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 his dreadful wounds. "My God!" he exclaimed,
"thy vengeance is sometimes delayed, but only that it may fall the
more effectually." Ali looked at his master for further instructions.
"Bring here immediately the king's attorney, M. de Villefort, who
lives in the Faubourg St. Honorиж. As you pass the lodge, wake the
porter, and send him for a surgeon." Ali obeyed, leaving the abbиж alone with Caderousse, who had
not yet revived. When
the wretched man again opened his eyes, the count looked at him with 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 abbиж. "I
know he cannot save my life, but he may strengthen me to give my
evidence." "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 should kill the
count and he thus become his heir, or that the count would kill me 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 in five
minutes with a phial. The dying man's eyes were all the time riveted on
the door, through which he hoped succor would arrive. "Hasten,
reverend sir, hasten! I shall faint again!" Monte Cristo approached,
and dropped on his purple lips three or four drops of the contents 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 abbиж. "Oh,
send for some one 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 of this
posthumous revenge. Monte Cristo wrote:-- "I
die, murdered by the Corsican Benedetto, my comrade in the galleys at
Toulouse, 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 calls himself Andrea Cavalcanti. He lodges
at the H?tel des Princes. Oh, I am dying!" He again fainted. The abbиж made him smell the contents of
the phial, and he again opened his eyes. His desire for revenge had not
forsaken 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 the hope
the count would kill you. I will say, likewise, he had apprised the count,
by a note, of your intention, and, the count being absent, I read the note
and sat up to await you." "And
he will be guillotined, will be not?" said Caderousse. "Promise
me that, and I will die with that hope." "I
will say," continued the count, "that he followed and watched
you the whole time, and when he saw you leave the house, ran to the angle
of the wall to conceal himself." "Did
you see all that?" "Remember
my words: 'If you return home safely, I shall believe God has forgiven
you, and I will forgive you also.'" "And
you did not warn me!" cried Caderousse, raising himself on his
elbows. "You knew I should be killed on leaving this house, and did
not warn me!" "No;
for I saw God's justice placed in the hands of Benedetto, and should have
thought it sacrilege to oppose the designs of providence." "God's
justice! Speak not of it, reverend sir. If God were just, you know how
many would be punished who now escape." "Patience,"
said the abbиж,
in a tone which made the dying man shudder; "have patience!"
Caderousse looked at him with amazement. "Besides," said the abbиж, "God is merciful to all,
as he has been to you; 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 Monte
Cristo, "I must believe on seeing you." Caderousse raised his
clinched hands towards heaven. "Listen,"
said the abbиж,
extending his hand over the wounded man, as if to 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 man might enjoy with a
calm conscience. Instead of improving these gifts, rarely granted so
abundantly, this has been your course--you have given yourself up to sloth
and drunkenness, and in a fit of intoxication have ruined your best
friend." "Help!"
cried Caderousse; "I require a surgeon, not a priest; perhaps I am
not mortally wounded--I may not die; perhaps they can yet save my
life." "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 the
dying to despair, instead of consoling them." "Listen,"
continued the abbиж.
"When you had betrayed your friend God began not to strike, but to
warn you. Poverty overtook you. You had already passed half your life in
coveting that which you might have honorably acquired; and already you
contemplated crime under the excuse of want, when God worked a miracle in
your behalf, sending you, by my hands, a fortune--brilliant, indeed, for
you, who had never possessed any. But this unexpected, unhoped-for,
unheard-of fortune sufficed you no longer when you once possessed it; you
wished to double it, and how?--by a murder! You succeeded, and then God
snatched it from you, and brought you to justice." "It
was not I who wished to kill the Jew," said Caderousse; "it was
La Carconte." "Yes,"
said Monte Cristo, "and God,--I cannot say in justice, for his
justice 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 feared death
rejoiced at perpetual disgrace; for like all galley-slaves, you said, 'I
may escape from prison, I cannot from the grave.' And you said truly; the
way was opened for you unexpectedly. An Englishman visited Toulon, who had
vowed to rescue two men from infamy, and his choice fell on you and your
companion. You received a second fortune, money and tranquillity were
restored to you, and you, who had been condemned to a felon's life, might
live as other men. Then, wretched creature, then you tempted God a third
time. 'I have not enough,' you said, when you had more than you before
possessed, and you committed a third crime, without reason, without
excuse. God is wearied; he has punished you." Caderousse was fast
sinking. "Give me drink," said he: "I thirst--I burn!"
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 a priest--you
should have prevented Benedetto from killing me." "I?"
said the count, with a smile which petrified the dying man, "when you
had just broken your knife against the coat of mail which protected my
breast! Yet perhaps if I had found you humble and penitent, I might have
prevented Benedetto from killing you; but I found you proud and
blood-thirsty, and I left you in the hands of God." "I
do not believe there is a God," howled Caderousse; "you do not
believe it; you lie--you lie!" "Silence,"
said the abbиж;
"you will force the last drop of blood from your veins. What! you do
not believe in God when he is striking you dead? you will not believe in
him, who requires but a prayer, a word, a tear, and he will forgive? God,
who might have directed the assassin's dagger so as to end your career in
a moment, has given you this quarter of an hour for repentance. Reflect,
then, wretched man, and repent." "No,"
said Caderousse, "no; I will not repent. There is no God; there is no
providence--all comes by chance."-- "There
is a providence; there is a God," said Monte Cristo, "of whom
you are a striking proof, as you lie in utter despair, denying him, while
I stand before you, rich, happy, safe and entreating that God in whom you
endeavor not to believe, while in your heart you still believe in
him." "But
who are you, then?" asked Caderousse, fixing his dying eyes on the
count. "Look well at me!" said Monte Cristo, putting the light
near his face. "Well, the abbиж--the
Abbиж
Busoni." Monte Cristo took off the wig which disfigured him, and let
fall his black hair, which added so much to the beauty of his pallid
features. "Oh?" said Caderousse, thunderstruck, "but for
that black hair, I should say you were the Englishman, Lord Wilmore."
"I
am neither the Abbиж
Busoni nor Lord Wilmore," said Monte Cristo; "think again,--do
you not recollect me?" Those was a magic effect in the count's words,
which once more revived the exhausted powers of the miserable man.
"Yes, indeed," said he; "I think I have seen you and known
you formerly." "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 been possible to save
you, I should have considered it another proof of God's mercy, and I would
again have endeavored to restore you, I swear by my father's tomb." "By
your father's tomb!" said Caderousse, supported by a supernatural
power, and half-raising himself to see more distinctly the man who had
just 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 last struggle. He approached the dying man, and, leaning over him with
a calm and melancholy look, he whispered, "I am--I am"--And his
almost closed lips uttered a name so low that the count himself appeared
afraid to hear it. Caderousse, who had raised himself on his knees, and
stretched out his arm, tried to draw back, then clasping his hands, and
raising them with a desperate effort, "O my God, my God!" said
he, "pardon me for having denied thee; thou dost exist, thou art
indeed 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, O my Lord!"
Caderousse sighed deeply, and fell back with a groan. The blood no longer
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 one accompanied by the porter, the other by Ali, and were
received by the Abbиж
Busoni, who was praying by the side of the corpse. |
|||||
|
©2005 - 2010 XiuSha.Com . All Rights Reserved.