Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 4).djvu/188

170 Albert hesitated a moment. "You may think my departure strange and foolish," said the young man; "you know not how a paragraph in a newspaper may exasperate. Read that," said he, "when I am gone, that you may not be witness of my anger."

While the count picked up the paper Albert put spurs to his horse, which, astonished that his rider should deem such a stimulus necessary, started with the rapidity of an arrow. The count watched him with a feeling of compassion, and when he had completely disappeared, read as follows:

"The French officer in the service of Ali, Pacha of Janina, alluded to three weeks since in the Impartial, who not only surrendered the castle of Janina, but sold his benefactor to the Turks, styled himself truly at that time Fernand, as our honorable brother states; but he has since added to his Christian name a title of nobility and a family name. He now calls himself the Count of Morcerf, and ranks among the peers."

Thus this terrible secret, which Beauchamp had so generously destroyed, appeared again as an armed phantom; and another paper, cruelly informed, had published, two days after Albert's departure for Normandy, the few lines which had almost distracted the unfortunate young man.