Chapter 48

CHAPTER 48
Ideology.

If the Count of Monte Cristo had been for a long time
familiar with the ways of Parisian society, he would have
appreciated better the significance of the step which M. de
Villefort had taken. Standing well at court, whether the
king regnant was of the older or younger branch, whether the
government was doctrinaire liberal, or conservative; looked
upon by all as a man of talent, since those who have never
experienced a political check are generally so regarded;
hated by many, but warmly supported by others, without being
really liked by anybody, M. de Villefort held a high
position in the magistracy, and maintained his eminence like
a Harlay or a Mole. His drawing-room, under the regenerating
influence of a young wife and a daughter by his first
marriage, scarcely eighteen, was still one of the
well-regulated Paris salons where the worship of traditional
customs and the observance of rigid etiquette were carefully
maintained. A freezing politeness, a strict fidelity to
government principles, a profound contempt for theories and
theorists, a deep-seated hatred of ideality, -- these were
the elements of private and public life displayed by M. de
Villefort.

He was not only a magistrate, he was almost a diplomatist.
His relations with the former court, of which he always
spoke with dignity and respect, made him respected by the
new one, and he knew so many things, that not only was he
always carefully considered, but sometimes consulted.
Perhaps this would not have been so had it been possible to
get rid of M. de Villefort; but, like the feudal barons who
rebelled against their sovereign, he dwelt in an impregnable
fortress. This fortress was his post as king's attorney, all
the advantages of which he exploited with marvellous skill,
and which he would not have resigned but to be made deputy,
and thus to replace neutrality by opposition. Ordinarily M.
de Villefort made and returned very few visits. His wife
visited for him, and this was the received thing in the
world, where the weighty and multifarious occupations of the
magistrate were accepted as an excuse for what was really
only calculated pride, a manifestation of professed
superiority -- in fact, the application of the axiom,
"Pretend to think well of yourself, and the world will think
well of you," an axiom a hundred times more useful in
society nowadays than that of the Greeks, "Know thyself," a
knowledge for which, in our days, we have substituted the
less difficult and more advantageous science of knowing
others.

To his friends M. de Villefort was a powerful protector; to
his enemies, he was a silent, but bitter opponent; for those
who were neither the one nor the