The Count of Monte Cristo (The Wild and Wanton Edition) Read online

  An old man, decorated with the cross of Saint Louis, now rose and proposed the health of King Louis XVIII. It was the Marquis de Saint-Meran. This toast, recalling at once the patient exile of Hartwell and the peace-loving King of France, excited universal enthusiasm; glasses were elevated in the air a l’Anglais, and the ladies, snatching their bouquets from their fair bosoms, strewed the table with their floral treasures. In a word, an almost poetical fervor prevailed.

  “Ah,” said the Marquise de Saint-Meran, a woman with a stern, forbidding eye, though still noble and distinguished in appearance, despite her fifty years — “ah, these revolutionists, who have driven us from those very possessions they afterwards purchased for a mere trifle during the Reign of Terror, would be compelled to own, were they here, that all true devotion was on our side, since we were content to follow the fortunes of a falling monarch, while they, on the contrary, made their fortune by worshipping the rising sun; yes, yes, they could not help admitting that the king, for whom we sacrificed rank, wealth, and station was truly our ‘Louis the well-beloved,’ while their wretched usurper his been, and ever will be, to them their evil genius, their ‘Napoleon the accursed.’ Am I not right, Villefort?”

  Villefort had no ear for the evening’s conversation, his attention attuned to his betrothed and her hand beneath the crisp tablecloth. Her smooth white fingers undid his breeches and nothing on Earth could have drawn his attention away from her movements. The conversation continued around them as she took his flaccid member in hand while he stifled an inhale, almost giving the game away. She worked him slow and steady, allowing him time to grow rigid, the blood pounding in his ears as slid her hand in sharp vertical motions. The dinner party swirled around them, and this was the perfect way to celebrate his betrothal to one of the most beautiful and innocent maids at the height of social standing.

  “Are you enjoying the celebration?” Renee whispered for him alone, careful to keep the deep timbre of her voice low; a breathy tingle perfused each word she spoke against his neck.

  “My lady, I do believe it is one of the best soirees I have had the pleasure of attending.” He smirked at her, allowing her to see the jest, but she punished him, dragging her hand back up and down the length of him again. A hiss escaped his closed lips but glancing around proved no one noticed what the young Renee did beneath the table. He reached down and gently untangled her clutch.

  Villefort refastened his pants and Renee re-donned her dinner glove under the cover of the tablecloth.

  “Mademoiselle, might I have the pleasure of speaking to you alone?” Villefort asked, somewhat loud, drawing the table’s attention.

  “Of course, Monsieur.” Renee bowed her head in acquiescence, then smiled and nodded assurances at her mother and father before quietly following Villefort out the nearest door. He seized her just as the clock ticked like a cannon blast in complete silence. His hands lifted her skirts and found her seeping center in only moments. This was how it had always been between them, since the first time her quiet grin ensnared him and then the first night she snuck to an alcove to lie in his arms.

  “Why, Mademoiselle, I do believe I might help you with your little problem.” Villefort rubbed his thumb across her pearl, her skirts wrinkling, crushed between him and the door.

  “Monsieur, please, I beg you, ease me.”

  “Oh, my love, I will, once you prove to me how much you want it.” With those words, Villefort released Renee and pushed her hard to her knees. As she bent down she made quick work of the elbow length gloves encasing her slender arms. Under usual circumstances she might have removed her gloves in an almost sensual fashion and Villefort would have enjoyed watching her careful movements. Having been in this position many times before, Renee knew exactly what he enjoyed. She gripped him hard, a painful grip most men might crumple under, but he did not. Her lips closed around him, and he delved his hand into the bottom of her chignon, even then careful not to undo something they could not repair in haste.

  “Does the taste of me please you, Renee?”

  She made an unintelligible noise and continued the ministrations of her mouth as he guided her head with his hand.

  “I have yet to understand how you can play such an innocent in public yet outside the parlors and ballrooms you are wanton and completely unapologetic about it. I am honestly more concerned with the fact that no one speaks of it — none of the men in court, that is.”

