Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 1).djvu/128

108 she had returned to the Catalans, and had despairingly cast herself on her couch. Feruand, kneeling by her side, took her hand and covered it with kisses that Mercédѐs did not even feel. She passed the night thus; the lamp died out for want of oil, she saw neither light nor dark, and the day returned without her noticing it. Grief had made her blind to all but one object—that was Edmond.

"Ah! you are there," said she, at length.

"I have not quitted you since yesterday," returned Fernand sorrowfully.

M. Morrel had learned that Dantѐs had been conducted to prison, and he had gone to all his friends and the influential persons of the city, but the report was already in circulation that Dantѐs was arrested as a Bonapartist agent; and as the most sanguine looked upon any attempt of Napoleon to remount the throne as impossible, he met with nothing but coldness, alarm, and refusal, and had returned home in despair, confessing that Dantѐs was in a dangerous position, beyond his aid.

Caderousse was equally restless and uneasy, but, instead of seeking to aid Dantѐs, he had shut himself up with two bottles of wine, in the hope of drowning reflection. But he did not succeed, and became too intoxicated to fetch any more wine, and yet not so intoxicated as to forget what had happened, and as he leaned on his shaky table, opposite his two empty bottles, he saw in the flare of his dull candle all the specters of Hoffmann's punch-inspired tales.

Danglars alone was content and joyous—he had got rid of an enemy and preserved his situation on board the Pharaon. Danglars was one of those men born with a pen behind the ear and an inkstand in place of a heart. Everything with him was multiplication or subtraction, and he estimated the life of a man as less precious than a figure, when that figure could increase, and that life would diminish, the total of the amount.

Villefort, after having received M. de Salvieux's letter, embraced Renée, kissed the marquise's hand, and shaken hands with the marquis, started for Paris.

Old Dantѐs was dying with anxiety, and, as regards Edmond, we know what had become of him.