed, to a great extent, among the
+masses."</p>
+
+<p>"But can the masses read the papers?" asked Marrast.</p>
+
+<p>"Each family, house, neighborhood, caf&eacute; or cabaret, at any rate, has, at
+least one reader," said Rollin; "and all the men, women and children
+have ears to hear, if not power to comprehend. But some of these papers,
+which I have seen, come down in style to the very humblest
+comprehension."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p><p>"Can it be," asked Flocon, "that there is such a club as a society for
+the diffusion of social knowledge in Paris, after the form of that in
+London, instituted by Lord Henry Brougham and his Whig coadjutors, for
+the diffusion of general information, and so opposed by the Tories."</p>
+
+<p>"If there be such an association," said Louis Blanc, "it has managed to
+elude all my vigilance thus far, and that of the Government, too, for
+Guizot can perceive, if no one else can, the inevitable effect of all
+this, and he has no idea that the dear people of France shall be
+educated by any one save himself. But, actually, there seems to me to
+exist too much unity of purpose and action in this enterprise for it to
+be the work of an association. I should rather suppose one powerful and
+philanthropic mind at the head of the movement, were there not two
+things so plainly opposed to it as to forbid the idea&mdash;the first being
+that there is no one man in Europe who is rich enough to expend such
+immense sums upon such an enterprise, if he would, and the second that
+there is no man who has the subject sufficiently at heart to do it, if
+he could."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>"WAIT AND HOPE."</h3>
+
+<p>Just then a light rap was heard at the private door, which Marrast
+immediately hastened to open, as if in anticipation of the arrival of a
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>A brief and rapid colloquy ensued; then M. Dant&egrave;s, the Deputy from
+Marseilles, was introduced. He seemed acquainted with, and to be held in
+high regard by all present. His dress, as usual, was black, with a white
+cravat, and his manner and bearing had all that magnetism and dignity
+which so deeply impressed those he met.</p>
+
+<p>"I find you in private conference, do I not, Messieurs?" asked he,
+glancing around with a smile. "I pray you let me not interrupt. I have
+called but for a moment to speak with M. Marrast respecting a measure in
+the Chamber, and have consented to enter only at his solicitation."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, M. Dant&egrave;s," replied Marrast, "in supposing us engaged in
+a private conference, and upon matters of deep import, though
+conferences in this office can never be so private or so important as
+not to derive benefit from the presence and counsel of the Deputy from
+Marseilles."</p>
+
+<p>"Most true," observed Louis Blanc; "and so far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> from intrusion do we
+view your arrival that we can but consider it most opportune that we
+have the privilege of referring to you a question on which, between us,
+especially between our friend Marrast and myself, there seems some
+little diversity of sentiment."</p>
+
+<p>"It would, I fear," said M. Dant&egrave;s, "be unpardonable arrogance in one so
+young as I am in the great cause of human liberty to offer counsel to
+you, who are all veterans, and most of you little less than martyrs to
+your enthusiasm. But no good citizen will shrink from the responsibility
+of declaring the results of his reflections on all topics which have
+reference to the general weal."</p>
+
+<p>"We differ mainly in this," said Marrast: "Louis Blanc attributes the
+Republican failures of the past ten years to prematurity and want of
+preparation in our attempts, and contends that all those reverses may be
+retrieved by patience and prudence in future, while, to my mind, there
+is nothing to indicate for the future, from the same causes, different
+results than those experienced in the past."</p>
+
+<p>"Concert of action," said M. Dant&egrave;s, mildly, "is always an indispensable
+requisite in the accomplishment of every enterprise which relies for its
+success on association, or the combined efforts of individuals laboring
+for a common end; yet, with all the concert of action which can possibly
+be attained, the best arranged and best digested scheme in the world may
+be ruined by premature movement. Of this we surely have sad proof in the
+history of the past<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> ten years alluded to. There is something of truth
+in the declaration so frequently made that the French people are not yet
+prepared for freedom. If this be so, then it is the duty of their
+friends to prepare them. It is folly to suppose that the masses should,
+at first, intuitively know all their rights and the best mode of
+vindicating them. This they must be taught; and, to this end, the press
+should be unceasingly at work, not only all over France, but all over
+Europe, in diffusing correct views upon life and labor, and political
+rights and powers. There should be, also, concert of action among the
+friends of freedom, and clubs should at once be instituted in every
+city, town and village in France, which should be in private and
+intimate correspondence with similar clubs at Paris and in all the
+capitals of Christendom. There should, likewise, be unity of action
+introduced among the masses themselves. In a city like Paris, and among
+a people like the French, secret signals can easily be arranged, by
+which, at any hour of the night, or of the day, fifty thousand laborers
+in their blouses might be concentrated at any point where their presence
+is required, and that, too, with arms in their hands furnished from
+secret arsenals; and thus would those pitiable slaughters of helpless
+insurgents, like those of sheep in the shambles, we have so often
+witnessed, be avoided, if nothing besides were gained. The people are
+ever but too ready to pour out their blood, and the most difficult and
+delicate task in our enterprise is, after all, to restrain them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>&mdash;to
+impress upon them the all important maxim, without which nothing great,
+good or enduring is achieved, those three words in which all human
+wisdom is contained, 'Wait and hope.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And for what are we to wait and hope, for which we have not already in
+vain waited and hoped the past ten years?" asked Marrast.</p>
+
+<p>"The true hour to strike!" was the firm answer.</p>
+
+<p>"And that hour, when will it come?"</p>
+
+<p>"It may come quickly, as it will come surely, soon or late! It cannot be
+that the Revolution of July should continue much longer to result in the
+solemn mockery it has. It cannot be that its friends should much longer
+be withheld from those by whom it was achieved, only to aggrandize one
+old man and his sons. It cannot be that the unmitigated and disgusting
+selfism of Louis Philippe, and his efforts to ally himself with every
+crowned head in Europe&mdash;not for the glory of France, but for his
+own&mdash;will much longer be overlooked or their perils masked. The
+appanages grasped by himself&mdash;the dotation and bridal outfit of the Duke
+of Orl&eacute;ans&mdash;the dotation sought for the Duke of Nemours, and his
+appointment as Regent during the minority of the Count of Paris&mdash;the
+Governorship of Algeria bestowed on the youthful and inexperienced
+Aumale, to the insult of so many brave and victorious generals&mdash;the
+naval supremacy, to which has been exalted the ambitious Joinville, and
+his union to the opulent Brazilian Princess&mdash;the effort to unite the
+young Montpensier with the Infanta of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> Spain&mdash;the environment of Paris
+with Bastilles, with the avowed purpose of fortifying order by turning
+the ordnance which should protect into enginery of destruction&mdash;an
+immense standing army&mdash;the notorious corruption of officials, and the
+audacious dabbling of Ministers in the stocks, if not the King himself,
+by means of information obtained by the Government telegraph, and
+withheld from the people, or of information manufactured by the
+telegraph designed to affect the Bourse&mdash;the unprecedented number of
+placemen occupying seats in the Chamber of Deputies, yet receiving
+exorbitant salaries as incumbents of civil offices, one man being often
+in receipt of the salaries of several offices, though performing the
+duties of none&mdash;the fact that Ministers have maintained majorities by
+unblushing bribery in elections&mdash;that hardly one man in two hundred is
+an elector&mdash;the profligate arts of corruption by which every able man is
+bought by the Court&mdash;the disgraceful censorship of the press and the
+drama&mdash;the enormous appropriations for the civil list, wrung out by
+grinding taxes from the toil and sweat of millions&mdash;the absurd
+assumption, yet the monstrous power, over the press and its conductors,
+of that conclave of hoary dotards called the Chamber of Peers&mdash;the utter
+and most impious disregard of the deprivation and misery of the
+operative and laborer, although arrayed side by side with the insolence
+and wealth pampered by the taxes torn from themselves&mdash;the total
+forgetfulness of the self-evident truth of the right of all men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> to
+labor, unrestricted by the baleful influences of the competition of
+capitalists&mdash;these facts, properly urged and set forth by the press,
+from the tribune and in the clubs, in connection with due enlightenment
+of the masses upon their rights as to labor and its reward and the duty
+of government thereupon could not fail to prepare the popular mind, all
+over France, and all over Europe, for reform&mdash;for revolution."</p>
+
+<p>"Unquestionably," cried Louis Blanc, "such would be the effect; and it
+would not only prepare the people for reform, and stimulate them to
+obtain it, but it would make them Republicans&mdash;true
+Republicans&mdash;American Republicans! The Americans do not plume themselves
+on the title citizen, but they work; they dispute little about words,
+but clear their lands; they do not talk of exterminating anybody, but
+they cover the sea with their ships, they construct immense canals,
+roads and steamers without jabbering at every stroke of the spade about
+the rights of man. With them, labor, merit, talent and honest opulence
+are honored and rewarded aristocracies. Such Republicans would furnish
+France more Washingtons, Jeffersons and Madisons, and fewer
+Robespierres, Dantons and Marats!"</p>
+
+<p>"There can be no doubt," remarked Flocon, "that the paramount interest
+in a republic is that of those who work, that the labor question is of
+supreme importance, that the profound problem now submitted to the
+industrial nations of Christendom demands satisfactory solution, and
+that the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>long-enduring and most iniquitous miseries of those who toil
+must cease. Reform, revolution and government which achieve not these,
+achieve nothing! They would be worse than useless. The measures
+suggested by our distinguished friend seem to me eminently calculated to
+attain the consummation we desire."</p>
+
+<p>"A good government must and always will systematically uphold the poor,
+and ever interpose to protect the weak against the strong," said Louis
+Blanc. "The state should be tutelary for the ignorant, the poor and the
+suffering of every description. We must have a guardian government&mdash;a
+government that will accord the aid of that mighty engine, credit, not
+to the rich only, but also to the poor. It must interpose likewise in
+the matter of industry, and exclude that antagonistical principle of
+competition&mdash;the poisoned fount of so much virulence, violence and ruin.
+Our maxim is, brothers, and in this do we all concur, 'Human
+Solidarity,' and our motto, 'Unity, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.'
+All men are of one family, and once thoroughly sensible of this kindred,
+discord, hate and selfism will no longer be possible."</p>
+
+<p>"The views advanced," said Ledru Rollin, "so far as they tend to the
+elevation of the masses and to popular preparation for reform,
+Republicanism or revolution, have my most cordial approval; but I would
+beg to ask how long are the people to 'wait and hope?' When is to come
+the hour to strike?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who can tell," said M. Dant&egrave;s, in his low,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> clear and musical tones,
+"at what moment the breath will come which may hurl on its errand of
+devastation the avalanche which the snows and suns of centuries,
+perchance, have been preparing for its awful mission? In the stillness
+of the night-time, beneath the clear blue sky of summer, or amid the
+ravings of the midnight tempest, its dread march is ordered, and in
+resistless, crushing sublimity it begins to move on to accomplish its
+terrible errand. Who may predict the precise moment when the earthquake
+shall rock, the tornado sweep, the red lightning scathe, or the lava
+flood desolate? And who shall tell the day or the hour when the people,
+in their majesty and might, shall rise to avenge their wrongs? The
+snow-flake falls fleecily on the mountain's top through many a long and
+silent night; a land green as Eden smiles over the volcano; through many
+a calm and sunny day the electric flame gathers in the firmament! At
+length, when least expected, the avalanche sweeps, the volcano bursts,
+the red bolt strikes. France is the victim of many wrongs. Which one of
+them shall prove the last drop in her cup of bitterness we know not.
+France is divided into many political sects, and all but one aim at
+revolution. Which one of all shall it be to set the ball of revolution
+in motion? The Legitimists, who consider the Duke of Bordeaux the
+rightful heir, and Louis Philippe a usurper; the Bonapartists, who think
+they evoke the great shade of Napoleon in the person of his unworthy
+descendant; or the old Republicans? As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> for the Conservatives, let them
+with Guizot at their head, uphold themselves if they can, and let the
+dynasties under Barrot and Thiers overthrow and succeed their factional
+foes. Their petty quarrels we care not for. Nor shall we, the
+Communists, ever suffer ourselves to be deemed the revolutionary party;
+but the revolution once commenced, let us throw ourselves into its
+torrent, and with our thorough, perfect and secret organization, we
+cannot fail to shape it most successfully to our own, our righteous
+ends. The hour when revolution may commence we cannot predict, as it is
+not our policy to start or precipitate it; but that hour may come
+quickly. It must come on the demise of Louis Philippe, which event
+cannot be long delayed, and it may be precipitated before. Nor will
+France alone be convulsed. As the news of that old man's death, on the
+lightning's wing, spreads over Europe, the electric wire will prove but
+a train passing through repeated mines, which, one after the other, will
+explode with awful devastation. Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg, the
+strongholds of despotism in Europe, each will totter&mdash;all but the last
+will fall. The press is powerless on the Russian serf. Russia will be
+the tyrant's last citadel. Italy will throw off the Austrian yoke and be
+free. Gregory XVIII. will shortly die. A wise, far-seeing and benevolent
+priest, named Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, born at Sinigaglia, and
+now a cardinal, with the title of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, will
+succeed to the Papal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> See, and Italy will be a republic; Genoa, Venice,
+Naples, Lombardy, Piedmont and Sardinia will be sister yet sovereign
+states, forming one union&mdash;the constellation of freedom, the favorite
+scheme of Napoleon's better days at last achieving reality. Switzerland,
+with her green hills and her field Morgarten, her priestly despots
+expelled, shall also be free. But I weary you, Messieurs."</p>
+
+<p>"By no means," cried Marrast, cordially clasping M. Dant&egrave;s by the hand.
+"I have listened in silence to your earnest exposition of the policy you
+suggest, and so truly do I subscribe to it that, henceforth, I am your
+disciple and adopt your motto, 'Wait and hope' for my own. But it is
+nearly two o'clock. In an hour the Chamber sits."</p>
+
+<p>"And, meanwhile, Messieurs," interrupted M. Dant&egrave;s, "I know not that we
+can better employ ourselves, after so protracted a s&eacute;ance, than to
+repair to V&eacute;four's. This talking is hungry work, and listening and
+thinking, which are by far more tedious, are still more so. So to
+V&eacute;four's."</p>
+
+<p>"The s&eacute;ance 'National' is closed!" cried Ledru Rollin, laughing, as the
+whole company descended the gloomy stairs.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MYSTERIOUS PRIMA DONNA.</h3>
+
+<p>All fashionable Paris was excited over the announcement of a new prima
+donna, whose wonderful achievements in Italian opera had set even the
+exacting critics of Italy wild with enthusiasm and delight.</p>
+
+<p>This great artiste was no other than the renowned Louise d'Armilly. She
+had never before sung in the presence of a Parisian audience, but her
+fame had preceded her, and it was accepted as certain that her triumph
+at the Acad&eacute;mie Royale would be both instantaneous and overwhelming.</p>
+
+<p>She was to assume the r&ocirc;le of Lucrezia Borgia, in Donizetti's brilliant
+opera of that name, a r&ocirc;le in which the enterprising director of the
+Acad&eacute;mie Royale assured the expectant public that she possessed no
+equal.</p>
+
+<p>For weeks every Parisian journal had been sounding her praises with
+unremitting zeal, and now her name was as familiar as a household word
+in all the high society salons, where the ladies and their gallants
+could talk of nothing but the approaching operatic event, while in the
+caf&eacute;s and on the boulevards an equal degree of interest was exhibited.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p>Even the masses, notwithstanding the political agitation in which they
+were involved, had caught the prevailing excitement, and the leaders of
+the contending parties themselves paused amid their heated discussions
+to talk of Louise d'Armilly.</p>
+
+<p>The career of this young and beautiful artiste had been remarkable. Her
+d&eacute;but had been made at Brussels, about two years before, in company with
+her brother, M. L&eacute;on d'Armilly, and there, as well as at all the
+theatres of Italy, La Scala, Argentina and Valle, they had roused a
+perfect storm of operatic enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>The origin of this young artiste was veiled in the deepest mystery.
+Rumor ascribed to her descent from one of the oldest and most
+respectable families of France; and domestic trials, among which was a
+matrimonial misadventure, no less than the arrest of an Italian Prince
+whom she was about to wed, on the bridal night, as an escaped galley
+slave, were assigned as the cause which had given her splendid powers to
+the stage.</p>
+
+<p>At an earlier hour than usual&mdash;for Parisian fashion never fills the
+opera-house until the curtain falls on the second act&mdash;the Rue
+Lepelletier was crowded with carriages, La Pinon with fiacres, and the
+Grande Bateli&egrave;re and the passages to the Boulevard des Italiens with
+persons on foot, all hastening toward that magnificent edifice,
+constructed within the space of a single year by Debret, to replace the
+building in the Rue de Richelieu ordered to be razed by the Government
+because of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>assassination at its door of the Duke of Berri, in
+1820&mdash;that magnificent structure which accommodates two thousand
+spectators with seats.</p>
+
+<p>Among the first in the orchestra stalls were Beauchamp and Debray, whose
+attention was divided between the stage and the arrivals of splendidly
+attired el&eacute;gantes in the different loges, during the overture. All the
+&eacute;lite of Paris seemed on the qui vive.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be a splendid house," observed Debray.</p>
+
+<p>"The d&eacute;butante, be she whom she may, should feel flattered by such an
+unexampled assemblage of all the ton of Paris."</p>
+
+<p>Orchestra, balcony, galleries, amphitheatres, lobbies and parterre were
+packed; every portion of the vast edifice, in short, was thronged except
+a few of the loges and baignoires, into which every moment brilliant
+companies were entering.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that tall, dark military man, with the heavy moustache, now
+making his way into the Minister's box?" asked Beauchamp, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"That man is no less a personage than the Governor of Algeria, Eug&egrave;ne
+Cavaignac, Marshal of Camp," said Debray. "He reported himself at the
+War Office this morning, and is the lion of the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" cried the journalist; "and that is the hero of Constantine! What a
+frank, open countenance, and what a distingu&eacute; bearing and manner!"</p>
+
+<p>"You would not suppose all that man's life passed in a camp, would you?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p><p>"His career has, I understand, been remarkable," said Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Very. His father was a Conventionist of '92, a famous old fellow, who,
+among other terrible things laid at his door, is said to have pawned an
+old man's life, old Labod&egrave;re, for his daughter's honor; somewhat, you
+remember, as Francis I. spared St. Valliar's life for the favor of the
+lovely Diana of Poitiers, his only child. His aged mother is yet living,
+a woman of strong mind, though seventy, and he does nothing without her
+advice. His brother Godefroi's name was notorious as that of a powerful
+Republican leader for years before his decease. At eighteen Eug&egrave;ne
+entered the Polytechnic School. At twenty-two he was a sub-lieutenant in
+the engineer corps of the second regiment. In '28 he was first
+lieutenant in France; in '29 he was captain; in '34 he was in Algeria;
+and, in '39, his cool, bold, decided but discreet conduct had made him
+chef de bataillon, despite the fact that he had incurred the Royal
+displeasure some years before by a disloyal toast at a banquet. In '40
+he was lieutenant-colonel; in '41 marshal of camp, and first commander
+of division of Tlemeen; in '43, he was conqueror of Constantine, at the
+first siege of which I so nearly lost my own valuable head, and he is
+now Governor of Algeria, after service there of fourteen years."</p>
+
+<p>"And the tall and sinewy man beside him, presenting such a contrast to
+Cavaignac, with his light complexion, gray hair, and sullen and not very
+intelligent expression?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p><p>"Oh! that is General Bugeaud, by some deemed the real conqueror of
+Algeria. But he's not at all popular with the army. His manners are
+simple and excessively blunt. He is a perfect despot with his staff,
+'tis said; yet he is quite a wag when in good-humor, and, at Ministerial
+dinners, can unbend and make himself as agreeable as need be wished. His
+voice is as harsh as a Cossack's, and in perfect contrast to that of
+Cavaignac, which is the richest and most musical you ever heard, yet
+distinct, emphatic and impressive."</p>
+
+<p>"Bugeaud incurred intense odium with the opposition for his unwarranted
+severity as jailor of the Duchess of Berri, in '34, and his killing
+Dulong in a duel, because of a deserved taunt on the subject."</p>
+
+<p>"Bugeaud did his duty," said the Secretary, "though a man of his nature
+could hardly perform such a duty with gentleness. Bugeaud is not a
+gentleman; he knows it, and don't try to seem one. He is only a soldier.
+But there comes his very particular foe; General Lamorici&egrave;re. That
+magnificent woman on his arm is his wife and the sister of the lady who
+follows, with her husband, the ex-Minister, Adolphe Thiers."</p>
+
+<p>"What a contrast!" cried Beauchamp. "The tall and elegant figure of
+Lamorici&egrave;re, in his brilliant uniform of the Spahis, half oriental, half
+French, with his lovely wife, and the low, swarthy little ex-Minister in
+complete black, with his huge round spectacles on his nose nearly twice
+the size of his eyes, and a wife on his arm nearly double his stature.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+Why, Thiers reminds me of a Ghoul gallanting a Peri."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet that same dark little ex-Minister has perhaps, in many respects
+the most powerful mind&mdash;at all events, the most available mind&mdash;impelled
+as it is by his restless ambition, in all France. Do you observe how
+incessantly his keen black eye flashes around the house, beneath his
+huge glasses?"</p>
+
+<p>"He seems perfectly aware that every eye in the house is directed toward
+his loge. But is it true that his brother-in-law owes his rapid rise to
+his influence at Court?"</p>
+
+<p>"By no means," replied Debray. "If there is a man in the French army who
+has achieved his own fortunes, that man is Lamorici&egrave;re. He went to
+Algeria a lieutenant, and bravely and gallantly has he attained his
+present brilliant position. It was he who proposed the creation of a
+corps of native Arab troops, like the Sepoys of British India; and he
+was appointed colonel of the first regiment of Spahis. Our quondam
+friend, Maximilian Morrel, has a command in this regiment, and is a
+prot&eacute;g&eacute; of his illustrious exemplar."</p>
+
+<p>"The hostility between Lamorici&egrave;re and Bugeaud arises, I suppose, from
+the latter's detestable disposition, his overbearing and dictatorial
+temper. Lamorici&egrave;re is not a man, I take it, to be the slave of any
+one."</p>
+
+<p>"Rivalry in Africa is thought to have originated the feud," remarked
+Debray, "and political <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>differences in Paris to have inflamed it.
+Bugeaud is a Legitimist, and Lamorici&egrave;re a Republican."</p>
+
+<p>"Silence!" cried the musical connoisseurs in the orchestra. "The curtain
+rises."</p>
+
+<p>As the curtain rose a hush of expectation reigned over the audience. The
+hum and bustle ceased, and silence most profound succeeded. The
+appearance of the fair cantatrice was the signal for such a reception as
+only a Parisian audience can give, and the first strains that issued
+from her lips assured them that their applause was not misplaced.</p>
+
+<p>And surely never was the dark Duchess of Ferrara more faithfully
+personated than by the present artiste. This vraisemblance, which is so
+seldom witnessed in the opera, seemed to strike every eye. Her figure
+was tall and majestic, and voluptuously developed. Her air and bearing
+were haughty, dignified, and queen-like. Her complexion was very dark,
+but perfectly clear; her forehead broad and high; her brows heavy, but
+gracefully arched; her eyes large, black and flashing; her hair dark as
+night, and arranged with great simplicity in glossy bands; and her mouth
+large, but filled with teeth of pearl-like whiteness, contrasted by lips
+of coral wet with the spray. The entire outline of her face was Roman,
+and exhibited in its contour and lineaments even more than Roman
+sternness and decision; and its effect was still more heightened by a
+large mole at one corner of her mouth and the velvet robes in which she
+was appropriately costumed.</p>
+
+<p>The scene between the Duchess and the Spaniard,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> Gubetta, was received
+with the utmost applause, and the pathos of that between the son and his
+unknown mother, which succeeded, touched the audience to tears; but when
+the maskers rushed in and her vizard was torn off, and her true name
+proclaimed, and, amid her heart-rending wailings, the curtain fell on
+the first act, the shouts were perfectly thunderous with enthusiasm. The
+r&ocirc;le of Gennaro was performed by the brother of the cantatrice, L&eacute;on
+d'Armilly, a young man of twenty, of delicate and graceful figure, and
+as decidedly blonde as his sister was brunette. Nature seemed to have
+made a great mistake in sex when this brother and sister were fashioned.
+Indeed, it seemed hardly possible that they could be brother and sister,
+a remark constantly made by the audience, and the kindred announced on
+the bills was generally viewed as one of those convenient relationships
+often assumed on the stage, but having no more reality than those of the
+dramatis person&aelig; themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"A second Pasta!" cried Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud, entering the stalls immediately
+on the descent of the curtain. "Heard you ever such a magnificent
+contralto?"</p>
+
+<p>"Saw you ever such a magnificent bust?" asked Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Were it not for a few manifest impossibilities," thoughtfully remarked
+Debray, "I should swear that this same angelic Louise d'Armilly was no
+other than a certain very beautiful, very eccentric<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> and very talented
+young lady whom we all once knew as a star of Parisian fashion, and who,
+the last time she was in this house, sat in the same loge where now sit
+the African generals."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom can you mean, Debray?" cried Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"A certain haughty young lady, who was to have married an Italian
+Prince, but, on the night of the bridal, in the midst of the
+festivities, the house being thronged with guests, and even while the
+contract was receiving the signatures, the Prince was arrested as an
+escaped galley-slave, and at his trial proved to be the illegitimate son
+of the bride's mother and a certain high legal functionary, the
+Procureur du Roi, now at Charenton, through whose burning zeal for
+justice the horrible discovery transpired."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!" exclaimed Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud. "You cannot mean Eug&eacute;nie Danglars,
+daughter of the bankrupt baron, whom our unhappy friend Morcerf was once
+to have wed?"</p>
+
+<p>"The very same," quietly rejoined the Secretary; "but this lady cannot
+be Mlle. Danglars, I say absolutely, for many sufficient reasons," he
+quickly added; then, as if to turn the conversation, he hastily
+remarked: "Ah! there are M. Dant&egrave;s and M. Lamartine, as usual,
+together."</p>
+
+<p>"M. Dant&egrave;s!" exclaimed the Count, in surprise, looking around.
+"Impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"And yet most true," observed Beauchamp; "in the third loge from the
+Minister's to the right.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> What a wonderful resemblance there is between
+those men&mdash;the poet and the Deputy! One would suppose them brothers. The
+same tall and elegant figure, the same white and capacious brow, the
+same dark, blazing eye, the same raven hair, and, above all, the same
+most unearthly and spiritual pallor of complexion."</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder M. Dant&egrave;s is pale," said the Count. "Have you not heard of
+the occurrence of this evening in the Chamber? M. Dant&egrave;s was in the
+midst of one of his powerful harangues against the Government, when
+suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he stopped&mdash;coughed violently
+several times, and pressed his handkerchief to his mouth; then taking a
+small vial from his vest pocket, he placed it to his lips, and
+instantaneously, as if new life had entered him, proceeded more
+eloquently than ever to the conclusion of his speech."</p>
+
+<p>"I heard something of this," said Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"As he descended from the tribune his friends thronged around him,
+anxious about his health. He quieted their apprehensions with his
+peculiar smile of assurance, but I observed that his white handkerchief
+was spotted with blood, and he almost immediately left the Chamber."</p>
+
+<p>"That man will kill himself in the cause he has espoused," remarked
+Debray. "See how ghastly he now looks. But so much the better for the
+Ministry. He is a formidable foe. Indeed, that loge contains the two
+most powerful opponents of the Government."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p><p>"And who are those men just entering the box?" asked Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"None other than the two rival astronomers of Europe," said Debray, "and
+yet most intimate friends. The taller and elder, the one with gray hair,
+a dark, sharp Bedouin countenance, and that large, wild, black eye, with
+a smile of mingled sarcasm and humor ever on his thin lip, is Emanuel
+Arago. The other, the short, robust man, with fair complexion, sandy
+hair, bright blue eye and vivacious expression, is Le Verrier, the most
+tireless star-gazer science has produced since Galileo. But hush! the
+curtain is up."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! it matters not," said the Count; "only Gennaro and the Spaniard
+appear in the second act, and I have neither eyes nor ears save for the
+Duchess to-night. But who are those, Beauchamp?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the loge on the first tier, next to the Minister's and directly
+opposite to that of M. Dant&egrave;s?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! two officers of the Spahis and two most exquisite women!" exclaimed
+Debray. "They belong, doubtless, to the African party in the Minister's
+loge. Your lorgnette, Count. What a splendid woman!"</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had the Secretary raised the glass to his eyes before he dropped
+it with the exclamation:</p>
+
+<p>"A miracle! a miracle!"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" cried both of the other young men, turning to the box at which
+Debray was gazing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p><p>"Messieurs, do you remember the fair Valentine de Villefort, whose
+untimely and mysterious demise all the young people of Paris so much
+bewailed, some two or three years ago, and whose lovely remains, we,
+with our own eyes, saw deposited in the Saint-M&eacute;ran and de Villefort
+vault at P&egrave;re Lachaise, one bitter cold autumn evening, and there
+listened most patiently and piously to a whole breviary of mournful
+speeches, declarative of the said Valentine's most superlative
+excellence?"</p>
+
+<p>"Undoubtedly, we remember it well," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Then behold, and never dare to doubt the reappearance of the dead again
+to the ocular organs of humanity."</p>
+
+<p>"Valentine de Villefort!" exclaimed the Count, after a careful and
+scrutinizing survey, "by all that's supernatural; and more exquisitely
+lovely than ever!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then it was true, after all, the strange story we heard," said
+Beauchamp, "of the young lady's resurrection and marriage to Maximilian
+Morrel, somewhere far away in parts unknown?"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," replied the Count, "for, if I mistake not&mdash;and I'm sure I
+don't mistake, now that I look more closely&mdash;that stalwart, splendid
+fellow, with the broad forehead, black eyes and moustache, and the order
+of the Legion of Honor on his breast, to set off his rich uniform of the
+Spahis, and on whose arm the fair apparition is leaning, is no other
+than Maximilian Morrel himself&mdash;the identical man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> who saved my
+worthless neck from a yataghan in Algeria."</p>
+
+<p>"How dark he's grown!" said Debray.</p>
+
+<p>"No more so than all these African heroes&mdash;for instance, Cavaignac and
+Lamorici&egrave;re."</p>
+
+<p>"But what a splendid contrast there is between the young Colonel of the
+Spahis and his lovely bride, if such she be! He, dark as a Corsican;
+she, fair as an Englishwoman&mdash;he, upright as a poplar; she, drooping
+like a willow&mdash;his hair and eyes black as midnight, while her soft,
+languishing orbs are as blue as the summer sky, and her glossy ringlets
+as brown as a chestnut!"</p>
+
+<p>"On my word," said Beauchamp, "the Count grows poetical! Morrel had
+better keep his beautiful wife out of the way! But have you discovered
+who are the other couple in the box?" he added to the Secretary, who had
+his lorgnette in most vigilant requisition. "Any more discoveries,
+Debray?"</p>
+
+<p>A sigh might have been heard as the Secretary took his glass from his
+eye, and replied simply:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And who now?" asked Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud. "There seems no end to discoveries
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"The young man who, by his decorations, seems a chef de bataillon of the
+Spahis," replied Debray, "I cannot make out. But, be he whom he may, he
+is effectually disguised from his most intimate friends by his luxuriant
+beard and moustache. As for the lady&mdash;there is but one woman in the
+world<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> I have ever had the good fortune to behold who could be mistaken
+for her."</p>
+
+<p>"And that is?" said Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Herself."</p>
+
+<p>"And who is herself, Lucien?" asked Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you forgotten the Countess de Morcerf?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Countess de Morcerf?&mdash;the wife of the general who was convicted by
+the peers of felony, treason and outrage in the matter of Ali Tebelen,
+Pacha of Yanina?" said Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"And who blew his brains out in despair?" added the Count.</p>
+
+<p>"The same," said Debray. "She returned to Marseilles with her son
+Albert. You remember Albert and his strange conduct in the duel with the
+Count of Monte-Cristo?"</p>
+
+<p>"One could hardly forget such chivalric generosity, such magnificent
+magnanimity and such sublime self-control as were exhibited by the young
+man on that occasion!" said Beauchamp. "It is to be hoped he was not
+equally forbearing toward the Arabs in his African campaigns, although,
+as his name has never been seen or heard since he entered the army, in
+all probability he was."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," cried the Secretary, impatiently, "the Countess retired to
+Marseilles, and there she is said to have resided in utter seclusion, in
+company only with Morrel's beautiful wife, devoting the vast wealth of
+the deceased Count to philanthropic objects, having received it, as his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+widow, only with the understanding it should be thus bestowed."</p>
+
+<p>"But the rumor was," said Beauchamp, "and indeed I was so assured by M.
+de Boville himself, Receiver-General of the Hospitals, at the time, that
+the Countess gave all the Count's fortune to the hospitals, and that he
+himself registered the deed of gift."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! that was only some twelve or thirteen hundred thousand francs,"
+said Debray. "Three months after her settlement at Marseilles, in a
+small house in the All&eacute;es de Meillan, said to be her own by maternal
+inheritance, a letter came to her from Thomson and French, of Rome,
+stating that there was a deposit in their house, to the credit of the
+estate of the late Count, of the enormous sum of two millions of francs,
+subject to her sole control and order, as the Count's only heir, in the
+absence of his son."</p>
+
+<p>"Two millions of francs!" cried the two young men in a breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Even so, Messieurs," said Debray. "The story does sound rather
+oriental; but I have reason to know that it is entirely true, for I made
+diligent inquiry about it when last at Marseilles."</p>
+
+<p>"And what took you to Marseilles, Lucien?" asked the Count
+significantly.</p>
+
+<p>"The Ministry," replied Debray, with evident confusion, coloring deeply.</p>
+
+<p>"But why does not the Countess marry again?" asked Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud,
+surveying her faultless form<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> and face through his glass. "In the prime
+of life, rich, and, despite her past troubles, most exquisitely
+beautiful, it is strange she don't make herself and some one else
+happy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Especially as no one could ever accuse her of having very desperately
+loved her dear first husband," added the journalist. "Why don't she
+marry, Lucien?"</p>
+
+<p>"How the devil should I know!" replied the Secretary in great confusion.
+"You don't suppose I ever asked her the question, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word," exclaimed the Count, laughing, "I shall begin to think
+you have, if you take it so warmly. But, hist! the bell! The curtain
+rises. We mustn't lose the third act of Donizetti's chef d'&oelig;uvre,
+with such a Lucrezia, for any woman living."</p>
+
+<p>But it was very evident that much of the magnificent performance of the
+d&eacute;butante and her companion, in the thrilling scene between the Duke and
+Duchess of Ferrara and the young Captain Gennaro, was lost to the
+Secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you observe, Beauchamp, how strangely fascinated with the new
+cantatrice seems the young officer of the Spahis who accompanies the
+Countess?" he whispered. "Do but look. He sits like one transfixed."</p>
+
+<p>"And the Countess seems transfixed also, though not by the same object,"
+was the reply. "How excessively pale, yet how beautiful she is! That
+plain black dress, without ornament or jewel, and her raven hair, parted
+simply on her forehead, enhance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> her voluptuous charms infinitely more
+than could the most gorgeous costume. Heavens! what a happy man will he
+be who can call her his!"</p>
+
+<p>"Amen!" said Debray, and the word seemed to rise from the very depths of
+his heart. "But she will never marry. Some early disappointment, even
+before her union with Morcerf, has withered her heart, and the terrible
+divorce which parted her from him, although she never loved him, will
+keep her single forever. Her first and only love is either dead
+or&mdash;worse&mdash;married to another."</p>
+
+<p>"See, see, Lucien!" cried Beauchamp, hurriedly; "at whom does she gaze
+so intently, and yet so sadly? It cannot be Lamartine, for there sits
+his lovely young English wife at his side; nor can it be old Arago, nor
+young Le Verrier; and yet some one in that box it surely is."</p>
+
+<p>"M. Dant&egrave;s?" cried Debray.</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible! That man seems hardly conscious that there are such beings
+as women. His whole soul is in affairs of state."</p>
+
+<p>"His whole soul seems somewhere else just at present," exclaimed the
+Secretary, bitterly. "Look!"</p>
+
+<p>"How dreadfully pale he is!" said Beauchamp; "and yet his eyes fairly
+blaze. Is it the Countess he gazes at?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it M. Dant&egrave;s she gazes at?"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, amid the wild farewell of the mother to her son, upon
+the stage, the curtain came down, and at the same instant, M. Dant&egrave;s
+hastily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> pressed his white handkerchief to his lips, and, leaning on the
+arms of Lamartine and Arago, hastily left the box.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! the Countess faints!" cried Debray, as the door closed on M.
+Dant&egrave;s. "Do they know each other, then?"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ITALIAN LOVER.</h3>
+
+<p>It was early in the evening succeeding the day on which M. Dant&egrave;s had
+answered Giovanni Massetti's letter. Zuleika was seated in the vast,
+sumptuously-furnished salon of the magnificent Morcerf mansion, now, as
+the reader already knows, the residence of the famous and mysterious
+Deputy from Marseilles. She sat upon a superb green velvet-covered sofa,
+half reclining in an indolent, picturesque attitude; behind the sofa and
+leaning over its back stood a young Italian, a perfect model of manly
+beauty; his ardent black eyes were riveted on Zuleika's blushing
+countenance with a look of the most profound and enthusiastic adoration,
+while his hand held the young girl's with a gentle, loving pressure,
+which was returned with unmistakable warmth. The apartment was dimly
+lighted and huge, sombre patches of shadow lay everywhere. Zuleika and
+her lover were alone together; for some time they seemed too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> full of
+happiness to speak, but finally Giovanni said, in a soft, flutelike
+whisper, as if unwilling to break with loudly uttered words the
+delicious spell of his love-dream:</p>
+
+<p>"Zuleika, darling Zuleika, so you did not once forget me during our
+long, cruel separation?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never for a single instant, Giovanni," answered the young girl, the
+flush upon her cheek deepening as she spoke, her hand tightening about
+her lover's and her lovely eyes filling with a soft fire. "But I
+sometimes feared you had forgotten me!"</p>
+
+<p>"You were always present in my mind and in my heart," replied the
+Italian in a tone that thrilled her through and through. Stooping, he
+placed his lips to her forehead and imprinted upon it a long and silent
+kiss; then, flushing in his turn, he added, still holding his head
+against hers: "From the very moment of our first meeting you have
+reigned in my bosom, my own, my love, the queen of my destiny and my
+life!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Giovanni, Giovanni," murmured the young girl, "I am happy, so
+happy!"</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her again, this time upon her upturned lips that with a slight
+movement almost imperceptibly returned the kiss, sending his blood
+tingling through his veins and causing him to tremble with delight from
+head to foot. No longer able to restrain himself, he hastily quitted the
+back of the sofa, threw himself down beside her and clasping her in his
+arms drew her unresistingly upon his bosom. Once there she did not offer
+to stir, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> even nestled closer to him and pillowed her head on his
+broad shoulder. The tumultuous beating of both their hearts was audible
+amid the unbroken silence that ensued. With one hand the Viscount
+tenderly smoothed her silken tresses, and his arm tightened around her
+waist as if he had determined never to release her again.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father, in his letter of this morning," said Giovanni finally,
+"told me there was hope, that you did not look upon my addresses with
+aversion, and that I had his leave to pay court to you and ascertain
+your wishes from your own dear lips. I hastened here this evening, and
+M. Dant&egrave;s himself bade me seek you in this salon. I came on the wings of
+love and found all my fondest hopes realized; that I possessed your
+heart as you possessed mine. Oh! tell me, Zuleika, that this is not all
+a dream, for it seems too delicious to be true!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is reality, Giovanni, blessed reality," answered the young girl in a
+low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"And do you really love me with all your soul?"</p>
+
+<p>"With all my soul, Giovanni!"</p>
+
+<p>The ardent Italian showered a flood of burning kisses upon her forehead,
+cheeks and lips, and she quivered like a leaf in his embrace. Then he
+said, with a shade of anxiety in his tone:</p>
+
+<p>"And your brother Esp&eacute;rance, is he disposed to look upon me with
+approval? You know that in Rome he did not see fit to include me in the
+number of his friends. We had a little difference, you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> will remember,
+and ever afterwards he was cold toward me."</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika shuddered as she recalled the fact that the little difference
+alluded to had been a violent quarrel that had nearly resulted in a duel
+between the two young men. She had never known the details, for both her
+brother and Giovanni had studiously concealed them from her; indeed,
+Esp&eacute;rance had carefully avoided all mention of the Viscount's name ever
+since the day they had become embroiled. Was M. Dant&egrave;s aware of the
+trouble between his son and the youthful Italian? She did not know, but,
+at the same time, felt firmly persuaded that her father had fully
+investigated the doings, character and family of her suitor, and would
+not have sanctioned a renewal of his addresses to her had he not been
+perfectly satisfied in every respect. She, therefore, answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I am altogether ignorant as to what Esp&eacute;rance thinks of you, and cannot
+say whether he still harbors resentment against you or not; but,
+whatever may be his opinion and feelings, rest assured that he will
+never interfere to cause his sister an instant of unhappiness, more
+especially as he knows that my father looks upon you with a favoring
+eye."</p>
+
+<p>"But how about the coldness existing between us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does it still exist on both sides?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not on mine, Zuleika, not on mine. I forgave and forgot all long ago."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p><p>"Forgave and forgot! Then Esp&eacute;rance must have wronged you!"</p>
+
+<p>"He did, Zuleika, and with the proverbial hot blood and headlong
+impulses of the Roman youth I resented that wrong. But I could not
+remain at enmity with the brother of the girl I loved, so when I became
+cooler I sought him out and endeavored to apologize."</p>
+
+<p>"And he accepted your apology?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did not accept it, but turned on his heel and left me without a
+word. He evidently thought me a coward and attributed my efforts toward
+effecting a reconciliation to a desire to escape fighting him."</p>
+
+<p>"But why did you quarrel in the first place? What was the cause of the
+difference between you?"</p>
+
+<p>The young Italian hung his head and did not answer. Zuleika saw that he
+had grown deadly pale, and she felt his hand tremble nervously.</p>
+
+<p>Freeing herself from his embrace, the young girl sprang to her feet and
+faced him.</p>
+
+<p>"Giovanni," said she, firmly, "tell me the whole story of this painful
+affair. It is imperative that I should know it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you doubt me, Zuleika, do you doubt me?" he asked, bitterly, and he
+buried his face in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I doubt you, Giovanni? No. But, if you love me, tell me all the
+details of the trouble between my brother and yourself!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p><p>"I cannot, I cannot, Zuleika!" he cried. "Command me to shed the last
+drop of blood in my veins for you and I will do it without an instant's
+hesitation, but I cannot tell you that terrible tale of deceit,
+treachery and bloodshed!"</p>
+
+<p>He had arisen and was walking excitedly about the salon; his pallor had
+increased and he trembled in every limb.</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika stood with folded arms and gazed at him; she was calm and her
+eyes had a look of determination the young man had never before beheld
+in them; it filled him with dismay. A few moments ago she had been all
+love and tenderness, a yielding, trusting maiden in her lover's arms;
+now, she resembled a beautiful Amazon bent on achieving a victory, whom
+nothing but unconditional surrender would satisfy.</p>
+
+<p>"The story, the story," she repeated, "tell me the story!"</p>
+
+<p>Her face was as white as marble and her faultless lips seemed chiseled
+from stone. She looked so beautiful and tempting as she stood there, her
+surpassing loveliness enhanced by the picturesque half-oriental,
+half-Parisian dress she wore, that the Viscount felt his passion for her
+redoubled. He flung himself at her feet and seizing the hem of her
+superb robe kissed it rapturously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Zuleika, Zuleika," he cried, utterly unable to restrain himself, "I
+am your slave! Place your tiny foot upon my neck and crush me where I
+lie! I shall expire adoring you!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p><p>"Giovanni," replied Zuleika, greatly moved by this display of devotion,
+"rise and be a man!"</p>
+
+<p>The Italian sprang up as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt; then he
+endeavored to clasp her in his arms, but she quietly repulsed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Zuleika," cried he, sadly, "you do not love me; you never loved me; I
+have been the victim of a cruel deception!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you think so," answered the young girl, quietly, "there is but one
+course you can pursue as a man of honor&mdash;spurn the deceiver from you and
+never look upon her face again!"</p>
+
+<p>The young man gazed at her reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"What have I done to turn you thus against me?" he asked, his tone
+suddenly becoming humble.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you done? You refuse to reveal this mystery to me, which, as
+you yourself admit, involves deceit, treachery and bloodshed, and which,
+for aught I know, has set an indelible stain upon your life! I love you
+truly, love you with all the passion of a woman's nature, but I must
+know this history that I may judge whether you are worthy of my love!"</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you, Zuleika, that there is no stain upon my life, that there
+is nothing in this history that tends in the least to dishonor me, but
+still I cannot speak."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we must separate."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Zuleika, Zuleika, do not be pitiless! You will drive me mad!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p><p>The young girl touched a bell and Ali, the Nubian, appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur is about taking his departure," said she to the faithful
+servant. "I leave him in your hands."</p>
+
+<p>And without a word of farewell to Giovanni, she swept from the salon
+like a queen.</p>
+
+<p>The Viscount gazed after her with indescribable sadness pictured upon
+his handsome countenance. Then he followed Ali, put on his overcoat and
+hat and regretfully left the house.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MINUTE VIALS.</h3>
+
+<p>Even to the Communists, with whom he had come into such close contact,
+M. Dant&egrave;s, the Deputy from Marseilles, remained as much of a mystery as
+ever. Marrast, though now devotedly attached to him, admitted that he
+was totally unable to fathom either his designs, or his methods of
+accomplishing them, while Lamartine, who was in his company a large
+portion of the time, when questioned concerning him, replied that all he
+knew of M. Dant&egrave;s was that he was a firm friend of the cause and an
+untiring worker in the interest of the weary and oppressed masses.</p>
+
+<p>Debray, though he had no tangible foundation for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> it, could not get rid
+of the idea that the dangerous Deputy and the Count of Monte-Cristo were
+one and the same individual, but Beauchamp, with the usual incredulity
+of journalists, scoffed at the notion, and Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud derided it
+whenever it was mentioned in his presence.</p>
+
+<p>That M. Dant&egrave;s had great wealth was, however, generally admitted, though
+whence it was derived or in what manner it was invested no one could
+tell. It was now no longer a secret that he had purchased and resided in
+the magnificent mansion formerly owned by the Count de Morcerf, in the
+Rue du Helder, and this circumstance, while it vastly augmented the
+interest attaching to him, did not in the least detract from the
+enthusiasm felt for him by the working classes.</p>
+
+<p>It was night. In a large chamber, richly furnished, but dimly lighted,
+in the mansion in the Rue du Helder, the same apartment once inhabited
+by the Countess de Morcerf, motionless, and seemingly lifeless, with a
+countenance as pale as alabaster, and as still, lay M. Dant&egrave;s, the
+Deputy from Marseilles. Although, in the ashy pallor of the lips and
+brow, and the fixed, serene, almost stern aspect of the immovable face,
+might be read unmistakable evidence of an exhausting and dangerous
+constitutional shock to the system, yet none of that emaciation, over
+which broods the shadow of the angel of death, resulting from protracted
+illness, was there to be seen. The broad white forehead&mdash;the raven hair,
+sparsely sprinkled with silver&mdash;the round temples&mdash;the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>delicately
+penciled brow, encircling, like a sable arch, the large and
+almond-formed eye&mdash;the full calm lip, and the chiseled chin and
+nostril&mdash;all these were as perfect now as when last before the reader.
+The cheek was, perhaps, slightly sunken, but it could not be more pallid
+than when last beheld; and but for that nameless quietude&mdash;that "rapture
+of repose," as Lord Byron well expresses it&mdash;that placid languor which
+sleeps on the features, which illness always creates and which
+spiritualizes and intellectualizes the most common features, the invalid
+might be supposed to be enjoying the most quiet slumber.</p>
+
+<p>Excepting the invalid, there was no one in that chamber save the
+faithful Ali, who moved noiselessly about, from time to time, or sat
+immovably upon the floor and gazed on his master's pallid face.</p>
+
+<p>As the silvery tones of the chamber clock tinkled forth the third
+quarter after ten, the door opened, and a small, dark, thin man, with
+large whiskers, keen, penetrating eyes, broad, bald forehead, thinly
+covered with gray hair, and apparently about fifty years of age, briskly
+entered. It was Dr. Orfila, a name somewhat known in medical science.
+Approaching the bed, he placed his fingers upon the sick man's pulse,
+and gazed earnestly on his face for some time in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange!" he at length muttered; "the most powerful drugs in the most
+unheard-of quantities are powerless! Who, then, is this man, whose
+nature so differs from that of every one else? Can he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> so have
+accustomed his system to poisons, that, as with the King of Pontus, they
+are ineffectual to help or to harm him? His constitution must be iron!
+The vitality of a dozen men is in him, or he'd have been dead a month
+ago. Well, it's plain he's no worse, if he's no better. Drugs are
+useless, and he must be left to nature and his amazing constitution.
+This stupor, this utter death of all the faculties and senses for so
+long a time, is wonderful. Fever, delirium, anything but this death-like
+trance. It seems as if this man had been sleepless all his life before,
+and that now his overwrought brain and heart were compensating
+themselves for the toil and wakefulness of years. Could I but excite the
+nerves!"</p>
+
+<p>For some time the physician gazed in deep thought at the pale face of
+the unconscious slumberer. Suddenly turning to the Nubian, he said to
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"Ali, where does your master keep the drugs he has been for years
+accustomed to take?"</p>
+
+<p>The Nubian stared in mute amazement, but moved not from his rug.</p>
+
+<p>"Ali," said Dr. Orfila, sternly, "unless I see and know those drugs,
+this night your master dies."</p>
+
+<p>The Nubian looked anxiously into the face of the physician, and then, as
+if satisfied with the scrutiny, rose, and, with noiseless steps, left
+the room. In a few moments he re-entered and placed in the physician's
+hands a small casket of ebony, exquisitely worked and studded with gems.
+Taking it hastily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> to the shaded lamp upon a table at the extremity of
+the chamber, he attempted to open it, but his attempts were vain.
+Indeed, to all appearances, it was a solid block of ebony, and its
+extreme heaviness, compared with its dimensions, seemed to favor the
+idea.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said the doctor, returning the casket, after a close scrutiny,
+to the Nubian, who had followed him.</p>
+
+<p>Ali took the casket, and instantly a portion of the top flew up,
+disclosing within the centre of the cube of ebony a cavity lined with
+crimson velvet, and a dazzling array of minute vials of crystal, each
+filled with a fluid&mdash;pink, blue, green and yellow in hue, while the
+contents of several were colorless. The Nubian had touched a spring
+concealed in the carving, and known only to his master and himself.</p>
+
+<p>The physician removed the minute vials one after another from their
+receptacles, and held them up to the light; on each was a cipher, and on
+no two was the same. Most of them were quite filled with the fluid
+contained, but some were only half full, while one was nearly empty. Dr.
+Orfila looked closely at the cipher upon each vial as he removed it from
+the casket. He then held it to the light to determine its particular hue
+or shade, and sometimes withdrew the crystal stopper ground into the
+deep mouth, touching it cautiously and quickly to his nostril or the tip
+of his tongue. "Morphia, cinchonia, quinia, lobelia, belladonna,
+narcotina, bromine, arsenicum, strychnos colubrina, bruc&oelig;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+ferruginea," muttered the savant, as he examined one vial after the
+other and replaced it. "Bruc&oelig;a ferruginea&mdash;ha! brucine! I thought as
+much," exclaimed he, holding up the vial, which showed, by being nearly
+empty, that its contents had been used more frequently than those of any
+of the others.</p>
+
+<p>"How many drops of this is the greatest number your master has ever
+taken?" asked Dr. Orfila.</p>
+
+<p>The Nubian, who, it will be remembered, was a mute, held up both hands
+with the fingers outspread, and then two other fingers of one of his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Twelve drops!" cried the astonished physician. "Impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>Ali insisted on the assertion.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet it must be so," the doctor added. "That would explain all."</p>
+
+<p>Taking the vial and a minute crystal vessel, which he found in the
+casket, he hastily but carefully dropped into the latter thirteen drops.
+Then filling the vessel with water, he approached the patient, who still
+slumbered heavily on, and placed it to his lips. For an instant he
+seemed conscious of the wish of the physician, and with an effort the
+mixture was swallowed. Then he lay as still and motionless as before.</p>
+
+<p>Returning the vials and the vessel to their places, Dr. Orfila closed
+the casket and gave it to the Nubian. He then gazed long and anxiously
+at the torpid slumberer, standing at the bedside and watching that
+marble face.</p>
+
+<p>At length the clock struck eleven. Dr. Orfila<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> started and hastily
+glanced at his repeater; then, turning to the Nubian, who had carried
+away the casket, and, having noiselessly returned, stood silently beside
+him, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Ali, in one hour your master will be in high fever; in two hours he
+will, probably, be delirious. He will then sleep soundly, and toward
+morning will wake, I hope, in his right mind, but terribly exhausted and
+profusely perspiring. At daylight I shall be here. You must not leave
+him for a single instant as you value his life."</p>
+
+<p>The Nubian clasped his hands above his head and bent his forehead almost
+to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"If you think necessary, however, Ali, send for me before morning."</p>
+
+<p>The physician gave one more look at his patient, pressed his fingers on
+his pulse, placed his palm on his forehead, and then, taking his hat and
+cane, left the chamber.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE UNKNOWN NURSE.</h3>
+
+<p>When the rumor that M. Dant&egrave;s had been taken seriously ill was first
+circulated throughout Paris, it caused excitement in every quarter of
+the city, filling the Communists and workmen with dismay and greatly
+elating their opponents.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p><p>In the midst of the excitement a strange lady, very plainly attired,
+but whose language and bearing gave unmistakable evidence of refinement
+and aristocratic associations, made her appearance one morning at the
+office of Dr. Orfila and humbly asked permission to nurse his
+distinguished patient. The physician, somewhat surprised at such a
+request from such a woman, immediately grew suspicious and demanded an
+explanation, when the lady informed him that she had known the sick man
+in his youth and was still deeply interested in his welfare. She refused
+to give her name, but solemnly assured the doctor that, should he grant
+her petition, M. Dant&egrave;s on his recovery would be ready to thank him on
+bended knees.</p>
+
+<p>Convinced at length that no harm was intended, the physician gave his
+permission and the unknown lady was duly installed as nurse. She
+discharged her duties with unflagging devotion and energy, satisfying
+even the exacting Nubian, with whom she divided the watch at the bedside
+of the unconscious deputy. Dr. Orfila was delighted, while Esp&eacute;rance and
+Zuleika were overjoyed.</p>
+
+<p>On&mdash;on&mdash;the sleeper still slumbered on! One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four quarters
+after eleven tinkled in silvery numbers upon the delicate bell of the
+clock, yet the closed eyelids and fixed lips moved not, gave no sign;
+but for the light, though regular undulation of the chest, life itself
+might seem to have fled forever. Yet life was still there!</p>
+
+<p>How strange the bond which connects vitality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> with consciousness&mdash;the
+body with the soul! And yet more strange is that phase of existence in
+which the one moves on without the other. The mind sometimes is all life
+when the body is dead, and oftener still is the body all life when the
+mind seems gone. Mind, too, may frequently act independently, not only
+of the body, as in dreams, but, also, of consciousness and of the heart;
+while the body, as in somnambulism, may act altogether alone.</p>
+
+<p>On&mdash;on&mdash;the slumberer breathed on, but he thought not, felt not,
+perceived not. A revolution, an earthquake might heave around him, but
+the convulsive throes of man or of nature would have been as nothing to
+him. The brow would have remained as calm and as cold, and the cheek as
+pale and as still, while, in all human probability, the faithful Nubian
+would have sat as immovable upon his rug at the bedside of his beloved
+master, and have gazed upon him as untiringly with his dark and
+sleepless eye.</p>
+
+<p>As the last quarter after eleven sounded, followed immediately by the
+hour of midnight, a small door beside the bed noiselessly opened, and a
+female figure in white silently entered the room; but not so noiselessly
+was the entrance effected as to escape the ear of the vigilant Ali. He
+glanced hurriedly around; then, as if familiar with the apparition, and
+anticipating its approach, he rose, and, taking his rug to the further
+extremity of the chamber, again laid himself down, like a faithful dog,
+though not now to watch.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p><p>Meanwhile the lady, quietly approaching the bed, gazed long and
+mournfully at the slumberer's pale yet noble visage; then, kneeling, she
+buried her face in her hands amid the coverings.</p>
+
+<p>She was, probably, forty; yet, in the full and faultless perfection of
+her form&mdash;in her graceful and yielding motions&mdash;in her statuesque bust,
+rounded cheek and night-black hair, she would, to the casual observer,
+have indicated hardly the half of that age. Her figure was tall and
+dignified, yet mobile as a willow; her eyes were dark and luminous, and,
+in their profound depths, slept a world of melancholy meaning. Her hair
+was simply parted on a broad forehead, and was gathered in heavy masses
+low on the neck. Her lips were full and red, and, when parted, exhibited
+teeth of dazzling whiteness, while her complexion, which was very dark,
+was yet clear and pure as the hue of the magnolia's petal. But that face
+was pale, very pale, almost as colorless as that of the quiet sleeper at
+its side, and upon it rested an expression of love unutterable, mingled
+with the sadness of death.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the unknown nurse, the Countess de Morcerf, as she again was an
+inmate of that apartment of which she had once, under circumstances how
+different, been mistress; such was Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, the Catalane of Marseilles,
+again at the side of the man whom all her life she had loved, with none
+to gainsay or forbid!</p>
+
+<p>Upon that pale and motionless countenance she gazed long and deeply,
+and, oh! the world of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> memory that passed through her mind!&mdash;the world
+of thought and feeling that centred in that fixed gaze! At length,
+clasping her hands upon her forehead, her eyes streaming with tears, she
+bowed her face upon the bed, from which she had just raised it, and long
+seemed absorbed in prayer.</p>
+
+<p>Roused from this position by some movement of the slumberer, she started
+up and watched him.</p>
+
+<p>The shaded rays of the dim and distant lamp threw a faint glimmering of
+light upon the pale countenance, but the quick eye of love
+instantaneously detected a change. A slight flush was mounting the
+cheek, and gentle perspiration was distilling upon the brow, while a
+smile played on the mouth. Suddenly, as she gazed, those pallid lips
+moved. Astonished, she listened.</p>
+
+<p>"Marseilles! beautiful Marseilles!" said the sleeper. "Home of my
+boyhood, home of my heart. I come!" Then quickly and sternly came the
+order, "Let go the anchor&mdash;furl the sails&mdash;mate, take charge of the
+ship!" Then the tones changed, and a joyful light shot over the face as
+the lips exclaimed, "Now for my father! now for my love! Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s!
+Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s!"</p>
+
+<p>Amazed, the fair watcher retained her position, and gazed and listened
+so silently and breathlessly that the quick and audible beatings of her
+heart might have been numbered.</p>
+
+<p>"Mine&mdash;mine at last!" continued the dreamer. "The marriage-feast&mdash;the
+marriage-feast!" But instantly the expression of the voice and the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>countenance altered. The light of joy was shrouded in clouds.
+"Arrest&mdash;arrest me?" was the exclamation&mdash;"me! at my marriage-feast! A
+dungeon for me! Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s! Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s! My love&mdash;my wife! Oh! God! it is the
+Ch&acirc;teau d'If! Despair&mdash;despair!"</p>
+
+<p>Shocked, terrified at the terrible energy of these words, and the
+expression of unutterable woe that rested on the countenance of the
+sleeper, the affrighted woman, who comprehended but too well the fearful
+significance of the abrupt and disjointed syllables, hastily arose as if
+to rouse the slumberer from his dream or to call on the Nubian for aid.</p>
+
+<p>But, before she could carry the purpose into execution, the aspect of
+the Deputy's visage again had changed. A dark frown settled on the brow,
+a spirit of fixed resolve contracted the firm lip and dilated the
+nostril, and the word, "Vengeance&mdash;vengeance!" in whispers scarcely
+audible, but repeatedly and rapidly pronounced, was heard.</p>
+
+<p>A longer silence than before succeeded. At length another change swept
+over the face, and the words, "Free&mdash;free&mdash;I am free!" burst from the
+lips; then they murmured, "Treasure untold! wondrous
+wealth!&mdash;diamonds&mdash;pearls&mdash;rubies&mdash;ingots of gold! The mad abb&eacute;'s dream
+was reality!" Again the countenance darkened. "Fourteen years in a
+dungeon for no crime!&mdash;a father dead of starvation!&mdash;a bride the bride
+of the fiend who has done all this&mdash;and he a peer of France&mdash;and his
+friends a millionaire of Paris and the Procureur du Roi!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+Vengeance&mdash;vengeance&mdash;vengeance!" There was a pause, and the dreamer
+exultingly continued, "It is done! The peer of France is a disgraced
+suicide! The Procureur du Roi is a madman! The banker is a bankrupt!"
+The dreamer again paused, and his countenance once more changed. "Alas!
+alas! man is not God! 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord!'
+The innocent suffer with the guilty. To avenge a wrong has been
+sacrificed a life, and only misery has been the recompense! No more&mdash;no
+more&mdash;no more of this! Man and man's happiness be henceforth the aim! To
+that be devoted wealth untold!"</p>
+
+<p>The lips ceased to move. Gradually the high excitement of the features
+passed away and was succeeded by an expression of sadness and love.
+"Hayd&eacute;e&mdash;gone&mdash;gone to a better world. Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s&mdash;Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s&mdash;oh! does she
+love me yet? The long lost idol of my heart!&mdash;the adored angel of my
+life!&mdash;come! come! come!"</p>
+
+<p>As the dreamer spoke, he spread wide his arms; when his eyes opened, and
+his long slumbering senses returned, Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, his own Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, was,
+indeed, clasped to his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s! Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s?" he faintly whispered. "Ah! it was no dream, for
+you are, indeed, beside me and mine&mdash;mine forever!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thine&mdash;thine&mdash;forever!" was the reply, and she clasped his feeble form
+to her heart as she would have clasped that of a child.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A NOTABLE F&Ecirc;TE.</h3>
+
+<p>On the night of Monday, February 21st, 1848, all Paris was at the house
+of M. Gaultier de Rumilly, in the Avenue des Champs Elys&eacute;es. M. Gaultier
+de Rumilly was well known as one of the leaders of the extreme left,
+though the confidential friend of M. Odillon Barrot, and the f&ecirc;te was
+perfectly understood to be a political reunion, rather than a social
+one. All the accompaniments of the most splendid society events of the
+season were in requisition. Even the brilliant balls given by the
+opulent citizens of New York were eclipsed in luxury and splendor. There
+was the streaming of lamps and chandeliers, the swell of enchanting
+music, the whirl of the fascinating polka, redowa or mazurka, while
+throngs of richly attired and lovely women were constantly enhancing the
+magnificence of the scene by their arrival. The brilliancy of the
+occasion was also richly diversified by the presence of an unusually
+large number of officers of the Municipal and National Guards in full
+uniform, as well as of several belonging to the Line or the regiments of
+Algeria.</p>
+
+<p>It was about ten o'clock. Within, all was light, life and loveliness;
+without, the winter wind moaned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> drearily through the leafless trees of
+the Boulevard, and the drifting sleet swept along the deserted streets.
+It was a wild night. Throughout all Paris seemed going forth a
+portentous murmur, like that mysterious moaning of the ocean, which,
+with mariners, is the prelude of a storm. An ominous whispering, as of
+many voices, seemed to sink and swell on the sweeping night blast; then
+all was still. Again, in the distance, would rise a sharp shout, or the
+stern, brief word of military command. At intervals, also, one might
+imagine he heard a deep rumbling, as of heavy ordnance and its tumbrels
+over the pavements, accompanied by the measured tread of armed men and
+the clattering hoofs of cavalry horses. Then these sounds died away, and
+along the narrow streets of Paris again the night wind only swept, the
+bitter blast howled and the ominous whispering, as of spirits, rose and
+fell.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange and stormy night&mdash;murky and chilly&mdash;while at intervals
+the cold rain dashed down in cutting blasts. But within the magnificent
+mansion of Gaultier de Rumilly all was light and loveliness, as has been
+said. The splendid salons were already thronged, yet crowds of
+richly-attired guests were constantly arriving.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! Beauchamp, just come?" cried Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud to his friend, as he
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>"By the grace of God, yes!" said the journalist. "What a night!"</p>
+
+<p>"What a throng of men and women say rather!" was the reply.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p><p>"Very true. Who's here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask who's not here, and your question may be easily answered. All Paris
+is here! Women of every age and station, and men of all political
+creeds&mdash;Conservatives, Dynastics, Legitimists, Republicans and
+Communists. Indeed, this soir&eacute;e seems to me, and I shouldn't wonder if
+it were designed so to be, a general reunion of the leaders of all the
+great parties in France, to compare notes and learn the news."</p>
+
+<p>"And there is news enough to learn, it would seem. Is M. Dant&egrave;s here?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is, or was, and his beautiful wife, too, the most magnificent woman
+in Paris. Morrel also is here with his fair bride."</p>
+
+<p>"And who is that dark, dignified man in the Turkish costume, around whom
+the ladies have clustered so inquisitively?" asked the Deputy.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that's the Emir of Algeria, the famous captive of the Duke
+d'Aumale," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"What! Abd-el-Kader! How comes he here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! as a special favor, I suppose; he has a respite from his sad
+prison."</p>
+
+<p>"What a splendid beard, and what keen black eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, his eyes are decidedly gray, but so shaded by his extraordinary
+lashes that they seem black. They say that he was more distinguished as
+a scholar, in Algeria, than as a soldier, statesman or priest. In fact,
+he is as erudite as an Arab can be, and his library, which is contained
+in two leathern trunks,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> accompanied him in all his wanderings prior to
+his submission."</p>
+
+<p>"And what think you really induced him to surrender himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Policy of the deepest character, and worthy of Talleyrand, Metternich
+or Nesselrode, if we are to rely on the eloquent speech of Lamorici&egrave;re
+in the Chamber, the other day."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember. Bugeaud spoke first, and Lamorici&egrave;re followed. He thought
+that the Arab Curtius leaped into the gulf because, by so doing, he was
+convinced he could injure French interests more than by his freedom.
+Well, perhaps he was right. He bids fair to be a hard bone of contention
+between the opposition and the Ministry."</p>
+
+<p>"If I mistake not, Lamorici&egrave;re disclaimed all responsibility for
+accepting the surrender, and placed it on the Governor-General, the
+young Duke, for whom the Ministry is liable?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and Guizot announced that he would send the Emir back to
+Alexandria, could security be given against his return to Algeria."</p>
+
+<p>"As to the Emir's surrender, at which you wonder, the real cause is said
+to have been not policy, but the universal passion&mdash;love."</p>
+
+<p>"He is an Antony, then, instead of a Curtius."</p>
+
+<p>"So it seems. At the moment when, with incredible efforts, he had
+effected the passage of the Moorish camp, and was off like an ostrich
+for the desert, the firing of the French, who had reached his deira,
+struck his ear. Back he flew like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> lamiel. Twice his horse fell
+under him dead&mdash;twice he was surrounded and seized, and twice, by his
+wonderful agility, he regained his freedom. At last, perceiving that all
+was lost, he turned his face again toward the desert, and, for two days
+and nights, continued his flight. But his heart was behind him. Certain
+of escape himself, he preferred hopeless captivity with her he loved,
+and he returned."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite poetical, on my word! Worthy of Sadi, the Arab Petrarch,
+himself!" said Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud.</p>
+
+<p>"He is decidedly a great man, that Abd-el-Kader. They say he bears his
+misfortunes like a philosopher&mdash;or, better, a Turk&mdash;unalterably mild and
+dignified, while his wives and his mother wail at his feet. Every
+morning he reads the Koran to them, and during the orisons all the
+windows are open, and a large fire blazes in the centre of the room."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a decided godsend to the quidnuncs of Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"So would be a Hottentot, or a North American savage," replied
+Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather a different affair this from the Ministerial soir&eacute;e a week ago,
+I fancy," remarked the editor.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather. I will confess to you, Beauchamp, I attended that soir&eacute;e from
+curiosity to see whether M. Guizot retained his habitual placidity of
+manner amid the clouds every day thickening around him."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p><p>"And what was the result?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, this. He was as polite and courteous as ever, and the same cold,
+imperturbable smile was on his thin lip; but he looked careworn, and
+upon his countenance was an expression of solicitude, when it was
+closely watched, which I never saw there before. Ah, Beauchamp, I envy
+not the Premier!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the guests?" asked the journalist.</p>
+
+<p>"Of guests there were but few; and the spacious salons of the H&ocirc;tel des
+Affaires &Eacute;trang&egrave;res looked dismal and deserted."</p>
+
+<p>"The lovely Countess Leven&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Even she was absent."</p>
+
+<p>"And the Countess of Dino?"</p>
+
+<p>"Absent, too."</p>
+
+<p>"The soir&eacute;e must have been, indeed, dull without those 'charming queens
+of intrigue,' as Louis Blanc courteously calls them. But tell me, Count,
+is the Minister really the husband of the beautiful Leven, or is she
+only his par amours?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one knows. It is certain, however, that the great man devotes to the
+enchantress every moment he can steal from the State, though to look at
+him one would hardly suppose him a lover, in any meaning of the term.
+But who knows? To read his writings can one imagine a purer man? But,
+then, the affairs of Gisquet, Cubi&egrave;res, Teste, and, last and worst,
+Petit, whose case was before the Chamber, do they not betray deplorable
+lack of firmness or morality? But no more of this. Who is that dark,
+splendid woman to whom young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> Joliette seems so devoted? I have seen
+them together before!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you surely have not forgotten Louise d'Armilly, the charming
+cantatrice! She has recently left the boards, to the irreparable loss of
+the opera, having come into possession of an immense inheritance&mdash;some
+millions, it is said, left by her father, who was once a banker of
+Paris. She is asserted to be very accomplished and very ambitious, and,
+as the young African paladin is thoroughly bewitched by her, and she by
+him, they will, doubtless, be matched as well as paired."</p>
+
+<p>"Has Lucien been here?" asked the Deputy, after a pause, during which
+the young men surveyed the brilliant throngs that passed before them and
+returned the salutations of their acquaintances.</p>
+
+<p>"I think not. We have not met, at least," replied the journalist.</p>
+
+<p>"He can hardly be spared to-night, I fancy. The Ministry have had a
+stormy day, and are, doubtless, preparing for one still more stormy
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"There was a perfect tempest in the Chamber this evening, I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Call it rather a hurricane, a tornado!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! give me the particulars; here, come with me into this corner.
+Unfortunately, I was not present. I was busy on the General Committee
+for the Banquet of the Twelfth Arrondissement, to-morrow, at Chaillot.
+To avoid all possibility of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>collision with the police, we resolved, you
+know, not to have the banquet within the walls of Paris, and so there is
+to be a procession to the Barri&egrave;re de l'Etoile. I have been there since
+morning, and reached the city only in time to come here. So, you see, I
+am edifyingly ignorant of the latest news."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I have to inform you that there is to be no banquet after all."</p>
+
+<p>"No banquet! Why, I thought it was compromised between Guizot and Barrot
+that the banquet should be allowed to proceed under protest, in order
+that the question might be brought before the Supreme Court."</p>
+
+<p>"Such was the purpose, but a manifesto of the Banquet Committee, drawn
+up by Marrast, it is said, and, at all events, issued in 'Le National'
+this morning, declaring the design not only of a banquet, but of a
+procession, changed everything. The address sets forth that all invited
+to the banquet would assemble at the Place de la Madeleine to-morrow at
+about noon, and thence, escorted by the National Guard, and accompanied
+by the students of the universities, should proceed by the Place de la
+Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, at the extremity of the Avenue des
+Champs Elys&eacute;es, and thence to the immense pavilion on the grounds of
+General Shian. Only one toast, 'Reform, and the right to assemble,' was
+announced to be drunk, and then a commissary of police could enter a
+formal protest against the whole proceeding on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> spot, on which to
+base a legal prosecution, and the multitude would disperse."</p>
+
+<p>"A very sensible mode of procedure," quietly remarked the journalist,
+"and one eminently calculated to relieve your friend Guizot and my
+friend Barrot from the awkward dilemma of a direct issue."</p>
+
+<p>"But so thought not my friend Guizot. Like his oracle, the sage
+Montesquieu, he thought, 'Who assembles the people causes them to
+revolt.' He took fright at the manifesto, as he was pleased to dignify
+the simple programme in this morning's 'National,' and so, early in the
+sitting, it was announced that the reform banquet was utterly prohibited
+by M. Delessert, Pr&eacute;fect of Police, on the express injunction and
+responsibility of M. Duchatel, Minister of the Interior, by and with the
+advice of M. Hebert, Minister of Justice."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! and what said Odillon Barrot?" cried the journalist.</p>
+
+<p>"He&mdash;why he said nothing at all, but immediately retired at the head of
+the opposition from the Chamber."</p>
+
+<p>"To consult?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. An hour after, they returned in a body two hundred and fifty
+strong, with Barrot at their head, who at once mounted the tribune and
+denounced the despotism of the Ministry in forbidding the peaceful
+assembling of the citizens, without tumult or arms, to discuss their
+political rights. Duchatel replied, under great excitement.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>"'Shall reform committees dare to call out the National Guard at their
+pleasure?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Will you dare to call out the National Guard?' retorted De Courtais,
+fiercely. 'Only try it!'</p>
+
+<p>"'The Government of France will never yield!' rejoined the Minister,
+pale with fury.</p>
+
+<p>"'Speak in your own name, Monsieur!' shouted Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"'I shall never speak in yours!' was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"'You play the game of menace!' cried Lesseps.</p>
+
+<p>"'The Government will never yield!' again vociferated Duchatel.</p>
+
+<p>"'Those were the very words of Charles X.!' observed M. Dant&egrave;s, sternly.
+The entire left responded in a terrific roar.</p>
+
+<p>"'There is blood in those words!' shouted Ledru Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"'The Government will never yield!' the Minister of the Interior for the
+third time vehemently exclaimed, and the right gathered around him.
+'This is worse than Polignac or Peyronet!' vociferated Odillon Barrot,
+his trumpet tones rising above all others like a clarion in a tempest.
+Those hated names were greeted by a yell of abhorrence perfectly savage
+from the left; then all was uproar&mdash;a dozen voices simultaneously
+shouting at their
+loudest&mdash;denunciation&mdash;menace&mdash;defiance&mdash;retort&mdash;clenched
+hands&mdash;extended arms&mdash;furious gesticulations&mdash;every one on
+tip-toe&mdash;fiery eyes&mdash;stamping feet&mdash;shouts of 'Order! order!
+order!'&mdash;and, amid all, the incessant tinkling of old Sauzet's little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+silver bell, which was just about as effective in restoring peace as it
+would be to quiet the tempest now howling through the streets of Paris.
+At length, in utter consternation and dismay the old President put on
+his hat, and, pronouncing the s&eacute;ance ended, rushed from his chair amid a
+hurricane of uproarious shouts."</p>
+
+<p>"And Odillon Barrot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Odillon Barrot led the opposition members immediately from the Chamber
+to his own house, where they have been ever since in deliberation. It
+was six o'clock when the sitting closed, and they must be in
+consultation now, or Barrot would surely be here, if but for a moment,
+out of respect to his bosom friend, our host. Ah! there he is, just
+entering, surrounded by a perfect army of Republicans&mdash;De Courtais,
+Marrast, Lesseps, Duvergier, Flocon, Lamartine, Dupont and a whole host
+besides."</p>
+
+<p>"How excited they look!" exclaimed the journalist. "Ah! Thiers
+approaches them from the other end of the salon!"</p>
+
+<p>"M. Thiers, like the worldly-wise and selfish man he is, has held
+himself aloof from the banquet, and even declined the invitation
+accepted by a hundred of his party; to-day he was absent from the
+Chamber and to-night from the conclave, all with the aspiring, yet vain
+hope, that the King will send for him to form a Ministry."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, in the Chamber, a few days ago, he said that he was of the
+party of the revolution in Europe."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p><p>"True, but he added that he wished the revolution carried on by its
+moderate supporters, and that he should do all he could to keep it in
+the hands of the moderate party."</p>
+
+<p>"'But if it should pass into the hands of a party not moderate,'
+continued the crafty ex-Minister, 'I shall not abandon the cause of the
+revolution. I shall be always of the party of the revolution.' But see,
+he singles out Marrast, of all others!"</p>
+
+<p>"And his old colleague of 'Le National' seems to give him no very
+cordial reception," added the Deputy. "But let us move up and hear the
+determination of the opposition relative to the banquet."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the very question the little historian has just propounded to
+the great journalist. Now for the answer."</p>
+
+<p>"The opposition decide, Monsieur, to abandon the banquet," was the angry
+reply of the editor to the ex-Minister.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" was the bland rejoinder; "and has a manifesto of this decision
+been issued to the people?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has; and it instantly called forth a counter manifesto from the
+electoral committee of the Twelfth Arrondissement, expressing very
+natural astonishment that, at the same time the opposition abandoned the
+banquet, they had not abandoned their seats in the Chamber, and inviting
+them so to do at once."</p>
+
+<p>"And the Ministry?" anxiously asked M. Thiers.</p>
+
+<p>"Will to-morrow be impeached, Monsieur!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p><p>"Ah! indeed! indeed!" cried the smart little aspirant, gleefully
+rubbing his hands.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment General Lamorici&egrave;re, the brother-in-law of Thiers, who
+owed so much to the house of Orl&eacute;ans, hastily approached.</p>
+
+<p>"I come straight from the Tuileries," he said, with considerable
+excitement. "General Jacqueminot has just issued an order of the day, as
+commander-in-chief of the National Guard, appealing to them as the
+constitutional protectors of the Throne to take no part in the banquet.
+Orders have, also, been issued for the rappel to be beaten at dawn, in
+the Quartier St. Honor&eacute;, the scene of the contemplated procession. But
+it's all folly to rely on the National Guard. They are of the people.
+Only the Municipal Guard and the troops of the Line can be relied on in
+the civil conflict, which is sure to come to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"And the Ministers, what do they?" asked Thiers.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! they are not idle," replied the soldier. "The bastilles are armed,
+and those of Montrouge and Aubervilliers are provisioned. The
+horse-artillery at Vincennes are ready, on the instant, to gallop into
+the capital. Seventy additional pieces of ordnance are now entering the
+barri&egrave;res. The Municipal Guard are supplied with ball-cartridges. The
+troops concentrated at sunrise to-morrow will not be less than one
+hundred thousand strong. With these men in the forts and faithful, the
+city can be starved in three days, National Guard and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> all, if
+rebellious. Now is the crisis in which to test the remarkable admission
+of M. Duchatel, in May, '45, that the bastilles of Paris were designed
+to 'fortify order.' We shall see, we shall see!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the Marshal Duke of Islay&mdash;where is he?" quietly asked Marrast,
+with a significant shrug and smile.</p>
+
+<p>At this mention of his bitter foe, a frown lowered on the fine face of
+Lamorici&egrave;re, as he briefly and sternly replied:</p>
+
+<p>"With the King, Monsieur&mdash;General Bugeaud is with the King. But they
+mistake, Monsieur. Eug&egrave;ne Cavaignac is the man for this emergency.
+Bugeaud is a soldier&mdash;a mere soldier&mdash;Cavaignac is a statesman&mdash;a
+Napoleon! Paris will discriminate between the two one day, and that
+shortly."</p>
+
+<p>And with an abrupt military salute the conqueror of Algeria walked away,
+followed by his little brother-in-law, who seemed yet shorter and more
+insignificant at the side of his towering and graceful form. At the same
+moment, Ledru Rollin entered in great agitation, and, having glanced
+hastily around, as if in search of some one in the assemblage, advanced
+straight to the journalist and grasped his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"By heavens, Armand, I think the hour has arrived!"</p>
+
+<p>"Whence do you come?" was the quick question.</p>
+
+<p>"From the Boulevards, where I left Flocon, Louis Blanc and M. Dant&egrave;s,
+with the people. I tell you,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> Armand, the people are ripe&mdash;ripe! The
+Ministerial ordinances prohibiting the banquet have kindled a flame
+wherever they have gone. The pitiful manifesto of the opposition and the
+counter manifesto of the Twelfth Arrondissement have only served to fan
+this flame into fury. It has been our care to restrain and direct, not
+to excite. It is dark and cold without, Armand; the winter wind howls
+dismally along the streets, the sleet freezes as it falls and the
+furious blast almost extinguishes the torches by which, at the corners
+and at the caf&eacute;s, the different manifestoes of the day are being read to
+the eager throngs, on whose faces, in the flare of the blood-red light,
+can be perceived the fury of their hearts. The people, at length, are
+ripe! To-morrow all Paris will be in arms!"</p>
+
+<p>While Ledru Rollin was thus speaking, Louis Blanc entered and quietly
+approached, courteously saluting his acquaintances on his way, and
+stopping to exchange a few words with Madame Dant&egrave;s, who inquired with
+considerable anxiety for her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"I have this moment left him, Madame," said Louis Blanc. "Be assured, he
+is safe and well. Ah! how glorious to be an object of solicitude to one
+like you!" he added, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>The lady smiled also, and offered an appropriate jest in reply to the
+gallantry of the distinguished author, as he moved on to join his
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>"The Ministry provokes its fate!" he said, in a low tone, as he
+approached. "'Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.' These
+men suffered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> seventy reform banquets all over France. The seventy-first
+one they prohibit, and that, too, by the exhumation of an old despotic
+edict of 1790. This is exactly what we would have. It was the first, not
+the last banquet they should have suppressed. Barrot was right to-day,
+in the Chamber, when he said that had this manifestation been suffered
+the people would have become tranquil."</p>
+
+<p>"Tranquil, indeed!" cried Ledru Rollin. "That's exactly what we have
+apprehended! No&mdash;no&mdash;it is too late! This Reform Banquet was, at first,
+but an insignificant thing. In it we now recognize the commencement of a
+revolution. The various announcements and postponements of this banquet
+have caused an agitation among the masses favorable to our wishes, and
+the threats and obstinacy of the Ministry have completed the work. The
+hopes, fears, doubts and disappointments attending this affair have put
+the mind of all Paris in a ferment, and excited passions of which we may
+take immediate advantage."</p>
+
+<p>"Aye!" cried Louis Blanc, "we may now do what I have always wished and
+counseled&mdash;we, the Communists, may now take advantage of a movement, in
+the origin or inception of which we had no hand."</p>
+
+<p>"True, most true!" observed Marrast; "this is the work of the
+Dynastics&mdash;Thiers, Barrot and the rest&mdash;the commencement of a reform
+under the law which we design to make a revolution paramount to all
+law."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p><p>"They begin to fear already that they have gone too far, those discreet
+men!" said Louis Blanc, smiling bitterly. "Did you observe how they
+shuffled to-night at M. Barrot's, and finally resolved to abandon the
+banquet, but, as a sop to the people, pledged themselves to impeach the
+Ministry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! ha! ha!" laughed Ledru Rollin; "just as if their abandonment of the
+banquet is to keep the people away from it to-morrow, any more than the
+Ministerial ordinances! Why, not one man in ten thousand knows of the
+existence of these manifestoes! But the faubourgs have been promised a
+holiday for a fortnight past, and they don't intend to be put off
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"Whether the Dynastics designed or wished to be compromised in this
+affair," remarked Marrast, "they certainly are committed now, and it is
+too late for them to get out of the movement. Indeed, I view it as
+nothing less than a union of all the oppositions against the Crown&mdash;aye,
+against the Crown, and for a republic! We comprehend this&mdash;they don't.
+They have not, like us, waited seventeen years for a signal for
+revolution;&mdash;and now, before God, I believe the hour is at hand! This is
+no accidental insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, '32&mdash;no outbreak
+at a funeral&mdash;no riot of operatives&mdash;no unmeaning revolt, as in '39. It
+is a reform, with the first names in France as its advocates and
+supporters, which we will make a revolution if we can secure the
+National Guard."</p>
+
+<p>"The National Guard is secured already," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> Louis Blanc. "Are they
+not of the people? At least twenty thousand of the National Guard are
+Republicans. Of the remaining forty thousand, nearly all are well
+disposed or neutral in feeling. Have I studied the National Guard for
+twenty years in vain, and have all the measures of the Communists to
+secure them, when the crisis came on, proved utterly ineffectual? On the
+National Guard we may rely. The Municipal Guard are picked men, and well
+paid to support the Throne&mdash;they will fight even better than the Line.
+With the Line and the National Guard the people must seek to fraternize
+from the beginning&mdash;with the other troops they have solely to
+fight&mdash;but, after all, general facts and principles only can be laid
+down. Circumstances utterly beyond human control must direct and govern,
+and vary and determine results when the period of action arrives; and
+arrive it may at any hour of the day or night. At this moment Paris
+sleeps on a volcano, the fires of which have long been gathering through
+many a fair and sunny day! God only knows when the volcano will burst;
+but, when the hour comes, let the people be prepared!"</p>
+
+<p>As these enthusiastic words were uttered, the dark eye of the speaker
+flashed and his lip quivered. The silver clock on the mantel, beside
+which the conspirators stood, struck the first quarter after two. The
+night was waning, but the festivity seemed rather to increase than
+diminish within the salons of the magnificent mansion, while the storm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+howled even more drearily without, and the rain, at intervals, in heavy
+blasts, beat even more fiercely against the northern casements.</p>
+
+<p>As Louis Blanc ceased speaking, M. Flocon entered the salon, and, as if
+by some preconcerted arrangement, at once sought his political friends.</p>
+
+<p>"What of the night, watchman?" cried Ledru Rollin, as the editor of "La
+R&eacute;forme" approached. "The latest news! for 'That of an hour's age doth
+hiss the speaker,' as the English Shakespeare says. The news! good or
+bad!"</p>
+
+<p>"As I entered," said Flocon, "the house trembled with the jar of a train
+of heavy ordnance, attended by tumbrels and artillery caissons, and
+escorted by a regiment of horse, which rolled along the pavement of the
+Champs Elys&eacute;es."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" answered Marrast, with enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"All night," continued Flocon, eagerly, "through darkness and storm,
+whole regiments of infantry have thronged the line of boulevards which
+stretch from the Tuileries to Vincennes, and each soldier bears upon his
+knapsack, in addition to all his arms, an axe to demolish barricades.
+The garrisons of the arrondissements of Paris are already seventy
+thousand strong; and the troops of the Line are concentrating around the
+Palais Bourbon and the Chamber of Deputies."</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent&mdash;most excellent!" joyfully exclaimed Louis Blanc. "The
+affront will not be wanting! But where is M. Dant&egrave;s?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is still with the chiefs of the faubourgs and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> the committees of the
+Free-masons and workmen, in the Rue Lepelletier, issuing his last
+instructions for the morrow. Messieurs, that man is a magician! His zeal
+in the good cause puts the boldest of us all to the blush. By most
+indefatigable energy and indomitable perseverance, he has brought about
+a systematic, almost scientific organization and fraternity, through
+various modes of rapid intercommunication between the innumerable
+classes of operatives of every description throughout the whole capital
+and its faubourgs, so that, within six hours, he can have in military
+array an armed mass of one hundred thousand blouses upon the boulevards.
+The workshops alone, he tells me, can furnish fifty thousand. The
+rapidity with which he conveys intelligence through this immense army
+and their utter subservience to his will and subordination to his orders
+are all so wonderful that it is impossible to determine which is most
+so. To control a Parisian populace has hitherto been deemed a chimera.
+With M. Dant&egrave;s it is an existing reality. Not an army in Europe is so
+obedient or so prompt as his army of workmen. The secret is this&mdash;they
+know him to be their friend. All over Paris are to be seen his
+workshops, savings banks, hospitals and houses of industry and reform,
+and, in the suburbs, his phalansteries and his model farms. That he has
+the command of boundless wealth is certain; but whose it is, or whence
+it comes, no one can divine; and never did man make use of boundless
+wealth to attain his ends more wisely than he does! Why, I am told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> that
+the pens of half the litt&eacute;rateurs and feuilletonists of Paris have for
+years past been guided by his will and compensated from his purse to
+accomplish his purposes. 'The Mysteries of Paris' and 'The Wandering
+Jew' are but two of the triumphs of his policy. And his system of
+philanthropy seems not bounded by France, but to embrace all Europe. The
+Swiss Protestant and the Italian patriot have each felt his effective
+sympathy as well as the French workman; and in the same manner as with
+the operatives so has he obtained influence and weight with the National
+Guard, and to such an extent that of the sixty thousand one-half would
+obey his orders with greater alacrity than those of Jacqueminot himself.
+I tell you, Messieurs, he is a magician!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! hush!" cried Marrast; "he is entering now!"</p>
+
+<p>"He pauses and looks around him!" said Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"He looks for us; I will go to him!" remarked Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"He looks for his wife," replied Louis Blanc. "There, he catches her
+eye. See how eagerly she flies to him!"</p>
+
+<p>"That is the finest pair in Paris," remarked the journalist.</p>
+
+<p>"And the most devoted," added Ledru Rollin. "They have been man and wife
+for some time, it is said, and any one would take them for lovers at
+this moment."</p>
+
+<p>"Have they children?" asked Flocon.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p><p>"No; but M. Dant&egrave;s has by a former wife a son and daughter, who rival
+in good looks the celebrated children of our friend Victor Hugo,"
+returned Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"I met Arago, Lamartine, Sue, Ch&acirc;teaubriand and some other celebrities
+at his mansion in the Rue du Helder one night, recently," continued
+Marrast, "and I thought I never saw a house arranged with such perfect
+taste. The salons, library, picture-gallery, cabinet of natural history,
+conservatory, and laboratory were superb&mdash;everything, in short, was
+exquisite."</p>
+
+<p>"And then one is always sure to meet at Madame Dant&egrave;s' soir&eacute;es," added
+Louis Blanc, "exactly the persons who, of all others, he wishes to see,
+and whom he would meet nowhere else, poets, painters, authors, orators,
+statesmen and artists of every description&mdash;in fine, every man or woman,
+whether native or foreigner, distinguished for anything, is certain to
+be met with at M. Dant&egrave;s' house."</p>
+
+<p>"I once met there," said Flocon, "Rachel, the actress, and Van Amburgh,
+the lion-king."</p>
+
+<p>"M. Dant&egrave;s is a perfect M&aelig;cenas in encouraging merit, as every one
+knows," remarked Marrast; "and he manifests especial solicitude to show
+that he appreciates worth more highly than wealth&mdash;genius than station.
