“Yes, I am Bastien, whom you thought you had killed, but who is not dead . . . Bastien, who an hour later was found by the Cossacks drenched in blood; Bastien, who after forty years in prison has come to seek amends for the blood of his colonel with which you stained your hands.” While Felipone, dumbfounded, continued to move back at that terrible sight, Bastien turned to the countess, saying, “Madame, this man, this wretch, is the murderer of your son just as he was the murderer of his father.” The countess, who one instant earlier had been helpless and mad with grief, threw herself like a tiger upon the killer of her son to rip him to pieces with her claws. “Murderer! Murderer!” she shouted. “The gallows await you . . .
I myself shall deliver you to the executioner!” But at that very moment, as the villain continued to retreat, the mother felt something moving within her. She let out a cry and stopped, pallid, reeling, broken-hearted . . . The man she wanted to consign to justice for its vengeance, the man she wanted to drag to the gallows, this wretched vile man was the father of her other child, who was beginning to move about within her. “It is she! It is she!” exclaimed the old man, turning his gaze from Marzia to Virginia. He alone had correctly interpreted the sad cry of the woman who had fainted—and she fell into her habitual stupor, then gradually reviving, as if she had an important confession to make—and a tear finally bathed that cheek that had been dry for so long, through time and suffering. Old Elias, who for some time had been beside himself with consternation, took advantage of an instant in which the women raised the countess’s head to help her drink, to hold before her a gold necklace, with a beautiful cross in the same metal, encrusted with costliest diamonds of dazzling splendor.
In doing so, the old man added the following names: “Virginia and Silvia!” “Silvia!” exclaimed the countess, and her glassy eyes stared at the precious jewelry as if it were a talisman, and her fine head fell back upon the pillow, like a flower in the blazing desert wind that drops upon its stem, never to straighten again. But the final hour of that beautiful victim of betrayal had not yet struck. She stirred a moment later, as if touched by an electric current, opened her eyes, and turned to Marzia with such an ardent expression of love that only a mother can understand and cherish. “My daughter!” she exclaimed, and fell back again. At that very moment, a man with a bandaged face hurried precipitously into the room, kneeled between the two beds of the wounded women, and cried desperately, “Forgive me! Forgive me!” Countess Virginia was electrified by that cry. She sat up with extraordinary speed and glancing down upon the prostrate wretch, exclaimed in a heart-rending voice, “Marzia! Marzia! That villain is your father!” Étienne drew his wallet from his pocket, took from it a letter sealed with a large black seal, and gave it to Georges, adding: “My dear son, read this letter . . .
Read it aloud . . . and you, Lucie Fortier, listen . . .” Georges Darier took the letter with trembling hand. He seemed not to have the courage to break the seal. “Read!” repeated the artist. The young man ripped open the envelope and read, “My beloved Georges. In the month of September 1861, a poor woman, with a child in her arms, presented herself at my house at Chevry. That poor woman had been persecuted, spied upon, victim of the triple accusation of murder, theft, and arson. Her name was Jeanne Fortier . . .” These words were followed by a triple exclamation made simultaneously by Georges, Lucie, and Lucien Labroue. “I . . . I . . . ,” said Georges, confused. “I am the son of Jeanne Fortier, and Lucie . . . Lucie . . . is my sister!” At the same time he held his arms out to the young girl. “My brother! . . . My brother! . . . ,” exclaimed Lucie, throwing herself toward Georges, who held her in a tight embrace. “Yes . . . yes . . . ,” he then exclaimed. “This is the proof of the crime! Oh! Mother! . . . Mother! God has finally then been moved to pity! But this final proof, which was thought to have been lost . . . where was it?” “In the side of the small papier-mâché horse you were carrying when you and your mother arrived at Chevry,” replied Étienne Castel.
“Can you prove it?” “This is her death certificate . . . the real Paul Harmant, the millionaire, the great industrialist, former associate of James Mortimer, is none other than Jacques Garaud!” Marius abruptly drew his chair closer to Thénardier’s, who noted this movement and continued with the deliberation of an orator who holds his interlocutor and feels his adversary palpitating under his words: “This man, forced to conceal himself for reasons, moreover, which are foreign to politics, had adopted the sewer as his domicile and had a key to it. It was, I repeat, the sixth of June, toward eight in the evening. Do you understand now: the person who carried the corpse was Jean Valjean, the one who had the key is speaking to you at this moment; and the piece of the coat . . .” Thénardier completed the phrase by drawing from his pocket at eye level, nipped between his two thumbs and his two forefingers, a strip of torn black cloth, covered with dark spots.
Marius had sprung to his feet, pale, hardly able to draw his breath, with his eyes riveted on the fragment of black cloth, and without uttering a word, without taking his eyes from that fragment, he retreated and fumbled with his right hand along the wall for a key that was in the lock of a cupboard near the chimney. He found the key, opened the cupboard, and plunged his arm into it without looking, and without his frightened gaze quitting the rag, which Thénardier still held outspread. But the other continued. “Monsieur le Baron, I have the strongest of reasons for believing that the assassinated young man was an opulent stranger lured into a trap by Jean Valjean, and the bearer of an enormous sum of money.” “The young man was myself, and here is the coat!” cried Marius, and he flung upon the floor an old black coat all covered with blood. Then, snatching the fragment from the hands of Thénardier, he crouched down over the coat, and laid the torn piece against the tattered skirt. It fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Villefort, stepping back fearfully. “Surely that is not the voice of Abbé Busoni.” “No!” The abbé threw off the false tonsure, shook his head, and his hair, no longer confined, fell in black masses around his manly face. “It is the face of the Count of Monte Cristo!” cried Villefort, with a haggard expression. “You are not exactly right, Monsieur Procureur; you must go farther back.” “That voice, that voice!—where did I first hear it?” “You heard it for the first time at Marseille, twenty-three years ago, the day of your marriage with Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran. Refer to your papers.” “You are not Busoni?—you are not Monte Cristo? Oh, heavens—you are then some secret, implacable, and mortal enemy!
I must have wronged you in some way at Marseille. Oh, woe to me!” “Yes; you are right,” said the count, crossing his arms over his broad chest; “search, search.” “But what have I done to you?”exclaimed Villefort, whose mind was balancing between reason and insanity, in the cloud that is neither a dream nor reality; “what have I done to you? Tell me, then! Speak!” “You condemned me to a horrible, slow death; you killed my father; you deprived me of liberty, of love, and happiness.” “Who are you, then? Who are you? Good Lord!” “I am the specter of a wretch you buried in the dungeons of the Chateau d’If.
When he at length issued from his tomb, heaven gave him the mask of the Count of Monte Cristo, enriched him with gold and diamonds, and led him to you.” “Ah, I recognize you, I recognize you!” exclaimed the king’s attorney. “You are . . .” “I am Edmond Dantès!” The Count of Monte Cristo turned dreadfully pale; his eye seemed to burn with a devouring fire. He bounded toward a dressing room near his bedroom and in a trice, tearing off his cravat, his coat, and waistcoat, he put on a sailor’s jacket and hat beneath which rolled his long black hair. He returned thus, formidable and implacable, advancing with his arms crossed on his breast, toward the general who was waiting for him, and who, feeling his teeth chatter and his legs sink beneath him, drew back a step, and only stopped when he found a table to support his clenched hand. “Fernand,” cried he, “of my hundred names I need only tell you one to overwhelm you! But you guess it now, do you not?”
The general, with his head thrown back, hands extended, gaze fixed, looked silently at this dreadful apparition; then seeking the wall to support him, he glided along close to it until he reached the
