The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 79. The Lemonade – Chapter 88. The Insult

The morning began with joy in the house on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, for Maximilian Morrel had been summoned by M. Noirtier to receive, through Valentine’s lips, the old man’s blessing on their union. Valentine spoke shyly, repeating Noirtier’s plans to leave the Villefort home, to take lodgings of her own with her grandfather, and there to await the day when Morrel would claim her hand. The lovers exchanged tender vows, and the old servant Barrois, exhausted from running through the heat, was offered a glass of lemonade from Noirtier’s decanter. Hardly had he drained it than he staggered, his face contorting, his body racked by a violent convulsion. Maximilian and Valentine cried out, and the household was thrown into chaos as Dr. d’Avrigny, arriving for his weekly visit to Noirtier, recognized the symptoms of poisoning. The lemonade was recovered, and the dying man confirmed that he had been the one to prepare and leave it in the pantry. Barrois died in agony as the doctor forced him to drink ether and water, and the household watched in helpless horror. D’Avrigny mixed syrup of violets into the remaining lemonade, and the liquid turned from blue to emerald green — a confirmation that no man in the room could deny.

The accusation fell heavily on Valentine. The doctor, looking Noirtier in the eye, traced the deaths of the Saint-Mérans, the failed attempt on the old man’s life, and now Barrois, all to one steady hand. Valentine had prepared the medicines sent to the Saint-Mérans; Valentine had brought the lemonade to her grandfather. The lawyer Villefort, clutching at straws, begged the doctor to keep the secret and preserve his daughter’s life, while Madame de Villefort watched with an icy smile as the household servants, one and all, declared that death dwelt in that house and announced they would leave at once.

Across Paris, Andrea Cavalcanti — the young adventurer, the false son of a Luccanese marquis — formally proposed marriage to Mademoiselle Danglars and received the banker’s joyful consent. With flattering words and a show of noble birth, Andrea negotiated an annual income of one hundred and seventy-five thousand livres, walked away with eighty thousand francs in ready money, and returned to his modest lodgings to find a threatening letter from Caderousse, his old accomplice from the galleys. Disguised in his servant’s livery, Andrea crossed the Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the room of the “retired baker,” where Caderoussaint awaited him with a Provençal breakfast and a plan to bleed the young man of far more than the meager two-hundred-franc stipend he had been receiving. Caderousse knew Andrea as Benedetto; he knew of the escape from the bagne at Saint-Mandrier; he knew too of the supposed inheritance awaiting his young friend. Patiently, with a glass of brandy in his hand, the one-eyed old convict drew from Andrea a full plan of the Count of Monte Cristo’s Champs-Élysées mansion, then watched the young man depart before seating himself to study the drawing with the avaricious gleam of a man preparing a robbery.

That very night, his greed drove Caderousse through the window of Monte Cristo’s dressing-room. The count, forewarned by an anonymous letter, had traveled to Auteuil only as a feint; he had returned secretly, armed himself and the mute Ali, and waited in the dark. When Caderousse felt out the secretaire with his picklocks, the room was suddenly lit, and a tall figure in priestly garb addressed him by name. It was the Abbé Busoni — or rather the Count of Monte Cristo, smiling with that terrifying calm which had carried him through so many trials. Caderousse’s dagger struck a coat of mail beneath the cassock and shattered; the count wrung the bandit’s wrist until the arm was nearly dislocated, forced him to write a letter addressed to Baron Danglars exposing Andrea Cavalcanti as Benedetto, a fugitive convict, then ordered him to descend again by the window. No sooner had Caderousse touched the ground than a hidden figure in the shadow struck him three times. Wounded, dying, the man dragged himself back toward the house, calling for the abbé to help him.

Monte Cristo, with Ali and a lantern, brought the bleeding wretch inside, revived him with three drops from a phial, and listened as Caderousse dictated the deposition naming Benedetto as his murderer. The abbé then revealed his true face, dropping the wig and speaking his own name — a name Caderousse had not heard in ten years, the name of Edmond Dantès. The dying man, struck with the knowledge of a God he had long denied, begged forgiveness even as his life’s blood ebbed away. Caderousse perished in that house, and the surgeon and procureur, summoned at the count’s order, found only the Abbé Busoni praying by the corpse.

In the weeks that followed, the attempted robbery passed into the public’s memory, eclipsed by rumors of the coming wedding between Eugénie Danglars and Count Andrea Cavalcanti. But a darker storm was gathering around the House of Morcerf. The journalist Beauchamp, who had been dispatched to Yanina to verify a damaging rumor, returned to Paris with attestations from four notables confirming that Colonel Fernand Mondego, the present Count of Morcerf, had betrayed Ali Pasha’s castle for two million crowns, sold the pasha’s wife and daughter into slavery, and fled with the price of his treachery. Confronted with this evidence, Albert Morcerf broke down in tears, but Beauchamp, true to the bond of their friendship, gave him the documents to destroy. Albert watched the last fragments curl into black ash and, with a heart rent by grief, swore to remember his deliverer forever. Yet the very secret he had burned returned: another paper, in receipt of maliciously supplied proofs, republished the accusations, and Florentin, Albert’s valet, was sent racing into Normandy to summon his young master home.

Albert arrived in Paris with fury in his breast. Beauchamp told him that it was the Count of Monte Cristo who had advised Danglars to write to Yanina in the first place; that the count had known, had planned, had set every piece of the trap. Albert rushed to the banker’s house, found Danglars pale and trembling behind his desk, and there learned the chain of treachery that bound the count to the ruin of his family. Danglars defended himself with the cowardly assurance of a man who had not lifted his own hand; he was but the secondary agent, he said. The true author of the catastrophe was Monte Cristo.