+Poverty and ability are sure recommendations to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Dant&egrave;s is, I am told, as devoted to the good cause as her
+husband," remarked Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"She is a second Madame Roland!" exclaimed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> Louis Blanc. "France will
+owe much to such women as she and her friend Madame Dudevant!"</p>
+
+<p>"She differs greatly from Madame George Sand in some respects, I fancy,"
+said Marrast; "but, if she at all rivals that wonderful woman in
+devotedness to the cause of human rights, whether of her own sex or
+ours, she deserves well of France. In her charities, it is notorious,
+she has no rival. Half the mendicants of the capital bless her name, and
+she is at the head of a dozen associations and enterprises for the
+amelioration of the condition of the destitute, suffering and abandoned
+of her sex."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, Messieurs," cried Ledru Rollin, "your praises of M.
+Dant&egrave;s and Madame, his beautiful wife, are perfectly enthusiastic&mdash;so
+much so, that, in your zeal, you utterly forgot another matter quite as
+momentous. I am so unfortunate as to know M. Dant&egrave;s only as one of the
+great pillars of our noble cause, and a man who, for nearly six years,
+has proven himself an apostle of man's rights, and ready, if need be, to
+become a martyr! That's enough for me to know of him!"</p>
+
+<p>"But who really are M. Dant&egrave;s and his wife?" asked Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"Who really are any of us?" laughingly rejoined Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"Who really is any one in Paris," continued Marrast, "the blood-royal
+always and alone excepted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of M. Dant&egrave;s this only is known," said Louis Blanc, "that for five or
+six years past he has been a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> Deputy from Marseilles, Lyons and other
+southern cities, all of which have been eager to honor themselves by
+returning him as their representative, as one of the boldest and most
+eloquent Republicans in all France; as for Madame Dant&egrave;s, we know her to
+have once been the Countess de Morcerf, but now the wife of our friend,
+and one of the noblest and most lovely matrons in Paris. What need have
+we to know more? But our friend comes."</p>
+
+<p>While this conversation was proceeding, Dant&egrave;s and Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s had joined
+each other, and their hands were quietly clasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Is all well, Edmond?" was the anxious inquiry of the fond wife, in low,
+soft, musical tones, as she fixed upon his pale face her dark eyes,
+beaming with the tenderest solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>"All is well, love," replied the husband. "You will pardon my protracted
+absence, when I tell you it has been unavoidable&mdash;will you not,
+Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will I not? What a question! But I have been so anxious for your
+safety, knowing the perilous business in which you are engaged; and the
+night is so tempestuous."</p>
+
+<p>"You forget that I have a constitution of iron, dear," replied Dant&egrave;s;
+"you forget that I was a sailor once, and the storms were my
+playthings!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you will go home with me now, Edmond, will you not?" she anxiously
+asked, placing her little white hand on his arm and gazing beseechingly
+into his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I ever passed one night from your arms,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> my Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, since we
+were wed?" was the whispered response. "Ah! love, any pillow but thy
+soft bosom would be to me a thorny one! You have spoiled me forever!" he
+added, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"And shall we go now, Edmond?" eagerly asked the delighted woman. "Oh!
+I'm so weary of this f&ecirc;te!"</p>
+
+<p>"I must exchange a few words with our friend Louis Blanc, whom I see
+yonder, with others of our party, and then, dear, we will to our pillow.
+We are both weary. Au revoir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Edmond&mdash;Edmond!" cried the lady, as her husband was going, "do you see
+Joliette and Louise in the redowa yonder?"</p>
+
+<p>Dant&egrave;s looked and, with a well pleased smile, nodded assent; a more
+brilliant and well-matched pair could hardly have been found, Joliette
+in the splendid uniform of an officer of the Spahis, and she in her own
+magnificent beauty, fitly garbed.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s was received with marked respect by the knot of Republicans as
+he approached.</p>
+
+<p>"I am delighted to meet you all, and to meet you to-night, or, rather,
+this morning," said Dant&egrave;s, warmly, "in order that I may render you an
+account of my stewardship for the past six hours. They have been hours
+big with fate; and the first day of Republican France has already
+commenced. Messieurs, we can no longer remain blind to the fact that the
+long looked for&mdash;hoped for&mdash;expected hour has come&mdash;the hour to
+strike&mdash;strike home for liberty and for France! To-morrow the streets of
+Paris will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> swarm with blouses!&mdash;the Marseillaise will be
+heard!&mdash;barricades rise!&mdash;the Ministry be impeached! Next day the
+National Guards will fraternize with the people!&mdash;blood will flow!&mdash;the
+Ministry resign! On the third, the King abdicates!&mdash;the Tuileries are
+surrendered!&mdash;a Regency is refused!&mdash;a Republic is declared! And this
+day, two weeks hence, liberty will be shouted in the streets of Vienna
+and Berlin, and every throne in Europe will tremble! The honors of
+prophecy are easily won," continued the speaker, with a significant
+smile that lighted up his features, pale with enthusiasm and exhaustion,
+"when the problem of seventeen years approaches solution with
+mathematical certainty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are our plans all complete?" asked Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"So far as human forethought or power could render them so, our efforts
+have, I trust, been effectual," was the reply. "Yet the events of every
+hour will induce changes, and render indispensable policy now undreamed
+of. Ah! Messieurs, we must none of us sleep now! Not a moment must
+escape our vigilance! Not an advantage must be sacrificed! We can afford
+to lose nothing! Without leaders, the people are blind! Not, for an
+instant, must they be abandoned! To-morrow, let the masses gather at
+different points! Next day let barricades choke the Boulevards; and, if
+the conflict come not, be it precipitated&mdash;provoked! Thursday, an
+hundred thousand men must invest the Tuileries, and a Provisional
+Government be declared in the Chamber<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> of Deputies! The Bourbons will
+then be in full flight, and France will be free! And now, Messieurs,
+will you permit me to suggest the propriety of our separation? Yonder
+Ministerial Secretary has had his eye upon us ever since he entered."</p>
+
+<p>The expediency of the suggestion of M. Dant&egrave;s was at once perceived; the
+conspirators parted and one after the other, by different routes,
+shortly disappeared. As for M. Dant&egrave;s, he threw himself carelessly in
+the way of the Ministerial Secretary to whom he had alluded, who was no
+other than our friend Lucien Debray, and saluted him with most marked
+and winning courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>"Will the Ministerial Secretary suffer me to compliment him upon his
+indefatigable industry and exertions to-night to fortify order in Paris
+and sustain the administration?"</p>
+
+<p>Debray bowed somewhat confusedly at this remark, and having returned a
+diplomatic reply, from which neither himself nor any one else could have
+elicited an idea, M. Dant&egrave;s continued the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see, it is now nearly three o'clock," he said, consulting his
+repeater; "at half-past two you received an order, signed by the Duke of
+Montpensier, and directed to the War Ministry, commanding that
+seventy-two additional pieces of artillery be transported from Vincennes
+to Paris before dawn. That order was issued, and the ordnance is now on
+the boulevard!"</p>
+
+<p>"How!" exclaimed the astonished Secretary.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p><p>"At Vincennes, the horses of the flying artillery stand harnessed in
+their stalls! All night infantry have been pouring into Paris, and,
+obedient to midnight orders, every railway will disgorge, at dawn,
+additional troops!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a magician?" asked the astonished Secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I reveal to you the Ministerial tactics for the morrow's
+apprehended insurrection?" coolly asked Dant&egrave;s, with a smile. "The
+salons of the Tuileries have not been deserted to-night. 'Can you quell
+an insurrection, General?' asked the King of the Marshal Duke of Islay.
+'I can kill thirty thousand men,' was the humane answer. 'And I, sire,
+can preserve order in Paris without killing a score,' said Marshal
+G&eacute;rard, the hero of Antwerp, 'if I can rely on my men.' 'What is your
+plan, Marshal?' asked the King. Shall I give you the Marshal's reply, my
+friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"You were present&mdash;you know all!" exclaimed Debray.</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite all," thought Dant&egrave;s, "but I shall before we part. Well,"
+continued he, aloud, "the Marshal's strategy was this&mdash;exceedingly
+simple and exceedingly efficacious, too, provided, to use the Marshal's
+own words, he can rely on his men. It is this: Occupy the Tuileries, the
+H&ocirc;tel de Ville, the Halles, the Louvre and other prominent points with a
+heavy reserve of infantry and artillery, and sweep the boulevards, and
+the Rues St. Honor&eacute;, de Rivoli, St. Martin, St. Denis, Montmartre and
+Richelieu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> with cavalry. A simple plan, is it not? Almost as simple as
+that of the insurrectionists themselves&mdash;a barricade on every street and
+one hundred thousand men in the Place du Carrousel!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Government will not yield, Monsieur!" said Debray, firmly. "The
+Minister is unshaken. To crush an unarmed mob cannot severely tax the
+most skillful generals in Europe."</p>
+
+<p>"True, they are unarmed," returned Dant&egrave;s, with apparent seriousness.
+"Their leaders should have thought of that&mdash;arms are so easily
+provided&mdash;but then they can rely on their men!"</p>
+
+<p>"We have yet to see that!" replied Debray, with some asperity.</p>
+
+<p>"True, we have yet to see it. It is only a matter of belief now; then it
+will be a matter of knowledge. Seeing is knowing," added M. Dant&egrave;s, with
+his peculiar smile. "But, pray, assure me, M. Debray, are the Ministry
+and their advisers, indeed, sanguine of the issue to-morrow!"</p>
+
+<p>"They are certain!" replied the Secretary, with energy. Then, feeling
+that he had, perhaps, made a dangerous revelation, he quickly added: "I
+have the honor, Monsieur, to wish you a very good night! It is late!"</p>
+
+<p>"Say, rather, it is early, Monsieur!" replied Dant&egrave;s. "I have the honor
+to wish you a very good morning!"</p>
+
+<p>The Secretary returned the courtesy, turned away, and, after exchanging
+a few words with M. Thiers, disappeared.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p><p>"They are certain, then!" soliloquized M. Dant&egrave;s, as Debray quitted the
+salon. "I was sure I should know all before he left."</p>
+
+<p>Then, rejoining Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, who was patiently awaiting him, they stepped
+into their carriage, as the drowsy tones of the watchman rose on the
+misty air, "Past four o'clock, and all is well!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE REVOLUTION BEGINS.</h3>
+
+<p>Tuesday, the 22nd of February, the birthday of the immortal Washington
+and the first of the Three Days of the French Revolution of 1848, broke
+darkly and gloomily on Paris. The night had been tempestuous, and the
+wind still drove the sleet through the leafless trees of the
+Champs-Elys&eacute;es and howled drearily along the cheerless boulevards.</p>
+
+<p>The streets were dismal, desolate and deserted. Here and there, however,
+through the gray light of the winter dawn, could be caught the semblance
+of a figure closely muffled, whether for concealment, disguise, or
+protection from the biting blast was doubtful, stealing along; these
+figures often met and exchanged ominous signs of recognition.</p>
+
+<p>"Is the procession still to take place?" asked one of another of these
+persons, pausing for an instant as they hurried along.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p><p>"Yes!" was the emphatic answer. "Dupont, Lamartine and the sixteen
+others who are faithful are resolute."</p>
+
+<p>"And the rendezvous?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is the Place de La Concorde."</p>
+
+<p>"And the hour?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twelve."</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon the conspirators parted.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the number of persons in the streets increased as the morning
+advanced. Chiefly, these were artisans, lads, blouses and workmen.</p>
+
+<p>"Whither so early this disagreeable morning?" cried a peaceable-looking
+shopman of the Rue de Rivoli, who was taking down his shutters for the
+day, to a friend who was hurrying by.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't exactly know where I am going," was the reply. "We were all
+roused at daybreak in the Quartier St. Honor&eacute; by the rappel, and so I
+happen to be awake."</p>
+
+<p>"And are the National Guard turning out in good numbers?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. They don't turn out at all. The drummers are followed by a crowd of
+gamins in blouses, who shout Vive la R&eacute;forme and sing the Marseillaise."</p>
+
+<p>"The National Guard don't turn out!" cried the alarmed shopman; "then
+I'll not take down my shutters!"</p>
+
+<p>And as his friend moved on to the Madeleine, he took the precautionary
+measure he had spoken of.</p>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock troops were in motion all over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> Paris, and the roll of
+the drum was heard in every street.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock ten thousand men were assembled at the Madeleine.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there to be a banquet?" asked one of another, as they met on the Rue
+Royale.</p>
+
+<p>"No. It is a procession. The people are to march to the Chamber of
+Deputies and sing the Marseillaise."</p>
+
+<p>All the avenues to the Palais Bourbon and part of the Place around the
+Madeleine were now occupied by the 21st Regiment of the Line and mounted
+Municipal Guards. Before the Chamber of Deputies was marshaled a
+squadron of dragoons, and a battalion of the 69th Regiment of
+Cuirassiers stood ready to charge on the throng.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock two thousand students in blouses from the Parthenon
+were joined by an immense column of workmen from the faubourgs, and,
+having fraternized in the Place de la Concorde, advanced in perfect
+order in procession, led by National Guards, shouting the Marseillaise
+and the Hymn of the Girondins. Slowly and solemnly moved the vast mass
+up the Rue Royale to the Pont de la Concorde, leading to the Place of
+the Chamber of Deputies.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o'clock the vast arena between the Chamber of Deputies and the
+Madeleine contained thirty thousand people. Along the railing of the
+church was drawn up a regiment of horse. A man in a tri-colored sash
+three times read the summons and ordered the crowd disperse.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p><p>The order is disregarded! The charge is sounded! The dragoons rush with
+sheathed sabres on the mass! Again and again they charge, but they cut
+down none!</p>
+
+<p>All at once a heavy cart with a powerful horse is discovered&mdash;the people
+seize it&mdash;the horse is lashed into fury&mdash;he rushes on the double line of
+dragoons and chasseurs&mdash;a breach is made&mdash;the crowd dash through&mdash;some
+rush up the steps of the Chamber of Deputies&mdash;they force the gates&mdash;they
+even enter the hall&mdash;then, suddenly panic-stricken at their own
+audacity, they rush back! At this moment, along the Quai d'Orsay,
+gallops up a strong detachment of the mounted Municipal Guard, led by
+General Peyronet Tiburce Sebastiani, brother of the Marshal and uncle of
+the unhappy Duchess of Praslin. A charge was ordered, the crowd was
+driven over the bridge, and the Municipal Guard, a company of dragoons
+and a squadron of hussars took up a position at the foot of the Obelisk
+of Luxor. "Long live the dragoons!" shouted the people. "Down with the
+Municipal Guard!" accompanied by hootings, groans, shouts and showers of
+stones. The troops, with sheathed sabres, charged. One of the immense
+fountains afforded the gamins a place of shelter. Suddenly the flood of
+water was let on and they fled.</p>
+
+<p>Thus began the revolution.</p>
+
+<p>One o'clock tolled from the tower of the Madeleine. The area was clear.
+Cavalry patrolled the boulevards. Infantry, bearing, besides their
+usual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> arms, implements for demolishing barricades&mdash;axes, adzes and
+hatchets&mdash;each soldier one upon his knapsack, followed.</p>
+
+<p>At two o'clock, at the H&ocirc;tel des Affaires &Eacute;trang&egrave;res, at the corner of
+the Rue des Capucines and the Boulevard, an immense mass of men ebbed
+and flowed like tides of the sea, and a tempest of shouts, groans and
+choruses to national songs arose.</p>
+
+<p>A commissary of police in colored clothes, and with the tri-colored
+sash, led a body of Municipal Guards into the court. Deliberately they
+charge their muskets with ball. "In the name of the Law!" shouted the
+commissary. "Vive la Ligne!" responded the people, as they slowly
+retired.</p>
+
+<p>"Away," cried a trooper to a blouse, in the Place de la Concorde, at the
+corner, near the Turkish Embassy; "Away, or I'll cut you down!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you, coward!" replied the artisan, calmly, with folded arms. At
+that moment a body of the people rushed on the Municipal Guards and
+drove them for safety into their barracks; then they fled themselves to
+avoid the fusillade of the enraged troops.</p>
+
+<p>On the Pont de la Concorde the people stopped the carriage of a
+Ministerial Deputy and saluted him with groans. The next moment Armand
+Marrast, of "Le National," approached and was most rapturously cheered.</p>
+
+<p>The money-changers, those seers of Napoleon, scented not yet the
+revolution. On Friday, the three per cents. were 75f. 85c. On Tuesday
+they opened at 73f. 90c. and closed at 74f.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p><p>The day advanced. The Republican and Communist power augments in its
+systematized order. Paris swarms with insurgents. Bakers' and gunsmiths'
+shops are plundered. Barricades are thrown up. A column rushes down the
+Champs-Elys&eacute;es, and, having been repulsed at an escalade of the railings
+of the Chamber of Deputies, retires, shouting the Marseillaise and a
+chorus from the new opera of the Girondins, "Mourir pour la Patrie." At
+dusk a deputation of students, at the office of "Le National," presents
+a petition for the impeachment of the Ministry.</p>
+
+<p>That impeachment had already taken place!</p>
+
+<p>"What news?" shouted a student to a workman, as he hurried along.</p>
+
+<p>"There has been fighting in the Faubourg St. Marceau; half a dozen
+Municipal Guards have been carried wounded to the hospital of
+Val-de-Grace and a captain was killed."</p>
+
+<p>"And is it true that the Guard has been disarmed on the Rues Geoffroi
+and Langevin, and a gunmaker's shop near the Porte St. Martin broken
+into and rifled?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hadn't heard of that," was the hurried reply. "But I hear this, that
+the guard-houses in the Champs-Elys&eacute;es have been taken, and the troops
+driven off, and that lamps and windows have been torn down."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment another workman rushed along.</p>
+
+<p>"The news!" shouted the student and the first workman.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p><p>"The railing of the Church of the Assumption has been torn away by the
+people to supply arms; two women of the people have been crushed by a
+charge of the Municipal Guard; the shop of Lepage, the armorer, in the
+Rue Richelieu, has been entered by means of the pole of an omnibus used
+as a battering ram; and barricades rise on the Rue St. Honor&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>At three o'clock a column of the people dashed down the boulevards,
+smashing lamps and breaking shop windows. In the Rue St. Honor&eacute; and the
+Rue de Rivoli an omnibus and two carriages were seized to aid in
+erecting a barricade. A guard-house in the Champs-Elys&eacute;es was burned.
+The troops at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were increased. No one was
+suffered to pass. A Municipal Guard was dismounted and nearly killed by
+the people. The crowd in the Rue Royale had become so dense that it was
+impossible to pass to the Place de la Concorde. The troops charged. The
+people gave way. Some were wounded badly; but still rose the shouts,
+"Vive la Ligne! Down with the Municipal Guard!"</p>
+
+<p>In the Place Vend&ocirc;me stood a regiment of the Line. There was the h&ocirc;tel
+of M. Hebert, the Minister of Justice, and M. Hebert was hated by the
+people. "Down with Hebert, the inventor of moral complicity!" yelled the
+populace, but they made no attack.</p>
+
+<p>It was ten o'clock at night. Many of the shops were closed, but the
+caf&eacute;s and restaurants were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> thronged. From time to time the shouts,
+"Down with Guizot!" and "Vive la R&eacute;forme!" were heard and, also, the
+roll of drums as a body of troops passed along; knots of individuals
+gathered around the doors of bakers' shops, and, while they eagerly ate
+their bread and sausage, as eagerly denounced Guizot and the Ministry.</p>
+
+<p>But all was comparative order in Paris.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE.</h3>
+
+<p>It was twelve o'clock at night, on the 22nd of February, 1848.</p>
+
+<p>Lights still gleamed in the vast edifice of "Le National" printing
+office, and in the editorial chamber were assembled the chiefs of the
+revolution.</p>
+
+<p>"All goes well," said Louis Blanc. "The blow is struck; let it only be
+followed up, and the efforts of the past ten years will not prove vain!"</p>
+
+<p>"How true was the opinion of M. Dant&egrave;s respecting the National Guard!"
+said Marrast.</p>
+
+<p>"How true also respecting the workmen!" said Albert.</p>
+
+<p>"How true respecting the Ministry!" said Ledru Rollin. "But where is M.
+Dant&egrave;s? Why is he not here?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p><p>At that moment the private door opened, and M. Dant&egrave;s, Flocon and
+Lamartine entered.</p>
+
+<p>"The news from the Chambers!" cried Marrast, as they approached.</p>
+
+<p>"Three impeachments of the Ministry have been proposed," said Lamartine.</p>
+
+<p>"By whom&mdash;by whom?" asked Louis Blanc. "By whom presented?"</p>
+
+<p>"One by Odillon Barrot, one by Duvergier d'Hauranne and one by M. de
+Genoude, Deputy from Toulouse."</p>
+
+<p>"And what said Guizot?" asked Marrast.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. He only laughed when the papers were handed him by old
+President Sauzet."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" cried Ledru Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"Few deputies were there," continued Flocon. "The opposition benches
+were vacant. Guizot was there early, pale and troubled, but stern and
+unbending. All the Ministers followed him."</p>
+
+<p>"What was discussed?" asked Marrast.</p>
+
+<p>"The Bordeaux Bank Bill."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" cried Ledru Rollin again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," continued Flocon, "until five o'clock that bill was discussed.
+Barrot then ascended the tribune and deposited a general proposition to
+impeach the Ministry."</p>
+
+<p>"And what was done with it?" asked Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"The President raised the sitting without reading it, but announced that
+the bureaux should have it for examination on Thursday."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p><p>"Infamous!" cried Ledru Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all as it should be," said M. Dant&egrave;s, calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"And the peers&mdash;what of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Marquis de Boissy made an effort to get a hearing on the state of
+Paris, but, of course, it was in vain."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true," asked Flocon, "that the rappel has been beaten to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was beaten in the Quartier St. Honor&eacute;, at dawn," said Louis Blanc,
+"and this evening, at about five o'clock, in several of the
+arrondissements. But no reliance need be placed on the National Guard.
+They are with us&mdash;they are of the people&mdash;they shout, 'Vive la
+R&eacute;forme!'"</p>
+
+<p>"But the Municipal Guard and the Line? I am told that an immense body of
+them was this evening, at about eight o'clock, reviewed by the King and
+the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier, in the Place du Carrousel," said
+Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"That's true," said Ledru Rollin; "I witnessed it myself in passing, and
+I could not help saying, 'It is the last.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Six thousand troops of the Line are on the boulevards, from the
+Madeleine to the Porte St. Martin," said M. Dant&egrave;s. "The H&ocirc;tel de Ville,
+the Places de la Bastille, de la Concorde and du Carrousel, and the
+Quays frown with artillery. To-morrow will be a warm day!"</p>
+
+<p>"It has been rather warm to-day in some parts of Paris," said Louis
+Blanc, smiling. "Was there ever a grander spectacle than that in the
+Place de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> la Concorde at noon? At least one hundred thousand men were
+there assembled. Rushing across the bridge, they gathered around the
+Chamber of Deputies&mdash;then from the southern gate of the Tuileries issued
+two bodies of troops, one of mounted Municipal Guards, the other
+infantry of the Line, and, pressing on the dense mass, they drove them
+over the bridge. Only a few old fruitwomen were crushed beneath the
+horses' hoofs, and a few of the troops were wounded by pebbles,
+however."</p>
+
+<p>"At the same time," said Flocon, "all the chains in the Champs-Elys&eacute;es
+were in requisition for a barricade, as well as all the public
+carriages, and the people sang the Marseillaise, the Parisienne and the
+Hymn of the Girondins. A guard-house was also consumed."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard Bugeaud's remark at noon, when looking upon the Place de
+la Concorde?" asked Marrast.</p>
+
+<p>"We have been too busy to-day to hear anything," said Ledru Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah! we shall have a day of it,' said the bloodthirsty old hero. 'I
+care not for the day,' said the pale Guizot, 'but the night!'"</p>
+
+<p>"The people made quite a demonstration about Guizot, I hear," said
+Flocon. "They assailed him with a shower of groans, it is said, and some
+of the gamins flung pebbles at his gates."</p>
+
+<p>"The most significant shout before the office of Foreign Affairs was
+this," said Ledru Rollin&mdash;"'Countess of Leven, where is the Minister?'"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p><p>"And the very moment this was occurring," said Flocon, "I understand
+that M. Thiers, on his return from the Chamber, in passing through the
+Champs-Elys&eacute;es, narrowly escaped a most unwelcome ovation from the
+people. The two rivals were duly and simultaneously honored it seems."</p>
+
+<p>"Thus much for to-day," said Marrast; "what of to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Barricades rise all over Paris," said M. Dant&egrave;s. "But we can do no
+more. Let us each retire to his home. To-morrow the National Guard will
+fraternize with the people, and the Ministry will resign."</p>
+
+<p>A few words of parting salutation passed, and all departed.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s and Lamartine left the office in company.</p>
+
+<p>"What say you, Edmond," asked Lamartine, "will your wife spare you long
+enough from her pillow to make with me a brief tour of the town?"</p>
+
+<p>"Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s is rather exacting," said Dant&egrave;s, with a laugh; "but if your
+fair lady will suffer your absence, mine must do the same, I fear."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, let us first to the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, that grand centre of
+Paris in all that is revolutionary."</p>
+
+<p>As the two friends passed along, conversing on the events of the day and
+the anticipations of the morrow, they were met, from time to time, by
+knots of men at the corners, eagerly recounting the incidents of the
+hour; the roll of drums was heard in the distance, and occasionally
+there came the heavy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> measured tread of infantry, the clatter of
+cavalry and the lumbering of artillery, as they passed on their way. All
+the shops and caf&eacute;s were closed. Many of the lamps were demolished, and
+others were not lighted, the gas being shut off. A fearful gloom brooded
+over the city. The winter wind swept sharply and cuttingly along the
+deserted streets, and rain, which froze as it fell, at intervals dashed
+down.</p>
+
+<p>The H&ocirc;tel de Ville was encompassed by troops as the friends approached
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that a cannon?" asked Lamartine, pointing to a dark object that
+protruded from an embrasure of the edifice.</p>
+
+<p>"It is!" replied Dant&egrave;s.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the revolution has, indeed, begun! Artillery in the streets of
+Paris!"</p>
+
+<p>"Behind each column of the portico of the Chamber of Deputies this day
+frowned a concealed cannon!" was the significant response.</p>
+
+<p>The friends turned off from the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, and, crossing the right
+branch of the Seine, were under the deep shadows of N&ocirc;tre Dame. But all
+was tranquil and still. Only the howlings of the wintry blast were heard
+through the towers and architectural ornaments of the old pile. Up the
+Rue St. Jacques, into the Quartier Latin, they then proceeded, but the
+students and the grisettes seemed to be fast asleep. Turning back, they
+passed the Fish Market, and here a large body of cavalry had bivouacked.
+Patrols marched to and fro; officers in huge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> dark cloaks smoked,
+laughed and chatted, regardless of the morrow. The friends went on. All
+was dark in the faubourg which succeeded. Not a light gleamed, save, in
+some lofty casement, the fainting candle of the worn-out needlewoman or
+of the overtasked student.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" exclaimed Lamartine, as they passed one of these flickering
+lights, "who knows what plotting head and ready hand may be beside that
+candle? Who knows of the weapon burnished, the cartridge filled and the
+sabre sharpened by that light for the morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"The morrow!" exclaimed M. Dant&egrave;s; "that morrow decides the fate of
+France!"</p>
+
+<p>And the friends parted.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SECOND DAY.</h3>
+
+<p>The 23d of February dawned on Paris as a city under arms. Artillery
+frowned in all the public places; the barricades of the preceding night
+had been thrown down as fast as erected; National Guards thronged the
+thoroughfares; the people swarmed along the boulevards. In the
+neighborhood of the Porte St. Denis and the Porte St. Martin, barricades
+rose as if by magic, but were as if by magic swept away. Cavalry
+bivouacked in the streets, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> ordnance was leveled along their entire
+extent. The avenues were closely invested, and even old men and women
+were arrested on their way to their own thresholds. From time to time
+single shots or volleys of musketry were heard in the distance, and
+wounded men were carried past to the hospitals.</p>
+
+<p>The Government had ordered all public carriages to be cleared from the
+stands, that material for new barricades might not exist when the old
+ones were demolished; but the people were busy, too, for the iron
+railings at the h&ocirc;tel of the Minister of Marine, in the Place de la
+Concorde, and at the churches of the Assumption and St. Roch had been
+torn away to supply weapons of attack or defence, or implements with
+which to tear up the huge square paving stones of Paris for barricades.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock the National Guard of the Second Arrondissement
+gathered at the opera house in the Rue Lepelletier, and near the office
+of "Le National." "Vive la R&eacute;forme!" "Vive la Garde Nationale!" "Long
+live the real defenders of the country!"&mdash;these were the shouts,
+intermingled with the choruses of national songs, that now rose from the
+people and the National Guard.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o'clock the 2d Legion of the National Guard was at the
+Tuileries to make a demonstration for reform. Its colonel, M. Bagni&egrave;res,
+declared to the Duke of Nemours that he could not answer for his men. At
+one o'clock, accompanied by an immense multitude, with whom they
+fraternized, they were again on the Rue Lepelletier. A squadron of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+cuirassiers and one of chasseurs advanced to dislodge them.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are these men?" cried the chef d'escadron.</p>
+
+<p>"The people of Paris!" replied the officer of the National Guard.</p>
+
+<p>"And who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"An officer of the 2d Legion of the National Guard."</p>
+
+<p>"The people must disperse!"</p>
+
+<p>"They will not!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will compel them!"</p>
+
+<p>"The National Guard will defend them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Vive la R&eacute;forme!" shouted the people.</p>
+
+<p>The National Guard and the cuirassiers united. The officer, chagrined,
+turned back to his men and vociferated in tones of thunder:</p>
+
+<p>"Wheel! Forward!"</p>
+
+<p>And the whole body resumed its march down the Boulevard.</p>
+
+<p>An hour afterwards a still larger body of troops, Municipal Guards
+mounted and on foot, cuirassiers and infantry of the Line, came down the
+Boulevard and made a half movement on the Rue Lepelletier, but, seeing
+the hostile attitude of the National Guard, continued their march amid
+shouts of "Vive la R&eacute;forme!" "Vive la Garde Nationale!" "Vive la Ligne!"</p>
+
+<p>Twice, within an hour afterwards, the same thing occurred.</p>
+
+<p>It was plain that the National Guard fraternized with the people.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p><p>The 3d Legion deputed their colonel, M. Besson, to demand of the King
+reform and a change of Ministry. The colonel presented the memorial to
+General Jaqueminot, who promised to place it in the Royal hands.</p>
+
+<p>The 4th Legion marched to the Chamber of Deputies and presented a
+petition for reform.</p>
+
+<p>Col. Lemercier, of the 10th, arrested a man for shouting "Vive la
+R&eacute;forme!" The man was liberated by his own troops, with shouts of "Vive
+la R&eacute;forme!" The colonel withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>The cavalry legion, the 13th, in like manner repudiated Col. Montalivet.</p>
+
+<p>The Municipal Guard was ordered to disarm the 3d Legion. Both
+advanced&mdash;bayonets were crossed&mdash;blood was about to flow. At that moment
+Col. Textorix, of the National Guard, rushed up and exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers, will you slay brothers?"</p>
+
+<p>The effect was electrical. The muskets were instantly shouldered and the
+combatants separated.</p>
+
+<p>All over Paris the same scenes took place, with a few exceptions.</p>
+
+<p>"Vive la R&eacute;publique!" cried Ledru Rollin to Albert, who was hurrying
+down the Rue Lepelletier, at about noon.</p>
+
+<p>"Vive la R&eacute;publique!" was the hearty response. "What of the National
+Guard?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Guard fraternizes with the people," replied Ledru Rollin. "What of
+the blouses and the barricades?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p><p>"Last night, the barricades of yesterday were swept from the streets,
+and even the material of which to build them also, the pavements only
+excepted; yet, at dawn this morning, the whole space between the
+Quartier Saint-Martin des Champs, the Mont de Pi&eacute;t&eacute; and the Temple, and
+all the smaller streets were choked with barricades."</p>
+
+<p>"And they were at once assailed?"</p>
+
+<p>"By the troops of the Line, the Municipal Guard and the chasseurs of
+Vincennes."</p>
+
+<p>"Who were repulsed?"</p>
+
+<p>"With most obstinate bravery. At the Rue Rambuteau, the 69th Regiment
+was three times driven back; also at the corner of the Rue St. Denis and
+the Rue de Tracy. In the Rue Philippeaux a ball passed through the face
+of a soldier of the 21st of the Line infantry, and then through the head
+of a voltigeur behind him. Sixteen soldiers fell in the attack on the
+barricade of the Rue Rambuteau. A blouse pointed a pistol at an officer
+of the Municipal Guard; the pistol hung fire, and the officer passed his
+sword through his assailant's body. From this you can infer that we have
+had close fighting."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard that an assault was made on the armory of our friends, the
+Leparge Brothers, for weapons; is it so?"</p>
+
+<p>"There was an assault at about ten o'clock; but the windows were too
+strong to be carried. There has been fighting in the Rue de Petit
+Carrel, and the neighborhood of the Place Royale, I learn. Achmet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+Pacha, son of Mehemet Ali, is fighting for us with the most wonderful
+intrepidity. A chef de bataillon of the 34th was slain by a shot from a
+window, and some offices of the Octroi have been burned. Three men were
+killed at the Batignolles, and their bodies were accompanied by an
+immense throng to the Morgue."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard that the 5th Regiment, as in 1830, has joined the
+people, and that, on their way to the Pr&eacute;fecture of Police to liberate
+some of the people who had been arrested, they stopped at the office of
+'La R&eacute;forme,' and were eloquently addressed by our friend, Louis Blanc?"</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say to them?"</p>
+
+<p>"He told them the fight was not yet over; that there must still be a
+banquet; and that this time there must be no mistake&mdash;the workmen must
+have the freedom they won!"</p>
+
+<p>"Vive Louis Blanc!" cried Albert, and, in a higher state of excitement
+than he had ever before been known to exhibit, he hurried off.</p>
+
+<p>"I am for the Tuileries," said Ledru Rollin, as they parted.</p>
+
+<p>"And I for the Palais Royal," said Albert.</p>
+
+<p>"We meet to-night at the office of 'Le National?'"</p>
+
+<p>"Without fail, at midnight!"</p>
+
+<p>It was on the square at the south end of the Palais Royal that most
+blood was spilled between the people and the troops. The Ch&acirc;teau d'Eau
+was furiously assailed and obstinately defended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>&mdash;assailed by the people
+and defended by six thousand picked troops. The people triumphed! Of the
+troops, at least a thousand perished, and the remnant fled.</p>
+
+<p>At three o'clock M. Rambuteau, Pr&eacute;fect of the Seine, waited on the King
+and informed him that the National Guard demanded reform, and the
+Municipal Guard a change of Ministry.</p>
+
+<p>The King in dismay convened the Ministry.</p>
+
+<p>"Can the Ministry maintain itself?" asked Louis Philippe.</p>
+
+<p>"That question brings its own answer to your Majesty," replied Guizot.
+"If you doubt the stability of your Ministry, who can trust them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought of the Count Mole," observed the King.</p>
+
+<p>"He is an able man, sire," replied Guizot; "and his political
+connections with M. Barrot and M. Thiers may aid him to form a Ministry.
+But, sire, not an instant is to be lost. Your faithful Ministers will do
+all they can, but a Ministerial crisis cannot be delayed; and, if your
+Majesty will permit the suggestion, the emergency demands that to
+Marshal Bugeaud be given the command of Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"You will proceed to the Chamber to announce that M. Mole is entrusted
+with the formation of a new cabinet," said the King.</p>
+
+<p>And the council closed.</p>
+
+<p>At four, an officer of the staff passed along the boulevards, announcing
+the fall of the Ministry.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly, with the speed of the telegraph, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> intelligence flew to
+the obscurest parts of Paris. Its effect was, at first, most cheering.
+Barricades were deserted and arms thrown down; faces brightened, hands,
+almost stained with each other's blood, were clasped; troops and people,
+unwillingly fighting, embraced; all was triumph, joy and congratulation.</p>
+
+<p>"All now is over&mdash;all is right at last!" was the exclamation of one man
+of the people to another.</p>
+
+<p>"Guizot has fallen, but the King has sent for Count Mole," replied a
+third, with a dissatisfied air.</p>
+
+<p>"No matter," cried the first speaker, "the system is overturned! What
+care we who is Minister?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is too late," replied the other. "Guizot has been forced away by the
+people&mdash;Mole may be forced away, too&mdash;so may the King! No more tricks!
+The people now know their power. There shall be no mistake this time!"</p>
+
+<p>And the insurrectionists parted.</p>
+
+<p>As the day closed, barricades rose in the Quartier du Temple, and there
+was fighting between the people and the Municipal Guard. But the
+National Guard came to the rescue, and the latter surrendered.</p>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock Paris was illuminated. White, red, blue&mdash;yellow, orange,
+green&mdash;these were the tri-colors of the lamps that poured their rich
+effulgence from every window on the gloomy scene without. The streets
+were thronged and the caf&eacute;s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> crowded; men of all nations and Parisians
+of all classes were in the streets; the rattle of musketry had ceased;
+the troops were in their barracks and the people at their homes.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue des Capucines, Flocon and
+Louis Blanc met.</p>
+
+<p>"Guizot has fallen!" cried the first.</p>
+
+<p>"And the most intimate friend of the King has succeeded him! What have
+we to hope for from the change?"</p>
+
+<p>"What are we to do?" asked Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"In one hour the people will sing the Marseillaise before the H&ocirc;tel des
+Affaires &Eacute;trang&egrave;res!"</p>
+
+<p>"The 14th Regiment of the Line is there," replied Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better! Blood will flow! The revolution will not stop!"</p>
+
+<p>And the conspirators separated.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock, before the official residence of M. Guizot, himself then
+absent, and probably in full flight for the coast, an immense crowd of
+the people with torches was assembled. Their purpose was to sing the
+Marseillaise. The 14th Regiment barred the way&mdash;the street was dimly
+lighted&mdash;a single row of lamps along the courtyard wall was all the
+illumination&mdash;a double line of troops was the defence.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me pass!" cried the officer of the National Guard who led the
+people to the officer who led the troops.</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the people, I demand to pass!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p><p>"In the name of the Law, you shall not!"</p>
+
+<p>"The people command! Forward!" cried the National Guard.</p>
+
+<p>"Present! Fire!" shouted the officer.</p>
+
+<p>There was a roll of musketry&mdash;a shrill shriek rang along the
+Boulevard&mdash;the vast mass recoiled&mdash;the smoke floated off&mdash;sixty-three of
+the people of Paris lay weltering in their gore!</p>
+
+<p>"The blow is struck at last!" cried M. Dant&egrave;s, rushing across the
+Boulevard, pale and excited. "To arms, people of Paris, to arms!"</p>
+
+<p>"To arms, to arms! Vengeance for our brothers!" was now the terrible cry
+that burst from the infuriated populace. The congratulation&mdash;the
+illumination&mdash;all was lost in the wild wish for vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock that night an immense multitude, composed chiefly of
+workmen from the faubourgs, was coming down the Boulevard des Capucines.
+It was the largest and most regular throng yet seen. In front marched a
+platoon of men bearing torches and waving tri-color flags. Immediately
+behind walked an officer in the full uniform of the National Guard, with
+a drawn sword in his hand, whose slightest command was implicitly
+observed. Next came a tumbrel bearing the naked corpses of the slain,
+whose faces, mutilated by their wounds and disfigured by blood, glared
+horribly up, with open eyes, in the red torchlight that flared in the
+night blast around! Behind this awful display marched a dense mass of
+National Guards, succeeded by a countless mass of the people armed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+with, guns, swords, clubs and bars of iron, chanting forth in full
+chorus, not the inspiring Marseillaise or the Parisienne, but in awful
+concert sending upon the night air the deep and dreadful notes of the
+death-hymn of the Girondins, "Mourir pour la Patrie," intermingled with
+yells for vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>Down the boulevards approach the multitude&mdash;more distinct becomes the
+dirge&mdash;more redly glare the torches&mdash;and, amid all, more deeply rumble
+the wheels of the death-cart on the pavement!</p>
+
+<p>The funeral column reaches the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue
+Lepelletier&mdash;the death-hymn rises to a yell of fury&mdash;the officer of the
+National Guard turns the head of the column to the right&mdash;before it is
+an edifice conspicuous by its illumination of huge and blood-red
+lamps&mdash;it is the office of "Le National"&mdash;the crowd halts&mdash;one long loud
+shriek of "Vengeance!" goes up&mdash;it is succeeded by the thrilling notes
+of the Marseillaise from ten thousands lips, and "Marrast! Marrast!" is
+the shout that follows.</p>
+
+<p>The windows of the front office were thrown up, and the editor,
+surrounded by friends, appeared. His speech was brief but fervid. He
+exhorted the people to be firm&mdash;to secure their rights beyond
+recall&mdash;and promised them ample retribution for past wrongs and security
+for future rights.</p>
+
+<p>M. Garnier Pages, who stood at the side of Marrast, next addressed the
+people in the same strain, amid thunders of applause.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p><p>Making a detour to the office of "La R&eacute;forme," the multitude were
+addressed by M. Flocon, its editor; then, proceeding to the Place de la
+Bastille, the corpses were deposited at the foot of the Column of July,
+and the crowd dispersed.</p>
+
+<p>The night that succeeded was an awful one. The streets, which an hour
+before blazed with the illumination, were dark. Barricades rose in every
+direction. At every corner shopmen, workmen, women, clerks and children
+were at work. The crash of falling trees, the clank of the lever and the
+pickaxe, the rattle of paving stones&mdash;these were the significant sounds
+that broke the stillness. Every tree on the whole line of the Boulevard
+was felled and every lamp-post overthrown; a barricade of immense
+strength rose at the end of the Rue Richelieu; the troops offered no
+resistance; they piled their arms, lighted their fires and bivouacked
+close beside the barricades. At the H&ocirc;tel de Ville the troops of the
+Line and the Chasseurs d'Afrique quietly ate their suppers, smoked their
+pipes and laid themselves down to sleep. On the Boulevard des Italiens
+appeared three regiments of the Line, a battalion of National Guards, a
+regiment of cuirassiers, and three field-pieces, with their caissons of
+ammunition. The horses were unharnessed by the people, the caissons
+opened, the ammunition distributed and the guns dragged off. The troops,
+guards and cuirassiers fraternized.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>ANOTHER MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE.</h3>
+
+<p>Again it was midnight. Again the chiefs of the revolution of '48
+assembled in conclave. The second of the Three Days had passed, but the
+streets of Paris were all alive with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Every leader of the reform was there&mdash;Ledru Rollin and Flocon excited
+and fiery, Louis Blanc exhausted and agitated, Albert stern and
+collected, Lamartine pale and troubled, Marrast sanguine and
+confident&mdash;all of them more or less disturbed but M. Dant&egrave;s. As for him,
+the same calm smile was on his lip, the same mild light in his eye and
+the same unchanging resolution upon his countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Who attended the Chamber of Deputies to-day?" asked Marrast. "Did you,
+Lamartine?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did," was the reply, "and witnessed a somewhat stormy sitting. At
+three o'clock, as usual, old Sauzet took the chair. Our friends were
+there in large numbers; the Ministerial benches were also filled.
+Immediately after, M. Guizot entered. He had been saluted with groans by
+the 10th Legion, stationed on guard without, and with cries of 'Down
+with Guizot!' Calm, undisturbed, stony in aspect, though strangely
+pallid, he entered and took his seat. M. Vavin, Deputy for the Seine,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+instantly mounted the tribune. As Deputy of Paris he had, he said, a
+solemn duty to fulfill. For twenty-four hours Paris had been in
+insurrection. Why was this? He called on the Minister of the Interior to
+explain."</p>
+
+<p>"And what said Guizot?" asked Louis Blanc, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"He said he thought the public interest did not demand, nor was it
+proper for the Chamber at that time, to enter into debate on the
+subject. The King had called M. le Comte Mole to form a new cabinet."</p>
+
+<p>"And then the left cheered?" exclaimed Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"Most emphatically," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"And what said Guizot then?" asked Ledru Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>"He calmly said that no such demonstrations could induce him to add to
+or withhold a single syllable of what he designed to say, or to
+pretermit a single act he had designed to do. As long as his Ministry
+remained in office he should cause public order to be respected,
+according to his best judgment, and as he had always done. He should
+consider himself answerable for all that might happen, and should in all
+things act as conscience might dictate for the best interests of the
+country."</p>
+
+<p>"A noble answer!" exclaimed M. Dant&egrave;s, with enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc assented.</p>
+
+<p>"And what next?" pursued Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"After considerable confusion," continued Lamartine, "M. Odillon Barrot
+rose and demanded, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> consequence of the situation of the cabinet, a
+postponement of the proposition for its impeachment, fixed for
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! And what said the Chamber?" asked Flocon.</p>
+
+<p>"The demand was so loudly reprobated that M. Barrot immediately said he
+made the proposal in entire submission to the majority."</p>
+
+<p>"And what said Dupin?" asked Ledru Rollin, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Dupin said the first thing necessary for the capital was order. Anarchy
+must cease. The Ministry could not at the same time occupy themselves in
+re-establishing order and in caring for their own safety. He demanded
+the adjournment of the impeachment and of all business."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did Barrot reply to that?" asked Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"M. Barrot was silent; but the Minister of Foreign Affairs at once rose
+and said with much energy that as long as his cabinet remained entrusted
+with the public interest, which would probably be for some hours, it
+would cause the laws to be respected. The cabinet saw no reason for the
+suspension of the labors of the Chamber. The Crown was at that moment
+exercising its prerogative, and it must be respected. So long as his
+cabinet was on those benches, the Chamber need not suspend its labors."</p>
+
+<p>"What was the vote on the question to postpone consideration of the
+impeachment?" asked Flocon.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p><p>"Some of the opposition supported the motion, but the whole centre
+opposed it, and it was lost. The Chamber immediately rose in great
+agitation, and M. Guizot disappeared."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me that the position of M. Odillon Barrot is a somewhat
+peculiar one at this moment," observed Louis Blanc. "He is neither with
+the Crown nor with the people, and yet both seem to confide in him."</p>
+
+<p>"As I passed his house this evening, at about eight o'clock," said
+Flocon, "a large multitude were in his courtyard shouting, 'Long live
+Odillon Barrot!' A deputation of the people penetrated, I understand,
+even to his private apartment, where he was in consultation with Thiers
+and Dupin. Barrot then urged them to be moderate in their triumph and to
+retire. M. Garnier Pages, who chanced to be there, urged them to do the
+same, and they went off shouting louder than ever."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment one of the reporters of "Le National" hastily entered and
+handed Marrast a note.</p>
+
+<p>"Whence do you come, Monsieur?" asked the editor.</p>
+
+<p>"From the Tuileries, Monsieur," was the reply, and the reporter left.</p>
+
+<p>The editor opened the note and read aloud:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"One o'clock&mdash;Count Mole, unable to form a cabinet, has this moment
+resigned, and the King has sent for M. Guizot, M. Thiers and
+Marshal Bugeaud.</p>
+
+<p>"Half-past one o'clock&mdash;Marshal Bugeaud's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> commission as
+Commander-in-chief of the National Guard and of the troops of the
+Line, in place of Generals Jaqueminot and Peyronett Tyburce
+Sebastiani, has just been signed by M. Guizot and his colleagues,
+the Ministers of War and the Interior, and will appear in the
+'Moniteur' of this morning. Bugeaud's plan is this: Instant attack
+with an overwhelming force of artillery, cavalry and infantry of
+the Line, (which, he asserts, he has now all ready in position in
+anticipation of this event, and well disposed to act,) on all the
+barricades. He promises to sweep away every obstruction from the
+streets before dawn, though at the cost of fifty thousand lives."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"Ha!" exclaimed all the conspirators, instantly springing to their feet.</p>
+
+<p>"This, indeed, is resistance!" said M. Dant&egrave;s. "But Bugeaud can
+concentrate no more troops upon us. Every avenue to Paris will be
+effectually closed before morning and even the telegraph stopped!"</p>
+
+<p>"If this be true, we have not an instant to lose!" said Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a hint of this," began M. Dant&egrave;s.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay&mdash;stay, Messieurs!" cried Marrast, as the whole company was rushing
+to the door. "Here is another and later dispatch."</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Two o'clock&mdash;Marshal Bugeaud has gone to complete his arrangements
+for instant attack. M. Thiers has arrived, and, with Odillon
+Barrot, Duvergier de Hauranne and de Remusat, has formed a cabinet.
+General Lamorici&egrave;re supersedes Marshal Bugeaud&mdash;the latter is
+recalled and forbidden to fire on the people. He protests with
+violence, and sheathes his sword in despair."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p><p>"To be sure he does, the old cut-throat!" cried Ledru Rollin. "The idea
+of being let loose with his mastiffs on the people of Paris, like sheep
+pent up in a fold, was to him a source of rapturous anticipation, and
+his rage at the disappointment is proportional!"</p>
+
+<p>"Messieurs!" cried M. Dant&egrave;s, "this last step of the Government was all
+that we required to insure our success. Thiers and Barrot mistake if
+they think there is sufficient magic in their names to quell a
+revolution. In fact, neither of them are trusted by the people. It is
+too late! Yesterday this might have been done; but now the demand is not
+reform, but a republic&mdash;not 'down with the Ministry,' but 'down with the
+dynasty!'"</p>
+
+<p>The conspirators looked at each other and then at M. Dant&egrave;s in amazement
+and doubt. It was apparent they were as yet unprepared for language so
+plain.</p>
+
+<p>"M. Dant&egrave;s is right!" cried Flocon. "To-morrow night when we meet we
+shall all admit it!"</p>
+
+<p>It was now nearly three o'clock, and the Republicans repaired to their
+homes for a few hours' sleep before the exciting scenes anticipated for
+the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>As Louis Blanc and M. Albert passed up the Rue Lepelletier, and came
+opposite the H&ocirc;tel of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which, but a few
+hours before, had been the scene of so much confusion and bloodshed,
+they paused and looked around. The pavement was still dark and wet with
+the gore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> of the slaughtered citizens, but the whole street was deserted
+and silent. Here and there a solitary light might be detected in the
+attic windows of the immense h&ocirc;tel; but no other sign of life or human
+occupation was to be perceived. True, there was an ominous sound of
+rising barricades in the Boulevard beyond&mdash;the crash of trees, the click
+of steel on stone, the lumbering of wheels&mdash;and, at intervals, a distant
+shout. But this excepted, all was as quiet in Paris as if the old city
+had never known of insurrection.</p>
+
+<p>"This spot will be noted in the future history of France," said Louis
+Blanc. "Do you know the exact facts of the case, M. Albert? There are so
+many rumors that we can with difficulty get near the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"I was not present when the 14th delivered their fire," was the reply,
+"but I learned from M. de Courtais, who hastened to the spot, that the
+colonel of the regiment, now in prison, asserts that, at the moment of
+the arrival of the crowd, a ball from a musket which accidentally went
+off, broke the leg of his horse, and he, thinking this the signal for an
+attack, at once gave orders to fire. Another story is that one of our
+young blouses blew out an officer's brains with a pistol."</p>
+
+<p>"Many of the troops must have fired in the air," said Louis Blanc,
+looking around him, "for there were two hundred of them in line, I
+understand, and their discharge was delivered across the whole breadth
+of the Boulevard swarming with people."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p><p>"It was unfortunate for M. Guizot," rejoined M. Albert, with a sardonic
+smile, "that his h&ocirc;tel should have witnessed such a scene."</p>
+
+<p>"But fortunate for the cause, nevertheless," replied Louis Blanc. "This
+last movement is called the movement of the journalists, I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"If suspicions are always as correct," said M. Albert, "there will be
+fewer false ones, I fancy."</p>
+
+<p>Louis Blanc made no reply, and the friends walked on up the Boulevard,
+reconnoitering every spot.</p>
+
+<p>At the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre they were stopped by a barricade,
+which was rapidly rising under the united and vigorous exertions of
+several hundred men. Steadily, sternly and silently, all that night they
+toiled, and when the barricade was completed the tri-color flag was
+planted on its summit, and a citizen-soldier stood beside its staff to
+defend it. On the other side of the Boulevard, in the Rue Montmartre,
+rose another barricade entirely finished.</p>
+
+<p>"These men are resolved," said Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"Desperate, rather," replied Albert. "They have counted the cost and
+prepared to go on with the attempt they have begun at all hazards. It is
+better to fight than starve, they think."</p>
+
+<p>"But do you observe how few of them are armed?" asked Louis Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>"We have provided for that deficiency. You will see arms enough for all
+to-morrow," replied Albert. "Barricades first, arms afterwards!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p><p>And, indeed, while he was yet speaking, a tumbrel loaded with arms of
+every description drove silently up, and each man supplied himself with
+a weapon that suited his fancy. In some instances the taste exhibited
+was ludicrous in the extreme; there were swords without scabbards and
+bayonets without guns&mdash;a towering helmet on the head of one man, and
+broad white leather cross-belts on the shoulders of another&mdash;daggers and
+knives, sabres and pikes mingled in grotesque confusion. But each
+individual was armed with something, and, to crown all, a small piece of
+ordnance, borne on the shoulders of four stout men, who staggered
+beneath its weight, was now brought up and placed in battery.</p>
+
+<p>"From such men what may we not hope!" exclaimed Louis Blanc. "But it is
+near morning; let us proceed."</p>
+
+<p>"I stop here," quietly said Albert.</p>
+
+<p>"What! Pass the night here?" exclaimed his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"The night is nearly passed now," replied Albert, with a smile. "I will
+sleep a few hours with my men of the barricades, and be ready to help
+them defend their work in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"You are devoted to the cause, Albert," said Louis Blanc, warmly
+grasping his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! no more than yourself," was the reply. "We are all devoted to it,
+but each in his own way. You are an author, I am a workman. It is a
+light thing for me to pass a night with only the sky for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> canopy. It
+is a light thing for you to pass a night in your study. A change of
+positions would possibly kill us both!"</p>
+
+<p>The friends grasped each other warmly by the hand and parted, the author
+going to his study and the workman to his barricade.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE THIRD DAY.</h3>
+
+<p>The next morning the following placard attracted general attention:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Citizens of Paris</span>:</p>
+
+<p>Orders have been given to cease firing everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>We have just been charged by the King to form a new Ministry.</p>
+
+<p>The Chamber will be dissolved and an appeal made to the country.</p>
+
+<p>General Lamorici&egrave;re has been appointed Commandant of the National
+Guard.</p>
+
+<p>Liberty! Order! Union! Reform!</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Odillon Barrot.</span><br /><span class="smcap">Thiers</span>."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Such was the placard which appeared at every corner in Paris on the
+morning of Thursday, February 24th. At three o'clock it had been hastily
+struck at the offices of "La Presse" and "Le Constitutionnel," and given
+into the hands of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> bill-posters. At daylight it was read by the
+early passers, and, as soon as read, indignantly torn down with the
+significant murmur, "It is too late!"</p>
+
+<p>At eight o'clock a proclamation to the National Guard, signed by
+Lamorici&egrave;re and countersigned by Odillon Barrot, was similarly received.</p>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock the 45th Regiment of the Line fraternized with the
+National Guard, the 30th resigned its arms to the people, and the five
+companies of Compiers yielded their quarters with all their arms and
+ammunition at the first summons.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock a proclamation was posted up at the Bourse, signed by
+Odillon Barrot and Thiers, ordering the troops not only to cease firing,
+but to retire to their quarters. Immediately the trumpets sounded a
+retreat, and the most important positions hitherto held by the Line were
+yielded to the people. The men of the barricades could now concentrate
+and advance. Magic there was none in the names of Barrot and Thiers to
+restrain them. Both were viewed as deserters from their cause. The
+latter was openly insulted by the populace wherever he appeared, and the
+former, though at first respectfully listened to, was, at length,
+assailed with murmurs of disapprobation on his way to the Tuileries.</p>
+
+<p>In his editorial sanctum sat our friend Beauchamp, of whom for some time
+we have lost sight, but who has, meanwhile, been most industriously at
+work in his paper, "Le Charivari," in concert with "Le National" and
+other larger sheets,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> in forwarding the cause of reform and, finally, of
+revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened and Ch&acirc;teau-Renaud appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Farewell, Beauchamp!" he exclaimed, "I've not a moment to lose! A
+post-chaise is at the door! Farewell!"</p>
+
+<p>"Off!" cried the journalist, in astonishment. "And whither&mdash;and why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, off for England&mdash;Italy&mdash;America&mdash;anywhere but France!" exclaimed
+the young noble.</p>
+
+<p>"And why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" cried the indignant Deputy. "Look around you and then ask what
+there is left in France for me! Beauchamp," continued the young man
+hurriedly and in low tones, "France will have no King at this hour
+to-morrow! Mark the prophecy! The National Guard fraternizes with the
+populace; the Line fraternizes with the Guard. The Government is, of
+course, paralyzed. All is over; six hours hence the Tuileries will be
+ransacked by a drunken mob!&mdash;Farewell!"</p>
+
+<p>"One moment! Why do you leave in this way? Why do you not go to Boulogne
+by the cars?"</p>
+
+<p>"And do you not know&mdash;you, a journalist&mdash;that for three leagues around,
+in every direction, every railway radiating from Paris has been torn up?
+Do you not know that every public conveyance, even to the Mail
+Diligences, has been stopped, and that all the telegraph stations have
+been dismantled&mdash;all to prevent the further concentration of troops in
+Paris by the Government?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p><p>"I did hear of this, indeed," said Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<p>"At dawn I was at the railway d&eacute;p&ocirc;t, having late last night, with
+extreme difficulty, procured a passport. And whom think you, among
+crowds of others, I encountered there? You would never guess, and I
+haven't time for you to try. Lucien Debray, and with him&mdash;but that's
+impossible for you to divine&mdash;she who was Madame Danglars, wife of the
+rich banker years ago. Well, the banker is dead and she is immensely
+rich, and I suppose Lucien's spouse into the bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"And where go they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! to England of course&mdash;that grand reservoir of all emigrant
+royalists, that asylum for all who love kings! But farewell, farewell!
+If I am not off soon I may have to go without my head! And if you are
+not massacred by your detestable party, I hope to hear of you yet as a
+Cabinet Minister. Despite your abominable principles, you have my best
+wishes! Farewell!"</p>
+
+<p>And with a hearty shake of Beauchamp's hand, the young noble was off for
+an atmosphere more congenial to monarchists than was that of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was he alone. Thousands fled from Paris in like manner that same
+day, and the only cry that followed them was this:</p>
+
+<p>"Let them go! Let them go!"</p>
+
+<p>The streets of Paris were now choked with barricades&mdash;not the mere
+temporary breastworks of the first and second days, which a single
+charge of heavy dragoons would sweep away, but regular <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>systematic,
+scientific structures, erected apparently under the direction of
+military engineers, and calculated upon every principle of art to insure
+resistance. Some of them were of immense size&mdash;that, for example, at the
+corner of the Rue Richelieu; some had port-holes from which protruded
+the mouths of ordnance in battery; all were surmounted by a flag,
+tri-color or red, and all were defended by desperate men. Some other
+thoroughfares were crossed by many barricades&mdash;the Rue St. Martin, for
+instance, by thirty or forty. The troops assailing these structures were
+mowed down, throughout the day, in a manner which even their opponents
+deemed most merciless. Instances of individual bravery on both sides
+were frequent. In the Rue Mauconseil, a young man exposed himself on the
+top of the barricade, time after time, firing with fatal aim, and every
+time a shower of balls from the troops assailing whistled around him.
+But he stood untouched, and, at length, the officer ordering the troops
+to fire at him no more, he retired at once behind the breastwork. A boy
+in the Rue St. Honor&eacute; mounted the barricade, enveloped in a tri-color
+flag, and dared the troops to fire on their colors. He descended
+unharmed. An officer of the Line was summoned to yield his sword. He did
+so, but first broke it in twain across his knee. The same demand was
+made to a lieutenant of the Municipal Guard, with a musket at his
+breast; he was bidden also to shout "Vive la R&eacute;publique!" but he only
+cried "Vive le Roi!" as the weapon was wrenched from his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> grasp! Yet he
+was spared. Arms were demanded from every householder, and when given,
+the gift was endorsed on the door in these words: "Here we were given
+arms." One man received a sword splendidly decorated with gems upon its
+scabbard and hilt. "I want only the blade!" he said, tearing it away
+from its ornaments and grasping the naked steel!</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock M. Odillon Barrot, General Lamorici&egrave;re and Horace Vernet,
+the great marine artist, proceeded on horseback to the barricades to
+induce the people to disperse, but all their eloquent entreaties were
+received only with insults. "No truce&mdash;no tricks&mdash;no mistake this time!"
+were the decisive shouts with which they were greeted. A second time, in
+the Rue Richelieu, General Lamorici&egrave;re, accompanied by Moline Saint Gru
+bearing a palm-branch, was equally unsuccessful. "It is too late!" was
+the terrible response from the heart of the barricades, followed by a
+shower of stones, one of which wounded General Lamorici&egrave;re on the hand.
+A third time, in the Rue Rohan, General Gourgaud, who even promised the
+abdication of the King, met with the same utter defeat, and hastily fled
+from the fury of the monster now thoroughly roused.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o'clock the rumor sped with lightning rapidity through the
+streets of Paris that the troops, who had ostensibly been ordered to
+their quarters, were, in fact, concentrated around the palace. Instantly
+rose the shout, "To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" and a hundred
+thousand men from all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> sections of the city marched toward the Palais
+Bourbon and the Tuileries!</p>
+
+<p>The rumor of the concentration at the palace was true. The Place du
+Carrousel was crowded with troops of every arm, including several
+squadrons of cuirassiers, and six pieces of ordnance were in position,
+with their ammunition caissons and their provisions and baggage wagons,
+as if for a siege. The King, attended by his staff and accompanied by
+the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier, now descended into the court to
+pass the troops in review. The Line shouted "Vive le Roi!" as the King
+rode along. The National Guards, with tones and looks of menace and
+defiance, cried "Reform!" The King replied, "Yes, my friends, you shall
+have reform," and sad and dispirited turned away to his apartments; as
+he retired the bitter murmur was heard from his aged lips, "Like Charles
+X."</p>
+
+<p>A deputation of the people had been admitted within the limits of the
+Place du Carrousel to announce the terms they would accept, but after a
+brief parley had retired dissatisfied. The men of the barricades now
+invested the Tuileries and the Palais Royal on every side.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the scene without. Within, all was confusion and dismay. The
+salons were thronged by deputies, peers, generals and marshals; Bugeaud,
+Lamorici&egrave;re, Dupin, Thiers, de Lasteyrie and many others were there,
+together with all of the Royal family then in the capital, whether male
+or female.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the rattle of musketry, broken by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> occasional roar of
+ordnance, in the direction of the Palais Royal, indicated the severe
+struggle then going on between the people and the troops; from time to
+time, the furious shout of "To the guillotine with Louis Philippe!"
+reached the ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Does your Majesty hear that?" asked the Duke of Nemours coldly of his
+dismayed father. Alas! the old man was no longer the hero of July 3d!</p>
+
+<p>"I do, my son," was the trembling reply. "Do you advise abdication?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any other course left?" asked the Duke of Montpensier.</p>
+
+<p>"Any other course!" cried the Queen, indignantly. "Oh! are you my
+son&mdash;are you a son of Orl&eacute;ans, and can you talk thus of degradation? Are
+you a soldier and do you fear? Mount!&mdash;mount!&mdash;charge on the
+rebels!&mdash;cut them to the earth!&mdash;drench the pavement with their
+blood!&mdash;perish, but yield not ignominiously thus!"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame," said M. Thiers, solemnly, "it is too late! There must be an
+abdication in favor of the Count of Paris, and the appointment of the
+Duchess of Orl&eacute;ans as Regent, or all is lost!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then if this must be, let it be done with dignity becoming a monarch,"
+said the noble Queen. "Let us all retire to St. Cloud. There may be
+dictated terms of honorable capitulation. There&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At that instant in rushed a man breathless, bearing a sheet of paper in
+his hand, and exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>"Sire&mdash;Sire&mdash;your troops are delivering their arms to the people! In a
+moment they will stand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> where you now stand! Sign this paper, or your
+life and the lives of all your family will be sacrificed!"</p>
+
+<p>That man was &Eacute;mile de Girardin, the editor of "La Presse," and the
+murderer of Armand Carrel, and that paper was an act of abdication.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! this is a bitter cup," said the old King as he placed his signature
+to the sheet, "and doubly bitter presented by such a hand! Like Charles
+X.!"</p>
+
+<p>At one o'clock, at the Bourse and at the corners of all the principal
+streets, was posted this proclamation:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Citizens of Paris</span>: The King has abdicated in favor of the Count of
+Paris, with the Duchess of Orl&eacute;ans as Regent.</p>
+
+<p>A General Amnesty.</p>
+
+<p>Dissolution of the Chamber.</p>
+
+<p>Appeal to the Country."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>But the people were now in the midst of the assault on the Palais Royal,
+and to check them was impossible.</p>
+
+<p>The Palais Royal consisted of two portions&mdash;the Ch&acirc;teau d'Eau, or
+palace, and the other part, which though the property of the Orl&eacute;ans
+family was yet rented by private persons, and was occupied for caf&eacute;s,
+shops, dwellings and places of entertainment&mdash;adorned by colonnades and
+arcades, and by trees, statues and fountains in the magnificent
+quadrangle. The property of the citizens was respected&mdash;that of the King
+only was assailed. For two hours did the 14th Regiment pour forth its
+fire from the numerous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> windows of that edifice and from the court
+below. At length, a band of bold Republicans, headed by the chivalric
+&Eacute;tienne Arago, musket in hand, charged from the side of the Caf&eacute; de la
+R&eacute;gence, followed by a detachment of the National Guard, and, driving
+the troops into the building, surrounded it with straw which they set on
+fire. The vast edifice was instantly filled with smoke and flame. The
+defence ceased. The soldiers rushed out and were instantly slain. The
+commander of the detachment was pierced by a bayonet. The multitude
+rushed in, and the building was sacked. The richest and most costly
+furniture and decorations were at once torn down, dashed to pieces and
+thrown from the windows by the infuriated populace.</p>
+
+<p>Within the Palace of the Tuileries is a subterranean passage,
+constructed for the infant King of Rome and his nurses, which, plunging
+beneath the pavements, and passing along the whole length of the
+gardens, under the terrace beside the river bank, suddenly emerges at
+the gate of the Place du Carrousel, in front of the obelisk. Into this
+passage, in wild panic, descended the King and Queen of France, with all
+their children and grandchildren, immediately upon the signing of the
+abdication, and just as the doors were about to be forced. Emerging from
+the passage, the King, leaning on the arm of his faithful wife, Marie
+Am&eacute;lie, and followed by the Royal party, crossed the Place de la
+Concorde as far as the asphalt pavement. The Royal party now consisted
+of the King and Queen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> the Duchess of Nemours and her children, the
+Princess Cl&eacute;mentine and her husband, the Duke Augustus of Saxe-Coburg,
+and the Duke of Montpensier with his young and lovely Spanish bride, now
+enceinte and far advanced. Ignorant of the language, only sixteen years
+of age, a stranger to the customs and people of the country, and in her
+delicate situation, the position of this young creature was peculiarly
+trying. At one moment she clung with terror to her young husband's arm,
+which she refused for an instant to resign, and the next laughed at her
+own terror, saying that one who in her infancy had twice, in Madrid,
+been saved by being carried off in a sack ought not now to fear when she
+had feet to carry herself away and was suffered to use them! It is said
+that the fair Senora was forgotten in the hurry of the flight and almost
+left behind!</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the Royal party were perceived, they were surrounded by a
+troop of National Guards as an escort, and a large number of officers of
+the Line in various uniforms. The King leaned on the Queen, as if for
+support, while she boldly advanced with a firm step and stern look. Both
+were in deepest mourning for the recent death of the beloved sister of
+the King, the Princess Adelaide.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this melancholy procession the people gazed with mingled curiosity,
+amusement, gratification and regret.</p>
+
+<p>"They are going to the Chamber of Deputies to complete the abdication!"
+cries one.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p><p>"Vive la R&eacute;forme!" shouts another.</p>
+
+<p>"Vive la France!" shouts a second.</p>
+
+<p>"Vive le Roi!" in suppressed tones falters a third.</p>
+
+<p>"See the poor young Duchess!" cried a woman, who was availing herself of
+her peculiar rotundity as a battering-ram to force her way through the
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"She had better have remained at home!" sneered a Dynastic bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"The poor little children!" exclaimed a young woman more remarkable for
+prettiness than neatness, and more remarkable still for the scantiness
+of her attire, nearly all of which had been torn from her rounded
+shoulders in the throng.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit which pervaded the mass was, evidently, by no means
+unfriendly to the Royal family, and it was as evidently misunderstood by
+them, for, suddenly, as if by fatality, on the very spot where Louis
+XVI. was beheaded, just beyond the Pont Tournant, on the pavement of the
+Obelisk of Luxor, the whole party, with no apparent necessity, came to a
+dead and complete halt. Instantly the multitude was crowded upon them,
+and this augmented their terror. The King dropped the Queen's arm and
+hastily raising his hat cried, "Vive la R&eacute;forme!" All was in a moment
+uproar and confusion. The Queen in terror at finding her husband's arm
+was gone turned hurriedly on every side.</p>
+
+<p>"Fear not, Madame," said a mild voice beside her. "The people will do
+you no harm."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p><p>This was M. Maurice, editor of "Le Courrier des Spectacles."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me, leave me, Monsieur!" she exclaimed, in great excitement,
+evidently mistaking the words. Then regaining her husband, she again
+grasped his arm, and the mass at the same time opening its ranks, the
+two hastened on to a couple of those little black one-horse vehicles,
+chancing there to stand, which run to St. Cloud. In one of these already
+sat the Duchesses of Montpensier and Nemours with two of the children.
+In the other stood the two remaining children. Into the latter hurriedly
+stepped the Royal pair. The door was instantly closed and the vehicle
+drove off at a furious rate, surrounded by an escort of dragoons,
+cuirassiers and National Guards, two hundred in number, taking the
+water-side toward St. Cloud. The other carriage, similarly escorted,
+followed at a like rapid pace, the children standing at the windows,
+their faces pressed to the glass, gazing eagerly, with the innocent
+curiosity of infancy, on a scene from which their future fate would take
+shape.</p>
+
+<p>"He is gone!" shouted a stentorian voice, breaking the momentary
+stillness as the carriages, surrounded by their escort, swept from the
+view.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him go! Let him go!" was the stern and significant response. "We
+are not regicides!"</p>
+
+<p>"To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" was now the tremendous shout which
+rose from the multitude, as they rushed toward the deserted palace.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p><p>But the Tuileries had already fallen. It was no longer the
+dwelling-place of kings.</p>
+
+<p>Even before the Royal abdication was declared, even before it was
+signed, the troops of the Line in the courtyard of the palace&mdash;infantry,
+artillery, dragoons&mdash;to the number at least of twenty-five thousand,
+were summoned to surrender their posts, while the fraternal shout, "Vive
+la Ligne!" elicited from the lips of many of the soldiers the answering
+cry of "Vive la R&eacute;forme!" In vain was it that Marshal Bugeaud, the
+veteran of a hundred battles, menaced and blasphemed. In vain did his
+old prot&eacute;g&eacute; and subaltern, but now bitter foe, General Lamorici&egrave;re,
+dashing from one end of the line to the other on his white horse,
+entreat and persuade with his eloquent tongue. The people insisted&mdash;the
+National Guard fraternized&mdash;the Line wavered. And yet most imminent at
+that moment was their own peril.</p>
+
+<p>The 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 6th and 10th Legions of the National Guard
+invested the Tuileries, and others were on the march, accompanied by
+countless masses of the people. Within the courtyard were twenty-five
+thousand of the best troops in the world of every arm, and a park of
+ordnance charged to the muzzle frowned upon the dense masses which
+swarmed the Place du Carrousel. The watchful artilleryman stood at his
+cannon's breech, with the lighted linstock in his hand, which he kept
+alive by constant motion. He awaited but a word from the pale, firm lips
+of General Lamorici&egrave;re, and that vast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> and magnificent space now
+swarming with life would have been swept as if by destruction's besom.
+Death in all its most horrid forms would have been there. That pavement
+would have run with gore! The fa&ccedil;ades of those splendid edifices would
+have been polluted with shreds and fragments of human flesh, and
+spattered with human blood. Yet dreadful would have been the sure
+retribution! Indiscriminate massacre of all unfortunate souls within
+that Royal palace would have been inevitable and instantaneous. Yet,
+such a catastrophe might be precipitated by a single word!&mdash;the
+avalanche might be started by a single breath; and blood once shed,
+Paris would be deluged!</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the people I demand to speak with the commandant of the
+Tuileries!" shouted a young man in the uniform of an officer of the
+National Guard, advancing to the iron railing of the court near the Rue
+de Rivoli.</p>
+
+<p>It was Lieutenant Aubert Roche. The commandant was sent for and
+immediately arrived.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, you are lost!" cried the young man.</p>
+
+<p>"You are surrounded by sixty thousand men of the National Guard, and one
+hundred thousand of the people of Paris!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is demanded?" was the trembling response.</p>
+
+<p>"That you evacuate the Tuileries!&mdash;resign it to the National Guard!"</p>
+
+<p>"The troops shall be withdrawn, Monsieur.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> Orders for their retirement
+to the palace shall be issued instantly."</p>
+
+<p>"That will not do! The palace must be evacuated," insisted the
+Lieutenant, "or the people will raze it to the ground!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me, Monsieur," said the commandant.</p>
+
+<p>The gate was immediately opened, and Lieutenant Roche, accompanied by M.
+Leseur, chef de bataillon, bearing a flag of truce, followed the
+commandant to the Pavillon de l'Horloge, where stood the Duke of
+Nemours, pale with excitement, surrounded by generals.</p>
+
+<p>"Monseigneur," said the commandant, "suffer me to present a deputation
+from the people."</p>
+
+<p>"Messieurs, what do the people demand?" asked the Duke in trembling
+tones.</p>
+
+<p>"The evacuation, this instant, of this palace, and its delivery to the
+National Guard!"</p>
+
+<p>"And if we do not comply?" asked Marshal Bugeaud, calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, Monsieur, you all are lost!" was the bold answer. "This palace is
+surrounded by one hundred and sixty thousand men. The combat once begun
+must be exterminating&mdash;must be a massacre! The 5th Legion of the
+National Guard, to which I belong, is, at this moment, sacking the
+Palais Royal. It may be here before we part!"</p>
+
+<p>"The troops shall retire, Monsieur," said the Duke; and on the instant
+orders for the retreat were issued.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p><p>The artillery went by the railing of the palace, and the staff and the
+Duke of Nemours by the Pavillon de l'Horloge, their well-trained horses
+descending the flight of steps. The cavalry followed, succeeded by the
+infantry.</p>
+
+<p>The National Guards were then introduced by Lieutenant Roche, and
+entered the court of the Tuileries by the gate of the Rue de Rivoli,
+their muskets shouldered, with the stock in the air. At the same moment
+the abdication of the King was declared. General Lamorici&egrave;re had
+resigned. The Ministry was dissolved. There was a tremendous shout, and
+the conquerors of the Palais Royal rushed in to take possession of the
+Tuileries!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LAST SESSION OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES.</h3>
+
+<p>The usual hour for the opening of the Chamber of Deputies was three
+o'clock; but the startling events of the last two days, and especially
+of the last two hours, demanded that it should be convened earlier.</p>
+
+<p>At one o'clock the President of the Chamber, Sauzet, took the chair. On
+the left bank of the Seine all the approaches were open, save the
+bridges of the Place de la Concorde, where strong detachments of cavalry
+were posted on guard.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p><p>Within the Chamber all was solemnity. About three hundred members were
+present. The opposition seemed joyous and confident, though anxious. The
+conservative party was troubled. The Ministerial benches were deserted.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past one the President turned round in his chair, and kept his
+eye fixed upon a side door, as if expecting some one to enter. Suddenly
+a bustle was heard in that direction, and the Duchess of Orl&eacute;ans, in
+deep mourning, attended by her two sons and followed by the Dukes of
+Montpensier and Nemours, entered. The latter was received with marked
+expressions of dislike. The Count of Paris, garbed in complete black,
+was conducted through the crowd to the space in front of the President's
+chair; the Duchess followed and seated herself in a fauteuil upon the
+same spot. On each side of her was one of her sons, and behind her stood
+her brothers, the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier. This position was
+subsequently changed for one more distant, but otherwise remained
+throughout relatively the same.</p>
+
+<p>Being seated, the Duchess rose and bowed repeatedly to the assembly. At
+the same moment an immense multitude of National Guards and the people
+rushed in through the passages, and despite the shouts of the officers,
+"You cannot enter!" the space beneath the tribune was instantly and
+densely thronged. At the same time the public tribunes were invaded by a
+second body of the people.</p>
+
+<p>For some minutes the greatest uproar prevailed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> At length it
+comparatively ceased, and, in a moment of quiet, M. Dupin, who had
+accompanied the Duchess of Orl&eacute;ans to the Chamber, ascended the tribune.
+The stillness was instantly as great as had been the previous agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"The King has abdicated," said M. Dupin. "The Count of Paris is
+nominated as his successor and the Duchess of Orl&eacute;ans as Regent."</p>
+
+<p>"It is too late!" shouted a man from the gallery of the people.</p>
+
+<p>"The Count of Paris is proclaimed King by the Chamber and the Duchess of
+Orl&eacute;ans Regent!' exclaimed the President.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no&mdash;no!" was the almost unanimous shout that now rose in the
+Chamber.</p>
+
+<p>"I demand," cried M. Lamartine, "that the Royal family withdraw!"</p>
+
+<p>The question was put, and the Duchess and her sons, after great
+hesitation, were drawn away to a side door, at the further end of the
+hall. At the same moment a new crowd of the people rushed in and took
+seats beside the opposition members, by whom they were welcomed.</p>
+
+<p>"I demand to speak!" cried M. Marie. "By the law of 1842, the Duke of
+Nemours is Regent. How can the King abrogate that law? I demand a
+provisional government!"</p>
+
+<p>"A provisional government!" cried M. Cr&eacute;mieux. "We made a mistake in
+'30. Let there be no mistake in '48!"</p>
+
+<p>"A provisional government," said the Abb&eacute;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> Genoude, a Legitimist; "but
+it must be the will of the people!"</p>
+
+<p>M. Odillon Barrot, who had been long expected, now entered and
+immediately mounted the tribune.</p>
+
+<p>"The crown of July rests on the head of a woman and a child!" cried the
+great lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess of Orl&eacute;ans instantly rose, as if about to speak, but, at the
+urgent solicitation of those around her, resumed her seat.</p>
+
+<p>"I call on the country to rally around this woman and this child," cried
+M. Barrot, "the two-fold representative of the principles of July, '30!"</p>
+
+<p>The voice of the speaker was drowned in shouts of dissent and of "Vive
+la R&eacute;forme!"</p>
+
+<p>"I dissent from the opinion of M. Odillon Barrot!" cried the Marquis de
+la Rochejacquelin. "If he is right, the people are nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Order&mdash;order!" cried the President, putting on his hat, but he was at
+once induced to remove it.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment another vast crowd burst into the Chamber, garbed in a
+style so heterogeneous as to be grotesque&mdash;some with blouses&mdash;some with
+dragoon helmets on their heads, some with weapons and many with flags.</p>
+
+<p>"Down&mdash;down&mdash;down with the Throne!" was the terrible cry of this
+infuriated mass.</p>
+
+<p>"I demand that the sitting be suspended!" cried M. de Mornay.</p>
+
+<p>"There can be no session at such a moment," said the President, putting
+on his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Off&mdash;off&mdash;off with your hat, President!" cried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> the populace; and
+several of their muskets were at once pointed at the President. The hat
+was removed.</p>
+
+<p>The scene was chaos!</p>
+
+<p>"Beware!" shouted M. Chevalier, editor of the Historical Library.
+"Beware how you make the Count of Paris King! A provisional government
+we must first have!"</p>
+
+<p>"What right have you to speak?" shouted a man. "You are not a deputy!"</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the people, silence!" roared a terrific voice that
+drowned every other.</p>
+
+<p>It was the voice of Ledru Rollin.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the deputies now withdrew, and their places were filled by the
+people. The Duchess of Orl&eacute;ans sat calmly amid the uproar, and the Duke
+of Nemours with equal calmness stood behind her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"The throne has been tumbled from the windows of the Tuileries and is
+now burning in the Place de la Bastille!" cried M. Dumoulin, who
+commanded the H&ocirc;tel de Ville in July of '30, displaying the tri-color
+flag.</p>
+
+<p>"No more Bourbons! Down with the Bourbons! Down with the traitors! A
+provisional government!" shouted the people.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, a Republic!" cried M. Chevalier.</p>
+
+<p>Cr&eacute;mieux, Ledru Rollin and Lamartine were at the same time in the
+tribune.</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the people, silence!" again roared the awful voice of
+Ledru Rollin.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p><p>"A provisional government!" shouted one of the people.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall have a provisional government!" exclaimed M. Maguin.</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the people&mdash;in the name of the people of Paris in arms,"
+again began Ledru Rollin, "I protest against this King and this Regency.
+The constitution of '9 demands the will of the people to fix a Regency.
+Yet the law of '42 makes the Duke of Nemours Regent, and now it is the
+Duchess of Orl&eacute;ans. I protest against it all! I demand a provisional
+government!"</p>
+
+<p>"Question&mdash;question!" shouted M. Berryer. "A provisional government!"</p>
+
+<p>"In 1815," continued Ledru Rollin, "Napoleon abdicated in favor of the
+King of Rome. The King of Rome was refused. In 1830, Charles X.
+abdicated in favor of his grandson. The grandson was rejected. In 1848,
+Louis Philippe abdicates in favor of his grandson&mdash;the Count of Paris!"</p>
+
+<p>"Question&mdash;question!" again vociferated M. Berryer. "We all know those
+histories!"</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the people," continued Ledru Rollin, "I demand a
+provisional government, named by the people&mdash;not by the Chamber&mdash;but by
+the people!"</p>
+
+<p>Tremendous shouts followed, and M. Lamartine, who had stood beside
+Rollin in the tribune, now took his place amid renewed shouts.</p>
+
+<p>After an eloquent speech on the same side as his friend, he concluded by
+demanding a provisional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> government, with an appeal to "the people&mdash;the
+entire people&mdash;all who by the title of man have rights as men."</p>
+
+<p>While Lamartine was yet speaking, a violent knocking was heard at the
+door of the Chamber, which was forcibly burst open and a vast crowd
+rushed in.</p>
+
+<p>"Down with the Chamber! Down with the Deputies!" shouted the populace,
+and muskets were instantly leveled at Lamartine, and, also, at the Royal
+party.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Lamartine! it is Lamartine!" was the cry of terror that rose from
+his friends.</p>
+
+<p>The muskets were lowered.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess and her party were at once withdrawn from the Chamber by a
+side door, and having first retired to the H&ocirc;tel des Invalides, next
+fled to the Rhine; the Duke of Nemours fled to Boulogne and thence to
+England.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence&mdash;silence&mdash;silence!" shouted the President, violently ringing
+his bell. But the uproar only increased. "I pronounce this session
+closed!" cried the President, and putting on his hat he instantly left
+the chair.</p>
+
+<p>Here ends the Chamber of Deputies.</p>
+
+<p>A large number of the members withdrew with the President, but the
+opposition remained, and with them the people and the National Guards.</p>
+
+<p>After the noise incident to this departure had subsided, the venerable
+M. Dupont de l'Eure, a gray-headed old man of eighty, was, by unanimous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+acclamation, placed in the President's chair. Lamartine still remained
+in the tribune, and repeatedly strove to make his voice heard, but in
+vain.</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the people, silence, and let Lamartine speak!" at length
+was heard in the thunder tones of Ledru Rollin, rising above all other
+sounds.</p>
+
+<p>Silence for a moment being obtained, Lamartine exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Citizens!&mdash;a provisional government is declared! The names of the
+members will now be announced by the President!"</p>
+
+<p>Lamartine then descended from the tribune; applause and uproar
+succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>"The names of the members nominated for a provisional government I will
+now read to you," said the aged President, rising and displaying a
+paper.</p>
+
+<p>The following names were then read, and were repeated as they came one
+after the other from the speaker's mouth by the reporters in loud tones:
+Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Arago, Dupont de l'Eure, Marie, Georges
+Lafayette; all were received with general approbation.</p>
+
+<p>"The members of the Provisional Government must be conducted by the
+people to the H&ocirc;tel de Ville and installed!" cried a voice from the
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us adjourn to the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, Lamartine at the head!" said M.
+Bocage.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately Lamartine, accompanied by a large number of citizens,
+withdrew. But a great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>multitude still remained upon the benches and in
+the semi-circle of the Chamber.</p>
+
+<p>"Citizens!" cried Ledru Rollin, "in nominating a provisional government
+you perform a solemn act&mdash;an act which cannot be performed in a furious
+manner. Let me once more repeat to you the names you have chosen, and as
+they are repeated, you will say 'yes' or 'no,' precisely as they please
+you; I call on the reporters of the public press to note the names and
+the manner in which they are now received, that France may know what is
+here done."</p>
+
+<p>The names of Dupont de l'Eure, Arago, Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Cr&eacute;mieux,
+Garnier Pages and Marie were then read out, and all, except the last
+two&mdash;which were received with a few negatives&mdash;were confirmed by
+unanimous acclamation. The names were then engrossed in capitals on a
+sheet of paper and borne around the Chamber on the bayonet of a National
+Guard that all might read for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"I have one more word to say," cried Ledru Rollin. "The Provisional
+Government has immense duties to perform. We must now close this
+meeting, that the Government may be able to restore order&mdash;stanch the
+flow of blood, and secure to the people their rights."</p>
+
+<p>"To the H&ocirc;tel de Ville!&mdash;to the H&ocirc;tel de Ville!" responded the people in
+a tremendous shout. "Vive la R&eacute;publique!&mdash;to the H&ocirc;tel de Ville!"</p>
+
+<p>Headed by Ledru Rollin the excited multitude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> withdrew, and at four
+o'clock all was as silent in the Chamber of Deputies as if not a voice
+had resounded or a footstep had echoed within its walls for centuries.
+In the distance, however, could be heard the repeated shout:</p>
+
+<p>"Vive la R&eacute;publique!&mdash;to the H&ocirc;tel de Ville!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SACK OF THE TUILERIES.</h3>
+
+<p>Scarcely had the carriages conveying the Royal family disappeared on
+their flight toward St. Cloud, when the whole mass of the populace
+poured as with one simultaneous purpose into the deserted palace. The
+Palais Bourbon had already been sacked; a like fate might be supposed to
+await the Tuileries; but the Tuileries belonged to France, not to the
+House of Orl&eacute;ans, and a certain respect was observed for everything but
+the insignia of Royalty. For these was shown no regard. The throne
+itself of the state reception-room&mdash;that throne on which sat Louis
+Philippe for the first time, as King of the French, ere the Tuileries
+became his throne&mdash;was torn from its base, and, having been hurled first
+in derision from the windows into the court, was borne in mock triumph
+on the shoulders of men, who shouted that now the throne was indeed
+supported by the people, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> the Place de la Bastille, and there
+consumed to ashes. In the courtyard, in the Rue de Rivoli and on the
+quays, huge fires roared, fanned into fury by a hurricane of wind, and
+fed by richly carved furniture, gilded chairs, canopies, pianos, sofas,
+beds, costly paintings, splendid works of art and the Royal carriages
+glittering with gold. The magnificent tapestries of the Gobelins were
+borne as streamers, in frantic fury, along the boulevards; mischievous
+gamins were frolicking about in the long scarlet robes worn upon Court
+occasions, which they had filched from the Royal wardrobe; the
+escritoire of the King, the key having been found in a tea-cup, was
+ransacked, and private letters, books and the garments of ladies were
+strewn about the court and gardens of the Tuileries. The cellars of the
+palace were soon filled with the insurgents; but they declared the wine
+bad, as it never remained long enough in the cellars of kings to get
+good! Destruction, not pillage, seemed the order of the hour, and to
+guard against robbery the people took upon themselves the arrest and
+punishment of offenders. The walls bore the menace, "Robbers shall die!"
+In several instances the threat was carried into immediate execution,
+and bodies, suffered to lie on the spot upon which they had been cut
+down, bore on their breasts the label "Thief!" in terrible warning.
+Sentinels also stood at the gates, and no one was allowed to leave the
+palace without rigorous search.</p>
+
+<p>In the apartments of the Duchess of Orl&eacute;ans, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> table was found spread
+for the dinner of herself and her children; upon the table were the
+little silver cups, forks and spoons of the young Princes, and on the
+floor were scattered their costly toys. The latter were gathered
+carefully up by a workman in a blouse, and as carefully concealed in a
+corner. The former, together with all jewels and other valuables found
+in the apartments of the Duchess, were deposited in a bathing-tub, on
+which a workman seated himself as guard and suffered no one to approach
+until the aforesaid valuables could be conveyed by a detachment of the
+Polytechnic School to the Government treasury. The story runs that, on
+the night succeeding the sack of the Tuileries, the conquerors chose a
+king and queen, and that, in the palace hall, was spread a banquet
+composed of the viands found in the Royal kitchen and the wines found in
+the Royal cellars. The queen, who was a soubrette more noticeable for
+beauty than for cleanliness of person, garbed in Royal robes which she
+well became, and with a coronet upon her stately brow, was seated in a
+chair of state and received the most extravagant homage from her willing
+subjects, while groups of gamins, in the long crimson liveries of the
+Royal household, boisterously frolicked before the sans culotte court
+amid roars of merriment.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>A MEMORABLE NIGHT.</h3>
+
+<p>Generally, the rogues throughout Paris, intimidated by the awful,
+immediate and certain penalty for crime, forsook, for the time, their
+calling. A man who attempted to fire the Palais Royal was shot at the
+Pr&eacute;fecture. Another, for a like attempt on buildings in the Rue Monceau,
+met a like fate. In the Rue Richelieu lay the bodies of two thieves,
+each with a ball through the breast, and over the aperture the word
+"Thief" on a label. In like manner were eight more robbers executed at
+once on the Place de la Madeleine. A woman of the street wrested a
+bracelet from a lady's wrist; she was instantly seized by the bystanders
+and shot. But for this summary punishment of malefactors by the people,
+dreadful that night would have been the state of Paris, without laws to
+enforce or a police to enforce them. It is true the Ch&acirc;teau of Neuilly
+was sacked and burned, as well as the splendid villa of the Baron
+Rothschild at Parennes; but both were supposed to be the property of the
+King. It is true, also, that some rails on the Northern Railway were
+torn up, and a viaduct between Paris and Amiens, and another between
+Amiens and the frontier of Belgium<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> were demolished; and that the
+railway stations at St. Denis, Enghien and Pontoise and the bridge at
+Asni&egrave;res had been destroyed; but all this was done to prevent the
+concentration upon the citizens of Paris of additional Royal troops.</p>
+
+<p>A workman entered a house and demanded bread. Meat and wine were offered
+him. "No," was the reply, "bread and water are all I want."</p>
+
+<p>Yet such was the scarcity of food that horses were killed and eaten at
+the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, on the third day of the Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>"Arms&mdash;arms!" shouted a band of workmen, entering a house on the Rue
+Richelieu. The proprietor, alarmed, shouted for help. "Do you think us
+robbers?" was the indignant reply. "Give us your weapons!"</p>
+
+<p>The weapons were given and the band retired; on the door they wrote,
+"Here we received arms!"</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock, on the evening of the 24th of February, a proclamation
+to the citizens of Paris, issued by the Provisional Government then in
+session at the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, declared the Revolution
+accomplished&mdash;that eighty thousand of the National Guard and one hundred
+thousand of the people were in arms&mdash;that order as well as liberty must
+now be secured, and the people, with the National Guard, were appointed
+guardians of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this proclamation was magical. Never was Paris so well
+protected as on that night of the 24th of February, when, filled with
+barricades, she had no police and was guarded by her citizens.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p><p>And how was constituted the Provisional Government whose power was thus
+implicitly obeyed? It was founded by the people who obeyed it. This was
+the only secret.</p>
+
+<p>From the Chamber of Deputies to the H&ocirc;tel de Ville proceeded the members
+of the Provisional Government. They marched under a canopy of sabres,
+pikes and bayonets into halls stained with blood and encumbered with the
+slain, and there, at a small table, while the conflict between the two
+Republics had already commenced, within an hour had they organized their
+body by the nomination of Armand Marrast, of "Le National," Ferdinand
+Flocon, of "La R&eacute;forme," Albert, a workman, and Louis Blanc, the editor
+and author, as Secretaries of the Government; their first official act
+was to issue a proclamation to the people.</p>
+
+<p>The scenes witnessed the night which succeeded in Paris will never be
+forgotten by those who witnessed them. Patrols promenaded the streets,
+the men of the barricades slept upon their weapons, beside their works,
+and through all that night ceaselessly toiled the press to spread over
+all the world the news of the great events of the three past days in
+Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the door of an edifice situated in the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau&mdash;a
+street which was filled with barricades of immense size and
+strength&mdash;was posted a printed placard, "The Provisional Government,"
+lighted by a single lamp. Entering the door with a vast multitude, and
+ascending the dark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> and winding staircase, you found yourself in a large
+room, dimly lighted and crowded with armed men.</p>
+
+<p>It was the editorial apartment of the office of "La R&eacute;forme."</p>
+
+<p>At a large and massive table sat a dozen persons most industriously
+employed in writing. Around them, looking on, rose the rough, stern
+faces of the men of the barricades, seeming still more rough and stern
+by reason of the shadowy light; in the hands of all were weapons.</p>
+
+<p>"A copy of the names of the members of the Provisional Government!" was
+the incessant demand of these armed men, a demand which the dozen
+writers at the table were unable even by most indefatigable industry to
+supply as fast as made. And as fast as the demand was satisfied, the
+armed men would hurry away, only to leave room for the crowds constantly
+entering.</p>
+
+<p>"A copy for the H&ocirc;tel de Ville!" cried one.</p>
+
+<p>"A copy for the Place Vend&ocirc;me!" shouted another.</p>
+
+<p>"A copy for the Palais Bourbon!" screamed a third.</p>
+
+<p>"Are there no printed copies left?" asked many.</p>
+
+<p>"They were gone long ago&mdash;twenty thousand copies," was the reply. "You
+will see one at every corner. The demand was not expected. The printers
+have just gone to sleep. They had not rested for fifty-two hours."</p>
+
+<p>"Will 'La R&eacute;forme' appear in the morning?" asked another.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p><p>"Perhaps so," was the answer. "But all the people are worn out&mdash;writers
+and compositors. Here is your copy of the names."</p>
+
+<p>"Many thanks. Vive la R&eacute;publique!"</p>
+
+<p>With this shout, in concert with the same which constantly issued from a
+hundred lips, the citizen folded up his precious document, and carefully
+depositing it in his cap hurried off to communicate its contents to his
+comrades of the neighboring barricade.</p>
+
+<p>In another apartment of that same edifice were a large number of the
+Republican party connected with "La R&eacute;forme."</p>
+
+<p>"The Provisional Government is now in session," said one. "They will,
+doubtless, make immediate provision for departments of State so
+important as the post-office and the pr&eacute;fecture of police. Early
+to-morrow a proclamation&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow may be too late," interrupted a large and muscular man. "The
+post-office is more active than ever to-night. Every moment couriers are
+arriving and departing. That powerful instrument remains in the hands of
+the foes of our cause! Who may estimate the injury, the irreparable
+injury which they may this night accomplish by its means!"</p>
+
+<p>This man was &Eacute;tienne Arago, brother of the great astronomer, and, for
+sixteen years, celebrated as one of the boldest members of the
+Republican party, as well as one of the bravest men in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"And the pr&eacute;fecture of police," observed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>another&mdash;"the present utter
+derangement of all its functions may lead to most serious results.
+Already those foes of freedom, Guizot and his colleagues, have been
+suffered to secure their escape from the just indignation of an outraged
+people. Delessert, the Pr&eacute;fect, has also fled!"</p>
+
+<p>The man who said this was Marc Caussidi&egrave;re, a well-known Republican.</p>
+
+<p>"Citizens!" cried M. Gouache, "this state of things must continue no
+longer. In the name of the people, I demand that &Eacute;tienne Arago
+immediately assume the charge of the post-office, as its director, and
+that Marc Caussidi&egrave;re fill the position of Pr&eacute;fect."</p>
+
+<p>This demand was confirmed by acclamation, and committees for the
+installation of the nominees into office at once accompanied them to
+their respective departments.</p>
+
+<p>The immense edifice of the post-office was surrounded by people, and its
+numerous windows were flashing with lights. Within the utmost activity
+seemed to prevail, and without couriers were leaving and arriving every
+moment, and mail coaches were dashing up to discharge their burdens, or,
+having received them, were dashing off.</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the people, entrance for Citizen &Eacute;tienne Arago,
+Republican director of the post-office!" shouted one of the committee.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly a passage through the immense crowd in the courtyard was
+cleared by the National Guard, and the director entered with his escort.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p><p>"In the name of the people, Citizen Dejean, you are dismissed," said
+&Eacute;tienne Arago, entering the private cabinet of the Director General.</p>
+
+<p>"And who is to be my successor?" asked the astonished Count, rising to
+his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the people, I am sent to displace and to succeed you,"
+was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"But your commission, Monsieur?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is here," pointing to the committee.</p>
+
+<p>"Before I resign the direction of this department," said the Count after
+some hesitation, "I must ask of you for some record of this act, bearing
+your signature, to be deposited in the archives of the office."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Monsieur, your request is but reasonable," answered Arago,
+seating himself in the official chair. And writing a few lines to which
+he affixed his signature, he coolly handed the document to his
+astonished predecessor. It contained notice of his own appointment by
+the people, in place of the Count Dejean, dismissed.</p>
+
+<p>The Count read and folded the paper, and having made a copy of it, which
+he laid carefully in his porte-monnaie, he placed the original on file
+among the papers of the day belonging to the department. Then,
+courteously bowing, he took his hat and cane and marched out of the
+building.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.</h3>
+
+<p>In the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, closely closeted, sat the Provisional Government
+of France. Over that stern old citadel, over the dismantled Palace of
+the Tuileries, from the tall summit of the Column of Vend&ocirc;me, over the
+H&ocirc;tel des Invalides and in the Place de la Bastille is seen a blood-red
+banner, streaming out like a meteor on the keen north-western blast.
+Eighty thousand armed men invest the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, and wave on wave,
+wave on wave, the living and stormy tide eddies and welters and dashes
+around that dark old pile. All its avenues are held; its courts are
+thronged; ordnance frowns from its black portals and against its gates;
+drums roll&mdash;banners stream&mdash;bayonets glitter; and from those tens of
+thousands of hoarse and stormy voices goes up but one shout of menace
+and command:</p>
+
+<p>"Vive la R&eacute;publique! Vive la R&eacute;publique! No kings! No Bourbons!
+Down&mdash;down forever with the kings!"</p>
+
+<p>And upward to that dark old pile of despotism, as to the temple of
+Liberty herself, are turned those tens of thousands of swarthy faces,
+dark with the smoke of battle, yet livid with excitement and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+exhaustion&mdash;and as they realize that within those walls the question of
+their fate and that of their country is then being settled&mdash;that from
+that night's counsels in that vast and ancient edifice are to flow peace
+and prosperity, and freedom and plenty, or else all the untold terrors
+of anarchy, civil war, bloodshed, violence and strife&mdash;what wonder that
+the sitting of the council seemed endless and their own impatience
+became intolerable&mdash;that all imaginable doubts and fears and absurd
+apprehensions took possession of their inflamed imaginations?&mdash;that at
+one time the rumor should fly, and win credence as it flew, that the
+Provisional Government were consulting with the friends of Henry V.&mdash;or
+again, that they were considering the question of a Regency&mdash;and that
+under such influences they should roar and yell, and thunder for
+admission at the gates, and burden the air with their shouts?</p>
+
+<p>"No Bourbons! No kings! No Regency! Death&mdash;death to all kings! La
+R&eacute;publique! La R&eacute;publique! La R&eacute;publique!"</p>
+
+<p>At times, in terrific concert, would the thousands of uplifted throats
+roar forth the chorus of that startling canticle of '92:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>"Vive la r&eacute;publique! Vive la r&eacute;publique!</div>
+<div>Debout, peuple Fran&ccedil;ais! debout, peuple h&eacute;ro&iuml;que!</div>
+<div>Debout, peuple Fran&ccedil;ais! Vive la r&eacute;publique!"</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then the song would change and the mournful notes of the "Death Hymn of
+the Girondins,"&mdash;"Mourir Pour la Patrie"&mdash;would swell in wild yet solemn
+cadence on the wintry blast:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i2">DEATH HYMN OF THE GIRONDINS.</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i2">By the voice of the signal cannon,</div>
+<div class="i3">France calls her sons their aid to lend;</div>
+<div class="i2">"Let us go," the soldier cries, "to battle!</div>
+<div class="i3">'Tis our mother we defend!"</div>
+<div>To die on Freedom's Altar&mdash;to die on Freedom's Altar!</div>
+<div>'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter!</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i2">We who fall afar from the battle,</div>
+<div class="i3">Lone and unknown obscurely die,</div>
+<div class="i2">But give at least our parting blessings</div>
+<div class="i3">Unto France and Freedom high.</div>
+<div>To die on Freedom's Altar&mdash;to die on Freedom's Altar!</div>
+<div>'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter!</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And thus all that terrible night, even until the morning's dawn,
+thronged those men of the barricades around the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, and all
+the night, even until the morning's dawn, calmly continued those men of
+the Provisional Government of the French Republic, amid menace and
+mandate, uproar and confusion, in their noble, yet arduous work. At
+midnight a proclamation of the Provisional Government was read by
+torchlight to the excited masses by Louis Blanc, from the steps of the
+H&ocirc;tel de Ville, declaring for a government of the people by itself, with
+liberty, equality and fraternity for its principles, while order was
+devised and maintained by the people&mdash;which served somewhat to allay
+their apprehensions and distrust. This proclamation appeared in all the
+morning journals, and was placarded all over the city the next day.</p>
+
+<p>That day was Friday, the 25th of February. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> still the Provisional
+Government remained in session, and still the armed masses of the
+barricades, in congregated thousands, rolled in tumultuous billows
+around the H&ocirc;tel de Ville. At length the populace, exasperated by
+impatience, hunger and sleeplessness, with brandished bayonets rushed
+into the very chamber of council, with furious cries, and with threats
+which were well nigh accomplished. Again and again, at the entreaty of
+his colleagues, did the brave, the eloquent, the wise Lamartine present
+himself upon the steps of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville to assuage and quiet the
+rising tempest. Again and again, throughout that fearful day, did he
+come forth, single-handed, to wrestle with violence, turbulence, anarchy
+and strife; and again and again, beneath the magic of his eloquent
+tongue, the storm lulled, the tempest ceased. Again and again,
+throughout all that fearful day, were the acts of that noble Government
+matured and sent forth. Proclamation followed proclamation, and no
+branch of society seemed forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The names of the members of the Provisional Government were again
+published. Caussidi&egrave;re and Sobrier were confirmed in the police
+department, and &Eacute;tienne Arago in that of the post-office. Merchants of
+provisions were recommended to supply all who were in need; and the
+people were recommended to still retain their arms. The Chamber of
+Deputies was dissolved, the Peers were forbidden to meet, and the
+convocation of a National Assembly was promised. To all laborers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> labor
+was guaranteed and compensation for labor. At noon the garrison of the
+fort of Vincennes was announced to have acknowledged the Republic, just
+as the people were about to march upon it. To insure order and
+tranquillity, the Municipal Guard was disbanded, and the National Guard
+entrusted with the protection of Paris under M. Courtais, the
+commandant, who was ordered immediately to recruit twenty-four
+battalions for active service. All articles pledged at the
+Mont-de-Pi&eacute;t&eacute;, from February 4th, not exceeding in value ten francs,
+were ordered to be returned, and the Tuileries was decreed the future
+asylum of invalid workmen. An attack on the machinery of some of the
+printing offices was checked by a proclamation.</p>
+
+<p>General Bedeau was appointed Minister of War, General Cavaignac Governor
+of Algeria, and Admiral Baudin to the command of the Toulon fleet. On
+the part of the army Marshal Bugeaud and on the part of the clergy the
+venerable Archbishop of Paris gave in their adhesion to the Republic,
+while the entire press, Bourgeoisie and the Provinces hesitated not an
+instant. Indeed, from all quarters came in adhesions to the Republic.
+The Bonapartes were among the first. Barrot and Thiers also came, but
+too late to save themselves from contempt. Mr. Rush, the American
+Minister, the first of foreign ambassadors acknowledged the Republic.
+The son of Mehemet Ali was next. The Papal Nuncio succeeded, together
+with the Ministers of the Argentine Republic and Uruguay. Next came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> the
+ambassador of England; but those of Austria, Prussia, Russia and Holland
+awaited instructions from home&mdash;little dreaming of the news they were
+about to receive! The city of Rouen sent three hundred of its citizens
+as a deputation, with abundant supplies of arms, by the morning cars of
+the railway.</p>
+
+<p>At about noon, the Pont Louis Philippe was destroyed by fire. Henceforth
+it is to be "Le Pont de la R&eacute;forme." And so with all other names. Royal
+is to give place to R&eacute;publique, and "Libert&eacute;, Egalit&eacute; et Fraternit&eacute;" is
+to be again inscribed on all public monuments.</p>
+
+<p>The children of citizens killed in the Revolution were declared adopted
+by the country. The civil, judicial and administrative functionaries of
+the Royal Government were announced released from their oaths of office,
+the colonels of the twelve legions of National Guards were dismissed,
+and all political prisoners set free. Every citizen was declared an
+elector, and absolute freedom of thought, the liberty of the press, and
+the right of political and industrial associations secured to all were
+proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>A warrant for the arrest of the late Ministers was issued by the new
+Procureur-General, M. Portalis, based on an act of accusation presented
+to the Court of Appeals. But all of them had fled. Guizot is said to
+have escaped from the Foreign Office in a servant's livery. When the
+people broke into his h&ocirc;tel, they found only his daughter, and retired.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>
+The other members of the Ministry are said to have leaped from a low
+window of the Tuileries, and to have escaped at the moment of the King's
+abdication. M. de Cormenin was appointed Conseilleur d'&Eacute;tat and M.
+Achille Marrast Procureur-General to the Court of Appeals in Paris, in
+place of the refugees.</p>
+
+<p>Such were some of the acts of the seven men constituting the Provisional
+Government of the French Republic, during their first extraordinary
+session of sixty-four hours&mdash;from the hour of four o'clock in the
+afternoon of Thursday after the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies
+to the hour of four o'clock in the morning of Sunday, the 27th of
+February, when the people of Paris consented to retire to their homes.
+But during all of this period, night and day without intermission, every
+moment was the H&ocirc;tel de Ville surrounded by tumultuous masses infuriated
+by suspicion, apprehension and distrust. For two whole days and two
+whole nights armed men incessantly inundated the square, the courts and
+halls of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville. They insisted on giving to the Republic the
+character, the attitude and the emblems of the first Revolution&mdash;they
+insisted on a Republic violent, sweeping, dictatorial and terrorist, in
+language, in gesture and in color, in place of that determined on,
+moderate, pacific, legal, unanimous and constitutional. At the peril of
+their lives the Provisional Government resisted this demand. Twenty
+times during those sixty-four hours was Lamartine taken up, dragged,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+carried to the doors and windows or to the head of the grand staircase,
+into the courts and the square, to hurl down with his eloquence those
+emblems of terrorism, with which it was attempted to dishonor the
+Republic. But the vast and infuriated mass refused to listen, and
+drowned his voice in clamor and vociferation. At length, when well-nigh
+exhausted in defence of the emblem of a moderate Republic, he exclaimed:
+"The red flag has been nowhere except around the Champ-de-Mars, trailed
+in the blood of the people, while the tri-color has been around the
+world with our navy, our glory and our liberties!"</p>
+
+<p>The furious and hitherto obdurate and bloodthirsty populace became
+softened&mdash;tears were shed, arms were lowered&mdash;flags were thrown away,
+and peaceably they departed to their homes. Never&mdash;never was there a
+more glorious triumph of eloquence&mdash;of patriotism!</p>
+
+<p>It was on the morning of Sunday, the 27th day of February, that the
+Provisional Government deemed it prudent and proper for them to bring to
+a close their initiative labors, and once more, for the last time,
+Lamartine descended the steps of the great staircase of the H&ocirc;tel de
+Ville, and, presenting himself in front of the edifice surrounded by his
+colleagues, announced to the vast assembly the result of their
+protracted toil:</p>
+
+<p>Royalty abolished&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A Republic proclaimed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The people restored to their political rights&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p><p>National workshops opened&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The army and National Guard reorganized&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The abolition of death for political offences.</p>
+
+<p>With louder and more prolonged acclamations than any other decree was
+this last received. And, instantly, in accordance with this
+proclamation, the director of criminal affairs, on the order of M.
+Cr&eacute;mieux, Minister of Justice, dispatched on the wings of the wind, all
+over France, the warrant to suspend all capital executions which were to
+have taken place, in virtue of Royal decrees, until the will of the
+National Assembly, at once to be convened, should be promulgated on the
+subject of the penalty of death. The effects of this decree, as it sped
+on the lightning's wings, like a saving angel, all over France, may be
+imagined perhaps, but portrayal is impossible! Who can imagine even the
+joy, the rapture it brought to many a dungeon-prisoner, who was counting
+the hours that yet remained to him of life and preceded his awful doom,
+or to those who sorrowed over his untimely&mdash;perchance his unjust fate!</p>
+
+<p>Leaning on the arm of Louis Blanc, the youngest member of the
+Government, the venerable Dupont de l'Eure, the eldest, accompanied by
+the other members, now appeared on the balcony of the room formerly
+called the Chamber of the Throne, but now the Chamber of the Republic!
+Lamartine then advanced a step before his colleagues, and in a brief and
+eloquent address proclaimed to that immense throng the existence of the
+Republic.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p><p>The announcement was received with, acclamations of joy, and shouts of
+"Vive le Gouvernement!"&mdash;"Vive Lamartine!"&mdash;"Vive Louis Blanc!" mingled
+with those of "Vive la R&eacute;publique!" loudly rose.</p>
+
+<p>From the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, the Provisional Government proceeded in a body,
+despite the rain which fell in torrents, accompanied by the people, to
+the Place de la Bastille, there officially to inaugurate the Republic,
+agreeably to announcement.</p>
+
+<p>At the appointed hour, the Place de la Bastille was thronged. The
+National Guard, consisting of two battalions from each of the twelve
+legions of Paris, together with the Thirteenth Legion of cavalry and two
+battalions of the Banlieu, were drawn up from the Church of the
+Madeleine to the Column of July. And, there, at the base of that column
+erected in commemoration of the Revolution which had made Louis Philippe
+King of the French, his downfall was commemorated, and on the ruins of
+the throne then established was now inaugurated a Republic!</p>
+
+<p>During the ceremony of the inauguration, the "Marseillaise" was sung by
+the National Guard and the people, and, at its conclusion, about the
+hour of three, the troops filed off before the Column of July to the
+thrilling strains of the "Marseillaise" and the "Mourir Pour la Patrie"
+of the Girondins. The members of the Provisional Government, preceded by
+a detachment of the National Guard and accompanied by the pupils of the
+Polytechnic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> School and the Military School of St. Cyr, then descended
+the boulevards, followed by the whole of the military and civic array,
+who chanted the national songs. The effect was stupendous. Hour after
+hour the immense procession moved on like a huge serpent through the
+streets of Paris; and, at length, when its head was at the H&ocirc;tel de
+Ville, its extremity had hardly left the Column of July.</p>
+
+<p>It was night, on Sunday, the 27th of February, when the members of the
+Provisional Government, for the first time during four days, returned to
+their homes. But their work was accomplished. A Republic was gained,
+proclaimed and inaugurated!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>DANT&Egrave;S AND MERC&Eacute;D&Egrave;S.</h3>
+
+<p>It was a tempestuous night. The wind howled dismally through the streets
+of Paris, and the rain and sleet dashed fiercely against the casements.
+At intervals a wild shout might be caught as the blast paused in its
+furious career, and then a distant shot might be heard. But they passed
+away, and nothing save the wail of the storm-wind or the rushing sleet
+of the winter tempest was distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>But, while all was thus wild, dark and tempestuous without, light,
+warmth, comfort and elegance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> rendered yet more delightful by the
+elemental war, reigned triumphant within a large and splendidly
+furnished apartment in the noble mansion of M. Dant&egrave;s, the Deputy from
+Marseilles, in the Rue du Helder. Every embellishment which art could
+invent, luxury court, wealth invoke, or even imagination conceive,
+seemed there lavished with a most prodigal hand. The soft atmosphere of
+summer, perfumed by the exotics of a neighboring conservatory, delighted
+the senses, the mild effulgence of gaslight transmitted through opaque
+globes of glass melted upon the sight, while sofas, divans and ottomans
+in luxurious profusion invited repose. To describe the rare paintings,
+the rich gems of statuary and the other miracles of art which were there
+to be seen would be as impossible as it would be to portray the
+exquisite taste which enhanced the value of each and constituted more
+than half its charm.</p>
+
+<p>Upon one of the elegant sofas reclined Edmond Dant&egrave;s, his tall and
+graceful figure draped in a dressing robe, while beside him on a low
+ottoman sat his beautiful wife, her arm resting on his knee, and her
+dark, glorious eyes gazing with confiding fondness into his face.</p>
+
+<p>Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s was no longer the young, light-hearted and thoughtless being
+who graced the village of the Catalans. Many years had flown since then
+and many sorrows passed over her. Each of these years and each of these
+sorrows, like retiring waves of the sea, upon the smooth and sandy
+beach, had left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> behind its trace. No, Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s was not now the young,
+light-hearted and thoughtless girl she once was; but she was a being far
+more perfect, far more winning, far more to be loved&mdash;she was a matured,
+impassioned, accomplished, and still, despite the flight of years, most
+lovely woman. She was one who could feel passion as well as inspire it,
+and having once felt or inspired it, that passion, it was plain, could
+never pass lightly away. Her face could not now boast, perhaps, that
+full and perfect oval which it formerly had, but the lines of care and
+of reflection, which here and there almost imperceptibly appeared,
+rendered it all the more charming. In the bold yet beautiful contour of
+those features, in the full red lips, in the high pale forehead and,
+above all, in those dark and haunting eyes lay a depth of feeling and
+profundity and nobleness of thought, which to a reflective mind have a
+charm infinitely more irresistible than that which belongs to mere
+youthful perfection. There was a bland beauty in the smile which slept
+upon her lips, a delicacy of sentiment in the faint flush that tinged
+her soft cheek, and a deep meaning in her dark and eloquent eye which
+told a whole history of experience even to a stranger; while the full
+and rounded outline of the figure, garbed in a loose robe of crimson,
+which contrasted beautifully with her luxuriant dark tresses, had that
+voluptuous development and grace which only maturity and maternity can
+impart to the female form. In short, never had Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, in the days of
+her primal bloom,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> presented a person so fascinating as now. She was a
+woman to sigh for, perchance to die for, and one whom a man would
+willingly wish to live for, if he might but hope she would live for him,
+or, peradventure, he might even be willing not only to risk, but
+ultimately to resign his life, would that fair being not only live for
+him, but love him with that entire and passionate devotedness which
+beamed from her dark eyes up into his who now gazed upon her as she sat
+at his feet. As for him, as for Edmond Dant&egrave;s, his figure had now the
+same elegance, his hand the same delicate whiteness, his features the
+same spiritual beauty, his brow the same marble pallor, and his eye
+which beamed beneath its calm expanse the same deep brilliancy which,
+years before, had distinguished him from all other men and made the
+Count of Monte-Cristo the idol of every salon in Paris and the hero of
+every maiden's dream. Yet that face was not without its changes. Tears,
+care, thought and sorrow had done their work; in the deep lines upon his
+brow and cheek, in the silvery threads which thickly sprinkled his
+night-black hair, and, more than all, in the mild light of those eyes
+which once glowed only with vindictive hate or gratified revenge and in
+the softened expression of those lips which once, in their stern beauty,
+had but curled with scorn or quivered with rage could be read that the
+lapse of time, though it might, indeed, have made him a sadder man, had
+made him also a better one.</p>
+
+<p>The husband and wife were alone. They still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> loved as warmly as ever,
+and, if possible, more fondly than when first they were made one.</p>
+
+<p>Dant&egrave;s stretched himself out on the sofa, and Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, dropping lower
+upon the low ottoman at his side, passed her full and beautiful arm
+around his waist and pressed her lips to his forehead. He returned the
+embrace with warmth, and placing his own arm about her form, drew it
+closely to his bosom. Thus they remained, clasped in each other's arms,
+and thus they fixed on each other eyes beaming with love, passion,
+bliss, happiness unutterable.</p>
+
+<p>"My own Edmond!" murmured Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s. "At length you are again with
+me&mdash;all my own!"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I not always your own, dearest?" was the fond reply.</p>
+
+<p>"But during the week past, I might almost say during the month past, you
+have been compelled to be so often absent from me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! love, you know I was not willingly absent!" was the quick answer.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no&mdash;no&mdash;but it was hardly the more endurable for that," said the
+lady, with a smile. "Oh! the anxiety of the last three days and nights!
+Dearest, I do believe I have not slept three hours during the whole of
+those three days and nights!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I, dear, have slept not one!" was the laughing rejoinder.</p>
+
+<p>"But all is over now, is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"In one sense all is over, and in another all now begins. The monarchy
+is ended in France, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> believe, forever. The Republic has begun, and, I
+trust, will prove lasting."</p>
+
+<p>"And all the grand objects for which you have been striving with your
+noble colleagues for years and years are at length accomplished, are
+they not?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is a question, love, not easily answered. That the cause of man
+and France has wonderfully triumphed during the past three days is, no
+doubt, most true. But this victory, love, I foresaw. Indeed, it was but
+the inevitable result of an irresistible cause. It was neither chance,
+love, nor a spontaneous burst of patriotism that, on the first day,
+filled the boulevards with fifty thousand blouses, which on the second
+won over to the people eighty thousand National Guards, and on the third
+choked the streets of Paris with barricades constructed by engineers and
+defended by men completely armed. The events of the last three days,
+Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, have been maturing in the womb of Providence for the past ten
+years. It is their birth only which has now taken place, and to some the
+parturition seems a little premature, I suppose. This banquet caused the
+fright that hastened the event," added Dant&egrave;s, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very scientific in your comparisons," replied Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s,
+slightly blushing, "and I suppose I must admit, very apt. But tell me,
+love, is all over? That is, must you be away from me any more at night,
+and wander about, Heaven only knows where, in this dark and dangerous
+city, or Heaven only knows with whom or for what?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p><p>Dant&egrave;s kissed his fair wife, and, after a pause, during which he gazed
+fondly into her eyes, replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, I trust, I believe, dear, that all is over&mdash;at least all that
+will take me from you, as during the past week. France has or will have
+a Republic. That is as certain as fate can make it. But first she will
+have to pass through strife and tribulation&mdash;perhaps bloodshed. The end
+surely, love, is not yet. But France is now comparatively free. The
+dreadful problem is now nearer solution than it ever was. Labor will
+hereafter be granted to all, together with the adequate reward of labor.
+Destitution will not be deemed guilt. The death-penalty is abolished.
+The rich will not with impunity grind the poor into powder beneath their
+heels. Asylums for the suffering, the distressed, the abandoned of both
+sexes will be sustained. The efforts which, as individuals, we have some
+of us made for years to ameliorate the condition of mankind, to assuage
+human woes and augment human joys, will henceforth be encouraged and
+directly aided by the State. This Revolution, love, is a social
+Revolution, and during the sixty-four hours the Provisional Government
+was in session, in the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, I became thoroughly convinced
+that the thousands and tens of thousands who, with sleepless vigilance,
+watched their proceedings, had learned the deep lesson too well to be
+further deceived, and that the fruits of the Revolution they had won
+would not again be snatched from their lips."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p><p>"And the result of this triumph of the people you believe has advanced
+the cause of human happiness?" asked Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s.</p>
+
+<p>"Most unquestionably, dear, and most incalculably, too, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"All your friends are not as disinterested as you have been, Edmond,"
+said Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s.</p>
+
+<p>"And why think you that, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"For six full years I know you have devoted all your powers of mind and
+body and all your immense wealth to one single object."</p>
+
+<p>"And that object?"</p>
+
+<p>"Has been the happiness of your race."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"And now, when a triumph has been achieved&mdash;now, when others, who have
+been but mere instruments&mdash;blind instruments, many of them, in your
+hands to accomplish they knew not what&mdash;come forward and assume place
+and power&mdash;you, Edmond, the noble author and first cause of all, remain
+quietly in seclusion, unknown, unnamed, unappreciated and uncommended,
+while the others reap the fruits of your toil!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, dear?" said Dant&egrave;s, smiling at the warmth of his wife in his
+behalf.</p>
+
+<p>"But it is not 'well,' Edmond. I say no one is as disinterested as you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! love, what of ambition?"</p>
+
+<p>Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me tell you all, love, and then you will not, I fear, think me
+disinterested," said Dant&egrave;s <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>seriously. "I should blush, indeed, at
+praise so little deserved. You know all my early history. I suffered&mdash;I
+was wronged&mdash;I was revenged. But was I happy? I sought happiness. All
+men do so, even the most miserable. Some seek happiness in gratified
+ambition, some in gratified avarice, some in gratified vanity, and some
+in the gratification of a dominant lust for pleasure or for power. I
+sought happiness in gratified revenge!"</p>
+
+<p>Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s shuddered, and, hiding her face on the bosom of her husband,
+clung to it more closely as if for protection. Dant&egrave;s drew her form to
+his as he would have drawn that of a child, and continued:</p>
+
+<p>"I sought happiness in vengeance for terrible wrongs, and to win it I
+devoted a life and countless wealth. What was the result?
+Misery!&mdash;misery!&mdash;misery!"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Edmond!" murmured Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, clinging to him closer than ever.</p>
+
+<p>"At length I awoke, as from a dream. I saw my error. My whole life had
+been a lie. I saw that God by a miracle had bestowed on me untold riches
+for a nobler purpose than to make his creatures wretched. I saw that if
+I would be happy I must make others happy, and to this end&mdash;the
+happiness, not the misery, of my race&mdash;must my wealth and power be
+devoted. To this end, then, did I devote myself, and to this end, for
+six years, have I been devoted&mdash;to make myself happy by making others
+happy&mdash;you among the rest, dear,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> dear Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s," he added, pressing her
+to his bosom. "And am I then so disinterested?"</p>
+
+<p>"But why should you achieve triumphs for others to enjoy, Edmond?" asked
+the wife.</p>
+
+<p>"You refer to the Provisional Government," said Dant&egrave;s with a smile.
+"Well, I see I must tell you all, even though by the revelation I prove
+myself utterly unworthy of the praise of disinterestedness. I may tell
+you, love&mdash;you my second self&mdash;without danger of being charged with
+egotism, what I might not say to others. Our friend Lamartine is the
+actual head of this Government. I had but to assent to the urgent
+entreaties to secure that position for myself. These appointments seem
+the result of nomination by the people. Yet they are not!"</p>
+
+<p>"And why did you refuse to head the Government, Edmond?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am ashamed to confess to you that I feared to accept," said Dant&egrave;s
+after a pause. "My own selfishness, not, alas! my disinterestedness, has
+kept me from the post of peril. Perhaps, indeed, I can do far more for
+the cause of my race as I am than I could by sacrificing myself for
+office and position; at least, I hope so."</p>
+
+<p>"Is the position of your friends then so perilous?" asked Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, they stand upon a volcano!" said Dant&egrave;s, solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!" cried the lady in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s&mdash;Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s!" continued Dant&egrave;s with enthusiasm, "I sometimes am
+startled with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> idea that to me have been entrusted the awful powers
+of foreknowledge, of prophecy, so fearfully true have some of my
+predictions proved! The events of the past week I foresaw and foretold,
+even to minute circumstances and the hours of their occurrence. And
+now&mdash;glorious as is the triumph that France and the cause of man have
+achieved&mdash;I perceive in the dim future a sea of commotion! All is not
+yet settled. Within one month, revolution will succeed revolution
+throughout Europe! Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid, perhaps also St.
+Petersburg, London, and all the cities of Italy, will be in revolt. All
+Europe must and will feel the events of the past week in Paris. Europe
+must be free!"</p>
+
+<p>"And our friends&mdash;Lamartine&mdash;Louis Blanc?"</p>
+
+<p>"Within six months Louis Blanc will be an exile, and Lamartine&mdash;he may
+be in a dungeon or on a scaffold!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" exclaimed Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, clinging yet more closely to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"But the cause of human happiness, human right and human freedom will
+live forever! That must be, will be eternal&mdash;as eternal, my adored
+Merc&eacute;d&egrave;s, as is our own deathless love!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>ESP&Eacute;RANCE AND ZULEIKA.</h3>
+
+<p>During the whole period of the memorable Revolution Zuleika never once
+saw her brother, though she was burning with a desire to have an
+interview with him on the subject that had caused the separation between
+her young Italian lover and herself. Esp&eacute;rance made his home behind the
+barricades, from the time the struggle began until the people finally
+triumphed; gun in hand, he fought as heroically as the most devoted
+workman, fearlessly exposing himself whenever the troops pressed his
+comrades in arms and always in the thick of the fight. Begrimed with
+dust and powder, his garments torn by bullets and bayonet thrusts, his
+hat battered and rent, he encouraged the people by word and example,
+constantly shouting "Vive la R&eacute;publique," and contending for liberty
+with the bravery of a lion and a persistency that never flagged. He,
+however, escaped without a single scratch, returning to the paternal
+mansion utterly worn out, but altogether unhurt, proud of having done
+his duty as a man and a patriot, and of having sustained the glorious
+cause for which his father was working heart and soul.</p>
+
+<p>As he was slowly and wearily wending his way<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> homeward, he suddenly
+encountered M. Dant&egrave;s and his friend Lamartine in the Rue Richelieu; his
+gun was on his shoulder, and in his tattered attire, with the dust and
+powder on his face and hands, he had the exact appearance of an
+insurrectionist and a barricader. He touched his hat in military fashion
+to M. Dant&egrave;s and his illustrious companion, and was about passing on
+when his father recognized him and, ragged and begrimed as he was, threw
+his arms enthusiastically about his neck. M. Lamartine watched the
+Deputy from Marseilles and could not restrain an expression of
+astonishment at his singular behavior. M. Dant&egrave;s smiled and, taking
+Esp&eacute;rance by the hand, said:</p>
+
+<p>"M. Lamartine, you will, I know, make every allowance for me when you
+learn that this young man, who has been fighting behind the barricades
+with the people, is my son!"</p>
+
+<p>The head of the Provisional Government instantly grew as enthusiastic as
+M. Dant&egrave;s himself; he grasped Esp&eacute;rance's free hand and, shaking it with
+the utmost cordiality, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Your son, M. Dant&egrave;s! Let me congratulate you! Why he is a perfect
+hero!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have but followed my father's teachings and done what he would have
+done had he been my age and unable to serve the great cause of human
+freedom in a more effective way!"</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s' eyes sparkled with joy and a faint shade of color appeared
+upon his pale cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name, young patriot?" asked M.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> Lamartine, his excitement
+and enthusiasm continuing to hold possession of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance&mdash;hope&mdash;the name is both appropriate and auspicious; with such
+heroic young men as you fighting for our cause there is, indeed, hope,
+and of the brightest and best kind!" cried Lamartine.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay," said M. Dant&egrave;s, "do not flatter the boy; he has but done his
+duty."</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me, I do not flatter him," returned Lamartine; "I have simply
+told him the truth; in time he will rival the devotion and achievements
+of his noble father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough, enough," said the Deputy, modestly; "we deserve only the credit
+of executing God's will&mdash;we are merely instruments in His omnipotent
+hand!" he added, impressively.</p>
+
+<p>"And such instruments are exactly what we need in the present crisis.
+God grant us plenty of them!"</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Zuleika encountered Esp&eacute;rance on the stairway; she led
+him into the salon, and, when they were seated, said:</p>
+
+<p>"My brother, I have a question to ask of you."</p>
+
+<p>A shadow crossed the young man's brow, and he quickly asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it about the Viscount Massetti?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I must refuse to answer!"</p>
+
+<p>"But the matter concerns my happiness, nay,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> my very life itself; think
+of that before you finally refuse to answer my question!"</p>
+
+<p>Esp&eacute;rance hastily and excitedly arose from his chair and stood in front
+of his sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Zuleika," said he, in an agitated tone, "beware of that man&mdash;beware of
+Giovanni Massetti!"</p>
+
+<p>"Beware of Giovanni, Esp&eacute;rance&mdash;and why?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man began to pace the salon with short and nervous steps; his
+hands twitched convulsively, and his face had suddenly assumed the
+whiteness of chalk.</p>
+
+<p>"Zuleika, Zuleika," he murmured, "I cannot, I cannot tell you why! It
+would crash you to the very earth and make you blush with shame that you
+had ever listened to the seductive tones of that doubly false Italian's
+voice!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Esp&eacute;rance," said Zuleika, "papa certainly knows all about
+Giovanni; if he did not altogether approve of his character and conduct,
+he would never have consented to admit him as a suitor for my hand!"</p>
+
+<p>"A suitor for your hand, Zuleika! My God! has he then dared&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He has done nothing that an upright and honorable man should not do!"
+interrupted Zuleika, warmly. "He did not even call here until he had
+written to papa and obtained his full permission to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"Zuleika," said Esp&eacute;rance, approaching his sister and taking her hand,
+"no doubt Giovanni Massetti has conducted himself in all respects<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>
+toward you like a perfect gentleman, but, nevertheless, he is not fit to
+be my sister's husband."</p>
+
+<p>"But papa&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Has been deceived, as have many others, in regard to the true character
+and standing of this so-called Roman nobleman."</p>
+
+<p>"And is he not a nobleman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once more I must refuse to answer any question in regard to him. I can
+only tell you to beware and shun him as you would a venomous serpent."</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance, I love him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Love him!&mdash;you love him, Zuleika! Oh! this is, indeed, torture!"</p>
+
+<p>The young man dropped his sister's hand and flung himself upon a divan.
+He was a prey to the most intense excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika, deeply affected to see him thus, and remembering Giovanni's
+mysterious behavior, together with his strange and ominous words, when
+she had questioned him in regard to his quarrel with Esp&eacute;rance, felt for
+a moment shaken and uncertain. She also recollected that, at the time of
+the inexplicable difficulty between the two young men, she had heard
+rumors to the effect that a youthful member of the Roman aristocracy had
+abducted a beautiful peasant girl, in which affair he had been assisted
+by the notorious brigand Luigi Vampa; the matter, however, had almost
+immediately been hushed up and she had learned none of the
+circumstances. Could it be possible that Giovanni Massetti was the
+youthful aristocrat alluded to by the gossips and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> scandalmongers of the
+Eternal City&mdash;that he was the abductor of the unfortunate peasant girl?
+She could not entertain such an idea, and yet that abduction, in spite
+of all her efforts, would associate itself with her Italian lover in her
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>She arose from her chair and, going to the divan, seated herself beside
+Esp&eacute;rance, determined to make a final attempt to draw his secret from
+him. Throwing her arms tenderly about his neck she said, in a coaxing
+tone:</p>
+
+<p>"If any sound reason exists why I should not love Giovanni Massetti, and
+you know it, your plain duty as my brother is to tell me. Will you not
+tell me, Esp&eacute;rance?"</p>
+
+<p>Instead of replying, the young man buried his face in his hands and
+fairly sobbed in his anguish. Zuleika was filled with pity for him, and,
+as she gazed at him, tears came into her eyes; but still bent on
+discovering the nature of the obstacle that had so suddenly loomed up
+between Giovanni and herself, she continued after a pause, in the same
+coaxing voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance, I am no longer a child and should not be treated as one.
+What I ask of you is only reasonable and just. If I stand on the brink
+of a gulf I cannot see, it is your duty to inform me not only of my
+danger but also of its nature. Am I not right?"</p>
+
+<p>Heaving a deep sigh, Esp&eacute;rance replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you are right, Zuleika; it is my duty to tell you all&mdash;and yet I
+cannot!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p><p>"At least, tell me why you are compelled to maintain silence on a
+matter of so much importance."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you question the Viscount?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did."</p>
+
+<p>"And what answer did he return?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like you, he refused to answer."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! then he has some sense of shame left!"</p>
+
+<p>"Shame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, shame! And what did you do when he refused to speak?"</p>
+
+<p>"I left him."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will not see him again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not until he has decided to tell me all."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you will never put eyes upon him more; he dare not tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dare not! And why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because, did you know the depth of his infamy, you would spurn him from
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a grave suspicion stole into Zuleika's mind and made her
+tremble from head to foot. Might it not be that Esp&eacute;rance had been as
+deeply involved in the mysterious and infamous affair of which he
+declined to speak as Giovanni Massetti himself? The thought was torment,
+and totally unable to restrain her keen anxiety to be instantly informed
+upon this topic, Zuleika gasped out:</p>
+
+<p>"Were you not, Esp&eacute;rance, as guilty as your former friend?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man leaped to his feet as if a tarantula had bitten him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p><p>"No, no!" cried he. "I was innocent of all blame in the matter! Luigi
+Vampa&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He abruptly checked himself and stood staring at his sister, as if in
+dismay at having unguardedly uttered the brigand's name.</p>
+
+<p>But Zuleika said nothing. Giovanni Massetti also had protested his
+innocence, and the young girl knew not what to believe. Luigi Vampa? So
+then he had been a party to this mysterious and terrible business,
+whatever it was! And again she thought of the abduction of the beautiful
+peasant girl. Could that be the fearful secret? Yes, it must be. Luigi
+Vampa had assisted in that abduction, if report could be relied on, and
+the chief criminal had been a youthful member of the Roman aristocracy.
+Oh! it was all plain now. Zuleika shuddered and felt her heart grow
+heavy as lead, while a sharp, killing pang ran through it. Had Esp&eacute;rance
+been misled by Vampa and the Viscount? Had he discovered too late the
+infamy of the affair and challenged Massetti on that account? This was,
+doubtless, the solution of the whole enigma, and yet Zuleika hesitated
+to accept it as such. No, no, she could not accept it without further
+and more convincing proof! But how was that proof to be obtained?
+Neither the Viscount nor her brother would speak; it was evident that
+their lips were sealed; possibly an oath to maintain silence had been
+extorted from them under terrible circumstances&mdash;an oath they feared to
+break even to clear themselves from a foul suspicion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> But Vampa? He
+might, perhaps, be induced to give the key to the mystery. Vampa,
+however, was far away in Rome and inaccessible. Zuleika made a wild
+resolve&mdash;she would write to the brigand and throw herself upon his
+generosity; then she decided that the plan was impracticable; her letter
+would never reach Vampa&mdash;it would be seized by the Roman authorities and
+might cause additional trouble by reviving a smothered scandal&mdash;and even
+should it reach the brigand, would he answer it? The chances were a
+hundred to one that he would not. At this instant an inspiration came to
+the tortured girl like a flash of lightning. Her father had known Vampa
+in the past, and, perhaps, still possessed some influence over him. She
+had heard the story of Albert de Morcerf's adventure in the catacombs of
+Saint Sebastian, and was aware that the brigand chief had released him
+from captivity without ransom at her father's simple solicitation. Would
+not Vampa answer her questions if M. Dant&egrave;s could be influenced to write
+him and ask them? She had full faith in her father's power to get a
+letter to the bandit notwithstanding all the vigilance of the Roman
+authorities. Yes, she would go to him, tell all her suspicions without
+reserve and beg him to write the letter; it was hardly likely he would
+refuse; he could not, he must not. Thus resolved, Zuleika looked her
+brother full in the face and said, calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"I see I torture you with my questions, Esp&eacute;rance, that for some reason
+best known to yourself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> you cannot answer them, and that it is useless
+to torment you further. But something must be done and that at once. I
+am going to my father!"</p>
+
+<p>Esp&eacute;rance caught her wildly by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"You are mad!" cried he.</p>
+
+<p>"It is you who are mad&mdash;you and Giovanni! I tell you, I am going to my
+father; if you are innocent, you have nothing to fear from any
+revelation I may make!"</p>
+
+<p>With these words she freed herself from her brother's grasp and quitted
+the salon, leaving Esp&eacute;rance standing in the centre of the apartment as
+if he were rooted to the spot.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>CAPTAIN JOLIETTE'S LOVE.</h3>
+
+<p>In a small but cosy and elegant suite of apartments in a mansion on the
+Rue des Capucines resided Mlle. Louise d'Armilly and her brother L&eacute;on;
+as has already been stated, the celebrated cantatrice had retired from
+the boards in consequence of having inherited a fortune of several
+millions of francs from the estate of her deceased father, who, rumor
+asserted, had been a very wealthy Parisian banker; L&eacute;on had abandoned
+the stage simultaneously with his sister, who had invited him to share
+her suddenly acquired riches,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> for, strange to say, the banker had not
+bequeathed to him a single sou.</p>
+
+<p>The immense inheritance had been a complete surprise to Mlle. d'Armilly,
+and for some time she had hesitated to accept it, as a condition imposed
+by the will was her immediate withdrawal from her operatic career, and
+the prima donna was as ambitious as gifted; but, finally, she had
+yielded to the persuasive eloquence of the notary and the earnest
+entreaties of her friends, canceling all her engagements, and with them
+abandoning her bright professional future.</p>
+
+<p>The director of the Acad&eacute;mie Royale demanded a large sum to release the
+artiste from her contract with him, and this was paid by the notary with
+an alacrity that seemed to suggest he was not acting solely according to
+the directions of the will, but was influenced by some personage who
+chose to remain in the background; the notary also paid all other
+demands made by the various operatic managers who claimed they would
+lose by Mlle. d'Armilly's failure to appear; these amounts were not
+deducted from the legacy, a circumstance that gave additional color to
+the supposition that the will of the deceased banker was not the sole
+factor in the celebrated cantatrice's good luck.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, shortly after Paris had again quieted down, Mlle. d'Armilly
+was seated in the little apartment that served her as a salon, and with
+her was her brother L&eacute;on. The contrast between the pair seemed
+intensified in private life. Louise had that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> dark, imperious, majestic
+beauty usually possessed by brunettes; her figure was full and finely
+developed, her black eyes had the deep, intense fire of passion, and her
+faultless countenance, glowing with health and loveliness, indicated at
+once firmness, decision and caprices without number. L&eacute;on, on the
+contrary, was delicate and feminine in appearance; he had exceedingly
+small feet and hands, and a single glance at his strikingly handsome
+face was sufficient to convince any experienced judge of human nature
+that he possessed a mild and yielding disposition. The young man bore
+not the remotest family likeness to his sister, and it was difficult to
+realize that they could be in any way related.</p>
+
+<p>L&eacute;on quitted his sister and, going to a piano that stood in one corner
+of the apartment, softly opened it and commenced lightly running his
+fingers over the keys; then he seated himself at the instrument and
+played an air from "Lucrezia Borgia" with brilliancy and effect that
+only a finished performer could attain. At the first notes Louise arose
+and approaching the piano stood beside the player, her eyes sparkling
+with appreciation and delight. So absorbed were the brother and sister
+that they did not hear a soft knock at the door, and only at the
+conclusion of the air did they realize that a visitor was in the
+apartment. L&eacute;on sprang from the instrument in confusion, behaving like a
+startled girl, but Mlle. d'Armilly, with perfect self-control, turned to
+the new comer and said, in a tone of mingled coquetry and merriment:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p><p>"So, so, Captain Joliette, your military career has accustomed you to
+surprising the enemy to such an extent that it has become second nature
+with you, and you cannot avoid carrying your favorite tactics even into
+private life!"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Joliette, for it was, indeed, he, bowed and answered with a
+smile:</p>
+
+<p>"You must allow me solemnly to protest against classing yourself and
+your brother with the enemy! You are, both of you, very dear friends!"</p>
+
+<p>"Especially Louise!" said L&eacute;on, with a sly look and a pretty little
+ringing laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"L&eacute;on, L&eacute;on, when will you learn wisdom!" exclaimed Mlle. d'Armilly, a
+blush mantling her visage, and adding to its voluptuous beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Never, I suppose!" returned her brother, still laughing. "But I am
+already well acquainted with the value of discretion and, therefore,
+will withdraw!"</p>
+
+<p>As he uttered those words, L&eacute;on kissed the tips of his fingers to Louise
+and Joliette, and lightly ran from the salon. When he had disappeared
+the Captain folded Mlle. d'Armilly in his arms and kissed her tenderly
+upon the forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Louise," said he, enthusiastically, "I love you more and more every
+day!"</p>
+
+<p>The former artiste gently disentangled herself from his embrace and,
+smiling archly, led him to a chair; then she sat down upon another at a
+short distance from him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," said Joliette, warmly; "come and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> sit beside me on the sofa.
+Even L&eacute;on sees that I adore you, and all my friends in Paris are aware
+that I am seeking your hand in marriage. Why will you be so formal and
+distant with me!"</p>
+
+<p>She arose and did as he requested; Joliette, seated at her side, put his
+arm about her waist. Louise did not resist, but still maintained an air
+of coquetry that was displeasing to the ardent young soldier.</p>
+
+<p>"Albert," she said, in a low, musical voice, "do you, indeed, love me as
+you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Love you, Louise!" cried Joliette. "I would lay down my life for you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you quite sure you love me for myself and not because of the
+resemblance you say I bear to the woman you once so ardently admired?
+What was her name?&mdash;ah! Eug&eacute;nie Danglars!" said she, looking at him with
+a piercing gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite sure, Louise, quite sure. Besides, Mlle. Danglars has
+disappeared, has not been seen or heard of for several years, and, no
+doubt, is dead."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you do not mourn for her! How strange!"</p>
+
+<p>"I never loved her as I love you, Louise. Eug&eacute;nie Danglars was a
+capricious and eccentric girl, and had she lived would have been a
+capricious and eccentric woman. It was well for me she vanished when she
+did! But, by the way, another singular and inexplicable coincidence is
+that Louise d'Armilly, the name you bear, was also the name of Mlle.
+Danglars' music teacher. I cannot understand it at all!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span></p><p>"There is no necessity for you to understand it. Anyhow, it is a
+coincidence, as you say&mdash;nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Louise, let us speak no further about either the resemblance or
+the coincidence. Suffice it that I love you, and you alone&mdash;that I love
+you for yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Your words make me very happy, Albert," replied Mlle. d'Armilly, and
+her full red lips looked so luscious, ripe and alluring, that Joliette
+could not resist the temptation to bestow a long, burning kiss upon
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Be my wife, then, dearest Louise," cried the Captain, "and I will
+prolong your happiness until death shall strike me down!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Albert, men are so fickle; they become infatuated with women and
+declare and, no doubt think, they could pass their lives at their
+charmers' feet; but possession dulls the lustre of the brightest jewel,
+and the devoted lover is speedily replaced by a careless, if not
+faithless husband, who, instead of making his wife happy as he has sworn
+to do, forsakes her side to bask in the smiles of sirens."</p>
+
+<p>"It will never be so with me, my own, my love!" protested Joliette,
+kissing her again and again. "I swear it."</p>
+
+<p>"I know the value of a lover's oath, Albert," murmured Louise, with a
+meaning look. "When I was the brightest operatic star of the day many of
+them were breathed in my ear, but they were 'trifles light as air,'
+forgotten as soon as uttered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> Besides, should I consent to become your
+wife, you would be forced to leave me in France and return to Africa in
+obedience to the call of duty; the lovely women of Algeria are prodigal
+of their beauties and endearments, and under the spell of some subtle
+Arab enchantress you would either forget poor Louise d'Armilly
+altogether, or remember her only as a clog upon your pleasures and
+amorous delights."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay, you wrong me; among all the dusky sirens of Algeria there
+exists not one who could make me forget you for a single instant; they
+are brazen, shameless women, who love with a recklessness and boldness
+that can only disgust a Frenchman."</p>
+
+<p>"But they can dazzle even a Frenchman, render him delirious with passion
+and, ere he is aware, weave a web around him through which he cannot
+break. My heart tells me you are as susceptible to feminine wiles as the
+rest of your countrymen, and that, perhaps, you have already had
+half-a-dozen love-affairs in Algeria."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Louise, Louise, it grieves me to the soul that you can thus doubt
+me. Give me a chance to prove my love and you shall be more than
+satisfied that I can be loyal and true."</p>
+
+<p>Mlle. d'Armilly gazed at him with a singular expression on her dark
+beautiful countenance; it thrilled him to the very marrow of his bones,
+and caused his arm that was about her waist to tremble violently; at
+that moment the former cantatrice resembled Eug&eacute;nie Danglars more than
+ever; her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> breath, was hot and convulsive as it struck his cheek, and a
+faint suspicion that all was not right&mdash;that she was playing a r&ocirc;le with
+him, shot across his mind for the first time; with this suspicion came
+jealousy, and, releasing her waist, he said, in a gasping tone:</p>
+
+<p>"You have another lover, Louise, a lover you prefer to me&mdash;am I not
+right?"</p>
+
+<p>Mlle. d'Armilly laughed a short, nervous laugh, and answered in a voice
+that seemed to mock him:</p>
+
+<p>"I have had hosts of ardent admirers in my time. Do you refer
+particularly to any individual?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know not; I am beside myself with passion for you, and the mere fancy
+that another man may have the first place in your heart is unbearable to
+me! But there is one conclusive way in which you can prove my
+suspicion&mdash;my jealousy&mdash;groundless; marry me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Albert," replied Louise, with a renewal of the singular expression of
+countenance that had so agitated him, "I shall never marry any one; I
+cannot&mdash;I dare not!"</p>
+
+<p>The young man was startled as if by an electric shock; he drew back and
+gazed at her with wide-opened eyes, speechless from astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>After a brief pause, Mlle. d'Armilly continued, in a dry, hard tone:</p>
+
+<p>"You do not understand me and I cannot expect you to, for I can neither
+tell you my motives nor lay bare my sad history to you; you must be
+content with my decision&mdash;I shall not marry!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></p><p>Captain Joliette, strong man as he was, could not control his emotion;
+he buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud. The young woman gazed
+at him half pityingly, half triumphantly; she felt compassion for her
+stricken lover, but, above all, gloried in the overwhelming power of her
+charms that could so subdue a manly, victorious young soldier and make
+him her helpless slave.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there then no shadow of a hope?" at length asked Joliette, in a
+hoarse whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Not the shadow of a hope!" replied Mlle. d'Armilly, firmly. "You can be
+my friend, my brother, if you will, but never my husband."</p>
+
+<p>The young man recoiled in horror at the suggestion that seemed to be
+conveyed by this permission.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by friend?" he asked, a cold shiver passing through
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Louise laughed a short, nervous laugh, and, looking him full in the
+eyes, replied:</p>
+
+<p>"You know what I mean. I love you better than any man I ever met, save
+one."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Joliette slowly arose to his feet and stood staring at her, his
+passion and his scruples waging a bitter battle within him for the
+mastery. The temptress half reclined on the sofa, a miracle of seductive
+grace and voluptuous beauty. He moved toward her as if to seize her in
+his arms; then, suddenly checking himself, he asked, with a convulsive
+gasp:</p>
+
+<p>"And that man&mdash;that one?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></p><p>"Was separated from me forever through the vile machinations of that
+mysterious and cold-blooded fiend, the Count of Monte-Cristo!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Count of Monte-Cristo?" exclaimed the young man, lost in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the Count of Monte-Cristo, who afterwards disappeared from Paris
+and has not since been heard of."</p>
+
+<p>"You mistake; the Count of Monte-Cristo is in Paris now; he calls
+himself Edmond Dant&egrave;s and is the celebrated Deputy from Marseilles over
+whom everybody has gone wild for some time past."</p>
+
+<p>Mlle. d'Armilly's eyes flashed with fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will have my revenge upon him at last!" she cried. "I will amply
+repay him for introducing the so-called Prince Cavalcanti into my
+father's house and thus breaking off the match between Albert and
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Albert?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Albert de Morcerf."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Eug&eacute;nie Danglars, I know you and it is useless for you to attempt
+the denial of your identity longer!"</p>
+
+<p>The young woman leaped up from the sofa, with terror pictured upon her
+visage, and, seizing Captain Joliette by the arm with a powerful grasp,
+cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"And how, pray, do you know I am Eug&eacute;nie Danglars?"</p>
+
+<p>"You unwittingly betrayed yourself by revealing the names of
+Monte-Cristo and Cavalcanti. Besides,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> Eug&eacute;nie, look at me well&mdash;I am
+Albert de Morcerf!"</p>
+
+<p>With a wild cry the retired prima donna sank back upon the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"You Albert de Morcerf!" she exclaimed. "I cannot believe it!"</p>
+
+<p>"But my mother, the former Countess de Morcerf, who is now the wife of
+Edmond Dant&egrave;s, will vouch for my identity."</p>
+
+<p>The young woman passed her hand across her forehead as if dazed.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are Albert de Morcerf, you must despise me after what has taken
+place this evening," she said, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Despise you? No, I pity and forgive you."</p>
+
+<p>"Albert," said she, softly, "come here and sit beside me on this sofa; I
+have something to say to you."</p>
+
+<p>The soldier obeyed; when he was seated, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Eug&eacute;nie, why did you tell me I could be your friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Simply because I have long suspected your secret and wished to
+ascertain the real nature of your feelings toward me. You not only
+resisted a terrible temptation, the most terrible temptation to which a
+young, ardent and passion-smitten man can be exposed, but by your honor
+conclusively established the purity and sincerity of your love. Oh!
+Albert, Albert, are you satisfied with my explanation and do you still
+think me worthy of you?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></p><p>"My own Eug&eacute;nie, my happiness is far too great for words!" murmured the
+delighted young man, gathering his beautiful companion in a warm embrace
+and repeatedly kissing her ripe lips and blushing cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon known throughout Paris that Captain Joliette and Albert de
+Morcerf were identical, and that Mlle. d'Armilly was in reality no other
+than Mlle. Eug&eacute;nie Danglars, daughter of Baron Danglars, the once famous
+and opulent Parisian banker; the report also was current that Albert and
+Eug&eacute;nie were engaged and would shortly be united in the bonds of
+matrimony. Another bit of gossip was to the effect that the former
+cantatrice's brother L&eacute;on was not a man but a woman; in short, the real
+Louise d'Armilly, who had loaned her name to Eug&eacute;nie Danglars and
+assumed male attire solely for professional purposes. This story was
+speedily confirmed, for L&eacute;on soon vanished and in his place appeared a
+most attractive and fascinating lady, who very quietly assumed, or
+rather resumed, the name of Louise d'Armilly. Still another rumor was
+that the wealth so strangely inherited by the former prima donna was not
+a legacy at all, but a gift from the mysterious Count of Monte-Cristo,
+who had thus striven to make amends to the daughter for the misfortunes
+he had, while pursuing his scheme of wholesale vengeance, so
+remorselessly heaped upon the head of the father.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>ZULEIKA GOES TO M. DANT&Egrave;S.</h3>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s was sitting alone in his library, busily engaged in reading a
+favorite work on the subject of political economy, and from time to time
+making copious notes. It was after midnight, and the vast mansion on the
+Rue du Helder was as silent as the tomb; the lamp on the Deputy's table
+burned brightly, but a large metallic shade concentrated the light and
+reflected it upon the table, so that the other portions of the apartment
+were shrouded in almost complete darkness.</p>
+
+<p>As M. Dant&egrave;s read a shadow suddenly fell on the page of his book, and
+quickly looking up he saw his daughter Zuleika standing beside him;
+tears were in her eyes and a look of melancholy rested upon her
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Why child," said her father, in a startled tone, "what is the matter
+with you? You are weeping and seem very sad. Has anything happened to
+young Massetti?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I am aware of, papa," answered Zuleika, in a low voice. "But,
+nevertheless, it is of him I wish to speak."</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s pushed his book from him, motioned his daughter to a seat and
+prepared to listen as she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> did not begin at once, but seemed to
+hesitate, he said, kindly:</p>
+
+<p>"I am waiting, little one; proceed."</p>
+
+<p>Thus encouraged, Zuleika summoned up all her strength and, with downcast
+eyes, commenced:</p>
+
+<p>"Papa," said she, "in the first place let me assure you that this is no
+mere lovers' quarrel, but a matter of the utmost importance that demands
+immediate action."</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s knitted his brows.</p>
+
+<p>"Has the Viscount been guilty of any impropriety toward you?" he asked,
+fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"No, papa, not toward me, but I fear he may have been guilty of
+impropriety, or, at least, of indiscretion, with regard to another in
+the past."</p>
+
+<p>"A woman, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, papa, a woman&mdash;a Roman peasant."</p>
+
+<p>"I heard of some such thing while you were at the convent school in
+Rome, but dismissed it as a slander."</p>
+
+<p>"There may, however, be some truth in it."</p>
+
+<p>"But, now I recollect, Giovanni's name was not associated with the
+scandal; it was a mere inference on my part that connected him with the
+youthful member of the Roman aristocracy mentioned by the gossips."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I am unjust, papa, in reviving your suspicions, but Giovanni's
+strange behavior when I asked him the cause of his quarrel with
+Esp&eacute;rance and of the continued coldness between them, forced me to think
+there was something wrong."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p><p>"His quarrel with Esp&eacute;rance? Ah! now I remember, there was a quarrel,
+but I imagined it was settled, and that their relations were altogether
+friendly."</p>
+
+<p>"They are enemies, papa, or seem to be, and that is not all&mdash;Esp&eacute;rance
+accuses Giovanni of having been guilty of some infamous deed."</p>
+
+<p>"You have spoken to Esp&eacute;rance then on the subject?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, papa."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He dealt in vague denunciations, and positively refused to give me any
+definite information."</p>
+
+<p>"That is singular."</p>
+
+<p>"But what is still more so is that both Giovanni and Esp&eacute;rance seem
+bound by some fearful oath not to disclose the dread secret in their
+possession."</p>
+
+<p>"Bound by an oath?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, papa; but why both of them should have been so bound, unless they
+were accomplices, I cannot see; I even went so far as to accuse
+Esp&eacute;rance of complicity, whereupon he grew as white as chalk and
+protested his entire innocence, and in his confusion uttered the name of
+Luigi Vampa."</p>
+
+<p>"Zuleika, Zuleika, you certainly misunderstood your brother; he could
+not have mentioned the name of that man! Do you know who this Luigi
+Vampa is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly, papa; Luigi Vampa is a notorious Roman brigand."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p><p>"Exactly, my child, and therefore could not possibly have had any
+dealings either with the Viscount or Esp&eacute;rance."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am sure of the name, nevertheless. Esp&eacute;rance said Luigi Vampa."</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s was evidently startled; he arose to his feet and paced the
+library excitedly. Zuleika had expected this, and hence was not
+surprised. At last her father resumed his seat, and when he again came
+within reach of the lamp's rays she saw that his visage was even more
+pallid than usual and that he was not a little agitated. She waited for
+him to speak, and in a few seconds he did so.</p>
+
+<p>"Zuleika," said he, in a tone of decision, "I will see both the Viscount
+and my son in regard to this matter, for now that Luigi Vampa seems to
+have had a share in it, close investigation is imperatively demanded."</p>
+
+<p>"You may interrogate them, papa, but I am convinced in advance that you
+will derive no information from either of them. The strange power that
+holds sway over them you cannot break, but there is one thing you can
+do."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that, Zuleika?"</p>
+
+<p>"Write to Luigi Vampa!"</p>
+
+<p>"Write to Vampa? Why should I do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I feel assured that he is in possession of the full details of
+the terrible secret, whatever it may be, and will communicate them to
+you if you ask him to do so."</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s gazed at his daughter curiously.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p><p>"What makes you think I have such influence over this Roman brigand?"
+he asked, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! papa, do not be angry with me!" cried Zuleika; "but I have heard
+how Vampa released the Viscount de Morcerf at your simple solicitation
+without a single franc of ransom, though he had previously demanded a
+very large amount from the unfortunate man as the price of his liberty.
+I have heard this, and the natural inference I drew was that, if the
+brigand chief went so far as to surrender his prey to you, he would
+certainly answer your letter and tell you all he knew about the matter
+that so closely concerns my happiness and Esp&eacute;rance's good name."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not angry with you, my child," replied the Deputy, in a milder
+tone, "for I know how deeply you have this affair at heart. I will write
+to Luigi Vampa as you desire, this very night, and in two weeks at the
+furthest his answer may be expected, but to-morrow I will talk with
+Esp&eacute;rance and then will question the Viscount. Rest assured that this
+matter shall be sifted to the bottom. I know the extent of your love for
+Giovanni Massetti; I also feel confident that I am not deceived in him,
+and that he will be amply able to prove himself entirely worthy of your
+hand. I have seen too much of men, Zuleika, and studied them too deeply,
+to be deceived in reading character."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! thank you, thank you ever so much, papa, both for your promise, and
+your kind, encouraging words. I, too, have full faith in Giovanni, but
+still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> I cannot rest satisfied until his record is entirely and
+conclusively cleared. No one must have the power to breathe even a
+suspicion against the good name of your daughter's husband!"</p>
+
+<p>"Spoken like a girl of spirit!" said M. Dant&egrave;s, his eyes sparkling with
+enthusiasm and admiration. "Now leave me, and I will write to Vampa."</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika kissed her father and quitted the library with a much lighter
+heart than she had entered it.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s, by the exercise of his iron will, had managed to control
+himself in her presence, but now that she had gone he gave free course
+to his emotions. For a full hour he sat leaning on his writing-table,
+his frame convulsed with anguish, and his mind filled with sad
+forebodings. He did not for an instant doubt that both Esp&eacute;rance and the
+Viscount could clear themselves from any criminal or dishonorable
+charge, if they would consent to open their lips, but their silence and
+Zuleika's belief that they were bound by some fearful oath gave him
+great uneasiness. Besides, his son had mentioned Luigi Vampa's name, and
+the thought that the young man was involved in some complication with
+the Roman bandit sent a chill to his heart. He was convinced that
+whatever had occurred had been merely the result of the folly and
+headlong disposition of youth, but this was scarcely a consolation, for
+he well knew to what length young men sometimes allowed themselves to be
+carried, especially in what they considered a love-affair.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span></p><p>In addition, the more he thought of the half-forgotten Roman scandal,
+the more clearly its particulars returned to him. He remembered that a
+young and handsome peasant girl had been mysteriously abducted, and that
+eventually she had been brought back to her home by one of the shepherds
+known to be in league with Luigi Vampa and his band. She asserted that
+she had been carried off to the bandits' haunt by her youthful lover,
+who had passed for a peasant lad, but was in reality a nobleman. This
+was all M. Dant&egrave;s could distinctly recall, though he was certain he had
+heard other details that had slipped his memory. At the period of the
+abduction, he now remembered, both Esp&eacute;rance and the Viscount were
+temporarily absent from Rome; then followed their return and the quarrel
+that had almost resulted in a duel, but had suddenly been patched up
+without apparent reason. Had Esp&eacute;rance and the Viscount been concerned
+in the abduction? That was a question that only they or Luigi Vampa
+could answer, and it was evident the young men would not speak. Vampa
+then must be made to speak for them; that was the sole course left to
+pursue, for the peasant girl had disappeared immediately after her
+return, and her whereabouts were a mystery.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s drew writing materials before him and wrote his letter to the
+brigand chief; it was brief, but to the point. When it was finished, it
+bore the signature, "Edmond Dant&egrave;s, Count of Monte-Cristo." The Deputy
+placed it in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> drawer of his table to go by mail the following
+morning, having first folded and sealed it. "Thomson and French, Rome,"
+was the direction it bore.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+<h3>TWO INTERVIEWS.</h3>
+
+<p>The morning following the events detailed in the last chapter, as
+Esp&eacute;rance was in his dressing-room preparing to take a short stroll
+through Paris, Ali knocked at the door and signified that M. Dant&egrave;s
+wished to see him at once in the library. As such a summons was
+something unusual, the young man immediately concluded that Zuleika had
+been in consultation with her father and that he would now have to
+submit to a close and rigid examination; he had expected such an
+examination, but, nevertheless, the summons filled him with dismay and
+he grew pale as wax, his limbs trembling beneath him and his hands
+working nervously; however, he braced up as well as he could, and with
+as firm a step as it was possible for him to assume walked toward the
+library. On the threshold he paused, and his courage so utterly forsook
+him that he was tempted to take refuge in flight, but the thought
+flashed through his mind that this would be cowardly, and, making a
+supreme effort to control himself, he entered his father's presence.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p><p>M. Dant&egrave;s, who was seated at his writing-table examining a curious
+manuscript written in Arabic characters, looked up as he came in and
+fixed his eyes searchingly upon his son's countenance, noting its
+extreme pallor and remarking with manifest uneasiness the difficulty
+Esp&eacute;rance experienced in maintaining a firm demeanor. Motioning the
+young man to a seat, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"My son, I have sent for you on a matter of the utmost importance, and I
+sincerely hope you will see fit to tell me in all frankness whatever you
+may know in regard to it."</p>
+
+<p>Esp&eacute;rance partially closed his eyes as if suffering intensely, bringing
+his teeth firmly together and compressing his lips. As he did not speak,
+M. Dant&egrave;s continued:</p>
+
+<p>"I have every reason to believe that the revelation I am about to ask of
+you will be exceedingly painful for you to make, but you must consider
+that your sister's happiness is deeply concerned and that, for that
+reason, no matter what may be your motives, you have not the right to
+maintain silence."</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you mean, father," replied Esp&eacute;rance in an unsteady voice,
+"but, notwithstanding the pain it gives me to do so, I must ask you,
+nay, entreat you not to question me, for I cannot answer you!"</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s cast upon his son a glance that seemed to pierce him through
+and through; the young man quailed beneath it and again partially closed
+his eyes, while a faint blue shade was mixed with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> the waxen pallor of
+his visage. The Deputy, though he had made a profound and exhaustive
+study of men and their varied motives, though he was a skilled anatomist
+of the human heart and a ready reader of the human countenance,
+acknowledged to himself that this time he was completely baffled. Was it
+fear or guilt that Esp&eacute;rance exhibited? He could not tell; but it was
+abundantly evident that the young man was not acting a part, that he
+keenly felt the suspicions to which he was exposing himself by his
+inexplicable conduct. At length M. Dant&egrave;s said, in a mild but determined
+tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance, my son, you can, at least, enlighten me upon a few points,
+and I request, nay, I command you to do so. Are you bound by oath to
+preserve silence concerning this matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am bound by a most solemn oath!" answered the young man with a
+shudder.</p>
+
+<p>"And is Giovanni Massetti likewise so bound?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will not ask you who administered that oath to you or under what
+circumstances it was taken, although as your father I have a right to do
+so and to compel you to answer; neither will I interrogate you further
+in regard to the main question at issue, the complication in which you
+and the Viscount seem to be so hopelessly involved; but I insist that
+you inform me whether any guilt or stain of dishonor rests upon you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said Esp&eacute;rance, rising and lifting his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> right hand toward
+heaven, "I solemnly swear to you that whatever wrong may have been done,
+whatever crime may have been committed, I am entirely guiltless and that
+there is not the slightest stain of dishonor upon me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you, my son," said M. Dant&egrave;s, in a tone of conviction, "and
+this unequivocal assurance from your own lips removes the weight of a
+mountain from me. Now, tell me, is the Viscount Massetti as blameless in
+this affair as you are?"</p>
+
+<p>"The so-called Viscount Massetti is a black-hearted villain!" cried
+Esp&eacute;rance, excitedly. "He is guilty of a foul and revolting crime, a
+crime that should condemn him to a life of penal servitude!"</p>
+
+<p>"But may you not be mistaken, may you not be the victim of some
+delusion?" asked M. Dant&egrave;s, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I am neither mistaken, father, nor the victim of a delusion," replied
+Esp&eacute;rance, positively. "The charges that I make against that miserable
+apology for a man I can fully substantiate should the proper opportunity
+ever be offered me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Zuleika informed me that, while you were speaking with her upon this
+mysterious subject, the name of Luigi Vampa escaped your lips. Does that
+notorious brigand posses a knowledge of this unfortunate matter?"</p>
+
+<p>Esp&eacute;rance became violently agitated and instantly answered:</p>
+
+<p>"That is a question my oath forbids me to reply to!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p><p>"So be it," said M. Dant&egrave;s; "but I have written him and he will reply
+for you!"</p>
+
+<p>"You have written to Vampa!" exclaimed the young man, with a
+terror-stricken look. "Then all is lost!"</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s smiled, and, rising, placed his hand on his son's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance," said he, calmly, "if neither crime nor dishonor attaches to
+you in this affair, as you have sworn, you have nothing whatever to
+fear, and, besides, Vampa's disclosures may relieve you of some portion
+of your heavy burden."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! God!" groaned the young man, "if Vampa speaks how shall I be able
+to prove my innocence!"</p>
+
+<p>"My son," said M. Dant&egrave;s, impressively, "God, whose name you have
+invoked, will not desert you in your hour of need!"</p>
+
+<p>Bowing his head in his hands and trembling like an aspen leaf, Esp&eacute;rance
+quitted the library with a convulsive sob, as if the last ray of hope
+had been withdrawn from his life and all was darkness and despair.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s threw himself in his chair and for an instant was plunged in
+absorbing thought; then he arose and putting on his hat and cloak left
+the library; a few moments later he had quitted the mansion by a private
+door.</p>
+
+<p>Closely muffling his face in the folds of his cloak, that he might not
+be recognized, the Deputy from Marseilles passed hurriedly from street
+to street until he stood before a massive building in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> Rue Vivienne.
+He rang the bell, and, when the concierge appeared, said to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Is the Viscount Massetti at home?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman, a large, fat, lumbering creature, cast a sleepy glance, that
+was half-curious, half-suspicious, at him and answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur; but he bade me deny him to everybody."</p>
+
+<p>"He will see me, however, my good woman," said M. Dant&egrave;s. "Take my card
+to him."</p>
+
+<p>The fat concierge took the card and glanced at it; when she read "Edmond
+Dant&egrave;s, Deputy from Marseilles," she stared at the famous Republican
+leader like one possessed; then, filled with awe, she hastened away and
+climbed the stairs as fast as her cumbersome legs would let her. She
+returned, panting and puffing, followed by the Viscount's valet, who,
+with much ceremony and obsequiousness, conducted the distinguished
+visitor to his master's apartments.</p>
+
+<p>The salon into which M. Dant&egrave;s was ushered was large and sumptuously
+furnished; evidences of wealth and luxury were visible on every side,
+while everything displayed the utmost taste and elegance.</p>
+
+<p>"To what am I indebted for the honor of this unexpected visit, my dear
+Count?" said Massetti, rising from a handsomely carved, red velvet
+upholstered arm-chair, in which he had been indolently reclining, and
+coming forward to greet his guest.</p>
+
+<p>"To a matter that concerns both of us deeply," replied the Deputy, in a
+meaning tone.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span></p><p>A shadow crossed the Viscount's handsome visage, but it was gone in an
+instant, and he said, with the utmost politeness:</p>
+
+<p>"Pray be seated, my dear Count, and before proceeding to business
+refresh yourself with a glass of rare old Burgundy. Here, Stephano, wine
+and glasses."</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s sat down in an arm-chair precisely resembling that from which
+the Viscount had arisen; Massetti resumed his seat and the valet brought
+the old Burgundy and glasses, placing the decanter and drinking vessels
+on a small table of glistening ebony between his master and the Deputy.
+After they had duly drunk each other's health, M. Dant&egrave;s said:</p>
+
+<p>"I regret, my dear Viscount, that I am compelled to disturb you, but my
+business was too urgent for delay."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't disturb me in the least. Pray proceed."</p>
+
+<p>"You remember your conversation with my daughter just before you and she
+parted, do you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember it," replied the Viscount, coloring slightly and evidently
+growing ill at ease.</p>
+
+<p>"In that case, neither preface nor explanation is necessary. I called to
+ask you a few plain questions."</p>
+
+<p>The Italian was now a prey to singular excitement; he grew pale and
+flushed by turns, finally rising and pacing the salon in great
+agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Count," said he, abruptly, when he could <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>command his voice, "you are a
+man of the world and a cosmopolitan, and, of course, you know that one
+often commits folly, especially when the ardent and uncontrollable blood
+of youth is rushing through his veins. With this explanation, imperfect
+though it be, I must ask you to rest satisfied, for it is utterly out of
+my power to give you any other, or to enter into the details of the
+unfortunate affair which has brought you here. I assure you, however,
+that I am altogether blameless in the matter; investigation will
+abundantly establish the truth of what I say."</p>
+
+<p>"I will make that investigation."</p>
+
+<p>"I regret that I can neither empower you to do so nor aid you in it!"</p>
+
+<p>"What am I to understand by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Simply what I say."</p>
+
+<p>"You are, doubtless, aware that my son makes grave accusations against
+you, that he accuses you, in fact, of a dastardly crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance is mistaken, my dear Count; I swear to you that he is
+mistaken and that I am as innocent as he is!"</p>
+
+<p>"But Luigi Vampa may have a different tale to tell!"</p>
+
+<p>"Luigi Vampa!" cried the Viscount, coming instantly to a dead halt, and
+a sudden pallor overspreading his entire visage.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Luigi Vampa; I have written to him and in two weeks will have his
+answer!"</p>
+
+<p>"For Esp&eacute;rance's sake, for my sake, for your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> daughter's sake, destroy
+that answer as soon as received and without reading it!" exclaimed the
+young Italian, wildly, his pallor increasing to such a degree that his
+face resembled that of a corpse.</p>
+
+<p>"Should I be mad enough to do so," said M. Dant&egrave;s, calmly, "with it all
+hope of your marriage with Zuleika would perish!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! do not say that, do not say that!" groaned Massetti. "What would
+life be worth to me without Zuleika's love!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then deserve that love by clearing yourself, by proving that your
+record will bear the light of day!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have sworn to you that I am innocent! Is not that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied M. Dant&egrave;s, coldly. "I must have proof to support your
+oath."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you believe me guilty in spite of all! This is the worst blow
+yet!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is in your power to completely justify yourself; at least, so you
+give me to understand, and yet your refusal will forever separate you
+from the woman you love!"</p>
+
+<p>"You fill me with despair!" said Massetti, in a smothered voice, sinking
+upon a sofa. "I fain would reveal everything to you, but an awful oath
+of silence stands between me and the revelation."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I must wait for Vampa's answer, and shape my course by that!" said
+M. Dant&egrave;s, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"That answer will destroy both Esp&eacute;rance and myself!" replied the
+Viscount, in a hoarse whisper.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p><p>"We shall see," returned the Deputy, rising and resuming his cloak; as
+he stood at the door of the salon with his hat in his hand, he added: "I
+thought you all a man should be, Viscount, and that you would make
+Zuleika happy, but my convictions have been sadly shaken. I came here
+thinking that love for woman was all powerful in the heart of man, that
+it would induce you to speak, even in the face of an oath, perhaps
+violently and iniquitously administered; I was wrong; farewell!"</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s turned slowly and took his departure, leaving Giovanni
+Massetti on the sofa plunged in grief and dismay.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>VAMPA'S ANSWER.</h3>
+
+<p>As the time for the arrival of Luigi Vampa's answer to M. Dant&egrave;s' letter
+approached, Esp&eacute;rance grew more and more uneasy and serious; he spent
+the greater portion of every day from home, apparently for the purpose
+of avoiding his father and sister; when he returned he was moody,
+depressed and silent, and far into the night he could be heard pacing
+his chamber as if unable to sleep from excitement and anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika endeavored to comfort him, but all her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> efforts were fruitless.
+She, poor girl, was herself overwhelmed with her own distress, though
+she strove to bear up against it. Massetti had neither written to nor
+attempted to see her since their separation, a circumstance she could
+not reconcile with his protestations of ardent love for her, and this
+served vastly to augment her sadness and anguish, though she still
+believed in her soul that the Viscount was entirely innocent of the
+crime laid to his charge.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dant&egrave;s, who had plunged into politics deeper than ever since the
+success of the Revolution, was frequently in consultation with the
+Republican leaders, and many of them visited him at his residence and
+were closeted with him for hours at a time; but, though seemingly
+engrossed in State affairs, the Deputy did not lose sight of his son and
+daughter, or of the mysterious complication that Vampa was expected to
+make clear. Ali had strict orders to watch both Zuleika and Esp&eacute;rance,
+and to report to his master whatever they did when at home in his
+absence, but the faithful Nubian found nothing amiss, save that the
+young people seemed burdened with a sorrow he could not fathom.</p>
+
+<p>At length, when the two weeks that it would take to hear from Rome had
+expired, M. Lamartine called one morning at the mansion in the Rue du
+Helder, and having finished his business with M. Dant&egrave;s was invited by
+his host to remain to lunch. The repast was served in the
+salle-&agrave;-manger, Esp&eacute;rance and Zuleika partaking of it with their father<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>
+and his illustrious guest. When the edibles had been removed and the
+party were taking wine at the dining-table, M. Dant&egrave;s, suddenly
+remembering that he had an engagement, begged M. Lamartine to excuse him
+and remain with his son and daughter until his return, that would be in
+half an hour at the utmost. This arrangement effected, the Deputy arose
+from his chair, threw his cloak over his arm and was about to take his
+departure, when Ali appeared on the threshold of the open doorway,
+bearing in his hand a letter. Instantly divining that this was Vampa's
+answer, upon which hung Massetti's fate and his own, Esp&eacute;rance leaped to
+his feet and fixed his wild and staring eyes on the ominous missive as
+if he would read its contents through its folds. Zuleika retained her
+seat, but lifted her hands in terror and stared at the letter with
+pallid cheeks and blanched lips. Even Lamartine turned in his chair and,
+holding his glass in his hand, gazed wonderingly at the Nubian and the
+epistle. M. Dant&egrave;s alone seemed unmoved, and his pale countenance gave
+no sign of the emotion struggling in his breast; he stood like a man of
+iron, and extending his hand took the letter without a tremor. It was
+enclosed in a curiously-fashioned envelope, evidently made by the writer
+himself, and bore the Roman postmark; the direction, written in bold,
+scrawling, but perfectly legible characters, read: "M. Edmond Dant&egrave;s,
+Deputy from Marseilles, No. 27 Rue du Helder, Paris, France. Personal
+and private." This direction was in French.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span></p><p>Ali having retired, the Deputy calmly broke the seal and hurriedly ran
+his eyes over the missive. Esp&eacute;rance and Zuleika eagerly and
+breathlessly watched his countenance while he read, but it was as
+impassable as a countenance chiseled from marble; when he had finished
+he turned to Esp&eacute;rance and without a word handed him the letter. For a
+moment the young man trembled so he could not read; cold perspiration
+stood in heavy beads upon his forehead, and vivid flashes of red passed
+before his eyes like sheets of lurid lightning. What thoughts, what
+suspicions, what dread shot through his tortured mind in that brief
+moment, making it seem an eternity of suffering! At last, steadying and
+controlling himself by a supreme effort, he read the missive from which
+he had feared such terrible consequences. It was in Italian, and ran as
+follows:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">His Excellency, the Count of Monte-Cristo</span>:<br /> You ask me to answer
+your questions, and I comply. Pasquale Solara's daughter,
+Annunziata, was abducted, from her father's peasant-home by
+Giovanni Massetti, known as the Viscount Massetti, who is, no
+doubt, the person to whom you allude as now in Paris, for he has
+disappeared from Rome. You are right in assuming that he had aid.
+He was assisted by a young Frenchman, and that young Frenchman was
+your son, Esp&eacute;rance. Annunziata suffered the usual fate of abducted
+peasant girls, and was deserted by her dastardly abductor in a
+fastness controlled by my band. When the abduction took place,
+Annunziata's brother strove to rescue her, but was attacked and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>
+killed by Massetti. Through my means the girl was returned to her
+home, but she was miserable there and fled; she is now in an asylum
+for unfortunate women founded at Civita Vecchia by the Order of
+Sisters of Refuge, and superintended by a French lady, a Madame
+Helena de Rancogne, who, as is said, was formerly called the
+Countess of Monte-Cristo.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> It is due to your son to say that he
+was entirely misled in regard to the abduction of Annunziata
+Solara, and is altogether innocent of crime or intention to commit
+it. The whole burden of guilt rests upon the shoulders of the
+Viscount Massetti, who, I believe, compelled your son at the
+pistol's mouth to take a fearful oath of silence.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Luigi Vampa</span>.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>When Esp&eacute;rance had read this letter that so effectually cleared him, and
+was such a fearful arraignment of the Viscount Massetti, he restored it
+to his father and sank into his chair utterly overcome by the terrible
+excitement and mental strain through which he had passed. M. Dant&egrave;s
+forced him to swallow a glass of wine that partially restored him; then,
+turning to M. Lamartine, who had been an astonished spectator of this
+strange and to him incomprehensible family scene, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear friend, you are amazed, and you have a right to be. This letter
+that has caused my son and daughter so much emotion comes from a Roman
+brigand chief, no other than Luigi Vampa,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> whose name is notorious
+throughout Europe. You will understand its importance when I inform you
+that it conclusively clears my son of an exceedingly grave charge."</p>
+
+<p>M. Lamartine arose and took Esp&eacute;rance by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I heartily congratulate you," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"And Giovanni Massetti?" asked Zuleika, in a tremulous voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Giovanni Massetti is unworthy of my daughter's hand!" replied M.
+Dant&egrave;s.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see that letter," said Zuleika, her cheek growing paler and her
+heart beating tumultuously.</p>
+
+<p>Her father gave it to her. She took it and read each line with an
+intensity of interest that was painful to behold. When she had reached
+the end, her eyes suddenly lighted up and the color came rushing back to
+her pallid cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance," she said, facing her brother with an air of resolution
+beneath which he quailed, "Luigi Vampa has not told all! Something he
+has kept back, and that something you know. What is it? Speak!"</p>
+
+<p>"Luigi Vampa has told the truth!" replied the young man, doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but not the whole truth. What has he kept back?"</p>
+
+<p>Esp&eacute;rance shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"He has told the truth!" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Did the Viscount Massetti administer the oath of silence to you?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p><p>"He did."</p>
+
+<p>"Then who administered that oath to Giovanni?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>"There is some mystery about this complicated affair yet unexplained,
+and until it is explained I cannot believe Giovanni Massetti guilty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, my daughter," said M. Dant&egrave;s, soothingly, "your heart
+speaks and not your mind."</p>
+
+<p>"My heart and mind both speak, papa," replied Zuleika, "and both say
+that Giovanni Massetti is innocent."</p>
+
+<p>"Let him prove it then."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel certain that he can and will."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, child, go to Madame Dant&egrave;s and take counsel of her. Only a
+woman can heal a young girl's love wounds."</p>
+
+<p>Zuleika quitted the salle-&agrave;-manger, her countenance yet bearing the
+stamp of an inflexible belief and a fixed determination.</p>
+
+<p>"Esp&eacute;rance," said M. Dant&egrave;s, "your honor is unstained and you are
+restored to my heart. I thank God for the blessings of this day!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are a true father, Edmond, as well as a true patriot," said M.
