Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 5).djvu/221

Rh now reflected by the mirror in which Monte-Cristo seeks to behold Dantès. Hide thy diamonds, bury thy gold, shroud thy splendor, exchange riches for poverty, liberty for a prison, a living body for a corpse!"

As he thus reasoned, Monte-Cristo walked down the Rue de la Caisserie. It was the same through which, twenty-four years ago, he had been conducted by a silent and nocturnal guard; the houses, to-day so smiling and animated, were on that night dark, mute, and closed.

"And yet they were the same," murmured Monte-Cristo, "only now it is broad daylight instead of night; it is the sun which brightens the place, and makes it appear so cheerful."

He proceeded toward the quay by the Rue Saint-Laurent, and advanced to the Consigne; it was the point where he had embarked. A pleasure boat was passing, with its striped awning; Monte-Cristo called the owner, who immediately rowed up to him, with the eagerness of a boatman hoping for a good fare. The weather was magnificent, and the excursion a treat. The sun, red and flaming, was sinking into the water, which embraced it as it approached. The sea, smooth as crystal, was now and then disturbed by the leaping of fish, which, pursued by some unseen enemy, sought for safety in another element; while, on the extreme verge of the horizon, might be seen the fishermen's boats, white and graceful as the sea-gull, sailing toward Martigues, or the merchant vessels bound for Corsica or Spain.

But notwithstanding that serene sky, those graceful boats, and the golden light in which the whole scene was bathed, the Count of Monte-Cristo, wrapped in his cloak, could think only of this terrible voyage, the details of which were, one by one, recalled to his memory. The solitary light burning at the Catalans; that first sight of the Château-d'If, which told him whither they were leading him; the struggle with the gendarmes when he wished to throw himself overboard; his despair when he found himself vanquished, and the cold sensation of the end of the carbine touching his forehead—all these were brought before him in vivid and frightful reality.

Like those streams which the heat of the summer has dried up and which, after the autumnal storms, gradually begin to fill and drip, drop by drop, so did the count feel his heart fill, drop by drop, with the gall which formerly inundated that of Edmond Dantès. Henceforth he no longer beheld the clear sky, the graceful barks, the ardent light; the sky appeared hung in black, and the gigantic structure of the Château-d'If make him tremble as if there had suddenly appeared to him the black phantom of a mortal enemy. As they reached the shore, the count instinctively shrunk to the extreme end of the boat, and the owner was obliged to call out in his sweetest tone of voice: