The Count of Monte Cristo

“Fernand,” answered Mercédès, shaking her head, “a woman becomes a bad manager, and who shall say she will remain an honest woman, when she loves another man better than her husband? Rest content with my friendship, for I repeat to you that is all I can promise, and I will promise no more than I can bestow.”

“I understand,” replied Fernand, “you can endure your own wretchedness patiently, but you are afraid of mine. Well, Mercédès, beloved by you, I would tempt fortune; you would bring me good luck, and I should become rich. I could extend my occupation as a fisherman, might get a place as clerk in a warehouse, and become myself a dealer in time.”

“You could do no such thing, Fernand; you are a soldier, and if you remain at the Catalans it is because there is not a war; so remain a fisherman, and contented with my friendship, as I cannot give you more.”

“Well, you are right, Mercédès. I will be a sailor; instead of the costume of our fathers, which you despise, I will wear a varnished hat, a striped shirt, and a blue jacket with an anchor on the buttons. Would not that dress please you?”

“What do you mean?” asked Mercédès, darting at him an angry glance,—“what do you mean? I do not understand you.”

“I mean, Mercédès, that you are thus harsh and cruel with me, because you are expecting some one who is thus attired; but, perhaps, he you await is inconstant, or, if he is not, the sea is so to him.”

“Fernand!” cried Mercédès, “I believed you were good hearted, and I was mistaken! Fernand, you are wicked to call to your aid jealousy and the anger of God! Yes, I will not deny it, I do await, and I do love him to whom you allude; and, if he does not return, instead of accusing him of the inconstancy which you insinuate, I will tell you that he died loving me and me only.”

The young Catalan made a gesture of rage.

“I understand you, Fernand; you would be revenged on him because I do not love you; you would cross your Catalan knife with his dirk. What end would that answer? To lose you my friendship if he were conquered, and see that friendship changed into hate if you were conqueror. Believe me, to seek a quarrel with a man is a bad method of pleasing the woman who loves that man. No, Fernand, you will not thus give way to evil thoughts. Unable to have me for your wife, you will content yourself with having me for your friend and sister; and besides,” she added, her eyes troubled and moistened with tears, “wait, wait, Fernand, you said just now that the sea was treacherous, and he has been gone four months, and during these four months we have had some terrible storms.”

Fernand made no reply, nor did he attempt to check the tears which flowed down the cheeks of Mercédès, although for each of these tears he would have shed his heart’s blood; but these tears flowed for another. He arose, paced awhile up and down the hut, and then, suddenly stopping before Mercédès, with his eyes glowing and his hands clenched:

“Say, Mercédès,” he said, “once for all, is this your final determination?”

“I love Edmond Dantès,” the young girl calmly replied, “and none but Edmond shall ever be my husband.”

“And you will always love him?”

“As long as I live.”

Fernand let fall his head like a defeated man, heaved a sigh which resembled a groan, and then, suddenly looking her full in the face, with clenched teeth and expanded nostrils, said:

“But if he is dead———”

“If he is dead, I shall die too.”

“If he has forgotten you———”

“Mercédès!” cried a voice joyously, outside the house,—“Mercédès!”

“Ah!” exclaimed the young girl, blushing with delight, and springing up with love, “you see he has not forgotten me, for here he is!” And rushing towards the door, she opened it, saying, “Here, Edmond, here I am!”

Fernand, pale and trembling, receded like a traveller at the sight of a serpent, and fell into a chair beside him.

Edmond and Mercédès were clasped in each other’s arms. The burning sun of Marseilles, which penetrated the room by the open door, covered them with a flood of light. At first they saw nothing around them. Their intense happiness isolated them from all the rest of the world, and they only spoke in broken words, which are the tokens of a joy so extreme that they seem rather the expression of sorrow.

Suddenly Edmond saw the gloomy countenance of Fernand, as it was defined in the shadow, pale and threatening. By a movement, for which he could scarcely account to himself, the young Catalan placed his hands on the knife at his belt.

“Ah! your pardon,” said Dantès, frowning in his turn. “I did not perceive that there were three of us.” Then, turning to Mercédès, he inquired, “Who is this gentleman?”

“One who will be your best friend, Dantès, for he is my friend, my cousin, my brother,—it is Fernand—the man whom, after you, Edmond, I love the most in the world. Do you not remember him?”

“Yes,” said Edmond, and without relinquishing Mercédès’ hand clasped in one of his own, he extended the other to the Catalan with a cordial air.

But Fernand, instead of responding to this amicable gesture, remained mute and trembling.

Edmond then cast his eyes scrutinisingly at Mercédès, agitated and embarrassed, and then again on Fernand, gloomy and menacing.

“I did not know, when I came with such haste to you, that I was to meet an enemy here.”

“An enemy!” cried Mercédès, with an angry look at her cousin. “An enemy in my house, do you say, Edmond! If I believed that, I would place my arm under yours and go with you to Marseilles, leaving the house to return to it no more.”

Fernand’s eye darted lightning.

“And, should any misfortune occur to you, dear Edmond,” she continued, with the same calmness, which proved to Fernand that the young girl had read the very innermost depths of his sinister thought, “if misfortune should occur to you, I would ascend the highest point of the Cape de Morgion, and cast myself headlong from it.”

Fernand became deadly pale.

“But you are deceived, Edmond,” she continued. “You have no enemy here—there is no one but Fernand, my brother, who will grasp your hand as a devoted friend.”

And at these words the young girl fixed her imperious look on the Catalan, who, as if fascinated by it, came slowly towards Edmond, and offered him his hand.

His hatred, like a powerless though furious wave, was broken against the strong ascendancy which Mercédès exercised over him.

Scarcely, however, had he touched Edmond’s hand than he felt he had done all he could do, and rushed hastily out of the house.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, running furiously and tearing his hair—“oh! who will deliver me from this man? Wretched—wretched that I am!”

“Hallo, Catalan! Hallo, Fernand! where are you running to?” exclaimed a voice.

The young man stopped suddenly, looked around him, and perceived Caderousse sitting at table with Danglars under an arbour.

“Well,” said Caderousse, “why don’t you come? Are you really in such a hurry that you have not time to say, ‘how do’ to your friends?”

“Particularly when they have still a full bottle before them,” added Danglars. Fernand looked at them both with a stupefied air, but did not say a word.

“He seems besotted,” said Danglars, pushing Caderousse with his knee. “Are we mistaken, and is Dantès triumphant in spite of all we have believed?”

“Why, we must inquire into that,” was Caderousse’s reply; and turning towards the young man, said, “Well, Catalan, can’t you make up your mind?”

Fernand wiped away the perspiration steaming from his brow, and slowly entered the arbour, whose shade seemed to restore somewhat of calmness to his senses, and whose coolness, somewhat of refreshment to his exhausted body.

“Good day,” said he. “You called me, didn’t you?” And he fell rather than sat down on one of the seats which surrounded the table.

“I called you because you were running like a madman; and I was afraid you would throw yourself into the sea,” said Caderousse, laughing. “Why! when a man has friends, they are not only to offer him a glass of wine, but, moreover, to prevent his swallowing three or four pints of water unnecessarily!”

Fernand gave a groan, which resembled a sob, and dropped his head into his hands, his elbows leaning on the table.

“Well, Fernand, I must say,” said Caderousse, beginning the conversation, with that brutality of the common people, in which curiosity destroys all diplomacy, “you look uncommonly like a rejected lover;” and he burst into a hoarse laugh.

“Bah!” said Danglars, “a lad of his make was not born to be unhappy in love. You are laughing at him, Caderousse!”