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He helped himself to some more marmalade, and poured out another cup of coffee. Nothing is more thrilling, thought he, than to be treated as a cully by the person you hold in the hollow of your hand. He knew well in what mood Zuleika had done what she had done to him last night; yet he preferred to accept her explanation of it.
Zuleika, quite untouched, would not linger in the conquered city. Agents had come to her from every capital in Europe, and, for a year, she ranged, in triumphal nomady, from one capital to another. In Berlin, every night, the students escorted her home with torches.
"Tell me," said he, addressing M. Morrel, "what is the Viscount's present condition. Is he recovering?" Maximilian looked hastily in the direction of Zuleika; the poor girl was intently watching him, eagerly waiting for his answer.
Zuleika kissed her father and quitted the library with a much lighter heart than she had entered it. M. Dantès, by the exercise of his iron will, had managed to control himself in her presence, but now that she had gone he gave free course to his emotions. For a full hour he sat leaning on his writing-table, his frame convulsed with anguish, and his mind filled with sad forebodings.
In a way, you have a perfect right to ask both those questions. But their very pertinence shows that you think I might omit things that matter. Please don't interrupt me again. Am I writing this history, or are you? Though the news that he must die was a yet sharper douche, as you have suggested, than the douche inflicted by Zuleika, it did at least leave unscathed the Duke's pride.
"But how about the coldness existing between us?" "Does it still exist on both sides?" "Not on mine, Zuleika, not on mine. I forgave and forgot all long ago." "Forgave and forgot! Then Espérance must have wronged you!" "He did, Zuleika, and with the proverbial hot blood and headlong impulses of the Roman youth I resented that wrong.
Surely, this was a high price to pay for snubbing Zuleika... Yes, he must revert without more ado to his first scheme. He must die in the manner that he had blazoned forth. And he must do it with a good grace, none knowing he was not glad; else the action lost all dignity. True, this was no way to be a saviour.
He realised, however, that to Zuleika he owed the tenderness he now felt for Miss O'Mora. It was Zuleika that had cured him of his aseity. She it was that had made his heart a warm and negotiable thing. Yes, and that was the final cruelty. To love and be loved this, he had come to know, was all that mattered. Yesterday, to love and die had seemed felicity enough.
The faithful Ali no longer deemed it necessary to maintain his precautions against surprise, and the strict watch that had been kept up day and night ever since the conflict in the almond grove was abandoned. Haydée, Zuleika and Espérance resumed their usual mode of life, having apparently dismissed the robbers from their minds, while even Monte-Cristo seemed free from all uneasiness.
For him to fall in love was itself a violent peripety, bound to produce a violent upheaval; and such was his pride that for his love to be unrequited would naturally enamour him of death. These other, these quite ordinary, young men were the victims less of Zuleika than of the Duke's example, and of one another.
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