  Renee lifted her head. “What leads you to the conclusion I have had many men? Perhaps I read too many novels?” Her raised eyebrow and the way her eyes suggested more than she spoke, was his undoing. He lifted her bodily by the arms and pushed her back against the door. They had made love quite a few times but never fucked, never experienced this raw, sensual passion that ignited his blood and turned her knees to gelatin. Each finger bit into the tender flesh of her hip as he pushed inside her already wet, hot center.

  She writhed in his hands, small and slight, which never failed to surprise him, her costume making up the bulk of her figure to anyone who had not the pleasure of getting beneath them.

  “Renee.” Villefort exhaled her name as he bent his knees and pumped up into her with more force. Each thrust brought on new sensations, a tingling awareness that the end was near. At this moment, no part of their bodies could be close enough, touching quiet enough, and as much skin was upon skin as possible in the rushed circumstances. The clutching and groping only increased until Villefort felt Renee’s body spasm around him; this proved the catalyst that sent him over the edge and into oblivion. In the moments after completion there always seemed to be a heavy silence, filled only with the sound of a couple’s mingled breaths and heavy heartbeats. Villefort and Renee shared a moment such as this, joined together through mashed clothes and silent panting. Even now they both knew that their relationship could grow to love from the infinite spark of their lustful natures.

  As quickly as possible while maintaining dignity, they untangled their limbs and arranged their clothes according to decorum. Villefore even checked the pins underneath her hair, ensuring not a strand was out of place. In the dim lighting of the antechamber, Renee’s skin glowed and Villefort did not resist the urge to trace a finger down the side of her face. Touching in public was not something a well born couple did and he could hardly control himself when she was near. Her coquettish smile only made him ready to take her against the door again but if they were gone too long it might be remarked upon and Villefort would not have his bride besmirched. The dinner party was as they left it, joyous and filled with revelry at their impending nuptials. Villefort helped Renee into her chair and took his own, turning to address the marquise.

  “I beg your pardon, Madame. I really must pray you to excuse me, but — in truth — I was not attending to the conversation.”

  “Marquise, marquise!” interposed the old nobleman who had proposed the toast, “let the young people alone; let me tell you, on one’s wedding day there are more agreeable subjects of conversation than dry politics.”

  “Never mind, dearest mother,” said a young and lovely girl, with a profusion of light brown hair, and eyes that seemed to float in liquid crystal, “’tis all my fault for seizing upon M. de Villefort, so as to prevent his listening to what you said. But there — now take him — he is your own for as long as you like. M. Villefort, I beg to remind you my mother speaks to you.”

  “If the marquise will deign to repeat the words I but imperfectly caught, I shall be delighted to answer,” said M. de Villefort.

  “Never mind, Renee,” replied the marquise, with a look of tenderness that seemed out of keeping with her harsh dry features; but, however all other feelings may be withered in a woman’s nature, there is always one bright smiling spot in the desert of her heart, and that is the shrine of maternal love. “I forgive you. What I was saying, Villefort, was, that the Bonapartists had not our sincerity, enthusiasm, or devotion.”

  “They had, however, what supplied the place of those fine qua
lities,” replied the young man, “and that was fanaticism. Napoleon is the Mahomet of the West, and is worshipped by his commonplace but ambitions followers, not only as a leader and lawgiver, but also as the personification of equality.”

  “He!” cried the marquise: “Napoleon the type of equality! For mercy’s sake, then, what would you call Robespierre? Come, come, do not strip the latter of his just rights to bestow them on the Corsican, who, to my mind, has usurped quite enough.”

  “Nay, Madame; I would place each of these heroes on his right pedestal — that of Robespierre on his scaffold in the Place Louis Quinze; that of Napoleon on the column of the Place Vendome. The only difference consists in the opposite character of the equality advocated by these two men; one is the equality that elevates, the other is the equality that degrades; one brings a king within reach of the guillotine, the other elevates the people to a level with the throne. Observe,” said Villefort, smiling, “I do not mean to deny that both these men were revolutionary scoundrels, and that the 9th Thermidor and the 4th of April, in the year 1814, were lucky days for France, worthy of being gratefully remembered by every friend to monarchy and civil order; and that explains how it comes to pass that, fallen, as I trust he is forever, Napoleon has still retained a train of parasitical satellites. Still, Marquise, it has been so with other usurpers — Cromwell, for instance, who was not half so bad as Napoleon, had his partisans and advocates.”

