The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas
Chapter 83. The Hand of God
Caderousse continued to call piteously, “Help, reverend sir, help!”
“What is the matter?” asked Monte Cristo.
“Help,” cried Caderousse; “I am murdered!”
“We are here;—take courage.”
“Ah, it’s all over! You are come too late—you are come to see me die.What blows, what blood!”
He fainted. Ali and his master conveyed the wounded man into a room.Monte Cristo motioned to Ali to undress him, and he then examined hisdreadful wounds.
“My God!” he exclaimed, “thy vengeance is sometimes delayed, but onlythat it may fall the more effectually.” Ali looked at his master forfurther instructions. “Bring here immediately the king’s attorney, M. deVillefort, who lives in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. As you pass thelodge, wake the porter, and send him for a surgeon.”
Ali obeyed, leaving the abbé alone with Caderousse, who had not yetrevived.
When the wretched man again opened his eyes, the count looked at himwith a mournful expression of pity, and his lips moved as if in prayer.“A surgeon, reverend sir—a surgeon!” said Caderousse.
“I have sent for one,” replied the abbé.
“I know he cannot save my life, but he may strengthen me to give myevidence.”
“Against whom?”
“Against my murderer.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“Yes; it was Benedetto.”
“The young Corsican?”
“Himself.”
“Your comrade?”
“Yes. After giving me the plan of this house, doubtless hoping I shouldkill the count and he thus become his heir, or that the count would killme and I should be out of his way, he waylaid me, and has murdered me.”
“I have also sent for the procureur.”
“He will not come in time; I feel my life fast ebbing.”
“Wait a moment,” said Monte Cristo. He left the room, and returned infive minutes with a phial. The dying man’s eyes were all the timeriveted on the door, through which he hoped succor would arrive.
“Hasten, reverend sir, hasten! I shall faint again!” Monte Cristoapproached, and dropped on his purple lips three or four drops of thecontents of the phial. Caderousse drew a deep breath. “Oh,” said he,“that is life to me; more, more!”
“Two drops more would kill you,” replied the abbé.
“Oh, send for someone to whom I can denounce the wretch!”
“Shall I write your deposition? You can sign it.”
“Yes, yes,” said Caderousse; and his eyes glistened at the thought ofthis posthumous revenge. Monte Cristo wrote:
“I die, murdered by the Corsican Benedetto, my comrade in the galleys atToulon, No. 59.”
“Quick, quick!” said Caderousse, “or I shall be unable to sign it.”
Monte Cristo gave the pen to Caderousse, who collected all his strength,signed it, and fell back on his bed, saying:
“You will relate all the rest, reverend sir; you will say he callshimself Andrea Cavalcanti. He lodges at the Hôtel des Princes. Oh, I amdying!” He again fainted. The abbé made him smell the contents of thephial, and he again opened his eyes. His desire for revenge had notforsaken him.
“Ah, you will tell all I have said, will you not, reverend sir?”
“Yes, and much more.”
“What more will you say?”
“I will say he had doubtless given you the plan of this house, in thehope the count would kill you. I will say, likewise, he had apprised thecount, by a note, of your intention, and, the count being absent, I readthe note and sat up to await you.”
“And he will be guillotined, will be not?” said Caderousse. “Promise methat, and I will die with that hope.”
“I will say,” continued the count, “that he followed and watched you thewhole time, and when he saw you leave the house, ran to the angle of thewall to conceal himself.”
“Did you see all that?”
“Remember my words: ‘If you return home safely, I shall believe God hasforgiven you, and I will forgive you also.’”
“And you did not warn me!” cried Caderousse, raising himself on hiselbows. “You knew I should be killed on leaving this house, and did notwarn me!”
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“No; for I saw God’s justice placed in the hands of Benedetto, andshould have thought it sacrilege to oppose the designs of Providence.”
“God’s justice! Speak not of it, reverend sir. If God were just, youknow how many would be punished who now escape.”
“Patience,” said the abbé, in a tone which made the dying man shudder;“have patience!”
Caderousse looked at him with amazement.
“Besides,” said the abbé, “God is merciful to all, as he has been toyou; he is first a father, then a judge.”
“Do you then believe in God?” said Caderousse.
“Had I been so unhappy as not to believe in him until now,” said MonteCristo, “I must believe on seeing you.”
Caderousse raised his clenched hands towards heaven.
“Listen,” said the abbé, extending his hand over the wounded man, as ifto command him to believe; “this is what the God in whom, on your death-bed, you refuse to believe, has done for you—he gave you health,strength, regular employment, even friends—a life, in fact, which a manmight enjoy with a calm conscience. Instead of improving these gifts,rarely granted so abundantly, this has been your course—you have givenyourself up to sloth and drunkenness, and in a fit of intoxication haveruined your best friend.”
“Help!” cried Caderousse; “I require a surgeon, not a priest; perhaps Iam not mortally wounded—I may not die; perhaps they can yet save mylife.”
“Your wounds are so far mortal that, without the three drops I gave you,you would now be dead. Listen, then.”
