The Count of Monte Cristo

Bertuccio Confesses to a Past Assassination

Bertuccio falls at Monte Cristo’s feet and confesses that his vengeance was accomplished in this house—someone was assassinated here. When the Count points out that this is the house of the Marquis de Saint-Méran, Bertuccio clarifies the assassination was not of him but of another. Bertuccio insists it was fate that led Monte Cristo to purchase this particular house where his crime occurred. The Count descended to the garden by the same staircase the victim used, stopped at the spot where he received the blow, and two paces farther lies the grave where a child had just been buried.

Monte Cristo Confronts Bertuccio’s Secret

Monte Cristo warns Bertuccio that in France, unlike Italy, vendettas are considered in very bad taste—gendarmes occupy themselves with such affairs, judges condemn, and scaffolds avenge. The Count examines Bertuccio coldly, comparing his look to that bent upon an execution in Rome. He mentions that the Abbé Busoni recommended Bertuccio with a letter of praise, but now Monte Cristo will write to the abbé holding him responsible for his protégé’s misconduct. Bertuccio protests his faithful service and declares he has always been an honest man. Monte Cristo observes that a quiet conscience does not cause such paleness and fever in a man’s hands.

Bertuccio Accuses M. de Villefort of Wrongdoing

Monte Cristo’s cloak-concealed figure reminds Bertuccio of M. de Villefort, prompting him to reveal that it was indeed Villefort involved in the events. When Bertuccio declares that this man with his spotless reputation was actually a villain, Monte Cristo finds it impossible to believe. Bertuccio insists his accusation is true. Monte Cristo asks if he has proof, and Bertuccio admits he had proof but lost it—though it might be recovered through careful search.

Monte Cristo Agrees to Hear Bertuccio’s Tale

Monte Cristo sits on a garden bench and tells Bertuccio to collect himself and tell everything. Bertuccio admits he has only related the story once before, to the Abbé Busoni during confession in the prison at Nîmes, and that such things are only told under the seal of confession. Monte Cristo responds sarcastically that he refers Bertuccio to his confessor—whether he becomes a Trappist or Chartreux—but makes clear he will not keep servants afraid to walk in his garden, nor does he want a visit from the commissary of police. Fearing dismissal would mean the scaffold, Bertuccio agrees to tell everything, and Monte Cristo listens as the steward begins to collect his thoughts.

Chapter 44. The Vendetta

Bertuccio began his tale in 1815. He had a brother, an elder, a lieutenant in a Corsican regiment, his only friend. The brother had married and joined the army for the Hundred Days; slightly wounded at Waterloo, he retired with the army beyond the Loire. A letter came asking Bertuccio to leave money for him at Nîmes. Bertuccio loved his brother and resolved to take the money in person.

He loaded his boat, sailed to Arles, and reached Nîmes to find the streets running with blood from the massacres of Trestaillon’s band. His brother had been assassinated the previous evening at the door of the very house where he sought shelter; no one durst name the murderers. Bertuccio went to the king’s attorney—“His name was Villefort. He came from Marseilles”—and begged for justice and a pension for the widow. Villefort replied that the brother had perished by the sword and that government owed the family nothing. Bertuccio declared the vendetta: “I will kill you.”

From that day he followed Villefort as a shadow. For three months he watched, discovering at last that the magistrate went secretly to Auteuil, where the Marquis de Saint-Méran owned a house. A young and handsome woman of eighteen or nineteen, evidently soon to be a mother, waited for him in the garden. “And,” asked the count, “did you ever know the name of this woman?” “No, excellency,” replied Bertuccio; “you will see that I had no time to learn it.”

Bertuccio climbed the wall and waited. At midnight a faint light appeared; Villefort emerged with a spade, and Bertuccio saw him dig a hole and lift from his mantle a box two feet long and six inches deep. Before Villefort could fill the hole, Bertuccio rushed upon him: “I am Giovanni Bertuccio; thy death for my brother’s; thy treasure for his widow.” He felt the blood gush over his face, and in a delirium of vengeance dragged the box to the river.

Within it lay a new-born child, purple and suffocated. Bertuccio inflated its lungs; after a quarter of an hour it breathed. The count asked what he had done with the child. “It was an embarrassing load for a man seeking to escape,” Bertuccio answered. He left it at the asylum in the Rue d’Enfer, after cutting the linen in two pieces—one half marked with the letter H and an N, surmounted by a baron’s coronet. “What letters were marked on the linen?” asked Monte Cristo. “An H and an N,” said Bertuccio, “surmounted by a baron’s coronet.” “By heaven, M. Bertuccio, you make use of heraldic terms; where did you study heraldry?” “In your service, excellency, where everything is learned.”

He returned to Rogliano and told Assunta, his sister-in-law, that Israel was avenged. She persuaded him to reclaim the child, and within months little Benedetto was restored to them. The boy proved perverse from infancy, cunning and greedy, the embodiment of his true father’s blood. At twelve he refused to join his uncle’s smuggling life. “Did you not say something of an infant?” the count inquired. “I thought you did; I must have been mistaken.” “No, you were not,” replied Bertuccio, “for it was in reality a little boy. But your excellency wished to know two things; what was the second?” “The second,” said the count, “was the crime of which you were accused when you asked for a confessor, and the Abbé Busoni came to visit you at your request in the prison at Nîmes.”

In June 1829, on the evening of the third, Bertuccio’s vessel was trapped by custom-house officers on the Rhône. He sprang into the river, dived, and reached the ditch leading to the canal.

At the inn of his old colleague Caderousse, on the road from Bellegarde to Beaucaire, he hid in a shed adjoining the kitchen. Caderousse entered with a stranger—a Parisian jeweller named Joannes, come to purchase a diamond. La Carconte, trembling with cupidity, told the story of the bequest from Edmond Dantès through the Abbé Busoni. Joannes offered forty-five thousand francs. Caderousse wavered, but La Carconte urged him to sell. They counted the gold and notes; a storm broke; Caderousse directed the jeweller to the right-hand road to Beaucaire. The jeweller refused to stay and departed, pistols in his pocket.

A knocking came at the door. It was Joannes, drenched, returned. La Carconte opened wide; Caderousse sank pale into his chair. La Carconte double-locked the door behind the unsuspecting guest.