  “Do you know, Villefort, that you are talking in a most dreadfully revolutionary strain? But I excuse it, it is impossible to expect the son of a Girondin to be free from a small spice of the old leaven.” A deep crimson suffused the countenance of Villefort.

  “’Tis true, Madame,” answered he, “that my father was a Girondin, but he was not among the number of those who voted for the king’s death; he was an equal sufferer with yourself during the Reign of Terror, and had well-nigh lost his head on the same scaffold on which your father perished.”

  “True,” replied the marquise, without wincing in the slightest degree at the tragic remembrance thus called up; “but bear in mind, if you please, that our respective parents underwent persecution and proscription from diametrically opposite principles; in proof of which I may remark, that while my family remained among the staunchest adherents of the exiled princes, your father lost no time in joining the new government; and that while the Citizen Noirtier was a Girondin, the Count Noirtier became a senator.”

  “Dear Mother,” interposed Renee, “you know very well it was agreed that all these disagreeable reminiscences should forever be laid aside.”

  “Suffer me, also, Madame,” replied Villefort, “to add my earnest request to Mademoiselle de Saint-Meran’s, that you will kindly allow the veil of oblivion to cover and conceal the past. What avails recrimination over matters wholly past recall? For my own part, I have laid aside even the name of my father, and altogether disown his political principles. He was — nay, probably may still be — a Bonapartist, and is called Noirtier; I, on the contrary, am a staunch royalist, and style myself de Villefort. Let what may remain of revolutionary sap exhaust itself and die away with the old trunk, and condescend only to regard the young shoot which has started up at a distance from the parent tree, without having the power, any more than the wish, to separate entirely from the stock from which it sprung.”

  “Bravo, Villefort!” cried the marquis; “excellently well said! Come, now, I have hopes of obtaining what I have been for years endeavoring to persuade the marquise to promise; namely, a perfect amnesty and forgetfulness of the past.”

  “With all my heart,” replied the marquise; “let the past be forever forgotten. I promise you it affords me as little pleasure to revive it as it does you. All I ask is, that Villefort will be firm and inflexible for the future in his political principles. Remember, also, Villefort, that we have pledged ourselves to his majesty for your fealty and strict loyalty, and that at our recommendation the king consented to forget the past, as I do” (and here she extended to him her hand) — “as I now do at your entreaty. But bear in mind, that should there fall in your way anyone guilty of conspiring against the government, you will be so much the more bound to visit the offence with rigorous punishment, as it is known you belong to a suspected family.”

  “Alas, Madame,” returned Villefort, “my profession, as well as the times in which we live, compels me to be severe. I have already successfully conducted several public prosecutions, and brought the offenders to merited punishment. But we have not done with the thing yet.”

  “Do you, indeed, think so?” inquired the marquise.

  “I am, at least, fearful of it. Napoleon, in the Island of Elba, is too near France, and his proximity keeps up the hopes of his partisans. Marseilles is filled with half-pay officers, who are daily, under one frivolous pretext or other, getting up quarrels with the royalists; from hence arise continual and fatal duels among the higher classes of persons, and assassinations in the lower.”

  “You have heard, perhaps,” said the Comte de Salvieux, one of M. de Saint-Meran’s oldest friends, and chamberlain to the Comte d’Artois, “that the Holy Alliance purpose removing him from thence?”

  “Yes; they were talking about it when we left Paris,” said M. de Saint-Meran; “and where is it decided to transfer him?”

  “To Saint Helena.”

  “For heaven’s sake, where is that?” asked the marquise.

  “An island situated on the other side of the equator, at least two thousand leagues from here,” replied the count.