+Lamartine, "and I feel assured that your son will be worthy of you and
+of our beloved France."</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p>That very day Giovanni Massetti received an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> unsigned little note,
+written in a tiny feminine hand. It was phrased thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I believe you innocent in spite of all! Prove to me and to the
+world that you are so."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Enclosed in this little note was Luigi Vampa's letter to M. Dant&egrave;s.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning it became known that the Viscount Massetti had
+disappeared from Paris. Gossip assigned a thousand scandalous motives
+for his sudden flight, but gossip could form no idea as to whither he
+had fled. Zuleika<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> however, knew that he had returned to Italy to
+clear his name and prove himself worthy of her love!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The exceedingly romantic history of Madame de Rancogne will
+be found in that fascinating and absorbing novel, "The Countess of
+Monte-Cristo," published by Messrs. T. B. Peterson &amp; Brothers, a
+wonderful book that everybody should read.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> A full account, from this point, of the life and remarkable
+career of "Zuleika, the Daughter of Monte-Cristo," will be found in the
+brilliant, original, and absorbing novel just published by T. B.
+Peterson &amp; Brothers, Philadelphia, in uniform style with "Edmond
+Dant&egrave;s," entitled "<span class="smcap">Monte-Cristo's Daughter</span>," being the Sequel to
+Alexander Dumas' famous novel, "The Count of Monte-Cristo," and
+Conclusion of "Edmond Dant&egrave;s." "<span class="smcap">Monte-Cristo's Daughter</span>" will be found
+to be of unflagging interest, abounding in ardent love scenes and
+stirring adventures, while the Count of Monte-Cristo figures largely in
+it, and many of the original Monte-Cristo characters are also introduced
+into the volume, making it in point of brilliancy, power, and absorbing
+interest fully equal to its famous predecessors.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>THE END.</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Edmond Dantès, by Edmund Flagg
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@@ -0,0 +1,10508 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Edmond Dantes, by Edmund Flagg
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Edmond Dantes
+
+Author: Edmund Flagg
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23183]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDMOND DANTES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sigal Alon, Fox in the Stars, Martin Pettit
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EDMOND DANTES.
+
+THE SEQUEL TO
+
+ALEXANDER DUMAS'
+
+CELEBRATED NOVEL OF
+
+THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO.
+
+AN ENTIRE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION.
+
+BY
+
+EDMUND FLAGG
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"EDMOND DANTES," one of the greatest novels ever written, is the sequel
+to Alexander Dumas' world-renowned chef-d'oeuvre, "The Count of
+Monte-Cristo," taking up the fascinating narrative where the latter ends
+and continuing it with marvellous power and absorbing interest. Every
+word tells, and the number of unusually stirring incidents is legion,
+while the plot is phenomenal in its strength, merit and ingeniousness.
+The superb book deals with the exciting career of Edmond Dantes, who
+first figures as the Count of Monte-Cristo, and then as the Deputy from
+Marseilles takes an active part in the French Revolution of 1848.
+Dramatic and graphic scenes abound, the reader finding startling
+surprises at every turn. Love, philanthropy, politics and bloodshed form
+the staple of the novel and are handled with extraordinary skill.
+Besides the hero, Haydee, Mercedes, Valentine de Villefort, Eugenie
+Danglars, Louise d'Armilly, Zuleika (Dantes' daughter), Benedetto,
+Lucien Debray, Albert de Morcerf, Beauchamp, Chateau-Renaud, Ali,
+Maximilian Morell, Giovanni Massetti, and Esperance (Dantes' son) figure
+prominently, while Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc and hosts of
+revolutionary leaders are introduced. "EDMOND DANTES" will delight all
+who read it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NEW YORK:
+
+WM. L. ALLISON COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COPYRIGHT:--1884.
+
+T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EDMOND DANTES.
+
+AN ENTIRE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION.
+
+_"Edmond Dantes" the Sequel to Alexander Dumas' masterpiece, "The Count
+of Monte-Cristo," is a novel that will delight, entertain and instruct
+all who read it. It has wonderful fascination, absorbing interest and
+rare merit, combined with remarkable power, amazing ingenuity and
+thorough originality. In it the narrative is taken up immediately at the
+close of "The Count of Monte-Cristo," and continued in a style of
+exceeding cleverness. There is a terrible volcanic tempest on the
+Mediterranean, in which Monte-Cristo and Haydee are wrecked, a vivid
+picture of the French Revolution of 1848 is given and the love affair of
+Zuleika and Giovanni Massetti is recounted in a manner unsurpassed for
+novelty and excitement. The central figure is Edmond Dantes, and about
+him are grouped Mercedes, Eugenie Danglars, Louise d'Armilly, Valentine
+de Villefort, Esperance (the son of Monte-Cristo), Benedetto, Albert de
+Morcerf, Maximilian Morrel, Ali and the other old friends of
+"Monte-Cristo" readers, as well as numerous political leaders famous in
+French history, namely, Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, Armand
+Marrast, Flocon, Albert and others. Thiers, Guizot, Odillon Barrot,
+General Lamoriciere, General Bugeaud and other noted historical
+characters are introduced, as well as Lucien Debray, Chateau-Renaud,
+Beauchamp, etc. No one can afford to miss the opportunity to read
+"Edmond Dantes," which is published only by T. B. Peterson & Brothers,
+who also issue the only correct, complete and unabridged editions of the
+other volumes of the great "Monte-Cristo" Series, namely, "The Count of
+Monte-Cristo," "The Countess of Monte-Cristo," "The Wife of
+Monte-Cristo, Haydee," and "The Son of Monte-Cristo, Esperance."_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+Chapter.                                                 Page.
+      I. STORM AND SHIPWRECK,                               21
+
+     II. THE ISLAND,                                        38
+
+    III. THE CONFLAGRATION,                                 55
+
+     IV. THE NEWS FROM ALGERIA,                             70
+
+      V. EDMOND DANTES, DEPUTY FROM MARSEILLES,             82
+
+     VI. THE MYSTERY THICKENS,                              91
+
+    VII. DANTES AND HIS DAUGHTER,                          100
+
+   VIII. A VAST PRINTING HOUSE,                            116
+
+     IX. ARMAND MARRAST,                                   126
+
+      X. THE COMMUNISTS,                                   134
+
+     XI. "WAIT AND HOPE,"                                  168
+
+    XII. THE MYSTERIOUS PRIMA DONNA,                       178
+
+   XIII. THE ITALIAN LOVER,                                195
+
+    XIV. THE MINUTE VIALS,                                 202
+
+     XV. THE UNKNOWN NURSE,                                208
+
+    XVI. A NOTABLE FETE,                                   215
+
+   XVII. THE REVOLUTION BEGINS,                            244
+
+  XVIII. THE MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE,                            251
+
+    XIX. THE SECOND DAY,                                   257
+
+     XX. ANOTHER MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE,                        269
+
+    XXI. THE THIRD DAY,                                    278
+
+   XXII. THE LAST SESSION OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES,      294
+
+  XXIII. THE SACK OF THE TUILERIES,                        303
+
+   XXIV. A MEMORABLE NIGHT,                                306
+
+    XXV. THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT,                       313
+
+   XXVI. DANTES AND MERCEDES,                              323
+
+  XXVII. ESPERANCE AND ZULEIKA,                            334
+
+ XXVIII. CAPTAIN JOLIETTE'S LOVE,                          343
+
+   XXIX. ZULEIKA GOES TO M. DANTES,                        355
+
+    XXX. TWO INTERVIEWS,                                   362
+
+   XXXI. VAMPA'S ANSWER,                                   371
+
+
+
+
+EDMOND DANTES.
+
+THE SEQUEL TO
+
+THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STORM AND SHIPWRECK.
+
+
+The Count of Monte-Cristo, with the beautiful Haydee clinging lovingly
+about his neck, her head pillowed upon his shoulder, stood on the deck
+of his superb yacht, the Alcyon, gazing at the fast-vanishing isle where
+he had left Maximilian Morrel and Valentine de Villefort.
+
+It was just daybreak, but by the faint glimmering light he could plainly
+distinguish the figures of a man and a woman upon the distant beach.
+They were walking arm in arm. Presently another figure, a man's,
+approached them and seemed to deliver something.
+
+"Look," said the Count to Haydee, "Jacopo has given Maximilian my
+letter; he reads it to Valentine, and now they know all. Jacopo points
+toward the yacht; they see us and are waving their handkerchiefs in
+token of adieu."
+
+Haydee raised her head and glanced in the direction of the Isle of
+Monte-Cristo.
+
+"I see them, my lord," she replied, in a joyous tone; "they are happy."
+
+"Yes," said the Count, "they are happy, but they deserve their
+happiness, and all is well."
+
+"They owe their happiness to you, my lord," resumed Haydee, meekly.
+
+"They owe it to God," answered Monte-Cristo, solemnly; "I was but His
+humble instrument, and He has allowed me in this to make some slight
+atonement for the wrong I committed in taking vengeance into my own
+mortal hands."
+
+Haydee was silent. She knew the sad history of Edmond Dantes, and was
+aware of how remorselessly the Count of Monte-Cristo had avenged the
+wrongs of the humble sailor of Marseilles. This she had learned from her
+lord's own lips within the past few days. The strict seclusion in which
+she had lived in Paris had necessarily excluded her from all personal
+knowledge of the Count's subtle war upon his enemies; true, she had
+emerged from her retirement to testify against Morcerf at his trial
+before the House of Peers, but at that time she was ignorant of the fact
+that by causing the foe of her family to be convicted of felony, treason
+and outrage she had simply promoted Monte-Cristo's vengeance on Fernand,
+the Catalan. But, though silent, the beautiful Greek girl, with her
+thoroughly oriental ideas, could not realize that the man who stood
+beside her, the being she almost worshiped, had been guilty of the least
+wrong in avenging himself. Besides, she would never have admitted, even
+in the most secret recesses of her own heart, that Monte-Cristo, who to
+her mind symbolized all that was good, pure and heroic in human nature,
+could have been wrong in anything he did.
+
+Meanwhile the Count also had been silent, and a shade of the deepest
+sadness had settled upon his pallid but intellectual visage. He gazed at
+the Isle of Monte-Cristo until it became a mere dot in the distance;
+then, putting his arm tenderly about his lovely companion's waist, he
+drew her gently toward the cabin.
+
+As they vanished down the companion-way, Bertuccio and the captain of
+the Alcyon, followed by Ali, the Nubian, advanced to the prow of the
+yacht.
+
+"Captain," said Bertuccio, "can you tell me whither we are bound? I feel
+an irresistible desire to know."
+
+"Yes," answered the captain, "I can tell you. The Count ordered me to
+make with all possible speed for the Island of Crete."
+
+Bertuccio gave a sigh of relief.
+
+"I feared we were bound for Italy," he said. "But," he added, after an
+instant's thought, "why should we go to Rome? Luigi Vampa is amply able
+to care for all the Count's interests there, if, indeed, any remain now
+that the Baron Danglars has been attended to."
+
+The captain, who was an old Italian smuggler, placed his finger
+warningly upon his lips and glanced warily around when Luigi Vampa's
+name was mentioned, but said nothing. Bertuccio took the hint and the
+conversation was dropped.
+
+Pressing onward under full sail, the magnificent yacht shot over the
+blue waters of the Mediterranean with the speed of an eagle on the wing.
+It sped past Corsica and Sardinia, and soon the arid, uninviting shores
+of Tunis were visible; then it passed between Sicily and Malta, steering
+directly toward the Island of Crete.
+
+Up to this time the weather had been of the most delightful description.
+Not a cloud had obscured the sky, and during the entire voyage the
+unruffled surface of the Mediterranean had resembled that of some
+peaceful lake. It was now the tenth of October, and just cool enough to
+be pleasant; the spice-laden breezes from the coast of Africa reached
+the yacht tempered by the moist atmosphere of the sea, furnishing an
+additional element of enjoyment.
+
+The Count of Monte-Cristo and Haydee, who seemed inseparable, came on
+deck every morning at dawn, and each evening walked back and forth,
+admiring the gorgeous sunset and watching the shades of night as they
+gradually settled down upon the wide expanse of the waters.
+
+It required no unusual penetration to see that they were lovers and that
+their delight in each other's society was unalloyed. Haydee clung to the
+Count, who, with his arm wound about her slender waist, looked down
+into the liquid depths of her eyes with a smile of perfect content,
+while his free hand ever and anon toyed with her night-black tresses.
+
+One evening as they were walking thus--it was the evening of the
+fifteenth of October, and Crete was distant but two days'
+sail--Monte-Cristo tenderly took Haydee's hand in his and said to her in
+a tone of ineffable softness:
+
+"Haydee, do you remember what you said to me on the Isle of Monte-Cristo
+just before we parted from Valentine and Maximilian?"
+
+"Oh! yes, my lord," was the low reply. "I said I loved you as one loves
+a father, brother, husband--I loved you as my life."
+
+"And do you now regret those words?"
+
+"Regret them! Oh! my lord, how could I do that?"
+
+"I asked you," said the Count, slowly, "because we are nearing our
+destination. In two days we shall land upon the shore of Crete, and,
+once there, it is my intention to make you my wife, provided your
+feelings toward me are still unchanged. Marriage, my child, is the most
+important step in life, and I do not wish you to take that step without
+fully understanding the promptings of your own dear heart. Only misery
+can follow the union of two souls not in perfect accord, not entirely
+devoted the one to the other. I am much older than you, Haydee, and my
+sufferings have aged me still more than years. I am a sad and weary
+man. You, on the contrary, stand just upon the threshold of existence;
+the world and its pleasures are all before you. Think, my child, think
+deeply before you pronounce the irrevocable vow."
+
+Haydee threw herself passionately upon Monte-Cristo's breast.
+
+"My lord," she cried, in accents broken by extreme agitation and
+emotion, "am I not your slave?"
+
+"No, Haydee," answered the Count, his bosom heaving and his eyes
+lighting up with a strange flash, "you are free, your fate rests in your
+own hands."
+
+"Then," said the young girl, ardently, "I will decide it this very
+instant. I accept my freedom that I may voluntarily offer myself to you,
+my love, my husband. You have suffered. Granted. So have I. Your
+sufferings have aged you; mine have transformed a child into a woman--a
+woman who knows the promptings of her heart, who knows that it beats for
+you, and you alone in all the world. My lord, I resign myself to you. Do
+you accept the gift?"
+
+As Haydee concluded, her beautiful eyes were suffused with tears and her
+whole frame quivered with intense excitement.
+
+Monte-Cristo bent down and kissed her upon the forehead.
+
+"Haydee, my own Haydee," he said, with a slight tremor in his manly
+voice, "I accept the gift. Be my wife, the wife of Monte-Cristo, and no
+effort of mine shall be wanting to assure your happiness."
+
+At that moment there was a sinister flash in the heavens, that were as
+yet without a cloud. The livid light shot downward to the water and
+seemingly plunged to the depths of the Mediterranean.
+
+The Count gave a start and drew his beloved Haydee closer to him; the
+frightened girl trembled from head to foot and clung to him for
+protection.
+
+"Oh! my lord, my lord," she murmured, "does Heaven disapprove of our
+plighted troth?"
+
+"Calm yourself, Haydee," answered Monte-Cristo. "The lightning is God's
+seal, and He has set it upon our betrothal."
+
+The flash was now repeated and was succeeded by several others of
+increased intensity, but as yet no thunder rolled and there was not the
+slightest indication of an approaching storm.
+
+Monte-Cristo took Haydee's hand and led her to the side of the yacht.
+Not a single wave wrinkled the surface of the sea for miles and miles;
+the water seemed asleep, while down upon it the moon poured a flood of
+silvery radiance. The stars, too, were beaming brightly. Still, however,
+the intense lightning shot athwart the placid sky. It had become almost
+incessant. Monte-Cristo could not account for the bewildering
+phenomenon. He summoned the captain of the Alcyon and said to him:
+
+"Giacomo, you have sailed the Mediterranean all your life, have you
+not?"
+
+"All my life, Excellency," replied he, touching his cap.
+
+"Have you ever before seen lightning such as this on a calm night?"
+
+"Never, Excellency."
+
+"It certainly cannot be heat-lightning."
+
+"I think not, Excellency. Heat-lightning has a quicker flash and is much
+less intense."
+
+"What do you suppose it portends?"
+
+"I can form no idea, Excellency."
+
+"Oh! my lord," said Haydee, "a terrible storm is coming, I am sure; I
+feel a premonition Of approaching danger. I pray you, guard against it."
+
+"Nonsense, my child," returned Monte-Cristo, with a laugh that, in spite
+of all his efforts at self-control, betrayed nervous agitation and an
+undefinable dread. "The sky is clear, the moon is shining brilliantly
+and the sea is altogether tranquil; if a storm were coming it would not
+be so. Banish your fears and reassure yourself; the lightning is but a
+freak of nature."
+
+The captain, too, was disturbed, though he could give himself no
+satisfactory reason for his uneasiness.
+
+Ali, with the characteristic superstition of the Nubian race, had
+prostrated himself upon the deck, and was making signs the Moslems of
+his country use to drive away malignant spirits.
+
+The night, however, passed without accident, though the singular
+lightning continued for several hours.
+
+Next morning the sun rose, encircled by a ruddy band, fringed on the
+outer rim with a faint yellow, while its beams had a sullen glare
+instead of their normal brilliancy. The lightning of the previous night
+was absent, but soon another and not less disquieting phenomenon
+manifested itself; as far as the eye could reach the sea seemed boiling,
+and, at intervals, a puff, as if of vapor, would filter through the
+waves, rising and disappearing in the heavens. Meanwhile the wind had
+fallen, and amid an almost dead calm the sails of the Alcyon hung
+listlessly, with only an occasional flapping. The yacht moved forward,
+indeed, but so slowly that it scarcely appeared to move at all.
+
+Monte-Cristo and Haydee came on deck at dawn, but the young girl
+displayed such terror at the unwonted aspect of the sun and the sea that
+the Count speedily persuaded her to return with him to the cabin. There
+she cowered upon a divan, hiding her face in her hands and moaning
+piteously. Her fiance, distressed at her condition, endeavored to soothe
+and comfort her, but utterly without avail; her fears could neither be
+banished nor allayed. At length he threw himself on a rug at her feet,
+and, disengaging her hands from her face, drew them about his neck;
+Haydee clasped him frantically and clung to him as if she deemed that
+embrace a final one.
+
+As they were sitting thus, the Alcyon received a sudden and violent
+shock that shook the noble yacht from stem to stern. Instantly there was
+a sound of hurrying feet on deck, and the captain could be heard
+shouting hoarsely to the sailors.
+
+Monte-Cristo leaped up and caught Haydee in his arms. At that moment Ali
+darted down the companion-way and stood trembling before his master.
+
+"What was that shock?" demanded the Count, hurriedly.
+
+The agitated Nubian made a sign signifying he did not know, but that all
+was yet safe.
+
+"Remain with your mistress, Ali," said Monte-Cristo. "I am going to see
+what is the matter."
+
+"Oh! no, no," cried Haydee, imploringly, as the Count placed her again
+on the divan and was moving away. "Oh! no, no; do not leave me, my lord,
+or I shall die!"
+
+Ashy pale, Haydee arose from the divan, and cast herself on her knees at
+Monte-Cristo's feet.
+
+"Swear to me, at least, that you will not needlessly expose yourself to
+danger," she uttered, in a pleading tone.
+
+"I swear it," answered the Count. "Ali will faithfully guard you while I
+am gone," he added, "and ere you can realize my absence, I shall be
+again at your side."
+
+With these words he tore himself away and hastened to the deck.
+
+There a scene met his eye as unexpected as it was appalling. The entire
+surface of the Mediterranean was aglow with phosphorescence, and the sun
+was veiled completely by a heavy cloud that seemed to cover the whole
+expanse of the sky. This cloud was not black, but of a bloody hue, and
+the atmosphere was so densely charged with sulphur that it was almost
+impossible to breathe. The sea was boiling more furiously than ever, and
+the puffs of vapor that had before only occasionally filtered through
+the waves now leaped up incessantly, each puff attended with a slight
+explosion; the vapor was grayish when it first arose from the water, but
+as it ascended it became red, mingling at length with the bloody cloud
+that each moment acquired greater density. The wind blew fitfully,
+sometimes amounting to a gale and then utterly vanishing without the
+slightest warning. Soon the bloody cloud seemed to settle of its own
+weight upon the sea, growing so thick that the eye could not penetrate
+it, and a few feet from the yacht all was inky darkness.
+
+Monte-Cristo hurried to the captain, who was endeavoring to quiet the
+superstitious fears of the sailors. Drawing him aside, he said, in a low
+tone:
+
+"Giacomo, we are in frightful danger. This elemental disturbance is
+volcanic, and how it will end cannot be foretold. No doubt an earthquake
+is devastating the nearest land, or will do so before many hours have
+elapsed. At any moment rocks or islands may arise from the sea, and
+obstruct our passage. All we can do is to hold ourselves in readiness
+for whatever calamity may happen, and make for Crete as rapidly as
+possible, with the hope of eventually getting beyond the volcanic zone.
+Do not enlighten the crew as to the cause of the disturbance; did they
+know, or even suspect it, they could not be controlled, but would become
+either stupefied or reckless. Try to convince them that we are simply in
+the midst of a severe electrical storm that will speedily exhaust its
+fury and subside. Now, to work, and remember that everything depends
+upon your courage and resolution."
+
+Giacomo rejoined the sailors, who were huddled together at the stern of
+the yacht like so many frightened sheep. He spoke to them, doing his
+utmost to reassure them, and ultimately succeeded so well that they
+resumed their neglected duties with some show of alacrity and even
+cheerfulness.
+
+Meanwhile, Monte-Cristo, with folded arms and an outward show of
+calmness, was pacing the deck as if nothing unusual were in progress,
+and his demeanor was not without its effect on the sailors, who looked
+upon him with a species of awe and admiration. At times he went below to
+cheer the drooping spirits of his beloved Haydee, but speedily returned
+that the influence of his presence might not be lost.
+
+Thus the day passed. A night of painful suspense succeeded it, during
+which not a soul on board the Alcyon thought of sleeping. Nothing,
+however, occurred, save that the intense lightning of the previous night
+was renewed. Toward eleven o'clock the breeze freshened to such an
+extent that the yacht sped along on her course with great fleetness.
+
+In the morning the sun arose amid a purple haze, and the Mediterranean
+presented a more tumultuous and threatening aspect than it had the
+preceding day. The breeze was still blowing stiffly, and the lightning
+continued. Giacomo informed Monte-Cristo that unless a calm should
+suddenly come on they would certainly arrive at Crete by noon. The
+sailors, he added, were in good spirits, and might be relied upon,
+though they were much fatigued by reason of their unceasing labor.
+
+At ten o'clock the man at the wheel hurriedly summoned the captain to
+his side, and, with a look of terror and bewilderment, directed his
+attention to the compass, the needle of which no longer pointed to the
+north, but was dancing a mad dance, not remaining stationary for a
+single instant. To complicate the situation still further, the sun was
+suddenly obscured, absolute darkness invading both sea and sky. Only
+when the vivid lightning tore the dense clouds apart were those on board
+the Alcyon enabled to catch a glimpse of what was going on about them,
+and that glimpse was but momentary. Thunder peals were now added to the
+terrors of the time, while the yacht tossed and plunged on angry,
+threatening billows. Showers of sparks and glowing cinders, as if from
+some mighty conflagration, poured down into the water, striking its
+surface with an ominous hiss; they resembled meteors, and their
+brilliancy was augmented by the surrounding gloom. Rain also began to
+descend, not in drops, but in broad sheets and with the roar of a
+cataract; in a moment everybody on the Alcyon's deck was drenched to the
+skin.
+
+Haydee had not ventured from the cabin since the first day of the
+elemental commotion; in obedience to his master's commands, Ali
+constantly watched over her whenever the Count was facing the strange
+storm with Giacomo and the sailors.
+
+As the captain approached the man at the wheel, Monte-Cristo fixed his
+eyes upon the old Italian's countenance and saw it assume a deathly
+pallor as he noticed that the needle of the compass could no longer be
+depended on.
+
+In an instant the Count was beside him and realized the extent of the
+new evil that had befallen them.
+
+"We can steer but by guess now," said Giacomo, in a low, hoarse whisper.
+"God grant that we may be able to reach our destination."
+
+As he spoke, a loud crash was heard, and the rudder, torn from its
+fastenings by the violence of the tempest, swept by them, vanishing amid
+the darkness. The man at the wheel gazed after it, uttering a cry of
+despair.
+
+"We are completely at the mercy of the wind and waves!" said
+Monte-Cristo, in an undertone. "Can nothing be done?" he added,
+hurriedly.
+
+"Nothing, Excellency," returned the captain. "A temporary rudder might
+be rigged were the sea calmer, but, boiling and seething as it is, such
+a thing is utterly impossible."
+
+A panic had seized upon the sailors as they witnessed the catastrophe
+that rendered the Alcyon helpless, but this immediately gave place to
+stupor, and the men stood silent and overwhelmed.
+
+Bertuccio, from the time the dread storm had broken forth, had been
+gloomy and uncommunicative; he had held persistently aloof both from
+Monte-Cristo and the crew. In the general turmoil and confusion his
+bearing and behavior had passed unnoticed even by the vigilant eye of
+the Count.
+
+The steward now approached his master, and, taking him aside, whispered
+in his ear:
+
+"Heaven's vengeance is pursuing the Alcyon and all on board because of
+my crimes! I feel it--I know it!"
+
+The steward's face was as white as a sheet, but his eye betokened fixed
+resolution.
+
+"Not another word of this," cried Monte-Cristo, sternly. "Should the
+superstitious sailors hear you, they would demand with one voice that
+you be cast into the boiling sea."
+
+"And they would be right," rejoined Bertuccio, doggedly. "If I remain
+where I am, the Alcyon's doom is sealed. On the other hand, the moment
+you are rid of me the storm will cease as if by magic, and you will be
+saved."
+
+"Be silent!" commanded Monte-Cristo. "You are a Corsican--show a
+Corsican's courage!"
+
+"I will!" was the determined reply, and the steward walked with a firm
+tread to the side of the yacht.
+
+"What do you mean?" said the Count, hurrying after him and placing his
+hand on his shoulder.
+
+"You shall see!" answered Bertuccio.
+
+Shaking off Monte-Cristo's grasp, he leaped upon the bulwarks and
+suddenly sprang far out amid the seething waves. The Count uttered a cry
+of horror that was echoed by the captain. As for the crew, so utterly
+stupefied were they that they did not seem to comprehend the suicidal
+act. For an instant Monte-Cristo and Giacomo saw the steward whirling
+about amid the tumultuous flood; then he was swept away, and vanished in
+the impenetrable darkness beyond.
+
+The force of the wind had meanwhile augmented until a perfect hurricane
+was raging about the Alcyon; the noise was deafening, and the sails
+swelled to such an extent that they threatened to snap asunder. Suddenly
+they gave way, and the tattered shreds flew in all directions, like
+white-winged sea-fowl. Simultaneously the mast toppled and went by the
+board. The yacht, now a helpless wreck, pitched and tossed, but still
+shot onward, impelled by the wild fury of the gale. Gigantic waves at
+intervals swept the deck, each torrent as it retreated carrying with it
+all it could tear away, and making huge gaps in the bulwarks, to which
+the sailors were clinging with all the energy of desperation.
+Monte-Cristo had grasped the stump of the mast, and the captain clung
+with all his strength to the remains of the wheel. The lightning had
+become terrific, and the almost continuous roar of the thunder was
+sufficient to drown the mad din of the waters.
+
+All at once the jagged outlines of a gigantic rock loomed up, directly
+in the course of the fated vessel; in another instant the Alcyon struck
+and remained fast, while a vivid flash of lightning revealed what
+appeared to be an island, about a quarter of a mile away. But though the
+wreck of the yacht was motionless, the furious sea continued to break
+over the deck, and it seemed only a question of a few moments when the
+battered and torn hull of the Alcyon would go to pieces. The boat the
+vessel carried had long since been wrenched from its fastenings and
+swept into the whirlpool.
+
+Monte-Cristo, quitting the stump of the mast, darted down the
+companion-way into the cabin, and quickly returned to the deck bearing
+in his arms the swooning form of his adored Haydee. Ali followed him.
+The Nubian seemed to have entirely recovered from his fear, and
+manifested both alertness and decision.
+
+Shifting his lifeless burden to his left arm and grasping her firmly,
+Monte-Cristo advanced to the side of the Alcyon. Pausing there for an
+instant, he said, addressing Giacomo and the crew:
+
+"The yacht cannot hold together much longer; if we remain where we are
+we shall inevitably be ground to powder on the rock with our vessel.
+There is an island some distance to the right of us, and, sustained by
+Providence, we may succeed in reaching it by swimming. For my part, I
+shall try the venture and endeavor to save this lady. You, men, are
+untrammeled and stand a better chance of success than I do. I advise you
+all to follow my example; to cling further to the wreck is death!"
+
+With these words the Count made his way to a gap in the bulwarks and,
+grasping Haydee tightly, leaped with her into the midst of the angry
+sea. Ali followed his master, and soon they were seen far in the
+distance, struggling and battling with the waves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE ISLAND.
+
+
+It was the month of December, but on the little Island of Salmis in the
+Grecian Archipelago the temperature was as mild and genial as that of
+June. The grass was rank and thick, while the blooming almond trees
+filled the atmosphere with fragrance. On a narrow strip of sandy beach
+three or four fishermen were preparing their nets and boats for a
+fishing expedition to the waters beyond. They chatted as they toiled.
+The eldest of them, a man about sixty, with silvered locks and a long
+gray beard, said:
+
+"You may talk of storms as much as you please, but I maintain that the
+most severe tempest ever experienced in this neighborhood was the one I
+witnessed ten years ago last October, when we had the earthquake and the
+strange man, who now owns this island, was washed ashore."
+
+"The Count of Monte-Cristo you mean?" remarked one of the party.
+
+"Yes, the Count of Monte-Cristo, who has done so much for us all and
+whose wife is nothing less than an angel of goodness and charity."
+
+"You rescued him, did you not, Alexis?"
+
+"I found him lying upon the beach, with the lady who is now his wife
+tightly clasped in his arms, so tightly that I had no end of trouble to
+separate them. Both were unconscious at the time, and no wonder, for the
+sea was furious and they must have been dashed about at a fearful rate.
+It was a miracle they escaped with their lives. Near them lay that
+dark-skinned African, their servant, who styles himself Ali, as well as
+the corpses of several sailors. The African, however, revived just as I
+approached him. He's a man of iron, I tell you, for he immediately
+leaped to his feet and helped me to restore his master and mistress.
+When they came to, I took the whole party to my hut and cared for them.
+The next day I rowed the Count and the African out to the wreck of their
+vessel on that rock you see away over there, and they brought back with
+them a fabulous amount of money and jewels that they found in the
+strangest closets I ever saw in the cabin. Then the Count bought this
+island and has lived here ever since. He took the lady to Athens and was
+married to her there, and on his return he had the palace they now
+occupy built in the midst of the palm grove."
+
+By this time the fishermen had completed their preparations and,
+leaping into their boats, they started on their expedition.
+
+The palace in the palm grove to which old Alexis had alluded was,
+indeed, a magnificent dwelling, suitable in every respect for the
+residence of an oriental monarch. It was built in the Turkish fashion
+and its exterior was singularly beautiful and imposing. Huge palm trees
+surrounded it; they were planted in regular rows upon a vast lawn that
+was adorned with costly statues and fountains, while at intervals were
+scattered great flower beds filled with choice exotics and blooming
+plants of endless variety. A wide graveled walk and carriage-road led to
+the palace, the main entrance to which was flanked on either side by
+columns of dark-veined marble. The edifice itself was of green stone,
+and sparkled in the sunlight like a colossal emerald. It was surmounted
+by three zinc-covered domes, above each of which towered a gilded
+crescent.
+
+Within all was elegance and luxury. There were immense salons, with
+marble floors, and walls covered with Smyrna hangings of the most
+beautiful description that of themselves must have cost a fortune. These
+salons were furnished with rich divans, tables of malachite, cabinets of
+ebony, and oriental rugs of the most artistic and complicated
+workmanship. There were dazzling reception rooms filled with exquisite
+statues and superb paintings, the works of the greatest sculptors and
+artists of the east and west, of the past and the present. Figures by
+Thorwaldsen, Powers and other modern celebrities of the block and chisel
+stood beside antique masterpieces framed by the genius of Phidias and
+his brother sculptors of old Greece and Rome, masterpieces that had been
+torn from the ruins of antiquity by the hand of the untiring and
+enterprising excavator. Among the paintings were fine specimens of the
+skill of Albert Duerer, Murillo, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds and other votaries of the brush whose names are immortal. These
+paintings did not hang on the walls, for they were covered with rich
+tapestry from the looms of Benares and the Gobelins, but rested on
+delicately fashioned easels, themselves entitled to a high, rank as
+works of art. In the salons were statues by Michael Angelo, Pierre Puget
+and Pompeo Marchesi, and paintings by Claude Lorraine, Titian, Sir
+Thomas Lawrence, Correggio and Salvator Rosa.
+
+The vast library was encircled by lofty bookcases of walnut and ebony,
+filled with rare and costly volumes from the curiously illuminated
+missals of monkish days to the latest scientific works, together with a
+liberal sprinkling of poetry and fiction; upon tables, stands and
+mantels were superb ornaments in brass repousse work and grand old
+faience, including some wonderful specimens of ancient Chinese crackle
+ware, the peculiar secret of the manufacture of which had been lost in
+the flight of ages.
+
+At an exquisite desk of walnut, carved with grotesque images, sat the
+Count of Monte-Cristo; he was busily engaged in writing, and beside him
+lay a huge pile of manuscript that was ever and anon augmented by an
+additional sheet, hastily scrawled in strange, bewildering Semitic
+characters.
+
+The Count showed but small trace of the passage of years; he did not
+look much older than when he left the Isle of Monte-Cristo with Haydee
+on that voyage which was destined to result so disastrously for the
+Alcyon and her ill-fated crew. To be sure, his hair was slightly flecked
+with gray, but his visage still retained its full outline, and not a
+wrinkle marred its masculine beauty. He was clad in an exceedingly
+picturesque costume, half Greek and half Turkish, while upon his head
+was a red fez from the centre of which hung down a gilt tassel.
+
+As he wrote his eyes sparkled and he seemed filled with enthusiasm. At
+length he threw aside his pen, and rising began to pace the vast
+apartment with long strides. "Alas!" he muttered, "perhaps after all I
+am only a vain dreamer, as hosts of others have been before me. But no,
+my scheme is feasible and cannot fail; it is based on sound principles
+and a thorough knowledge of mankind; besides, the immense wealth that an
+all-wise God has placed at my disposal will aid me and form a mighty
+factor in the cause. In the past I used that wealth solely for my own
+selfish ends, but now all is different; I have no thought of self--the
+philanthropist has replaced the egotist; I have aided the poor, relieved
+the stricken and brought joy to many a sorrowing home, but hitherto I
+have acted only in isolated cases; now I meditate a grand, a sublime
+stroke--to give freedom to man throughout the entire length and breadth
+of the Continent of Europe. If I succeed, and succeed I must, every
+down-trodden human being from the coast of France to the Ural Mountains,
+from the sunny Mediterranean to the frozen Arctic Ocean, will reap the
+benefit of my efforts and shake off the yoke of tyranny. Where shall I
+begin? Ah! with France, my own country, the land that gave me birth. I
+shall thus return good for evil, and Edmond Dantes, the prisoner of the
+Chateau d'If, will free the masses from their galling chains. My most
+potent instrument will be the public press; by means of journals I will
+found, or buy, the minds of all Europeans shall become familiarized with
+the theory of universal liberty and ripened for sweeping revolutions and
+the establishment of republics; I will also call fiction to my aid;
+struggling novelists and feuilletonists shall receive liberal subsidies
+from my hand on condition that they disseminate my ideas, theories and
+plans in their romances and feuilletons; thus will I reach thousands
+upon thousands who hold themselves aloof from politics, and almost
+insensibly they will be transformed into zealous, active partisans of
+the order of things that is to be; poets, too, shall sing the praises of
+freedom louder and more enthusiastically than ever before; in fine, no
+instrument, no means, however humble and apparently insignificant, shall
+be neglected when the proper moment arrives, but until it does arrive I
+must wait, wait patiently, wait though while waiting an internal fire
+consume me, and my veins throb with anxiety and expectation to the point
+of bursting."
+
+He sank into a chair, and, burying his face in his hands, was lost in
+profound thought.
+
+Meanwhile, a lovely woman, leading a beautiful girl of eight years and a
+handsome boy of nine, had noiselessly entered the apartment. It was
+Haydee, the wife of Monte-Cristo, Haydee grown mature and more beautiful
+than ever. Her night-black tresses were gathered in two wide braids at
+the back of her shapely head, so long that they reached below her waist.
+Her eyes were as bright as stars, and her slender hands, tipped with
+their pink nails, as white as the lily; her tiny feet, encased in
+Cinderella slippers of rose-hued satin, peeped out from beneath ample
+Turkish trousers, which were semi-transparent and disclosed the outlines
+of her beautifully turned limbs; she wore a close-fitting gilet of
+pearly silk, adorned with gilt fringe and cut low, displaying her snowy
+neck and magnificent shoulders; her arms were encompassed but not hidden
+by flowing sleeves of filmy gauze as fine as the tissue of a spider's
+web; about her neck flashed a collar of brilliant diamonds of enormous
+value, and on her tapering fingers were rings of emerald, ruby and
+sapphire; on her head was a red fez, precisely similar to her husband's;
+her countenance, a perfect revelation of angelic beauty, was wreathed
+in sunny smiles that betokened thorough happiness and contentment.
+
+The little girl, Zuleika, the daughter of Monte-Cristo, was her exact
+image, a reproduction of her lovely mother in miniature, a promise of
+rare delight for the future. The child's costume was also modeled after
+Haydee's, but with modifications suited to her tender years. Zuleika was
+of a gentle, loving disposition, but a vein of romance and poetry had
+already developed itself in her notwithstanding her extreme youth. She
+sighed for the unknown delights of the sea, and the wail of the surf
+sounded to her like the most delicious of mysterious harmonies. Her
+infant imagination peopled the watery realm with spirits of good and
+evil always in contention, and the great ships, with their huge white
+sails, that she saw in the distance from the sandy beach of the Island
+of Salmis, were in her eyes the mighty birds of Arabian story.
+
+The boy, Esperance, the son of Monte-Cristo, resembled his father both
+in disposition and appearance; his youthful soul was full of noble
+aspirations, while his daring and bravery filled even the hardy
+fishermen of the coast with wonder and amazement. He was a very manly
+and handsome child; quick, enthusiastic and energetic; his father's hope
+and his mother's idol; though Haydee saw, with extreme uneasiness, that
+the little lad was wise beyond his years, and was already devoted to
+Monte-Cristo's somewhat visionary schemes, which he appeared to grasp in
+all their complicated details. His attire was that of a Greek fisher
+boy; his trousers, rolled up above his knees, displayed his naked legs
+and bare feet; in one hand he held a rough sea cap that he had removed
+from his head at the door of the library. Esperance loved, above all
+other things, to be with the fishermen on the beach, and his joy knew no
+bounds when he was permitted to accompany them on their fishing
+expeditions to the waters beyond.
+
+Haydee remained silently gazing at Monte-Cristo for a moment; then,
+advancing into the middle of the room, she stood beside him with the
+children. Zuleika, dropping her mother's hand, sprang lightly upon her
+father's knees, and, clasping him about the neck with her chubby arms,
+kissed him rapturously.
+
+The Count started from his deep reverie and returned his daughter's
+kiss; then, looking up, he perceived Haydee and Esperance.
+
+"Ah! my loved ones," said he, "so you are all here!"
+
+"Yes, papa," returned Zuleika, in a clear, crystal voice, that sounded
+like the tinkle of a fairy bell, "we are all here--mamma, Esperance and
+'Leika!"
+
+Monte-Cristo smiled faintly, and patted the little girl tenderly on the
+cheek.
+
+"Haydee," said he, "fortune favors us in our children; they are, indeed,
+a blessing to us."
+
+"A veritable blessing, my lord," answered the lovely Haydee, "but still
+I cannot help feeling some terror at the thought that Esperance may one
+day be drawn into those political struggles you have so often foretold,
+and in which it is your intention to act a prominent part."
+
+"Papa will lead the people to victory, and I will fight by his side!"
+cried Esperance, proudly.
+
+Haydee gazed sadly at the enthusiastic boy, and tears came into her
+gazelle-like eyes.
+
+"Oh! my lord," she said to her husband, "teach Esperance the arts of
+peace, implant in his boyish bosom, while there is yet time, the love of
+home and domestic joys."
+
+The Count glanced admiringly at the little lad, who stood with dilated
+nostrils and eyes flashing fire; then, turning to Haydee, he said in an
+impressive tone:
+
+"My beloved wife, Esperance is but an infant, and it may be years ere
+Europe shall awake from her lethargy and strive to overturn the thrones
+of her despots; before that period, the period of revolution and
+bloodshed, our son may change his opinions and cease to be the ardent
+Republican he is now."
+
+"No, no," protested the enthusiastic boy; "I will be a Republican all my
+life!"
+
+Monte-Cristo smiled sadly, and, drawing the lad to his knee, said to
+him:
+
+"Esperance, my son, you are yet too young to know the ways of the world
+and the snares that monarchs set for the inexperienced and unwary. There
+are temptations at their command capable of winning over even the most
+zealous enemies, and they never hesitate to use them when the
+opportunity offers. At the proper time I will instruct you fully about
+all this; now, you cannot understand it."
+
+As Monte-Cristo ceased to speak, Ali entered the library, followed by
+three native servants attached to the palace. The Nubian bowed low
+before his master and reverently kissed Haydee's hand; the servants did
+likewise. Then Ali handed the Count a sealed letter, making signs to the
+effect that he had found it tied with a cord to one of the palm trees on
+the lawn.
+
+Monte-Cristo opened the letter and glanced at the signature; as he did
+so a look of surprise and annoyance settled upon his face.
+
+The note was written in the French language, and read as follows:
+
+
+     COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO: I am in hiding on the Island of Salmis and
+     must see you without delay. Meet me at midnight in the almond grove
+     near the eastern shore. Be sure to come alone.
+                                                         BENEDETTO.
+
+
+"Humph!" said the Count to himself as he finished reading this singular
+epistle. "I thought I was rid of that scoundrel forever, but it seems
+that the galleys at Toulon cannot hold him. Well, I suppose I must meet
+him; otherwise he may take a notion to come here, which would be both
+inconvenient and disagreeable. I imagine he wants a little money to
+enable him to escape to the east; if that is all, I will gladly give it
+to be rid of his presence, on the island. I prefer not to have as a
+neighbor a thief and an assassin, even if he did shine so brilliantly
+once in aristocratic Parisian society as the Prince Cavalcanti!"
+
+"What is the matter, my lord?" asked Haydee, noticing the expression on
+Monte-Cristo's countenance. "From whom is the letter?"
+
+"Oh! it is nothing," answered the Count, with a smile. "A poor fellow
+wishes my assistance, and is too modest to ask it in person; that's
+all!"
+
+Haydee was not satisfied with this indefinite reply; she knew that the
+contents of the letter so strangely conveyed to her husband had vexed
+and troubled him; but she also knew that Monte-Cristo could be as silent
+as the tomb about anything he wished to keep secret, and, therefore,
+judged it useless to attempt further questions. Besides, a singular
+presentiment of evil had taken possession of her at the sight of the
+ominous note, and she felt certain that some disaster was threatened;
+hence, she determined to be watchful and keep strict guard over her
+children until the mystery, whatever it was, should be cleared up.
+
+As the clock in his library struck the quarter before midnight,
+Monte-Cristo arose from the chair in which he had been sitting; donning
+his fez and a light cloak, he prepared to go to the almond grove on the
+eastern portion of the island, the spot Benedetto had appointed for
+their meeting; prior to setting out he slipped into his pocket a
+well-filled purse, and thrust a loaded revolver into the belt he wore
+about his waist.
+
+"The scoundrel was anxious that I should come alone, but he did not
+prohibit me from arming myself," muttered he, with a grim smile, "and I
+have seen too much of Signor Benedetto to care to leave the game
+entirely in his hands!"
+
+Quitting the palace by a private door, after making sure that everybody
+was asleep and that he was unobserved, Monte-Cristo bent his steps in
+the direction of the almond grove. It was a moonless night and very
+dark; the air was rather chill, while the roar of the surf sounded
+louder than usual in the crisp, bracing atmosphere. The Count gathered
+his cloak tightly about him and walked steadily onward, notwithstanding
+the thick darkness. At length the heavy odor of the almond blossoms
+warned him that he was approaching his destination, and he paused to
+survey the scene.
+
+About fifty yards away the almond grove loomed up, casting a denser
+shade upon the surrounding blackness. The Count hastened his steps and
+in a few seconds stood among the trees. As he paused the figure of a man
+emerged from behind a huge fragment of rock and thus hailed him:
+
+"Are you the Count of Monte-Cristo?"
+
+"I am," was the firm reply.
+
+"And are you alone, as I recommended?"
+
+"Entirely alone. Now, if you have finished your questions, pray who are
+you?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"Merely for form's sake."
+
+"Well, then, I am Benedetto."
+
+"Of course. As it was too dark for me to distinguish your features, I
+simply wanted to identify you. Now, state your business as briefly as
+possible."
+
+"I escaped from Toulon long ago, and, after wandering all over Europe,
+settled in Athens, where I remained until a week since, when the result
+of a difficulty compelled me to quit the city."
+
+"An assassination?"
+
+"Yes, an assassination!"
+
+Monte-Cristo shuddered to hear the cold-blooded villain talk so calmly
+of his foul crime, but, conquering his aversion, he said between his
+teeth:
+
+"Proceed."
+
+"I fled from Athens under cover of the night and the next morning hired
+a fisherman to bring me here in his boat, thinking that the island was
+inhabited only by a few poverty-stricken wretches who gained a scanty
+subsistence from the sea. On my arrival I was filled with terror at
+beholding your magnificent palace, which I was told belonged to a great
+lord. I naturally imagined that no one could inhabit such a dwelling
+save some high official of the Greek Government, and, without making
+further inquiries, again secured the services of the fisherman, who took
+me to the neighboring Island of Kylo. There I was in safety, for I fell
+in with a band of stout-hearted men, of whom I eventually became the
+chief."
+
+"Bandits, no doubt!"
+
+"Yes, bandits, if you will, but valiant men all the same. We prospered
+exceedingly and imagined that our career could be continued with
+impunity as long as we might desire; in this, however, we were sadly
+mistaken, for one fatal night the Greek soldiery suddenly descended upon
+us and hemmed us in on every side ere we were aware of their presence.
+We fought none the less desperately on that account, and in the
+sanguinary conflict all my companions were slain. I was grievously
+wounded and left for dead, but the following day managed to crawl to the
+beach and contrived to be conveyed hither, having learned by accident
+that the great lord of the Island of Salmis was no other than my old
+friend of happier days, the Count of Monte-Cristo, in short, yourself.
+Now, you know my story. I am a fugitive here as in France, and need your
+aid to enable me to escape."
+
+"You want money?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"A million of francs!"
+
+"Man!" cried Monte-Cristo, breathless with astonishment at Benedetto's
+audacious demand, "you are out of your senses! I will give you a
+thousand francs, but not a sou more!"
+
+"Beware how you trifle with a desperate man!" hissed Benedetto.
+
+"What have I to fear?" said Monte-Cristo, calmly. "You are alone."
+
+"I am not alone, Count of Monte-Cristo; my stout-hearted friends of the
+Island of Kylo are with me, and ready to support my demand!"
+
+"Then you lied to me; your story was a base fabrication."
+
+"Partly, Count; but enough of this--I want the million of francs; it is
+a small sum for you to spare an old friend, who did you as much service
+as Prince Andrea Cavalcanti! Are you going to give me the money?"
+
+"I am not!" replied Monte-Cristo, drawing his revolver from his belt and
+cocking it.
+
+"Ho! ho!" laughed Benedetto, mockingly, "that's your game, is it? Again
+I tell you to beware how you trifle with a desperate man!"
+
+At the repetition of this phrase, as if it had been a preconcerted
+signal, a dozen stalwart figures started up from the darkness and
+surrounded Monte-Cristo, who instantly discharged his weapon right and
+left among them. Several of the bandits fell, pierced by the balls, and
+Benedetto, with a loud oath, leaped at the Count's throat, brandishing a
+long, keen-bladed dagger above his head.
+
+Raising his empty revolver, Monte-Cristo with a hand of iron struck his
+on-coming assailant full in the face, stretching him instantly at his
+feet; but scarcely had he accomplished this when three of the bandits
+sprang upon him and hurled him to the earth beside Benedetto.
+
+"Now," cried one of the miscreants with a frightful curse, at the same
+time placing the muzzle of a pistol at the Count's temple, "now, my
+lord of Salmis, your time has come!"
+
+As he was about to fire, there arose a tremendous shout, and, headed by
+Ali, who swung aloft a Turkish yataghan, the entire force of
+Monte-Cristo's servants, armed to the teeth, swept down upon the
+astonished bandits. At the same instant a pistol-shot rang out, and the
+man who had threatened to take the Count's life fell to the ground a
+corpse. As Monte-Cristo regained his feet he saw Esperance standing a
+short distance away, the smoking weapon with which he had just killed
+his father's would-be murderer still clenched in his boyish hand. The
+struggle that ensued was of short duration, for the bandits, finding
+themselves outnumbered, speedily fled to their boats, leaving their
+wounded comrades behind them.
+
+When the Count realized that Esperance, his beloved son, had saved him
+from death, he rushed to the heroic lad, took him in his arms and bore
+him beyond the reach of danger; this done, he returned to aid Ali and
+the servants, but they were already victors and in full possession of
+the field.
+
+A search was made for the body of Benedetto, but it had disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE CONFLAGRATION.
+
+
+As the Count of Monte-Cristo, Esperance, Ali and the servants approached
+the palace on their return from the struggle with the bandits in the
+almond grove, their ears were suddenly saluted by loud cries of terror.
+They came from the library and thither Monte-Cristo hurried, followed by
+his son. On the floor in the centre of the apartment Haydee lay in a
+swoon, and bending over her mother was Zuleika, screaming and wringing
+her little hands. The Count raised his wife and placed her upon a divan,
+while Esperance brought a water-jar and bathed her temples with its
+cool, refreshing contents, Zuleika meanwhile holding her mother's hands
+and sobbing violently.
+
+At last Haydee recovered consciousness, and opening her eyes gazed
+wildly around her; seeing her husband, Esperance and Zuleika safe beside
+her, she uttered a faint sigh of relief. It was several moments longer
+before she could speak; then she exclaimed in a tremulous voice:
+
+"Oh! my lord, did you meet that terrible man?"
+
+"What man, Haydee?" asked the Count. "Do you mean Benedetto?"
+
+"I do not know his name; I never saw him before," answered Haydee; "but
+his face was all battered and bleeding; on his uncovered head the locks
+were matted and unkempt, and his garments were torn as if in wrenching
+his way through a thicket of tangled briers."
+
+"Benedetto, it was Benedetto!" cried Monte-Cristo. "You do not mean to
+say he was here, in this room?"
+
+"He was here and only a short time ago," replied Haydee, with a shudder.
+"I was standing at the window with Zuleika when he rushed by me like a
+whirlwind, and going to your secretary endeavored to open it, but in
+vain; then with a cry of rage he ran to the window, leaped out into the
+darkness and was gone! I know nothing further, for as he vanished I fell
+to the floor in a swoon."
+
+Monte-Cristo touched a bell and almost immediately Ali stood bowing
+before him, as calm and unmoved as though nothing unusual had occurred.
+
+"Ali," said the Count, "post all the servants within and without the
+palace, and let the strictest watch be kept until dawn. The chief of the
+bandits, who is no other than the former Prince Cavalcanti, was here in
+our absence and must yet be hovering in the vicinity. See that he does
+not effect another entrance, as his purpose is robbery if not murder!"
+
+Ali signified by his eloquent pantomime that he had already taken it
+upon himself to station the servants as his master directed, and that it
+would be utterly impossible for any one to approach the palace without
+being seen and seized.
+
+As the faithful Nubian turned to retire, Monte-Cristo noticed that his
+right hand was bandaged as if wounded, and inquired whether he had been
+hurt in the conflict with the bandits. Ali explained that a dagger
+thrust had cut his palm, but that the wound had been properly cared for
+and would soon heal.
+
+When the Count and his family were once more alone together, Haydee
+threw herself at her husband's feet and humbly demanded pardon.
+
+"What have you done to require pardon?" asked Monte-Cristo, in
+astonishment. "Speak, but I forgive you beforehand.'
+
+"Oh! my lord," said Haydee, still maintaining her kneeling posture
+despite her husband's efforts to raise her, "oh! my lord, I have been
+guilty of a despicable act, but my love for you and fears for your
+safety must be my excuse. You left the letter you received so strangely
+this morning lying upon your secretary. I opened it and hurriedly made
+myself acquainted with its contents, for I had a premonition that some
+terrible danger threatened you. Oh! my lord, pardon, pardon!"
+
+Monte-Cristo raised her to her feet, and imprinted a kiss upon her
+pallid brow.
+
+"So then, it is to you, Haydee, that I owe my timely rescue from the
+hands of Benedetto and his band of cut-throats! Had you committed even a
+much more serious fault than peeping into my correspondence, that would
+be more than sufficient to secure my full forgiveness. But do you know
+that Esperance shot and killed the miscreant who held his pistol to my
+temple and was about to blow out my brains?"
+
+"Esperance?" said Haydee in bewilderment. "Did he not remain behind with
+Zuleika and myself?"
+
+"No, mamma," said the boy, holding his head proudly erect. "I could not
+remain behind. I knew papa was in danger, and, taking a pistol that I
+had seen Ali load this morning from the cabinet of fire-arms, I followed
+the servants, arriving at the almond grove just in time."
+
+Haydee ran to her son, and, taking him in her arms, pressed him fondly
+to her heart, kissing him again and again.
+
+"Oh! Esperance," she cried, "had I known you were in the midst of those
+bloodthirsty cut-throats I should have died of terror! But you have
+saved your father's life, my son, and I bless you for it!"
+
+"He is a little hero," said Monte-Cristo, impressively.
+
+Zuleika had thrown herself upon the divan, and, utterly worn out by the
+excitement through which she had passed, was already wrapped in a deep
+slumber. The Count, Haydee and Esperance, however, could not resign
+themselves to sleep, and when the gray light of dawn appeared in the
+eastern sky, they were still in the library and still watching.
+
+Benedetto had not been seen again, and a diligent search of the entire
+island, made by Ali and the servants, failed to reveal even the
+slightest trace of him. He had evidently succeeded in finding some
+fisherman's skiff and in it had made his escape.
+
+This view of the case was confirmed a few hours later, when old Alexis
+came to the palace and informed Monte-Cristo that his smack had vanished
+during the night, having, in all probability, been carried off by
+thieves.
+
+"I knew," said the fisherman, "that the Island of Kylo was infested by
+bandits, but I had no idea they would venture here. Now, however, I
+thought I had better put you on your guard."
+
+"I am much indebted to you, Alexis," said the Count; then, slipping a
+purse of money into his hand, he added: "Take that and provide yourself
+with a new boat."
+
+Alexis touched his cap, bowed and was about to withdraw when
+Monte-Cristo said to him, assuming a careless tone:
+
+"By the way, my good fellow, have you ever chanced to meet any of the
+bandits you mentioned?"
+
+"Often, Excellency," replied Alexis.
+
+"What kind of men are they?"
+
+"Bold, bad wretches, whose hands have been more than once stained with
+innocent blood."
+
+"What is their strength?"
+
+"They number about fifty."
+
+"Do any women dwell among them?"
+
+"Yes, Excellency, their wives and sweethearts."
+
+"Who is the leader of the band?"
+
+"A strange, morose man, who has not been long in their midst."
+
+"Is he a Greek?"
+
+"No, Excellency, he is a foreigner."
+
+"A Frenchman?"
+
+"Quite likely, though I am not sure."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"He calls himself Demetrius."
+
+"Did he ever question you about me?"
+
+"Yes, Excellency."
+
+"And what did you reply?"
+
+"I told him you were the Count of Monte-Cristo."
+
+"Ah! What did he say then?"
+
+"He said he had heard of you before."
+
+"That will do, Alexis; I have all the information I require."
+
+The fisherman again touched his cap, and, making a low bow, took his
+departure.
+
+Under ordinary circumstances Monte-Cristo would not have been disturbed
+by the presence of bandits so near the Island of Salmis, but it became
+an altogether different thing when those bandits were led by Benedetto.
+
+A month passed, but in it nothing occurred calculated to break the
+tranquillity of the Count and his family. The bandits had not reappeared
+and Benedetto had given no sign of life. The faithful Ali no longer
+deemed it necessary to maintain his precautions against surprise, and
+the strict watch that had been kept up day and night ever since the
+conflict in the almond grove was abandoned. Haydee, Zuleika and
+Esperance resumed their usual mode of life, having apparently dismissed
+the robbers from their minds, while even Monte-Cristo seemed free from
+all uneasiness.
+
+One night, while the Count was writing at a late hour in the library, he
+yielded to fatigue and fell asleep over his papers. His slumber was
+troubled with a strange and vivid dream.
+
+A man in the picturesque garb of a Greek peasant, and wearing a mask on
+his face, suddenly stood before him, with his arms folded upon his
+breast. Monte-Cristo saw him distinctly, though unable to stir either
+hand or foot. The singular visitant surveyed the Count long and
+steadily. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but as to his
+identity the sleeper could form no idea. At last he slowly removed the
+mask, and recognition was instantaneous. The man was Danglars. He raised
+his right hand, and, pointing with his forefinger at the Count, said
+deliberately, with a hiss like some venomous serpent:
+
+"Edmond Dantes, there is a bitter account open between us, and I am here
+to force you to a bitter settlement!"
+
+The light of the huge lamp, suspended from the ceiling, fell full upon
+Danglars' countenance; it was as bloodless as that of a corpse, and the
+eyes shone with a remorseless, vindictive glare. The banker continued in
+the same hissing tone, his words penetrating to the very marrow of the
+slumberer's bones:
+
+"Count of Monte-Cristo, for by that name it still pleases you to be
+called, listen to me. By the most ingenious and fiendish combinations
+possible for a human being to contrive, you wrecked my fortune and with
+it my hopes. You drove me ignominiously from Paris; in Rome you caused
+me to be starved and robbed by Luigi Vampa and his brigands; then with
+the malevolent magnanimity of an arch-demon you sent me forth into the
+world a fugitive and an outcast. Count of Monte-Cristo, Edmond Dantes,
+low-born sailor of Marseilles, modern Mephistopheles as you are, I will
+be even with you! You have had your vengeance; now you shall feel mine!
+Here in the Grecian Archipelago, on the Island of Salmis, I will torture
+you through your dearest affections, and grind you to dust beneath my
+heel!"
+
+As Danglars finished, his features changed and became those of
+Villefort, while his Greek peasant's garb was transformed into the
+sombre habiliments of the Procureur du Roi. Villefort's face wore the
+look of madness, but there was a freezing calmness in his voice as he
+said:
+
+"Edmond Dantes, Count of Monte-Cristo, gaze upon the ruin you have made.
+Through you I was dragged down from my high position, exposed,
+humiliated and deprived of reason. But although the mere wreck of my
+former self, I am not utterly powerless, as you shall learn to your
+cost. You raised up my infamous son, Benedetto, to be the instrument of
+my destruction. Now, he shall work yours, and avenge his unhappy
+father!"
+
+The apparition paused, sighed deeply, and then resumed in a tone of
+still greater menace:
+
+"Count of Monte-Cristo, look well to your beloved wife, Haydee, look
+well to your heroic son, Esperance, look well to your darling daughter,
+Zuleika, for this night they are in frightful danger! Look well to your
+fabulous riches, for they are threatened; look well to your stately and
+magnificent palace, for already the element that shall devour it is
+noiselessly and stealthily at work! Count of Monte-Cristo, farewell!"
+
+A heart-rending shriek rang in the sleeper's ears, a mighty flash
+dazzled his eyes, and, with a grim smile upon his pallid countenance,
+Villefort vanished.
+
+Monte-Cristo awoke with a quick start and passed his hand across his
+forehead, as if dazed; then he leaped to his feet and glanced
+breathlessly about him. Danglars and Villefort had been only the idle
+coinage of his brain, but the heart-rending shriek, the mighty flash,
+they were, indeed, stern realities--the shriek was Haydee's, and the
+flash was fire!
+
+"My God!" cried Monte-Cristo, standing for an instant rooted to the
+spot, "can it be possible that this dream is the truth after all, and
+that I am even now to feel the vengeance of those two men?"
+
+He sprang into the spacious hall that was as light as day, and, as he
+did so, the figure of a man rushed by him--it was Benedetto, and in his
+hand he held a long knife dripping with blood. The Count turned and
+pursued him, snatching a dagger from a table as he ran. At the door
+leading to the lawn, he grasped him firmly by the shoulder and held him.
+
+"Murderer!" he shouted, "whose blood is that upon your knife?"
+
+"The blood of Haydee, the Greek slave!" hissed Benedetto, with a glare
+of ferocious triumph, "the blood of Haydee, your wife! Edmond Dantes, I
+am even with you!"
+
+Monte-Cristo struck at the assassin with his dagger, but Benedetto
+eluded the blow, and raising his own weapon inflicted a frightful gash
+upon the Count's cheek.
+
+A terrible struggle ensued. Monte-Cristo was possessed of wonderful
+strength and activity, but in both these respects the two desperate
+antagonists seemed fairly matched. Three times did the Count bury his
+dagger in Benedetto's body, but, though the assassin's blood gushed
+copiously from his wounds, he continued to fight with the utmost
+determination. At length the men grappled in a supreme, deadly effort,
+but Monte-Cristo, making a false step, slipped on the blood-spattered
+marble floor, and Benedetto, with the quickness of thought, hurling him
+backward, freed himself and bounding through the open doorway vanished
+in the darkness beyond.
+
+The Count uttered a groan of despair as he saw Haydee's self-confessed
+murderer escape him, and staggered to his feet; the fierce conflict with
+Benedetto had exhausted him, and he stood for an instant panting and
+breathless. The shrieks had now grown fainter and the hall was full of
+smoke. During all this time neither Ali nor any of the servants under
+him had appeared, a circumstance that, to Monte-Cristo, seemed
+inexplicable. He, however, did not pause to give it thought, but dashed
+up the stairway and strove to reach his wife's apartment; blinding,
+stifling clouds of smoke, through which penetrated the glare of the
+conflagration, drove him back again and again, but he renewed his
+attempts to force a passage with undaunted energy and courage. Finally,
+compressing his lips and holding his nostrils with the thumb and
+forefinger of his right hand, he gave a headlong plunge, and succeeded
+in reaching Haydee's door; it was open, displaying a scene that caused
+the Count's heart to sink within him; the whole chamber was one sea of
+flame; fiery tongues, like so many writhing and hissing serpents, were
+licking and consuming the costly tapestry, the richly carved furniture
+and the magnificent objects of art; the curtains of the bed were
+blazing, and upon the couch lay the senseless form of the wife of
+Monte-Cristo, the pallor of her faultless countenance contrasting
+painfully with the ruddy glow of the devouring element. In Haydee's
+breast was a gaping wound, from which her life blood was slowly oozing
+in ruby drops.
+
+Rendered utterly reckless by the terrible sight, the Count madly rushed
+to the couch, tore his beloved Haydee from it, and, clasping her tightly
+against his bosom, staggered into the corridor with his precious
+burden. There the smoke had increased in volume and density, but,
+summoning all his resolution and endurance to his aid, he plunged
+through it, and finally was successful in reaching the library.
+
+Then, with the swiftness of a flash of lightning, the husband was
+replaced by the father, and Monte-Cristo, for the first time since
+Haydee's shrieks had awakened him from his dream, thought of his
+children. Where were they and what had happened to them? The Count felt
+a cold perspiration break out upon his forehead, and a feeling of
+unspeakable dread took entire possession of him. Haydee demanded
+immediate attention, but Esperance and Zuleika must instantly be found
+and rescued. At the top of his voice Monte-Cristo shouted for Ali, but
+no reply was returned. Fearing to leave Haydee for even a moment, the
+Count strode about the library like a caged wild animal, still holding
+her in his arms. He shouted again and again until he was hoarse, calling
+distractedly upon Esperance, Zuleika and all the servants in turn.
+
+At last an answering shout came suddenly from the lawn, and old Alexis,
+followed by several fishermen, leaped into the library through an open
+window.
+
+Resigning Haydee to Alexis, the Count, accompanied by the fishermen,
+fairly flew to the apartment of his children, situated on a corridor in
+another portion of the palace. There Esperance and Zuleika were
+discovered gagged and bound; they lay upon the floor of their chamber,
+while Ali, who had been treated in like manner, was extended near them.
+To release the prisoners was but the work of a moment, and then it was
+learned that all the servants under Ali were confined in their
+dormitory. They, as well as Monte-Cristo's children and the Nubian, had
+been suddenly seized by a party of rough-looking Greeks, evidently a
+portion of Benedetto's band.
+
+Meanwhile the flames had spread from Haydee's chamber to the adjoining
+quarters of the edifice, and the entire palace seemed doomed, for to
+check the conflagration appeared impossible, but so happy had the Count
+been made by the recovery of his son and daughter, unharmed, that he
+gave himself no concern about the probable destruction of his
+magnificent property.
+
+Seizing his children, he directed Ali and the fishermen to release the
+captive servants, and hastily returned to the library. As he entered the
+room Haydee uttered a low groan and opened her eyes; she was lying on a
+divan, where old Alexis had placed her. Esperance and Zuleika sprang to
+her side; she took each by the hand, and as she did so they saw the
+wound in her breast. Zuleika burst into tears. Esperance compressed his
+lips and grew deadly pale.
+
+"My loved ones," said Haydee, faintly, "I feel that I am about to leave
+you forever, perhaps in a few moments. Be good children and obey your
+father in all things. Esperance, Zuleika, stoop and kiss me."
+
+They did as she desired; her lips were already purple and cold; the
+stamp of death was upon her features. Suddenly her frame was convulsed
+and her eyes assumed a glassy look.
+
+"Monte-Cristo, my husband, where are you?" she said, in a broken voice.
+
+"Here, Haydee," answered the Count, approaching.
+
+He strove to appear calm, but could not control his emotion.
+
+"Nearer, nearer, Edmond," said Haydee, growing weaker and weaker.
+
+The Count sank on his knees beside his dying wife and put his arms about
+her neck.
+
+"Oh! Haydee, Haydee," he sobbed; "thrice accursed be the infamous wretch
+who has done this!"
+
+"Edmond, my children, farewell," gasped Haydee; "I am going to a better
+land!"
+
+The death rattle was in her throat; she raised herself with a mighty
+effort, gazed lovingly at her husband and children, and strove to speak
+again, but could not; then a flickering shade of violet passed over her
+countenance, and she fell back dead.
+
+Esperance and Zuleika stood as if stunned; Monte-Cristo was overwhelmed
+with grief and despair.
+
+"The whole palace is in flames! Save yourselves, save yourselves!"
+cried a fisherman, rushing into the library, followed by his companions,
+Ali and the servants.
+
+Monte-Cristo leaped to his feet, seizing the corpse of Haydee and
+raising it in his arms. Ali grasped Esperance and Zuleika, and the
+entire party hastened from the burning edifice. They were not an instant
+too soon, for as they quitted the library the tempest of fire burst into
+it, accompanied by torrents of smoke. The fishermen and servants,
+commanded by the Nubian, had made every effort to save the doomed
+mansion, but in vain.
+
+Monte-Cristo and his children found refuge in the hut of Alexis, to
+which Haydee's body was reverently borne.
+
+The wife of Monte-Cristo was buried on the Island of Salmis, and over
+her remains her husband erected a massive monument.
+
+Shortly afterwards the Count, Esperance and Zuleika, attended by the
+faithful Ali, quitted the Island and took passage on a vessel bound for
+France.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE NEWS FROM ALGERIA.
+
+
+Beauchamp, the journalist, sat at his desk in his editorial sanctum
+early one bright morning in the autumn of 1841. He had gone to work long
+before his usual hour, for important movements were on foot, the
+political atmosphere was agitated and Paris was in a state of feverish
+excitement; besides, Beauchamp had that day printed in his journal a
+dispatch from Algeria that would be certain to cause a great sensation,
+and, with the proper spirit of pride, the journalist desired to be at
+his post that he might receive the numerous congratulations his friends
+could not fail to offer, as the dispatch had appeared in his paper
+alone.
+
+The sanctum had not an attractive look; in fact, it was rather
+dilapidated, while, in addition, the disorder occasioned by the previous
+night's work had not been repaired, and all was chaos and confusion.
+
+Beauchamp was busily engaged in glancing over the rival morning papers
+when Lucien Debray entered and seated himself at another desk. The
+Ministerial Secretary smiled upon the journalist in a knowing way, and
+the latter, nodding to him with an air of triumph, silently pointed to
+the pile of journals he had finished examining. Lucien took them up,
+and without a word began scanning their contents.
+
+"Glorious news that from the army in Algeria!" cried Chateau-Renaud,
+rushing into the sanctum.
+
+"Glorious, indeed!" replied the editor, looking up from the paper over
+which he was hurriedly skimming. On the huge table at his side, as well
+as beneath it, and under his feet and his capacious arm-chair, nothing
+was to be seen but newspapers.
+
+"Take a chair, Renaud, if you can find one, and help yourself to the
+news. You see I have Lucien similarly engaged yonder."
+
+The Ministerial Secretary glanced up from his papers, returned his
+friend's salutation and resumed his reading. He was dressed with his
+customary elegance and richness, but his form and face were fuller than
+when last before the reader, and his brown hair was besprinkled with
+gray.
+
+"I congratulate you, Beauchamp, on being the first to give the news,"
+continued Chateau-Renaud. "Not a paper in Paris but your own has a line
+from the army this morning."
+
+"Rather congratulate me and my paper on having a friend at court."
+
+"Ha! and that explains the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that an
+opposition journal has intelligence, which only the Bureau of War could
+have anticipated! Treason--treason!"
+
+The editor and the Secretary exchanged significant smiles.
+
+"Oh! I don't doubt that your favors are reciprocal," continued the
+young aristocrat, laughing. "I've half a mind to be something useful
+myself--Minister--editor--anything but an idler and a law-giver--just to
+experience the exquisite sensation of a new pleasure--the pleasure of
+revealing and publishing to the world something it knew not before. Why,
+you two fellows, in this dark and dirty little room, are the two
+greatest men in Paris this morning--or were, rather, before your paper,
+Beauchamp, laid before the world what only you and Lucien knew
+previously. Oh! the delight, the rapture of knowing something that
+nobody else knows, and then of making the revelation!"
+
+"And this news from Algeria is really important," remarked the editor.
+
+"Important! So important that it will be before the Chambers this
+morning," replied the Secretary.
+
+"So I supposed," said the Deputy, "and called to learn additional
+particulars, if you had any, on my way to the Chambers."
+
+"We gave all we had, my dear Lycurgus, and for that were indebted to an
+official dispatch, telegraphed to the War Office, and faithfully
+re-telegraphed to us by our well-beloved Lucien."
+
+"It's true, then, as I have sometimes suspected, that the wires radiate
+from the Minister's sanctum to the editor's?" was the laughing
+rejoinder.
+
+"It must be so, or there's witchcraft in it. There's witchcraft, at any
+rate, in this new invention. Speed, secrecy, security and surety--no
+eastern genius of Arabian fiction can be compared to the electric
+telegraph; and how Ministers or editors continued to keep the world in
+vassalage, as they always have done, without this ready slave, seems now
+scarce less wonderful than the invention itself. Instead of detracting
+from the power of the press, the telegraph renders it more powerful than
+ever."
+
+"But affairs in Algeria--is not the news splendid!" cried the editor.
+"Why did we not all become Spahis and win immortality, as some of our
+generals have?"
+
+"As to immortality," said the Secretary, "we should have been far more
+likely to win the phantom as dead men than as living heroes."
+
+"Debray was at the raising of the siege of Constantine," said Beauchamp
+laughing, "and knows all about the honors of war."
+
+"Yes, indeed, and all about the raptures of starvation, of cold and
+hunger, after victory, and the ecstatic felicity of being pursued by six
+Bedouins, and after having slain five having my own neck encircled by
+the yataghan of the sixth!"
+
+"And how chanced it that you saved your head, Lucien?" asked the Count.
+
+"Save it--I didn't save it; but a most excellent friend of mine--a
+friend in need--galloped up and saved it for me."
+
+"Yes," replied Beauchamp, "our gallant friend, Maximilian Morrel, the
+Captain of Spahis--now colonel of a regiment, and in the direct line of
+promotion to the first vacant baton--eh, Lucien? A lucky thing to save
+the head of one of the War Office from a Bedouin's yataghan. Up--up--up,
+like a balloon, has this young Spahi risen ever since."
+
+"You are wrong, Beauchamp. Not like a balloon. Rather like a planet.
+Maximilian Morrel is one of the most gallant young men in the French
+army, and step by step, from rank to rank, has he hewn his own path with
+his good sabre, in a strong hand, nerved by a brave heart and proud
+ambition, to the position he now holds."
+
+"His name I see among the immortals in the dispatch of this morning.
+Well, well, Morrel is a splendid fellow, no doubt, but it's a splendid
+thing to have friends in the War Office, nevertheless, who will give
+that splendor a chance to shine--will plant the lighted candle in a
+candlestick, and not smother its beams under a bushel."
+
+"Morrel has now been in Africa five whole years," said the Secretary--"a
+few months only excepted after his marriage with Villefort's fair
+daughter, Valentine, (as was said) when he was indulged with a furlough
+for his honeymoon."
+
+"She is not in Paris?" asked Beauchamp.
+
+"No; she leads the life of a perfect recluse with her child, during her
+husband's absence, at his villa somewhere in the south--near Marseilles,
+where the department forwards her letters."
+
+"Yet she is said to be a magnificent woman," remarked the Count.
+
+"Wonderful!" cried Beauchamp. "A magnificent woman and a recluse!"
+
+"Oh! but it was a love-match of the most devoted species, you must
+remember."
+
+"True; she was to have married our friend, Franz d'Epinay."
+
+"And died to save herself from that fate, I suppose--and afterwards was
+resurrected and blessed Morrel with her hand and heart, and the most
+exquisite person that even a jaded voluptuary could covet.
+Happy--happy--happy man!"
+
+"Apropos of dying," said the Secretary, "do you remember how fast people
+died at M. de Villefort's house about that time?"
+
+"Horrible! A whole family of two or three generations, one after the
+other! First M. and Madame de Saint-Meran--then Barrois, the old servant
+of M. Noirtier--then Valentine, and, last of all, Madame de Villefort
+and Edward, her idol. No wonder that M. le Procureur du Roi himself went
+mad under such an accumulation of horrors! By the by, Debray, is M. de
+Villefort still an inmate of the Maison Royale de Charenton?"
+
+"I know nothing to the contrary," replied the Secretary, who had resumed
+his paper, and to whom the subject seemed not altogether agreeable. "He
+is an incurable." Then, as if to turn the subject, he continued:
+"Apropos of the immortals of Algeria, here is a name that seems destined
+even to a more rapid apotheosis than that of the favored Morrel."
+
+"You mean Joliette?" said the editor. "Who, in the name of all that is
+mysterious and heroic, is this same Joliette? I have found it impossible
+to discover, with all the means at the command of the press."
+
+"And I, with all the means at the command of the Government. All we can
+discover is this--that he is a man of about twenty-five; that he
+enlisted at Marseilles, and in less than three years has risen from the
+ranks to the command of a battalion. His career has been most
+brilliant."
+
+"And to whose favor does he owe his wonderful advancement, Beauchamp?"
+asked the Deputy, laughing.
+
+"To that of Marshal Bugeaud, Governor-General of Algeria."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Who has indulged him with an appointment in every forlorn hope!"
+
+"Excellent!" cried the Count. "What more could a man resolved to be a
+military immortal desire? Immortality the goal--two paths conduct to
+it--each sure--death--life!--the former the shorter, and, perhaps, the
+surer! But there is one name I never see in the war dispatches. Do you
+ever meet with it, Messrs. editor and Secretary--I mean the name of our
+brilliant friend, Albert de Morcerf? The rumor ran that, after the
+disgrace and suicide of the Count, his father, he and his mother went
+south, and he later to Africa."
+
+"I have hardly seen the name of Morcerf in print since the paragraph
+headed 'Yanina' in my paper, about which poor Albert was so anxious to
+fight me."
+
+"Nor I," said Debray. "But where now is Madame de Morcerf? Without
+exception, she was the most splendid specimen of a woman I ever saw!"
+
+"High praise, that!" cried the Count, laughing. "Who would suppose our
+cold, calculating, ambitious, haughty, talented and opulent diplomat and
+aristocrat had so much blood in his veins? When before was he known to
+admire anything, male or female--but himself--or, at all events, to be
+guilty of the bad taste of expressing that admiration?"
+
+"Debray is right," replied the journalist, somewhat gravely. "Madame de
+Morcerf was, indeed, a noble and dignified woman--accomplished, lovely,
+dignified, amiable--"
+
+"Stop!--stop!--in the name of all that's forbearing, be considerate of
+my weak nerves! You, too, Beauchamp. Well, she must have been a paragon
+to make the conquest of two of the most inveterate bachelors in all
+Paris! But where is this marvel of excellence--pardon me, Beauchamp,"
+perceiving that the journalist looked yet more grave, and seemed in no
+mood for bantering or being bantered--"where is Madame de Morcerf at the
+present time?"
+
+"At Marseilles, I have heard."
+
+"And is married again?"
+
+"No. She is yet a widow."
+
+"And is a recluse, like Morrel's beautiful wife?"
+
+"So says report. They dwell together."
+
+"How romantic! The young wife, whose hero-husband is winning glory amid
+the perils of war and pestilence, pours her griefs, joys and
+anticipations into the bosom of the young mother, who appreciates and
+reciprocates all, because she has a son exposed to the same perils--and
+both beautiful as the morning! A charming picture! Two immortals in
+epaulets and sashes in the background are only wanted instead of one.
+But I must to the Chambers. M. Dantes is expected to speak in the
+tribune this morning upon his measure for the workmen."
+
+"Do you know, Count, who this M. Dantes really is?" asked Debray.
+
+"There's a question for a Ministerial Secretary to ask a member while a
+journalist sits by! I only know of M. Dantes that he is the most
+eloquent man I ever listened to. I don't mean that he's the greatest
+man, or the profoundest statesman, or the wisest politician, or the
+sagest political economist; but I do mean that, for natural powers of
+persuasion and denunciation--for natural oratory--I have never known his
+rival. If Plato's maxim, 'that oratory must be estimated by its
+effects,' is at all correct, then is M. Dantes the greatest orator in
+France, for the effect of his oratory is miraculous. There is a sort of
+magic in his clear, sonorous, powerful, yet most exquisitely modulated
+voice, and the wave of his arm is like that of a necromancer's wand."
+
+"You are enthusiastic, Count," observed Beauchamp, "but very just. M.
+Dantes is, indeed, a remarkable man, and possessed of remarkable
+endowments, both of mind and body. His personal advantages are
+wonderful. Such a figure and grace as his are alone worth more than all
+the powers of other distinguished speakers for popular effect. 'The eyes
+of the multitude are more eloquent than their ears,' as the English
+Shakespeare says."
+
+"I never saw such eyes and such a face," remarked Debray, "but once in
+my life. Do you remember the Count of Monte-Cristo, Messieurs?"
+
+"We shall not soon forget him," was the reply. "But this man differs
+greatly from the Count in most respects, though certainly not unlike him
+in others."
+
+"True," replied the Secretary; "in manners, habits, costume and a
+thousand other things there is a marked difference. Besides, the Count
+was said to be incalculably rich, while the Deputy has every appearance
+of being in very moderate circumstances. But he leads a life so retired
+that he is known only in the Chambers and in his public character. I
+allude to the Deputy's person, when I speak of resemblance to that
+wonderful Count, who set all Paris in a fever, and, more wonderful
+still, kept it so for a whole season. There is I know not what in his
+air and manners that often recalls to me that extraordinary man. There
+are the same large and powerful eyes, the same brilliant teeth for which
+the women envied the Count so much, the same graceful and dignified
+figure, the same peculiar voice, the same good taste in dress, and,
+above all, the same colorless, pallid face, as if, to borrow the idea of
+the Countess of G----, he had risen from the dead, or was a visitant
+from another world, or a vampire of this. Her celebrated friend, Lord
+B----, she used to say, was the only man she ever knew with such a
+complexion."
+
+"But, if I recollect rightly," said Beauchamp, "the Count of
+Monte-Cristo was somewhat noted for his profusion of black hair and
+beard. The Deputy Dantes is so utterly out of the mode, and out of good
+taste, too, as to wear no beard, and his hair is short. His face is as
+smooth as a woman's, and he always wears a white cravat like a cure."
+
+"But he is, nevertheless, one of the handsomest men in Paris," added the
+Count--"at least the women say so. You might add, the Deputy has many
+gray hairs among his black ones, and many furrows on his white brow,
+while Monte-Cristo had neither. Besides, M. Dantes has a handsome
+daughter and a son who resembles him greatly, both well grown, while the
+Count was childless."
+
+"Well, well, be his person and family what they may," said the
+Secretary, rising, "I wish to God the Ministry could secure his talents.
+I tell you, Messieurs, that man's influence over the destinies of France
+is to be almost omnipotent. His powerful mind has grasped the great
+problem of the age--remuneration for labor. The next revolution in
+France will hinge upon that--mark the prediction--and this man and his
+coadjutors, among whom Beauchamp here is one, are doing all they can to
+hasten the crisis. The whole soul of this remarkable man seems devoted
+to the elevation of the masses--the laboring classes--the people--and to
+the amelioration of their condition. His efforts and those of all like
+him cannot ultimately succeed. But they will have a temporary triumph,
+and the streets of Paris will run with blood! These men are rousing
+terrible agencies. They are evoking the fiends of hunger and misery,
+which will neither obey them nor lie down at their bidding."
+
+"And the magicians who have summoned these foul fiends will prove their
+earliest victims!" said Chateau-Renaud, in some excitement.
+
+"Messieurs, listen a moment!" cried Beauchamp, rising. "Pardon me, but
+this discussion must cease, at least here. It can lead to no good
+result. As the conductor of a reform journal, I entirely differ with you
+both. But let not political differences interfere with our personal
+friendship. Come, come, old friends, let us forsake this place, redolent
+with politics, having a very atmosphere of discussion, and repair to the
+Chambers, taking Very's on our way."
+
+"Agreed!" cried the Deputy and the Secretary, and the three left the
+journalist's sanctum arm in arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+EDMOND DANTES, DEPUTY FROM MARSEILLES.
+
+
+Beauchamp, Lucien Debray and Chateau-Renaud were not the only persons
+puzzled with regard to the enigmatical M. Dantes; all Paris was more or
+less bothered about him; his entire career prior to his appearance at
+the capital as the Deputy from Marseilles seemed shrouded in
+impenetrable mystery, and this was the more galling to the curious
+Parisians as his wonderful oratorical powers and his intense
+republicanism rendered him the cynosure of all eyes and made him the
+sensation of the hour. The Government had instituted investigations
+concerning him, but without result; even in Marseilles his antecedents
+were unknown; he had come there from the east utterly unheralded,
+attended only by a black servant, and bringing with him his son and
+daughter, but almost immediately he had plunged into politics, winning
+his way to the front with startling rapidity. From the first he had
+ardently espoused the cause of the working people, and such was his
+personal magnetism that he had made hosts of admirers, and had been
+chosen Deputy with hardly a dissenting voice. Some of the inhabitants of
+Marseilles, indeed, remembered a youthful sailor named Edmond Dantes,
+but they asserted that he had been dead many years, and that the Deputy
+was unlike him in every particular.
+
+As the young men passed the Theatre Francais, on their way to the
+Chamber of Deputies, after a glass of sherry and a biscuit at Very's,
+their attention was attracted by a crowd gathered around an immense
+poster spread upon the bill-board. There seemed no little excitement
+among the throng, a large proportion of whom appeared to be artisans and
+laborers, and loud expressions of admiration, accompanied by animated
+gestures, were heard. Nor were there wanting also words of deep
+denunciation and of significant threatening.
+
+"Down! down with the tyrants! Bread or blood! Wages for work! Food for
+the laborer!" and other cries of equally fearful significance were
+audible.
+
+"Do you hear that, Beauchamp?" said Debray, quietly.
+
+"Undoubtedly," was the equally quiet reply.
+
+"Those laborers have deserted the daily toil which would give them the
+bread they so fiercely demand, in order to discuss their imaginary
+misery, and denounce those who are richer than themselves."
+
+"But what brings them to the theatre at this hour?" asked
+Chateau-Renaud.
+
+"The new play," suggested Beauchamp.
+
+"Ah! the new play. 'The Laborer of Lyons,' is it not?"
+
+"Yes," said Debray, "and one of the most dangerous productions of the
+hour."
+
+"It is evidently from the pen of one unaccustomed to dramatic
+composition, yet familiar with stage effect," added the journalist. "And
+yet, without the least claptrap, with but little melodramatic power,
+against strong opposition and bitter prejudices, and without claqueurs,
+its own native force and the popularity of the principles it supports
+have carried it triumphantly through the ordeal of two representations.
+It will, doubtless, have a long run, and its influence will be
+incalculable in the cause it advocates--the cause of human liberty and
+human right."
+
+"No doubt it will exert a most baneful influence," bitterly rejoined
+Debray. "Without containing a syllable to which the Ministry can object,
+at least sufficiently to warrant its suppression, it yet abounds with
+principles, sentiments and theories of the most incendiary description,
+well calculated to rouse the disaffection of the laboring classes to
+frenzy. Its inevitable effect will be to give them a false and
+exaggerated idea of their wrongs and their rights, and to stimulate them
+to revolution. Oh! these men have much to answer for. They are drawing
+down an avalanche."
+
+"They are the champions of human liberty," said Beauchamp, warmly, "and
+will be blessed by posterity, if not by the men of the present
+generation."
+
+"Truce to politics, Messieurs!" cried the Deputy, observing that his
+friends were becoming excited. "I had heard of this play and its
+powerful character. Who's the author, Beauchamp?"
+
+"The production is attributed to M. Dantes, the Deputy from Marseilles,
+with what truth I know not; but he is fully capable of composing such a
+drama. To-morrow night, it is supposed, the author, whoever he may be,
+will be compelled by the people to appear and claim the laurels ready to
+be showered on him in such profusion. But it is nearly three o'clock,"
+continued Beauchamp, "and M. Dantes is expected to speak in the early
+part of the sitting."
+
+"To the Chamber, then," said the others, and the trio mingled with the
+crowd hurrying in the same direction.
+
+"What a glorious thing is popularity!" exclaimed the Count.
+
+"What a glorious thing to be the champion of the people!" rejoined
+Beauchamp.
+
+"And how glorious is that champion's glorious career!" cried the
+Secretary. "Let the hydra alone. Like the antique god of mythology, it
+eats up its own children as soon as they get large enough to be eaten.
+It is a fickle beast, and the idol of to-day it crushes to-morrow."
+
+The hall of the Chamber of Deputies was crowded when the three friends
+entered. Although the hour for the President to take the chair had not
+yet arrived, the benches were full, and the galleries, public and
+private, were overflowing. Strong agitation was visible among the
+Ministerial benches of the extreme left. The Premier himself was
+present, although his cold countenance, like the surface of a frozen
+lake, betrayed neither apprehension nor the reverse. Self-reliant,
+self-poised, calm, seemingly insensible to surrounding objects and
+events, this man of iron, with a heart of ice and a brain of fire,
+glanced quietly and fixedly around him, with his cold, dark eye, which,
+from time to time, rested on the Communist benches of the extreme right,
+unmoved by the stern glances hurled at him by his many fierce opponents
+and the almost tumultuous excitement by which they were agitated.
+
+At length President Sauzet took the chair. The house came to order, and
+the sitting opened with the usual preliminary business. A large number
+of petitions from the workmen of Paris for employment by the Government
+were presented and referred, and one immense roll containing a hundred
+thousand names, which came from the manufacturing districts, was brought
+in on the shoulders of two men and placed in the area before the
+President's chair, escorted by a deputation from the artisans; it was
+received with an uproar of applause from the centre of the extreme right
+of the benches, and from the throngs of blouses in the galleries. The
+tumult having, at length, subsided, the order of the day was announced
+to be the discussion of the bill introduced by M. Dantes, having for its
+purpose the general amelioration of the condition of the industrial
+classes in the Kingdom; and M. Dantes was himself announced to be the
+first on the list to occupy the tribune. A deep murmur of anticipation
+ran around the vast hall at this announcement. The multitudes in the
+galleries leaned forward to gain a better view of this idol, and to
+catch every syllable that might fall from his lips; and every eye among
+the members was turned to the seat of M. Dantes, on the centre right of
+the benches.
+
+A tall figure in black, with a white cravat, rose and advanced to the
+tribune slowly, amid a stillness as hushed and breathless as the prior
+excitement had been noisy. In age, M. Dantes seemed about fifty or
+fifty-five. His form was slight and his movements were graceful and
+dignified. His face was livid and as calm as marble; but for the large
+and eloquent eye, dark as night, one might have thought that broad white
+brow, that massive chin, those firmly compressed lips and that colorless
+mouth were those of a statue. Yet in the furrows of that forehead and
+the deep lines of that face could be read the record of thought and
+suffering. The busy plowshare had turned up the deep graves of departed
+passions. No one could gaze or even glance at that face and not perceive
+at once that it was the visage of a man of many sorrows--yet of a man
+proud, calm, self-possessed, self-poised and indomitable. His hair,
+which had been raven black, now rested in thin waves around his
+expansive forehead and was sprinkled with gray, while his intellectual
+countenance wore that expression of weariness and melancholy which
+illness, deep study and grief invariably trace.
+
+Mounting the steps of the tribune with slow and deliberate tread, he
+drew up his tall figure, and resting his left hand, which grasped a roll
+of papers, upon the marble slab, glanced around on the turbulent billows
+of upturned and excited faces, as if at a loss how to address them.
