Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 1).djvu/126

106 Villefort, in his turn, uttered a sigh that resembled a sob, and sank into a chair.

At the bottom of his diseased heart, the first roots of a mortal ulcer were forming. The man he sacrificed to his ambition, that innocent victim he made pay the penalty of his father's faults, appeared to him pale and threatening, leading his affianced bride by the hand, and bringing with him remorse, not such as the ancients figured, furious and terrible, but that slow and consuming agony which, at times, strikes the heart and lacerates it with recollections of past deeds,—a laceration whose poignant pangs increase and deepen the evil till death comes. Then he had a moment's hesitation. He had frequently called, without any other emotion than that of the struggle between the prosecution and defense, for capital punishment on criminals, and owing to his irresistible eloquence they had been condemned, and yet the slightest shadow of remorse had never clouded Villefort's brow, because they were guilty, or, at least, he believed so; but here the case was different. He was about to send into perpetual imprisonment an innocent man, an innocent man with a happy future before him, and was destroying not only his liberty, but his happiness. In this case he was not the judge, but the executioner.

As he thus reflected, he felt the sensation we have described, and which had hitherto been unknown to him, arise in his bosom and fill him with vague apprehensions. It is thus that a wounded man trembles instinctively at the approach of the finger to his wound until it be healed, but Villefort's was one of those that never close, or, if they do, only close to re-open more agonizing than ever. If at this moment the sweet voice of Renée had sounded in his ears pleading for mercy, or the fair Mercédѐs had entered and said, "In the name of God, I conjure you to restore me my affianced husband," his cold and trembling hands would have signed his release at any risk; but no voice broke the stillness of the chamber, and the door was opened only by Villefort's valet, who came to tell him the traveling-carriage was in readiness.

Villefort rose, or rather sprang, from his chair, hastily opened one of the drawers of his secrétaire, emptied all the gold it contained into his pocket, stood motionless an instant, his hand pressed to his head, muttered a few inarticulate sounds, and then, perceiving his servant had placed his cloak on his shoulders, he sprang into the carriage, ordering the postilions to go, Rue du Grand Cours, to the house of M. de Saint-Méran.

The wretched Dantѐs was condemned.

As the marquis had promised, Villefort found the marquise and Renée in the parlor. He started when he saw Renée, for he fancied she