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You were not here when, in the court-room, I flung my hatred and my loathing at the head of the Procureur du Roi at the head of my father, Monsieur de Villefort. And do you know the name of my mother?" "It was never given." "I will tell it to you, nevertheless. She was Madame Danglars." The banker started to his feet, his whole frame twitching nervously. "It is not true! It is not true!" he cried.
Villefort stepped forward two or three paces, and beheld his child lying no doubt asleep on the sofa. The unhappy man uttered an exclamation of joy; a ray of light seemed to penetrate the abyss of despair and darkness. He had only to step over the corpse, enter the boudoir, take the child in his arms, and flee far, far away.
"Well," said Renee, "I cannot help regretting you had not chosen some other profession than your own a physician, for instance. Do you know I always felt a shudder at the idea of even a destroying angel?" "Dear, good Renee," whispered Villefort, as he gazed with unutterable tenderness on the lovely speaker.
Do you say that M. Noirtier disinherits Mademoiselle de Villefort because she is going to marry M. le Baron Franz d'Epinay?" "Yes, sir, that is the reason," said Villefort, shrugging his shoulders. "The apparent reason, at least," said Madame de Villefort. "The real reason, madame, I can assure you; I know my father."
"Gentlemen," said the physician quietly, "you know I am a sensible man; why should I try to tell you a fable?" "But I was at the funeral," stammered Flambois. "I also, and yet I tell you the dead woman lives," persisted D'Avigny, "or if we want to call it by its proper name, Valentine de Villefort is dead and the daughter of Naya and the Rajah Duttjah lives."
"Madame," replied Villefort, with a mournful smile, "I have already had the honor to observe that my father has at least, I hope so abjured his past errors, and that he is, at the present moment, a firm and zealous friend to religion and order a better royalist, possibly, than his son; for he has to atone for past dereliction, while I have no other impulse than warm, decided preference and conviction."
The valet de chambre announced M. de Villefort at the moment when the count, leaning over a large table, was tracing on a map the route from St. Petersburg to China. The procureur entered with the same grave and measured step he would have employed in entering a court of justice.
M. D'Avrigny soon restored the magistrate to consciousness, who had looked like a second corpse in that chamber of death. "Oh, death is in my house!" cried Villefort. "Say, rather, crime!" replied the doctor. "M. d'Avrigny," cried Villefort, "I cannot tell you all I feel at this moment, terror, grief, madness."
"And who are fully as well worth loving and tending as M. Noirtier," said Madame de Villefort; "besides, they are to come to Paris in about a month, and Valentine, after the affront she has received, need not consider it necessary to continue to bury herself alive by being shut up with M. Noirtier." The count listened with satisfaction to this tale of wounded self-love and defeated ambition.
I am on the earth to punish, madame," he added, with a flaming glance; "any other woman, were it the queen herself, I would send to the executioner; but to you I shall be merciful. To you I will say, 'Have you not, madame, put aside some of the surest, deadliest, most speedy poison?" "Oh, pardon me, sir; let me live!" "She is cowardly," said Villefort. "Reflect that I am your wife!"
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