M. Noirtier de Villefort is a paralytic, able only to communicate through eye movements, and his only remaining joy in life is his granddaughter Valentine. When Villefort and his wife visit to announce her impending marriage to Franz d’Épinay, Noirtier’s eyes flash with rage: he detests Franz’s father, a royalist general assassinated in 1815, whose death was tied to Noirtier’s own Bonapartist political activities. When Valentine arrives, she deciphers his signals to learn he wants a notary brought to the house to draft a will disinheriting her if she goes through with the marriage. The notaries arrive, confirm Noirtier is of sound mind despite his physical paralysis, and he dictates his will: he leaves his entire 900,000 franc fortune to charity, explicitly disinheriting Valentine to protest the match. Villefort is furious but declares he will not revoke the will, and will still marry Valentine to Franz anyway, to keep his word to the d’Épinay family.
When the Villeforts return home later that evening, they find the Count of Monte Cristo waiting in their drawing room. Villefort complains bitterly about his father’s petty cruelty, and Monte Cristo feigns polite concern, pushing him to stick to the marriage to preserve his reputation and keep his promise to the d’Épinays. When Villefort mentions the country house he recently purchased in Auteuil—No. 28 Rue de la Fontaine, formerly owned by M. de Saint-Méran—Monte Cristo confirms it is his own home, a fact that visibly unsettles Villefort, who had hoped to buy the property himself. Monte Cristo then announces he is heading out to visit a rural telegraph station, launching into a long, whimsical meditation on the semaphore system: how as a child he imagined the moving iron arms were the claws of a magical insect, run by a hidden genius, only to learn as an adult they are operated by a low-paid, uneducated worker who has no idea what the messages he transmits mean, just moving levers for a paltry 1,000 franc annual salary. He declines an offer of a letter to the minister to get a tour of the official Parisian telegraphs, saying he wants to keep his illusions about the machine intact, and asks for directions to the nearest rural line.
As Monte Cristo leaves the Villeforts’ home, he passes the two notaries who have just finished drafting Noirtier’s will, disinheriting Valentine as planned. He sets off toward the Barrière d’Enfer, heading for the telegraph tower at Montlhéry, the first step in his plan to manipulate the stock market and ruin Baron Danglars, whose reckless speculation and tainted wealth have made him a key target in Monte Cristo’s slow, meticulous campaign of revenge against the men who destroyed his life.
Chapter 62. Ghosts – Chapter 71. Bread and Salt
The house at Auteuil had been transformed in mere days, as if a sleeping palace had been woken by the touch of its new master. Where the Count of Monte Cristo’s steward Bertuccio had once walked through dust and ruin, he now moved through rooms redolent of perfume, lined with books and rare porcelain, surrounded by poplars and a lawn so fresh that water still glistened upon it. Yet one chamber alone remained untouched, a room hung with red damask that Bertuccio passed with terror in his heart, for he had been the steward of this place long before Monte Cristo ever set foot within it, and in that room he had once committed what he believed to be a murder.
The guests began arriving at five o’clock. Maximilian Morrel came first, riding his Arabian Médéah and laughing as he spoke of outpacing Château-Renaud and Debray on the road. The Danglars party arrived next, the banker pale and distracted, the baroness throwing searching glances across the courtyard as she descended. The cavalcade of carriages and horsemen paused only briefly before Monte Cristo himself appeared and ushered them into the splendor of his newly awakened home.
As the steward counted heads for dinner, his eyes fell upon the woman in white diamonds. He stiffened, his hair rising. It was she, Madame Danglars, the woman he had seen in a garden at Auteuil nearly twenty years before, the woman with child, waiting while Bertuccio had driven his knife into the man she had come to meet. But the man he had killed was not a man at all, it seemed; he was Villefort himself, alive and well, sitting now at Monte Cristo’s table, the king’s procureur of Paris.
Bertuccio’s terror deepened when Monte Cristo guided his gaze to another guest, the young Andrea Cavalcanti, who stood before a Murillo Madonna with the air of an innocent. The name escaped the steward’s lips in a whisper: Benedetto. It was the child, the very child he had been told was dead. Monte Cristo silenced him with a look and ordered dinner to be served.
The feast was a marvel of the Orient, sterlet from the Volga and lamprey from Lake Fusaro presented alive in their casks, wines from the Archipelago and Asia Minor flowing freely, and conversation that touched upon politics, fortune, and old crimes. Château-Renaud mentioned that the house at Auteuil had once belonged to M. de Saint-Méran, and Morrel turned pale. Villefort sipped his wine to still a trembling hand, while Madame Danglars, sitting beside him, exchanged notes with Debray beneath the table with the practiced ease of long conspiracy.
After dinner, Monte Cristo led his guests through the transformed rooms, saving the red-draped chamber for last. He spoke of it as one might speak of a stage set for tragedy, suggesting a woman heavy with child, a man descending crooked stairs in a dark hour, a body to be hidden. Madame Danglars fainted against Villefort’s arm. When she recovered, Monte Cristo drew the company out into the garden beneath the plantain trees, and there, stamping his foot upon a spot of newly laid earth, he told them he had found a skeleton buried beneath the flowers. The bones of a newly born infant.
The guests murmured of infanticide. Villefort forced a smile and said the house had belonged to his wife’s family. Madame de Villefort, however, grew thoughtful, for she knew that Monte Cristo had once before, in the very chamber of red damask, revived her son Edward from a fatal dose of poison.
When the evening ended and the guests departed, Bertuccio remained trembling, and Monte Cristo bid him go purchase a small estate in Normandy, far from the questions that would soon be asked in Paris.
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