+Having read the bill, after the usual prefatory remarks, he began by
+laying down the platform which he proposed occupying in its advocacy and
+support, consisting, of course, of abstract, self-evident propositions,
+which none could have the hardihood to gainsay, yet, when once admitted,
+the deductions inevitably flowing therefrom none could resist. The
+propositions seemed safe and indisputable, but the deductions evolved
+from those propositions were as frightful to the legitimist as they were
+delightful to the liberal. That each man is born the heir to the same
+natural rights--that each man, alike and equally with all others, has a
+birthright of which he cannot be divested and of which he cannot divest
+himself, to act, to think and to pursue happiness wherever he can find
+it without infringement on the rights of his fellow beings--none were
+disposed to deny. That each human animal, as each animal of inferior
+grade, has, also, the right of subsistence, drained from the bosom of
+the earth, the great mother of us all, which without his foreknowledge
+or wish gave him being, seemed, also, indisputable. But when from these
+propositions were deduced that crime is rather the result of misery
+than depravity, and that the office of government is more to prevent
+crime by creating happiness than to punish it by creating misery, and
+that for the natural rights resigned by the individual in entering into
+and upholding the social system human government is bound to afford
+employment and subsistence to each of its members, that labor and its
+produce should be in partnership, that competition should be abolished,
+and work and wages so distributed by the State as to equalize the
+condition of each individual in the community, and, finally, that the
+claims of labor are not satisfied by wages, but the workman is entitled
+to a proprietary share in the capital which employs him, inasmuch as all
+the woes and miseries of the laborer arise exclusively from the
+competition for work--when these deductions were advanced the opulent
+and the conservative started back in terror and dismay. Distribution of
+property, universal plunder, havoc, bloodshed, sans culottism, a red
+republic and the ghastly shapes of another Reign of Terror rose in
+frightful vividness before the fancy. As the speaker proceeded to
+illustrate and sustain his positions, which were those of the Communist,
+Socialist, Fourierist, call them which we may, and poured forth a fiery
+flood of persuasion, invective, denunciation and shouts of applause,
+mingled with cries of rage and dismay, rose from all quarters of the
+hall. Unmoved and undaunted, that marble man, livid as a spectre, his
+dark eyes blazing, his thin and writhing lip flecked with foam, his
+tall form swaying to and fro, rising, bending--now thrown back, then
+leaning over the marble bar of the tribune--continued to pour forth his
+scathing sarcasm, his crushing invective, his eloquent persuasion and
+his unanswerable argument in tones, now soft and tuneful as a silvery
+bell, then sad and pitiful as an evening zephyr, then clear, high and
+sonorous as a clarion, then hoarse and deep as the thunder, for a period
+of four hours, unbroken and continuous, without stop or stay.
+
+The effect of this speech, as the orator, pale, exhausted, shattered,
+unstrung, with nerves like the torn cordage of a ship that has outridden
+the tempest, descended from the tribune, baffles all description.
+Fearful of its influence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at once arose,
+and in order to divert the attention of the Chamber asked leave to lay
+before it the late dispatches from the seat of war, setting forth the
+glorious triumphs of the French arms in Algeria. This intelligence,
+which, at any other time, would have been received with rapturous
+enthusiasm, was listened to under the influence of a counterirritant
+already at work, with comparative calmness, and its only effect was to
+cause a postponement of the vote on the laborers' bill upon the plea of
+the lateness of the hour, although not without strenuous opposition from
+the extreme right. The rejoicing of the galleries at the triumph of
+their champion and their fierce applause knew no bounds at the close of
+the sitting, and their idol escaped being borne in his chair to his
+lodgings only by gliding through a private exit from the hall to the
+first carriage he could find.
+
+"What think you?" cried Beauchamp, triumphantly, to the Ministerial
+Secretary, as they were pressed together for an instant by the excited
+throng on the steps as they left the hall.
+
+"Think, Monsieur!" was the bitter rejoinder of the Secretary, whose
+agitation completely overcame his habitual and constitutional
+self-possession, "I think Paris is on the eve of another Reign of
+Terror!"
+
+Beauchamp laughed, and the friends were drawn apart by the conflicting
+billows of the crowd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE MYSTERY THICKENS.
+
+
+M. Dantes' wonderful speech was the principal topic of conversation in
+every quarter of Paris, exciting comment of the most animated
+description. Of course, the workmen and their friends were delighted
+with it, and could not find words strong enough to adequately express
+their enthusiastic admiration for the gifted orator. Those belonging to
+the Government party, on the other hand, denounced the speaker as a
+demagogue and the speech as in the highest degree incendiary and
+dangerous. Strange to relate, whoever spoke of the oration always
+mentioned the new play, "The Laborer of Lyons," attributing its
+authorship to the mysterious Deputy from Marseilles, and the drama
+received cordial endorsement or scathing censure, according to the
+political opinions of those who alluded to it.
+
+For these reasons curiosity in regard to M. Dantes ran higher than ever,
+but instead of decreasing as he became more prominent, the mystery
+surrounding him seemed only to thicken. Nevertheless, the Deputy was the
+lion of the hour, or rather would have been, had he permitted himself to
+be lionized, but this he persistently declined to do, holding aloof from
+society and mingling with none save his political associates, though
+even to them he was a problem they could not solve; they, however,
+recognized in him a powerful coadjutor, and with that were forced to be
+content.
+
+
+     "THE HALL OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES was last evening thronged to
+     overflowing. It had been understood that M. Dantes was to advocate
+     the People's Bill, and, as usual, it had but to be known that this
+     distinguished orator was to occupy the tribune to draw out all
+     classes of citizens. Nor was the vast multitude disappointed. A
+     more powerful speech has never been heard within those walls. More
+     than four hours was the audience enchained by the matchless
+     eloquence of this remarkable man, which was received with thunders
+     of applause. A report of this speech will be found under the
+     appropriate head."
+
+     "THE NEW PLAY entitled, 'The Laborer of Lyons,' recently produced
+     at the Theatre Francais with triumphant success, and which has
+     caused such a deep and universal sensation, is repeated to-night.
+     There is reason to anticipate that the author, who is supposed to
+     be a celebrated orator of the opposition, may be induced to comply
+     with the call, which will be again renewed, to avow himself."
+
+
+Such were two paragraphs which the following morning appeared in
+Beauchamp's journal, and similar notices of both speech and drama were
+published in every other opposition sheet in Paris. In the Ministerial
+organ, on the contrary, and in all the papers of like political bias,
+appeared the following and similar paragraphs:
+
+
+     "THE SPEECH OF M. DANTES, last evening, in the Chamber of Deputies,
+     was one of the most dangerous diatribes to which we ever
+     listened--dangerous for the insidious and sophistical principles it
+     advanced, and the almost fiend-like eloquence with which they were
+     urged. Where are these things to stop? At what terrible catastrophe
+     do these men aim? What crisis do they contemplate?"
+
+
+     "THE NEW DRAMA at the Theatre Francais, called 'The Laborer of
+     Lyons,' which is to-night to be repeated, is calculated and seems
+     to have been designed by its reckless author to produce the very
+     worst effects among the laboring classes. We deeply regret that it
+     has been suffered by the censors to be brought out."
+
+
+The multitude called forth by paragraphs like these to witness the new
+play was, of course, immense. Long before the time for the curtain to
+rise, the vast edifice was crowded to its utmost capacity with an eager
+and enthusiastic assemblage. Not only were the galleries, parquette and
+lobbies filled with blouses, but the boxes were glittering with a
+perfect galaxy of fashion, loveliness and rank. Conspicuous in the
+orchestra stalls were the three friends--the Secretary, the journalist
+and the Deputy. In a small and private loge in the second tier,
+concealed from all eyes by its light curtain of green silk, and its
+position, but himself viewing everything upon the stage or in the house,
+sat the author of the play, calmly awaiting the rising of the curtain.
+
+The performance at length began, and the piece proceeded to its
+termination amid thunders of applause, which, as the curtain finally
+descended on the last scene of the last act, became perfectly deafening,
+accompanied by cries for the author. But no author appeared behind the
+footlights or in the proscenium box; and, at last, the uproar becoming
+redoubled, the manager came forward, and, in the author's behalf,
+tendered grateful acknowledgments for the unprecedented favor, even by a
+Parisian audience, with which the production had been received, but, at
+the same time, entreated the additional favor that they would grant the
+author's request, and permit his name, for the present, to remain
+unknown. He would, however, venture to reveal this much, that the author
+was a distinguished friend of the people. The earthquake of applause
+which succeeded this announcement was almost frightful, and while the
+scene was at its height, the three friends with great difficulty managed
+to extricate themselves from the multitude which wedged up the lobbies,
+and to make their escape.
+
+"A friend of the people!" cried Debray, bitterly, as his coupe,
+containing himself and companions, drove off to Very's. "From such
+friends let the people be saved, and they may save themselves from their
+foes."
+
+"And the play, what think you of that?" cried Beauchamp.
+
+"That it is a most able and abominable production, eminently calculated
+to cause exactly the evils which we have this night perceived--to excite
+and rouse the worst passions of the mob, and render the masses
+dissatisfied with their inevitable and irredeemable lot, and as
+dangerous as wild beasts to all whose lot is more favored."
+
+"Man has rights as man, and men in masses have rights, and one of those
+rights is to know actually what those rights are," said Beauchamp. "The
+most melancholy feature in the oppression of man is his ignorance that
+he is oppressed. Enlighten him as to those rights, elevate his mind to
+appreciate and value them, and then counsel him firmly and resolutely to
+demand those rights, and quietly and wisely to obtain them."
+
+"Aye! but will he obey such counsel?" exclaimed Chateau-Renaud. "Will
+not the result of such enlightenment and excitement prove, as it ever
+has proved, anarchy, revolution, guilt, blood? Who shall restrain the
+monster once lashed into madness?"
+
+"But you can surely perceive no such design in this play, and no such
+effect," rejoined Beauchamp.
+
+"In the abstract," replied the Count, "this production is
+unexceptionable--most beautiful, yet most powerful. How it could have
+been the work of an unpracticed pen, embodying as it does passages of
+which the first dramatists of the romantic school might be proud, I
+cannot imagine. Besides, there seems familiar acquaintance with stage
+effect and the way in which it is produced. But that might have been,
+and probably was, the result of some professional player's suggestions."
+
+"And, then, the profound knowledge of the human heart evinced--its
+passions, motives and principles of action," added the journalist.
+"There seems an individuality, a personality in the production, which
+compels the idea that the author is himself the hero, that he has
+himself experienced the evils he so vividly portrays, that the drama is
+at once the effusion of his own heart and the embodiment of his own
+history. Can that man be M. Dantes?"
+
+"If it be he," cried the Secretary, "there is more reason than ever to
+call him the most dangerous man in Paris. What with his speeches in the
+Chamber and his plays at the theatre, all tending to one most
+unrighteous end, and all aiming to inflame such an explosive mass as the
+workmen of Paris, he may be regarded as little less than the very agent
+of the fiend to accomplish havoc on earth!"
+
+"Yet, strange to say, my dear Secretary," said the journalist,
+laughing, "you have not yet estimated the tithe of this man's influence
+for good, or, as you think, for evil. Rumor proclaims him to be as
+immensely opulent as appearances would indicate him to be impoverished.
+That his whole soul, as you say, is devoted to the people, with all his
+wonderful powers of mind and person, is undoubted. That he has availed
+himself of that grand lever, the press, to accomplish his purposes, be
+they good or bad, seems equally certain. 'La Reforme,' the new daily, is
+undoubtedly under his control, if not sustained by his pen and his
+purse, for it has a wider circulation than all the other Parisian papers
+put together. It goes everywhere--it seeks the alleys, not the
+boulevards, finds its way to the threshold of all, whether paid for or
+not."
+
+"Ah!" cried Debray, in great agitation. "Is it so?"
+
+"And, then, not only is the public press subsidized by this man, if
+report is not even falser than usual, but a whole army of pamphleteers,
+journalists, litterateurs and students await his bidding, as well as
+some of the most distinguished novelists and dramatists of the nation
+and age!"
+
+"My God!" exclaimed the Count. "Can this be so?"
+
+"Nay--nay," replied Beauchamp, "I make no assertions, I merely retail
+rumors. But what cannot uncounted wealth achieve, directed by genius and
+intelligence?"
+
+"But is this man actually so wealthy?" asked Debray, pale with
+agitation. "His manners, dress, equipage, residence and mode of life
+would indicate just the reverse."
+
+"I know not--no one knows," said Beauchamp. "It is only known to myself
+and to a few others that he dwells in the mansion No. 27 Rue du Helder,
+formerly the residence of the Count de Morcerf, and that his private
+apartment is that pavilion at the corner of the court, where at
+half-past ten, on the morning of the 21st of May, 1838, we breakfasted
+with our amiable friend Albert, and were met by that remarkable man, the
+Count of Monte-Cristo."
+
+"I remember that morning well," said Chateau-Renaud.
+
+"Everything, it is said, remains in that once splendid mansion precisely
+as when it was deserted by the Countess and her son, at the time of the
+suicide of the Count--everything except that glorious picture of the
+Catalan fisherman by Leopold Robert, in Albert's exquisite chamber,
+which alone he took with him."
+
+"It is strange that a man so opulent as you represent M. Dantes to be,
+should adopt his magnificence at second hand," observed Debray, coolly.
+
+"But I do not represent him as opulent, my dear Lucien; and he certainly
+is the last man either to invent magnificence or to adopt it. Why, he is
+as plain in manners and mode as St. Simon himself. His dress you have
+seen; as to equipage his only conveyance is a public fiacre; as to
+diet, household arrangements and everything else of a personal nature,
+nothing can be more republican and less epicurean than is witnessed at
+his house. His study, Albert de Morcerf's pavilion, is said to be the
+only sumptuous apartment in the whole establishment; and that
+sumptuousness is of a character entirely literary and practical. His
+retinue consists of three servants, called Baptistin, Bertuccio and Ali,
+the latter being a Nubian, although fame gives him a perfect army of
+servitors prompt to execute his bidding. But I will not indulge your
+skeptical and sarcastic nature, Lucien, with a detail of all that rumor
+says of this wonderful man. I will only say that all he is, and has or
+hopes for seems devoted to one single object--the welfare of his race."
+
+"Has he a wife?" asked Debray.
+
+"He is a widower, with two children, a young girl, called Zuleika, and a
+youthful son, called Esperance. But my acquaintance with him is wholly
+of a public character. I have never been in his house, and very few
+there are who have been. But here we are."
+
+And the coupe stopped at Very's.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+DANTES AND HIS DAUGHTER.
+
+
+Even in the immediate vicinity of the Morcerf mansion, No. 27 Rue du
+Helder, no one was aware that its new tenant was M. Dantes, the famous
+Deputy from Marseilles. All the neighbors knew was that the palatial
+edifice had been purchased by a stranger, who said he was acting for his
+master, a man of great wealth lately arrived from the east. No repairs
+or alterations had been made, while the Morcerf furniture was bought
+with the house, the only new articles making their appearance being
+several huge bookcases and a number of large boxes evidently containing
+books, together with a host of traveling trunks filled, as was to be
+presumed, with the wardrobe of the family. The servants took possession
+during the day and were duly noted, but how or when the proprietor came
+could not be ascertained, while after his installation glimpses of him
+were exceedingly rare.
+
+Occasionally, however, a beautiful girl, with an oriental look
+notwithstanding her tasteful and elegant Parisian attire, would be seen
+for a moment at the windows, but she invariably vanished on realizing
+that she was observed. Sometimes, a handsome young man stood at her
+side, but he also seemed anxious to avoid the scrutiny of the curious,
+although he evinced less timidity than his companion, always withdrawing
+slowly and with great deliberation.
+
+It was after midnight. On the second floor of the pavilion once
+inhabited by the Viscount Albert de Morcerf was now a spacious library.
+The walls were lined with tall book-shelves, mounting to the lofty
+ceiling, and groaning under ponderous piles of volumes, from the huge
+black letter folio of the Middle Ages to the lightest duodecimo of the
+day; while in all parts of the chamber, on the floor, tables and chairs,
+and in the deep embrasures of the windows, were scattered huge masses of
+papers, pamphlets, manuscripts and charts. Over the bookcases stood
+marble busts of Danton, Mirabeau, Napoleon, Armand Carrel, the Duc de
+St. Simon and other great men whose names are identified with France;
+between the windows looking out on the garden, shrouded in shrubs and
+creeping plants, hung a full-length and magnificent picture of Fourier.
+Near the centre of the apartment stood a vast table covered with books,
+papers, manuscripts and writing materials, beside which stood one of
+those sombre and massive arm-chairs, on the possession of which the
+former proprietor had so felicitated himself, bearing on a carved shield
+the fleur-de-lis of the Louvre, and in whose sumptuous and antique
+embrace had, perhaps, reposed a Richelieu, a Mazarin or a Sully. The
+windows were hung with heavy tapestry of ancient pattern and rich dye,
+and also the walls, save where covered with books. A soft and summery
+atmosphere, the warmth of which emanated from concealed furnaces,
+neutralized the chill of an autumnal night, and the mellow chiaro-oscuro
+of a vast astral diffused its lunar effulgence on all around.
+
+Within this chamber was a man, who, with arms crossed upon his bosom and
+eyes fastened in profound and seemingly mournful contemplation upon the
+floor, slowly paced from one extremity of the spacious apartment to the
+other.
+
+This man was M. Dantes, representative of Marseilles in the French
+Chamber of Deputies.
+
+"At last, at last," he murmured, "the avenging Nemesis ceases to gnaw!
+At length the angel Peace begins to smile! The tempest, which, for
+nearly thirty years, has raved and swelled in my heart, begins to lull!
+At length I commence to live--at length I realize and pursue life's true
+end. Let me reflect," he continued, after a pause, "let me review the
+past. The past! alas! my past is a painful blank! At twenty, from the
+very marriage-feast, from the side of her whom more than life I loved, I
+was torn by the envy of one man and the jealousy of another, and then,
+by the ambition of a third, to whom nothing was crime if it but
+ministered to that unhallowed impulse, I was plunged into a dungeon,
+whose counterpart only the vaults of hell can furnish. For fourteen long
+years I was the tenant of a sombre tomb. The agony, the despair of
+those awful years--oh! God! oh! God!" and he shuddered and clasped his
+hands over his head as if to crush the recollection.
+
+After a pause he resumed: "And then those daily vows of vengeance! oh!
+vain and impotent vows as then they seemed! vows of awful agony, of
+fiendish retribution, though at that time I knew not all! I knew not
+that a venerable father had pined and died of starvation through the
+wrong done to me! I knew not that the woman I loved had become the bride
+of my destroyer! Yet those vows, awful and blasphemous as they were,
+those vows of vengeance have been terribly, dreadfully fulfilled! As the
+destroying angel of God's retributive providence, I was endowed with
+superhuman powers to walk the earth, to administer His justice and to
+execute His decrees. For fourteen years was that vengeance prepared, yet
+delayed. At last, it fell--it fell. All who had wronged me met their
+dreadful doom. Ambition was changed to madness. Avarice was tortured
+with bankruptcy. Falsehood sought refuge in self destruction; and
+all--all--all--even the meanest of those who had contributed to blight
+my life--perished miserably at my will! And did the guilty suffer alone?
+Alas! impious, remorseless, horrible revenge! The innocent and the
+criminal suffered alike. A might approaching omnipotence was vouchsafed
+me, but no power of omniscience to direct my hand or stay its effects.
+Blind and mad I knew not what I did. Those I most loved fell beneath the
+blow which crushed those I most abhorred, and shared the same fate. The
+terrible agencies I had summoned as my slaves became my masters. The
+fiends which, as ministers of God's justice, garbed in the guise of
+angels of light, I had, by hideous necromancy, evoked to aid me in
+righteous retribution, proved the dark demons of hell and derided all
+orders to accomplish my bidding. The awful engines I had set in motion I
+found myself powerless to arrest or control. Effects ceased not with the
+causes in which they had their origin. The stroke of vengeance, aimed at
+foes, recoiled on friends--recoiled on myself. And when I fain would
+stop, when I would arrest the awful havoc which my will had commenced,
+the dark ministers I had called up howled in my ears, 'On! on! on!
+vengeance is thine! vengeance is thine!' They mocked my terror and
+laughed at my apprehensions.
+
+"At last there seemed a pause. Fate appeared to have done her worst, to
+have executed her decrees. The blind agencies of vengeance blasted no
+more, because there seemed no more to blast. The misery I had caused I
+strove to alleviate, the innocent hearts I had crushed I endeavored to
+heal; rejoicing in the joy I had created and the affection I gratified,
+once more I loved--loved, but, oh! not as I first had loved--not with
+that deep, adoring, delirious passion of my youth, and yet with a
+subdued, fraternal feeling I loved; in the calm and sweet seclusion of a
+favored clime, parted from the world with all its miseries and its
+crimes, environed by all that man or nature could contribute to human
+bliss, I began to dream of happiness, in the happiness I had created.
+But, alas! I forgot that man's happiness lies not in his own hand, but
+in the hand of his Maker. I forgot that an omniscient eye pursued me,
+that a blasphemed and omnipotent Power was over me. The blow
+paused--hovered--fell, not upon me, not on the guilty, but again it fell
+on the innocent; and she, who was my only hope, my beloved Haydee, my
+wife, was snatched from my heart, ruthlessly murdered by that fiend,
+Benedetto!"
+
+The unhappy man pressed his hand to his forehead, and for some time
+paced the chamber in silence; then, approaching a small alcove at one
+extremity of the apartment, he raised the heavy and sumptuous hangings
+and revealed a small silver casket of exquisite workmanship and
+appointments, that sparkled as the mellow light poured in upon it. M.
+Dantes knelt beside the ebony table on which this casket rested, and for
+some moments seemed absorbed in prayer; then, rising and taking the
+casket in his hands, he touched a spring, when the lid flew open,
+disclosing a miniature portrait of Haydee, set in a frame of gold,
+ornamented with flashing diamonds and emeralds; he gazed long and
+lovingly at this portrait, that seemed designed to show how exquisitely
+fair God's creatures may be, after which he kissed it reverently, closed
+the casket, restored it to the table, and slowly dropped the hangings to
+their place. Resuming his walk, he said, mournfully: "But the deepest
+wound will close; the heaviest grief, the bitterest woe, becomes
+assuaged. Time, the comforter, soothes and consoles. From this stroke of
+bereavement I at length awoke, and, at the same moment, awoke to the
+conviction that my whole past had been an error; that my life had been a
+lie; that the years which had succeeded my imprisonment had been more
+utterly lost than those passed within my dungeon itself; and there came
+to me the conviction that time, talent, power and wealth had been worse
+than wasted--that the wondrous riches, undreamed of save in the wildest
+flights of oriental fiction, and by a miracle bestowed upon me, were
+designed for nobler, holier purposes than to subserve a fiendish and
+blasphemous vengeance for even unutterable wrongs, or to minister to the
+gratification of pride, and the satisfaction of selfish tastes and
+appetites, however refined and sublimated.
+
+"I looked around me--the world was full of misery--and the same
+disposition which had plunged me into a dungeon was crushing the hearts
+and hopes of millions of my race. My bosom softened by bereavement
+yearned toward my suffering fellows, and the path of duty, peace and
+happiness seemed open to my desolate and despairing heart. Resolution
+followed conviction; the world was my field; liberty, equality and
+fraternity were my objects. Not France alone, with her miserable
+millions, but Russia with her serfs, Poland with her wrongs, the
+enslaved Italian, the oppressed German, the starving son of Erin, the
+squalid operative of England, the priest-ridden slave of Jesuit Spain,
+and the oppressed but free-born Switzer. Great men and good men I found
+had already, with superhuman skill, constructed a system, a machine for
+the amelioration of mankind's condition, which needed only the
+co-operation of boundless wealth to set it in motion. That wealth was
+mine! The common house for the laborer, the asylum for the insane, for
+the orphan, the Magdalen, the destitute, the sick, the friendless, the
+deserted, the bereaved, or the asylum for the victim of his own vices,
+or the vices of others, for the depravity which originates in misery,
+ignorance or fate--all these my riches could sustain. Around me, in the
+accomplishment of this design, the uncounted wealth intrusted to my
+stewardship has already gathered the mightiest minds in every department
+of intellect, and the best hearts; and if but a few years are vouchsafed
+us to carry out the system we have adopted, all Europe, despite her
+throned and sceptred tyrants, impiously claiming the right to oppress by
+the will of God, shall be free! Silently but surely, the principle of
+human liberty is ceaselessly at work, undermining thrones and
+overthrowing dynasties. The hush that precedes the tornado even now
+broods over Europe; nations slumber the heavy sleep that preludes the
+earthquake. The hour of revolution is at hand--of social regeneration,
+disenthrallment, redemption, over all the world. In every capital of
+Europe the mine is prepared--the train laid to be lighted, and from this
+solitary chamber the free thought on the lightning's pinion flies to
+Vienna, St. Petersburg, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, London, over mountain and
+plain--over sea and land--through the forest wilderness and the thronged
+city; taken up by the press, it makes thrones totter and tyrants
+tremble--tremble at an influence which emanates they know not whence and
+contemplates a purpose they know not what--an influence whose mystery
+they are impotent to penetrate, and whose shadowy but awful right they
+are powerless to resist!"
+
+At that instant the silvery tinkle of a bell was heard at the table, and
+a low and continuous whizzing as of clockwork at once commenced. The
+Deputy advanced hastily to the table. The register of the electric
+telegraph like a living thing was unfolding the secrets of events at
+that moment transpiring at the furthest extremity of the Kingdom!
+Eagerly seizing the slip of paper which was gliding through the machine,
+he glanced over the cabalistic cipher there traced.
+"Lyons--Marseilles--Rome--Algeria," he murmured. "All goes well." And
+while the wonderful register, like a thing of life, still whizzed,
+clicked and delivered its magic scroll, covered with characters
+unintelligible to all but him for whose eye they were designed, he
+touched a spring, and a row of ivory keys resembling those of a
+piano-forte was revealed. Then rapidly touching them with the fingers of
+one hand, while he held up before him the endless slip of paper in the
+other as it was evolved, he transferred its cabalistic contents,
+character by character, to their distant destination.
+
+And when the day dawned on Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Madrid, the
+intelligence thus concentrated, and thus distributed in that solitary
+chamber, was laid by the press before a hundred thousand eyes, in a
+language which each could comprehend, for in every capital of Europe
+unbounded wealth had established a press which groaned in unceasing
+parturition for human rights, causing princes to tremble and ministers
+to wonder and grow pale; over each press, thus set in motion as if
+literally by an electric touch a thousand miles away, presided men of
+the greatest powers and most varied attainments which philanthropy or
+covetousness could enlist, while the result of their labors was sown
+broadcast among the poorest and humblest, without price or compensation,
+pouring light upon their darkened understandings and giving them
+knowledge of their rights.
+
+Nor was the newspaper press alone active. The feuilleton press was also
+at work; and magazines, reviews, pamphlets, whole libraries of volumes,
+were flung like Sibylline leaves on the four winds of heaven. Fiction,
+the drama, religion, art, literature, moral and mechanical science--all
+departments of intellect--silently, unseen, yet surely exerted their
+omnipotent influence for the attainment of one single glorious end--the
+happiness, rights, freedom of man; all this was under the guidance of
+one powerful mind and benevolent heart, wielding the resistless
+necromancy of countless and exhaustless treasure! Not a point in all
+Europe whence influence could radiate and be distributed was there at
+which this man, in one brief year, had not set in motion the press and
+the telegraph, those tremendous levers of the age to move the world, and
+all the more powerfully to move it because oft unseen. Not a court was
+there of emperor or prince, czar or kaiser, king, duke or potentate in
+which dwelt not his emissary, who suspected, least of all, knew
+everything that occurred, and, on the lightning's wing, dispatched it to
+its destination, so that the most important decrees of the
+cabinet-council of Vienna were exposed to the whole world by the
+Parisian press long before they had been communicated by Metternich to
+his sovereign. And thus, often, the ruler first learned the purposes of
+the Minister. Not a city or village was there in all Europe which
+nourished not in its bosom the germ of reform and revolution, while the
+great principle of association combined, embodied, and concentrated into
+a focus energies and influences which would otherwise have proved
+comparatively powerless.
+
+The click and buzz of the register ceased--the engine had revealed its
+secret--the shadowy tale had been caught up as it fell and given to the
+press of all Europe, thence to be laid before men's minds.
+
+Exhausted by the severe mental toil, and by the lateness of the hour,
+the Deputy sank back into his arm-chair and clasped his hands.
+"Glorious, omnipotent science!" he exclaimed in low and trembling, yet
+eager and enthusiastic tones. "Wealth must yield in power to thee, for
+what wealth can rival thy achievements or secure thy results? Thou hast
+girt the earth with web-work, forced the lightning to syllable the
+unspoken thought and made man's mind ubiquitous like God's; ere long,
+thou wilt have knit together with thy magic spells a world of mankind
+into one vast brotherhood!"
+
+M. Dantes ceased and, closing his eyes wearily, continued to think over
+the possibilities of the future. As he sat there motionless and
+seemingly asleep, a light footfall was heard in the apartment and his
+daughter stood before him. Zuleika was now sixteen, tall and matured
+beyond her years; she greatly resembled her dead mother, Haydee, the
+beautiful Greek, and the half-oriental costume she wore helped to render
+the resemblance still more striking; her abundant hair was the hue of
+the raven's wing, her feet and hands were those of a fairy, while her
+large and expressive eyes flashed like diamonds, and her parted lips, as
+red as rubies, disclosed perfect teeth of the whiteness of pearls. A
+shade of anxiety settled upon her handsome countenance as she bent over
+her weary father. The Deputy opened his eyes and glanced at her.
+
+"Why are you up so late, my child?" he asked, fondly. "I thought you
+were sleeping soundly long ere this."
+
+"I was waiting for you, papa," replied Zuleika, in a low, musical voice,
+that sounded like a chime of tiny bells; "I could not retire to my
+couch while you were toiling."
+
+M. Dantes pointed to a stool; the young girl brought it and seated
+herself at his feet; he drew her to his knee, smoothing her tresses
+gently and affectionately.
+
+"So you would not desert me, darling?" he said, with a glad smile.
+
+"No, indeed, dear papa," answered she, nestling closer to him.
+
+"Will you always love me as you do now, Zuleika?" asked the father,
+looking down into the liquid depths of her eyes.
+
+"Oh! papa, what a question, what a singular question!" said the girl,
+springing to her feet, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissing
+him again and again.
+
+"But love of another kind and for another will come along after awhile,"
+said the Deputy sadly, "and then you will forget your father."
+
+Zuleika blushed and hung her head in maidenly modesty; then she
+exclaimed:
+
+"No, no, papa; never will I forget you whatever may happen!"
+
+"Ah! my darling, you know not what you are saying; it is only natural
+for a woman to cast her father aside and cleave unto her husband."
+
+"But, papa, I have not even a lover yet, and, besides, I am not a woman;
+I am merely a little girl and your own, true, loving daughter."
+
+"Yes, yes, but you must remember that last year, young as you were
+then, you attracted marked attention from several youthful Romans of the
+best families in the Eternal City, and that one of them, the Viscount
+Giovanni Massetti, went so far as to ask me for your hand."
+
+At the mention of Massetti's name the blush upon Zuleika's cheek
+deepened. She trembled slightly, but said nothing; her heart fluttered
+painfully, but the pain was not altogether disagreeable. The young
+Viscount was evidently not unpleasing to her.
+
+M. Dantes resumed, looking at her fixedly the while:
+
+"My daughter, as you were then attending the convent school I felt it my
+duty to deny Giovanni Massetti's solicitation, nay, his ardent,
+impetuous prayer, but I did not deprive him of all hope; I gave him
+permission to urge his suit with you personally after a year from that
+time had elapsed. Did I do right?"
+
+Zuleika maintained silence, but blushed and trembled more than ever,
+while her heart fluttered so that she placed her hand upon her breast to
+still it.
+
+"Come, come, my daughter, answer me," said the Deputy, kindly, "did I do
+right? Tell me what your little heart says."
+
+"I do not know, oh! I do not know!" cried Zuleika, bursting into tears.
+
+"There, there now," said her father, soothingly; "I did not mean either
+to frighten or wound you. If the Viscount is displeasing to you I will
+answer his letter to-morrow and tell him as gently as possible that he
+has no hope of winning your hand."
+
+"What! have you received a letter from Giovanni?" exclaimed Zuleika,
+with sudden interest, her tears vanishing instantly and her pretty face
+brightening up.
+
+"Ho! ho!" said M. Dantes to himself, "Mademoiselle has waked up in
+earnest now." Then he added aloud: "Yes, one came this afternoon. The
+Viscount is in Paris, and has claimed the privilege I accorded him a
+year ago, provided you interposed no objection. However, the matter can
+speedily be settled. Young Massetti is a man of honor, and will not for
+an instant think of troubling with his attentions a lady to whom they
+cannot prove acceptable."
+
+"Oh! papa, papa, don't tell him that; he wouldn't come here if you did;
+besides, did--did--did I ever tell you that Giovanni's attentions would
+prove unacceptable to me?"
+
+"No, not in so many words," answered M. Dantes, archly, "but I inferred
+as much from your manner and tears just now. So I am to understand that
+you do not want me to reply to the Viscount's letter, am I?"
+
+"Oh! yes, I want you to reply to his letter, but--but----"
+
+"But what, darling?"
+
+"I do not wish you to tell him there is no hope!"
+
+"You think there is hope, then?"
+
+"I--I--am afraid so, dear papa!"
+
+"Yet a moment ago you told me you had no lover, and were merely a little
+girl!"
+
+"I did not know then that Giovanni was in Paris, and I--I--thought he
+had forgotten all about me."
+
+M. Dantes smiled as he said:
+
+"That makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes," answered Zuleika, innocently; then she added in a tone of great
+earnestness: "Write to Giovanni in the morning, and--and tell him I
+shall be delighted to see him."
+
+"I will write and inform him that, so far as I have been able to
+discover, my daughter does not object to receiving a visit from him."
+
+"Oh! that would be too cold and formal, and Giovanni is such an old
+friend."
+
+"Well, well," said M. Dantes, "I will so frame my reply as to give
+entire satisfaction both to you and him. Now, my child, kiss me and
+retire to your couch, for it is very, very late."
+
+Zuleika embraced her father and kissed him repeatedly; then, with
+beaming eyes and a countenance overflowing with happiness she ran
+lightly from the apartment.
+
+As she tripped joyously away, M. Dantes arose from his arm-chair and
+gazed after her with a look of the utmost sadness.
+
+"Oh! my daughter, my daughter," he murmured, "soon will you also quit
+me, and then I shall be alone, indeed! True, Esperance will remain,
+but, generous, manly and heroic as he is, he can never fill the void
+Zuleika will leave. Oh! Haydee, Haydee, my beloved wife, why were you
+torn so ruthlessly from your husband's heart!"
+
+Zuleika's dreams that night were rose-hued and delicious, and in all of
+them the central figure was the youthful Roman Viscount.
+
+When day dawned M. Dantes was still pacing his library.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A VAST PRINTING HOUSE.
+
+
+A street somewhat famous in Paris is the Rue Lepelletier, famous not for
+its length, for its breadth, for the splendid edifices it exhibits, or
+for the scenes and events it has witnessed, but famous for the exploits
+beheld by its neighbors, and the magnificent structures by them
+displayed. Not that the Rue Lepelletier can boast no fine edifices, for
+the grand opera-house would give the loud lie to such an assertion. And
+then there is the Foreign Office near by, the Hotel of the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue des
+Capucines, and other noted places.
+
+But there is one structure on the Rue Lepelletier not very noticeable
+save for its immense size and its ancient and dingy aspect, which has
+witnessed more scenes and events, and is more important than all its
+more splendid neighbors put together.
+
+This edifice is of brick, five stories in height, and, as has been
+intimated, is time-stained, storm-stained, smoke-stained and stained, it
+would seem, by all other conceivable causes of stain, so begrimed and
+dingy, yet so venerable and imposing, does it seem.
+
+This vast and ancient pile can be said to represent no order of
+architecture. Architectural elegance appears not to have been thought of
+when it was designed, and yet the facade of the old building seems to
+bear the same relation to the building itself as the face of an old man
+bears to his body, and that face is full of character, as are the faces
+of some men--sombre, sedate, serious, almost sinister in aspect. This
+old face, too, seemed full of apertures, through which unceasing and
+sleepless espionage could be kept up on the good citizens of the good
+City of Paris. Doors, and especially windows, numberless, opened and
+looked upon the street, and on a cul de sac at one end of the edifice.
+
+One of the doors opening on the cul de sac, at its further extremity,
+was broad, low, dark and sombre; like the gates of hell, as portrayed by
+the English bard, it "stood open night and day." If you entered this
+door and advanced, you would immediately find yourself ascending a
+narrow, gloomy and winding flight of stairs. Having with difficulty
+groped your way to the top, without having broken your neck, by having
+first reached the point from which you started, to wit, the bottom; or
+your shins, by stumbling against the steps--having, I say, accomplished
+the ascent to the first landing, your further passage is effectually
+stopped by a massive door, which resists all your efforts to open it;
+and, as you are contemplating the dangerous descent which you now think
+you are immediately and inevitably forced to make, an ivory bell-handle
+against the wall, beside the door, arrests your attention, with the
+words around it, which, with difficulty, you decipher by the dim light,
+"Editor's Room--No Admittance," followed by the encouraging, but
+somewhat contradictory word, "Ring," which, doubtless, means this: "If
+you are a particular friend of the editor, or have particular business
+with him as a journalist, ring the bell, and perhaps you may be
+admitted." Supposing either of these positions yours, you "ring the
+bell," and immediately you are startled by the tinkling of a small bell
+in the darkness close beside you, and the ponderous door, firm as a
+barricade till then, is now opened by unseen hands--by the same hand,
+indeed, and by the same action of that hand which caused the bell to
+tinkle.
+
+You enter the door, and find yourself in a corridor or passage, long and
+dark, for everything in this building is dark, and gaslight is the only
+light eighteen hours in the twenty-four; you find yourself in a
+corridor, I say, running the entire depth of the building, and bringing
+you back again toward the Rue Lepelletier, which you left on entering
+the cul de sac, to seek the low entrance below. As you traverse the
+endless gallery, your attention is arrested by a deep hum, as of many
+voices at a distance, with which the entire structure seems pervaded,
+accompanied by a heavier sound, which rises and falls with measured
+stroke. This mysterious hum might have been heard when you first
+approached or entered the building; but the silence and solitude of the
+corridor have caused you to notice it now for the first time, and to
+wonder at its cause.
+
+Now had you the power of those magicians, necromancers, clairvoyants and
+demi-devils, whether of the flesh or the spirit, who, at a glance, can
+gaze through massive walls and peer down the chimneys of a great city,
+and who, almost without glancing at all, can see through partitions,
+key-holes and iron doors, your wonder at the cause of these unknown
+sounds would instantly cease, while it would be yet more excited by
+those causes themselves, for the vast building all around you, and
+through which you are passing, and which envelops you in its ceaseless
+hum, like the voice of a great city, would seem to you nothing less than
+a leviathan of life and action--a Titan--a Frankenstein--a mental and
+material giant, with its acoustic tubes, like veins and arteries,
+running all over the structure, just beneath the surface of the walls,
+and uniting in every apartment; with its electric wires, like bundles of
+nerves, which, having webbed the whole body with network, converge into
+a focus-tube, and thence pass down into the vaults, through the massive
+foundations, and beneath, the pavements of the thronged streets of the
+metropolis, and thence, rising again to the surface, branching on
+distinct, diverse and solitary routes without the suburbs all over
+Europe. You would see, too, the mighty heart of this Titan, whose heavy
+heavings you have felt, heard and wondered at--THE PRESS--in its
+subterranean tenement, amid smoke and flame. THE PRESS; which, like the
+animal heart, receives eventually all that the veins convey to it, and
+flings forth everything in modified form through lungs and arteries.
+Tireless and untired in its action, never ceasing, never resting, for as
+well might a man think to live when his heart had ceased to beat, as a
+printing office exist when the throbbings of its press were no longer
+felt; and as well could a man be supposed to live without breath as a
+printing-office of the nineteenth century without its lungs, the steam
+engine, or its breath of life, the subtle fluid by which it is moved.
+
+But to drop metaphor. In the basement of the building you would find the
+press-room, with its steam engine, its furnaces, its presses, its dark
+demi-devils, and ghostly and ghastly gnomes and genii groping or
+flitting about amid the glare and gloom, begrimed and besmoked,
+seemingly at work at unhallowed yet supernatural toil, which toil, as if
+a punishment for sin, like that of Sisyphus, or the daughters of Danae
+in the heathen Tartarus, was eternal. The press never stops.
+
+On the first floor you would perceive the financial and publishing
+department in all its endless ramifications, with the separate bureaus
+for folding, enveloping, mailing, etc.
+
+On the second floor--but that you will shortly behold, and it will
+describe itself.
+
+On the third floor you would discover immense magazines of
+material--paper, ink, of every hue and quality, and type of every known
+description; and all in quantities seemingly as useless as incalculable.
+
+On the fourth and fifth floors you would find the composition rooms,
+whence fly the winged words all over the world, peopled by its whole
+army of compositors; while from the long platoons of cases,
+"click--click--click" is heard, the sole and unceasing sound which alone
+in those apartments is ever suffered to fall on the ear. If we add that
+the entire structure is warmed in winter by heated air, conveyed in
+tubes from the furnaces of the press, our description will be complete,
+and we may say such is the printing office of the nineteenth century in
+Paris. How changed from that of German Guttenberg or English Caxton,
+three hundred years before! Such is it by daylight. Flood every object
+and apartment with gaslight, and you have the scene at night--through
+all the night, for couriers and dispatches never cease to arrive--and
+the journal issues with the dawn--and the workmen are relieved by
+constant and continuous relays. Such an office gives employment to
+hundreds and bread to thousands. It demands twenty editors, exclusive
+of their chief, twenty reporters, exclusive of the same number in the
+commercial and mercantile corps; twenty-five clerks and bureau agents,
+sixty carriers, twenty mechanicians and margers, sixty folders, twenty
+pressmen, seventy correctors and compositors and five hundred
+distributors, besides a numberless and nameless army of attaches and
+employes too numerous to be specified. The aggregate compensation of
+this army is ten thousand francs per day, the annual income is nine
+millions of francs, the circulation is ninety thousand copies daily, and
+each number is read by half a million people, and through their
+influence by half a million more.
+
+The daily tax of the Government is nine thousand francs. The press has
+been called the Third Estate of France. It is not! Nor is it the
+second--nor is it the first! It combines all three. Nay, the power of
+all three united equals not its tithe; and its position--its
+rank!--royalty itself bows to the press! Ask the history of the past ten
+years. Point to the man of power or position in the court or State, who
+owes it not to the press! Where is the statesman who is not, or has not
+been, a journalist, or the savant, the philosopher, the philanthropist,
+the poet, the orator, the advocate, the diplomat, even the successful
+soldier? The sword and the pen are emblems of the power of France--its
+achievements and its continuance; Sir Bulwer Lytton says,
+
+
+     "The pen is mightier than the sword!"
+
+
+But I have left you, dear reader, perambulating the dim corridor--so
+dim that your eyes can hardly decipher, although it is now high noon,
+the various signs upon the series of doors in the wall on your left,
+designating the various rooms of the editorial corps, for to the
+editorial department is devoted the second floor of this extensive
+edifice. The last door in this prolonged series bears the name of the
+chief journalist. You ring a bell, are bid to enter, and the apartment
+is before you. Immense windows, rising from the floor to the ceiling,
+and opening upon a balcony, which overhangs the Rue Lepelletier, afford
+abundance of light for your eye to detect everything in the room by day,
+and an immense chandelier with gas-burners and opaque shades, pouring
+forth its flood of mellow radiance, would facilitate the same
+investigation yet more at night. Beneath the chandelier is spread the
+immense oval slab of the table. At it sits a man writing. Well, let him
+write on, at least for the present. Beside him, pile upon pile, pile
+upon pile, rise papers, wave after wave, flood upon flood, nothing but
+papers; on the floor beneath his feet, on the table and under the table,
+before him, behind him, and all around him, naught but papers, papers,
+rising, rising, as if in wrathful might and stormy indignation, while
+the very walls are lined with papers in all languages, from all climes
+and governments, and of every age and dimension, deposited in huge folio
+volumes and arranged in huge closets, along one whole side of the room.
+From the four continents, yea, and from the islands of the sea
+likewise, has this vast army come. In those tall closets extending from
+floor to ceiling might be found the full files for years of every
+leading paper in every part of Christendom, affording a treasury of
+reference, universal, unfailing, exhaustless, of knowledge of every
+conceivable description, rapidly found by means of exact and copious
+tables of contents.
+
+Upon the other side of the apartment extend ranges of shelves, from
+floor to ceiling, filled with ponderous tomes in black substantial
+binding, seeming to belong to that class of standard works chiefly
+valuable for reference as authorities, and bearing ample testimony in
+their wear and tear, and their soiled appearance, to having been
+faithfully fingered. No thin, delicate and perfumed duodecimo is there,
+resplendent in gold and Russia, with costly engravings on steel, and
+letter-press in gilt or hot-pressed post. No, the books, the table, the
+journalist and the whole chamber bear the dark, stern, toil-soiled
+aspect of labor, the severe air of practical utility. The only
+ornaments, if such they can be styled, are busts--the busts of the
+silver-tongued Vergniaud and a few of his political brothers--the victim
+Girondins of '92 being conspicuous. Here, too, in a prominent niche is
+the noble front of Armand Carrel, the brave, the knightly, the
+chivalric, the true Republican, the true statesman, the true journalist,
+the true man--Armand Carrel, who, with Adolphe Thiers, his associate,
+sat first in this apartment as its chief--Armand Carrel, who fell years
+ago before the pistol of Emile de Girardin, a brother journalist, the
+founder of the cheap press, the hero of scores of combats before and
+since, yet almost unscathed by all.
+
+Such are some of the ornaments of the chief editor's sanctum. At the
+further extremity of the apartment, the wall is covered with maps and
+diagrams, as well as charts of the prominent cities and points in
+Europe; and a large table beneath is heaped with books of travel,
+geographical views, and historical scenes arranged with no regard to
+order, and seeming to lie precisely as thrown down after having been
+used.
+
+In a word, the whole room bears unmistakable evidence of stern,
+practical thought. In it and about it display is everywhere scrupulously
+eschewed. Practical utility is the only question of interest as touching
+the instruments of an editor, as of those of a carpenter; and the
+workshop of the journalist bears no inconsiderable similarity to that of
+the artisan in more respects than one. To each a tool is valuable, be
+that tool a book or a chisel, only for its usefulness, and the facility
+and rapidity with which it will aid the possessor to accomplish his
+ends, and not for its beauty of form, or costliness of material or
+construction.
+
+In one respect only was there variance from this settled custom to be
+perceived, and that was in that delicate mechanism embodying the
+triumphs of modern science, which facilitates transmission of thought,
+and which, by skillful adaptation, made this one chamber a focus to
+which ideas and feeling in every other apartment of that vast
+establishment converged, and which enabled one man, without rising from
+his chair, to issue his orders to every department, from press-room to
+composing-room, from foundation stone to the turrets of that tall pile,
+everything being governed by the will and impulse of a single mind.
+Indeed, to such an extent is labor-saving carried in the Parisian
+printing office that the compositor may never have seen the journalist
+whose leaders he has spent half his life in setting up, for copy, proof
+and revise glide up or down as if by the agency only of magic, and the
+real actors rarely meet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ARMAND MARRAST.
+
+
+The journalist who now occupied the editorial chair was seemingly about
+thirty-five years of age, and one whom the ladies would call "a
+fine-looking man." His stature was about the average, his shoulders
+broad and his form thick-set. His face was long and thin, his forehead
+full and capacious, though not high, and was furrowed by thought. His
+beard, which, like his hair, was black, encircled his chin, and a
+moustache was suffered to adorn his lip. His dress was black and a plain
+stock, without a collar, surrounded his throat. His eyes were large,
+black, and piercing, and the expression of his countenance was
+contemplative and sad.
+
+Such is a hasty limning of the personal outlines of the first journalist
+in Paris, the chief editor of the chief organ of the democracy in
+Europe, Armand Marrast, of "Le National."
+
+An air of depression, exhaustion and regret was upon his face as he sat
+beside the table, with a pen in his hand and paper before him, in a
+thoughtful mood, as if planning a leader for his journal, of which but a
+single line was written. Whatever were his reflections, they were
+evidently far from pleasant; but the single line traced at the head of
+the paper indicated the source of his uneasiness. It read:
+
+"Again the House of Orleans triumphs!"
+
+Throwing down his pen, he folded his arms, and began hastily pacing the
+chamber.
+
+"Again the House of Orleans triumphs!" he bitterly exclaimed. "Aye,
+again and again! It is thus forever, and thus forever seems likely to
+continue. Every measure, however imperative, of the opposition,
+ignominiously fails--every measure of the Government, however infamous,
+succeeds. And so it has been for twelve years. Ah! what a barren sceptre
+did the Three Days of '30 place in the hands of the French people! The
+despotism of a Citizen King has been as deadly as that of the
+Restoration, and more insulting. For twelve years his acts have been but
+a continuous series of infringements upon the rights, and insults to the
+opinions, of the men of July. The Republican party is trampled on.
+Freedom of the press, electoral reform, rights of labor, restriction of
+the Royal prerogative, reduction of the civil list, all these measures
+are effectually crushed. The press is fettered, and its conductors are
+incarcerated. Out of a population of thirty-three millions, but two
+hundred thousand are electors. Out of four hundred and sixty deputies,
+one-third hold places under the Government, the aggregate of whose
+salaries would sustain thousands of starving families at their very
+doors. Paris, despite every struggle of freedom, is, at this hour, a
+Bastille. The line of fortification is complete. Wherever the eye turns
+battlements frown, ordnance protrudes, bayonets bristle. Corruption
+stalks unblushingly abroad in the highest places, and the frauds of
+Gisquet all Paris knows are but those of an individual. The civil list,
+instead of being reduced, is every year enlarged. A Citizen King
+receives forty times the appropriation received by the First Consul,
+while his whole family are quartered on the State. The dotation to the
+Duke of Orleans, on his marriage, would have saved from starvation
+hundreds of thousands whose claim for charity far exceeded his. Thank
+God, his own personal unpopularity defeated the dotation designed for
+the Duke of Nemours. But the appanages were granted because the King's
+life was attempted by an assassin. A Citizen King, indeed! This man
+cares only for his own. He would be allied to every dynasty in Europe.
+His policy is unmixed selfishness. His love for the people who made him
+their monarch is swallowed up in love for himself. Millions have been
+wrung from the sweat of toil to accomplish a worse than useless
+conquest, thousands of Frenchmen have been sacrificed on the burning
+sands of Africa, and all for what?--that a throne might be won for a
+boy--a boy without ability, or experience, and now the Duke of Aumale is
+Governor-General of Algeria, while hundreds of brave men are forgotten."
+
+As these last words, which indicated the cause of the present agitation,
+were uttered by the excited journalist a door at the further end of the
+apartment softly opened, and a young man of very low stature and boyish
+in aspect entered. He seemed, at a first glance, hardly to have attained
+his majority, though actually he was ten years older. His face was
+round, yet pale, his lips full, his brow commanding, his eye large, dark
+and thoughtful, and His characteristic expression mild and benevolent.
+He wore a dark frock coat, buttoned to the chin, and a plain black
+cravat was tied around his neck.
+
+The journalist was so deeply absorbed in his meditations that for some
+moments he seemed unaware that he was no longer alone, and he might have
+remained yet longer in that ignorance had not the guest approached and
+exclaimed:
+
+"Algeria!"
+
+The journalist raised his head and hastily turned.
+
+"Ah! Louis, is it you?" he said, cordially extending his hand; "I'm glad
+you've come. But why did I not hear you?"
+
+"For two reasons, my dear Armand," said the visitor, seating himself in
+an editorial chair: "one, that I came in by the private entrance, and
+the other, that you were too zealously engaged in cursing the recent
+appointment of the King to hear anything short of a salvo of artillery."
+
+"Ah! that cursed appointment! What next I wonder? Thank God, the old man
+has no more sons to make governors, although he'll never be satisfied
+till each one of them has a crown on his head, by his own right or the
+right of a wife."
+
+"And what care we whom the boys marry, so long as marriage takes them
+out of France? Montpensier can find favor in the eyes of the Spanish
+Infanta, Christina's sister, and thus balk England; be it so, yes, be it
+so, especially since it can't be helped or prevented."
+
+"But this affair of Algeria, Louis--"
+
+"Is a very different affair you would say. No doubt, no doubt. As to
+Algeria, I have always viewed it as a very costly bauble for France, 'an
+opera-box' as the Duke of Broglie once said, 'rather too expensive for
+France.'"
+
+"But then it has been a splendid arena for French valor. It has given
+the rough old Bugeaud a Marshal's baton, and has made the gallant
+Lamoriciere, his sworn foe, a general officer, thanks to his own
+intrepid conduct and the court influence of his brother-in-law, Thiers."
+
+"In the late dispatch appear the names of some new candidates for
+advancement, I perceive."
+
+"You allude to Morrel and Joliette among others, I suppose. Morrel has
+received a regiment, and Joliette is Chef d'Escadron of Spahis. Luckily
+for aspirants, and thanks to disease and slaughter, there is no lack of
+vacancies."
+
+"The name of Morrel I have seen before in the 'Moniteur,' but
+Joliette--who is he?"
+
+"A sort of protege of Bugeaud, 'tis said. He is reported to have
+enlisted at Marseilles, and in three years has risen to his present
+position from the ranks. He is of a good family, rumor says, but,
+suddenly reduced by some calamity, he became a soldier."
+
+"He must be a brave fellow, Armand! As I said before, Algeria has been a
+fine field for the development of military genius. My chief objections
+to French conquests are these--they have drained millions from France
+which should have been devoted to the cause of labor, and have tended to
+dazzle the masses with the glory of the achievements of French valor
+abroad; thus while thousands of the young and enterprising have been
+lured away to fill up the ranks, and to seek fame and fortune, the minds
+of those remaining have been withdrawn from their own wrongs, oppression
+and suffering, and from efficiently concerting to sustain the measures
+of their friends for their relief. There is not a race in Christendom
+so fond of military glory and achievement as the French. Dazzled by
+this, the people, the masses--"
+
+"The people, the masses!" impatiently interrupted the journalist. "You
+know me, Louis; for years you have known me well, for years have we
+devoted every energy of heart and soul to the cause of the people, and
+for years, ever since we came to man's estate, have we been equal
+sufferers in the same cause--"
+
+"Sufferers in the cause of the people of France, in the cause of man, we
+both, doubtless, have been, but not equal sufferers. What have been my
+sacrifices or sufferings, my dear Armand, compared to yours? In that
+dark hour when Armand Carrel fell--fell by an ignoble bullet in an
+ignoble cause--fell in bitterness and without a hope for liberty in his
+beloved France--I felt impelled to come forward and exert myself for the
+welfare of my race, and endeavor to aid others in filling the gap
+created by his loss. To France, to my country, did I then, though but a
+boy, devote myself--France, my country!--for such I feel her to be,
+though I was born in Spain and my mother was a Corsican. Since that hour
+my pen has been dedicated to the cause of the people, the dethronement
+of the Bourgeoisie and the organization of labor. As to sacrifice or
+suffering, I have sacrificed only my time and toil at the worst. I have
+not been deemed worthy of suffering even a fine for a newspaper libel,
+and my paper has never been thought worth suppression!"
+
+"And what have I accomplished, Louis?" asked Marrast, gloomily. "My life
+seems almost a blank."
+
+"With Armand Carrel, you have for fifteen years been the champion of
+Republicanism in France, and with you, as leaders, has all been
+accomplished that now exists. When Carrel died, on you fell his mantle.
+As editor of 'La Tribune,' your boldness and charging Casimir Perier and
+Marshal Soult with connivance in Gisquet's scandalous frauds brought
+upon you fine and imprisonment. Your boldness and patriotism during the
+insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, 1832, once more caused your
+paper to be stopped and your presses to be sealed. In April, '34, your
+press was again stopped, and you, with Godefroi Cavaignac, were thrown
+into Sainte Pelagie, whence you so gallantly escaped, though to become
+an exile in England. Again, in '35, you were sentenced to
+transportation. So much for sufferings; as to sacrifices--why, you have
+been utterly ruined by fines!"
+
+"Well, Louis, well," was the sad answer, "granting all this, my
+sacrifices and sufferings are only the more bitter from the fact of
+having been utterly in vain, entirely useless. You, Louis, have been
+wiser than I. Your journal is well named 'Bon Sens.'"
+
+"Possibly wiser," was the reply, "and possibly less bold. But does not
+discretion sometimes win what boldness would sacrifice? In rashly
+struggling for all we sometimes lose all. Prudence and perseverance, my
+dear Armand, are invaluable."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE COMMUNISTS.
+
+
+At this moment the private door opened, and three men entered the
+editorial sanctum.
+
+Marrast quickly turned, and his friend was silent.
+
+"Ha! Albert, Flocon, Rollin!" he cried. "Welcome, welcome! Our friend,
+Louis Blanc, was just about wasting on me a sermon upon patience, but
+now he'll have an audience worthy of the subject. Be seated and listen!"
+
+"Patience!" exclaimed Flocon. "Well, I'm sure we need it."
+
+"That we do, in our present low estate," echoed Rollin.
+
+Albert said nothing, but smiled with sarcastic significance.
+
+When the salutations were over and the party, all but Marrast, who
+restlessly paced the room, were seated, Louis Blanc looked around on his
+friends with a sad smile, and continued:
+
+"Marrast is right, Messieurs. I was, indeed, preaching patience. I was
+endeavoring to soothe his irritation and chide his depression with a
+sermon; since we are all old friends and fellow-sufferers in the good
+cause and have a common interest in knowing the reasons of failure and
+the means of triumph, I will by your leave proceed."
+
+"Aye, dear Louis, go on!" cried Marrast, kindly. "But you are the most
+youthful sage I ever listened to."
+
+"Yes, Louis, proceed; you look like a cure," said Rollin, laughing.
+
+"I subscribe to Louis Blanc's creed, be it what it may," added Flocon,
+briskly.
+
+"And so do I," said Albert, gravely, in a deep tone.
+
+Of the new visitors, Ledru Rollin was a man of medium stature, about
+thirty-five years of age and dressed in the extreme of the mode. His
+complexion and hair were light, his eyes large, blue and protruding, his
+mouth prominent, and his full cheeks covered with whiskers, which like
+those of Marrast, were closely trimmed and met beneath his chin. His
+head and shoulders were thrown back, and his air was bold and
+independent. He was a lawyer of talent, who had gained celebrity as
+advocate of the accused on many occasions of State prosecutions.
+
+Flocon was an older man than Rollin, and his countenance bore the wary,
+vigilant and suspicious look which experience alone gives. He was low in
+stature, thick-set and close-knit in figure; his eyes seemed always half
+closed; his brow was broad and massive; his face was long; a moustache
+was on his lip, and his hair was closely cut. The outline of his head
+and the expression of his face seemed those rather of one born on the
+banks of the Rhine than on the banks of the Seine, so calm and
+passionless did they appear. His dress was plain but neat. Flocon was
+the chief editor of "La Reforme," the name of which indicates its
+character. It was this man who, in February, 1833, repressed the
+violence of his partisans and saved the office of the "Gazette de
+France," yet the very next day published his celebrated letter to the
+Legitimists, which, for audacity, force and pungency was only equaled by
+the paralyzing effect it produced. The fines, imprisonments and civil
+incapacities to which this man had been subjected for assaults upon a
+government he deemed corrupt, for the ten years preceding, had been
+literally numberless.
+
+Albert was a man of fifty or more, with a large head, square German face
+and forehead, a large hazel eye, fixed and unexcitable, hair closely
+cut, and beard upon his chin and lip. His dress was a long iron-gray
+frock coat, buttoned closely to his chin. His face was rather thin, and
+his complexion bronzed. His name had for years been identified with
+reform; and though a manufacturer himself, of the class of workmen,
+being proprietor and chief engineer of a large machine factory at Lyons,
+he had established and sustained in that city a paper to advocate his
+principles, named "La Glaneuse," the prosecution of which by the
+Government for libel and the fining and imprisonment of its editor
+formed an originating cause of the revolt in Lyons of April, 1834. For
+the part played by this man in the revolt thus arising, he was sentenced
+to transportation, a penalty afterwards commuted to fine and
+imprisonment. He was a man of few words, remarkably few, but of deep
+thought and prompt action, and, in moments of crisis and emergency, a
+man of unshaken and inflexible nerve. To the casual observer, he seemed
+only a silent man, or a sullen one, astute or stolid; in times of peril
+he was a man of iron, but a man of action and passion, too, moving with
+resistless might. To rouse his powers, mental or physical, demanded,
+indeed, circumstances of unusual import, but once roused they were
+irresistible.
+
+Such were the personages now assembled in the office of "Le National;"
+and, of those five men, all were connected with the press, directly, as
+editor or proprietor, save only Ledru Rollin, and he was a writer for
+"La Reforme," as well as an advocate.
+
+The name of Louis Blanc's paper was, as has been said, "Le Bon Sens."
+
+But to return to the narrative.
+
+"And you really wish a sermon from me, old comrades, with patience as
+the text?"
+
+"Aye--aye--aye!" exclaimed all.
+
+"Suppose I add to it this line I find on the paper before me on the
+table, that our good Marrast had just written as the text for a
+paragraph which would probably have cost him another fine and
+imprisonment, had the paragraph been completed and published?"
+
+"Read! read!" cried Rollin.
+
+"With your permission, Armand?"
+
+"Certainly," replied the editor, still continuing his promenade.
+
+"'Again the House of Orleans triumphs!'" read Louis Blanc, aloud.
+
+"And is it not true--the accursed tyrants?" vociferated Rollin.
+
+"Aye, true!" was the mild answer; "alas, too true! That perfidious House
+does triumph, and for that very reason the fact should never be
+acknowledged by its opponents."
+
+Rollin shook his head, and, throwing himself back in his capacious
+chair, folded his arms, sunk his chin upon his breast and closed his
+eyes.
+
+Marrast continued his walk.
+
+Flocon remained silent and thoughtful.
+
+Albert gave a significant smile.
+
+"Oppose ceaselessly, but quietly, every act of despotism this Bourgeois
+Government may attempt; but, be the result what it may, never admit
+yourselves discouraged, depressed, dismayed, defeated. From every fall
+rise like Antaeus, with renewed vigor. Nor is it wise or prudent in
+those engaged in a great and glorious cause to provoke danger, to brave
+penalty, when nothing of good to that cause can reasonably be expected.
+Prudence, policy, patience and perseverance accomplish more than
+rashness, yet are not inconsistent with intrepidity, boldness,
+patriotism and philanthropy the most exalted. Comrades, what says the
+past, the past ten years, in whose events we have all so intimately
+mingled? Shall I tell you?"
+
+"Aye! 'L'Histoire de Dix Ans,'" said Flocon.
+
+"We are all sure of being immortal there, in that same book of yours!
+Eh! Louis?" cried Rollin, opening his large blue eyes.
+
+Louis Blanc smiled and continued:
+
+"Shall I convince you, comrades, by the history of the past ten years,
+the scenes we have all witnessed, the events we have all deplored, the
+defeats we have all sustained, the insulting ovations we have all been
+forced to behold and the unceasing triumphs and tyranny of the House of
+Orleans that, had patience and prudence been our motto, these defeats
+and triumphs would never have been witnessed, because these premature
+revolts would never have been made?"
+
+Albert bowed and gave his peculiar smile.
+
+"Our friend Albert smiles, and well he may. He has had a sad experience
+in this error of premature outbreaks. In April, 1834, he exerted every
+energy to restrain the revolt in Lyons, as chief of the Societe des
+Droits de l'Homme, and as the undoubted friend of the operatives. But
+his efforts were futile. Exasperated, urged on by less experienced
+leaders, they were in full tide of revolution, and could no more be
+restrained in their unwise rising than could the mountain cataract in
+mad career be dammed. The result was, of course, defeat--most disastrous
+defeat. Hundreds of the people perished, and our friend was imprisoned
+and fined for taking part in a movement, which he had in vain attempted
+to quell, and then, with the certainty of defeat, had joined, rather
+than desert the people who trusted and relied on him."
+
+"A noble act!" cried Marrast, as he paced the room.
+
+Albert quietly smiled, but otherwise his countenance remained unmoved.
+
+"And was it not a most noble and a most wise act," continued the author
+of "The Ten Years," "when our friend Flocon, by an energetic and
+eloquent harangue, restrained the indignant people from razing to the
+ground the office of the 'Gazette de France,' the organ of the Duchess
+of Berri, and his bitter foe? Terribly would that rash act have recoiled
+on us, and yet, at the same time, with this most patriotic and prudent
+deed before us, a wilder measure than even that was adopted, and it was
+quelled only by force. You all remember the events. In February, '33,
+Eugene Brifault, in his 'Corsair,' alluded jestingly to the mysterious
+pregnancy of the mother of Henry V., Duke of Bordeaux, as did every one,
+she then being imprisoned at Baye because of her prior conspiracy to
+place her son on the throne, and her secret marriage in Italy being
+unrevealed. The Legitimists of 'Le Revenant' challenged; the allusion
+was repeated, and a second trial and a death ensued. 'Le National' and
+'La Tribune,' regarding these repeated challenges as a menace to the
+Republicans, hurled defiance at the Legitimists, and demanded twelve
+distinct rencontres in behalf of as many names of our friends posted at
+their offices, among which those of Armand Carrel, Godefroi Cavaignac
+and Armand Marrast were conspicuous. The challenge is accepted--the
+names of twelve Legitimists are furnished--Armand Carrel selects Roux
+Laborie--they fight, and Carrel is dangerously wounded--the police then
+interfere--the affair ends with Flocon's terrific and audacious defiance
+flung down at the whole Legitimist and Orleans parties in the columns of
+'La Reforme.' Now, what to Republicans were the quarrels of Legitimists
+and Orleanists? If we were to be ruled by a king, what cared we whether
+that king were Henry V. or Louis Philippe? How would the sacrifice of
+Carrel, Marrast, Cavaignac, or of any of those twelve brave men have
+been repaid, or made up? And afterwards, alas! in July of '36, when
+Armand Carrel, causelessly assuming a quarrel not his own, because of a
+fancied attempt to degrade the press, by rendering its issues
+accessible, by cheapness, to the masses, was slain in the Bois de
+Vincennes by the vulgar bullet of Emile de Girardin, of 'La Presse.'
+What reparation to our cause was it that our champion had died like a
+hero, and Chateaubriand, Arago, Cormenin and Beranger wept around his
+grave? Alas! that inestimable life belonged to his country and his race,
+and not to himself, to fling away in an obscure quarrel."
+
+"But we are not all of us Armand Carrels," said Rollin.
+
+"And yet, to the great cause of human liberty, and the amelioration of
+man's condition, to which each of us stands sworn, are pledged our
+lives. To hazard that cause, by the sacrifice of those lives, or by
+rashly and unwisely attempting its advancement, makes us violators of
+our vows, quite as much in reality as if we had become traitors."
+
+"But the instances you cite are those only of individual rashness,
+Louis, and not of the people, or of their leaders acting in concert,"
+remarked Marrast.
+
+"True, concert of action has been chiefly needed, but I have only to
+recall the dates and places of our repeated attempts and defeats, for
+the past ten years, to convince you all that those attempts were
+premature, and had they not been so, they might have been
+successful--that they have frittered away energies which, properly
+concentrated and directed, might have achieved a revolution; and that
+while they have betrayed our designs and depressed our friends, have
+enabled our foes insultingly to triumph and caused them to be on the
+constant qui vive to anticipate our movements. What but premature and
+undigested uprisings were the conspiracy of the bell-tower of Notre
+Dame, in January of '32, when 'Le National' was seized--or the
+disturbances in La Vendee--or those in Grenoble--or those in
+Marseilles--or those in the Rue des Prouvaires--or those in April,
+during the cholera, when Casimir Perier died--or those of the 5th and
+6th of June, on the occasion of General Lamarque's funeral, on pretence
+of avenging upon the Government the affront offered during the
+obsequies of Casimir Perier, the victim-Premier of the cholera? For the
+part taken by 'La Tribune,' then conducted by Marrast, in this revolt,
+its press was seized and sealed. The same was the fate of 'La
+Quotidienne,' and the same would have been the fate of 'Le National,'
+but for its barricades. Well do I remember the meeting of our friends in
+this very apartment on the night after General Lamarque's funeral. The
+great shade of the venerable warrior seemed among us, repeating for our
+counsel and imitation his last impressive words, 'I die but the cause
+lives!' But, alas! we observed it not. Doubt, dissension, dismay and
+despair were in our midst. All was dark--all was defiance and
+denunciation, crimination and recrimination--brother's hand raised
+against brother. Armand Carrel that night sat in this chair, but he was
+not the man to command his own will or opinions; how could he then bring
+to obedience and concert the conflicting impulses of others? Armand
+Carrel was a wonderful man. His motto, like that of Danton, was this:
+'Audacity, audacity, always audacity!' Yet with all the audacity of
+Danton, he had little of his firmness. An officer under the Restoration,
+a conspirator at Bifort, in arms in Spain against the white flag, three
+times a prisoner before a council of war--in 1830 he was with Thiers,
+the founder of this journal; but everywhere he carried the exactitude of
+the camp; even in dress, manner and bearing he was a soldier--lofty,
+haughty, seemingly overbearing, yet, at heart, noble and generous, and
+to his friends accessible in the extreme. To his military notions,
+nothing could be accomplished without soldiers, and for the people to
+carry a revolution against soldiers seemed to him absurd."
+
+"Armand Carrel would have been, nevertheless, a good revolutionist,
+Louis," said Marrast; "but he was a bad conspirator. He had no faith in
+the people, no confidence in the efforts of undisciplined and unarmed
+masses."
+
+"And therein," said Rollin, "he greatly erred."
+
+"Although we can as yet boast of having accomplished but very little by
+them, Ledru," added Flocon, with a meaning smile. "The masses are easily
+roused, but they don't stay roused, and then they often get
+unmanageable, even by those by whose summons they were stirred up. They
+fight well, but, somehow or other, they always get beaten; they succumb
+at last, and bow their necks to the yoke lower than ever."
+
+"It is not the people," said Louis Blanc, "it is we the leaders, who are
+to be blamed. We rouse them before we are ready for them--before we have
+prepared them or anything else for a result; and then it is not strange
+that they only rush bravely on to death and defeat. We seize on the
+occasion of a funeral for an outbreak without organization, and the
+cuirassiers of the military escort trample our ranks beneath their
+horses' hoofs. But for unusual efforts, such would have been the case at
+the funeral of Dulong, the Deputy who fell in a duel with General
+Bugeaud, in January of '34."
+
+"What were the circumstances?" asked Rollin.
+
+"Armand recollects them better than I," replied Louis Blanc.
+
+"The circumstances were these, as I remember them," said Marrast.
+"General Bugeaud remarked in the course of a speech in the Chamber that
+'obedience is always a soldier's duty.' 'What if the order be to become
+a turnkey?' asked Dulong, in allusion to the General's position in
+relation to the Duchess of Berri, during her pregnancy and confinement
+at Baye. Armand Carrel endeavored to pacificate, but the effort failed.
+They met in the Bois de Boulogne at ten o' clock in the morning; the
+weapons were pistols; the distance forty paces. Bugeaud fired almost as
+soon as he turned, advancing only a few steps; his ball entered above
+Dulong's right eye, and at six o'clock that evening he was dead."
+
+"There was a splendid ball at the Tuileries that night, was there not?"
+asked Flocon.
+
+"There was, and this, with other things, excited in the masses the idea
+that their champion was the victim of a Royalist conspiracy, which all
+the influence of Armand Carrel and Dulong's uncle, Dupont de l'Eure was
+hardly sufficient to suppress. But Dupont immediately resigned his seat
+in the Chamber. He would sit no longer in a body one man of which he
+deemed the murderer of a beloved nephew. The obsequies were grand.
+Armand Carrel pronounced the eulogy, and two hundred and thirty-four
+deputies wet the grave with their tears. The people were greatly
+excited, and, as has been said, were with great difficulty restrained
+by Carrel and Dupont. Had they been suffered to revolt, the only result
+which could have followed would have been a terrific outpouring of their
+blood, furnishing another instance, I suppose, of the evil of
+impatience; is it not so, Louis?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," was the reply; "and only two months after that other
+instance actually occurred, for our warning, in the revolt at Lyons,
+with which we are all familiar, and in which we were all actors, most of
+us to our sorrow. This was in April. Albert's journal, 'La Glaneuse,'
+had been seized for libel on the Government, and the editor fined and
+imprisoned. Next a reform banquet of the operatives was forbidden,
+although but a year before Garnier Pages had been suffered to banquet
+the Lyonnese to the number of two thousand, and although at no period
+had so many gorgeous festivities and public balls been given by the rich
+Royalists, as if in premeditated scorn of the banquet prohibited to the
+poor Republicans. The result was so prompt as to seem inevitable; there
+was a strike of the operatives, an insurrection of the people. Albert
+was sent to Paris as an envoy, to find a man to lead the revolt. MM.
+Cabet and Pages were deemed too moderate. Cavaignac would go only with
+Cabet. Lafayette was too feeble, but gave his name and letters. Carrel
+and Marrast were not members of the Societe des Droits de l'Homme, and
+Albert had been cautioned that Carrel was too moderate. Thiers had
+denounced 'La Tribune,' and Marrast's friends were hiding him from the
+police. In despair concerning his mission, the envoy was about returning
+home, when he was sent for to Armand Carrel's house, and Carrel offered
+to go to Lyons and lead the revolt, provided Godefroi Cavaignac would
+accompany him. Now these friends had long been at feud, but all private
+grievances were forgotten in this crisis of the cause, and Albert is
+just about preceding them in the post-chaise, to announce their coming,
+when, lo! the telegraph says, 'Order reigns in Lyons!' Here, then, after
+a terrific slaughter, was recorded another fruitless revolt, because a
+premature one. Nay, it was infinitely worse than fruitless. Not only did
+the Republicans utterly fail in their attempts, not only were they
+cruelly crushed by the Royal mercenaries, but they were openly derided
+in their defeat, and the cause was gloomier than ever. The slaughter of
+women and children in the streets of Lyons, and on their own
+hearthstones, in the course of this insurrection, was hideous, and is
+graphically portrayed in the memorial of our friend Ledru Rollin, as
+advocate in the matter. But, as if all this were not enough for our
+persecuted cause, the decease of the great and good Lafayette, the idol
+of freemen all the world over, took place in the following May. Alas!
+his sun went down in clouds. His end was dark. Bitter maledictions
+quivered on his dying lips. He had lived to mourn that July day, only
+three years before, when, on the steps of the Hotel de Ville, he had,
+with his own hands, been called to invest a cold-blooded, perfidious,
+selfish, and most ungrateful tyrant with Royal robes. Alas! there was
+order in Lyons--Lafayette was in his grave--peace reigned in Paris--the
+House of Orleans triumphed!"
+
+"Those were dark days," said Marrast, sadly.
+
+"They were, dear Armand, dark, indeed, for you and your friends, for
+your journal had been suppressed, and you were an inmate, with
+Cavaignac, of Sainte-Pelagie."
+
+"Whence you both, bravely and boldly effected your escape more than a
+year afterwards and fled to England, to the most glorious discomfiture
+of the knaves who put you there!" cried Rollin. "Vive la Republique!
+yet, Messieurs! We've all seen dark days, and the present is none of the
+brightest; and we've all come together at these old headquarters of
+liberty just to be unhappy together, just to help each other be
+miserable, which, in fact, is vastly happier unhappiness than being
+miserable alone. At all events, that's what I want. But it can't always
+be right. I predict a revolution before another ten years shall have
+rolled round, which shall make immortals of us all--that revolution for
+which we have been waiting, watching, toiling and writing, lo! now these
+thirteen years and upward, for the which waiting, watching, toiling and
+writing we have some of us been fined, who had money enough to pay a
+fine, and others imprisoned and hunted about and persecuted. Why,
+there's Albert and Flocon haven't been able to get a franc cleverly warm
+in their pockets these ten years, before forth it was drawn in the form
+of a fine; while as for Marrast, he has the perfect air and bearing of a
+bandit, so often has he seen the inside of a dungeon; and our friend
+Albert isn't much better looking. As for Louis and myself, why, we never
+knew what it was to have a franc get warm in our pockets, so we escaped
+having any drawn forth by Ministers, and they have never thought us
+worth prosecuting or imprisoning. But they may change their minds when
+Louis' book, that is to make us all immortal, comes out. Eh, Louis?"
+
+Louis Blanc smiled, but made no answer.
+
+"Well, it is only meet, I suppose, that I should receive my share of the
+blows," said Marrast. "I'm sure I'm not very delicate or very
+ceremonious in bestowing them. Besides, every one of my predecessors has
+endured the same--Carrel, Thomas, Bastide; while poor Rouen, the
+proprietor, would have been ruined, indeed, a dozen times with fines,
+but for his enormous profits. Why, this old office has been a perfect
+butt for Ministers to fire at--it has received a dozen fusillades, at
+least; but it stands yet, and, strange as may have been the scenes it
+has witnessed, it will witness yet other and stranger ones, and we shall
+all be witnesses thereof, and actors in them, too, or greatly do I err."
+
+"So be it, with all our hearts!" was the general shout.
+
+"Apropos of State prosecutions against 'Le National,'" said Louis Blanc,
+"that was a most exciting time when Rouen was brought by Thiers before
+the Court of Peers, for a libel on that most august and erudite body."
+
+"Aye! and a most, liberal, honest and honorable conclave--the
+thrice-sodden and most solemn knaves and mules!" cried Rollin.
+
+"Rouen at the bar demanded Armand Carrel for his defence," continued
+Louis Blanc. "To refuse was impossible, but a bitter pill must it have
+been to Thiers and Mignet to consent. They must have foreseen what came.
+Both, now in the Ministry, only four years before both had been in 'Le
+National'--Thiers as the colleague of Carrel, and Mignet as a
+collaborateur. The files of the journal were produced, and, lo! there
+stood paragraphs proven to have emanated from the pens of the
+prosecutors far more libelous and venomous on the august peers than
+anything Rouen had published. You all remember the scene that ensued and
+won't forget it soon."
+
+"No; nor shall we soon forget that noble passage in Armand Carrel's
+defence," said Flocon, "in which he evoked the shade of Marshal Ney, and
+from the wild excitement that followed, one would suppose that it had
+really risen in the hall, bleeding and ghastly, and pointing to its
+wounds, like the ghost of Banquo, to blast his hoary, jeweled and noble
+assassin, who, seated on those very seats, had sentenced him to an
+infamous doom. Carrel was instantly stopped, but General Excelmens rose
+in his seat and pronounced the charge true. It was then reiterated with
+tremendous applause from the galleries. How Carrel escaped punishment
+for contempt is not known. Rouen was convicted of libel on the peers, of
+course; his sentence was a fine of ten thousand francs and imprisonment
+for two years."
+
+"But of what words did this famous libel actually consist?" asked Ledru
+Rollin.
+
+"Louis can tell you better than I," said Flocon.
+
+"Why, the words were severe enough, no doubt," replied Louis Blanc, "but
+Thiers and Mignet had themselves expressed the same ideas a hundred
+times, though in less powerful and pointed language. The passage which
+seems particularly to have given offence was this, that in the eyes of
+eternal justice and those of posterity, as well as in the testimony of
+their own consciences, these renegades from the Revolution, these
+returned emigrants, these men of Ghent, these military and civil
+parvenus, these old Senators and spoiled Marshals of Bonaparte, these
+Procureur Generals, these new-made nobles of the Restoration, these
+three or four generations of Ministers sunk in public hatred and
+contempt, and stained with blood--all these, seasoned with a few
+notabilities, thrown in by the Royalty of the 7th of August, on
+condition they should never open their lips save to approve their
+master's commands--all this farrago of servilities was not competent to
+pronounce on the culpability of men seeking to enforce the results of
+the Revolution of July!"
+
+"It was not until the commencement of 1835, I think," said Marrast,
+"that Ministers opened a general onslaught upon the Parisian press. 'Le
+Republicain' was interdicted that year. It was then, too, that the laws
+against public criers and newspaper hawkers were instituted. As far back
+as '33, however, Rodde had braved all such prohibitions by selling and
+with impunity, too, his own paper in the streets. In May of '35 came on
+the general prosecution of the press. Rollin was advocate in the
+defence. There were warm words between Armand Carrel and his friend
+Dupont, the lawyer, and there was at one time apprehension of a duel."
+
+"The position of Armand Carrel with Thiers, his former colleague, was,
+at that time, a singular one," remarked Rollin. "Each seemed to be on
+the constant search for opportunities to exasperate the other. The
+editor assailed the Minister in his columns, and the Minister retaliated
+by an arrest. Carrel censured and ridiculed Thiers, though he respected
+his abilities, and Thiers feared and hated Carrel, though he admired his
+talents."
+
+"It was about this time that Fieschi exploded his infernal machine at
+the King, was it not?" asked Flocon. "Thiers arrested Carrel then, I
+know."
+
+"It was on the 28th of July of '35, at ten in the morning, on the
+Boulevard du Temple. This was the second attempt on the King's life, the
+first having been that of Bergeron, in November of '33. Carrel was
+arrested as an accomplice, it was pretended, for every one of these
+attempts has been attributed to the whole body of the Republicans,
+while they were utterly ignorant of them until they took place, and then
+bitterly denounced them. But the Government has made capital out of all
+these insane attempts, and against the opposition, too."
+
+"I've heard it asserted," said Rollin, "that the Government got up some
+of those little exhibitions of fireworks for that very purpose. They are
+quite harmless, so far as the old man is concerned--wonderfully so--and
+Fieschi was made a perfect fool of, so ridiculously lionized was he by
+King, Court and Ministers. Our friend Marie was advocate for that
+wretched old man, Pepin, Fieschi's accomplice, more a ghost than a
+living creature."
+
+"You are entirely right, friend Rollin," said Louis Blanc, "in the idea
+that every one of these attempts strengthens the Government and recoils
+on the opposition. No one should so vigilantly and vigorously watch for
+and suppress such attempts as we. Heaven defend the old despot from the
+assassin's weapon, as it seems well inclined to do, or the deed will
+surely be attributed to us. Every unsuccessful attempt at assassination
+is viewed like an unsuccessful attempt at revolt on the part of the
+opposition, and injures our cause accordingly. Better never to attempt
+than never to succeed."
+
+"Do you think it true, Louis, as was reported," asked Marrast, "that as
+soon as the smoke of Fieschi's explosion swept off, and the old man
+found himself standing unharmed amid a heap of slain and mangled,
+Marshal Mortier and Colonel Rieussec being among the killed, his first
+exclamation was this, with, ill-concealed gratification, 'Now I shall
+get my appanages and the dotations for the boys.'"
+
+"Nothing is more probable," said Louis Blanc. "That old man has but one
+impulse--selfishness, and but one attachment--to his family--his family,
+because it is his. His purse and family have for years been his sole
+objects of love. To aggrandize his own has been for years his sole end
+and aim. He parcels out the thrones and kingdoms of Europe among his
+children as if it were but a family estate."
+
+"What thoughtful selfishness!" exclaimed Flocon; "and at a moment, too,
+when he had but just escaped an awful death, and all around him flowed
+the blood and lay scattered the lacerated limbs of his faithful
+servants, either dead or dying with groans and shrieks of most agonizing
+torture, and all because of himself; how disgraceful that, at such a
+terrible moment, his first thought should have been of the few more
+francs his trembling hand was striving to tear from a people by whom he
+had already been made the richest man in Europe, and which the
+occurrence of this dreadful event might serve to win for him."
+
+"Well," said Rollin, "whether this event aided to win the appanages and
+dotations, and was so designed, or not, it is very sure the aforesaid
+appanages and dotations were secured. No wonder that such attempts
+succeed each other so rapidly--one every year, at the least! When was
+the next, Louis--that of Alibaud, I think?"
+
+"That took place about sunset on the 25th of June, '36," was the reply.
+"Alibaud discharged a walking-stick-gun at the King, as he left the
+Tuileries, on his way to Neuilly, at the corner of the Porte Royale.
+That Alibaud was a mere boy, and a very interesting and intelligent boy,
+too; but for some mysterious cause he did not find favor with the court,
+as did Fieschi. He evidently attempted the assassination from
+conviction, from a feeling of manifest destiny. After his failure, he
+only wished to die, and to die at once. All who have succeeded Alibaud
+have been but vulgar cut-throats."
+
+"In what year was the insurrection of Armand Barbes and Martin Bernard?"
+asked Flocon. "That proved most disastrous to our cause."
+
+"That was in '39, May, I think," answered Rollin. "Barbes, Blanqui and
+Bernard were arraigned as leaders. Marie and myself were advocates for
+Barbes. Blanqui was sentenced to death and Barbes to the galleys for
+life. But we obtained commutation of penalty for both."
+
+"And where is to be the end of all these things?" asked Marrast,
+gloomily, as he continued pacing the chamber with folded arms, his head
+resting on his bosom. "Are the ten years on which we have now entered to
+be characterized by the fruitless efforts of the past? Are the people of
+France again, and again, and again to strike for freedom, only to be
+stricken into the dust and trampled beneath the armed heel of a despot's
+myrmidons? Are the streets of Lyons, Paris and Marseilles again to be
+drenched with the life-blood of their dwellers, poured out as freely as
+water and as fruitlessly? Are we all again, for full ten years, to toil,
+strive, struggle and suffer; to be hunted down like the vilest
+criminals, and, like criminals, plunged into the most pestilential
+dungeons; to be stripped like slaves of our hard-won earnings, and to be
+deprived of the most humble franchises of men claiming at all to be
+free; to be treated with scorn and contumely, and to be debarred the
+exercise of those common rights, which, like air and water, belong to
+all; I say, brothers, are all these scenes to be repeated during the ten
+years on which we have now entered, as they have been witnessed during
+the ten years now past?"
+
+"You speak sadly, Armand," observed Rollin.
+
+"Not so sadly as I feel. I have listened with attention to the
+recapitulation of the political events of the past ten years in France;
+and most plainly, and as sadly as plainly, does the result prove that
+every movement in our cause has been as premature as it has been
+unsuccessful."
+
+"May we not gather wisdom, which shall conduct us to success in the
+future, from the very errors and disasters of the past?" remarked
+Flocon.
+
+"Alas!" despondingly replied Marrast, "what is there in our present to
+promise a bright future more than was in our past to promise us a bright
+present? Our great leaders of another generation have all left us, one
+after another--all have dropped into their graves. The cold marble has
+closed over their venerable brows, and they rest well. Yet they died
+and made no sign of hope. On us, young, inexperienced and rash, has
+devolved their task; but the mantle of their power and virtue has not,
+alas! descended with that task to aid in its momentous accomplishment.
+General Lamarque's sun went down in clouds. Midnight, deeper than
+Egyptian darkness, brooded over the delirious deathbed of Lafayette.
+Armand Carrel fell without hope; and are we wiser than they? How often,
+oh! how often have I listened to the words of wisdom that fell from
+those eloquent lips, even as a boy reverently listens to a parent--for
+such was Armand Carrel to me. Upon this very spot have I stood, in that
+very chair has he sat, that chair, which, with mingled shame and pride,
+I reflect is now filled by me--shame, that it is filled in a manner so
+unworthy of him--pride, that I should have been deemed fit, after him to
+fill it at all--in that very chair, I say, has his noble form reclined,
+when he for hours, even from night till the next day's dawn, dwelt with
+sorrowful eloquence upon his country's present, and looked forward with
+gloomy foreboding and prediction for the future. It almost seems to me
+that this mighty shade is with us now!"
+
+"And why was all this despondency, my dear Armand?" remarked Louis
+Blanc, mildly. "Was it not because our noble and gifted friend was
+essentially a soldier, not a civilian, not a statesman, not a
+revolutionist? Had Armand Carrel gone to Algeria, he would have died--if
+died he had not in an unknown duel, with an unknown bravo--he would
+have died a Marshal of France--a Bugeaud, a Chaugarnier, a Bedeau, a
+Cavaignac, a Clausel, a Lamoriciere. Carrel had no faith in the masses
+to achieve a revolution. He never believed that they could even
+withstand a single charge of regular troops, much less repel and
+overcome it."
+
+"Not even with barricades?" asked Rollin.
+
+"Not even in defence of barricades," continued Louis Blanc.
+
+"Regular troops have much to learn," added Rollin, with a significant
+smile. "They will see the day--aye! and we all shall see it and rejoice
+at its coming, despite all melancholy prognostications, when the people
+of Paris will dictate abdication to the king of the barricades, from the
+top of the barricades, the people's throne! Nor will that event tarry
+long!"
+
+"I doubt it not, I doubt it not, Ledru!" exclaimed Louis Blanc, rejoiced
+that one of the youngest and least stable of their number appeared free
+from the apprehensions of one of the most influential and seemingly most
+reliable. "I accept the omen indicated by your enthusiasm. But I
+accounted for the vacillation and distrust of our lamented friend,
+Armand Carrel, by reverting to the fact that he relied entirely on
+regular troops, military skill, scientific tactics and severe
+subordination. Now, all of these belonged to our oppressors and none of
+them to us; and, inasmuch as he could not perceive that enthusiasm,
+passion for freedom, love of country and family, and the very wrath and
+rage of desperation itself sometimes not only supply the place of
+discipline, arms and the knowledge requisite to use them, but even
+enable vast masses to break down and crush beneath their heel the
+serried ranks of veteran troops, he could only despair at the prospects
+apparently before him. Besides, Armand Carrel, like all military men,
+was a man of action, not reflection--of execution, not contrivance--a
+soldier, not a conspirator. At the head of ten thousand veteran troops,
+he would have charged on thrice their number without discipline, with
+the confident assurance of sweeping them from his path as the chaff of
+the threshing floor is swept before the blast; but, with an
+undisciplined mob, as he contemptuously called the masses, he would have
+moved not a step. The larger the multitude, the less effective and the
+more impossible to manage he would have deemed it. A revolution
+accomplished by means of the three arms of the military
+service--artillery, cavalry and infantry--horse, foot and dragoons, he
+could readily conceive; but a revolution conducted to a successful issue
+only by means of pikes, axes, muskets and barricades, never, to the hour
+of his death, despite the victory of the Three Days, could Carrel
+comprehend."
