Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 2).djvu/219

201 being rich, possesses a vessel of Ms own. Go but to Portsmouth or Southampton, and you will find the harbors crowded with the yachts belonging to such of the English as have the same fancy. Now, by way of having a resting-place during his excursions, to avoid the wretched cookery which has been poisoning me during the last four months and you for four years, and to have a bed on which it is possible to slumber, Monte-Cristo has furnished for himself a little dwelling where you first found him. When his little dwelling was finished he feared that the Tuscan Government might bid him be off and all his expenses lost; there fore, he bought the island and assumed its name. Just ask yourself, my good fellow, whether there are not many persons of our acquaintance who assume the names of properties they never had in possession?"

"But," said Franz, "how do you account for the circumstance of the Corsican bandits being among the crew of his vessel?"

"Why, really, the thing seems to me simple enough. Nobody knows better than yourself that the bandits of Corsica are not thieves, but purely and simply fugitives, driven by some vendetta from their native town or village, and that their fellowship involves no disgrace; for my own part, I protest that, should I ever visit Corsica, my first visit, ere even I presented myself to the mayor or governor, should be to the bandits of Colomba, if I could only manage to find them; for I admire them."

"Still," persisted Franz, "Vampa and his band have no other motive than plunder when they seize your person. How do you explain the influence the count has over those ruffians?"

"My good friend, as in all probability I owe my life to that influence, it would ill become me to search too closely into its source; therefore, instead of condemning him, you must give me leave to excuse him; not altogether for preserving my life, for my own idea was that it never was in much danger, but certainly for saving me four thousand piastres, which, being translated, means neither more nor less than twenty-four thousand livres of our money a sum at which, most assuredly, I should never have been estimated in France; proving most indisputably," added Albert, with a laugh, "that no prophet is honored in his own country."

"Talking of countries," replied Franz, "what country does the count come from? what is his native tongue, his means of existence, and from whence does he derive his immense fortune, and what were those events of his early life a life as mysterious as unknown that have tinctured his succeeding years with so dark and gloomy a misanthropy? Certainly these are questions that, in your place, I should like to have answered."