Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13
The Hundred Days.

M. Noirtier was a true prophet, and things progressed
rapidly, as he had predicted. Every one knows the history of
the famous return from Elba, a return which was
unprecedented in the past, and will probably remain without
a counterpart in the future.

Louis XVIII. made but a faint attempt to parry this
unexpected blow; the monarchy he had scarcely reconstructed
tottered on its precarious foundation, and at a sign from
the emperor the incongruous structure of ancient prejudices
and new ideas fell to the ground. Villefort, therefore,
gained nothing save the king's gratitude (which was rather
likely to injure him at the present time) and the cross of
the Legion of Honor, which he had the prudence not to wear,
although M. de Blacas had duly forwarded the brevet.

Napoleon would, doubtless, have deprived Villefort of his
office had it not been for Noirtier, who was all powerful at
court, and thus the Girondin of '93 and the Senator of 1806
protected him who so lately had been his protector. All
Villefort's influence barely enabled him to stifle the
secret Dantes had so nearly divulged. The king's procureur
alone was deprived of his office, being suspected of
royalism.

However, scarcely was the imperial power established -- that
is, scarcely had the emperor re-entered the Tuileries and
begun to issue orders from the closet into which we have
introduced our readers, -- he found on the table there Louis
XVIII.'s half-filled snuff-box, -- scarcely had this
occurred when Marseilles began, in spite of the authorities,
to rekindle the flames of civil war, always smouldering in
the south, and it required but little to excite the populace
to acts of far greater violence than the shouts and insults
with which they assailed the royalists whenever they
ventured abroad.

Owing to this change, the worthy shipowner became at that
moment -- we will not say all powerful, because Morrel was a
prudent and rather a timid man, so much so, that many of the
most zealous partisans of Bonaparte accused him of
"moderation" -- but sufficiently influential to make a
demand in favor of Dantes.

Villefort retained his place, but his marriage was put off
until a more favorable opportunity. If the emperor remained
on the throne, Gerard required a different alliance to aid
his career; if Louis XVIII. returned, the influence of M. de
Saint-Meran, like his own, could be vastly increased, and
the marriage be still more suitable. The deputy-procureur
was, therefore, the first magistrate of Marseilles, when one
morning his door opened, and M. Morrel was announced.

Any one else would have hastened to receive him; but
Villefort was a