+
+"Besides," said Flocon, "it must not be forgotten that Armand Carrel,
+though a most devoted friend to Republicanism, was never a member of the
+Societe des Droits de l'Homme--was never, as we all now are--a
+Communist, a Socialist, a Fourierist, a friend to the laborer. No
+wonder he hoped so little for the people, and trusted to accomplish so
+little through them."
+
+"There can be no doubt that the social principle which Republicanism is
+now unconsciously assuming all over France," mildly remarked Louis
+Blanc, "is lending to the cause incalculable strength. How terribly
+impressed with a conviction of the justice of the cause in which they
+perished must have been the unhappy insurgents of Lyons, when, with this
+motto on their banner: 'To live toiling or die fighting,' they marched
+firmly up to the cannon's mouth and fought, and, thus fighting, fell.
+Yet this conviction is not peculiar to the workmen of Lyons. It pervades
+all Paris, all France, and needs only to be roused to act with an energy
+which no human power can resist. Social Republican will be the type of
+the next revolution in France--it must be. The French people have been
+dazzled by the mirage of liberty ever since '89,--but it has been only a
+mirage. On the last three days of July, '30, the people of Paris drove
+out one Bourbon to enthrone another. True, 'The State is myself,' was
+not the despotic motto he assumed, as did one of his successors, but it
+was 'Me and my family,' which has proved equally selfish, if not so
+absolute, and far more dangerous to freedom. With Lafayette and Benjamin
+Constant, the Citizen King they had made, quarreled as soon as on his
+throne, and Lafitte and Dupont de l'Eure, his supporters, were banished
+from the Court. Casimir Perier was called to crush the Liberals. Armand
+Carrel assailed the act, and urged a republic. 'Le National' was
+prosecuted, and insurrections followed. Thus was the Revolution of the
+Three Days won by the people to be seized and enjoyed by the
+Bourgeoisie. The next revolution will be won by the people, too, but the
+people will enjoy it!"
+
+"And how progresses our principles, Louis, among the people?" asked
+Marrast, who had listened attentively to every word that had been
+uttered.
+
+"Never so gloriously as now, Armand, never! Never has there been such a
+diffusion of information upon the subject of the rights of labor as now.
+Pagnerre tells me every day that volumes, tracts and pamphlets on this
+topic disappear like magic from his shelves."
+
+"Has not the Minister a hand in this mysterious disappearance of
+Communist literature?" asked Rollin. "We all know he is quite frantic on
+the topic of popular education."
+
+"Oh! yes, we all understand Guizot's love for the people! His system of
+education promulgated in 1833 was so very beautiful that it was almost a
+pity it was utterly impracticable. But Guizot has very little to do with
+Pagnerre's book-shelves, or with Pagnerre in any way, except to
+prosecute him from time to time for publishing Cormenin's withering
+tracts designed for the Minister himself, and yet it would almost seem
+there was a design to exhaust the market of the publications of our
+friends; only the great mass of them go to the provinces and large
+quantities abroad. My own little brochure, 'The Organization of Work,'
+after having fallen stillborn from the press, died a natural death and
+been laid out in state for a year or two on Pagnerre's shelves, all at
+once is resurrected, runs through half a dozen large editions, and is
+translated into half a dozen languages. The same is true of Lamartine's
+'Vision of the Future,' and the same of Cormenin's tracts, and of the
+ten thousand brochures on this same subject of Communism in all its
+different shades and phrases, and in every variety of size, form and
+style of writing and appearance. These publications are adapted to every
+taste and comprehension. The workman is suited as well as the savant.
+All this savors of magic. Even my most sanguine anticipations are
+surpassed by reality. There will never long lack a supply for a demand,
+be that demand what it may. A demand for Fourier literature has turned
+all the pens in Paris hard at work upon it--novelists, essayists,
+pamphleteers--while the Porte St. Antoine, the Porte St. Martin and all
+the minor theatres, where are found the masses, swarm with melodramas,
+farces and vaudevilles on the same subject, and none of you have
+forgotten the powerful play, entitled 'The Laborer of Lyons,' attributed
+to M. Dantes, recently produced with such success on the boards of the
+Francais itself."
+
+"And who is this M. Dantes," asked Ledru Rollin, "if you will suffer me
+to interrupt?"
+
+"Decidedly the most remarkable man in the French Chamber of Deputies,"
+replied Marrast. "In powers of natural eloquence I never saw his rival."
+
+"Nor is that all," added Louis Blanc. "Unlike most men noted as mere
+orators, he is a sound logician, as well as a polished rhetorician. As a
+political economist he has few equals. To that subject he seems to have
+devoted much study, while his familiarity with the political history of
+France and of the times generally all over Christendom seems boundless.
+In debate, you observe he is never at a loss for fact or argument, let
+the discussion take what direction it may."
+
+"And he has celebrity also as a writer, has he not?" asked Ledru Rollin.
+
+"The author of 'The Laborer of Lyons' must be a man of distinguished
+literary genius," was the reply.
+
+"Better than all," said Flocon, "he is devoted heart and soul to the
+good cause."
+
+"Such devotedness to a cause I never witnessed," said Marrast. "He puts
+us all to the blush. With him it appears a matter of direct individual
+interest. He is perfectly untiring. He is like one impelled by his fate.
+Love or vengeance could not force onward a man to the attainment of an
+object more irresistibly than he seems forced, and that, too, without
+the slightest apparent stain of personal interest or ambition. That man
+appears to me a miracle--a pure philanthropist. He strives, struggles,
+suffers, sacrifices, and all with the sole object of ameliorating the
+condition of his race."
+
+"It is, indeed, wonderful," said Rollin, thoughtfully. "Do you know,
+Marrast, anything of his past history?"
+
+"Little, if anything. Of himself he never speaks, and I can gather
+nothing from others. Even his constituents had known nothing of him but
+a few months before he became their representative in the Chamber. His
+popularity with them he owes to his efforts to ameliorate their
+condition. At his own expense he established among them a Phalanstrie,
+which is now in most successful operation."
+
+"He is rich, then?" asked Flocon.
+
+"Seemingly not, to judge from his habits of life," replied Marrast. "Not
+a man in the Chamber is more Republican in garb, manner, equipage or
+residence than he, and yet he may be rich."
+
+"Is he married?" asked Rollin.
+
+"He has been, I am told," said Marrast. "But we interrupt you, Louis.
+You were alluding to the unusual influences now at work for our cause."
+
+"I was about speaking of the newspaper press," said Louis Blanc. "Never
+has there been known such a revolution in favor of Reform and Communist
+journals, and to none is this better known than to some of ourselves.
+There's Flocon's new journal, 'La Reforme,' that has leaped at once into
+a circulation never before achieved but by long years of toil and
+enterprise. The old 'National,' we need but to look around us to be
+sure, was never more prosperous than now, while I am free to confess
+that my journal, 'Le Bon Sens,' which has been a sickly child ever since
+its birth, has, within three months, tripled its number of readers, or,
+at least, its payers. The same is in the main true of 'Le Monde,' by La
+Croix, 'Le Journal du Peuple,' by Dubose, 'Le Courier Francais,' by
+Chatelain, 'La Commerce,' by Bert, 'La Minerve,' by Lemaine, 'La
+Presse,' by Girardin, and all the journals in Paris which diffuse true
+ideas upon labor and the rights of the people, be they in other respects
+what they may. Even the 'Charivari,' which views the old King and his
+Ministers as fair butts of ridicule, perceives a marked increase in its
+patronage since it commenced that course, which sudden popularity
+naturally excites it to increase of zeal in the same path. Besides all
+this, an army of new papers, aiming to aid the great cause, have not
+only sprung up of late, like mushrooms, in Paris, but all over France,
+and even all over Europe; and so far appear they from interfering with
+each other's prospects that the more there are the better they seem
+sustained and the more ably conducted. A swarm of new and unknown
+writers for the press on this great subject seems all at once to have
+appeared from unseen hiding-places."
+
+"This is very strange, Louis," said Marrast, "and yet it is, doubtless,
+very true. I had observed what you remark myself, although I have viewed
+the movement less hopefully for the cause of the Republic than you."
+
+"Depend upon it, Armand," said Louis Blanc, smiling, "that
+Republicanism and Socialism are identical terms, as much so as Communism
+and despotism are antagonistic terms."
+
+"But how do you account for this wonderful change, this unprecedented
+fever for Fourierism?" asked Flocon.
+
+"I don't pretend to account for it at all. The merits of the cause have,
+perhaps, begun to be properly appreciated. Unusual efforts have been
+made by our friends of late. Whole nations and epochs are sometimes
+seized with a contagious mania for peculiar species of literature, as
+for everything else. But I will hint to you a suspicion which I have
+recently entertained, namely, that, after all, the rapid sale and ready
+market for every species of Fourier literature is not an unerring
+indication of the amount of reading of such literature, or the demand
+that actually exists of buyers as well as readers--individual ones at
+least. As for the journalistic literature, that I have learned is,
+without doubt, gratuitously distributed, to a great extent, among the
+masses."
+
+"But can the masses read the papers?" asked Marrast.
+
+"Each family, house, neighborhood, cafe or cabaret, at any rate, has, at
+least one reader," said Rollin; "and all the men, women and children
+have ears to hear, if not power to comprehend. But some of these papers,
+which I have seen, come down in style to the very humblest
+comprehension."
+
+"Can it be," asked Flocon, "that there is such a club as a society for
+the diffusion of social knowledge in Paris, after the form of that in
+London, instituted by Lord Henry Brougham and his Whig coadjutors, for
+the diffusion of general information, and so opposed by the Tories."
+
+"If there be such an association," said Louis Blanc, "it has managed to
+elude all my vigilance thus far, and that of the Government, too, for
+Guizot can perceive, if no one else can, the inevitable effect of all
+this, and he has no idea that the dear people of France shall be
+educated by any one save himself. But, actually, there seems to me to
+exist too much unity of purpose and action in this enterprise for it to
+be the work of an association. I should rather suppose one powerful and
+philanthropic mind at the head of the movement, were there not two
+things so plainly opposed to it as to forbid the idea--the first being
+that there is no one man in Europe who is rich enough to expend such
+immense sums upon such an enterprise, if he would, and the second that
+there is no man who has the subject sufficiently at heart to do it, if
+he could."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+"WAIT AND HOPE."
+
+
+Just then a light rap was heard at the private door, which Marrast
+immediately hastened to open, as if in anticipation of the arrival of a
+friend.
+
+A brief and rapid colloquy ensued; then M. Dantes, the Deputy from
+Marseilles, was introduced. He seemed acquainted with, and to be held in
+high regard by all present. His dress, as usual, was black, with a white
+cravat, and his manner and bearing had all that magnetism and dignity
+which so deeply impressed those he met.
+
+"I find you in private conference, do I not, Messieurs?" asked he,
+glancing around with a smile. "I pray you let me not interrupt. I have
+called but for a moment to speak with M. Marrast respecting a measure in
+the Chamber, and have consented to enter only at his solicitation."
+
+"You are right, M. Dantes," replied Marrast, "in supposing us engaged in
+a private conference, and upon matters of deep import, though
+conferences in this office can never be so private or so important as
+not to derive benefit from the presence and counsel of the Deputy from
+Marseilles."
+
+"Most true," observed Louis Blanc; "and so far from intrusion do we
+view your arrival that we can but consider it most opportune that we
+have the privilege of referring to you a question on which, between us,
+especially between our friend Marrast and myself, there seems some
+little diversity of sentiment."
+
+"It would, I fear," said M. Dantes, "be unpardonable arrogance in one so
+young as I am in the great cause of human liberty to offer counsel to
+you, who are all veterans, and most of you little less than martyrs to
+your enthusiasm. But no good citizen will shrink from the responsibility
+of declaring the results of his reflections on all topics which have
+reference to the general weal."
+
+"We differ mainly in this," said Marrast: "Louis Blanc attributes the
+Republican failures of the past ten years to prematurity and want of
+preparation in our attempts, and contends that all those reverses may be
+retrieved by patience and prudence in future, while, to my mind, there
+is nothing to indicate for the future, from the same causes, different
+results than those experienced in the past."
+
+"Concert of action," said M. Dantes, mildly, "is always an indispensable
+requisite in the accomplishment of every enterprise which relies for its
+success on association, or the combined efforts of individuals laboring
+for a common end; yet, with all the concert of action which can possibly
+be attained, the best arranged and best digested scheme in the world may
+be ruined by premature movement. Of this we surely have sad proof in the
+history of the past ten years alluded to. There is something of truth
+in the declaration so frequently made that the French people are not yet
+prepared for freedom. If this be so, then it is the duty of their
+friends to prepare them. It is folly to suppose that the masses should,
+at first, intuitively know all their rights and the best mode of
+vindicating them. This they must be taught; and, to this end, the press
+should be unceasingly at work, not only all over France, but all over
+Europe, in diffusing correct views upon life and labor, and political
+rights and powers. There should be, also, concert of action among the
+friends of freedom, and clubs should at once be instituted in every
+city, town and village in France, which should be in private and
+intimate correspondence with similar clubs at Paris and in all the
+capitals of Christendom. There should, likewise, be unity of action
+introduced among the masses themselves. In a city like Paris, and among
+a people like the French, secret signals can easily be arranged, by
+which, at any hour of the night, or of the day, fifty thousand laborers
+in their blouses might be concentrated at any point where their presence
+is required, and that, too, with arms in their hands furnished from
+secret arsenals; and thus would those pitiable slaughters of helpless
+insurgents, like those of sheep in the shambles, we have so often
+witnessed, be avoided, if nothing besides were gained. The people are
+ever but too ready to pour out their blood, and the most difficult and
+delicate task in our enterprise is, after all, to restrain them--to
+impress upon them the all important maxim, without which nothing great,
+good or enduring is achieved, those three words in which all human
+wisdom is contained, 'Wait and hope.'"
+
+"And for what are we to wait and hope, for which we have not already in
+vain waited and hoped the past ten years?" asked Marrast.
+
+"The true hour to strike!" was the firm answer.
+
+"And that hour, when will it come?"
+
+"It may come quickly, as it will come surely, soon or late! It cannot be
+that the Revolution of July should continue much longer to result in the
+solemn mockery it has. It cannot be that its friends should much longer
+be withheld from those by whom it was achieved, only to aggrandize one
+old man and his sons. It cannot be that the unmitigated and disgusting
+selfism of Louis Philippe, and his efforts to ally himself with every
+crowned head in Europe--not for the glory of France, but for his
+own--will much longer be overlooked or their perils masked. The
+appanages grasped by himself--the dotation and bridal outfit of the Duke
+of Orleans--the dotation sought for the Duke of Nemours, and his
+appointment as Regent during the minority of the Count of Paris--the
+Governorship of Algeria bestowed on the youthful and inexperienced
+Aumale, to the insult of so many brave and victorious generals--the
+naval supremacy, to which has been exalted the ambitious Joinville, and
+his union to the opulent Brazilian Princess--the effort to unite the
+young Montpensier with the Infanta of Spain--the environment of Paris
+with Bastilles, with the avowed purpose of fortifying order by turning
+the ordnance which should protect into enginery of destruction--an
+immense standing army--the notorious corruption of officials, and the
+audacious dabbling of Ministers in the stocks, if not the King himself,
+by means of information obtained by the Government telegraph, and
+withheld from the people, or of information manufactured by the
+telegraph designed to affect the Bourse--the unprecedented number of
+placemen occupying seats in the Chamber of Deputies, yet receiving
+exorbitant salaries as incumbents of civil offices, one man being often
+in receipt of the salaries of several offices, though performing the
+duties of none--the fact that Ministers have maintained majorities by
+unblushing bribery in elections--that hardly one man in two hundred is
+an elector--the profligate arts of corruption by which every able man is
+bought by the Court--the disgraceful censorship of the press and the
+drama--the enormous appropriations for the civil list, wrung out by
+grinding taxes from the toil and sweat of millions--the absurd
+assumption, yet the monstrous power, over the press and its conductors,
+of that conclave of hoary dotards called the Chamber of Peers--the utter
+and most impious disregard of the deprivation and misery of the
+operative and laborer, although arrayed side by side with the insolence
+and wealth pampered by the taxes torn from themselves--the total
+forgetfulness of the self-evident truth of the right of all men to
+labor, unrestricted by the baleful influences of the competition of
+capitalists--these facts, properly urged and set forth by the press,
+from the tribune and in the clubs, in connection with due enlightenment
+of the masses upon their rights as to labor and its reward and the duty
+of government thereupon could not fail to prepare the popular mind, all
+over France, and all over Europe, for reform--for revolution."
+
+"Unquestionably," cried Louis Blanc, "such would be the effect; and it
+would not only prepare the people for reform, and stimulate them to
+obtain it, but it would make them Republicans--true
+Republicans--American Republicans! The Americans do not plume themselves
+on the title citizen, but they work; they dispute little about words,
+but clear their lands; they do not talk of exterminating anybody, but
+they cover the sea with their ships, they construct immense canals,
+roads and steamers without jabbering at every stroke of the spade about
+the rights of man. With them, labor, merit, talent and honest opulence
+are honored and rewarded aristocracies. Such Republicans would furnish
+France more Washingtons, Jeffersons and Madisons, and fewer
+Robespierres, Dantons and Marats!"
+
+"There can be no doubt," remarked Flocon, "that the paramount interest
+in a republic is that of those who work, that the labor question is of
+supreme importance, that the profound problem now submitted to the
+industrial nations of Christendom demands satisfactory solution, and
+that the long-enduring and most iniquitous miseries of those who toil
+must cease. Reform, revolution and government which achieve not these,
+achieve nothing! They would be worse than useless. The measures
+suggested by our distinguished friend seem to me eminently calculated to
+attain the consummation we desire."
+
+"A good government must and always will systematically uphold the poor,
+and ever interpose to protect the weak against the strong," said Louis
+Blanc. "The state should be tutelary for the ignorant, the poor and the
+suffering of every description. We must have a guardian government--a
+government that will accord the aid of that mighty engine, credit, not
+to the rich only, but also to the poor. It must interpose likewise in
+the matter of industry, and exclude that antagonistical principle of
+competition--the poisoned fount of so much virulence, violence and ruin.
+Our maxim is, brothers, and in this do we all concur, 'Human
+Solidarity,' and our motto, 'Unity, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.'
+All men are of one family, and once thoroughly sensible of this kindred,
+discord, hate and selfism will no longer be possible."
+
+"The views advanced," said Ledru Rollin, "so far as they tend to the
+elevation of the masses and to popular preparation for reform,
+Republicanism or revolution, have my most cordial approval; but I would
+beg to ask how long are the people to 'wait and hope?' When is to come
+the hour to strike?"
+
+"Who can tell," said M. Dantes, in his low, clear and musical tones,
+"at what moment the breath will come which may hurl on its errand of
+devastation the avalanche which the snows and suns of centuries,
+perchance, have been preparing for its awful mission? In the stillness
+of the night-time, beneath the clear blue sky of summer, or amid the
+ravings of the midnight tempest, its dread march is ordered, and in
+resistless, crushing sublimity it begins to move on to accomplish its
+terrible errand. Who may predict the precise moment when the earthquake
+shall rock, the tornado sweep, the red lightning scathe, or the lava
+flood desolate? And who shall tell the day or the hour when the people,
+in their majesty and might, shall rise to avenge their wrongs? The
+snow-flake falls fleecily on the mountain's top through many a long and
+silent night; a land green as Eden smiles over the volcano; through many
+a calm and sunny day the electric flame gathers in the firmament! At
+length, when least expected, the avalanche sweeps, the volcano bursts,
+the red bolt strikes. France is the victim of many wrongs. Which one of
+them shall prove the last drop in her cup of bitterness we know not.
+France is divided into many political sects, and all but one aim at
+revolution. Which one of all shall it be to set the ball of revolution
+in motion? The Legitimists, who consider the Duke of Bordeaux the
+rightful heir, and Louis Philippe a usurper; the Bonapartists, who think
+they evoke the great shade of Napoleon in the person of his unworthy
+descendant; or the old Republicans? As for the Conservatives, let them
+with Guizot at their head, uphold themselves if they can, and let the
+dynasties under Barrot and Thiers overthrow and succeed their factional
+foes. Their petty quarrels we care not for. Nor shall we, the
+Communists, ever suffer ourselves to be deemed the revolutionary party;
+but the revolution once commenced, let us throw ourselves into its
+torrent, and with our thorough, perfect and secret organization, we
+cannot fail to shape it most successfully to our own, our righteous
+ends. The hour when revolution may commence we cannot predict, as it is
+not our policy to start or precipitate it; but that hour may come
+quickly. It must come on the demise of Louis Philippe, which event
+cannot be long delayed, and it may be precipitated before. Nor will
+France alone be convulsed. As the news of that old man's death, on the
+lightning's wing, spreads over Europe, the electric wire will prove but
+a train passing through repeated mines, which, one after the other, will
+explode with awful devastation. Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg, the
+strongholds of despotism in Europe, each will totter--all but the last
+will fall. The press is powerless on the Russian serf. Russia will be
+the tyrant's last citadel. Italy will throw off the Austrian yoke and be
+free. Gregory XVIII. will shortly die. A wise, far-seeing and benevolent
+priest, named Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, born at Sinigaglia, and
+now a cardinal, with the title of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, will
+succeed to the Papal See, and Italy will be a republic; Genoa, Venice,
+Naples, Lombardy, Piedmont and Sardinia will be sister yet sovereign
+states, forming one union--the constellation of freedom, the favorite
+scheme of Napoleon's better days at last achieving reality. Switzerland,
+with her green hills and her field Morgarten, her priestly despots
+expelled, shall also be free. But I weary you, Messieurs."
+
+"By no means," cried Marrast, cordially clasping M. Dantes by the hand.
+"I have listened in silence to your earnest exposition of the policy you
+suggest, and so truly do I subscribe to it that, henceforth, I am your
+disciple and adopt your motto, 'Wait and hope' for my own. But it is
+nearly two o'clock. In an hour the Chamber sits."
+
+"And, meanwhile, Messieurs," interrupted M. Dantes, "I know not that we
+can better employ ourselves, after so protracted a seance, than to
+repair to Vefour's. This talking is hungry work, and listening and
+thinking, which are by far more tedious, are still more so. So to
+Vefour's."
+
+"The seance 'National' is closed!" cried Ledru Rollin, laughing, as the
+whole company descended the gloomy stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS PRIMA DONNA.
+
+
+All fashionable Paris was excited over the announcement of a new prima
+donna, whose wonderful achievements in Italian opera had set even the
+exacting critics of Italy wild with enthusiasm and delight.
+
+This great artiste was no other than the renowned Louise d'Armilly. She
+had never before sung in the presence of a Parisian audience, but her
+fame had preceded her, and it was accepted as certain that her triumph
+at the Academie Royale would be both instantaneous and overwhelming.
+
+She was to assume the role of Lucrezia Borgia, in Donizetti's brilliant
+opera of that name, a role in which the enterprising director of the
+Academie Royale assured the expectant public that she possessed no
+equal.
+
+For weeks every Parisian journal had been sounding her praises with
+unremitting zeal, and now her name was as familiar as a household word
+in all the high society salons, where the ladies and their gallants
+could talk of nothing but the approaching operatic event, while in the
+cafes and on the boulevards an equal degree of interest was exhibited.
+
+Even the masses, notwithstanding the political agitation in which they
+were involved, had caught the prevailing excitement, and the leaders of
+the contending parties themselves paused amid their heated discussions
+to talk of Louise d'Armilly.
+
+The career of this young and beautiful artiste had been remarkable. Her
+debut had been made at Brussels, about two years before, in company with
+her brother, M. Leon d'Armilly, and there, as well as at all the
+theatres of Italy, La Scala, Argentina and Valle, they had roused a
+perfect storm of operatic enthusiasm.
+
+The origin of this young artiste was veiled in the deepest mystery.
+Rumor ascribed to her descent from one of the oldest and most
+respectable families of France; and domestic trials, among which was a
+matrimonial misadventure, no less than the arrest of an Italian Prince
+whom she was about to wed, on the bridal night, as an escaped galley
+slave, were assigned as the cause which had given her splendid powers to
+the stage.
+
+At an earlier hour than usual--for Parisian fashion never fills the
+opera-house until the curtain falls on the second act--the Rue
+Lepelletier was crowded with carriages, La Pinon with fiacres, and the
+Grande Bateliere and the passages to the Boulevard des Italiens with
+persons on foot, all hastening toward that magnificent edifice,
+constructed within the space of a single year by Debret, to replace the
+building in the Rue de Richelieu ordered to be razed by the Government
+because of the assassination at its door of the Duke of Berri, in
+1820--that magnificent structure which accommodates two thousand
+spectators with seats.
+
+Among the first in the orchestra stalls were Beauchamp and Debray, whose
+attention was divided between the stage and the arrivals of splendidly
+attired elegantes in the different loges, during the overture. All the
+elite of Paris seemed on the qui vive.
+
+"It will be a splendid house," observed Debray.
+
+"The debutante, be she whom she may, should feel flattered by such an
+unexampled assemblage of all the ton of Paris."
+
+Orchestra, balcony, galleries, amphitheatres, lobbies and parterre were
+packed; every portion of the vast edifice, in short, was thronged except
+a few of the loges and baignoires, into which every moment brilliant
+companies were entering.
+
+"Who is that tall, dark military man, with the heavy moustache, now
+making his way into the Minister's box?" asked Beauchamp, after a pause.
+
+"That man is no less a personage than the Governor of Algeria, Eugene
+Cavaignac, Marshal of Camp," said Debray. "He reported himself at the
+War Office this morning, and is the lion of the house."
+
+"Ah!" cried the journalist; "and that is the hero of Constantine! What a
+frank, open countenance, and what a distingue bearing and manner!"
+
+"You would not suppose all that man's life passed in a camp, would you?"
+
+"His career has, I understand, been remarkable," said Beauchamp.
+
+"Very. His father was a Conventionist of '92, a famous old fellow, who,
+among other terrible things laid at his door, is said to have pawned an
+old man's life, old Labodere, for his daughter's honor; somewhat, you
+remember, as Francis I. spared St. Valliar's life for the favor of the
+lovely Diana of Poitiers, his only child. His aged mother is yet living,
+a woman of strong mind, though seventy, and he does nothing without her
+advice. His brother Godefroi's name was notorious as that of a powerful
+Republican leader for years before his decease. At eighteen Eugene
+entered the Polytechnic School. At twenty-two he was a sub-lieutenant in
+the engineer corps of the second regiment. In '28 he was first
+lieutenant in France; in '29 he was captain; in '34 he was in Algeria;
+and, in '39, his cool, bold, decided but discreet conduct had made him
+chef de bataillon, despite the fact that he had incurred the Royal
+displeasure some years before by a disloyal toast at a banquet. In '40
+he was lieutenant-colonel; in '41 marshal of camp, and first commander
+of division of Tlemeen; in '43, he was conqueror of Constantine, at the
+first siege of which I so nearly lost my own valuable head, and he is
+now Governor of Algeria, after service there of fourteen years."
+
+"And the tall and sinewy man beside him, presenting such a contrast to
+Cavaignac, with his light complexion, gray hair, and sullen and not very
+intelligent expression?"
+
+"Oh! that is General Bugeaud, by some deemed the real conqueror of
+Algeria. But he's not at all popular with the army. His manners are
+simple and excessively blunt. He is a perfect despot with his staff,
+'tis said; yet he is quite a wag when in good-humor, and, at Ministerial
+dinners, can unbend and make himself as agreeable as need be wished. His
+voice is as harsh as a Cossack's, and in perfect contrast to that of
+Cavaignac, which is the richest and most musical you ever heard, yet
+distinct, emphatic and impressive."
+
+"Bugeaud incurred intense odium with the opposition for his unwarranted
+severity as jailor of the Duchess of Berri, in '34, and his killing
+Dulong in a duel, because of a deserved taunt on the subject."
+
+"Bugeaud did his duty," said the Secretary, "though a man of his nature
+could hardly perform such a duty with gentleness. Bugeaud is not a
+gentleman; he knows it, and don't try to seem one. He is only a soldier.
+But there comes his very particular foe; General Lamoriciere. That
+magnificent woman on his arm is his wife and the sister of the lady who
+follows, with her husband, the ex-Minister, Adolphe Thiers."
+
+"What a contrast!" cried Beauchamp. "The tall and elegant figure of
+Lamoriciere, in his brilliant uniform of the Spahis, half oriental, half
+French, with his lovely wife, and the low, swarthy little ex-Minister in
+complete black, with his huge round spectacles on his nose nearly twice
+the size of his eyes, and a wife on his arm nearly double his stature.
+Why, Thiers reminds me of a Ghoul gallanting a Peri."
+
+"And yet that same dark little ex-Minister has perhaps, in many respects
+the most powerful mind--at all events, the most available mind--impelled
+as it is by his restless ambition, in all France. Do you observe how
+incessantly his keen black eye flashes around the house, beneath his
+huge glasses?"
+
+"He seems perfectly aware that every eye in the house is directed toward
+his loge. But is it true that his brother-in-law owes his rapid rise to
+his influence at Court?"
+
+"By no means," replied Debray. "If there is a man in the French army who
+has achieved his own fortunes, that man is Lamoriciere. He went to
+Algeria a lieutenant, and bravely and gallantly has he attained his
+present brilliant position. It was he who proposed the creation of a
+corps of native Arab troops, like the Sepoys of British India; and he
+was appointed colonel of the first regiment of Spahis. Our quondam
+friend, Maximilian Morrel, has a command in this regiment, and is a
+protege of his illustrious exemplar."
+
+"The hostility between Lamoriciere and Bugeaud arises, I suppose, from
+the latter's detestable disposition, his overbearing and dictatorial
+temper. Lamoriciere is not a man, I take it, to be the slave of any
+one."
+
+"Rivalry in Africa is thought to have originated the feud," remarked
+Debray, "and political differences in Paris to have inflamed it.
+Bugeaud is a Legitimist, and Lamoriciere a Republican."
+
+"Silence!" cried the musical connoisseurs in the orchestra. "The curtain
+rises."
+
+As the curtain rose a hush of expectation reigned over the audience. The
+hum and bustle ceased, and silence most profound succeeded. The
+appearance of the fair cantatrice was the signal for such a reception as
+only a Parisian audience can give, and the first strains that issued
+from her lips assured them that their applause was not misplaced.
+
+And surely never was the dark Duchess of Ferrara more faithfully
+personated than by the present artiste. This vraisemblance, which is so
+seldom witnessed in the opera, seemed to strike every eye. Her figure
+was tall and majestic, and voluptuously developed. Her air and bearing
+were haughty, dignified, and queen-like. Her complexion was very dark,
+but perfectly clear; her forehead broad and high; her brows heavy, but
+gracefully arched; her eyes large, black and flashing; her hair dark as
+night, and arranged with great simplicity in glossy bands; and her mouth
+large, but filled with teeth of pearl-like whiteness, contrasted by lips
+of coral wet with the spray. The entire outline of her face was Roman,
+and exhibited in its contour and lineaments even more than Roman
+sternness and decision; and its effect was still more heightened by a
+large mole at one corner of her mouth and the velvet robes in which she
+was appropriately costumed.
+
+The scene between the Duchess and the Spaniard, Gubetta, was received
+with the utmost applause, and the pathos of that between the son and his
+unknown mother, which succeeded, touched the audience to tears; but when
+the maskers rushed in and her vizard was torn off, and her true name
+proclaimed, and, amid her heart-rending wailings, the curtain fell on
+the first act, the shouts were perfectly thunderous with enthusiasm. The
+role of Gennaro was performed by the brother of the cantatrice, Leon
+d'Armilly, a young man of twenty, of delicate and graceful figure, and
+as decidedly blonde as his sister was brunette. Nature seemed to have
+made a great mistake in sex when this brother and sister were fashioned.
+Indeed, it seemed hardly possible that they could be brother and sister,
+a remark constantly made by the audience, and the kindred announced on
+the bills was generally viewed as one of those convenient relationships
+often assumed on the stage, but having no more reality than those of the
+dramatis personae themselves.
+
+"A second Pasta!" cried Chateau-Renaud, entering the stalls immediately
+on the descent of the curtain. "Heard you ever such a magnificent
+contralto?"
+
+"Saw you ever such a magnificent bust?" asked Beauchamp.
+
+"Were it not for a few manifest impossibilities," thoughtfully remarked
+Debray, "I should swear that this same angelic Louise d'Armilly was no
+other than a certain very beautiful, very eccentric and very talented
+young lady whom we all once knew as a star of Parisian fashion, and who,
+the last time she was in this house, sat in the same loge where now sit
+the African generals."
+
+"Whom can you mean, Debray?" cried Beauchamp.
+
+"A certain haughty young lady, who was to have married an Italian
+Prince, but, on the night of the bridal, in the midst of the
+festivities, the house being thronged with guests, and even while the
+contract was receiving the signatures, the Prince was arrested as an
+escaped galley-slave, and at his trial proved to be the illegitimate son
+of the bride's mother and a certain high legal functionary, the
+Procureur du Roi, now at Charenton, through whose burning zeal for
+justice the horrible discovery transpired."
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed Chateau-Renaud. "You cannot mean Eugenie Danglars,
+daughter of the bankrupt baron, whom our unhappy friend Morcerf was once
+to have wed?"
+
+"The very same," quietly rejoined the Secretary; "but this lady cannot
+be Mlle. Danglars, I say absolutely, for many sufficient reasons," he
+quickly added; then, as if to turn the conversation, he hastily
+remarked: "Ah! there are M. Dantes and M. Lamartine, as usual,
+together."
+
+"M. Dantes!" exclaimed the Count, in surprise, looking around.
+"Impossible!"
+
+"And yet most true," observed Beauchamp; "in the third loge from the
+Minister's to the right. What a wonderful resemblance there is between
+those men--the poet and the Deputy! One would suppose them brothers. The
+same tall and elegant figure, the same white and capacious brow, the
+same dark, blazing eye, the same raven hair, and, above all, the same
+most unearthly and spiritual pallor of complexion."
+
+"No wonder M. Dantes is pale," said the Count. "Have you not heard of
+the occurrence of this evening in the Chamber? M. Dantes was in the
+midst of one of his powerful harangues against the Government, when
+suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he stopped--coughed violently
+several times, and pressed his handkerchief to his mouth; then taking a
+small vial from his vest pocket, he placed it to his lips, and
+instantaneously, as if new life had entered him, proceeded more
+eloquently than ever to the conclusion of his speech."
+
+"I heard something of this," said Beauchamp.
+
+"As he descended from the tribune his friends thronged around him,
+anxious about his health. He quieted their apprehensions with his
+peculiar smile of assurance, but I observed that his white handkerchief
+was spotted with blood, and he almost immediately left the Chamber."
+
+"That man will kill himself in the cause he has espoused," remarked
+Debray. "See how ghastly he now looks. But so much the better for the
+Ministry. He is a formidable foe. Indeed, that loge contains the two
+most powerful opponents of the Government."
+
+"And who are those men just entering the box?" asked Beauchamp.
+
+"None other than the two rival astronomers of Europe," said Debray, "and
+yet most intimate friends. The taller and elder, the one with gray hair,
+a dark, sharp Bedouin countenance, and that large, wild, black eye, with
+a smile of mingled sarcasm and humor ever on his thin lip, is Emanuel
+Arago. The other, the short, robust man, with fair complexion, sandy
+hair, bright blue eye and vivacious expression, is Le Verrier, the most
+tireless star-gazer science has produced since Galileo. But hush! the
+curtain is up."
+
+"Oh! it matters not," said the Count; "only Gennaro and the Spaniard
+appear in the second act, and I have neither eyes nor ears save for the
+Duchess to-night. But who are those, Beauchamp?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the loge on the first tier, next to the Minister's and directly
+opposite to that of M. Dantes?"
+
+"Ah! two officers of the Spahis and two most exquisite women!" exclaimed
+Debray. "They belong, doubtless, to the African party in the Minister's
+loge. Your lorgnette, Count. What a splendid woman!"
+
+Hardly had the Secretary raised the glass to his eyes before he dropped
+it with the exclamation:
+
+"A miracle! a miracle!"
+
+"What?" cried both of the other young men, turning to the box at which
+Debray was gazing.
+
+"Messieurs, do you remember the fair Valentine de Villefort, whose
+untimely and mysterious demise all the young people of Paris so much
+bewailed, some two or three years ago, and whose lovely remains, we,
+with our own eyes, saw deposited in the Saint-Meran and de Villefort
+vault at Pere Lachaise, one bitter cold autumn evening, and there
+listened most patiently and piously to a whole breviary of mournful
+speeches, declarative of the said Valentine's most superlative
+excellence?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, we remember it well," was the reply.
+
+"Then behold, and never dare to doubt the reappearance of the dead again
+to the ocular organs of humanity."
+
+"Valentine de Villefort!" exclaimed the Count, after a careful and
+scrutinizing survey, "by all that's supernatural; and more exquisitely
+lovely than ever!"
+
+"Then it was true, after all, the strange story we heard," said
+Beauchamp, "of the young lady's resurrection and marriage to Maximilian
+Morrel, somewhere far away in parts unknown?"
+
+"No doubt," replied the Count, "for, if I mistake not--and I'm sure I
+don't mistake, now that I look more closely--that stalwart, splendid
+fellow, with the broad forehead, black eyes and moustache, and the order
+of the Legion of Honor on his breast, to set off his rich uniform of the
+Spahis, and on whose arm the fair apparition is leaning, is no other
+than Maximilian Morrel himself--the identical man who saved my
+worthless neck from a yataghan in Algeria."
+
+"How dark he's grown!" said Debray.
+
+"No more so than all these African heroes--for instance, Cavaignac and
+Lamoriciere."
+
+"But what a splendid contrast there is between the young Colonel of the
+Spahis and his lovely bride, if such she be! He, dark as a Corsican;
+she, fair as an Englishwoman--he, upright as a poplar; she, drooping
+like a willow--his hair and eyes black as midnight, while her soft,
+languishing orbs are as blue as the summer sky, and her glossy ringlets
+as brown as a chestnut!"
+
+"On my word," said Beauchamp, "the Count grows poetical! Morrel had
+better keep his beautiful wife out of the way! But have you discovered
+who are the other couple in the box?" he added to the Secretary, who had
+his lorgnette in most vigilant requisition. "Any more discoveries,
+Debray?"
+
+A sigh might have been heard as the Secretary took his glass from his
+eye, and replied simply:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And who now?" asked Chateau-Renaud. "There seems no end to discoveries
+to-night."
+
+"The young man who, by his decorations, seems a chef de bataillon of the
+Spahis," replied Debray, "I cannot make out. But, be he whom he may, he
+is effectually disguised from his most intimate friends by his luxuriant
+beard and moustache. As for the lady--there is but one woman in the
+world I have ever had the good fortune to behold who could be mistaken
+for her."
+
+"And that is?" said Beauchamp.
+
+"Herself."
+
+"And who is herself, Lucien?" asked Chateau-Renaud.
+
+"Have you forgotten the Countess de Morcerf?"
+
+"The Countess de Morcerf?--the wife of the general who was convicted by
+the peers of felony, treason and outrage in the matter of Ali Tebelen,
+Pacha of Yanina?" said Beauchamp.
+
+"And who blew his brains out in despair?" added the Count.
+
+"The same," said Debray. "She returned to Marseilles with her son
+Albert. You remember Albert and his strange conduct in the duel with the
+Count of Monte-Cristo?"
+
+"One could hardly forget such chivalric generosity, such magnificent
+magnanimity and such sublime self-control as were exhibited by the young
+man on that occasion!" said Beauchamp. "It is to be hoped he was not
+equally forbearing toward the Arabs in his African campaigns, although,
+as his name has never been seen or heard since he entered the army, in
+all probability he was."
+
+"Well, well," cried the Secretary, impatiently, "the Countess retired to
+Marseilles, and there she is said to have resided in utter seclusion, in
+company only with Morrel's beautiful wife, devoting the vast wealth of
+the deceased Count to philanthropic objects, having received it, as his
+widow, only with the understanding it should be thus bestowed."
+
+"But the rumor was," said Beauchamp, "and indeed I was so assured by M.
+de Boville himself, Receiver-General of the Hospitals, at the time, that
+the Countess gave all the Count's fortune to the hospitals, and that he
+himself registered the deed of gift."
+
+"Oh! that was only some twelve or thirteen hundred thousand francs,"
+said Debray. "Three months after her settlement at Marseilles, in a
+small house in the Allees de Meillan, said to be her own by maternal
+inheritance, a letter came to her from Thomson and French, of Rome,
+stating that there was a deposit in their house, to the credit of the
+estate of the late Count, of the enormous sum of two millions of francs,
+subject to her sole control and order, as the Count's only heir, in the
+absence of his son."
+
+"Two millions of francs!" cried the two young men in a breath.
+
+"Even so, Messieurs," said Debray. "The story does sound rather
+oriental; but I have reason to know that it is entirely true, for I made
+diligent inquiry about it when last at Marseilles."
+
+"And what took you to Marseilles, Lucien?" asked the Count
+significantly.
+
+"The Ministry," replied Debray, with evident confusion, coloring deeply.
+
+"But why does not the Countess marry again?" asked Chateau-Renaud,
+surveying her faultless form and face through his glass. "In the prime
+of life, rich, and, despite her past troubles, most exquisitely
+beautiful, it is strange she don't make herself and some one else
+happy!"
+
+"Especially as no one could ever accuse her of having very desperately
+loved her dear first husband," added the journalist. "Why don't she
+marry, Lucien?"
+
+"How the devil should I know!" replied the Secretary in great confusion.
+"You don't suppose I ever asked her the question, do you?"
+
+"Upon my word," exclaimed the Count, laughing, "I shall begin to think
+you have, if you take it so warmly. But, hist! the bell! The curtain
+rises. We mustn't lose the third act of Donizetti's chef d'oeuvre,
+with such a Lucrezia, for any woman living."
+
+But it was very evident that much of the magnificent performance of the
+debutante and her companion, in the thrilling scene between the Duke and
+Duchess of Ferrara and the young Captain Gennaro, was lost to the
+Secretary.
+
+"Do you observe, Beauchamp, how strangely fascinated with the new
+cantatrice seems the young officer of the Spahis who accompanies the
+Countess?" he whispered. "Do but look. He sits like one transfixed."
+
+"And the Countess seems transfixed also, though not by the same object,"
+was the reply. "How excessively pale, yet how beautiful she is! That
+plain black dress, without ornament or jewel, and her raven hair, parted
+simply on her forehead, enhance her voluptuous charms infinitely more
+than could the most gorgeous costume. Heavens! what a happy man will he
+be who can call her his!"
+
+"Amen!" said Debray, and the word seemed to rise from the very depths of
+his heart. "But she will never marry. Some early disappointment, even
+before her union with Morcerf, has withered her heart, and the terrible
+divorce which parted her from him, although she never loved him, will
+keep her single forever. Her first and only love is either dead
+or--worse--married to another."
+
+"See, see, Lucien!" cried Beauchamp, hurriedly; "at whom does she gaze
+so intently, and yet so sadly? It cannot be Lamartine, for there sits
+his lovely young English wife at his side; nor can it be old Arago, nor
+young Le Verrier; and yet some one in that box it surely is."
+
+"M. Dantes?" cried Debray.
+
+"Impossible! That man seems hardly conscious that there are such beings
+as women. His whole soul is in affairs of state."
+
+"His whole soul seems somewhere else just at present," exclaimed the
+Secretary, bitterly. "Look!"
+
+"How dreadfully pale he is!" said Beauchamp; "and yet his eyes fairly
+blaze. Is it the Countess he gazes at?"
+
+"Is it M. Dantes she gazes at?"
+
+At that moment, amid the wild farewell of the mother to her son, upon
+the stage, the curtain came down, and at the same instant, M. Dantes
+hastily pressed his white handkerchief to his lips, and, leaning on the
+arms of Lamartine and Arago, hastily left the box.
+
+"Ha! the Countess faints!" cried Debray, as the door closed on M.
+Dantes. "Do they know each other, then?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE ITALIAN LOVER.
+
+
+It was early in the evening succeeding the day on which M. Dantes had
+answered Giovanni Massetti's letter. Zuleika was seated in the vast,
+sumptuously-furnished salon of the magnificent Morcerf mansion, now, as
+the reader already knows, the residence of the famous and mysterious
+Deputy from Marseilles. She sat upon a superb green velvet-covered sofa,
+half reclining in an indolent, picturesque attitude; behind the sofa and
+leaning over its back stood a young Italian, a perfect model of manly
+beauty; his ardent black eyes were riveted on Zuleika's blushing
+countenance with a look of the most profound and enthusiastic adoration,
+while his hand held the young girl's with a gentle, loving pressure,
+which was returned with unmistakable warmth. The apartment was dimly
+lighted and huge, sombre patches of shadow lay everywhere. Zuleika and
+her lover were alone together; for some time they seemed too full of
+happiness to speak, but finally Giovanni said, in a soft, flutelike
+whisper, as if unwilling to break with loudly uttered words the
+delicious spell of his love-dream:
+
+"Zuleika, darling Zuleika, so you did not once forget me during our
+long, cruel separation?"
+
+"Never for a single instant, Giovanni," answered the young girl, the
+flush upon her cheek deepening as she spoke, her hand tightening about
+her lover's and her lovely eyes filling with a soft fire. "But I
+sometimes feared you had forgotten me!"
+
+"You were always present in my mind and in my heart," replied the
+Italian in a tone that thrilled her through and through. Stooping, he
+placed his lips to her forehead and imprinted upon it a long and silent
+kiss; then, flushing in his turn, he added, still holding his head
+against hers: "From the very moment of our first meeting you have
+reigned in my bosom, my own, my love, the queen of my destiny and my
+life!"
+
+"Oh! Giovanni, Giovanni," murmured the young girl, "I am happy, so
+happy!"
+
+He kissed her again, this time upon her upturned lips that with a slight
+movement almost imperceptibly returned the kiss, sending his blood
+tingling through his veins and causing him to tremble with delight from
+head to foot. No longer able to restrain himself, he hastily quitted the
+back of the sofa, threw himself down beside her and clasping her in his
+arms drew her unresistingly upon his bosom. Once there she did not offer
+to stir, but even nestled closer to him and pillowed her head on his
+broad shoulder. The tumultuous beating of both their hearts was audible
+amid the unbroken silence that ensued. With one hand the Viscount
+tenderly smoothed her silken tresses, and his arm tightened around her
+waist as if he had determined never to release her again.
+
+"Your father, in his letter of this morning," said Giovanni finally,
+"told me there was hope, that you did not look upon my addresses with
+aversion, and that I had his leave to pay court to you and ascertain
+your wishes from your own dear lips. I hastened here this evening, and
+M. Dantes himself bade me seek you in this salon. I came on the wings of
+love and found all my fondest hopes realized; that I possessed your
+heart as you possessed mine. Oh! tell me, Zuleika, that this is not all
+a dream, for it seems too delicious to be true!"
+
+"It is reality, Giovanni, blessed reality," answered the young girl in a
+low voice.
+
+"And do you really love me with all your soul?"
+
+"With all my soul, Giovanni!"
+
+The ardent Italian showered a flood of burning kisses upon her forehead,
+cheeks and lips, and she quivered like a leaf in his embrace. Then he
+said, with a shade of anxiety in his tone:
+
+"And your brother Esperance, is he disposed to look upon me with
+approval? You know that in Rome he did not see fit to include me in the
+number of his friends. We had a little difference, you will remember,
+and ever afterwards he was cold toward me."
+
+Zuleika shuddered as she recalled the fact that the little difference
+alluded to had been a violent quarrel that had nearly resulted in a duel
+between the two young men. She had never known the details, for both her
+brother and Giovanni had studiously concealed them from her; indeed,
+Esperance had carefully avoided all mention of the Viscount's name ever
+since the day they had become embroiled. Was M. Dantes aware of the
+trouble between his son and the youthful Italian? She did not know, but,
+at the same time, felt firmly persuaded that her father had fully
+investigated the doings, character and family of her suitor, and would
+not have sanctioned a renewal of his addresses to her had he not been
+perfectly satisfied in every respect. She, therefore, answered:
+
+"I am altogether ignorant as to what Esperance thinks of you, and cannot
+say whether he still harbors resentment against you or not; but,
+whatever may be his opinion and feelings, rest assured that he will
+never interfere to cause his sister an instant of unhappiness, more
+especially as he knows that my father looks upon you with a favoring
+eye."
+
+"But how about the coldness existing between us?"
+
+"Does it still exist on both sides?"
+
+"Not on mine, Zuleika, not on mine. I forgave and forgot all long ago."
+
+"Forgave and forgot! Then Esperance must have wronged you!"
+
+"He did, Zuleika, and with the proverbial hot blood and headlong
+impulses of the Roman youth I resented that wrong. But I could not
+remain at enmity with the brother of the girl I loved, so when I became
+cooler I sought him out and endeavored to apologize."
+
+"And he accepted your apology?"
+
+"He did not accept it, but turned on his heel and left me without a
+word. He evidently thought me a coward and attributed my efforts toward
+effecting a reconciliation to a desire to escape fighting him."
+
+"But why did you quarrel in the first place? What was the cause of the
+difference between you?"
+
+The young Italian hung his head and did not answer. Zuleika saw that he
+had grown deadly pale, and she felt his hand tremble nervously.
+
+Freeing herself from his embrace, the young girl sprang to her feet and
+faced him.
+
+"Giovanni," said she, firmly, "tell me the whole story of this painful
+affair. It is imperative that I should know it!"
+
+"Do you doubt me, Zuleika, do you doubt me?" he asked, bitterly, and he
+buried his face in his hands.
+
+"Do I doubt you, Giovanni? No. But, if you love me, tell me all the
+details of the trouble between my brother and yourself!"
+
+"I cannot, I cannot, Zuleika!" he cried. "Command me to shed the last
+drop of blood in my veins for you and I will do it without an instant's
+hesitation, but I cannot tell you that terrible tale of deceit,
+treachery and bloodshed!"
+
+He had arisen and was walking excitedly about the salon; his pallor had
+increased and he trembled in every limb.
+
+Zuleika stood with folded arms and gazed at him; she was calm and her
+eyes had a look of determination the young man had never before beheld
+in them; it filled him with dismay. A few moments ago she had been all
+love and tenderness, a yielding, trusting maiden in her lover's arms;
+now, she resembled a beautiful Amazon bent on achieving a victory, whom
+nothing but unconditional surrender would satisfy.
+
+"The story, the story," she repeated, "tell me the story!"
+
+Her face was as white as marble and her faultless lips seemed chiseled
+from stone. She looked so beautiful and tempting as she stood there, her
+surpassing loveliness enhanced by the picturesque half-oriental,
+half-Parisian dress she wore, that the Viscount felt his passion for her
+redoubled. He flung himself at her feet and seizing the hem of her
+superb robe kissed it rapturously.
+
+"Oh! Zuleika, Zuleika," he cried, utterly unable to restrain himself, "I
+am your slave! Place your tiny foot upon my neck and crush me where I
+lie! I shall expire adoring you!"
+
+"Giovanni," replied Zuleika, greatly moved by this display of devotion,
+"rise and be a man!"
+
+The Italian sprang up as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt; then he
+endeavored to clasp her in his arms, but she quietly repulsed him.
+
+"Zuleika," cried he, sadly, "you do not love me; you never loved me; I
+have been the victim of a cruel deception!"
+
+"If you think so," answered the young girl, quietly, "there is but one
+course you can pursue as a man of honor--spurn the deceiver from you and
+never look upon her face again!"
+
+The young man gazed at her reproachfully.
+
+"What have I done to turn you thus against me?" he asked, his tone
+suddenly becoming humble.
+
+"What have you done? You refuse to reveal this mystery to me, which, as
+you yourself admit, involves deceit, treachery and bloodshed, and which,
+for aught I know, has set an indelible stain upon your life! I love you
+truly, love you with all the passion of a woman's nature, but I must
+know this history that I may judge whether you are worthy of my love!"
+
+"I assure you, Zuleika, that there is no stain upon my life, that there
+is nothing in this history that tends in the least to dishonor me, but
+still I cannot speak."
+
+"Then we must separate."
+
+"Oh! Zuleika, Zuleika, do not be pitiless! You will drive me mad!"
+
+The young girl touched a bell and Ali, the Nubian, appeared.
+
+"Monsieur is about taking his departure," said she to the faithful
+servant. "I leave him in your hands."
+
+And without a word of farewell to Giovanni, she swept from the salon
+like a queen.
+
+The Viscount gazed after her with indescribable sadness pictured upon
+his handsome countenance. Then he followed Ali, put on his overcoat and
+hat and regretfully left the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE MINUTE VIALS.
+
+
+Even to the Communists, with whom he had come into such close contact,
+M. Dantes, the Deputy from Marseilles, remained as much of a mystery as
+ever. Marrast, though now devotedly attached to him, admitted that he
+was totally unable to fathom either his designs, or his methods of
+accomplishing them, while Lamartine, who was in his company a large
+portion of the time, when questioned concerning him, replied that all he
+knew of M. Dantes was that he was a firm friend of the cause and an
+untiring worker in the interest of the weary and oppressed masses.
+
+Debray, though he had no tangible foundation for it, could not get rid
+of the idea that the dangerous Deputy and the Count of Monte-Cristo were
+one and the same individual, but Beauchamp, with the usual incredulity
+of journalists, scoffed at the notion, and Chateau-Renaud derided it
+whenever it was mentioned in his presence.
+
+That M. Dantes had great wealth was, however, generally admitted, though
+whence it was derived or in what manner it was invested no one could
+tell. It was now no longer a secret that he had purchased and resided in
+the magnificent mansion formerly owned by the Count de Morcerf, in the
+Rue du Helder, and this circumstance, while it vastly augmented the
+interest attaching to him, did not in the least detract from the
+enthusiasm felt for him by the working classes.
+
+It was night. In a large chamber, richly furnished, but dimly lighted,
+in the mansion in the Rue du Helder, the same apartment once inhabited
+by the Countess de Morcerf, motionless, and seemingly lifeless, with a
+countenance as pale as alabaster, and as still, lay M. Dantes, the
+Deputy from Marseilles. Although, in the ashy pallor of the lips and
+brow, and the fixed, serene, almost stern aspect of the immovable face,
+might be read unmistakable evidence of an exhausting and dangerous
+constitutional shock to the system, yet none of that emaciation, over
+which broods the shadow of the angel of death, resulting from protracted
+illness, was there to be seen. The broad white forehead--the raven hair,
+sparsely sprinkled with silver--the round temples--the delicately
+penciled brow, encircling, like a sable arch, the large and
+almond-formed eye--the full calm lip, and the chiseled chin and
+nostril--all these were as perfect now as when last before the reader.
+The cheek was, perhaps, slightly sunken, but it could not be more pallid
+than when last beheld; and but for that nameless quietude--that "rapture
+of repose," as Lord Byron well expresses it--that placid languor which
+sleeps on the features, which illness always creates and which
+spiritualizes and intellectualizes the most common features, the invalid
+might be supposed to be enjoying the most quiet slumber.
+
+Excepting the invalid, there was no one in that chamber save the
+faithful Ali, who moved noiselessly about, from time to time, or sat
+immovably upon the floor and gazed on his master's pallid face.
+
+As the silvery tones of the chamber clock tinkled forth the third
+quarter after ten, the door opened, and a small, dark, thin man, with
+large whiskers, keen, penetrating eyes, broad, bald forehead, thinly
+covered with gray hair, and apparently about fifty years of age, briskly
+entered. It was Dr. Orfila, a name somewhat known in medical science.
+Approaching the bed, he placed his fingers upon the sick man's pulse,
+and gazed earnestly on his face for some time in silence.
+
+"Strange!" he at length muttered; "the most powerful drugs in the most
+unheard-of quantities are powerless! Who, then, is this man, whose
+nature so differs from that of every one else? Can he so have
+accustomed his system to poisons, that, as with the King of Pontus, they
+are ineffectual to help or to harm him? His constitution must be iron!
+The vitality of a dozen men is in him, or he'd have been dead a month
+ago. Well, it's plain he's no worse, if he's no better. Drugs are
+useless, and he must be left to nature and his amazing constitution.
+This stupor, this utter death of all the faculties and senses for so
+long a time, is wonderful. Fever, delirium, anything but this death-like
+trance. It seems as if this man had been sleepless all his life before,
+and that now his overwrought brain and heart were compensating
+themselves for the toil and wakefulness of years. Could I but excite the
+nerves!"
+
+For some time the physician gazed in deep thought at the pale face of
+the unconscious slumberer. Suddenly turning to the Nubian, he said to
+him:
+
+"Ali, where does your master keep the drugs he has been for years
+accustomed to take?"
+
+The Nubian stared in mute amazement, but moved not from his rug.
+
+"Ali," said Dr. Orfila, sternly, "unless I see and know those drugs,
+this night your master dies."
+
+The Nubian looked anxiously into the face of the physician, and then, as
+if satisfied with the scrutiny, rose, and, with noiseless steps, left
+the room. In a few moments he re-entered and placed in the physician's
+hands a small casket of ebony, exquisitely worked and studded with gems.
+Taking it hastily to the shaded lamp upon a table at the extremity of
+the chamber, he attempted to open it, but his attempts were vain.
+Indeed, to all appearances, it was a solid block of ebony, and its
+extreme heaviness, compared with its dimensions, seemed to favor the
+idea.
+
+"Well?" said the doctor, returning the casket, after a close scrutiny,
+to the Nubian, who had followed him.
+
+Ali took the casket, and instantly a portion of the top flew up,
+disclosing within the centre of the cube of ebony a cavity lined with
+crimson velvet, and a dazzling array of minute vials of crystal, each
+filled with a fluid--pink, blue, green and yellow in hue, while the
+contents of several were colorless. The Nubian had touched a spring
+concealed in the carving, and known only to his master and himself.
+
+The physician removed the minute vials one after another from their
+receptacles, and held them up to the light; on each was a cipher, and on
+no two was the same. Most of them were quite filled with the fluid
+contained, but some were only half full, while one was nearly empty. Dr.
+Orfila looked closely at the cipher upon each vial as he removed it from
+the casket. He then held it to the light to determine its particular hue
+or shade, and sometimes withdrew the crystal stopper ground into the
+deep mouth, touching it cautiously and quickly to his nostril or the tip
+of his tongue. "Morphia, cinchonia, quinia, lobelia, belladonna,
+narcotina, bromine, arsenicum, strychnos colubrina, brucoea
+ferruginea," muttered the savant, as he examined one vial after the
+other and replaced it. "Brucoea ferruginea--ha! brucine! I thought as
+much," exclaimed he, holding up the vial, which showed, by being nearly
+empty, that its contents had been used more frequently than those of any
+of the others.
+
+"How many drops of this is the greatest number your master has ever
+taken?" asked Dr. Orfila.
+
+The Nubian, who, it will be remembered, was a mute, held up both hands
+with the fingers outspread, and then two other fingers of one of his
+hands.
+
+"Twelve drops!" cried the astonished physician. "Impossible!"
+
+Ali insisted on the assertion.
+
+"And yet it must be so," the doctor added. "That would explain all."
+
+Taking the vial and a minute crystal vessel, which he found in the
+casket, he hastily but carefully dropped into the latter thirteen drops.
+Then filling the vessel with water, he approached the patient, who still
+slumbered heavily on, and placed it to his lips. For an instant he
+seemed conscious of the wish of the physician, and with an effort the
+mixture was swallowed. Then he lay as still and motionless as before.
+
+Returning the vials and the vessel to their places, Dr. Orfila closed
+the casket and gave it to the Nubian. He then gazed long and anxiously
+at the torpid slumberer, standing at the bedside and watching that
+marble face.
+
+At length the clock struck eleven. Dr. Orfila started and hastily
+glanced at his repeater; then, turning to the Nubian, who had carried
+away the casket, and, having noiselessly returned, stood silently beside
+him, he said:
+
+"Ali, in one hour your master will be in high fever; in two hours he
+will, probably, be delirious. He will then sleep soundly, and toward
+morning will wake, I hope, in his right mind, but terribly exhausted and
+profusely perspiring. At daylight I shall be here. You must not leave
+him for a single instant as you value his life."
+
+The Nubian clasped his hands above his head and bent his forehead almost
+to the floor.
+
+"If you think necessary, however, Ali, send for me before morning."
+
+The physician gave one more look at his patient, pressed his fingers on
+his pulse, placed his palm on his forehead, and then, taking his hat and
+cane, left the chamber.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE UNKNOWN NURSE.
+
+
+When the rumor that M. Dantes had been taken seriously ill was first
+circulated throughout Paris, it caused excitement in every quarter of
+the city, filling the Communists and workmen with dismay and greatly
+elating their opponents.
+
+In the midst of the excitement a strange lady, very plainly attired,
+but whose language and bearing gave unmistakable evidence of refinement
+and aristocratic associations, made her appearance one morning at the
+office of Dr. Orfila and humbly asked permission to nurse his
+distinguished patient. The physician, somewhat surprised at such a
+request from such a woman, immediately grew suspicious and demanded an
+explanation, when the lady informed him that she had known the sick man
+in his youth and was still deeply interested in his welfare. She refused
+to give her name, but solemnly assured the doctor that, should he grant
+her petition, M. Dantes on his recovery would be ready to thank him on
+bended knees.
+
+Convinced at length that no harm was intended, the physician gave his
+permission and the unknown lady was duly installed as nurse. She
+discharged her duties with unflagging devotion and energy, satisfying
+even the exacting Nubian, with whom she divided the watch at the bedside
+of the unconscious deputy. Dr. Orfila was delighted, while Esperance and
+Zuleika were overjoyed.
+
+On--on--the sleeper still slumbered on! One--two--three--four quarters
+after eleven tinkled in silvery numbers upon the delicate bell of the
+clock, yet the closed eyelids and fixed lips moved not, gave no sign;
+but for the light, though regular undulation of the chest, life itself
+might seem to have fled forever. Yet life was still there!
+
+How strange the bond which connects vitality with consciousness--the
+body with the soul! And yet more strange is that phase of existence in
+which the one moves on without the other. The mind sometimes is all life
+when the body is dead, and oftener still is the body all life when the
+mind seems gone. Mind, too, may frequently act independently, not only
+of the body, as in dreams, but, also, of consciousness and of the heart;
+while the body, as in somnambulism, may act altogether alone.
+
+On--on--the slumberer breathed on, but he thought not, felt not,
+perceived not. A revolution, an earthquake might heave around him, but
+the convulsive throes of man or of nature would have been as nothing to
+him. The brow would have remained as calm and as cold, and the cheek as
+pale and as still, while, in all human probability, the faithful Nubian
+would have sat as immovable upon his rug at the bedside of his beloved
+master, and have gazed upon him as untiringly with his dark and
+sleepless eye.
+
+As the last quarter after eleven sounded, followed immediately by the
+hour of midnight, a small door beside the bed noiselessly opened, and a
+female figure in white silently entered the room; but not so noiselessly
+was the entrance effected as to escape the ear of the vigilant Ali. He
+glanced hurriedly around; then, as if familiar with the apparition, and
+anticipating its approach, he rose, and, taking his rug to the further
+extremity of the chamber, again laid himself down, like a faithful dog,
+though not now to watch.
+
+Meanwhile the lady, quietly approaching the bed, gazed long and
+mournfully at the slumberer's pale yet noble visage; then, kneeling, she
+buried her face in her hands amid the coverings.
+
+She was, probably, forty; yet, in the full and faultless perfection of
+her form--in her graceful and yielding motions--in her statuesque bust,
+rounded cheek and night-black hair, she would, to the casual observer,
+have indicated hardly the half of that age. Her figure was tall and
+dignified, yet mobile as a willow; her eyes were dark and luminous, and,
+in their profound depths, slept a world of melancholy meaning. Her hair
+was simply parted on a broad forehead, and was gathered in heavy masses
+low on the neck. Her lips were full and red, and, when parted, exhibited
+teeth of dazzling whiteness, while her complexion, which was very dark,
+was yet clear and pure as the hue of the magnolia's petal. But that face
+was pale, very pale, almost as colorless as that of the quiet sleeper at
+its side, and upon it rested an expression of love unutterable, mingled
+with the sadness of death.
+
+Such was the unknown nurse, the Countess de Morcerf, as she again was an
+inmate of that apartment of which she had once, under circumstances how
+different, been mistress; such was Mercedes, the Catalane of Marseilles,
+again at the side of the man whom all her life she had loved, with none
+to gainsay or forbid!
+
+Upon that pale and motionless countenance she gazed long and deeply,
+and, oh! the world of memory that passed through her mind!--the world
+of thought and feeling that centred in that fixed gaze! At length,
+clasping her hands upon her forehead, her eyes streaming with tears, she
+bowed her face upon the bed, from which she had just raised it, and long
+seemed absorbed in prayer.
+
+Roused from this position by some movement of the slumberer, she started
+up and watched him.
+
+The shaded rays of the dim and distant lamp threw a faint glimmering of
+light upon the pale countenance, but the quick eye of love
+instantaneously detected a change. A slight flush was mounting the
+cheek, and gentle perspiration was distilling upon the brow, while a
+smile played on the mouth. Suddenly, as she gazed, those pallid lips
+moved. Astonished, she listened.
+
+"Marseilles! beautiful Marseilles!" said the sleeper. "Home of my
+boyhood, home of my heart. I come!" Then quickly and sternly came the
+order, "Let go the anchor--furl the sails--mate, take charge of the
+ship!" Then the tones changed, and a joyful light shot over the face as
+the lips exclaimed, "Now for my father! now for my love! Mercedes!
+Mercedes!"
+
+Amazed, the fair watcher retained her position, and gazed and listened
+so silently and breathlessly that the quick and audible beatings of her
+heart might have been numbered.
+
+"Mine--mine at last!" continued the dreamer. "The marriage-feast--the
+marriage-feast!" But instantly the expression of the voice and the
+countenance altered. The light of joy was shrouded in clouds.
+"Arrest--arrest me?" was the exclamation--"me! at my marriage-feast! A
+dungeon for me! Mercedes! Mercedes! My love--my wife! Oh! God! it is the
+Chateau d'If! Despair--despair!"
+
+Shocked, terrified at the terrible energy of these words, and the
+expression of unutterable woe that rested on the countenance of the
+sleeper, the affrighted woman, who comprehended but too well the fearful
+significance of the abrupt and disjointed syllables, hastily arose as if
+to rouse the slumberer from his dream or to call on the Nubian for aid.
+
+But, before she could carry the purpose into execution, the aspect of
+the Deputy's visage again had changed. A dark frown settled on the brow,
+a spirit of fixed resolve contracted the firm lip and dilated the
+nostril, and the word, "Vengeance--vengeance!" in whispers scarcely
+audible, but repeatedly and rapidly pronounced, was heard.
+
+A longer silence than before succeeded. At length another change swept
+over the face, and the words, "Free--free--I am free!" burst from the
+lips; then they murmured, "Treasure untold! wondrous
+wealth!--diamonds--pearls--rubies--ingots of gold! The mad abbe's dream
+was reality!" Again the countenance darkened. "Fourteen years in a
+dungeon for no crime!--a father dead of starvation!--a bride the bride
+of the fiend who has done all this--and he a peer of France--and his
+friends a millionaire of Paris and the Procureur du Roi!
+Vengeance--vengeance--vengeance!" There was a pause, and the dreamer
+exultingly continued, "It is done! The peer of France is a disgraced
+suicide! The Procureur du Roi is a madman! The banker is a bankrupt!"
+The dreamer again paused, and his countenance once more changed. "Alas!
+alas! man is not God! 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord!'
+The innocent suffer with the guilty. To avenge a wrong has been
+sacrificed a life, and only misery has been the recompense! No more--no
+more--no more of this! Man and man's happiness be henceforth the aim! To
+that be devoted wealth untold!"
+
+The lips ceased to move. Gradually the high excitement of the features
+passed away and was succeeded by an expression of sadness and love.
+"Haydee--gone--gone to a better world. Mercedes--Mercedes--oh! does she
+love me yet? The long lost idol of my heart!--the adored angel of my
+life!--come! come! come!"
+
+As the dreamer spoke, he spread wide his arms; when his eyes opened, and
+his long slumbering senses returned, Mercedes, his own Mercedes, was,
+indeed, clasped to his breast.
+
+"Mercedes! Mercedes?" he faintly whispered. "Ah! it was no dream, for
+you are, indeed, beside me and mine--mine forever!"
+
+"Thine--thine--forever!" was the reply, and she clasped his feeble form
+to her heart as she would have clasped that of a child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A NOTABLE FETE.
+
+
+On the night of Monday, February 21st, 1848, all Paris was at the house
+of M. Gaultier de Rumilly, in the Avenue des Champs Elysees. M. Gaultier
+de Rumilly was well known as one of the leaders of the extreme left,
+though the confidential friend of M. Odillon Barrot, and the fete was
+perfectly understood to be a political reunion, rather than a social
+one. All the accompaniments of the most splendid society events of the
+season were in requisition. Even the brilliant balls given by the
+opulent citizens of New York were eclipsed in luxury and splendor. There
+was the streaming of lamps and chandeliers, the swell of enchanting
+music, the whirl of the fascinating polka, redowa or mazurka, while
+throngs of richly attired and lovely women were constantly enhancing the
+magnificence of the scene by their arrival. The brilliancy of the
+occasion was also richly diversified by the presence of an unusually
+large number of officers of the Municipal and National Guards in full
+uniform, as well as of several belonging to the Line or the regiments of
+Algeria.
+
+It was about ten o'clock. Within, all was light, life and loveliness;
+without, the winter wind moaned drearily through the leafless trees of
+the Boulevard, and the drifting sleet swept along the deserted streets.
+It was a wild night. Throughout all Paris seemed going forth a
+portentous murmur, like that mysterious moaning of the ocean, which,
+with mariners, is the prelude of a storm. An ominous whispering, as of
+many voices, seemed to sink and swell on the sweeping night blast; then
+all was still. Again, in the distance, would rise a sharp shout, or the
+stern, brief word of military command. At intervals, also, one might
+imagine he heard a deep rumbling, as of heavy ordnance and its tumbrels
+over the pavements, accompanied by the measured tread of armed men and
+the clattering hoofs of cavalry horses. Then these sounds died away, and
+along the narrow streets of Paris again the night wind only swept, the
+bitter blast howled and the ominous whispering, as of spirits, rose and
+fell.
+
+It was a strange and stormy night--murky and chilly--while at intervals
+the cold rain dashed down in cutting blasts. But within the magnificent
+mansion of Gaultier de Rumilly all was light and loveliness, as has been
+said. The splendid salons were already thronged, yet crowds of
+richly-attired guests were constantly arriving.
+
+"Ha! Beauchamp, just come?" cried Chateau-Renaud to his friend, as he
+entered.
+
+"By the grace of God, yes!" said the journalist. "What a night!"
+
+"What a throng of men and women say rather!" was the reply.
+
+"Very true. Who's here?"
+
+"Ask who's not here, and your question may be easily answered. All Paris
+is here! Women of every age and station, and men of all political
+creeds--Conservatives, Dynastics, Legitimists, Republicans and
+Communists. Indeed, this soiree seems to me, and I shouldn't wonder if
+it were designed so to be, a general reunion of the leaders of all the
+great parties in France, to compare notes and learn the news."
+
+"And there is news enough to learn, it would seem. Is M. Dantes here?"
+
+"He is, or was, and his beautiful wife, too, the most magnificent woman
+in Paris. Morrel also is here with his fair bride."
+
+"And who is that dark, dignified man in the Turkish costume, around whom
+the ladies have clustered so inquisitively?" asked the Deputy.
+
+"Why, that's the Emir of Algeria, the famous captive of the Duke
+d'Aumale," was the reply.
+
+"What! Abd-el-Kader! How comes he here?"
+
+"Oh! as a special favor, I suppose; he has a respite from his sad
+prison."
+
+"What a splendid beard, and what keen black eyes!"
+
+"No, his eyes are decidedly gray, but so shaded by his extraordinary
+lashes that they seem black. They say that he was more distinguished as
+a scholar, in Algeria, than as a soldier, statesman or priest. In fact,
+he is as erudite as an Arab can be, and his library, which is contained
+in two leathern trunks, accompanied him in all his wanderings prior to
+his submission."
+
+"And what think you really induced him to surrender himself?"
+
+"Policy of the deepest character, and worthy of Talleyrand, Metternich
+or Nesselrode, if we are to rely on the eloquent speech of Lamoriciere
+in the Chamber, the other day."
+
+"I remember. Bugeaud spoke first, and Lamoriciere followed. He thought
+that the Arab Curtius leaped into the gulf because, by so doing, he was
+convinced he could injure French interests more than by his freedom.
+Well, perhaps he was right. He bids fair to be a hard bone of contention
+between the opposition and the Ministry."
+
+"If I mistake not, Lamoriciere disclaimed all responsibility for
+accepting the surrender, and placed it on the Governor-General, the
+young Duke, for whom the Ministry is liable?"
+
+"Yes; and Guizot announced that he would send the Emir back to
+Alexandria, could security be given against his return to Algeria."
+
+"As to the Emir's surrender, at which you wonder, the real cause is said
+to have been not policy, but the universal passion--love."
+
+"He is an Antony, then, instead of a Curtius."
+
+"So it seems. At the moment when, with incredible efforts, he had
+effected the passage of the Moorish camp, and was off like an ostrich
+for the desert, the firing of the French, who had reached his deira,
+struck his ear. Back he flew like the lamiel. Twice his horse fell
+under him dead--twice he was surrounded and seized, and twice, by his
+wonderful agility, he regained his freedom. At last, perceiving that all
+was lost, he turned his face again toward the desert, and, for two days
+and nights, continued his flight. But his heart was behind him. Certain
+of escape himself, he preferred hopeless captivity with her he loved,
+and he returned."
+
+"Quite poetical, on my word! Worthy of Sadi, the Arab Petrarch,
+himself!" said Chateau-Renaud.
+
+"He is decidedly a great man, that Abd-el-Kader. They say he bears his
+misfortunes like a philosopher--or, better, a Turk--unalterably mild and
+dignified, while his wives and his mother wail at his feet. Every
+morning he reads the Koran to them, and during the orisons all the
+windows are open, and a large fire blazes in the centre of the room."
+
+"He is a decided godsend to the quidnuncs of Paris."
+
+"So would be a Hottentot, or a North American savage," replied
+Beauchamp.
+
+"Rather a different affair this from the Ministerial soiree a week ago,
+I fancy," remarked the editor.
+
+"Rather. I will confess to you, Beauchamp, I attended that soiree from
+curiosity to see whether M. Guizot retained his habitual placidity of
+manner amid the clouds every day thickening around him."
+
+"And what was the result?"
+
+"Why, this. He was as polite and courteous as ever, and the same cold,
+imperturbable smile was on his thin lip; but he looked careworn, and
+upon his countenance was an expression of solicitude, when it was
+closely watched, which I never saw there before. Ah, Beauchamp, I envy
+not the Premier!"
+
+"And the guests?" asked the journalist.
+
+"Of guests there were but few; and the spacious salons of the Hotel des
+Affaires Etrangeres looked dismal and deserted."
+
+"The lovely Countess Leven--"
+
+"Even she was absent."
+
+"And the Countess of Dino?"
+
+"Absent, too."
+
+"The soiree must have been, indeed, dull without those 'charming queens
+of intrigue,' as Louis Blanc courteously calls them. But tell me, Count,
+is the Minister really the husband of the beautiful Leven, or is she
+only his par amours?"
+
+"No one knows. It is certain, however, that the great man devotes to the
+enchantress every moment he can steal from the State, though to look at
+him one would hardly suppose him a lover, in any meaning of the term.
+But who knows? To read his writings can one imagine a purer man? But,
+then, the affairs of Gisquet, Cubieres, Teste, and, last and worst,
+Petit, whose case was before the Chamber, do they not betray deplorable
+lack of firmness or morality? But no more of this. Who is that dark,
+splendid woman to whom young Joliette seems so devoted? I have seen
+them together before!"
+
+"Why, you surely have not forgotten Louise d'Armilly, the charming
+cantatrice! She has recently left the boards, to the irreparable loss of
+the opera, having come into possession of an immense inheritance--some
+millions, it is said, left by her father, who was once a banker of
+Paris. She is asserted to be very accomplished and very ambitious, and,
+as the young African paladin is thoroughly bewitched by her, and she by
+him, they will, doubtless, be matched as well as paired."
+
+"Has Lucien been here?" asked the Deputy, after a pause, during which
+the young men surveyed the brilliant throngs that passed before them and
+returned the salutations of their acquaintances.
+
+"I think not. We have not met, at least," replied the journalist.
+
+"He can hardly be spared to-night, I fancy. The Ministry have had a
+stormy day, and are, doubtless, preparing for one still more stormy
+to-morrow."
+
+"There was a perfect tempest in the Chamber this evening, I understand."
+
+"Call it rather a hurricane, a tornado!"
+
+"Ah! give me the particulars; here, come with me into this corner.
+Unfortunately, I was not present. I was busy on the General Committee
+for the Banquet of the Twelfth Arrondissement, to-morrow, at Chaillot.
+To avoid all possibility of collision with the police, we resolved, you
+know, not to have the banquet within the walls of Paris, and so there is
+to be a procession to the Barriere de l'Etoile. I have been there since
+morning, and reached the city only in time to come here. So, you see, I
+am edifyingly ignorant of the latest news."
+
+"Then I have to inform you that there is to be no banquet after all."
+
+"No banquet! Why, I thought it was compromised between Guizot and Barrot
+that the banquet should be allowed to proceed under protest, in order
+that the question might be brought before the Supreme Court."
+
+"Such was the purpose, but a manifesto of the Banquet Committee, drawn
+up by Marrast, it is said, and, at all events, issued in 'Le National'
+this morning, declaring the design not only of a banquet, but of a
+procession, changed everything. The address sets forth that all invited
+to the banquet would assemble at the Place de la Madeleine to-morrow at
+about noon, and thence, escorted by the National Guard, and accompanied
+by the students of the universities, should proceed by the Place de la
+Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, at the extremity of the Avenue des
+Champs Elysees, and thence to the immense pavilion on the grounds of
+General Shian. Only one toast, 'Reform, and the right to assemble,' was
+announced to be drunk, and then a commissary of police could enter a
+formal protest against the whole proceeding on the spot, on which to
+base a legal prosecution, and the multitude would disperse."
+
+"A very sensible mode of procedure," quietly remarked the journalist,
+"and one eminently calculated to relieve your friend Guizot and my
+friend Barrot from the awkward dilemma of a direct issue."
+
+"But so thought not my friend Guizot. Like his oracle, the sage
+Montesquieu, he thought, 'Who assembles the people causes them to
+revolt.' He took fright at the manifesto, as he was pleased to dignify
+the simple programme in this morning's 'National,' and so, early in the
+sitting, it was announced that the reform banquet was utterly prohibited
+by M. Delessert, Prefect of Police, on the express injunction and
+responsibility of M. Duchatel, Minister of the Interior, by and with the
+advice of M. Hebert, Minister of Justice."
+
+"Ha! and what said Odillon Barrot?" cried the journalist.
+
+"He--why he said nothing at all, but immediately retired at the head of
+the opposition from the Chamber."
+
+"To consult?"
+
+"Of course. An hour after, they returned in a body two hundred and fifty
+strong, with Barrot at their head, who at once mounted the tribune and
+denounced the despotism of the Ministry in forbidding the peaceful
+assembling of the citizens, without tumult or arms, to discuss their
+political rights. Duchatel replied, under great excitement.
+
+"'Shall reform committees dare to call out the National Guard at their
+pleasure?' he asked.
+
+"'Will you dare to call out the National Guard?' retorted De Courtais,
+fiercely. 'Only try it!'
+
+"'The Government of France will never yield!' rejoined the Minister,
+pale with fury.
+
+"'Speak in your own name, Monsieur!' shouted Flocon.
+
+"'I shall never speak in yours!' was the answer.
+
+"'You play the game of menace!' cried Lesseps.
+
+"'The Government will never yield!' again vociferated Duchatel.
+
+"'Those were the very words of Charles X.!' observed M. Dantes, sternly.
+The entire left responded in a terrific roar.
+
+"'There is blood in those words!' shouted Ledru Rollin.
+
+"'The Government will never yield!' the Minister of the Interior for the
+third time vehemently exclaimed, and the right gathered around him.
+'This is worse than Polignac or Peyronet!' vociferated Odillon Barrot,
+his trumpet tones rising above all others like a clarion in a tempest.
+Those hated names were greeted by a yell of abhorrence perfectly savage
+from the left; then all was uproar--a dozen voices simultaneously
+shouting at their
+loudest--denunciation--menace--defiance--retort--clenched
+hands--extended arms--furious gesticulations--every one on
+tip-toe--fiery eyes--stamping feet--shouts of 'Order! order!
+order!'--and, amid all, the incessant tinkling of old Sauzet's little
+silver bell, which was just about as effective in restoring peace as it
+would be to quiet the tempest now howling through the streets of Paris.
+At length, in utter consternation and dismay the old President put on
+his hat, and, pronouncing the seance ended, rushed from his chair amid a
+hurricane of uproarious shouts."
+
+"And Odillon Barrot?"
+
+"Odillon Barrot led the opposition members immediately from the Chamber
+to his own house, where they have been ever since in deliberation. It
+was six o'clock when the sitting closed, and they must be in
+consultation now, or Barrot would surely be here, if but for a moment,
+out of respect to his bosom friend, our host. Ah! there he is, just
+entering, surrounded by a perfect army of Republicans--De Courtais,
+Marrast, Lesseps, Duvergier, Flocon, Lamartine, Dupont and a whole host
+besides."
+
+"How excited they look!" exclaimed the journalist. "Ah! Thiers
+approaches them from the other end of the salon!"
+
+"M. Thiers, like the worldly-wise and selfish man he is, has held
+himself aloof from the banquet, and even declined the invitation
+accepted by a hundred of his party; to-day he was absent from the
+Chamber and to-night from the conclave, all with the aspiring, yet vain
+hope, that the King will send for him to form a Ministry."
+
+"And yet, in the Chamber, a few days ago, he said that he was of the
+party of the revolution in Europe."
+
+"True, but he added that he wished the revolution carried on by its
+moderate supporters, and that he should do all he could to keep it in
+the hands of the moderate party."
+
+"'But if it should pass into the hands of a party not moderate,'
+continued the crafty ex-Minister, 'I shall not abandon the cause of the
+revolution. I shall be always of the party of the revolution.' But see,
+he singles out Marrast, of all others!"
+
+"And his old colleague of 'Le National' seems to give him no very
+cordial reception," added the Deputy. "But let us move up and hear the
+determination of the opposition relative to the banquet."
+
+"That's the very question the little historian has just propounded to
+the great journalist. Now for the answer."
+
+"The opposition decide, Monsieur, to abandon the banquet," was the angry
+reply of the editor to the ex-Minister.
+
+"Indeed!" was the bland rejoinder; "and has a manifesto of this decision
+been issued to the people?"
+
+"It has; and it instantly called forth a counter manifesto from the
+electoral committee of the Twelfth Arrondissement, expressing very
+natural astonishment that, at the same time the opposition abandoned the
+banquet, they had not abandoned their seats in the Chamber, and inviting
+them so to do at once."
+
+"And the Ministry?" anxiously asked M. Thiers.
+
+"Will to-morrow be impeached, Monsieur!"
+
+"Ah! indeed! indeed!" cried the smart little aspirant, gleefully
+rubbing his hands.
+
+At that moment General Lamoriciere, the brother-in-law of Thiers, who
+owed so much to the house of Orleans, hastily approached.
+
+"I come straight from the Tuileries," he said, with considerable
+excitement. "General Jacqueminot has just issued an order of the day, as
+commander-in-chief of the National Guard, appealing to them as the
+constitutional protectors of the Throne to take no part in the banquet.
+Orders have, also, been issued for the rappel to be beaten at dawn, in
+the Quartier St. Honore, the scene of the contemplated procession. But
+it's all folly to rely on the National Guard. They are of the people.
+Only the Municipal Guard and the troops of the Line can be relied on in
+the civil conflict, which is sure to come to-morrow."
+
+"And the Ministers, what do they?" asked Thiers.
+
+"Oh! they are not idle," replied the soldier. "The bastilles are armed,
+and those of Montrouge and Aubervilliers are provisioned. The
+horse-artillery at Vincennes are ready, on the instant, to gallop into
+the capital. Seventy additional pieces of ordnance are now entering the
+barrieres. The Municipal Guard are supplied with ball-cartridges. The
+troops concentrated at sunrise to-morrow will not be less than one
+hundred thousand strong. With these men in the forts and faithful, the
+city can be starved in three days, National Guard and all, if
+rebellious. Now is the crisis in which to test the remarkable admission
+of M. Duchatel, in May, '45, that the bastilles of Paris were designed
+to 'fortify order.' We shall see, we shall see!"
+
+"And the Marshal Duke of Islay--where is he?" quietly asked Marrast,
+with a significant shrug and smile.
+
+At this mention of his bitter foe, a frown lowered on the fine face of
+Lamoriciere, as he briefly and sternly replied:
+
+"With the King, Monsieur--General Bugeaud is with the King. But they
+mistake, Monsieur. Eugene Cavaignac is the man for this emergency.
+Bugeaud is a soldier--a mere soldier--Cavaignac is a statesman--a
+Napoleon! Paris will discriminate between the two one day, and that
+shortly."
+
+And with an abrupt military salute the conqueror of Algeria walked away,
+followed by his little brother-in-law, who seemed yet shorter and more
+insignificant at the side of his towering and graceful form. At the same
+moment, Ledru Rollin entered in great agitation, and, having glanced
+hastily around, as if in search of some one in the assemblage, advanced
+straight to the journalist and grasped his hand.
+
+"By heavens, Armand, I think the hour has arrived!"
+
+"Whence do you come?" was the quick question.
+
+"From the Boulevards, where I left Flocon, Louis Blanc and M. Dantes,
+with the people. I tell you, Armand, the people are ripe--ripe! The
+Ministerial ordinances prohibiting the banquet have kindled a flame
+wherever they have gone. The pitiful manifesto of the opposition and the
+counter manifesto of the Twelfth Arrondissement have only served to fan
+this flame into fury. It has been our care to restrain and direct, not
+to excite. It is dark and cold without, Armand; the winter wind howls
+dismally along the streets, the sleet freezes as it falls and the
+furious blast almost extinguishes the torches by which, at the corners
+and at the cafes, the different manifestoes of the day are being read to
+the eager throngs, on whose faces, in the flare of the blood-red light,
+can be perceived the fury of their hearts. The people, at length, are
+ripe! To-morrow all Paris will be in arms!"
+
+While Ledru Rollin was thus speaking, Louis Blanc entered and quietly
+approached, courteously saluting his acquaintances on his way, and
+stopping to exchange a few words with Madame Dantes, who inquired with
+considerable anxiety for her husband.
+
+"I have this moment left him, Madame," said Louis Blanc. "Be assured, he
+is safe and well. Ah! how glorious to be an object of solicitude to one
+like you!" he added, with a smile.
+
+The lady smiled also, and offered an appropriate jest in reply to the
+gallantry of the distinguished author, as he moved on to join his
+friends.
+
+"The Ministry provokes its fate!" he said, in a low tone, as he
+approached. "'Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.' These
+men suffered seventy reform banquets all over France. The seventy-first
+one they prohibit, and that, too, by the exhumation of an old despotic
+edict of 1790. This is exactly what we would have. It was the first, not
+the last banquet they should have suppressed. Barrot was right to-day,
+in the Chamber, when he said that had this manifestation been suffered
+the people would have become tranquil."
+
+"Tranquil, indeed!" cried Ledru Rollin. "That's exactly what we have
+apprehended! No--no--it is too late! This Reform Banquet was, at first,
+but an insignificant thing. In it we now recognize the commencement of a
+revolution. The various announcements and postponements of this banquet
+have caused an agitation among the masses favorable to our wishes, and
+the threats and obstinacy of the Ministry have completed the work. The
+hopes, fears, doubts and disappointments attending this affair have put
+the mind of all Paris in a ferment, and excited passions of which we may
+take immediate advantage."
+
+"Aye!" cried Louis Blanc, "we may now do what I have always wished and
+counseled--we, the Communists, may now take advantage of a movement, in
+the origin or inception of which we had no hand."
+
+"True, most true!" observed Marrast; "this is the work of the
+Dynastics--Thiers, Barrot and the rest--the commencement of a reform
+under the law which we design to make a revolution paramount to all
+law."
+
+"They begin to fear already that they have gone too far, those discreet
+men!" said Louis Blanc, smiling bitterly. "Did you observe how they
+shuffled to-night at M. Barrot's, and finally resolved to abandon the
+banquet, but, as a sop to the people, pledged themselves to impeach the
+Ministry?"
+
+"Ah! ha! ha!" laughed Ledru Rollin; "just as if their abandonment of the
+banquet is to keep the people away from it to-morrow, any more than the
+Ministerial ordinances! Why, not one man in ten thousand knows of the
+existence of these manifestoes! But the faubourgs have been promised a
+holiday for a fortnight past, and they don't intend to be put off
+again."
+
+"Whether the Dynastics designed or wished to be compromised in this
+affair," remarked Marrast, "they certainly are committed now, and it is
+too late for them to get out of the movement. Indeed, I view it as
+nothing less than a union of all the oppositions against the Crown--aye,
+against the Crown, and for a republic! We comprehend this--they don't.
+They have not, like us, waited seventeen years for a signal for
+revolution;--and now, before God, I believe the hour is at hand! This is
+no accidental insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, '32--no outbreak
+at a funeral--no riot of operatives--no unmeaning revolt, as in '39. It
+is a reform, with the first names in France as its advocates and
+supporters, which we will make a revolution if we can secure the
+National Guard."
+
+"The National Guard is secured already," said Louis Blanc. "Are they
+not of the people? At least twenty thousand of the National Guard are
+Republicans. Of the remaining forty thousand, nearly all are well
+disposed or neutral in feeling. Have I studied the National Guard for
+twenty years in vain, and have all the measures of the Communists to
+secure them, when the crisis came on, proved utterly ineffectual? On the
+National Guard we may rely. The Municipal Guard are picked men, and well
+paid to support the Throne--they will fight even better than the Line.
