The Count of Monte Cristo

A Desperate Plan

It would be difficult to describe the state of stupor in which Villefort left the Palais. Every pulse beat with feverish excitement, every nerve was strained, every vein swollen. His body seemed to suffer distinctly from each part, multiplying his agony a thousand-fold. He made his way along the corridors through force of habit and threw aside his magisterial robe, not from deference to etiquette but because it was an unbearable burden—a veritable garb of Nessus, insatiate in torture. Having staggered as far as the Rue Dauphine, he perceived his carriage, awoke his sleeping coachman, threw himself on the cushions, and pointed towards the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. All the weight of his fallen fortune seemed suddenly to crush him. God was still in his heart. “God—God!” he murmured, not knowing what he said. Behind the event that had overwhelmed him, he saw the hand of God.

The Return Home

The carriage rolled rapidly onward. While turning restlessly on the cushions, Villefort felt something press against him—a fan which Madame de Villefort had left in the carriage. This awakened a recollection that darted through his mind like lightning. He thought of his wife. During the last hour his own crime had alone been presented to his mind; now another object, not less terrible, suddenly presented itself. His wife! He had just acted the inexorable judge with her, had condemned her to death, and she—a poor, weak woman without help or the power to defend herself—might at that very moment be preparing to die! An hour had elapsed since her condemnation; she was likely recalling all her crimes to memory, asking pardon for her sins, perhaps even writing a letter imploring forgiveness from her virtuous husband—a forgiveness she was purchasing with her death. “That woman became criminal only from associating with me! I carried the infection of crime with me, and she has caught it as she would the typhus fever, the cholera, the plague! And yet I have punished her—‘Repent and die!’ No, she must not die; she shall live, and with me. We will flee from Paris and go as far as the earth reaches.”