Chapter 48 - Page 2

other, he was a statue of
the law-made man. He had a haughty bearing, a look either
steady and impenetrable or insolently piercing and
inquisitorial. Four successive revolutions had built and
cemented the pedestal upon which his fortune was based. M.
de Villefort had the reputation of being the least curious
and the least wearisome man in France. He gave a ball every
year, at which he appeared for a quarter of an hour only, --
that is to say, five and forty minutes less than the king is
visible at his balls. He was never seen at the theatres, at
concerts, or in any place of public resort. Occasionally,
but seldom, he played at whist, and then care was taken to
select partners worthy of him -- sometimes they were
ambassadors, sometimes archbishops, or sometimes a prince,
or a president, or some dowager duchess. Such was the man
whose carriage had just now stopped before the Count of
Monte Cristo's door. The valet de chambre announced M. de
Villefort at the moment when the count, leaning over a large
table, was tracing on a map the route from St. Petersburg to
China.

The procureur entered with the same grave and measured step
he would have employed in entering a court of justice. He
was the same man, or rather the development of the same man,
whom we have heretofore seen as assistant attorney at
Marseilles. Nature, according to her way, had made no
deviation in the path he had marked out for himself. From
being slender he had now become meagre; once pale, he was
now yellow; his deep-set eyes were hollow, and the gold
spectacles shielding his eyes seemed to be an integral
portion of his face. He dressed entirely in black, with the
exception of his white tie, and his funeral appearance was
only mitigated by the slight line of red ribbon which passed
almost imperceptibly through his button-hole, and appeared
like a streak of blood traced with a delicate brush.
Although master of himself, Monte Cristo, scrutinized with
irrepressible curiosity the magistrate whose salute he
returned, and who, distrustful by habit, and especially
incredulous as to social prodigies, was much more dispised
to look upon "the noble stranger," as Monte Cristo was
already called, as an adventurer in search of new fields, or
an escaped criminal, rather than as a prince of the Holy
See, or a sultan of the Thousand and One Nights.

"Sir," said Villefort, in the squeaky tone assumed by
magistrates in their oratorical periods, and of which they
cannot, or will not, divest themselves in society, "sir, the
signal service which you yesterday rendered to my wife and
son has made it a duty for me to offer you my thanks. I have
come, therefore, to discharge this duty, and to express to
you my