Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 3).djvu/267

Rh last, as I seemed to cling to life, I was ordered to the south. Four men carried me from Paris to Chalons, walking six leagues a day. Madame de Villefort followed the litter in her carriage. At Chalons I was put upon the Saone, thence I passed on to the Rhone, whence I descended, merely with the current, to Aries; at Aries I was again placed on my litter, and continued my journey to Marseilles. My recovery lasted ten months. I never heard you mentioned, and I did not dare inquire for you. When I returned to Paris, I learned that, widow of M. de Nargonne, you had married M. Danglars.

"What had been the subject of my thoughts ever since consciousness had returned to me? Always the same always the child's corpse, which, every night in my dreams, rising from the earth, fixed itself above the grave with a menacing look and gesture. I inquired immediately on my return to Paris; the house had not been inhabited since we left it, but it had just been let for nine years. I found the tenant. I pretended that I disliked the idea of a house belonging to my wife's father and mother passing into the hands of strangers. I offered to pay them for yielding up the lease; they demanded six thousand francs. I would have given ten thousand. I would have given twenty thousand. I had the money with me; I made the tenant sign the canceling deed, and when I had obtained what I so much wanted, I galloped to Auteuil. No one had entered the house since I had left it. It was five o'clock in the afternoon; I ascended into the red room, and waited for night. There all the thoughts which had disturbed me during my year of constant agony occurred with double force. The Corsican, who had declared the vendetta against me, who had followed me from Nîmes to Paris, who had hid himself in the garden, who had struck me, had seen me dig the grave, had seen me inter the child; he might become acquainted with your person—nay, he might even then have known it. Would he not one day make you pay for keeping this terrible secret I Would it not be a sweet revenge for him when he found I had not died from the blow of his dagger? It was therefore necessary, before everything else, and at all risks, that I should cause all traces of the past to disappear—that I should destroy every material vestige: too much reality would always remain in my recollection. It was for this I had annulled the lease—it was for this I had come—it was for this I was waiting.

"Night arrived; I allowed it to become quite dark. I was without a light in that room; when the wind shook all the doors, behind which I continually expected to see some concealed spy, I trembled. I seemed everywhere to hear your moans behind me in the bed, and I dared not turn round. My heart beat so violently that I feared my wound would