+With the Line and the National Guard the people must seek to fraternize
+from the beginning--with the other troops they have solely to
+fight--but, after all, general facts and principles only can be laid
+down. Circumstances utterly beyond human control must direct and govern,
+and vary and determine results when the period of action arrives; and
+arrive it may at any hour of the day or night. At this moment Paris
+sleeps on a volcano, the fires of which have long been gathering through
+many a fair and sunny day! God only knows when the volcano will burst;
+but, when the hour comes, let the people be prepared!"
+
+As these enthusiastic words were uttered, the dark eye of the speaker
+flashed and his lip quivered. The silver clock on the mantel, beside
+which the conspirators stood, struck the first quarter after two. The
+night was waning, but the festivity seemed rather to increase than
+diminish within the salons of the magnificent mansion, while the storm
+howled even more drearily without, and the rain, at intervals, in heavy
+blasts, beat even more fiercely against the northern casements.
+
+As Louis Blanc ceased speaking, M. Flocon entered the salon, and, as if
+by some preconcerted arrangement, at once sought his political friends.
+
+"What of the night, watchman?" cried Ledru Rollin, as the editor of "La
+Reforme" approached. "The latest news! for 'That of an hour's age doth
+hiss the speaker,' as the English Shakespeare says. The news! good or
+bad!"
+
+"As I entered," said Flocon, "the house trembled with the jar of a train
+of heavy ordnance, attended by tumbrels and artillery caissons, and
+escorted by a regiment of horse, which rolled along the pavement of the
+Champs Elysees."
+
+"Good!" answered Marrast, with enthusiasm.
+
+"All night," continued Flocon, eagerly, "through darkness and storm,
+whole regiments of infantry have thronged the line of boulevards which
+stretch from the Tuileries to Vincennes, and each soldier bears upon his
+knapsack, in addition to all his arms, an axe to demolish barricades.
+The garrisons of the arrondissements of Paris are already seventy
+thousand strong; and the troops of the Line are concentrating around the
+Palais Bourbon and the Chamber of Deputies."
+
+"Excellent--most excellent!" joyfully exclaimed Louis Blanc. "The
+affront will not be wanting! But where is M. Dantes?"
+
+"He is still with the chiefs of the faubourgs and the committees of the
+Free-masons and workmen, in the Rue Lepelletier, issuing his last
+instructions for the morrow. Messieurs, that man is a magician! His zeal
+in the good cause puts the boldest of us all to the blush. By most
+indefatigable energy and indomitable perseverance, he has brought about
+a systematic, almost scientific organization and fraternity, through
+various modes of rapid intercommunication between the innumerable
+classes of operatives of every description throughout the whole capital
+and its faubourgs, so that, within six hours, he can have in military
+array an armed mass of one hundred thousand blouses upon the boulevards.
+The workshops alone, he tells me, can furnish fifty thousand. The
+rapidity with which he conveys intelligence through this immense army
+and their utter subservience to his will and subordination to his orders
+are all so wonderful that it is impossible to determine which is most
+so. To control a Parisian populace has hitherto been deemed a chimera.
+With M. Dantes it is an existing reality. Not an army in Europe is so
+obedient or so prompt as his army of workmen. The secret is this--they
+know him to be their friend. All over Paris are to be seen his
+workshops, savings banks, hospitals and houses of industry and reform,
+and, in the suburbs, his phalansteries and his model farms. That he has
+the command of boundless wealth is certain; but whose it is, or whence
+it comes, no one can divine; and never did man make use of boundless
+wealth to attain his ends more wisely than he does! Why, I am told that
+the pens of half the litterateurs and feuilletonists of Paris have for
+years past been guided by his will and compensated from his purse to
+accomplish his purposes. 'The Mysteries of Paris' and 'The Wandering
+Jew' are but two of the triumphs of his policy. And his system of
+philanthropy seems not bounded by France, but to embrace all Europe. The
+Swiss Protestant and the Italian patriot have each felt his effective
+sympathy as well as the French workman; and in the same manner as with
+the operatives so has he obtained influence and weight with the National
+Guard, and to such an extent that of the sixty thousand one-half would
+obey his orders with greater alacrity than those of Jacqueminot himself.
+I tell you, Messieurs, he is a magician!"
+
+"Hush! hush!" cried Marrast; "he is entering now!"
+
+"He pauses and looks around him!" said Louis Blanc.
+
+"He looks for us; I will go to him!" remarked Flocon.
+
+"He looks for his wife," replied Louis Blanc. "There, he catches her
+eye. See how eagerly she flies to him!"
+
+"That is the finest pair in Paris," remarked the journalist.
+
+"And the most devoted," added Ledru Rollin. "They have been man and wife
+for some time, it is said, and any one would take them for lovers at
+this moment."
+
+"Have they children?" asked Flocon.
+
+"No; but M. Dantes has by a former wife a son and daughter, who rival
+in good looks the celebrated children of our friend Victor Hugo,"
+returned Louis Blanc.
+
+"I met Arago, Lamartine, Sue, Chateaubriand and some other celebrities
+at his mansion in the Rue du Helder one night, recently," continued
+Marrast, "and I thought I never saw a house arranged with such perfect
+taste. The salons, library, picture-gallery, cabinet of natural history,
+conservatory, and laboratory were superb--everything, in short, was
+exquisite."
+
+"And then one is always sure to meet at Madame Dantes' soirees," added
+Louis Blanc, "exactly the persons who, of all others, he wishes to see,
+and whom he would meet nowhere else, poets, painters, authors, orators,
+statesmen and artists of every description--in fine, every man or woman,
+whether native or foreigner, distinguished for anything, is certain to
+be met with at M. Dantes' house."
+
+"I once met there," said Flocon, "Rachel, the actress, and Van Amburgh,
+the lion-king."
+
+"M. Dantes is a perfect Maecenas in encouraging merit, as every one
+knows," remarked Marrast; "and he manifests especial solicitude to show
+that he appreciates worth more highly than wealth--genius than station.
+Poverty and ability are sure recommendations to him."
+
+"Madame Dantes is, I am told, as devoted to the good cause as her
+husband," remarked Flocon.
+
+"She is a second Madame Roland!" exclaimed Louis Blanc. "France will
+owe much to such women as she and her friend Madame Dudevant!"
+
+"She differs greatly from Madame George Sand in some respects, I fancy,"
+said Marrast; "but, if she at all rivals that wonderful woman in
+devotedness to the cause of human rights, whether of her own sex or
+ours, she deserves well of France. In her charities, it is notorious,
+she has no rival. Half the mendicants of the capital bless her name, and
+she is at the head of a dozen associations and enterprises for the
+amelioration of the condition of the destitute, suffering and abandoned
+of her sex."
+
+"Upon my word, Messieurs," cried Ledru Rollin, "your praises of M.
+Dantes and Madame, his beautiful wife, are perfectly enthusiastic--so
+much so, that, in your zeal, you utterly forgot another matter quite as
+momentous. I am so unfortunate as to know M. Dantes only as one of the
+great pillars of our noble cause, and a man who, for nearly six years,
+has proven himself an apostle of man's rights, and ready, if need be, to
+become a martyr! That's enough for me to know of him!"
+
+"But who really are M. Dantes and his wife?" asked Flocon.
+
+"Who really are any of us?" laughingly rejoined Louis Blanc.
+
+"Who really is any one in Paris," continued Marrast, "the blood-royal
+always and alone excepted?"
+
+"Of M. Dantes this only is known," said Louis Blanc, "that for five or
+six years past he has been a Deputy from Marseilles, Lyons and other
+southern cities, all of which have been eager to honor themselves by
+returning him as their representative, as one of the boldest and most
+eloquent Republicans in all France; as for Madame Dantes, we know her to
+have once been the Countess de Morcerf, but now the wife of our friend,
+and one of the noblest and most lovely matrons in Paris. What need have
+we to know more? But our friend comes."
+
+While this conversation was proceeding, Dantes and Mercedes had joined
+each other, and their hands were quietly clasped.
+
+"Is all well, Edmond?" was the anxious inquiry of the fond wife, in low,
+soft, musical tones, as she fixed upon his pale face her dark eyes,
+beaming with the tenderest solicitude.
+
+"All is well, love," replied the husband. "You will pardon my protracted
+absence, when I tell you it has been unavoidable--will you not,
+Mercedes?"
+
+"Will I not? What a question! But I have been so anxious for your
+safety, knowing the perilous business in which you are engaged; and the
+night is so tempestuous."
+
+"You forget that I have a constitution of iron, dear," replied Dantes;
+"you forget that I was a sailor once, and the storms were my
+playthings!"
+
+"But you will go home with me now, Edmond, will you not?" she anxiously
+asked, placing her little white hand on his arm and gazing beseechingly
+into his eyes.
+
+"Have I ever passed one night from your arms, my Mercedes, since we
+were wed?" was the whispered response. "Ah! love, any pillow but thy
+soft bosom would be to me a thorny one! You have spoiled me forever!" he
+added, smiling.
+
+"And shall we go now, Edmond?" eagerly asked the delighted woman. "Oh!
+I'm so weary of this fete!"
+
+"I must exchange a few words with our friend Louis Blanc, whom I see
+yonder, with others of our party, and then, dear, we will to our pillow.
+We are both weary. Au revoir!"
+
+"Edmond--Edmond!" cried the lady, as her husband was going, "do you see
+Joliette and Louise in the redowa yonder?"
+
+Dantes looked and, with a well pleased smile, nodded assent; a more
+brilliant and well-matched pair could hardly have been found, Joliette
+in the splendid uniform of an officer of the Spahis, and she in her own
+magnificent beauty, fitly garbed.
+
+M. Dantes was received with marked respect by the knot of Republicans as
+he approached.
+
+"I am delighted to meet you all, and to meet you to-night, or, rather,
+this morning," said Dantes, warmly, "in order that I may render you an
+account of my stewardship for the past six hours. They have been hours
+big with fate; and the first day of Republican France has already
+commenced. Messieurs, we can no longer remain blind to the fact that the
+long looked for--hoped for--expected hour has come--the hour to
+strike--strike home for liberty and for France! To-morrow the streets of
+Paris will swarm with blouses!--the Marseillaise will be
+heard!--barricades rise!--the Ministry be impeached! Next day the
+National Guards will fraternize with the people!--blood will flow!--the
+Ministry resign! On the third, the King abdicates!--the Tuileries are
+surrendered!--a Regency is refused!--a Republic is declared! And this
+day, two weeks hence, liberty will be shouted in the streets of Vienna
+and Berlin, and every throne in Europe will tremble! The honors of
+prophecy are easily won," continued the speaker, with a significant
+smile that lighted up his features, pale with enthusiasm and exhaustion,
+"when the problem of seventeen years approaches solution with
+mathematical certainty!"
+
+"Are our plans all complete?" asked Louis Blanc.
+
+"So far as human forethought or power could render them so, our efforts
+have, I trust, been effectual," was the reply. "Yet the events of every
+hour will induce changes, and render indispensable policy now undreamed
+of. Ah! Messieurs, we must none of us sleep now! Not a moment must
+escape our vigilance! Not an advantage must be sacrificed! We can afford
+to lose nothing! Without leaders, the people are blind! Not, for an
+instant, must they be abandoned! To-morrow, let the masses gather at
+different points! Next day let barricades choke the Boulevards; and, if
+the conflict come not, be it precipitated--provoked! Thursday, an
+hundred thousand men must invest the Tuileries, and a Provisional
+Government be declared in the Chamber of Deputies! The Bourbons will
+then be in full flight, and France will be free! And now, Messieurs,
+will you permit me to suggest the propriety of our separation? Yonder
+Ministerial Secretary has had his eye upon us ever since he entered."
+
+The expediency of the suggestion of M. Dantes was at once perceived; the
+conspirators parted and one after the other, by different routes,
+shortly disappeared. As for M. Dantes, he threw himself carelessly in
+the way of the Ministerial Secretary to whom he had alluded, who was no
+other than our friend Lucien Debray, and saluted him with most marked
+and winning courtesy.
+
+"Will the Ministerial Secretary suffer me to compliment him upon his
+indefatigable industry and exertions to-night to fortify order in Paris
+and sustain the administration?"
+
+Debray bowed somewhat confusedly at this remark, and having returned a
+diplomatic reply, from which neither himself nor any one else could have
+elicited an idea, M. Dantes continued the conversation.
+
+"Let me see, it is now nearly three o'clock," he said, consulting his
+repeater; "at half-past two you received an order, signed by the Duke of
+Montpensier, and directed to the War Ministry, commanding that
+seventy-two additional pieces of artillery be transported from Vincennes
+to Paris before dawn. That order was issued, and the ordnance is now on
+the boulevard!"
+
+"How!" exclaimed the astonished Secretary.
+
+"At Vincennes, the horses of the flying artillery stand harnessed in
+their stalls! All night infantry have been pouring into Paris, and,
+obedient to midnight orders, every railway will disgorge, at dawn,
+additional troops!"
+
+"Are you a magician?" asked the astonished Secretary.
+
+"Shall I reveal to you the Ministerial tactics for the morrow's
+apprehended insurrection?" coolly asked Dantes, with a smile. "The
+salons of the Tuileries have not been deserted to-night. 'Can you quell
+an insurrection, General?' asked the King of the Marshal Duke of Islay.
+'I can kill thirty thousand men,' was the humane answer. 'And I, sire,
+can preserve order in Paris without killing a score,' said Marshal
+Gerard, the hero of Antwerp, 'if I can rely on my men.' 'What is your
+plan, Marshal?' asked the King. Shall I give you the Marshal's reply, my
+friend?"
+
+"You were present--you know all!" exclaimed Debray.
+
+"Not quite all," thought Dantes, "but I shall before we part. Well,"
+continued he, aloud, "the Marshal's strategy was this--exceedingly
+simple and exceedingly efficacious, too, provided, to use the Marshal's
+own words, he can rely on his men. It is this: Occupy the Tuileries, the
+Hotel de Ville, the Halles, the Louvre and other prominent points with a
+heavy reserve of infantry and artillery, and sweep the boulevards, and
+the Rues St. Honore, de Rivoli, St. Martin, St. Denis, Montmartre and
+Richelieu with cavalry. A simple plan, is it not? Almost as simple as
+that of the insurrectionists themselves--a barricade on every street and
+one hundred thousand men in the Place du Carrousel!"
+
+"The Government will not yield, Monsieur!" said Debray, firmly. "The
+Minister is unshaken. To crush an unarmed mob cannot severely tax the
+most skillful generals in Europe."
+
+"True, they are unarmed," returned Dantes, with apparent seriousness.
+"Their leaders should have thought of that--arms are so easily
+provided--but then they can rely on their men!"
+
+"We have yet to see that!" replied Debray, with some asperity.
+
+"True, we have yet to see it. It is only a matter of belief now; then it
+will be a matter of knowledge. Seeing is knowing," added M. Dantes, with
+his peculiar smile. "But, pray, assure me, M. Debray, are the Ministry
+and their advisers, indeed, sanguine of the issue to-morrow!"
+
+"They are certain!" replied the Secretary, with energy. Then, feeling
+that he had, perhaps, made a dangerous revelation, he quickly added: "I
+have the honor, Monsieur, to wish you a very good night! It is late!"
+
+"Say, rather, it is early, Monsieur!" replied Dantes. "I have the honor
+to wish you a very good morning!"
+
+The Secretary returned the courtesy, turned away, and, after exchanging
+a few words with M. Thiers, disappeared.
+
+"They are certain, then!" soliloquized M. Dantes, as Debray quitted the
+salon. "I was sure I should know all before he left."
+
+Then, rejoining Mercedes, who was patiently awaiting him, they stepped
+into their carriage, as the drowsy tones of the watchman rose on the
+misty air, "Past four o'clock, and all is well!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE REVOLUTION BEGINS.
+
+
+Tuesday, the 22nd of February, the birthday of the immortal Washington
+and the first of the Three Days of the French Revolution of 1848, broke
+darkly and gloomily on Paris. The night had been tempestuous, and the
+wind still drove the sleet through the leafless trees of the
+Champs-Elysees and howled drearily along the cheerless boulevards.
+
+The streets were dismal, desolate and deserted. Here and there, however,
+through the gray light of the winter dawn, could be caught the semblance
+of a figure closely muffled, whether for concealment, disguise, or
+protection from the biting blast was doubtful, stealing along; these
+figures often met and exchanged ominous signs of recognition.
+
+"Is the procession still to take place?" asked one of another of these
+persons, pausing for an instant as they hurried along.
+
+"Yes!" was the emphatic answer. "Dupont, Lamartine and the sixteen
+others who are faithful are resolute."
+
+"And the rendezvous?"
+
+"Is the Place de La Concorde."
+
+"And the hour?"
+
+"Twelve."
+
+Whereupon the conspirators parted.
+
+Gradually the number of persons in the streets increased as the morning
+advanced. Chiefly, these were artisans, lads, blouses and workmen.
+
+"Whither so early this disagreeable morning?" cried a peaceable-looking
+shopman of the Rue de Rivoli, who was taking down his shutters for the
+day, to a friend who was hurrying by.
+
+"I don't exactly know where I am going," was the reply. "We were all
+roused at daybreak in the Quartier St. Honore by the rappel, and so I
+happen to be awake."
+
+"And are the National Guard turning out in good numbers?"
+
+"No. They don't turn out at all. The drummers are followed by a crowd of
+gamins in blouses, who shout Vive la Reforme and sing the Marseillaise."
+
+"The National Guard don't turn out!" cried the alarmed shopman; "then
+I'll not take down my shutters!"
+
+And as his friend moved on to the Madeleine, he took the precautionary
+measure he had spoken of.
+
+At nine o'clock troops were in motion all over Paris, and the roll of
+the drum was heard in every street.
+
+At ten o'clock ten thousand men were assembled at the Madeleine.
+
+"Is there to be a banquet?" asked one of another, as they met on the Rue
+Royale.
+
+"No. It is a procession. The people are to march to the Chamber of
+Deputies and sing the Marseillaise."
+
+All the avenues to the Palais Bourbon and part of the Place around the
+Madeleine were now occupied by the 21st Regiment of the Line and mounted
+Municipal Guards. Before the Chamber of Deputies was marshaled a
+squadron of dragoons, and a battalion of the 69th Regiment of
+Cuirassiers stood ready to charge on the throng.
+
+At eleven o'clock two thousand students in blouses from the Parthenon
+were joined by an immense column of workmen from the faubourgs, and,
+having fraternized in the Place de la Concorde, advanced in perfect
+order in procession, led by National Guards, shouting the Marseillaise
+and the Hymn of the Girondins. Slowly and solemnly moved the vast mass
+up the Rue Royale to the Pont de la Concorde, leading to the Place of
+the Chamber of Deputies.
+
+At twelve o'clock the vast arena between the Chamber of Deputies and the
+Madeleine contained thirty thousand people. Along the railing of the
+church was drawn up a regiment of horse. A man in a tri-colored sash
+three times read the summons and ordered the crowd disperse.
+
+The order is disregarded! The charge is sounded! The dragoons rush with
+sheathed sabres on the mass! Again and again they charge, but they cut
+down none!
+
+All at once a heavy cart with a powerful horse is discovered--the people
+seize it--the horse is lashed into fury--he rushes on the double line of
+dragoons and chasseurs--a breach is made--the crowd dash through--some
+rush up the steps of the Chamber of Deputies--they force the gates--they
+even enter the hall--then, suddenly panic-stricken at their own
+audacity, they rush back! At this moment, along the Quai d'Orsay,
+gallops up a strong detachment of the mounted Municipal Guard, led by
+General Peyronet Tiburce Sebastiani, brother of the Marshal and uncle of
+the unhappy Duchess of Praslin. A charge was ordered, the crowd was
+driven over the bridge, and the Municipal Guard, a company of dragoons
+and a squadron of hussars took up a position at the foot of the Obelisk
+of Luxor. "Long live the dragoons!" shouted the people. "Down with the
+Municipal Guard!" accompanied by hootings, groans, shouts and showers of
+stones. The troops, with sheathed sabres, charged. One of the immense
+fountains afforded the gamins a place of shelter. Suddenly the flood of
+water was let on and they fled.
+
+Thus began the revolution.
+
+One o'clock tolled from the tower of the Madeleine. The area was clear.
+Cavalry patrolled the boulevards. Infantry, bearing, besides their
+usual arms, implements for demolishing barricades--axes, adzes and
+hatchets--each soldier one upon his knapsack, followed.
+
+At two o'clock, at the Hotel des Affaires Etrangeres, at the corner of
+the Rue des Capucines and the Boulevard, an immense mass of men ebbed
+and flowed like tides of the sea, and a tempest of shouts, groans and
+choruses to national songs arose.
+
+A commissary of police in colored clothes, and with the tri-colored
+sash, led a body of Municipal Guards into the court. Deliberately they
+charge their muskets with ball. "In the name of the Law!" shouted the
+commissary. "Vive la Ligne!" responded the people, as they slowly
+retired.
+
+"Away," cried a trooper to a blouse, in the Place de la Concorde, at the
+corner, near the Turkish Embassy; "Away, or I'll cut you down!"
+
+"Will you, coward!" replied the artisan, calmly, with folded arms. At
+that moment a body of the people rushed on the Municipal Guards and
+drove them for safety into their barracks; then they fled themselves to
+avoid the fusillade of the enraged troops.
+
+On the Pont de la Concorde the people stopped the carriage of a
+Ministerial Deputy and saluted him with groans. The next moment Armand
+Marrast, of "Le National," approached and was most rapturously cheered.
+
+The money-changers, those seers of Napoleon, scented not yet the
+revolution. On Friday, the three per cents. were 75f. 85c. On Tuesday
+they opened at 73f. 90c. and closed at 74f.
+
+The day advanced. The Republican and Communist power augments in its
+systematized order. Paris swarms with insurgents. Bakers' and gunsmiths'
+shops are plundered. Barricades are thrown up. A column rushes down the
+Champs-Elysees, and, having been repulsed at an escalade of the railings
+of the Chamber of Deputies, retires, shouting the Marseillaise and a
+chorus from the new opera of the Girondins, "Mourir pour la Patrie." At
+dusk a deputation of students, at the office of "Le National," presents
+a petition for the impeachment of the Ministry.
+
+That impeachment had already taken place!
+
+"What news?" shouted a student to a workman, as he hurried along.
+
+"There has been fighting in the Faubourg St. Marceau; half a dozen
+Municipal Guards have been carried wounded to the hospital of
+Val-de-Grace and a captain was killed."
+
+"And is it true that the Guard has been disarmed on the Rues Geoffroi
+and Langevin, and a gunmaker's shop near the Porte St. Martin broken
+into and rifled?"
+
+"I hadn't heard of that," was the hurried reply. "But I hear this, that
+the guard-houses in the Champs-Elysees have been taken, and the troops
+driven off, and that lamps and windows have been torn down."
+
+At that moment another workman rushed along.
+
+"The news!" shouted the student and the first workman.
+
+"The railing of the Church of the Assumption has been torn away by the
+people to supply arms; two women of the people have been crushed by a
+charge of the Municipal Guard; the shop of Lepage, the armorer, in the
+Rue Richelieu, has been entered by means of the pole of an omnibus used
+as a battering ram; and barricades rise on the Rue St. Honore."
+
+At three o'clock a column of the people dashed down the boulevards,
+smashing lamps and breaking shop windows. In the Rue St. Honore and the
+Rue de Rivoli an omnibus and two carriages were seized to aid in
+erecting a barricade. A guard-house in the Champs-Elysees was burned.
+The troops at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were increased. No one was
+suffered to pass. A Municipal Guard was dismounted and nearly killed by
+the people. The crowd in the Rue Royale had become so dense that it was
+impossible to pass to the Place de la Concorde. The troops charged. The
+people gave way. Some were wounded badly; but still rose the shouts,
+"Vive la Ligne! Down with the Municipal Guard!"
+
+In the Place Vendome stood a regiment of the Line. There was the hotel
+of M. Hebert, the Minister of Justice, and M. Hebert was hated by the
+people. "Down with Hebert, the inventor of moral complicity!" yelled the
+populace, but they made no attack.
+
+It was ten o'clock at night. Many of the shops were closed, but the
+cafes and restaurants were thronged. From time to time the shouts,
+"Down with Guizot!" and "Vive la Reforme!" were heard and, also, the
+roll of drums as a body of troops passed along; knots of individuals
+gathered around the doors of bakers' shops, and, while they eagerly ate
+their bread and sausage, as eagerly denounced Guizot and the Ministry.
+
+But all was comparative order in Paris.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE.
+
+
+It was twelve o'clock at night, on the 22nd of February, 1848.
+
+Lights still gleamed in the vast edifice of "Le National" printing
+office, and in the editorial chamber were assembled the chiefs of the
+revolution.
+
+"All goes well," said Louis Blanc. "The blow is struck; let it only be
+followed up, and the efforts of the past ten years will not prove vain!"
+
+"How true was the opinion of M. Dantes respecting the National Guard!"
+said Marrast.
+
+"How true also respecting the workmen!" said Albert.
+
+"How true respecting the Ministry!" said Ledru Rollin. "But where is M.
+Dantes? Why is he not here?"
+
+At that moment the private door opened, and M. Dantes, Flocon and
+Lamartine entered.
+
+"The news from the Chambers!" cried Marrast, as they approached.
+
+"Three impeachments of the Ministry have been proposed," said Lamartine.
+
+"By whom--by whom?" asked Louis Blanc. "By whom presented?"
+
+"One by Odillon Barrot, one by Duvergier d'Hauranne and one by M. de
+Genoude, Deputy from Toulouse."
+
+"And what said Guizot?" asked Marrast.
+
+"Nothing. He only laughed when the papers were handed him by old
+President Sauzet."
+
+"Ah!" cried Ledru Rollin.
+
+"Few deputies were there," continued Flocon. "The opposition benches
+were vacant. Guizot was there early, pale and troubled, but stern and
+unbending. All the Ministers followed him."
+
+"What was discussed?" asked Marrast.
+
+"The Bordeaux Bank Bill."
+
+"Ah!" cried Ledru Rollin again.
+
+"Yes," continued Flocon, "until five o'clock that bill was discussed.
+Barrot then ascended the tribune and deposited a general proposition to
+impeach the Ministry."
+
+"And what was done with it?" asked Louis Blanc.
+
+"The President raised the sitting without reading it, but announced that
+the bureaux should have it for examination on Thursday."
+
+"Infamous!" cried Ledru Rollin.
+
+"It is all as it should be," said M. Dantes, calmly.
+
+"And the peers--what of them?"
+
+"The Marquis de Boissy made an effort to get a hearing on the state of
+Paris, but, of course, it was in vain."
+
+"Is it true," asked Flocon, "that the rappel has been beaten to-day?"
+
+"It was beaten in the Quartier St. Honore, at dawn," said Louis Blanc,
+"and this evening, at about five o'clock, in several of the
+arrondissements. But no reliance need be placed on the National Guard.
+They are with us--they are of the people--they shout, 'Vive la
+Reforme!'"
+
+"But the Municipal Guard and the Line? I am told that an immense body of
+them was this evening, at about eight o'clock, reviewed by the King and
+the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier, in the Place du Carrousel," said
+Flocon.
+
+"That's true," said Ledru Rollin; "I witnessed it myself in passing, and
+I could not help saying, 'It is the last.'"
+
+"Six thousand troops of the Line are on the boulevards, from the
+Madeleine to the Porte St. Martin," said M. Dantes. "The Hotel de Ville,
+the Places de la Bastille, de la Concorde and du Carrousel, and the
+Quays frown with artillery. To-morrow will be a warm day!"
+
+"It has been rather warm to-day in some parts of Paris," said Louis
+Blanc, smiling. "Was there ever a grander spectacle than that in the
+Place de la Concorde at noon? At least one hundred thousand men were
+there assembled. Rushing across the bridge, they gathered around the
+Chamber of Deputies--then from the southern gate of the Tuileries issued
+two bodies of troops, one of mounted Municipal Guards, the other
+infantry of the Line, and, pressing on the dense mass, they drove them
+over the bridge. Only a few old fruitwomen were crushed beneath the
+horses' hoofs, and a few of the troops were wounded by pebbles,
+however."
+
+"At the same time," said Flocon, "all the chains in the Champs-Elysees
+were in requisition for a barricade, as well as all the public
+carriages, and the people sang the Marseillaise, the Parisienne and the
+Hymn of the Girondins. A guard-house was also consumed."
+
+"Have you heard Bugeaud's remark at noon, when looking upon the Place de
+la Concorde?" asked Marrast.
+
+"We have been too busy to-day to hear anything," said Ledru Rollin.
+
+"'Ah! we shall have a day of it,' said the bloodthirsty old hero. 'I
+care not for the day,' said the pale Guizot, 'but the night!'"
+
+"The people made quite a demonstration about Guizot, I hear," said
+Flocon. "They assailed him with a shower of groans, it is said, and some
+of the gamins flung pebbles at his gates."
+
+"The most significant shout before the office of Foreign Affairs was
+this," said Ledru Rollin--"'Countess of Leven, where is the Minister?'"
+
+"And the very moment this was occurring," said Flocon, "I understand
+that M. Thiers, on his return from the Chamber, in passing through the
+Champs-Elysees, narrowly escaped a most unwelcome ovation from the
+people. The two rivals were duly and simultaneously honored it seems."
+
+"Thus much for to-day," said Marrast; "what of to-night?"
+
+"Barricades rise all over Paris," said M. Dantes. "But we can do no
+more. Let us each retire to his home. To-morrow the National Guard will
+fraternize with the people, and the Ministry will resign."
+
+A few words of parting salutation passed, and all departed.
+
+M. Dantes and Lamartine left the office in company.
+
+"What say you, Edmond," asked Lamartine, "will your wife spare you long
+enough from her pillow to make with me a brief tour of the town?"
+
+"Mercedes is rather exacting," said Dantes, with a laugh; "but if your
+fair lady will suffer your absence, mine must do the same, I fear."
+
+"Well, then, let us first to the Hotel de Ville, that grand centre of
+Paris in all that is revolutionary."
+
+As the two friends passed along, conversing on the events of the day and
+the anticipations of the morrow, they were met, from time to time, by
+knots of men at the corners, eagerly recounting the incidents of the
+hour; the roll of drums was heard in the distance, and occasionally
+there came the heavy and measured tread of infantry, the clatter of
+cavalry and the lumbering of artillery, as they passed on their way. All
+the shops and cafes were closed. Many of the lamps were demolished, and
+others were not lighted, the gas being shut off. A fearful gloom brooded
+over the city. The winter wind swept sharply and cuttingly along the
+deserted streets, and rain, which froze as it fell, at intervals dashed
+down.
+
+The Hotel de Ville was encompassed by troops as the friends approached
+it.
+
+"Is that a cannon?" asked Lamartine, pointing to a dark object that
+protruded from an embrasure of the edifice.
+
+"It is!" replied Dantes.
+
+"Then the revolution has, indeed, begun! Artillery in the streets of
+Paris!"
+
+"Behind each column of the portico of the Chamber of Deputies this day
+frowned a concealed cannon!" was the significant response.
+
+The friends turned off from the Hotel de Ville, and, crossing the right
+branch of the Seine, were under the deep shadows of Notre Dame. But all
+was tranquil and still. Only the howlings of the wintry blast were heard
+through the towers and architectural ornaments of the old pile. Up the
+Rue St. Jacques, into the Quartier Latin, they then proceeded, but the
+students and the grisettes seemed to be fast asleep. Turning back, they
+passed the Fish Market, and here a large body of cavalry had bivouacked.
+Patrols marched to and fro; officers in huge dark cloaks smoked,
+laughed and chatted, regardless of the morrow. The friends went on. All
+was dark in the faubourg which succeeded. Not a light gleamed, save, in
+some lofty casement, the fainting candle of the worn-out needlewoman or
+of the overtasked student.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Lamartine, as they passed one of these flickering
+lights, "who knows what plotting head and ready hand may be beside that
+candle? Who knows of the weapon burnished, the cartridge filled and the
+sabre sharpened by that light for the morrow?"
+
+"The morrow!" exclaimed M. Dantes; "that morrow decides the fate of
+France!"
+
+And the friends parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE SECOND DAY.
+
+
+The 23d of February dawned on Paris as a city under arms. Artillery
+frowned in all the public places; the barricades of the preceding night
+had been thrown down as fast as erected; National Guards thronged the
+thoroughfares; the people swarmed along the boulevards. In the
+neighborhood of the Porte St. Denis and the Porte St. Martin, barricades
+rose as if by magic, but were as if by magic swept away. Cavalry
+bivouacked in the streets, and ordnance was leveled along their entire
+extent. The avenues were closely invested, and even old men and women
+were arrested on their way to their own thresholds. From time to time
+single shots or volleys of musketry were heard in the distance, and
+wounded men were carried past to the hospitals.
+
+The Government had ordered all public carriages to be cleared from the
+stands, that material for new barricades might not exist when the old
+ones were demolished; but the people were busy, too, for the iron
+railings at the hotel of the Minister of Marine, in the Place de la
+Concorde, and at the churches of the Assumption and St. Roch had been
+torn away to supply weapons of attack or defence, or implements with
+which to tear up the huge square paving stones of Paris for barricades.
+
+At eleven o'clock the National Guard of the Second Arrondissement
+gathered at the opera house in the Rue Lepelletier, and near the office
+of "Le National." "Vive la Reforme!" "Vive la Garde Nationale!" "Long
+live the real defenders of the country!"--these were the shouts,
+intermingled with the choruses of national songs, that now rose from the
+people and the National Guard.
+
+At twelve o'clock the 2d Legion of the National Guard was at the
+Tuileries to make a demonstration for reform. Its colonel, M. Bagnieres,
+declared to the Duke of Nemours that he could not answer for his men. At
+one o'clock, accompanied by an immense multitude, with whom they
+fraternized, they were again on the Rue Lepelletier. A squadron of
+cuirassiers and one of chasseurs advanced to dislodge them.
+
+"Who are these men?" cried the chef d'escadron.
+
+"The people of Paris!" replied the officer of the National Guard.
+
+"And who are you?"
+
+"An officer of the 2d Legion of the National Guard."
+
+"The people must disperse!"
+
+"They will not!"
+
+"I will compel them!"
+
+"The National Guard will defend them!"
+
+"Vive la Reforme!" shouted the people.
+
+The National Guard and the cuirassiers united. The officer, chagrined,
+turned back to his men and vociferated in tones of thunder:
+
+"Wheel! Forward!"
+
+And the whole body resumed its march down the Boulevard.
+
+An hour afterwards a still larger body of troops, Municipal Guards
+mounted and on foot, cuirassiers and infantry of the Line, came down the
+Boulevard and made a half movement on the Rue Lepelletier, but, seeing
+the hostile attitude of the National Guard, continued their march amid
+shouts of "Vive la Reforme!" "Vive la Garde Nationale!" "Vive la Ligne!"
+
+Twice, within an hour afterwards, the same thing occurred.
+
+It was plain that the National Guard fraternized with the people.
+
+The 3d Legion deputed their colonel, M. Besson, to demand of the King
+reform and a change of Ministry. The colonel presented the memorial to
+General Jaqueminot, who promised to place it in the Royal hands.
+
+The 4th Legion marched to the Chamber of Deputies and presented a
+petition for reform.
+
+Col. Lemercier, of the 10th, arrested a man for shouting "Vive la
+Reforme!" The man was liberated by his own troops, with shouts of "Vive
+la Reforme!" The colonel withdrew.
+
+The cavalry legion, the 13th, in like manner repudiated Col. Montalivet.
+
+The Municipal Guard was ordered to disarm the 3d Legion. Both
+advanced--bayonets were crossed--blood was about to flow. At that moment
+Col. Textorix, of the National Guard, rushed up and exclaimed:
+
+"Brothers, will you slay brothers?"
+
+The effect was electrical. The muskets were instantly shouldered and the
+combatants separated.
+
+All over Paris the same scenes took place, with a few exceptions.
+
+"Vive la Republique!" cried Ledru Rollin to Albert, who was hurrying
+down the Rue Lepelletier, at about noon.
+
+"Vive la Republique!" was the hearty response. "What of the National
+Guard?"
+
+"The Guard fraternizes with the people," replied Ledru Rollin. "What of
+the blouses and the barricades?"
+
+"Last night, the barricades of yesterday were swept from the streets,
+and even the material of which to build them also, the pavements only
+excepted; yet, at dawn this morning, the whole space between the
+Quartier Saint-Martin des Champs, the Mont de Piete and the Temple, and
+all the smaller streets were choked with barricades."
+
+"And they were at once assailed?"
+
+"By the troops of the Line, the Municipal Guard and the chasseurs of
+Vincennes."
+
+"Who were repulsed?"
+
+"With most obstinate bravery. At the Rue Rambuteau, the 69th Regiment
+was three times driven back; also at the corner of the Rue St. Denis and
+the Rue de Tracy. In the Rue Philippeaux a ball passed through the face
+of a soldier of the 21st of the Line infantry, and then through the head
+of a voltigeur behind him. Sixteen soldiers fell in the attack on the
+barricade of the Rue Rambuteau. A blouse pointed a pistol at an officer
+of the Municipal Guard; the pistol hung fire, and the officer passed his
+sword through his assailant's body. From this you can infer that we have
+had close fighting."
+
+"I have heard that an assault was made on the armory of our friends, the
+Leparge Brothers, for weapons; is it so?"
+
+"There was an assault at about ten o'clock; but the windows were too
+strong to be carried. There has been fighting in the Rue de Petit
+Carrel, and the neighborhood of the Place Royale, I learn. Achmet
+Pacha, son of Mehemet Ali, is fighting for us with the most wonderful
+intrepidity. A chef de bataillon of the 34th was slain by a shot from a
+window, and some offices of the Octroi have been burned. Three men were
+killed at the Batignolles, and their bodies were accompanied by an
+immense throng to the Morgue."
+
+"Have you heard that the 5th Regiment, as in 1830, has joined the
+people, and that, on their way to the Prefecture of Police to liberate
+some of the people who had been arrested, they stopped at the office of
+'La Reforme,' and were eloquently addressed by our friend, Louis Blanc?"
+
+"What did he say to them?"
+
+"He told them the fight was not yet over; that there must still be a
+banquet; and that this time there must be no mistake--the workmen must
+have the freedom they won!"
+
+"Vive Louis Blanc!" cried Albert, and, in a higher state of excitement
+than he had ever before been known to exhibit, he hurried off.
+
+"I am for the Tuileries," said Ledru Rollin, as they parted.
+
+"And I for the Palais Royal," said Albert.
+
+"We meet to-night at the office of 'Le National?'"
+
+"Without fail, at midnight!"
+
+It was on the square at the south end of the Palais Royal that most
+blood was spilled between the people and the troops. The Chateau d'Eau
+was furiously assailed and obstinately defended--assailed by the people
+and defended by six thousand picked troops. The people triumphed! Of the
+troops, at least a thousand perished, and the remnant fled.
+
+At three o'clock M. Rambuteau, Prefect of the Seine, waited on the King
+and informed him that the National Guard demanded reform, and the
+Municipal Guard a change of Ministry.
+
+The King in dismay convened the Ministry.
+
+"Can the Ministry maintain itself?" asked Louis Philippe.
+
+"That question brings its own answer to your Majesty," replied Guizot.
+"If you doubt the stability of your Ministry, who can trust them?"
+
+"I have thought of the Count Mole," observed the King.
+
+"He is an able man, sire," replied Guizot; "and his political
+connections with M. Barrot and M. Thiers may aid him to form a Ministry.
+But, sire, not an instant is to be lost. Your faithful Ministers will do
+all they can, but a Ministerial crisis cannot be delayed; and, if your
+Majesty will permit the suggestion, the emergency demands that to
+Marshal Bugeaud be given the command of Paris."
+
+"You will proceed to the Chamber to announce that M. Mole is entrusted
+with the formation of a new cabinet," said the King.
+
+And the council closed.
+
+At four, an officer of the staff passed along the boulevards, announcing
+the fall of the Ministry.
+
+Instantly, with the speed of the telegraph, the intelligence flew to
+the obscurest parts of Paris. Its effect was, at first, most cheering.
+Barricades were deserted and arms thrown down; faces brightened, hands,
+almost stained with each other's blood, were clasped; troops and people,
+unwillingly fighting, embraced; all was triumph, joy and congratulation.
+
+"All now is over--all is right at last!" was the exclamation of one man
+of the people to another.
+
+"Guizot has fallen, but the King has sent for Count Mole," replied a
+third, with a dissatisfied air.
+
+"No matter," cried the first speaker, "the system is overturned! What
+care we who is Minister?"
+
+"It is too late," replied the other. "Guizot has been forced away by the
+people--Mole may be forced away, too--so may the King! No more tricks!
+The people now know their power. There shall be no mistake this time!"
+
+And the insurrectionists parted.
+
+As the day closed, barricades rose in the Quartier du Temple, and there
+was fighting between the people and the Municipal Guard. But the
+National Guard came to the rescue, and the latter surrendered.
+
+At nine o'clock Paris was illuminated. White, red, blue--yellow, orange,
+green--these were the tri-colors of the lamps that poured their rich
+effulgence from every window on the gloomy scene without. The streets
+were thronged and the cafes crowded; men of all nations and Parisians
+of all classes were in the streets; the rattle of musketry had ceased;
+the troops were in their barracks and the people at their homes.
+
+At the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue des Capucines, Flocon and
+Louis Blanc met.
+
+"Guizot has fallen!" cried the first.
+
+"And the most intimate friend of the King has succeeded him! What have
+we to hope for from the change?"
+
+"What are we to do?" asked Flocon.
+
+"In one hour the people will sing the Marseillaise before the Hotel des
+Affaires Etrangeres!"
+
+"The 14th Regiment of the Line is there," replied Flocon.
+
+"So much the better! Blood will flow! The revolution will not stop!"
+
+And the conspirators separated.
+
+At ten o'clock, before the official residence of M. Guizot, himself then
+absent, and probably in full flight for the coast, an immense crowd of
+the people with torches was assembled. Their purpose was to sing the
+Marseillaise. The 14th Regiment barred the way--the street was dimly
+lighted--a single row of lamps along the courtyard wall was all the
+illumination--a double line of troops was the defence.
+
+"Let me pass!" cried the officer of the National Guard who led the
+people to the officer who led the troops.
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"In the name of the people, I demand to pass!"
+
+"In the name of the Law, you shall not!"
+
+"The people command! Forward!" cried the National Guard.
+
+"Present! Fire!" shouted the officer.
+
+There was a roll of musketry--a shrill shriek rang along the
+Boulevard--the vast mass recoiled--the smoke floated off--sixty-three of
+the people of Paris lay weltering in their gore!
+
+"The blow is struck at last!" cried M. Dantes, rushing across the
+Boulevard, pale and excited. "To arms, people of Paris, to arms!"
+
+"To arms, to arms! Vengeance for our brothers!" was now the terrible cry
+that burst from the infuriated populace. The congratulation--the
+illumination--all was lost in the wild wish for vengeance.
+
+At eleven o'clock that night an immense multitude, composed chiefly of
+workmen from the faubourgs, was coming down the Boulevard des Capucines.
+It was the largest and most regular throng yet seen. In front marched a
+platoon of men bearing torches and waving tri-color flags. Immediately
+behind walked an officer in the full uniform of the National Guard, with
+a drawn sword in his hand, whose slightest command was implicitly
+observed. Next came a tumbrel bearing the naked corpses of the slain,
+whose faces, mutilated by their wounds and disfigured by blood, glared
+horribly up, with open eyes, in the red torchlight that flared in the
+night blast around! Behind this awful display marched a dense mass of
+National Guards, succeeded by a countless mass of the people armed
+with, guns, swords, clubs and bars of iron, chanting forth in full
+chorus, not the inspiring Marseillaise or the Parisienne, but in awful
+concert sending upon the night air the deep and dreadful notes of the
+death-hymn of the Girondins, "Mourir pour la Patrie," intermingled with
+yells for vengeance.
+
+Down the boulevards approach the multitude--more distinct becomes the
+dirge--more redly glare the torches--and, amid all, more deeply rumble
+the wheels of the death-cart on the pavement!
+
+The funeral column reaches the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue
+Lepelletier--the death-hymn rises to a yell of fury--the officer of the
+National Guard turns the head of the column to the right--before it is
+an edifice conspicuous by its illumination of huge and blood-red
+lamps--it is the office of "Le National"--the crowd halts--one long loud
+shriek of "Vengeance!" goes up--it is succeeded by the thrilling notes
+of the Marseillaise from ten thousands lips, and "Marrast! Marrast!" is
+the shout that follows.
+
+The windows of the front office were thrown up, and the editor,
+surrounded by friends, appeared. His speech was brief but fervid. He
+exhorted the people to be firm--to secure their rights beyond
+recall--and promised them ample retribution for past wrongs and security
+for future rights.
+
+M. Garnier Pages, who stood at the side of Marrast, next addressed the
+people in the same strain, amid thunders of applause.
+
+Making a detour to the office of "La Reforme," the multitude were
+addressed by M. Flocon, its editor; then, proceeding to the Place de la
+Bastille, the corpses were deposited at the foot of the Column of July,
+and the crowd dispersed.
+
+The night that succeeded was an awful one. The streets, which an hour
+before blazed with the illumination, were dark. Barricades rose in every
+direction. At every corner shopmen, workmen, women, clerks and children
+were at work. The crash of falling trees, the clank of the lever and the
+pickaxe, the rattle of paving stones--these were the significant sounds
+that broke the stillness. Every tree on the whole line of the Boulevard
+was felled and every lamp-post overthrown; a barricade of immense
+strength rose at the end of the Rue Richelieu; the troops offered no
+resistance; they piled their arms, lighted their fires and bivouacked
+close beside the barricades. At the Hotel de Ville the troops of the
+Line and the Chasseurs d'Afrique quietly ate their suppers, smoked their
+pipes and laid themselves down to sleep. On the Boulevard des Italiens
+appeared three regiments of the Line, a battalion of National Guards, a
+regiment of cuirassiers, and three field-pieces, with their caissons of
+ammunition. The horses were unharnessed by the people, the caissons
+opened, the ammunition distributed and the guns dragged off. The troops,
+guards and cuirassiers fraternized.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+ANOTHER MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE.
+
+
+Again it was midnight. Again the chiefs of the revolution of '48
+assembled in conclave. The second of the Three Days had passed, but the
+streets of Paris were all alive with excitement.
+
+Every leader of the reform was there--Ledru Rollin and Flocon excited
+and fiery, Louis Blanc exhausted and agitated, Albert stern and
+collected, Lamartine pale and troubled, Marrast sanguine and
+confident--all of them more or less disturbed but M. Dantes. As for him,
+the same calm smile was on his lip, the same mild light in his eye and
+the same unchanging resolution upon his countenance.
+
+"Who attended the Chamber of Deputies to-day?" asked Marrast. "Did you,
+Lamartine?"
+
+"I did," was the reply, "and witnessed a somewhat stormy sitting. At
+three o'clock, as usual, old Sauzet took the chair. Our friends were
+there in large numbers; the Ministerial benches were also filled.
+Immediately after, M. Guizot entered. He had been saluted with groans by
+the 10th Legion, stationed on guard without, and with cries of 'Down
+with Guizot!' Calm, undisturbed, stony in aspect, though strangely
+pallid, he entered and took his seat. M. Vavin, Deputy for the Seine,
+instantly mounted the tribune. As Deputy of Paris he had, he said, a
+solemn duty to fulfill. For twenty-four hours Paris had been in
+insurrection. Why was this? He called on the Minister of the Interior to
+explain."
+
+"And what said Guizot?" asked Louis Blanc, eagerly.
+
+"He said he thought the public interest did not demand, nor was it
+proper for the Chamber at that time, to enter into debate on the
+subject. The King had called M. le Comte Mole to form a new cabinet."
+
+"And then the left cheered?" exclaimed Flocon.
+
+"Most emphatically," was the reply.
+
+"And what said Guizot then?" asked Ledru Rollin.
+
+"He calmly said that no such demonstrations could induce him to add to
+or withhold a single syllable of what he designed to say, or to
+pretermit a single act he had designed to do. As long as his Ministry
+remained in office he should cause public order to be respected,
+according to his best judgment, and as he had always done. He should
+consider himself answerable for all that might happen, and should in all
+things act as conscience might dictate for the best interests of the
+country."
+
+"A noble answer!" exclaimed M. Dantes, with enthusiasm.
+
+Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc assented.
+
+"And what next?" pursued Flocon.
+
+"After considerable confusion," continued Lamartine, "M. Odillon Barrot
+rose and demanded, in consequence of the situation of the cabinet, a
+postponement of the proposition for its impeachment, fixed for
+to-morrow."
+
+"Ah! And what said the Chamber?" asked Flocon.
+
+"The demand was so loudly reprobated that M. Barrot immediately said he
+made the proposal in entire submission to the majority."
+
+"And what said Dupin?" asked Ledru Rollin, eagerly.
+
+"Dupin said the first thing necessary for the capital was order. Anarchy
+must cease. The Ministry could not at the same time occupy themselves in
+re-establishing order and in caring for their own safety. He demanded
+the adjournment of the impeachment and of all business."
+
+"And what did Barrot reply to that?" asked Louis Blanc.
+
+"M. Barrot was silent; but the Minister of Foreign Affairs at once rose
+and said with much energy that as long as his cabinet remained entrusted
+with the public interest, which would probably be for some hours, it
+would cause the laws to be respected. The cabinet saw no reason for the
+suspension of the labors of the Chamber. The Crown was at that moment
+exercising its prerogative, and it must be respected. So long as his
+cabinet was on those benches, the Chamber need not suspend its labors."
+
+"What was the vote on the question to postpone consideration of the
+impeachment?" asked Flocon.
+
+"Some of the opposition supported the motion, but the whole centre
+opposed it, and it was lost. The Chamber immediately rose in great
+agitation, and M. Guizot disappeared."
+
+"It seems to me that the position of M. Odillon Barrot is a somewhat
+peculiar one at this moment," observed Louis Blanc. "He is neither with
+the Crown nor with the people, and yet both seem to confide in him."
+
+"As I passed his house this evening, at about eight o'clock," said
+Flocon, "a large multitude were in his courtyard shouting, 'Long live
+Odillon Barrot!' A deputation of the people penetrated, I understand,
+even to his private apartment, where he was in consultation with Thiers
+and Dupin. Barrot then urged them to be moderate in their triumph and to
+retire. M. Garnier Pages, who chanced to be there, urged them to do the
+same, and they went off shouting louder than ever."
+
+At that moment one of the reporters of "Le National" hastily entered and
+handed Marrast a note.
+
+"Whence do you come, Monsieur?" asked the editor.
+
+"From the Tuileries, Monsieur," was the reply, and the reporter left.
+
+The editor opened the note and read aloud:
+
+
+     "One o'clock--Count Mole, unable to form a cabinet, has this moment
+     resigned, and the King has sent for M. Guizot, M. Thiers and
+     Marshal Bugeaud.
+
+     "Half-past one o'clock--Marshal Bugeaud's commission as
+     Commander-in-chief of the National Guard and of the troops of the
+     Line, in place of Generals Jaqueminot and Peyronett Tyburce
+     Sebastiani, has just been signed by M. Guizot and his colleagues,
+     the Ministers of War and the Interior, and will appear in the
+     'Moniteur' of this morning. Bugeaud's plan is this: Instant attack
+     with an overwhelming force of artillery, cavalry and infantry of
+     the Line, (which, he asserts, he has now all ready in position in
+     anticipation of this event, and well disposed to act,) on all the
+     barricades. He promises to sweep away every obstruction from the
+     streets before dawn, though at the cost of fifty thousand lives."
+
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed all the conspirators, instantly springing to their feet.
+
+"This, indeed, is resistance!" said M. Dantes. "But Bugeaud can
+concentrate no more troops upon us. Every avenue to Paris will be
+effectually closed before morning and even the telegraph stopped!"
+
+"If this be true, we have not an instant to lose!" said Louis Blanc.
+
+"I had a hint of this," began M. Dantes.
+
+"Stay--stay, Messieurs!" cried Marrast, as the whole company was rushing
+to the door. "Here is another and later dispatch."
+
+
+     "Two o'clock--Marshal Bugeaud has gone to complete his arrangements
+     for instant attack. M. Thiers has arrived, and, with Odillon
+     Barrot, Duvergier de Hauranne and de Remusat, has formed a cabinet.
+     General Lamoriciere supersedes Marshal Bugeaud--the latter is
+     recalled and forbidden to fire on the people. He protests with
+     violence, and sheathes his sword in despair."
+
+
+"To be sure he does, the old cut-throat!" cried Ledru Rollin. "The idea
+of being let loose with his mastiffs on the people of Paris, like sheep
+pent up in a fold, was to him a source of rapturous anticipation, and
+his rage at the disappointment is proportional!"
+
+"Messieurs!" cried M. Dantes, "this last step of the Government was all
+that we required to insure our success. Thiers and Barrot mistake if
+they think there is sufficient magic in their names to quell a
+revolution. In fact, neither of them are trusted by the people. It is
+too late! Yesterday this might have been done; but now the demand is not
+reform, but a republic--not 'down with the Ministry,' but 'down with the
+dynasty!'"
+
+The conspirators looked at each other and then at M. Dantes in amazement
+and doubt. It was apparent they were as yet unprepared for language so
+plain.
+
+"M. Dantes is right!" cried Flocon. "To-morrow night when we meet we
+shall all admit it!"
+
+It was now nearly three o'clock, and the Republicans repaired to their
+homes for a few hours' sleep before the exciting scenes anticipated for
+the morrow.
+
+As Louis Blanc and M. Albert passed up the Rue Lepelletier, and came
+opposite the Hotel of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which, but a few
+hours before, had been the scene of so much confusion and bloodshed,
+they paused and looked around. The pavement was still dark and wet with
+the gore of the slaughtered citizens, but the whole street was deserted
+and silent. Here and there a solitary light might be detected in the
+attic windows of the immense hotel; but no other sign of life or human
+occupation was to be perceived. True, there was an ominous sound of
+rising barricades in the Boulevard beyond--the crash of trees, the click
+of steel on stone, the lumbering of wheels--and, at intervals, a distant
+shout. But this excepted, all was as quiet in Paris as if the old city
+had never known of insurrection.
+
+"This spot will be noted in the future history of France," said Louis
+Blanc. "Do you know the exact facts of the case, M. Albert? There are so
+many rumors that we can with difficulty get near the truth."
+
+"I was not present when the 14th delivered their fire," was the reply,
+"but I learned from M. de Courtais, who hastened to the spot, that the
+colonel of the regiment, now in prison, asserts that, at the moment of
+the arrival of the crowd, a ball from a musket which accidentally went
+off, broke the leg of his horse, and he, thinking this the signal for an
+attack, at once gave orders to fire. Another story is that one of our
+young blouses blew out an officer's brains with a pistol."
+
+"Many of the troops must have fired in the air," said Louis Blanc,
+looking around him, "for there were two hundred of them in line, I
+understand, and their discharge was delivered across the whole breadth
+of the Boulevard swarming with people."
+
+"It was unfortunate for M. Guizot," rejoined M. Albert, with a sardonic
+smile, "that his hotel should have witnessed such a scene."
+
+"But fortunate for the cause, nevertheless," replied Louis Blanc. "This
+last movement is called the movement of the journalists, I understand."
+
+"If suspicions are always as correct," said M. Albert, "there will be
+fewer false ones, I fancy."
+
+Louis Blanc made no reply, and the friends walked on up the Boulevard,
+reconnoitering every spot.
+
+At the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre they were stopped by a barricade,
+which was rapidly rising under the united and vigorous exertions of
+several hundred men. Steadily, sternly and silently, all that night they
+toiled, and when the barricade was completed the tri-color flag was
+planted on its summit, and a citizen-soldier stood beside its staff to
+defend it. On the other side of the Boulevard, in the Rue Montmartre,
+rose another barricade entirely finished.
+
+"These men are resolved," said Louis Blanc.
+
+"Desperate, rather," replied Albert. "They have counted the cost and
+prepared to go on with the attempt they have begun at all hazards. It is
+better to fight than starve, they think."
+
+"But do you observe how few of them are armed?" asked Louis Blanc.
+
+"We have provided for that deficiency. You will see arms enough for all
+to-morrow," replied Albert. "Barricades first, arms afterwards!"
+
+And, indeed, while he was yet speaking, a tumbrel loaded with arms of
+every description drove silently up, and each man supplied himself with
+a weapon that suited his fancy. In some instances the taste exhibited
+was ludicrous in the extreme; there were swords without scabbards and
+bayonets without guns--a towering helmet on the head of one man, and
+broad white leather cross-belts on the shoulders of another--daggers and
+knives, sabres and pikes mingled in grotesque confusion. But each
+individual was armed with something, and, to crown all, a small piece of
+ordnance, borne on the shoulders of four stout men, who staggered
+beneath its weight, was now brought up and placed in battery.
+
+"From such men what may we not hope!" exclaimed Louis Blanc. "But it is
+near morning; let us proceed."
+
+"I stop here," quietly said Albert.
+
+"What! Pass the night here?" exclaimed his companion.
+
+"The night is nearly passed now," replied Albert, with a smile. "I will
+sleep a few hours with my men of the barricades, and be ready to help
+them defend their work in the morning."
+
+"You are devoted to the cause, Albert," said Louis Blanc, warmly
+grasping his hand.
+
+"Oh! no more than yourself," was the reply. "We are all devoted to it,
+but each in his own way. You are an author, I am a workman. It is a
+light thing for me to pass a night with only the sky for a canopy. It
+is a light thing for you to pass a night in your study. A change of
+positions would possibly kill us both!"
+
+The friends grasped each other warmly by the hand and parted, the author
+going to his study and the workman to his barricade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE THIRD DAY.
+
+
+The next morning the following placard attracted general attention:
+
+
+     "CITIZENS OF PARIS:
+
+     Orders have been given to cease firing everywhere.
+
+     We have just been charged by the King to form a new Ministry.
+
+     The Chamber will be dissolved and an appeal made to the country.
+
+     General Lamoriciere has been appointed Commandant of the National
+     Guard.
+
+     Liberty! Order! Union! Reform!
+                             ODILLON BARROT.
+                             THIERS."
+
+
+Such was the placard which appeared at every corner in Paris on the
+morning of Thursday, February 24th. At three o'clock it had been hastily
+struck at the offices of "La Presse" and "Le Constitutionnel," and given
+into the hands of the bill-posters. At daylight it was read by the
+early passers, and, as soon as read, indignantly torn down with the
+significant murmur, "It is too late!"
+
+At eight o'clock a proclamation to the National Guard, signed by
+Lamoriciere and countersigned by Odillon Barrot, was similarly received.
+
+At nine o'clock the 45th Regiment of the Line fraternized with the
+National Guard, the 30th resigned its arms to the people, and the five
+companies of Compiers yielded their quarters with all their arms and
+ammunition at the first summons.
+
+At ten o'clock a proclamation was posted up at the Bourse, signed by
+Odillon Barrot and Thiers, ordering the troops not only to cease firing,
+but to retire to their quarters. Immediately the trumpets sounded a
+retreat, and the most important positions hitherto held by the Line were
+yielded to the people. The men of the barricades could now concentrate
+and advance. Magic there was none in the names of Barrot and Thiers to
+restrain them. Both were viewed as deserters from their cause. The
+latter was openly insulted by the populace wherever he appeared, and the
+former, though at first respectfully listened to, was, at length,
+assailed with murmurs of disapprobation on his way to the Tuileries.
+
+In his editorial sanctum sat our friend Beauchamp, of whom for some time
+we have lost sight, but who has, meanwhile, been most industriously at
+work in his paper, "Le Charivari," in concert with "Le National" and
+other larger sheets, in forwarding the cause of reform and, finally, of
+revolution.
+
+The door opened and Chateau-Renaud appeared.
+
+"Farewell, Beauchamp!" he exclaimed, "I've not a moment to lose! A
+post-chaise is at the door! Farewell!"
+
+"Off!" cried the journalist, in astonishment. "And whither--and why?"
+
+"Yes, off for England--Italy--America--anywhere but France!" exclaimed
+the young noble.
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Why?" cried the indignant Deputy. "Look around you and then ask what
+there is left in France for me! Beauchamp," continued the young man
+hurriedly and in low tones, "France will have no King at this hour
+to-morrow! Mark the prophecy! The National Guard fraternizes with the
+populace; the Line fraternizes with the Guard. The Government is, of
+course, paralyzed. All is over; six hours hence the Tuileries will be
+ransacked by a drunken mob!--Farewell!"
+
+"One moment! Why do you leave in this way? Why do you not go to Boulogne
+by the cars?"
+
+"And do you not know--you, a journalist--that for three leagues around,
+in every direction, every railway radiating from Paris has been torn up?
+Do you not know that every public conveyance, even to the Mail
+Diligences, has been stopped, and that all the telegraph stations have
+been dismantled--all to prevent the further concentration of troops in
+Paris by the Government?"
+
+"I did hear of this, indeed," said Beauchamp.
+
+"At dawn I was at the railway depot, having late last night, with
+extreme difficulty, procured a passport. And whom think you, among
+crowds of others, I encountered there? You would never guess, and I
+haven't time for you to try. Lucien Debray, and with him--but that's
+impossible for you to divine--she who was Madame Danglars, wife of the
+rich banker years ago. Well, the banker is dead and she is immensely
+rich, and I suppose Lucien's spouse into the bargain."
+
+"And where go they?"
+
+"Oh! to England of course--that grand reservoir of all emigrant
+royalists, that asylum for all who love kings! But farewell, farewell!
+If I am not off soon I may have to go without my head! And if you are
+not massacred by your detestable party, I hope to hear of you yet as a
+Cabinet Minister. Despite your abominable principles, you have my best
+wishes! Farewell!"
+
+And with a hearty shake of Beauchamp's hand, the young noble was off for
+an atmosphere more congenial to monarchists than was that of Paris.
+
+Nor was he alone. Thousands fled from Paris in like manner that same
+day, and the only cry that followed them was this:
+
+"Let them go! Let them go!"
+
+The streets of Paris were now choked with barricades--not the mere
+temporary breastworks of the first and second days, which a single
+charge of heavy dragoons would sweep away, but regular systematic,
+scientific structures, erected apparently under the direction of
+military engineers, and calculated upon every principle of art to insure
+resistance. Some of them were of immense size--that, for example, at the
+corner of the Rue Richelieu; some had port-holes from which protruded
+the mouths of ordnance in battery; all were surmounted by a flag,
+tri-color or red, and all were defended by desperate men. Some other
+thoroughfares were crossed by many barricades--the Rue St. Martin, for
+instance, by thirty or forty. The troops assailing these structures were
+mowed down, throughout the day, in a manner which even their opponents
+deemed most merciless. Instances of individual bravery on both sides
+were frequent. In the Rue Mauconseil, a young man exposed himself on the
+top of the barricade, time after time, firing with fatal aim, and every
+time a shower of balls from the troops assailing whistled around him.
+But he stood untouched, and, at length, the officer ordering the troops
+to fire at him no more, he retired at once behind the breastwork. A boy
+in the Rue St. Honore mounted the barricade, enveloped in a tri-color
+flag, and dared the troops to fire on their colors. He descended
+unharmed. An officer of the Line was summoned to yield his sword. He did
+so, but first broke it in twain across his knee. The same demand was
+made to a lieutenant of the Municipal Guard, with a musket at his
+breast; he was bidden also to shout "Vive la Republique!" but he only
+cried "Vive le Roi!" as the weapon was wrenched from his grasp! Yet he
+was spared. Arms were demanded from every householder, and when given,
+the gift was endorsed on the door in these words: "Here we were given
+arms." One man received a sword splendidly decorated with gems upon its
+scabbard and hilt. "I want only the blade!" he said, tearing it away
+from its ornaments and grasping the naked steel!
+
+At ten o'clock M. Odillon Barrot, General Lamoriciere and Horace Vernet,
+the great marine artist, proceeded on horseback to the barricades to
+induce the people to disperse, but all their eloquent entreaties were
+received only with insults. "No truce--no tricks--no mistake this time!"
+were the decisive shouts with which they were greeted. A second time, in
+the Rue Richelieu, General Lamoriciere, accompanied by Moline Saint Gru
+bearing a palm-branch, was equally unsuccessful. "It is too late!" was
+the terrible response from the heart of the barricades, followed by a
+shower of stones, one of which wounded General Lamoriciere on the hand.
+A third time, in the Rue Rohan, General Gourgaud, who even promised the
+abdication of the King, met with the same utter defeat, and hastily fled
+from the fury of the monster now thoroughly roused.
+
+At twelve o'clock the rumor sped with lightning rapidity through the
+streets of Paris that the troops, who had ostensibly been ordered to
+their quarters, were, in fact, concentrated around the palace. Instantly
+rose the shout, "To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" and a hundred
+thousand men from all sections of the city marched toward the Palais
+Bourbon and the Tuileries!
+
+The rumor of the concentration at the palace was true. The Place du
+Carrousel was crowded with troops of every arm, including several
+squadrons of cuirassiers, and six pieces of ordnance were in position,
+with their ammunition caissons and their provisions and baggage wagons,
+as if for a siege. The King, attended by his staff and accompanied by
+the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier, now descended into the court to
+pass the troops in review. The Line shouted "Vive le Roi!" as the King
+rode along. The National Guards, with tones and looks of menace and
+defiance, cried "Reform!" The King replied, "Yes, my friends, you shall
+have reform," and sad and dispirited turned away to his apartments; as
+he retired the bitter murmur was heard from his aged lips, "Like Charles
+X."
+
+A deputation of the people had been admitted within the limits of the
+Place du Carrousel to announce the terms they would accept, but after a
+brief parley had retired dissatisfied. The men of the barricades now
+invested the Tuileries and the Palais Royal on every side.
+
+Such was the scene without. Within, all was confusion and dismay. The
+salons were thronged by deputies, peers, generals and marshals; Bugeaud,
+Lamoriciere, Dupin, Thiers, de Lasteyrie and many others were there,
+together with all of the Royal family then in the capital, whether male
+or female.
+
+Meanwhile, the rattle of musketry, broken by the occasional roar of
+ordnance, in the direction of the Palais Royal, indicated the severe
+struggle then going on between the people and the troops; from time to
+time, the furious shout of "To the guillotine with Louis Philippe!"
+reached the ear.
+
+"Does your Majesty hear that?" asked the Duke of Nemours coldly of his
+dismayed father. Alas! the old man was no longer the hero of July 3d!
+
+"I do, my son," was the trembling reply. "Do you advise abdication?"
+
+"Is there any other course left?" asked the Duke of Montpensier.
+
+"Any other course!" cried the Queen, indignantly. "Oh! are you my
+son--are you a son of Orleans, and can you talk thus of degradation? Are
+you a soldier and do you fear? Mount!--mount!--charge on the
+rebels!--cut them to the earth!--drench the pavement with their
+blood!--perish, but yield not ignominiously thus!"
+
+"Madame," said M. Thiers, solemnly, "it is too late! There must be an
+abdication in favor of the Count of Paris, and the appointment of the
+Duchess of Orleans as Regent, or all is lost!"
+
+"Then if this must be, let it be done with dignity becoming a monarch,"
+said the noble Queen. "Let us all retire to St. Cloud. There may be
+dictated terms of honorable capitulation. There--"
+
+At that instant in rushed a man breathless, bearing a sheet of paper in
+his hand, and exclaiming:
+
+"Sire--Sire--your troops are delivering their arms to the people! In a
+moment they will stand where you now stand! Sign this paper, or your
+life and the lives of all your family will be sacrificed!"
+
+That man was Emile de Girardin, the editor of "La Presse," and the
+murderer of Armand Carrel, and that paper was an act of abdication.
+
+"Ah! this is a bitter cup," said the old King as he placed his signature
+to the sheet, "and doubly bitter presented by such a hand! Like Charles
+X.!"
+
+At one o'clock, at the Bourse and at the corners of all the principal
+streets, was posted this proclamation:
+
+
+     "CITIZENS OF PARIS: The King has abdicated in favor of the Count of
+     Paris, with the Duchess of Orleans as Regent.
+
+     A General Amnesty.
+
+     Dissolution of the Chamber.
+
+     Appeal to the Country."
+
+
+But the people were now in the midst of the assault on the Palais Royal,
+and to check them was impossible.
+
+The Palais Royal consisted of two portions--the Chateau d'Eau, or
+palace, and the other part, which though the property of the Orleans
+family was yet rented by private persons, and was occupied for cafes,
+shops, dwellings and places of entertainment--adorned by colonnades and
+arcades, and by trees, statues and fountains in the magnificent
+quadrangle. The property of the citizens was respected--that of the King
+only was assailed. For two hours did the 14th Regiment pour forth its
+fire from the numerous windows of that edifice and from the court
+below. At length, a band of bold Republicans, headed by the chivalric
+Etienne Arago, musket in hand, charged from the side of the Cafe de la
+Regence, followed by a detachment of the National Guard, and, driving
+the troops into the building, surrounded it with straw which they set on
+fire. The vast edifice was instantly filled with smoke and flame. The
+defence ceased. The soldiers rushed out and were instantly slain. The
+commander of the detachment was pierced by a bayonet. The multitude
+rushed in, and the building was sacked. The richest and most costly
+furniture and decorations were at once torn down, dashed to pieces and
+thrown from the windows by the infuriated populace.
+
+Within the Palace of the Tuileries is a subterranean passage,
+constructed for the infant King of Rome and his nurses, which, plunging
+beneath the pavements, and passing along the whole length of the
+gardens, under the terrace beside the river bank, suddenly emerges at
+the gate of the Place du Carrousel, in front of the obelisk. Into this
+passage, in wild panic, descended the King and Queen of France, with all
+their children and grandchildren, immediately upon the signing of the
+abdication, and just as the doors were about to be forced. Emerging from
+the passage, the King, leaning on the arm of his faithful wife, Marie
+Amelie, and followed by the Royal party, crossed the Place de la
+Concorde as far as the asphalt pavement. The Royal party now consisted
+of the King and Queen, the Duchess of Nemours and her children, the
+Princess Clementine and her husband, the Duke Augustus of Saxe-Coburg,
+and the Duke of Montpensier with his young and lovely Spanish bride, now
+enceinte and far advanced. Ignorant of the language, only sixteen years
+of age, a stranger to the customs and people of the country, and in her
+delicate situation, the position of this young creature was peculiarly
+trying. At one moment she clung with terror to her young husband's arm,
+which she refused for an instant to resign, and the next laughed at her
+own terror, saying that one who in her infancy had twice, in Madrid,
+been saved by being carried off in a sack ought not now to fear when she
+had feet to carry herself away and was suffered to use them! It is said
+that the fair Senora was forgotten in the hurry of the flight and almost
+left behind!
+
+As soon as the Royal party were perceived, they were surrounded by a
+troop of National Guards as an escort, and a large number of officers of
+the Line in various uniforms. The King leaned on the Queen, as if for
+support, while she boldly advanced with a firm step and stern look. Both
+were in deepest mourning for the recent death of the beloved sister of
+the King, the Princess Adelaide.
+
+Upon this melancholy procession the people gazed with mingled curiosity,
+amusement, gratification and regret.
+
+"They are going to the Chamber of Deputies to complete the abdication!"
+cries one.
+
+"Vive la Reforme!" shouts another.
+
+"Vive la France!" shouts a second.
+
+"Vive le Roi!" in suppressed tones falters a third.
+
+"See the poor young Duchess!" cried a woman, who was availing herself of
+her peculiar rotundity as a battering-ram to force her way through the
+crowd.
+
+"She had better have remained at home!" sneered a Dynastic bitterly.
+
+"The poor little children!" exclaimed a young woman more remarkable for
+prettiness than neatness, and more remarkable still for the scantiness
+of her attire, nearly all of which had been torn from her rounded
+shoulders in the throng.
+
+The spirit which pervaded the mass was, evidently, by no means
+unfriendly to the Royal family, and it was as evidently misunderstood by
+them, for, suddenly, as if by fatality, on the very spot where Louis
+XVI. was beheaded, just beyond the Pont Tournant, on the pavement of the
+Obelisk of Luxor, the whole party, with no apparent necessity, came to a
+dead and complete halt. Instantly the multitude was crowded upon them,
+and this augmented their terror. The King dropped the Queen's arm and
+hastily raising his hat cried, "Vive la Reforme!" All was in a moment
+uproar and confusion. The Queen in terror at finding her husband's arm
+was gone turned hurriedly on every side.
+
+"Fear not, Madame," said a mild voice beside her. "The people will do
+you no harm."
+
+This was M. Maurice, editor of "Le Courrier des Spectacles."
+
+"Leave me, leave me, Monsieur!" she exclaimed, in great excitement,
+evidently mistaking the words. Then regaining her husband, she again
+grasped his arm, and the mass at the same time opening its ranks, the
+two hastened on to a couple of those little black one-horse vehicles,
+chancing there to stand, which run to St. Cloud. In one of these already
+sat the Duchesses of Montpensier and Nemours with two of the children.
+In the other stood the two remaining children. Into the latter hurriedly
+stepped the Royal pair. The door was instantly closed and the vehicle
+drove off at a furious rate, surrounded by an escort of dragoons,
+cuirassiers and National Guards, two hundred in number, taking the
+water-side toward St. Cloud. The other carriage, similarly escorted,
+followed at a like rapid pace, the children standing at the windows,
+their faces pressed to the glass, gazing eagerly, with the innocent
+curiosity of infancy, on a scene from which their future fate would take
+shape.
+
+"He is gone!" shouted a stentorian voice, breaking the momentary
+stillness as the carriages, surrounded by their escort, swept from the
+view.
+
+"Let him go! Let him go!" was the stern and significant response. "We
+are not regicides!"
+
+"To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" was now the tremendous shout which
+rose from the multitude, as they rushed toward the deserted palace.
+
+But the Tuileries had already fallen. It was no longer the
+dwelling-place of kings.
+
+Even before the Royal abdication was declared, even before it was
+signed, the troops of the Line in the courtyard of the palace--infantry,
+artillery, dragoons--to the number at least of twenty-five thousand,
+were summoned to surrender their posts, while the fraternal shout, "Vive
+la Ligne!" elicited from the lips of many of the soldiers the answering
+cry of "Vive la Reforme!" In vain was it that Marshal Bugeaud, the
+veteran of a hundred battles, menaced and blasphemed. In vain did his
+old protege and subaltern, but now bitter foe, General Lamoriciere,
+dashing from one end of the line to the other on his white horse,
+entreat and persuade with his eloquent tongue. The people insisted--the
+National Guard fraternized--the Line wavered. And yet most imminent at
+that moment was their own peril.
+
+The 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 6th and 10th Legions of the National Guard
+invested the Tuileries, and others were on the march, accompanied by
+countless masses of the people. Within the courtyard were twenty-five
+thousand of the best troops in the world of every arm, and a park of
+ordnance charged to the muzzle frowned upon the dense masses which
+swarmed the Place du Carrousel. The watchful artilleryman stood at his
+cannon's breech, with the lighted linstock in his hand, which he kept
+alive by constant motion. He awaited but a word from the pale, firm lips
+of General Lamoriciere, and that vast and magnificent space now
+swarming with life would have been swept as if by destruction's besom.
+Death in all its most horrid forms would have been there. That pavement
+would have run with gore! The facades of those splendid edifices would
+have been polluted with shreds and fragments of human flesh, and
+spattered with human blood. Yet dreadful would have been the sure
+retribution! Indiscriminate massacre of all unfortunate souls within
+that Royal palace would have been inevitable and instantaneous. Yet,
+such a catastrophe might be precipitated by a single word!--the
+avalanche might be started by a single breath; and blood once shed,
+Paris would be deluged!
+
+"In the name of the people I demand to speak with the commandant of the
+Tuileries!" shouted a young man in the uniform of an officer of the
+National Guard, advancing to the iron railing of the court near the Rue
+de Rivoli.
+
+It was Lieutenant Aubert Roche. The commandant was sent for and
+immediately arrived.
+
+"Monsieur, you are lost!" cried the young man.
+
+"You are surrounded by sixty thousand men of the National Guard, and one
+hundred thousand of the people of Paris!"
+
+"What is demanded?" was the trembling response.
+
+"That you evacuate the Tuileries!--resign it to the National Guard!"
+
+"The troops shall be withdrawn, Monsieur. Orders for their retirement
+to the palace shall be issued instantly."
+
+"That will not do! The palace must be evacuated," insisted the
+Lieutenant, "or the people will raze it to the ground!"
+
+"Come with me, Monsieur," said the commandant.
+
+The gate was immediately opened, and Lieutenant Roche, accompanied by M.
+Leseur, chef de bataillon, bearing a flag of truce, followed the
+commandant to the Pavillon de l'Horloge, where stood the Duke of
+Nemours, pale with excitement, surrounded by generals.
+
+"Monseigneur," said the commandant, "suffer me to present a deputation
+from the people."
+
+"Messieurs, what do the people demand?" asked the Duke in trembling
+tones.
+
+"The evacuation, this instant, of this palace, and its delivery to the
+National Guard!"
+
+"And if we do not comply?" asked Marshal Bugeaud, calmly.
+
+"Then, Monsieur, you all are lost!" was the bold answer. "This palace is
+surrounded by one hundred and sixty thousand men. The combat once begun
+must be exterminating--must be a massacre! The 5th Legion of the
+National Guard, to which I belong, is, at this moment, sacking the
+Palais Royal. It may be here before we part!"
+
+"The troops shall retire, Monsieur," said the Duke; and on the instant
+orders for the retreat were issued.
+
+The artillery went by the railing of the palace, and the staff and the
+Duke of Nemours by the Pavillon de l'Horloge, their well-trained horses
+descending the flight of steps. The cavalry followed, succeeded by the
+infantry.
+
+The National Guards were then introduced by Lieutenant Roche, and
+entered the court of the Tuileries by the gate of the Rue de Rivoli,
+their muskets shouldered, with the stock in the air. At the same moment
+the abdication of the King was declared. General Lamoriciere had
+resigned. The Ministry was dissolved. There was a tremendous shout, and
+the conquerors of the Palais Royal rushed in to take possession of the
+Tuileries!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE LAST SESSION OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES.
+
+
+The usual hour for the opening of the Chamber of Deputies was three
+o'clock; but the startling events of the last two days, and especially
+of the last two hours, demanded that it should be convened earlier.
+
+At one o'clock the President of the Chamber, Sauzet, took the chair. On
+the left bank of the Seine all the approaches were open, save the
+bridges of the Place de la Concorde, where strong detachments of cavalry
+were posted on guard.
+
+Within the Chamber all was solemnity. About three hundred members were
+present. The opposition seemed joyous and confident, though anxious. The
+conservative party was troubled. The Ministerial benches were deserted.
+
+At half-past one the President turned round in his chair, and kept his
+eye fixed upon a side door, as if expecting some one to enter. Suddenly
+a bustle was heard in that direction, and the Duchess of Orleans, in
+deep mourning, attended by her two sons and followed by the Dukes of
+Montpensier and Nemours, entered. The latter was received with marked
+expressions of dislike. The Count of Paris, garbed in complete black,
+was conducted through the crowd to the space in front of the President's
+chair; the Duchess followed and seated herself in a fauteuil upon the
+same spot. On each side of her was one of her sons, and behind her stood
+her brothers, the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier. This position was
+subsequently changed for one more distant, but otherwise remained
+throughout relatively the same.
+
+Being seated, the Duchess rose and bowed repeatedly to the assembly. At
+the same moment an immense multitude of National Guards and the people
+rushed in through the passages, and despite the shouts of the officers,
+"You cannot enter!" the space beneath the tribune was instantly and
+densely thronged. At the same time the public tribunes were invaded by a
+second body of the people.
+
+For some minutes the greatest uproar prevailed. At length it
+comparatively ceased, and, in a moment of quiet, M. Dupin, who had
+accompanied the Duchess of Orleans to the Chamber, ascended the tribune.
+The stillness was instantly as great as had been the previous agitation.
+
+"The King has abdicated," said M. Dupin. "The Count of Paris is
+nominated as his successor and the Duchess of Orleans as Regent."
+
+"It is too late!" shouted a man from the gallery of the people.
+
+"The Count of Paris is proclaimed King by the Chamber and the Duchess of
+Orleans Regent!' exclaimed the President.
+
+"No--no--no!" was the almost unanimous shout that now rose in the
+Chamber.
+
+"I demand," cried M. Lamartine, "that the Royal family withdraw!"
+
+The question was put, and the Duchess and her sons, after great
+hesitation, were drawn away to a side door, at the further end of the
+hall. At the same moment a new crowd of the people rushed in and took
+seats beside the opposition members, by whom they were welcomed.
+
+"I demand to speak!" cried M. Marie. "By the law of 1842, the Duke of
+Nemours is Regent. How can the King abrogate that law? I demand a
+provisional government!"
+
+"A provisional government!" cried M. Cremieux. "We made a mistake in
+'30. Let there be no mistake in '48!"
+
+"A provisional government," said the Abbe Genoude, a Legitimist; "but
+it must be the will of the people!"
+
+M. Odillon Barrot, who had been long expected, now entered and
+immediately mounted the tribune.
+
+"The crown of July rests on the head of a woman and a child!" cried the
+great lawyer.
+
+The Duchess of Orleans instantly rose, as if about to speak, but, at the
+urgent solicitation of those around her, resumed her seat.
+
+"I call on the country to rally around this woman and this child," cried
+M. Barrot, "the two-fold representative of the principles of July, '30!"
+
+The voice of the speaker was drowned in shouts of dissent and of "Vive
+la Reforme!"
+
+"I dissent from the opinion of M. Odillon Barrot!" cried the Marquis de
+la Rochejacquelin. "If he is right, the people are nothing!"
+
+"Order--order!" cried the President, putting on his hat, but he was at
+once induced to remove it.
+
+At this moment another vast crowd burst into the Chamber, garbed in a
+style so heterogeneous as to be grotesque--some with blouses--some with
+dragoon helmets on their heads, some with weapons and many with flags.
+
+"Down--down--down with the Throne!" was the terrible cry of this
+infuriated mass.
+
+"I demand that the sitting be suspended!" cried M. de Mornay.
+
+"There can be no session at such a moment," said the President, putting
+on his hat.
+
+"Off--off--off with your hat, President!" cried the populace; and
+several of their muskets were at once pointed at the President. The hat
+was removed.
+
+The scene was chaos!
+
+"Beware!" shouted M. Chevalier, editor of the Historical Library.
+"Beware how you make the Count of Paris King! A provisional government
+we must first have!"
+
+"What right have you to speak?" shouted a man. "You are not a deputy!"
+
+"In the name of the people, silence!" roared a terrific voice that
+drowned every other.
+
+It was the voice of Ledru Rollin.
+
+Many of the deputies now withdrew, and their places were filled by the
+people. The Duchess of Orleans sat calmly amid the uproar, and the Duke
+of Nemours with equal calmness stood behind her chair.
+
+"The throne has been tumbled from the windows of the Tuileries and is
+now burning in the Place de la Bastille!" cried M. Dumoulin, who
+commanded the Hotel de Ville in July of '30, displaying the tri-color
+flag.
+
+"No more Bourbons! Down with the Bourbons! Down with the traitors! A
+provisional government!" shouted the people.
+
+"Aye, a Republic!" cried M. Chevalier.
+
+Cremieux, Ledru Rollin and Lamartine were at the same time in the
+tribune.
+
+"In the name of the people, silence!" again roared the awful voice of
+Ledru Rollin.
+
+"A provisional government!" shouted one of the people.
+
+"You shall have a provisional government!" exclaimed M. Maguin.
+
+"In the name of the people--in the name of the people of Paris in arms,"
+again began Ledru Rollin, "I protest against this King and this Regency.
+The constitution of '9 demands the will of the people to fix a Regency.
+Yet the law of '42 makes the Duke of Nemours Regent, and now it is the
+Duchess of Orleans. I protest against it all! I demand a provisional
+government!"
+
+"Question--question!" shouted M. Berryer. "A provisional government!"
+
+"In 1815," continued Ledru Rollin, "Napoleon abdicated in favor of the
+King of Rome. The King of Rome was refused. In 1830, Charles X.
+abdicated in favor of his grandson. The grandson was rejected. In 1848,
+Louis Philippe abdicates in favor of his grandson--the Count of Paris!"
+
+"Question--question!" again vociferated M. Berryer. "We all know those
+histories!"
+
+"In the name of the people," continued Ledru Rollin, "I demand a
+provisional government, named by the people--not by the Chamber--but by
+the people!"
+
+Tremendous shouts followed, and M. Lamartine, who had stood beside
+Rollin in the tribune, now took his place amid renewed shouts.
+
+After an eloquent speech on the same side as his friend, he concluded by
+demanding a provisional government, with an appeal to "the people--the
+entire people--all who by the title of man have rights as men."
+
+While Lamartine was yet speaking, a violent knocking was heard at the
+door of the Chamber, which was forcibly burst open and a vast crowd
+rushed in.
+
+"Down with the Chamber! Down with the Deputies!" shouted the populace,
+and muskets were instantly leveled at Lamartine, and, also, at the Royal
+party.
+
+"It is Lamartine! it is Lamartine!" was the cry of terror that rose from
+his friends.
+
+The muskets were lowered.
+
+The Duchess and her party were at once withdrawn from the Chamber by a
+side door, and having first retired to the Hotel des Invalides, next
+fled to the Rhine; the Duke of Nemours fled to Boulogne and thence to
+England.
+
+"Silence--silence--silence!" shouted the President, violently ringing
+his bell. But the uproar only increased. "I pronounce this session
+closed!" cried the President, and putting on his hat he instantly left
+the chair.
+
+Here ends the Chamber of Deputies.
+
+A large number of the members withdrew with the President, but the
+opposition remained, and with them the people and the National Guards.
+
+After the noise incident to this departure had subsided, the venerable
+M. Dupont de l'Eure, a gray-headed old man of eighty, was, by unanimous
+acclamation, placed in the President's chair. Lamartine still remained
+in the tribune, and repeatedly strove to make his voice heard, but in
+vain.
+
+"In the name of the people, silence, and let Lamartine speak!" at length
+was heard in the thunder tones of Ledru Rollin, rising above all other
+sounds.
+
+Silence for a moment being obtained, Lamartine exclaimed:
+
+"Citizens!--a provisional government is declared! The names of the
+members will now be announced by the President!"
+
+Lamartine then descended from the tribune; applause and uproar
+succeeded.
+
+"The names of the members nominated for a provisional government I will
+now read to you," said the aged President, rising and displaying a
+paper.
+
+The following names were then read, and were repeated as they came one
+after the other from the speaker's mouth by the reporters in loud tones:
+Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Arago, Dupont de l'Eure, Marie, Georges
+Lafayette; all were received with general approbation.
+
+"The members of the Provisional Government must be conducted by the
+people to the Hotel de Ville and installed!" cried a voice from the
+crowd.
+
+"Let us adjourn to the Hotel de Ville, Lamartine at the head!" said M.
+Bocage.
+
+Immediately Lamartine, accompanied by a large number of citizens,
+withdrew. But a great multitude still remained upon the benches and in
+the semi-circle of the Chamber.
+
+"Citizens!" cried Ledru Rollin, "in nominating a provisional government
+you perform a solemn act--an act which cannot be performed in a furious
+manner. Let me once more repeat to you the names you have chosen, and as
+they are repeated, you will say 'yes' or 'no,' precisely as they please
+you; I call on the reporters of the public press to note the names and
+the manner in which they are now received, that France may know what is
+here done."
+
+The names of Dupont de l'Eure, Arago, Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Cremieux,
+Garnier Pages and Marie were then read out, and all, except the last
+two--which were received with a few negatives--were confirmed by
+unanimous acclamation. The names were then engrossed in capitals on a
+sheet of paper and borne around the Chamber on the bayonet of a National
+Guard that all might read for themselves.
+
+"I have one more word to say," cried Ledru Rollin. "The Provisional
+Government has immense duties to perform. We must now close this
+meeting, that the Government may be able to restore order--stanch the
+flow of blood, and secure to the people their rights."
+
+"To the Hotel de Ville!--to the Hotel de Ville!" responded the people in
+a tremendous shout. "Vive la Republique!--to the Hotel de Ville!"
+
+Headed by Ledru Rollin the excited multitude withdrew, and at four
+o'clock all was as silent in the Chamber of Deputies as if not a voice
+had resounded or a footstep had echoed within its walls for centuries.
+In the distance, however, could be heard the repeated shout:
+
+"Vive la Republique!--to the Hotel de Ville!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE SACK OF THE TUILERIES.
+
+
+Scarcely had the carriages conveying the Royal family disappeared on
+their flight toward St. Cloud, when the whole mass of the populace
+poured as with one simultaneous purpose into the deserted palace. The
+Palais Bourbon had already been sacked; a like fate might be supposed to
+await the Tuileries; but the Tuileries belonged to France, not to the
+House of Orleans, and a certain respect was observed for everything but
+the insignia of Royalty. For these was shown no regard. The throne
+itself of the state reception-room--that throne on which sat Louis
+Philippe for the first time, as King of the French, ere the Tuileries
+became his throne--was torn from its base, and, having been hurled first
+in derision from the windows into the court, was borne in mock triumph
+on the shoulders of men, who shouted that now the throne was indeed
+supported by the people, to the Place de la Bastille, and there
+consumed to ashes. In the courtyard, in the Rue de Rivoli and on the
+quays, huge fires roared, fanned into fury by a hurricane of wind, and
+fed by richly carved furniture, gilded chairs, canopies, pianos, sofas,
+beds, costly paintings, splendid works of art and the Royal carriages
+glittering with gold. The magnificent tapestries of the Gobelins were
+borne as streamers, in frantic fury, along the boulevards; mischievous
+gamins were frolicking about in the long scarlet robes worn upon Court
+occasions, which they had filched from the Royal wardrobe; the
+escritoire of the King, the key having been found in a tea-cup, was
+ransacked, and private letters, books and the garments of ladies were
+strewn about the court and gardens of the Tuileries. The cellars of the
+palace were soon filled with the insurgents; but they declared the wine
+bad, as it never remained long enough in the cellars of kings to get
+good! Destruction, not pillage, seemed the order of the hour, and to
+guard against robbery the people took upon themselves the arrest and
+punishment of offenders. The walls bore the menace, "Robbers shall die!"