“Ah,” murmured Caderousse, “what a strange priest you are; you drive thedying to despair, instead of consoling them.”
“Listen,” continued the abbé. “When you had betrayed your friend, Godbegan not to strike, but to warn you. Poverty overtook you. You hadalready passed half your life in coveting that which you might havehonorably acquired; and already you contemplated crime under the excuseof want, when God worked a miracle in your behalf, sending you, by myhands, a fortune—brilliant, indeed, for you, who had never possessedany. But this unexpected, unhoped-for, unheard-of fortune sufficed youno longer when you once possessed it; you wished to double it, andhow?—by a murder! You succeeded, and then God snatched it from you, andbrought you to justice.”
“It was not I who wished to kill the Jew,” said Caderousse; “it was LaCarconte.”
“Yes,” said Monte Cristo, “and God,—I cannot say in justice, for hisjustice would have slain you,—but God, in his mercy, spared your life.”
“Pardieu! to transport me for life, how merciful!”
“You thought it a mercy then, miserable wretch! The coward who feareddeath rejoiced at perpetual disgrace; for like all galley-slaves, yousaid, ‘I may escape from prison, I cannot from the grave.’ And you saidtruly; the way was opened for you unexpectedly. An Englishman visitedToulon, who had vowed to rescue two men from infamy, and his choice fellon you and your companion. You received a second fortune, money andtranquillity were restored to you, and you, who had been condemned to afelon’s life, might live as other men. Then, wretched creature, then youtempted God a third time. ‘I have not enough,’ you said, when you hadmore than you before possessed, and you committed a third crime, withoutreason, without excuse. God is wearied; he has punished you.”
Caderousse was fast sinking. “Give me drink,” said he: “I thirst—Iburn!” Monte Cristo gave him a glass of water. “And yet that villain,Benedetto, will escape!”
“No one, I tell you, will escape; Benedetto will be punished.”
“Then, you, too, will be punished, for you did not do your duty as apriest—you should have prevented Benedetto from killing me.”
“I do not believe there is a God,” howled Caderousse; “you do notbelieve it; you lie—you lie!”
“Silence,” said the abbé; “you will force the last drop of blood fromyour veins. What! you do not believe in God when he is striking youdead? you will not believe in him, who requires but a prayer, a word, atear, and he will forgive? God, who might have directed the assassin’sdagger so as to end your career in a moment, has given you this quarterof an hour for repentance. Reflect, then, wretched man, and repent.”
“No,” said Caderousse, “no; I will not repent. There is no God; there isno Providence—all comes by chance.”
“There is a Providence; there is a God,” said Monte Cristo, “of whom youare a striking proof, as you lie in utter despair, denying him, while Istand before you, rich, happy, safe and entreating that God in whom youendeavor not to believe, while in your heart you still believe in him.”
“But who are you, then?” asked Caderousse, fixing his dying eyes on thecount.
“Look well at me!” said Monte Cristo, putting the light near his face.
“Well, the abbé—the Abbé Busoni.” Monte Cristo took off the wig whichdisfigured him, and let fall his black hair, which added so much to thebeauty of his pallid features.
“Oh?” said Caderousse, thunderstruck, “but for that black hair, I shouldsay you were the Englishman, Lord Wilmore.”
“I am neither the Abbé Busoni nor Lord Wilmore,” said Monte Cristo;“think again,—do you not recollect me?”
There was a magic effect in the count’s words, which once more revivedthe exhausted powers of the miserable man.
“Yes, indeed,” said he; “I think I have seen you and known youformerly.”
“Yes, Caderousse, you have seen me; you knew me once.”
“Who, then, are you? and why, if you knew me, do you let me die?”
“Because nothing can save you; your wounds are mortal. Had it beenpossible to save you, I should have considered it another proof of God’smercy, and I would again have endeavored to restore you, I swear by myfather’s tomb.”
“By your father’s tomb!” said Caderousse, supported by a supernaturalpower, and half-raising himself to see more distinctly the man who hadjust taken the oath which all men hold sacred; “who, then, are you?”
The count had watched the approach of death. He knew this was the laststruggle. He approached the dying man, and, leaning over him with a calmand melancholy look, he whispered, “I am—I am——”
And his almost closed lips uttered a name so low that the count himselfappeared afraid to hear it. Caderousse, who had raised himself on hisknees, and stretched out his arm, tried to draw back, then clasping hishands, and raising them with a desperate effort, “Oh, my God, my God!”said he, “pardon me for having denied thee; thou dost exist, thou artindeed man’s father in heaven, and his judge on earth. My God, my Lord,I have long despised thee! Pardon me, my God; receive me, Oh, my Lord!”
Caderousse sighed deeply, and fell back with a groan. The blood nolonger flowed from his wounds. He was dead.
“One!” said the count mysteriously, his eyes fixed on the corpse,disfigured by so awful a death.
Ten minutes afterwards the surgeon and the procureur arrived, the oneaccompanied by the porter, the other by Ali, and were received by theAbbé Busoni, who was praying by the side of the corpse.