Chapter 89 - Page 2

thrill of
horror run through every vein. "You see, Edmond, I am not
mistaken, and have cause to say, 'Spare my son!'"

"And who told you, madame, that I have any hostile
intentions against your son?"

"No one, in truth; but a mother has twofold sight. I guessed
all; I followed him this evening to the opera, and,
concealed in a parquet box, have seen all."

"If you have seen all, madame, you know that the son of
Fernand has publicly insulted me," said Monte Cristo with
awful calmness.

"Oh, for pity's sake!"

"You have seen that he would have thrown his glove in my
face if Morrel, one of my friends, had not stopped him."

"Listen to me, my son has also guessed who you are, -- he
attributes his father's misfortunes to you."

"Madame, you are mistaken, they are not misfortunes, -- it
is a punishment. It is not I who strike M. de Morcerf; it is
providence which punishes him."

"And why do you represent providence?" cried Mercedes. "Why
do you remember when it forgets? What are Yanina and its
vizier to you, Edmond? What injury his Fernand Mondego done
you in betraying Ali Tepelini?"

"Ah, madame," replied Monte Cristo, "all this is an affair
between the French captain and the daughter of Vasiliki. It
does not concern me, you are right; and if I have sworn to
revenge myself, it is not on the French captain, or the
Count of Morcerf, but on the fisherman Fernand, the husband
of Mercedes the Catalane."

"Ah, sir!" cried the countess, "how terrible a vengeance for
a fault which fatality made me commit! -- for I am the only
culprit, Edmond, and if you owe revenge to any one, it is to
me, who had not fortitude to bear your absence and my
solitude."

"But," exclaimed Monte Cristo, "why was I absent? And why
were you alone?"

"Because you had been arrested, Edmond, and were a
prisoner."

"And why was I arrested? Why was I a prisoner?"

"I do not know," said Mercedes. "You do not, madame; at
least, I hope not. But I will tell you. I was arrested and
became a prisoner because, under the arbor of La Reserve,
the day before I was to marry you, a man named Danglars
wrote this letter, which the fisherman Fernand himself
posted." Monte Cristo went to a secretary, opened a drawer
by a spring, from which he took a paper which had lost its
original color, and the ink of which had become of a rusty
hue -- this he placed in the hands of Mercedes. It was
Danglars' letter to the king's attorney, which the Count of
Monte Cristo, disguised as a clerk from the house of Thomson
& French, had taken from the file against Edmond Dantes, on
the day he had paid the two hundred thousand francs to M. de
Boville.