  “So much the better. As Villefort observes, it is a great act of folly to have left such a man between Corsica, where he was born, and Naples, of which his brother-in-law is king, and face to face with Italy, the sovereignty of which he coveted for his son.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Villefort, “there are the treaties of 1814, and we cannot molest Napoleon without breaking those compacts.”

  “Oh, well, we shall find some way out of it,” responded M. de Salvieux.

  “There wasn’t any trouble over treaties when it was a question of shooting the poor Duc d’Enghien.”

  “Well,” said the marquise, “it seems probable that, by the aid of the Holy Alliance, we shall be rid of Napoleon; and we must trust to the vigilance of M. de Villefort to purify Marseilles of his partisans. The king is either a king or no king; if he be acknowledged as sovereign of France, he should be upheld in peace and tranquility; and this can best be effected by employing the most inflexible agents to put down every attempt at conspiracy — ’tis the best and surest means of preventing mischief.”

  “Unfortunately, Madame,” answered Villefort, “the strong arm of the law is not called upon to interfere until the evil has taken place.”

  “Then all he has got to do is to endeavor to repair it.”

  “Nay, Madame, the law is frequently powerless to effect this; all it can do is to avenge the wrong done.”

  “Oh, M. de Villefort,” cried a beautiful young creature, daughter to the Comte de Salvieux, and the cherished friend of Mademoiselle de Saint-Meran, “do try and get up some famous trial while we are at Marseilles. I never was in a law-court; I am told it is so very amusing!”

  “Amusing, certainly,” replied the young man, “inasmuch as, instead of shedding tears as at the fictitious tale of woe produced at a theatre, you behold in a law-court a case of real and genuine distress — a drama of life. The prisoner whom you there see pale, agitated, and alarmed, instead of — as is the case when a curtain falls on a tragedy — going home to sup peacefully with his family, and then retiring to rest, that he may recommence his mimic woes on the morrow, — is removed from your sight merely to be reconducted to his prison and delivered up to the executioner. I leave you to judge how far your nerves are calculated to bear you through such a scene. Of this, however, be assured, that should any favorable opportunity present itself, I will not fail to offer you the choice of being present.”

  “For shame, M. de Villefort!”
said Renee, becoming quite pale; “don’t you see how you are frightening us? — and yet you laugh.”

  “What would you have? ’Tis like a duel. I have already recorded sentence of death, five or six times, against the movers of political conspiracies, and who can say how many daggers may be ready sharpened, and only waiting a favorable opportunity to be buried in my heart?”

  “Gracious heavens, M. de Villefort,” said Renee, becoming more and more terrified; “you surely are not in earnest.”

  “Indeed I am,” replied the young magistrate with a smile; “and in the interesting trial that young lady is anxious to witness, the case would only be still more aggravated. Suppose, for instance, the prisoner, as is more than probable, to have served under Napoleon — well, can you expect for an instant, that one accustomed, at the word of his commander, to rush fearlessly on the very bayonets of his foe, will scruple more to drive a stiletto into the heart of one he knows to be his personal enemy, than to slaughter his fellow-creatures, merely because bidden to do so by one he is bound to obey? Besides, one requires the excitement of being hateful in the eyes of the accused, in order to lash one’s self into a state of sufficient vehemence and power. I would not choose to see the man against whom I pleaded smile, as though in mockery of my words. No; my pride is to see the accused pale, agitated, and as though beaten out of all composure by the fire of my eloquence.” Renee uttered a smothered exclamation.

  “Bravo!” cried one of the guests; “that is what I call talking to some purpose.”

  “Just the person we require at a time like the present,” said a second.

  “What a splendid business that last case of yours was, my dear Villefort!” remarked a third; “I mean the trial of the man for murdering his father. Upon my word, you killed him ere the executioner had laid his hand upon him.”

  “Oh, as for parricides, and such dreadful people as that,” interposed Renee, “it matters very little what is done to them; but as regards poor unfortunate creatures whose only crime consists in having mixed themselves up in political intrigues” —