+In several instances the threat was carried into immediate execution,
+and bodies, suffered to lie on the spot upon which they had been cut
+down, bore on their breasts the label "Thief!" in terrible warning.
+Sentinels also stood at the gates, and no one was allowed to leave the
+palace without rigorous search.
+
+In the apartments of the Duchess of Orleans, the table was found spread
+for the dinner of herself and her children; upon the table were the
+little silver cups, forks and spoons of the young Princes, and on the
+floor were scattered their costly toys. The latter were gathered
+carefully up by a workman in a blouse, and as carefully concealed in a
+corner. The former, together with all jewels and other valuables found
+in the apartments of the Duchess, were deposited in a bathing-tub, on
+which a workman seated himself as guard and suffered no one to approach
+until the aforesaid valuables could be conveyed by a detachment of the
+Polytechnic School to the Government treasury. The story runs that, on
+the night succeeding the sack of the Tuileries, the conquerors chose a
+king and queen, and that, in the palace hall, was spread a banquet
+composed of the viands found in the Royal kitchen and the wines found in
+the Royal cellars. The queen, who was a soubrette more noticeable for
+beauty than for cleanliness of person, garbed in Royal robes which she
+well became, and with a coronet upon her stately brow, was seated in a
+chair of state and received the most extravagant homage from her willing
+subjects, while groups of gamins, in the long crimson liveries of the
+Royal household, boisterously frolicked before the sans culotte court
+amid roars of merriment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+A MEMORABLE NIGHT.
+
+
+Generally, the rogues throughout Paris, intimidated by the awful,
+immediate and certain penalty for crime, forsook, for the time, their
+calling. A man who attempted to fire the Palais Royal was shot at the
+Prefecture. Another, for a like attempt on buildings in the Rue Monceau,
+met a like fate. In the Rue Richelieu lay the bodies of two thieves,
+each with a ball through the breast, and over the aperture the word
+"Thief" on a label. In like manner were eight more robbers executed at
+once on the Place de la Madeleine. A woman of the street wrested a
+bracelet from a lady's wrist; she was instantly seized by the bystanders
+and shot. But for this summary punishment of malefactors by the people,
+dreadful that night would have been the state of Paris, without laws to
+enforce or a police to enforce them. It is true the Chateau of Neuilly
+was sacked and burned, as well as the splendid villa of the Baron
+Rothschild at Parennes; but both were supposed to be the property of the
+King. It is true, also, that some rails on the Northern Railway were
+torn up, and a viaduct between Paris and Amiens, and another between
+Amiens and the frontier of Belgium were demolished; and that the
+railway stations at St. Denis, Enghien and Pontoise and the bridge at
+Asnieres had been destroyed; but all this was done to prevent the
+concentration upon the citizens of Paris of additional Royal troops.
+
+A workman entered a house and demanded bread. Meat and wine were offered
+him. "No," was the reply, "bread and water are all I want."
+
+Yet such was the scarcity of food that horses were killed and eaten at
+the Hotel de Ville, on the third day of the Revolution.
+
+"Arms--arms!" shouted a band of workmen, entering a house on the Rue
+Richelieu. The proprietor, alarmed, shouted for help. "Do you think us
+robbers?" was the indignant reply. "Give us your weapons!"
+
+The weapons were given and the band retired; on the door they wrote,
+"Here we received arms!"
+
+At five o'clock, on the evening of the 24th of February, a proclamation
+to the citizens of Paris, issued by the Provisional Government then in
+session at the Hotel de Ville, declared the Revolution
+accomplished--that eighty thousand of the National Guard and one hundred
+thousand of the people were in arms--that order as well as liberty must
+now be secured, and the people, with the National Guard, were appointed
+guardians of Paris.
+
+The effect of this proclamation was magical. Never was Paris so well
+protected as on that night of the 24th of February, when, filled with
+barricades, she had no police and was guarded by her citizens.
+
+And how was constituted the Provisional Government whose power was thus
+implicitly obeyed? It was founded by the people who obeyed it. This was
+the only secret.
+
+From the Chamber of Deputies to the Hotel de Ville proceeded the members
+of the Provisional Government. They marched under a canopy of sabres,
+pikes and bayonets into halls stained with blood and encumbered with the
+slain, and there, at a small table, while the conflict between the two
+Republics had already commenced, within an hour had they organized their
+body by the nomination of Armand Marrast, of "Le National," Ferdinand
+Flocon, of "La Reforme," Albert, a workman, and Louis Blanc, the editor
+and author, as Secretaries of the Government; their first official act
+was to issue a proclamation to the people.
+
+The scenes witnessed the night which succeeded in Paris will never be
+forgotten by those who witnessed them. Patrols promenaded the streets,
+the men of the barricades slept upon their weapons, beside their works,
+and through all that night ceaselessly toiled the press to spread over
+all the world the news of the great events of the three past days in
+Paris.
+
+Upon the door of an edifice situated in the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau--a
+street which was filled with barricades of immense size and
+strength--was posted a printed placard, "The Provisional Government,"
+lighted by a single lamp. Entering the door with a vast multitude, and
+ascending the dark and winding staircase, you found yourself in a large
+room, dimly lighted and crowded with armed men.
+
+It was the editorial apartment of the office of "La Reforme."
+
+At a large and massive table sat a dozen persons most industriously
+employed in writing. Around them, looking on, rose the rough, stern
+faces of the men of the barricades, seeming still more rough and stern
+by reason of the shadowy light; in the hands of all were weapons.
+
+"A copy of the names of the members of the Provisional Government!" was
+the incessant demand of these armed men, a demand which the dozen
+writers at the table were unable even by most indefatigable industry to
+supply as fast as made. And as fast as the demand was satisfied, the
+armed men would hurry away, only to leave room for the crowds constantly
+entering.
+
+"A copy for the Hotel de Ville!" cried one.
+
+"A copy for the Place Vendome!" shouted another.
+
+"A copy for the Palais Bourbon!" screamed a third.
+
+"Are there no printed copies left?" asked many.
+
+"They were gone long ago--twenty thousand copies," was the reply. "You
+will see one at every corner. The demand was not expected. The printers
+have just gone to sleep. They had not rested for fifty-two hours."
+
+"Will 'La Reforme' appear in the morning?" asked another.
+
+"Perhaps so," was the answer. "But all the people are worn out--writers
+and compositors. Here is your copy of the names."
+
+"Many thanks. Vive la Republique!"
+
+With this shout, in concert with the same which constantly issued from a
+hundred lips, the citizen folded up his precious document, and carefully
+depositing it in his cap hurried off to communicate its contents to his
+comrades of the neighboring barricade.
+
+In another apartment of that same edifice were a large number of the
+Republican party connected with "La Reforme."
+
+"The Provisional Government is now in session," said one. "They will,
+doubtless, make immediate provision for departments of State so
+important as the post-office and the prefecture of police. Early
+to-morrow a proclamation----"
+
+"To-morrow may be too late," interrupted a large and muscular man. "The
+post-office is more active than ever to-night. Every moment couriers are
+arriving and departing. That powerful instrument remains in the hands of
+the foes of our cause! Who may estimate the injury, the irreparable
+injury which they may this night accomplish by its means!"
+
+This man was Etienne Arago, brother of the great astronomer, and, for
+sixteen years, celebrated as one of the boldest members of the
+Republican party, as well as one of the bravest men in Paris.
+
+"And the prefecture of police," observed another--"the present utter
+derangement of all its functions may lead to most serious results.
+Already those foes of freedom, Guizot and his colleagues, have been
+suffered to secure their escape from the just indignation of an outraged
+people. Delessert, the Prefect, has also fled!"
+
+The man who said this was Marc Caussidiere, a well-known Republican.
+
+"Citizens!" cried M. Gouache, "this state of things must continue no
+longer. In the name of the people, I demand that Etienne Arago
+immediately assume the charge of the post-office, as its director, and
+that Marc Caussidiere fill the position of Prefect."
+
+This demand was confirmed by acclamation, and committees for the
+installation of the nominees into office at once accompanied them to
+their respective departments.
+
+The immense edifice of the post-office was surrounded by people, and its
+numerous windows were flashing with lights. Within the utmost activity
+seemed to prevail, and without couriers were leaving and arriving every
+moment, and mail coaches were dashing up to discharge their burdens, or,
+having received them, were dashing off.
+
+"In the name of the people, entrance for Citizen Etienne Arago,
+Republican director of the post-office!" shouted one of the committee.
+
+Instantly a passage through the immense crowd in the courtyard was
+cleared by the National Guard, and the director entered with his escort.
+
+"In the name of the people, Citizen Dejean, you are dismissed," said
+Etienne Arago, entering the private cabinet of the Director General.
+
+"And who is to be my successor?" asked the astonished Count, rising to
+his feet.
+
+"In the name of the people, I am sent to displace and to succeed you,"
+was the answer.
+
+"But your commission, Monsieur?"
+
+"Is here," pointing to the committee.
+
+"Before I resign the direction of this department," said the Count after
+some hesitation, "I must ask of you for some record of this act, bearing
+your signature, to be deposited in the archives of the office."
+
+"Certainly, Monsieur, your request is but reasonable," answered Arago,
+seating himself in the official chair. And writing a few lines to which
+he affixed his signature, he coolly handed the document to his
+astonished predecessor. It contained notice of his own appointment by
+the people, in place of the Count Dejean, dismissed.
+
+The Count read and folded the paper, and having made a copy of it, which
+he laid carefully in his porte-monnaie, he placed the original on file
+among the papers of the day belonging to the department. Then,
+courteously bowing, he took his hat and cane and marched out of the
+building.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.
+
+
+In the Hotel de Ville, closely closeted, sat the Provisional Government
+of France. Over that stern old citadel, over the dismantled Palace of
+the Tuileries, from the tall summit of the Column of Vendome, over the
+Hotel des Invalides and in the Place de la Bastille is seen a blood-red
+banner, streaming out like a meteor on the keen north-western blast.
+Eighty thousand armed men invest the Hotel de Ville, and wave on wave,
+wave on wave, the living and stormy tide eddies and welters and dashes
+around that dark old pile. All its avenues are held; its courts are
+thronged; ordnance frowns from its black portals and against its gates;
+drums roll--banners stream--bayonets glitter; and from those tens of
+thousands of hoarse and stormy voices goes up but one shout of menace
+and command:
+
+"Vive la Republique! Vive la Republique! No kings! No Bourbons!
+Down--down forever with the kings!"
+
+And upward to that dark old pile of despotism, as to the temple of
+Liberty herself, are turned those tens of thousands of swarthy faces,
+dark with the smoke of battle, yet livid with excitement and
+exhaustion--and as they realize that within those walls the question of
+their fate and that of their country is then being settled--that from
+that night's counsels in that vast and ancient edifice are to flow peace
+and prosperity, and freedom and plenty, or else all the untold terrors
+of anarchy, civil war, bloodshed, violence and strife--what wonder that
+the sitting of the council seemed endless and their own impatience
+became intolerable--that all imaginable doubts and fears and absurd
+apprehensions took possession of their inflamed imaginations?--that at
+one time the rumor should fly, and win credence as it flew, that the
+Provisional Government were consulting with the friends of Henry V.--or
+again, that they were considering the question of a Regency--and that
+under such influences they should roar and yell, and thunder for
+admission at the gates, and burden the air with their shouts?
+
+"No Bourbons! No kings! No Regency! Death--death to all kings! La
+Republique! La Republique! La Republique!"
+
+At times, in terrific concert, would the thousands of uplifted throats
+roar forth the chorus of that startling canticle of '92:
+
+
+     "Vive la republique! Vive la republique!
+     Debout, peuple Francais! debout, peuple heroique!
+     Debout, peuple Francais! Vive la republique!"
+
+
+Then the song would change and the mournful notes of the "Death Hymn of
+the Girondins,"--"Mourir Pour la Patrie"--would swell in wild yet solemn
+cadence on the wintry blast:
+
+                DEATH HYMN OF THE GIRONDINS.
+
+          By the voice of the signal cannon,
+           France calls her sons their aid to lend;
+          "Let us go," the soldier cries, "to battle!
+           'Tis our mother we defend!"
+     To die on Freedom's Altar--to die on Freedom's Altar!
+     'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter!
+
+          We who fall afar from the battle,
+           Lone and unknown obscurely die,
+          But give at least our parting blessings
+           Unto France and Freedom high.
+     To die on Freedom's Altar--to die on Freedom's Altar!
+     'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter!
+
+
+And thus all that terrible night, even until the morning's dawn,
+thronged those men of the barricades around the Hotel de Ville, and all
+the night, even until the morning's dawn, calmly continued those men of
+the Provisional Government of the French Republic, amid menace and
+mandate, uproar and confusion, in their noble, yet arduous work. At
+midnight a proclamation of the Provisional Government was read by
+torchlight to the excited masses by Louis Blanc, from the steps of the
+Hotel de Ville, declaring for a government of the people by itself, with
+liberty, equality and fraternity for its principles, while order was
+devised and maintained by the people--which served somewhat to allay
+their apprehensions and distrust. This proclamation appeared in all the
+morning journals, and was placarded all over the city the next day.
+
+That day was Friday, the 25th of February. But still the Provisional
+Government remained in session, and still the armed masses of the
+barricades, in congregated thousands, rolled in tumultuous billows
+around the Hotel de Ville. At length the populace, exasperated by
+impatience, hunger and sleeplessness, with brandished bayonets rushed
+into the very chamber of council, with furious cries, and with threats
+which were well nigh accomplished. Again and again, at the entreaty of
+his colleagues, did the brave, the eloquent, the wise Lamartine present
+himself upon the steps of the Hotel de Ville to assuage and quiet the
+rising tempest. Again and again, throughout that fearful day, did he
+come forth, single-handed, to wrestle with violence, turbulence, anarchy
+and strife; and again and again, beneath the magic of his eloquent
+tongue, the storm lulled, the tempest ceased. Again and again,
+throughout all that fearful day, were the acts of that noble Government
+matured and sent forth. Proclamation followed proclamation, and no
+branch of society seemed forgotten.
+
+The names of the members of the Provisional Government were again
+published. Caussidiere and Sobrier were confirmed in the police
+department, and Etienne Arago in that of the post-office. Merchants of
+provisions were recommended to supply all who were in need; and the
+people were recommended to still retain their arms. The Chamber of
+Deputies was dissolved, the Peers were forbidden to meet, and the
+convocation of a National Assembly was promised. To all laborers labor
+was guaranteed and compensation for labor. At noon the garrison of the
+fort of Vincennes was announced to have acknowledged the Republic, just
+as the people were about to march upon it. To insure order and
+tranquillity, the Municipal Guard was disbanded, and the National Guard
+entrusted with the protection of Paris under M. Courtais, the
+commandant, who was ordered immediately to recruit twenty-four
+battalions for active service. All articles pledged at the
+Mont-de-Piete, from February 4th, not exceeding in value ten francs,
+were ordered to be returned, and the Tuileries was decreed the future
+asylum of invalid workmen. An attack on the machinery of some of the
+printing offices was checked by a proclamation.
+
+General Bedeau was appointed Minister of War, General Cavaignac Governor
+of Algeria, and Admiral Baudin to the command of the Toulon fleet. On
+the part of the army Marshal Bugeaud and on the part of the clergy the
+venerable Archbishop of Paris gave in their adhesion to the Republic,
+while the entire press, Bourgeoisie and the Provinces hesitated not an
+instant. Indeed, from all quarters came in adhesions to the Republic.
+The Bonapartes were among the first. Barrot and Thiers also came, but
+too late to save themselves from contempt. Mr. Rush, the American
+Minister, the first of foreign ambassadors acknowledged the Republic.
+The son of Mehemet Ali was next. The Papal Nuncio succeeded, together
+with the Ministers of the Argentine Republic and Uruguay. Next came the
+ambassador of England; but those of Austria, Prussia, Russia and Holland
+awaited instructions from home--little dreaming of the news they were
+about to receive! The city of Rouen sent three hundred of its citizens
+as a deputation, with abundant supplies of arms, by the morning cars of
+the railway.
+
+At about noon, the Pont Louis Philippe was destroyed by fire. Henceforth
+it is to be "Le Pont de la Reforme." And so with all other names. Royal
+is to give place to Republique, and "Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite" is
+to be again inscribed on all public monuments.
+
+The children of citizens killed in the Revolution were declared adopted
+by the country. The civil, judicial and administrative functionaries of
+the Royal Government were announced released from their oaths of office,
+the colonels of the twelve legions of National Guards were dismissed,
+and all political prisoners set free. Every citizen was declared an
+elector, and absolute freedom of thought, the liberty of the press, and
+the right of political and industrial associations secured to all were
+proclaimed.
+
+A warrant for the arrest of the late Ministers was issued by the new
+Procureur-General, M. Portalis, based on an act of accusation presented
+to the Court of Appeals. But all of them had fled. Guizot is said to
+have escaped from the Foreign Office in a servant's livery. When the
+people broke into his hotel, they found only his daughter, and retired.
+The other members of the Ministry are said to have leaped from a low
+window of the Tuileries, and to have escaped at the moment of the King's
+abdication. M. de Cormenin was appointed Conseilleur d'Etat and M.
+Achille Marrast Procureur-General to the Court of Appeals in Paris, in
+place of the refugees.
+
+Such were some of the acts of the seven men constituting the Provisional
+Government of the French Republic, during their first extraordinary
+session of sixty-four hours--from the hour of four o'clock in the
+afternoon of Thursday after the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies
+to the hour of four o'clock in the morning of Sunday, the 27th of
+February, when the people of Paris consented to retire to their homes.
+But during all of this period, night and day without intermission, every
+moment was the Hotel de Ville surrounded by tumultuous masses infuriated
+by suspicion, apprehension and distrust. For two whole days and two
+whole nights armed men incessantly inundated the square, the courts and
+halls of the Hotel de Ville. They insisted on giving to the Republic the
+character, the attitude and the emblems of the first Revolution--they
+insisted on a Republic violent, sweeping, dictatorial and terrorist, in
+language, in gesture and in color, in place of that determined on,
+moderate, pacific, legal, unanimous and constitutional. At the peril of
+their lives the Provisional Government resisted this demand. Twenty
+times during those sixty-four hours was Lamartine taken up, dragged,
+carried to the doors and windows or to the head of the grand staircase,
+into the courts and the square, to hurl down with his eloquence those
+emblems of terrorism, with which it was attempted to dishonor the
+Republic. But the vast and infuriated mass refused to listen, and
+drowned his voice in clamor and vociferation. At length, when well-nigh
+exhausted in defence of the emblem of a moderate Republic, he exclaimed:
+"The red flag has been nowhere except around the Champ-de-Mars, trailed
+in the blood of the people, while the tri-color has been around the
+world with our navy, our glory and our liberties!"
+
+The furious and hitherto obdurate and bloodthirsty populace became
+softened--tears were shed, arms were lowered--flags were thrown away,
+and peaceably they departed to their homes. Never--never was there a
+more glorious triumph of eloquence--of patriotism!
+
+It was on the morning of Sunday, the 27th day of February, that the
+Provisional Government deemed it prudent and proper for them to bring to
+a close their initiative labors, and once more, for the last time,
+Lamartine descended the steps of the great staircase of the Hotel de
+Ville, and, presenting himself in front of the edifice surrounded by his
+colleagues, announced to the vast assembly the result of their
+protracted toil:
+
+Royalty abolished--
+
+A Republic proclaimed--
+
+The people restored to their political rights--
+
+National workshops opened--
+
+The army and National Guard reorganized--
+
+The abolition of death for political offences.
+
+With louder and more prolonged acclamations than any other decree was
+this last received. And, instantly, in accordance with this
+proclamation, the director of criminal affairs, on the order of M.
+Cremieux, Minister of Justice, dispatched on the wings of the wind, all
+over France, the warrant to suspend all capital executions which were to
+have taken place, in virtue of Royal decrees, until the will of the
+National Assembly, at once to be convened, should be promulgated on the
+subject of the penalty of death. The effects of this decree, as it sped
+on the lightning's wings, like a saving angel, all over France, may be
+imagined perhaps, but portrayal is impossible! Who can imagine even the
+joy, the rapture it brought to many a dungeon-prisoner, who was counting
+the hours that yet remained to him of life and preceded his awful doom,
+or to those who sorrowed over his untimely--perchance his unjust fate!
+
+Leaning on the arm of Louis Blanc, the youngest member of the
+Government, the venerable Dupont de l'Eure, the eldest, accompanied by
+the other members, now appeared on the balcony of the room formerly
+called the Chamber of the Throne, but now the Chamber of the Republic!
+Lamartine then advanced a step before his colleagues, and in a brief and
+eloquent address proclaimed to that immense throng the existence of the
+Republic.
+
+The announcement was received with, acclamations of joy, and shouts of
+"Vive le Gouvernement!"--"Vive Lamartine!"--"Vive Louis Blanc!" mingled
+with those of "Vive la Republique!" loudly rose.
+
+From the Hotel de Ville, the Provisional Government proceeded in a body,
+despite the rain which fell in torrents, accompanied by the people, to
+the Place de la Bastille, there officially to inaugurate the Republic,
+agreeably to announcement.
+
+At the appointed hour, the Place de la Bastille was thronged. The
+National Guard, consisting of two battalions from each of the twelve
+legions of Paris, together with the Thirteenth Legion of cavalry and two
+battalions of the Banlieu, were drawn up from the Church of the
+Madeleine to the Column of July. And, there, at the base of that column
+erected in commemoration of the Revolution which had made Louis Philippe
+King of the French, his downfall was commemorated, and on the ruins of
+the throne then established was now inaugurated a Republic!
+
+During the ceremony of the inauguration, the "Marseillaise" was sung by
+the National Guard and the people, and, at its conclusion, about the
+hour of three, the troops filed off before the Column of July to the
+thrilling strains of the "Marseillaise" and the "Mourir Pour la Patrie"
+of the Girondins. The members of the Provisional Government, preceded by
+a detachment of the National Guard and accompanied by the pupils of the
+Polytechnic School and the Military School of St. Cyr, then descended
+the boulevards, followed by the whole of the military and civic array,
+who chanted the national songs. The effect was stupendous. Hour after
+hour the immense procession moved on like a huge serpent through the
+streets of Paris; and, at length, when its head was at the Hotel de
+Ville, its extremity had hardly left the Column of July.
+
+It was night, on Sunday, the 27th of February, when the members of the
+Provisional Government, for the first time during four days, returned to
+their homes. But their work was accomplished. A Republic was gained,
+proclaimed and inaugurated!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+DANTES AND MERCEDES.
+
+
+It was a tempestuous night. The wind howled dismally through the streets
+of Paris, and the rain and sleet dashed fiercely against the casements.
+At intervals a wild shout might be caught as the blast paused in its
+furious career, and then a distant shot might be heard. But they passed
+away, and nothing save the wail of the storm-wind or the rushing sleet
+of the winter tempest was distinguished.
+
+But, while all was thus wild, dark and tempestuous without, light,
+warmth, comfort and elegance, rendered yet more delightful by the
+elemental war, reigned triumphant within a large and splendidly
+furnished apartment in the noble mansion of M. Dantes, the Deputy from
+Marseilles, in the Rue du Helder. Every embellishment which art could
+invent, luxury court, wealth invoke, or even imagination conceive,
+seemed there lavished with a most prodigal hand. The soft atmosphere of
+summer, perfumed by the exotics of a neighboring conservatory, delighted
+the senses, the mild effulgence of gaslight transmitted through opaque
+globes of glass melted upon the sight, while sofas, divans and ottomans
+in luxurious profusion invited repose. To describe the rare paintings,
+the rich gems of statuary and the other miracles of art which were there
+to be seen would be as impossible as it would be to portray the
+exquisite taste which enhanced the value of each and constituted more
+than half its charm.
+
+Upon one of the elegant sofas reclined Edmond Dantes, his tall and
+graceful figure draped in a dressing robe, while beside him on a low
+ottoman sat his beautiful wife, her arm resting on his knee, and her
+dark, glorious eyes gazing with confiding fondness into his face.
+
+Mercedes was no longer the young, light-hearted and thoughtless being
+who graced the village of the Catalans. Many years had flown since then
+and many sorrows passed over her. Each of these years and each of these
+sorrows, like retiring waves of the sea, upon the smooth and sandy
+beach, had left behind its trace. No, Mercedes was not now the young,
+light-hearted and thoughtless girl she once was; but she was a being far
+more perfect, far more winning, far more to be loved--she was a matured,
+impassioned, accomplished, and still, despite the flight of years, most
+lovely woman. She was one who could feel passion as well as inspire it,
+and having once felt or inspired it, that passion, it was plain, could
+never pass lightly away. Her face could not now boast, perhaps, that
+full and perfect oval which it formerly had, but the lines of care and
+of reflection, which here and there almost imperceptibly appeared,
+rendered it all the more charming. In the bold yet beautiful contour of
+those features, in the full red lips, in the high pale forehead and,
+above all, in those dark and haunting eyes lay a depth of feeling and
+profundity and nobleness of thought, which to a reflective mind have a
+charm infinitely more irresistible than that which belongs to mere
+youthful perfection. There was a bland beauty in the smile which slept
+upon her lips, a delicacy of sentiment in the faint flush that tinged
+her soft cheek, and a deep meaning in her dark and eloquent eye which
+told a whole history of experience even to a stranger; while the full
+and rounded outline of the figure, garbed in a loose robe of crimson,
+which contrasted beautifully with her luxuriant dark tresses, had that
+voluptuous development and grace which only maturity and maternity can
+impart to the female form. In short, never had Mercedes, in the days of
+her primal bloom, presented a person so fascinating as now. She was a
+woman to sigh for, perchance to die for, and one whom a man would
+willingly wish to live for, if he might but hope she would live for him,
+or, peradventure, he might even be willing not only to risk, but
+ultimately to resign his life, would that fair being not only live for
+him, but love him with that entire and passionate devotedness which
+beamed from her dark eyes up into his who now gazed upon her as she sat
+at his feet. As for him, as for Edmond Dantes, his figure had now the
+same elegance, his hand the same delicate whiteness, his features the
+same spiritual beauty, his brow the same marble pallor, and his eye
+which beamed beneath its calm expanse the same deep brilliancy which,
+years before, had distinguished him from all other men and made the
+Count of Monte-Cristo the idol of every salon in Paris and the hero of
+every maiden's dream. Yet that face was not without its changes. Tears,
+care, thought and sorrow had done their work; in the deep lines upon his
+brow and cheek, in the silvery threads which thickly sprinkled his
+night-black hair, and, more than all, in the mild light of those eyes
+which once glowed only with vindictive hate or gratified revenge and in
+the softened expression of those lips which once, in their stern beauty,
+had but curled with scorn or quivered with rage could be read that the
+lapse of time, though it might, indeed, have made him a sadder man, had
+made him also a better one.
+
+The husband and wife were alone. They still loved as warmly as ever,
+and, if possible, more fondly than when first they were made one.
+
+Dantes stretched himself out on the sofa, and Mercedes, dropping lower
+upon the low ottoman at his side, passed her full and beautiful arm
+around his waist and pressed her lips to his forehead. He returned the
+embrace with warmth, and placing his own arm about her form, drew it
+closely to his bosom. Thus they remained, clasped in each other's arms,
+and thus they fixed on each other eyes beaming with love, passion,
+bliss, happiness unutterable.
+
+"My own Edmond!" murmured Mercedes. "At length you are again with
+me--all my own!"
+
+"Am I not always your own, dearest?" was the fond reply.
+
+"But during the week past, I might almost say during the month past, you
+have been compelled to be so often absent from me."
+
+"Ah! love, you know I was not willingly absent!" was the quick answer.
+
+"No--no--no--but it was hardly the more endurable for that," said the
+lady, with a smile. "Oh! the anxiety of the last three days and nights!
+Dearest, I do believe I have not slept three hours during the whole of
+those three days and nights!"
+
+"And I, dear, have slept not one!" was the laughing rejoinder.
+
+"But all is over now, is it not?"
+
+"In one sense all is over, and in another all now begins. The monarchy
+is ended in France, I believe, forever. The Republic has begun, and, I
+trust, will prove lasting."
+
+"And all the grand objects for which you have been striving with your
+noble colleagues for years and years are at length accomplished, are
+they not?"
+
+"That is a question, love, not easily answered. That the cause of man
+and France has wonderfully triumphed during the past three days is, no
+doubt, most true. But this victory, love, I foresaw. Indeed, it was but
+the inevitable result of an irresistible cause. It was neither chance,
+love, nor a spontaneous burst of patriotism that, on the first day,
+filled the boulevards with fifty thousand blouses, which on the second
+won over to the people eighty thousand National Guards, and on the third
+choked the streets of Paris with barricades constructed by engineers and
+defended by men completely armed. The events of the last three days,
+Mercedes, have been maturing in the womb of Providence for the past ten
+years. It is their birth only which has now taken place, and to some the
+parturition seems a little premature, I suppose. This banquet caused the
+fright that hastened the event," added Dantes, laughing.
+
+"You are very scientific in your comparisons," replied Mercedes,
+slightly blushing, "and I suppose I must admit, very apt. But tell me,
+love, is all over? That is, must you be away from me any more at night,
+and wander about, Heaven only knows where, in this dark and dangerous
+city, or Heaven only knows with whom or for what?"
+
+Dantes kissed his fair wife, and, after a pause, during which he gazed
+fondly into her eyes, replied:
+
+"I hope, I trust, I believe, dear, that all is over--at least all that
+will take me from you, as during the past week. France has or will have
+a Republic. That is as certain as fate can make it. But first she will
+have to pass through strife and tribulation--perhaps bloodshed. The end
+surely, love, is not yet. But France is now comparatively free. The
+dreadful problem is now nearer solution than it ever was. Labor will
+hereafter be granted to all, together with the adequate reward of labor.
+Destitution will not be deemed guilt. The death-penalty is abolished.
+The rich will not with impunity grind the poor into powder beneath their
+heels. Asylums for the suffering, the distressed, the abandoned of both
+sexes will be sustained. The efforts which, as individuals, we have some
+of us made for years to ameliorate the condition of mankind, to assuage
+human woes and augment human joys, will henceforth be encouraged and
+directly aided by the State. This Revolution, love, is a social
+Revolution, and during the sixty-four hours the Provisional Government
+was in session, in the Hotel de Ville, I became thoroughly convinced
+that the thousands and tens of thousands who, with sleepless vigilance,
+watched their proceedings, had learned the deep lesson too well to be
+further deceived, and that the fruits of the Revolution they had won
+would not again be snatched from their lips."
+
+"And the result of this triumph of the people you believe has advanced
+the cause of human happiness?" asked Mercedes.
+
+"Most unquestionably, dear, and most incalculably, too, perhaps."
+
+"All your friends are not as disinterested as you have been, Edmond,"
+said Mercedes.
+
+"And why think you that, dear?"
+
+"For six full years I know you have devoted all your powers of mind and
+body and all your immense wealth to one single object."
+
+"And that object?"
+
+"Has been the happiness of your race."
+
+"Well, dear?"
+
+"And now, when a triumph has been achieved--now, when others, who have
+been but mere instruments--blind instruments, many of them, in your
+hands to accomplish they knew not what--come forward and assume place
+and power--you, Edmond, the noble author and first cause of all, remain
+quietly in seclusion, unknown, unnamed, unappreciated and uncommended,
+while the others reap the fruits of your toil!"
+
+"Well, dear?" said Dantes, smiling at the warmth of his wife in his
+behalf.
+
+"But it is not 'well,' Edmond. I say no one is as disinterested as you."
+
+"Ah! love, what of ambition?"
+
+Mercedes smiled.
+
+"Let me tell you all, love, and then you will not, I fear, think me
+disinterested," said Dantes seriously. "I should blush, indeed, at
+praise so little deserved. You know all my early history. I suffered--I
+was wronged--I was revenged. But was I happy? I sought happiness. All
+men do so, even the most miserable. Some seek happiness in gratified
+ambition, some in gratified avarice, some in gratified vanity, and some
+in the gratification of a dominant lust for pleasure or for power. I
+sought happiness in gratified revenge!"
+
+Mercedes shuddered, and, hiding her face on the bosom of her husband,
+clung to it more closely as if for protection. Dantes drew her form to
+his as he would have drawn that of a child, and continued:
+
+"I sought happiness in vengeance for terrible wrongs, and to win it I
+devoted a life and countless wealth. What was the result?
+Misery!--misery!--misery!"
+
+"Poor Edmond!" murmured Mercedes, clinging to him closer than ever.
+
+"At length I awoke, as from a dream. I saw my error. My whole life had
+been a lie. I saw that God by a miracle had bestowed on me untold riches
+for a nobler purpose than to make his creatures wretched. I saw that if
+I would be happy I must make others happy, and to this end--the
+happiness, not the misery, of my race--must my wealth and power be
+devoted. To this end, then, did I devote myself, and to this end, for
+six years, have I been devoted--to make myself happy by making others
+happy--you among the rest, dear, dear Mercedes," he added, pressing her
+to his bosom. "And am I then so disinterested?"
+
+"But why should you achieve triumphs for others to enjoy, Edmond?" asked
+the wife.
+
+"You refer to the Provisional Government," said Dantes with a smile.
+"Well, I see I must tell you all, even though by the revelation I prove
+myself utterly unworthy of the praise of disinterestedness. I may tell
+you, love--you my second self--without danger of being charged with
+egotism, what I might not say to others. Our friend Lamartine is the
+actual head of this Government. I had but to assent to the urgent
+entreaties to secure that position for myself. These appointments seem
+the result of nomination by the people. Yet they are not!"
+
+"And why did you refuse to head the Government, Edmond?"
+
+"I am ashamed to confess to you that I feared to accept," said Dantes
+after a pause. "My own selfishness, not, alas! my disinterestedness, has
+kept me from the post of peril. Perhaps, indeed, I can do far more for
+the cause of my race as I am than I could by sacrificing myself for
+office and position; at least, I hope so."
+
+"Is the position of your friends then so perilous?" asked Mercedes.
+
+"Dearest, they stand upon a volcano!" said Dantes, solemnly.
+
+"Ha!" cried the lady in alarm.
+
+"Mercedes--Mercedes!" continued Dantes with enthusiasm, "I sometimes am
+startled with the idea that to me have been entrusted the awful powers
+of foreknowledge, of prophecy, so fearfully true have some of my
+predictions proved! The events of the past week I foresaw and foretold,
+even to minute circumstances and the hours of their occurrence. And
+now--glorious as is the triumph that France and the cause of man have
+achieved--I perceive in the dim future a sea of commotion! All is not
+yet settled. Within one month, revolution will succeed revolution
+throughout Europe! Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid, perhaps also St.
+Petersburg, London, and all the cities of Italy, will be in revolt. All
+Europe must and will feel the events of the past week in Paris. Europe
+must be free!"
+
+"And our friends--Lamartine--Louis Blanc?"
+
+"Within six months Louis Blanc will be an exile, and Lamartine--he may
+be in a dungeon or on a scaffold!"
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Mercedes, clinging yet more closely to her husband.
+
+"But the cause of human happiness, human right and human freedom will
+live forever! That must be, will be eternal--as eternal, my adored
+Mercedes, as is our own deathless love!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+ESPERANCE AND ZULEIKA.
+
+
+During the whole period of the memorable Revolution Zuleika never once
+saw her brother, though she was burning with a desire to have an
+interview with him on the subject that had caused the separation between
+her young Italian lover and herself. Esperance made his home behind the
+barricades, from the time the struggle began until the people finally
+triumphed; gun in hand, he fought as heroically as the most devoted
+workman, fearlessly exposing himself whenever the troops pressed his
+comrades in arms and always in the thick of the fight. Begrimed with
+dust and powder, his garments torn by bullets and bayonet thrusts, his
+hat battered and rent, he encouraged the people by word and example,
+constantly shouting "Vive la Republique," and contending for liberty
+with the bravery of a lion and a persistency that never flagged. He,
+however, escaped without a single scratch, returning to the paternal
+mansion utterly worn out, but altogether unhurt, proud of having done
+his duty as a man and a patriot, and of having sustained the glorious
+cause for which his father was working heart and soul.
+
+As he was slowly and wearily wending his way homeward, he suddenly
+encountered M. Dantes and his friend Lamartine in the Rue Richelieu; his
+gun was on his shoulder, and in his tattered attire, with the dust and
+powder on his face and hands, he had the exact appearance of an
+insurrectionist and a barricader. He touched his hat in military fashion
+to M. Dantes and his illustrious companion, and was about passing on
+when his father recognized him and, ragged and begrimed as he was, threw
+his arms enthusiastically about his neck. M. Lamartine watched the
+Deputy from Marseilles and could not restrain an expression of
+astonishment at his singular behavior. M. Dantes smiled and, taking
+Esperance by the hand, said:
+
+"M. Lamartine, you will, I know, make every allowance for me when you
+learn that this young man, who has been fighting behind the barricades
+with the people, is my son!"
+
+The head of the Provisional Government instantly grew as enthusiastic as
+M. Dantes himself; he grasped Esperance's free hand and, shaking it with
+the utmost cordiality, exclaimed:
+
+"Your son, M. Dantes! Let me congratulate you! Why he is a perfect
+hero!"
+
+"I have but followed my father's teachings and done what he would have
+done had he been my age and unable to serve the great cause of human
+freedom in a more effective way!"
+
+M. Dantes' eyes sparkled with joy and a faint shade of color appeared
+upon his pale cheeks.
+
+"What is your name, young patriot?" asked M. Lamartine, his excitement
+and enthusiasm continuing to hold possession of him.
+
+"Esperance," was the reply.
+
+"Esperance--hope--the name is both appropriate and auspicious; with such
+heroic young men as you fighting for our cause there is, indeed, hope,
+and of the brightest and best kind!" cried Lamartine.
+
+"Nay, nay," said M. Dantes, "do not flatter the boy; he has but done his
+duty."
+
+"Believe me, I do not flatter him," returned Lamartine; "I have simply
+told him the truth; in time he will rival the devotion and achievements
+of his noble father!"
+
+"Enough, enough," said the Deputy, modestly; "we deserve only the credit
+of executing God's will--we are merely instruments in His omnipotent
+hand!" he added, impressively.
+
+"And such instruments are exactly what we need in the present crisis.
+God grant us plenty of them!"
+
+The next morning Zuleika encountered Esperance on the stairway; she led
+him into the salon, and, when they were seated, said:
+
+"My brother, I have a question to ask of you."
+
+A shadow crossed the young man's brow, and he quickly asked:
+
+"Is it about the Viscount Massetti?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I must refuse to answer!"
+
+"But the matter concerns my happiness, nay, my very life itself; think
+of that before you finally refuse to answer my question!"
+
+Esperance hastily and excitedly arose from his chair and stood in front
+of his sister.
+
+"Zuleika," said he, in an agitated tone, "beware of that man--beware of
+Giovanni Massetti!"
+
+"Beware of Giovanni, Esperance--and why?"
+
+The young man began to pace the salon with short and nervous steps; his
+hands twitched convulsively, and his face had suddenly assumed the
+whiteness of chalk.
+
+"Zuleika, Zuleika," he murmured, "I cannot, I cannot tell you why! It
+would crash you to the very earth and make you blush with shame that you
+had ever listened to the seductive tones of that doubly false Italian's
+voice!"
+
+"But, Esperance," said Zuleika, "papa certainly knows all about
+Giovanni; if he did not altogether approve of his character and conduct,
+he would never have consented to admit him as a suitor for my hand!"
+
+"A suitor for your hand, Zuleika! My God! has he then dared----"
+
+"He has done nothing that an upright and honorable man should not do!"
+interrupted Zuleika, warmly. "He did not even call here until he had
+written to papa and obtained his full permission to do so."
+
+"Zuleika," said Esperance, approaching his sister and taking her hand,
+"no doubt Giovanni Massetti has conducted himself in all respects
+toward you like a perfect gentleman, but, nevertheless, he is not fit to
+be my sister's husband."
+
+"But papa----"
+
+"Has been deceived, as have many others, in regard to the true character
+and standing of this so-called Roman nobleman."
+
+"And is he not a nobleman?"
+
+"Once more I must refuse to answer any question in regard to him. I can
+only tell you to beware and shun him as you would a venomous serpent."
+
+"Esperance, I love him!"
+
+"Love him!--you love him, Zuleika! Oh! this is, indeed, torture!"
+
+The young man dropped his sister's hand and flung himself upon a divan.
+He was a prey to the most intense excitement.
+
+Zuleika, deeply affected to see him thus, and remembering Giovanni's
+mysterious behavior, together with his strange and ominous words, when
+she had questioned him in regard to his quarrel with Esperance, felt for
+a moment shaken and uncertain. She also recollected that, at the time of
+the inexplicable difficulty between the two young men, she had heard
+rumors to the effect that a youthful member of the Roman aristocracy had
+abducted a beautiful peasant girl, in which affair he had been assisted
+by the notorious brigand Luigi Vampa; the matter, however, had almost
+immediately been hushed up and she had learned none of the
+circumstances. Could it be possible that Giovanni Massetti was the
+youthful aristocrat alluded to by the gossips and scandalmongers of the
+Eternal City--that he was the abductor of the unfortunate peasant girl?
+She could not entertain such an idea, and yet that abduction, in spite
+of all her efforts, would associate itself with her Italian lover in her
+mind.
+
+She arose from her chair and, going to the divan, seated herself beside
+Esperance, determined to make a final attempt to draw his secret from
+him. Throwing her arms tenderly about his neck she said, in a coaxing
+tone:
+
+"If any sound reason exists why I should not love Giovanni Massetti, and
+you know it, your plain duty as my brother is to tell me. Will you not
+tell me, Esperance?"
+
+Instead of replying, the young man buried his face in his hands and
+fairly sobbed in his anguish. Zuleika was filled with pity for him, and,
+as she gazed at him, tears came into her eyes; but still bent on
+discovering the nature of the obstacle that had so suddenly loomed up
+between Giovanni and herself, she continued after a pause, in the same
+coaxing voice:
+
+"Esperance, I am no longer a child and should not be treated as one.
+What I ask of you is only reasonable and just. If I stand on the brink
+of a gulf I cannot see, it is your duty to inform me not only of my
+danger but also of its nature. Am I not right?"
+
+Heaving a deep sigh, Esperance replied:
+
+"Yes, you are right, Zuleika; it is my duty to tell you all--and yet I
+cannot!"
+
+"At least, tell me why you are compelled to maintain silence on a
+matter of so much importance."
+
+"Did you question the Viscount?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"And what answer did he return?"
+
+"Like you, he refused to answer."
+
+"Ah! then he has some sense of shame left!"
+
+"Shame?"
+
+"Yes, shame! And what did you do when he refused to speak?"
+
+"I left him."
+
+"And you will not see him again?"
+
+"Not until he has decided to tell me all."
+
+"Then you will never put eyes upon him more; he dare not tell you!"
+
+"Dare not! And why?"
+
+"Because, did you know the depth of his infamy, you would spurn him from
+you!"
+
+Suddenly a grave suspicion stole into Zuleika's mind and made her
+tremble from head to foot. Might it not be that Esperance had been as
+deeply involved in the mysterious and infamous affair of which he
+declined to speak as Giovanni Massetti himself? The thought was torment,
+and totally unable to restrain her keen anxiety to be instantly informed
+upon this topic, Zuleika gasped out:
+
+"Were you not, Esperance, as guilty as your former friend?"
+
+The young man leaped to his feet as if a tarantula had bitten him.
+
+"No, no!" cried he. "I was innocent of all blame in the matter! Luigi
+Vampa----"
+
+He abruptly checked himself and stood staring at his sister, as if in
+dismay at having unguardedly uttered the brigand's name.
+
+But Zuleika said nothing. Giovanni Massetti also had protested his
+innocence, and the young girl knew not what to believe. Luigi Vampa? So
+then he had been a party to this mysterious and terrible business,
+whatever it was! And again she thought of the abduction of the beautiful
+peasant girl. Could that be the fearful secret? Yes, it must be. Luigi
+Vampa had assisted in that abduction, if report could be relied on, and
+the chief criminal had been a youthful member of the Roman aristocracy.
+Oh! it was all plain now. Zuleika shuddered and felt her heart grow
+heavy as lead, while a sharp, killing pang ran through it. Had Esperance
+been misled by Vampa and the Viscount? Had he discovered too late the
+infamy of the affair and challenged Massetti on that account? This was,
+doubtless, the solution of the whole enigma, and yet Zuleika hesitated
+to accept it as such. No, no, she could not accept it without further
+and more convincing proof! But how was that proof to be obtained?
+Neither the Viscount nor her brother would speak; it was evident that
+their lips were sealed; possibly an oath to maintain silence had been
+extorted from them under terrible circumstances--an oath they feared to
+break even to clear themselves from a foul suspicion. But Vampa? He
+might, perhaps, be induced to give the key to the mystery. Vampa,
+however, was far away in Rome and inaccessible. Zuleika made a wild
+resolve--she would write to the brigand and throw herself upon his
+generosity; then she decided that the plan was impracticable; her letter
+would never reach Vampa--it would be seized by the Roman authorities and
+might cause additional trouble by reviving a smothered scandal--and even
+should it reach the brigand, would he answer it? The chances were a
+hundred to one that he would not. At this instant an inspiration came to
+the tortured girl like a flash of lightning. Her father had known Vampa
+in the past, and, perhaps, still possessed some influence over him. She
+had heard the story of Albert de Morcerf's adventure in the catacombs of
+Saint Sebastian, and was aware that the brigand chief had released him
+from captivity without ransom at her father's simple solicitation. Would
+not Vampa answer her questions if M. Dantes could be influenced to write
+him and ask them? She had full faith in her father's power to get a
+letter to the bandit notwithstanding all the vigilance of the Roman
+authorities. Yes, she would go to him, tell all her suspicions without
+reserve and beg him to write the letter; it was hardly likely he would
+refuse; he could not, he must not. Thus resolved, Zuleika looked her
+brother full in the face and said, calmly:
+
+"I see I torture you with my questions, Esperance, that for some reason
+best known to yourself you cannot answer them, and that it is useless
+to torment you further. But something must be done and that at once. I
+am going to my father!"
+
+Esperance caught her wildly by the arm.
+
+"You are mad!" cried he.
+
+"It is you who are mad--you and Giovanni! I tell you, I am going to my
+father; if you are innocent, you have nothing to fear from any
+revelation I may make!"
+
+With these words she freed herself from her brother's grasp and quitted
+the salon, leaving Esperance standing in the centre of the apartment as
+if he were rooted to the spot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+CAPTAIN JOLIETTE'S LOVE.
+
+
+In a small but cosy and elegant suite of apartments in a mansion on the
+Rue des Capucines resided Mlle. Louise d'Armilly and her brother Leon;
+as has already been stated, the celebrated cantatrice had retired from
+the boards in consequence of having inherited a fortune of several
+millions of francs from the estate of her deceased father, who, rumor
+asserted, had been a very wealthy Parisian banker; Leon had abandoned
+the stage simultaneously with his sister, who had invited him to share
+her suddenly acquired riches, for, strange to say, the banker had not
+bequeathed to him a single sou.
+
+The immense inheritance had been a complete surprise to Mlle. d'Armilly,
+and for some time she had hesitated to accept it, as a condition imposed
+by the will was her immediate withdrawal from her operatic career, and
+the prima donna was as ambitious as gifted; but, finally, she had
+yielded to the persuasive eloquence of the notary and the earnest
+entreaties of her friends, canceling all her engagements, and with them
+abandoning her bright professional future.
+
+The director of the Academie Royale demanded a large sum to release the
+artiste from her contract with him, and this was paid by the notary with
+an alacrity that seemed to suggest he was not acting solely according to
+the directions of the will, but was influenced by some personage who
+chose to remain in the background; the notary also paid all other
+demands made by the various operatic managers who claimed they would
+lose by Mlle. d'Armilly's failure to appear; these amounts were not
+deducted from the legacy, a circumstance that gave additional color to
+the supposition that the will of the deceased banker was not the sole
+factor in the celebrated cantatrice's good luck.
+
+One evening, shortly after Paris had again quieted down, Mlle. d'Armilly
+was seated in the little apartment that served her as a salon, and with
+her was her brother Leon. The contrast between the pair seemed
+intensified in private life. Louise had that dark, imperious, majestic
+beauty usually possessed by brunettes; her figure was full and finely
+developed, her black eyes had the deep, intense fire of passion, and her
+faultless countenance, glowing with health and loveliness, indicated at
+once firmness, decision and caprices without number. Leon, on the
+contrary, was delicate and feminine in appearance; he had exceedingly
+small feet and hands, and a single glance at his strikingly handsome
+face was sufficient to convince any experienced judge of human nature
+that he possessed a mild and yielding disposition. The young man bore
+not the remotest family likeness to his sister, and it was difficult to
+realize that they could be in any way related.
+
+Leon quitted his sister and, going to a piano that stood in one corner
+of the apartment, softly opened it and commenced lightly running his
+fingers over the keys; then he seated himself at the instrument and
+played an air from "Lucrezia Borgia" with brilliancy and effect that
+only a finished performer could attain. At the first notes Louise arose
+and approaching the piano stood beside the player, her eyes sparkling
+with appreciation and delight. So absorbed were the brother and sister
+that they did not hear a soft knock at the door, and only at the
+conclusion of the air did they realize that a visitor was in the
+apartment. Leon sprang from the instrument in confusion, behaving like a
+startled girl, but Mlle. d'Armilly, with perfect self-control, turned to
+the new comer and said, in a tone of mingled coquetry and merriment:
+
+"So, so, Captain Joliette, your military career has accustomed you to
+surprising the enemy to such an extent that it has become second nature
+with you, and you cannot avoid carrying your favorite tactics even into
+private life!"
+
+Captain Joliette, for it was, indeed, he, bowed and answered with a
+smile:
+
+"You must allow me solemnly to protest against classing yourself and
+your brother with the enemy! You are, both of you, very dear friends!"
+
+"Especially Louise!" said Leon, with a sly look and a pretty little
+ringing laugh.
+
+"Leon, Leon, when will you learn wisdom!" exclaimed Mlle. d'Armilly, a
+blush mantling her visage, and adding to its voluptuous beauty.
+
+"Never, I suppose!" returned her brother, still laughing. "But I am
+already well acquainted with the value of discretion and, therefore,
+will withdraw!"
+
+As he uttered those words, Leon kissed the tips of his fingers to Louise
+and Joliette, and lightly ran from the salon. When he had disappeared
+the Captain folded Mlle. d'Armilly in his arms and kissed her tenderly
+upon the forehead.
+
+"Oh! Louise," said he, enthusiastically, "I love you more and more every
+day!"
+
+The former artiste gently disentangled herself from his embrace and,
+smiling archly, led him to a chair; then she sat down upon another at a
+short distance from him.
+
+"No, no," said Joliette, warmly; "come and sit beside me on the sofa.
+Even Leon sees that I adore you, and all my friends in Paris are aware
+that I am seeking your hand in marriage. Why will you be so formal and
+distant with me!"
+
+She arose and did as he requested; Joliette, seated at her side, put his
+arm about her waist. Louise did not resist, but still maintained an air
+of coquetry that was displeasing to the ardent young soldier.
+
+"Albert," she said, in a low, musical voice, "do you, indeed, love me as
+you say?"
+
+"Love you, Louise!" cried Joliette. "I would lay down my life for you!"
+
+"Are you quite sure you love me for myself and not because of the
+resemblance you say I bear to the woman you once so ardently admired?
+What was her name?--ah! Eugenie Danglars!" said she, looking at him with
+a piercing gaze.
+
+"Quite sure, Louise, quite sure. Besides, Mlle. Danglars has
+disappeared, has not been seen or heard of for several years, and, no
+doubt, is dead."
+
+"And yet you do not mourn for her! How strange!"
+
+"I never loved her as I love you, Louise. Eugenie Danglars was a
+capricious and eccentric girl, and had she lived would have been a
+capricious and eccentric woman. It was well for me she vanished when she
+did! But, by the way, another singular and inexplicable coincidence is
+that Louise d'Armilly, the name you bear, was also the name of Mlle.
+Danglars' music teacher. I cannot understand it at all!"
+
+"There is no necessity for you to understand it. Anyhow, it is a
+coincidence, as you say--nothing more."
+
+"Well, Louise, let us speak no further about either the resemblance or
+the coincidence. Suffice it that I love you, and you alone--that I love
+you for yourself."
+
+"Your words make me very happy, Albert," replied Mlle. d'Armilly, and
+her full red lips looked so luscious, ripe and alluring, that Joliette
+could not resist the temptation to bestow a long, burning kiss upon
+them.
+
+"Be my wife, then, dearest Louise," cried the Captain, "and I will
+prolong your happiness until death shall strike me down!"
+
+"Ah! Albert, men are so fickle; they become infatuated with women and
+declare and, no doubt think, they could pass their lives at their
+charmers' feet; but possession dulls the lustre of the brightest jewel,
+and the devoted lover is speedily replaced by a careless, if not
+faithless husband, who, instead of making his wife happy as he has sworn
+to do, forsakes her side to bask in the smiles of sirens."
+
+"It will never be so with me, my own, my love!" protested Joliette,
+kissing her again and again. "I swear it."
+
+"I know the value of a lover's oath, Albert," murmured Louise, with a
+meaning look. "When I was the brightest operatic star of the day many of
+them were breathed in my ear, but they were 'trifles light as air,'
+forgotten as soon as uttered. Besides, should I consent to become your
+wife, you would be forced to leave me in France and return to Africa in
+obedience to the call of duty; the lovely women of Algeria are prodigal
+of their beauties and endearments, and under the spell of some subtle
+Arab enchantress you would either forget poor Louise d'Armilly
+altogether, or remember her only as a clog upon your pleasures and
+amorous delights."
+
+"Nay, nay, you wrong me; among all the dusky sirens of Algeria there
+exists not one who could make me forget you for a single instant; they
+are brazen, shameless women, who love with a recklessness and boldness
+that can only disgust a Frenchman."
+
+"But they can dazzle even a Frenchman, render him delirious with passion
+and, ere he is aware, weave a web around him through which he cannot
+break. My heart tells me you are as susceptible to feminine wiles as the
+rest of your countrymen, and that, perhaps, you have already had
+half-a-dozen love-affairs in Algeria."
+
+"Oh! Louise, Louise, it grieves me to the soul that you can thus doubt
+me. Give me a chance to prove my love and you shall be more than
+satisfied that I can be loyal and true."
+
+Mlle. d'Armilly gazed at him with a singular expression on her dark
+beautiful countenance; it thrilled him to the very marrow of his bones,
+and caused his arm that was about her waist to tremble violently; at
+that moment the former cantatrice resembled Eugenie Danglars more than
+ever; her breath, was hot and convulsive as it struck his cheek, and a
+faint suspicion that all was not right--that she was playing a role with
+him, shot across his mind for the first time; with this suspicion came
+jealousy, and, releasing her waist, he said, in a gasping tone:
+
+"You have another lover, Louise, a lover you prefer to me--am I not
+right?"
+
+Mlle. d'Armilly laughed a short, nervous laugh, and answered in a voice
+that seemed to mock him:
+
+"I have had hosts of ardent admirers in my time. Do you refer
+particularly to any individual?"
+
+"I know not; I am beside myself with passion for you, and the mere fancy
+that another man may have the first place in your heart is unbearable to
+me! But there is one conclusive way in which you can prove my
+suspicion--my jealousy--groundless; marry me!"
+
+"Albert," replied Louise, with a renewal of the singular expression of
+countenance that had so agitated him, "I shall never marry any one; I
+cannot--I dare not!"
+
+The young man was startled as if by an electric shock; he drew back and
+gazed at her with wide-opened eyes, speechless from astonishment.
+
+After a brief pause, Mlle. d'Armilly continued, in a dry, hard tone:
+
+"You do not understand me and I cannot expect you to, for I can neither
+tell you my motives nor lay bare my sad history to you; you must be
+content with my decision--I shall not marry!"
+
+Captain Joliette, strong man as he was, could not control his emotion;
+he buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud. The young woman gazed
+at him half pityingly, half triumphantly; she felt compassion for her
+stricken lover, but, above all, gloried in the overwhelming power of her
+charms that could so subdue a manly, victorious young soldier and make
+him her helpless slave.
+
+"Is there then no shadow of a hope?" at length asked Joliette, in a
+hoarse whisper.
+
+"Not the shadow of a hope!" replied Mlle. d'Armilly, firmly. "You can be
+my friend, my brother, if you will, but never my husband."
+
+The young man recoiled in horror at the suggestion that seemed to be
+conveyed by this permission.
+
+"What do you mean by friend?" he asked, a cold shiver passing through
+him.
+
+Louise laughed a short, nervous laugh, and, looking him full in the
+eyes, replied:
+
+"You know what I mean. I love you better than any man I ever met, save
+one."
+
+Captain Joliette slowly arose to his feet and stood staring at her, his
+passion and his scruples waging a bitter battle within him for the
+mastery. The temptress half reclined on the sofa, a miracle of seductive
+grace and voluptuous beauty. He moved toward her as if to seize her in
+his arms; then, suddenly checking himself, he asked, with a convulsive
+gasp:
+
+"And that man--that one?"
+
+"Was separated from me forever through the vile machinations of that
+mysterious and cold-blooded fiend, the Count of Monte-Cristo!"
+
+"The Count of Monte-Cristo?" exclaimed the young man, lost in amazement.
+
+"Yes, the Count of Monte-Cristo, who afterwards disappeared from Paris
+and has not since been heard of."
+
+"You mistake; the Count of Monte-Cristo is in Paris now; he calls
+himself Edmond Dantes and is the celebrated Deputy from Marseilles over
+whom everybody has gone wild for some time past."
+
+Mlle. d'Armilly's eyes flashed with fury.
+
+"Then I will have my revenge upon him at last!" she cried. "I will amply
+repay him for introducing the so-called Prince Cavalcanti into my
+father's house and thus breaking off the match between Albert and
+myself."
+
+"Albert?"
+
+"Yes; Albert de Morcerf."
+
+"Now, Eugenie Danglars, I know you and it is useless for you to attempt
+the denial of your identity longer!"
+
+The young woman leaped up from the sofa, with terror pictured upon her
+visage, and, seizing Captain Joliette by the arm with a powerful grasp,
+cried out:
+
+"And how, pray, do you know I am Eugenie Danglars?"
+
+"You unwittingly betrayed yourself by revealing the names of
+Monte-Cristo and Cavalcanti. Besides, Eugenie, look at me well--I am
+Albert de Morcerf!"
+
+With a wild cry the retired prima donna sank back upon the sofa.
+
+"You Albert de Morcerf!" she exclaimed. "I cannot believe it!"
+
+"But my mother, the former Countess de Morcerf, who is now the wife of
+Edmond Dantes, will vouch for my identity."
+
+The young woman passed her hand across her forehead as if dazed.
+
+"If you are Albert de Morcerf, you must despise me after what has taken
+place this evening," she said, bitterly.
+
+"Despise you? No, I pity and forgive you."
+
+"Albert," said she, softly, "come here and sit beside me on this sofa; I
+have something to say to you."
+
+The soldier obeyed; when he was seated, he said:
+
+"Eugenie, why did you tell me I could be your friend?"
+
+"Simply because I have long suspected your secret and wished to
+ascertain the real nature of your feelings toward me. You not only
+resisted a terrible temptation, the most terrible temptation to which a
+young, ardent and passion-smitten man can be exposed, but by your honor
+conclusively established the purity and sincerity of your love. Oh!
+Albert, Albert, are you satisfied with my explanation and do you still
+think me worthy of you?"
+
+"My own Eugenie, my happiness is far too great for words!" murmured the
+delighted young man, gathering his beautiful companion in a warm embrace
+and repeatedly kissing her ripe lips and blushing cheeks.
+
+It was soon known throughout Paris that Captain Joliette and Albert de
+Morcerf were identical, and that Mlle. d'Armilly was in reality no other
+than Mlle. Eugenie Danglars, daughter of Baron Danglars, the once famous
+and opulent Parisian banker; the report also was current that Albert and
+Eugenie were engaged and would shortly be united in the bonds of
+matrimony. Another bit of gossip was to the effect that the former
+cantatrice's brother Leon was not a man but a woman; in short, the real
+Louise d'Armilly, who had loaned her name to Eugenie Danglars and
+assumed male attire solely for professional purposes. This story was
+speedily confirmed, for Leon soon vanished and in his place appeared a
+most attractive and fascinating lady, who very quietly assumed, or
+rather resumed, the name of Louise d'Armilly. Still another rumor was
+that the wealth so strangely inherited by the former prima donna was not
+a legacy at all, but a gift from the mysterious Count of Monte-Cristo,
+who had thus striven to make amends to the daughter for the misfortunes
+he had, while pursuing his scheme of wholesale vengeance, so
+remorselessly heaped upon the head of the father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+ZULEIKA GOES TO M. DANTES.
+
+
+M. Dantes was sitting alone in his library, busily engaged in reading a
+favorite work on the subject of political economy, and from time to time
+making copious notes. It was after midnight, and the vast mansion on the
+Rue du Helder was as silent as the tomb; the lamp on the Deputy's table
+burned brightly, but a large metallic shade concentrated the light and
+reflected it upon the table, so that the other portions of the apartment
+were shrouded in almost complete darkness.
+
+As M. Dantes read a shadow suddenly fell on the page of his book, and
+quickly looking up he saw his daughter Zuleika standing beside him;
+tears were in her eyes and a look of melancholy rested upon her
+countenance.
+
+"Why child," said her father, in a startled tone, "what is the matter
+with you? You are weeping and seem very sad. Has anything happened to
+young Massetti?"
+
+"Not that I am aware of, papa," answered Zuleika, in a low voice. "But,
+nevertheless, it is of him I wish to speak."
+
+M. Dantes pushed his book from him, motioned his daughter to a seat and
+prepared to listen as she did not begin at once, but seemed to
+hesitate, he said, kindly:
+
+"I am waiting, little one; proceed."
+
+Thus encouraged, Zuleika summoned up all her strength and, with downcast
+eyes, commenced:
+
+"Papa," said she, "in the first place let me assure you that this is no
+mere lovers' quarrel, but a matter of the utmost importance that demands
+immediate action."
+
+M. Dantes knitted his brows.
+
+"Has the Viscount been guilty of any impropriety toward you?" he asked,
+fiercely.
+
+"No, papa, not toward me, but I fear he may have been guilty of
+impropriety, or, at least, of indiscretion, with regard to another in
+the past."
+
+"A woman, no doubt."
+
+"Yes, papa, a woman--a Roman peasant."
+
+"I heard of some such thing while you were at the convent school in
+Rome, but dismissed it as a slander."
+
+"There may, however, be some truth in it."
+
+"But, now I recollect, Giovanni's name was not associated with the
+scandal; it was a mere inference on my part that connected him with the
+youthful member of the Roman aristocracy mentioned by the gossips."
+
+"Perhaps I am unjust, papa, in reviving your suspicions, but Giovanni's
+strange behavior when I asked him the cause of his quarrel with
+Esperance and of the continued coldness between them, forced me to think
+there was something wrong."
+
+"His quarrel with Esperance? Ah! now I remember, there was a quarrel,
+but I imagined it was settled, and that their relations were altogether
+friendly."
+
+"They are enemies, papa, or seem to be, and that is not all--Esperance
+accuses Giovanni of having been guilty of some infamous deed."
+
+"You have spoken to Esperance then on the subject?"
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He dealt in vague denunciations, and positively refused to give me any
+definite information."
+
+"That is singular."
+
+"But what is still more so is that both Giovanni and Esperance seem
+bound by some fearful oath not to disclose the dread secret in their
+possession."
+
+"Bound by an oath?"
+
+"Yes, papa; but why both of them should have been so bound, unless they
+were accomplices, I cannot see; I even went so far as to accuse
+Esperance of complicity, whereupon he grew as white as chalk and
+protested his entire innocence, and in his confusion uttered the name of
+Luigi Vampa."
+
+"Zuleika, Zuleika, you certainly misunderstood your brother; he could
+not have mentioned the name of that man! Do you know who this Luigi
+Vampa is?"
+
+"Perfectly, papa; Luigi Vampa is a notorious Roman brigand."
+
+"Exactly, my child, and therefore could not possibly have had any
+dealings either with the Viscount or Esperance."
+
+"But I am sure of the name, nevertheless. Esperance said Luigi Vampa."
+
+M. Dantes was evidently startled; he arose to his feet and paced the
+library excitedly. Zuleika had expected this, and hence was not
+surprised. At last her father resumed his seat, and when he again came
+within reach of the lamp's rays she saw that his visage was even more
+pallid than usual and that he was not a little agitated. She waited for
+him to speak, and in a few seconds he did so.
+
+"Zuleika," said he, in a tone of decision, "I will see both the Viscount
+and my son in regard to this matter, for now that Luigi Vampa seems to
+have had a share in it, close investigation is imperatively demanded."
+
+"You may interrogate them, papa, but I am convinced in advance that you
+will derive no information from either of them. The strange power that
+holds sway over them you cannot break, but there is one thing you can
+do."
+
+"What is that, Zuleika?"
+
+"Write to Luigi Vampa!"
+
+"Write to Vampa? Why should I do that?"
+
+"Because I feel assured that he is in possession of the full details of
+the terrible secret, whatever it may be, and will communicate them to
+you if you ask him to do so."
+
+M. Dantes gazed at his daughter curiously.
+
+"What makes you think I have such influence over this Roman brigand?"
+he asked, sharply.
+
+"Oh! papa, do not be angry with me!" cried Zuleika; "but I have heard
+how Vampa released the Viscount de Morcerf at your simple solicitation
+without a single franc of ransom, though he had previously demanded a
+very large amount from the unfortunate man as the price of his liberty.
+I have heard this, and the natural inference I drew was that, if the
+brigand chief went so far as to surrender his prey to you, he would
+certainly answer your letter and tell you all he knew about the matter
+that so closely concerns my happiness and Esperance's good name."
+
+"I am not angry with you, my child," replied the Deputy, in a milder
+tone, "for I know how deeply you have this affair at heart. I will write
+to Luigi Vampa as you desire, this very night, and in two weeks at the
+furthest his answer may be expected, but to-morrow I will talk with
+Esperance and then will question the Viscount. Rest assured that this
+matter shall be sifted to the bottom. I know the extent of your love for
+Giovanni Massetti; I also feel confident that I am not deceived in him,
+and that he will be amply able to prove himself entirely worthy of your
+hand. I have seen too much of men, Zuleika, and studied them too deeply,
+to be deceived in reading character."
+
+"Oh! thank you, thank you ever so much, papa, both for your promise, and
+your kind, encouraging words. I, too, have full faith in Giovanni, but
+still I cannot rest satisfied until his record is entirely and
+conclusively cleared. No one must have the power to breathe even a
+suspicion against the good name of your daughter's husband!"
+
+"Spoken like a girl of spirit!" said M. Dantes, his eyes sparkling with
+enthusiasm and admiration. "Now leave me, and I will write to Vampa."
+
+Zuleika kissed her father and quitted the library with a much lighter
+heart than she had entered it.
+
+M. Dantes, by the exercise of his iron will, had managed to control
+himself in her presence, but now that she had gone he gave free course
+to his emotions. For a full hour he sat leaning on his writing-table,
+his frame convulsed with anguish, and his mind filled with sad
+forebodings. He did not for an instant doubt that both Esperance and the
+Viscount could clear themselves from any criminal or dishonorable
+charge, if they would consent to open their lips, but their silence and
+Zuleika's belief that they were bound by some fearful oath gave him
+great uneasiness. Besides, his son had mentioned Luigi Vampa's name, and
+the thought that the young man was involved in some complication with
+the Roman bandit sent a chill to his heart. He was convinced that
+whatever had occurred had been merely the result of the folly and
+headlong disposition of youth, but this was scarcely a consolation, for
+he well knew to what length young men sometimes allowed themselves to be
+carried, especially in what they considered a love-affair.
+
+In addition, the more he thought of the half-forgotten Roman scandal,
+the more clearly its particulars returned to him. He remembered that a
+young and handsome peasant girl had been mysteriously abducted, and that
+eventually she had been brought back to her home by one of the shepherds
+known to be in league with Luigi Vampa and his band. She asserted that
+she had been carried off to the bandits' haunt by her youthful lover,
+who had passed for a peasant lad, but was in reality a nobleman. This
+was all M. Dantes could distinctly recall, though he was certain he had
+heard other details that had slipped his memory. At the period of the
+abduction, he now remembered, both Esperance and the Viscount were
+temporarily absent from Rome; then followed their return and the quarrel
+that had almost resulted in a duel, but had suddenly been patched up
+without apparent reason. Had Esperance and the Viscount been concerned
+in the abduction? That was a question that only they or Luigi Vampa
+could answer, and it was evident the young men would not speak. Vampa
+then must be made to speak for them; that was the sole course left to
+pursue, for the peasant girl had disappeared immediately after her
+return, and her whereabouts were a mystery.
+
+M. Dantes drew writing materials before him and wrote his letter to the
+brigand chief; it was brief, but to the point. When it was finished, it
+bore the signature, "Edmond Dantes, Count of Monte-Cristo." The Deputy
+placed it in the drawer of his table to go by mail the following
+morning, having first folded and sealed it. "Thomson and French, Rome,"
+was the direction it bore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+TWO INTERVIEWS.
+
+
+The morning following the events detailed in the last chapter, as
+Esperance was in his dressing-room preparing to take a short stroll
+through Paris, Ali knocked at the door and signified that M. Dantes
+wished to see him at once in the library. As such a summons was
+something unusual, the young man immediately concluded that Zuleika had
+been in consultation with her father and that he would now have to
+submit to a close and rigid examination; he had expected such an
+examination, but, nevertheless, the summons filled him with dismay and
+he grew pale as wax, his limbs trembling beneath him and his hands
+working nervously; however, he braced up as well as he could, and with
+as firm a step as it was possible for him to assume walked toward the
+library. On the threshold he paused, and his courage so utterly forsook
+him that he was tempted to take refuge in flight, but the thought
+flashed through his mind that this would be cowardly, and, making a
+supreme effort to control himself, he entered his father's presence.
+
+M. Dantes, who was seated at his writing-table examining a curious
+manuscript written in Arabic characters, looked up as he came in and
+fixed his eyes searchingly upon his son's countenance, noting its
+extreme pallor and remarking with manifest uneasiness the difficulty
+Esperance experienced in maintaining a firm demeanor. Motioning the
+young man to a seat, he said:
+
+"My son, I have sent for you on a matter of the utmost importance, and I
+sincerely hope you will see fit to tell me in all frankness whatever you
+may know in regard to it."
+
+Esperance partially closed his eyes as if suffering intensely, bringing
+his teeth firmly together and compressing his lips. As he did not speak,
+M. Dantes continued:
+
+"I have every reason to believe that the revelation I am about to ask of
+you will be exceedingly painful for you to make, but you must consider
+that your sister's happiness is deeply concerned and that, for that
+reason, no matter what may be your motives, you have not the right to
+maintain silence."
+
+"I know what you mean, father," replied Esperance in an unsteady voice,
+"but, notwithstanding the pain it gives me to do so, I must ask you,
+nay, entreat you not to question me, for I cannot answer you!"
+
+M. Dantes cast upon his son a glance that seemed to pierce him through
+and through; the young man quailed beneath it and again partially closed
+his eyes, while a faint blue shade was mixed with the waxen pallor of
+his visage. The Deputy, though he had made a profound and exhaustive
+study of men and their varied motives, though he was a skilled anatomist
+of the human heart and a ready reader of the human countenance,
+acknowledged to himself that this time he was completely baffled. Was it
+fear or guilt that Esperance exhibited? He could not tell; but it was
+abundantly evident that the young man was not acting a part, that he
+keenly felt the suspicions to which he was exposing himself by his
+inexplicable conduct. At length M. Dantes said, in a mild but determined
+tone:
+
+"Esperance, my son, you can, at least, enlighten me upon a few points,
+and I request, nay, I command you to do so. Are you bound by oath to
+preserve silence concerning this matter?"
+
+"I am bound by a most solemn oath!" answered the young man with a
+shudder.
+
+"And is Giovanni Massetti likewise so bound?"
+
+"He is!"
+
+"I will not ask you who administered that oath to you or under what
+circumstances it was taken, although as your father I have a right to do
+so and to compel you to answer; neither will I interrogate you further
+in regard to the main question at issue, the complication in which you
+and the Viscount seem to be so hopelessly involved; but I insist that
+you inform me whether any guilt or stain of dishonor rests upon you!"
+
+"Father," said Esperance, rising and lifting his right hand toward
+heaven, "I solemnly swear to you that whatever wrong may have been done,
+whatever crime may have been committed, I am entirely guiltless and that
+there is not the slightest stain of dishonor upon me!"
+
+"I believe you, my son," said M. Dantes, in a tone of conviction, "and
+this unequivocal assurance from your own lips removes the weight of a
+mountain from me. Now, tell me, is the Viscount Massetti as blameless in
+this affair as you are?"
+
+"The so-called Viscount Massetti is a black-hearted villain!" cried
+Esperance, excitedly. "He is guilty of a foul and revolting crime, a
+crime that should condemn him to a life of penal servitude!"
+
+"But may you not be mistaken, may you not be the victim of some
+delusion?" asked M. Dantes, anxiously.
+
+"I am neither mistaken, father, nor the victim of a delusion," replied
+Esperance, positively. "The charges that I make against that miserable
+apology for a man I can fully substantiate should the proper opportunity
+ever be offered me!"
+
+"Zuleika informed me that, while you were speaking with her upon this
+mysterious subject, the name of Luigi Vampa escaped your lips. Does that
+notorious brigand posses a knowledge of this unfortunate matter?"
+
+Esperance became violently agitated and instantly answered:
+
+"That is a question my oath forbids me to reply to!"
+
+"So be it," said M. Dantes; "but I have written him and he will reply
+for you!"
+
+"You have written to Vampa!" exclaimed the young man, with a
+terror-stricken look. "Then all is lost!"
+
+M. Dantes smiled, and, rising, placed his hand on his son's shoulder.
+
+"Esperance," said he, calmly, "if neither crime nor dishonor attaches to
+you in this affair, as you have sworn, you have nothing whatever to
+fear, and, besides, Vampa's disclosures may relieve you of some portion
+of your heavy burden."
+
+"Oh! God!" groaned the young man, "if Vampa speaks how shall I be able
+to prove my innocence!"
+
+"My son," said M. Dantes, impressively, "God, whose name you have
+invoked, will not desert you in your hour of need!"
+
+Bowing his head in his hands and trembling like an aspen leaf, Esperance
+quitted the library with a convulsive sob, as if the last ray of hope
+had been withdrawn from his life and all was darkness and despair.
+
+M. Dantes threw himself in his chair and for an instant was plunged in
+absorbing thought; then he arose and putting on his hat and cloak left
+the library; a few moments later he had quitted the mansion by a private
+door.
+
+Closely muffling his face in the folds of his cloak, that he might not
+be recognized, the Deputy from Marseilles passed hurriedly from street
+to street until he stood before a massive building in the Rue Vivienne.
+He rang the bell, and, when the concierge appeared, said to her:
+
+"Is the Viscount Massetti at home?"
+
+The woman, a large, fat, lumbering creature, cast a sleepy glance, that
+was half-curious, half-suspicious, at him and answered:
+
+"Yes, Monsieur; but he bade me deny him to everybody."
+
+"He will see me, however, my good woman," said M. Dantes. "Take my card
+to him."
+
+The fat concierge took the card and glanced at it; when she read "Edmond
+Dantes, Deputy from Marseilles," she stared at the famous Republican
+leader like one possessed; then, filled with awe, she hastened away and
+climbed the stairs as fast as her cumbersome legs would let her. She
+returned, panting and puffing, followed by the Viscount's valet, who,
+with much ceremony and obsequiousness, conducted the distinguished
+visitor to his master's apartments.
+
+The salon into which M. Dantes was ushered was large and sumptuously
+furnished; evidences of wealth and luxury were visible on every side,
+while everything displayed the utmost taste and elegance.
+
+"To what am I indebted for the honor of this unexpected visit, my dear
+Count?" said Massetti, rising from a handsomely carved, red velvet
+upholstered arm-chair, in which he had been indolently reclining, and
+coming forward to greet his guest.
+
+"To a matter that concerns both of us deeply," replied the Deputy, in a
+meaning tone.
+
+A shadow crossed the Viscount's handsome visage, but it was gone in an
+instant, and he said, with the utmost politeness:
+
+"Pray be seated, my dear Count, and before proceeding to business
+refresh yourself with a glass of rare old Burgundy. Here, Stephano, wine
+and glasses."
+
+M. Dantes sat down in an arm-chair precisely resembling that from which
+the Viscount had arisen; Massetti resumed his seat and the valet brought
+the old Burgundy and glasses, placing the decanter and drinking vessels
+on a small table of glistening ebony between his master and the Deputy.
+After they had duly drunk each other's health, M. Dantes said:
+
+"I regret, my dear Viscount, that I am compelled to disturb you, but my
+business was too urgent for delay."
+
+"You don't disturb me in the least. Pray proceed."
+
+"You remember your conversation with my daughter just before you and she
+parted, do you not?"
+
+"I remember it," replied the Viscount, coloring slightly and evidently
+growing ill at ease.
+
+"In that case, neither preface nor explanation is necessary. I called to
+ask you a few plain questions."
+
+The Italian was now a prey to singular excitement; he grew pale and
+flushed by turns, finally rising and pacing the salon in great
+agitation.
+
+"Count," said he, abruptly, when he could command his voice, "you are a
+man of the world and a cosmopolitan, and, of course, you know that one
+often commits folly, especially when the ardent and uncontrollable blood
+of youth is rushing through his veins. With this explanation, imperfect
+though it be, I must ask you to rest satisfied, for it is utterly out of
+my power to give you any other, or to enter into the details of the
+unfortunate affair which has brought you here. I assure you, however,
+that I am altogether blameless in the matter; investigation will
+abundantly establish the truth of what I say."
+
+"I will make that investigation."
+
+"I regret that I can neither empower you to do so nor aid you in it!"
+
+"What am I to understand by that?"
+
+"Simply what I say."
+
+"You are, doubtless, aware that my son makes grave accusations against
+you, that he accuses you, in fact, of a dastardly crime."
+
+"Esperance is mistaken, my dear Count; I swear to you that he is
+mistaken and that I am as innocent as he is!"
+
+"But Luigi Vampa may have a different tale to tell!"
+
+"Luigi Vampa!" cried the Viscount, coming instantly to a dead halt, and
+a sudden pallor overspreading his entire visage.
+
+"Yes, Luigi Vampa; I have written to him and in two weeks will have his
+answer!"
+
+"For Esperance's sake, for my sake, for your daughter's sake, destroy
+that answer as soon as received and without reading it!" exclaimed the
+young Italian, wildly, his pallor increasing to such a degree that his
+face resembled that of a corpse.
+
+"Should I be mad enough to do so," said M. Dantes, calmly, "with it all
+hope of your marriage with Zuleika would perish!"
+
+"Oh! do not say that, do not say that!" groaned Massetti. "What would
+life be worth to me without Zuleika's love!"
+
+"Then deserve that love by clearing yourself, by proving that your
+record will bear the light of day!"
+
+"I have sworn to you that I am innocent! Is not that enough?"
+
+"No," replied M. Dantes, coldly. "I must have proof to support your
+oath."
+
+"Then you believe me guilty in spite of all! This is the worst blow
+yet!"
+
+"It is in your power to completely justify yourself; at least, so you
+give me to understand, and yet your refusal will forever separate you
+from the woman you love!"
+
+"You fill me with despair!" said Massetti, in a smothered voice, sinking
+upon a sofa. "I fain would reveal everything to you, but an awful oath
+of silence stands between me and the revelation."
+
+"Then I must wait for Vampa's answer, and shape my course by that!" said
+M. Dantes, firmly.
+
+"That answer will destroy both Esperance and myself!" replied the
+Viscount, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"We shall see," returned the Deputy, rising and resuming his cloak; as
+he stood at the door of the salon with his hat in his hand, he added: "I
+thought you all a man should be, Viscount, and that you would make
+Zuleika happy, but my convictions have been sadly shaken. I came here
+thinking that love for woman was all powerful in the heart of man, that
+it would induce you to speak, even in the face of an oath, perhaps
+violently and iniquitously administered; I was wrong; farewell!"
+
+M. Dantes turned slowly and took his departure, leaving Giovanni
+Massetti on the sofa plunged in grief and dismay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+VAMPA'S ANSWER.
+
+
+As the time for the arrival of Luigi Vampa's answer to M. Dantes' letter
+approached, Esperance grew more and more uneasy and serious; he spent
+the greater portion of every day from home, apparently for the purpose
+of avoiding his father and sister; when he returned he was moody,
+depressed and silent, and far into the night he could be heard pacing
+his chamber as if unable to sleep from excitement and anxiety.
+
+Zuleika endeavored to comfort him, but all her efforts were fruitless.
+She, poor girl, was herself overwhelmed with her own distress, though
+she strove to bear up against it. Massetti had neither written to nor
+attempted to see her since their separation, a circumstance she could
+not reconcile with his protestations of ardent love for her, and this
+served vastly to augment her sadness and anguish, though she still
+believed in her soul that the Viscount was entirely innocent of the
+crime laid to his charge.
+
+M. Dantes, who had plunged into politics deeper than ever since the
+success of the Revolution, was frequently in consultation with the
+Republican leaders, and many of them visited him at his residence and
+were closeted with him for hours at a time; but, though seemingly
+engrossed in State affairs, the Deputy did not lose sight of his son and
+daughter, or of the mysterious complication that Vampa was expected to
+make clear. Ali had strict orders to watch both Zuleika and Esperance,
+and to report to his master whatever they did when at home in his
+absence, but the faithful Nubian found nothing amiss, save that the
+young people seemed burdened with a sorrow he could not fathom.
+
+At length, when the two weeks that it would take to hear from Rome had
+expired, M. Lamartine called one morning at the mansion in the Rue du
+Helder, and having finished his business with M. Dantes was invited by
+his host to remain to lunch. The repast was served in the
+salle-a-manger, Esperance and Zuleika partaking of it with their father
+and his illustrious guest. When the edibles had been removed and the
+party were taking wine at the dining-table, M. Dantes, suddenly
+remembering that he had an engagement, begged M. Lamartine to excuse him
+and remain with his son and daughter until his return, that would be in
+half an hour at the utmost. This arrangement effected, the Deputy arose
+from his chair, threw his cloak over his arm and was about to take his
+departure, when Ali appeared on the threshold of the open doorway,
+bearing in his hand a letter. Instantly divining that this was Vampa's
+answer, upon which hung Massetti's fate and his own, Esperance leaped to
+his feet and fixed his wild and staring eyes on the ominous missive as
+if he would read its contents through its folds. Zuleika retained her
+seat, but lifted her hands in terror and stared at the letter with
+pallid cheeks and blanched lips. Even Lamartine turned in his chair and,
+holding his glass in his hand, gazed wonderingly at the Nubian and the
+epistle. M. Dantes alone seemed unmoved, and his pale countenance gave
+no sign of the emotion struggling in his breast; he stood like a man of
+iron, and extending his hand took the letter without a tremor. It was
+enclosed in a curiously-fashioned envelope, evidently made by the writer
+himself, and bore the Roman postmark; the direction, written in bold,
+scrawling, but perfectly legible characters, read: "M. Edmond Dantes,
+Deputy from Marseilles, No. 27 Rue du Helder, Paris, France. Personal
+and private." This direction was in French.
+
+Ali having retired, the Deputy calmly broke the seal and hurriedly ran
+his eyes over the missive. Esperance and Zuleika eagerly and
+breathlessly watched his countenance while he read, but it was as
+impassable as a countenance chiseled from marble; when he had finished
+he turned to Esperance and without a word handed him the letter. For a
+moment the young man trembled so he could not read; cold perspiration
+stood in heavy beads upon his forehead, and vivid flashes of red passed
+before his eyes like sheets of lurid lightning. What thoughts, what
+suspicions, what dread shot through his tortured mind in that brief
+moment, making it seem an eternity of suffering! At last, steadying and
+controlling himself by a supreme effort, he read the missive from which
+he had feared such terrible consequences. It was in Italian, and ran as
+follows:
+
+
+     HIS EXCELLENCY, THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO: You ask me to answer
+     your questions, and I comply. Pasquale Solara's daughter,
+     Annunziata, was abducted, from her father's peasant-home by
+     Giovanni Massetti, known as the Viscount Massetti, who is, no
+     doubt, the person to whom you allude as now in Paris, for he has
+     disappeared from Rome. You are right in assuming that he had aid.
+     He was assisted by a young Frenchman, and that young Frenchman was
+     your son, Esperance. Annunziata suffered the usual fate of abducted
+     peasant girls, and was deserted by her dastardly abductor in a
+     fastness controlled by my band. When the abduction took place,
+     Annunziata's brother strove to rescue her, but was attacked and
+     killed by Massetti. Through my means the girl was returned to her
+     home, but she was miserable there and fled; she is now in an asylum
+     for unfortunate women founded at Civita Vecchia by the Order of
+     Sisters of Refuge, and superintended by a French lady, a Madame
+     Helena de Rancogne, who, as is said, was formerly called the
+     Countess of Monte-Cristo.[1] It is due to your son to say that he
+     was entirely misled in regard to the abduction of Annunziata
+     Solara, and is altogether innocent of crime or intention to commit
+     it. The whole burden of guilt rests upon the shoulders of the
+     Viscount Massetti, who, I believe, compelled your son at the
+     pistol's mouth to take a fearful oath of silence.
+                                                      LUIGI VAMPA.
+
+
+When Esperance had read this letter that so effectually cleared him, and
+was such a fearful arraignment of the Viscount Massetti, he restored it
+to his father and sank into his chair utterly overcome by the terrible
+excitement and mental strain through which he had passed. M. Dantes
+forced him to swallow a glass of wine that partially restored him; then,
+turning to M. Lamartine, who had been an astonished spectator of this
+strange and to him incomprehensible family scene, he said:
+
+"My dear friend, you are amazed, and you have a right to be. This letter
+that has caused my son and daughter so much emotion comes from a Roman
+brigand chief, no other than Luigi Vampa, whose name is notorious
+throughout Europe. You will understand its importance when I inform you
+that it conclusively clears my son of an exceedingly grave charge."
+
+M. Lamartine arose and took Esperance by the hand.
+
+"I heartily congratulate you," said he.
+
+"And Giovanni Massetti?" asked Zuleika, in a tremulous voice.
+
+"Giovanni Massetti is unworthy of my daughter's hand!" replied M.
+Dantes.
+
+"Let me see that letter," said Zuleika, her cheek growing paler and her
+heart beating tumultuously.
+
+Her father gave it to her. She took it and read each line with an
+intensity of interest that was painful to behold. When she had reached
+the end, her eyes suddenly lighted up and the color came rushing back to
+her pallid cheeks.
+
+"Esperance," she said, facing her brother with an air of resolution
+beneath which he quailed, "Luigi Vampa has not told all! Something he
+has kept back, and that something you know. What is it? Speak!"
+
+"Luigi Vampa has told the truth!" replied the young man, doggedly.
+
+"Yes, but not the whole truth. What has he kept back?"
+
+Esperance shook his head.
+
+"He has told the truth!" he repeated.
+
+"Did the Viscount Massetti administer the oath of silence to you?"
+
+"He did."
+
+"Then who administered that oath to Giovanni?"
+
+The young man did not answer.
+
+"There is some mystery about this complicated affair yet unexplained,
+and until it is explained I cannot believe Giovanni Massetti guilty!"
+
+"Come, come, my daughter," said M. Dantes, soothingly, "your heart
+speaks and not your mind."
+
+"My heart and mind both speak, papa," replied Zuleika, "and both say
+that Giovanni Massetti is innocent."
+
+"Let him prove it then."
+
+"I feel certain that he can and will."
+
+"Well, well, child, go to Madame Dantes and take counsel of her. Only a
+woman can heal a young girl's love wounds."
+
+Zuleika quitted the salle-a-manger, her countenance yet bearing the
+stamp of an inflexible belief and a fixed determination.
+
+"Esperance," said M. Dantes, "your honor is unstained and you are
+restored to my heart. I thank God for the blessings of this day!"
+
+"You are a true father, Edmond, as well as a true patriot," said M.
+Lamartine, "and I feel assured that your son will be worthy of you and
+of our beloved France."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That very day Giovanni Massetti received an unsigned little note,
+written in a tiny feminine hand. It was phrased thus:
+
+
+     "I believe you innocent in spite of all! Prove to me and to the
+     world that you are so."
+
+
+Enclosed in this little note was Luigi Vampa's letter to M. Dantes.
+
+The next morning it became known that the Viscount Massetti had
+disappeared from Paris. Gossip assigned a thousand scandalous motives
+for his sudden flight, but gossip could form no idea as to whither he
+had fled. Zuleika[2] however, knew that he had returned to Italy to
+clear his name and prove himself worthy of her love!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The exceedingly romantic history of Madame de Rancogne will be found
+in that fascinating and absorbing novel, "The Countess of Monte-Cristo,"
+published by Messrs. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, a wonderful book that
+everybody should read.
+
+[2] A full account, from this point, of the life and remarkable career
+of "Zuleika, the Daughter of Monte-Cristo," will be found in the
+brilliant, original, and absorbing novel just published by T. B.
+Peterson & Brothers, Philadelphia, in uniform style with "Edmond
+Dantes," entitled "MONTE-CRISTO'S DAUGHTER," being the Sequel to
+Alexander Dumas' famous novel, "The Count of Monte-Cristo," and
+Conclusion of "Edmond Dantes." "MONTE-CRISTO'S DAUGHTER" will be found
+to be of unflagging interest, abounding in ardent love scenes and
+stirring adventures, while the Count of Monte-Cristo figures largely in
+it, and many of the original Monte-Cristo characters are also introduced
+into the volume, making it in point of brilliancy, power, and absorbing
+interest fully equal to its famous predecessors.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Edmond Dantes, by Edmund Flagg
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