Chapter 3 The Catalans
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BEYOND
A BARE, weather-worn wall, about a hundred paces from the spot where the
two friends sat looking and listening as they drank their wine, was the
village of the Catalans. Long ago this mysterious colony quitted Spain,
and settled on the tongue of land on which it is to this day. Whence it
came no one knew, and it spoke an unknown tongue. One of its chiefs, who
understood Proven?al, begged the commune of Marseilles to give them this
bare and barren promontory, where, like the sailors of old, they had run
their boats ashore. The request was granted; and three months afterwards,
around the twelve or fifteen small vessels which had brought these gypsies
of the sea, a small village sprang up. This village, constructed in a
singular and picturesque manner, half Moorish, half Spanish, still
remains, and is inhabited by descendants of the first comers, who speak
the language of their fathers. For three or four centuries they have
remained upon this small promontory, on which they had settled like a
flight of seabirds, without mixing with the Marseillaise population,
intermarrying, and preserving their original customs and the costume of
their mother-country as they have preserved its language. Our
readers will follow us along the only street of this little village, and
enter with us one of the houses, which is sunburned to the beautiful
dead-leaf color peculiar to the buildings of the country, and within
coated with whitewash, like a Spanish posada. A young and beautiful girl,
with hair as black as jet, her eyes as velvety as the gazelle's, was
leaning with her back against the wainscot, rubbing in her slender
delicately moulded fingers a bunch of heath blossoms, the flowers of which
she was picking off and strewing on the floor; her arms, bare to the
elbow, brown, and modelled after those of the Arlesian Venus, moved with a
kind of restless impatience, and she tapped the earth with her arched and
supple foot, so as to display the pure and full shape of her well-turned
leg, in its red cotton, gray and blue clocked, stocking. At three paces
from her, seated in a chair which he balanced on two legs, leaning his
elbow on an old worm-eaten table, was a tall young man of twenty, or
two-and-twenty, who was looking at her with an air in which vexation and
uneasiness were mingled. He questioned her with his eyes, but the firm and
steady gaze of the young girl controlled his look. "You
see, Mercижdииs," said the young man,
"here is Easter come round again; tell me, is this the moment for a
wedding?" "I
have answered you a hundred times, Fernand, and really you must be very
stupid to ask me again." "Well,
repeat it,--repeat it, I beg of you, that I may at last believe it! Tell
me for the hundredth time that you refuse my love, which had your mother's
sanction. Make me understand once for all that you are trifling with my
happiness, that my life or death are nothing to you. Ah, to have dreamed
for ten years of being your husband, Mercижdииs, and to lose that hope, which
was the only stay of my existence!" "At
least it was not I who ever encouraged you in that hope, Fernand,"
replied Mercижdииs; "you cannot reproach me
with the slightest coquetry. I have always said to you, 'I love you as a
brother; but do not ask from me more than sisterly affection, for my heart
is another's.' Is not this true, Fernand?" "Yes,
that is very true, Mercижdииs," replied the young man,
"Yes, you have been cruelly frank with me; but do you forget that it
is among the Catalans a sacred law to intermarry?" "You
mistake, Fernand; it is not a law, but merely a custom, and, I pray of
you, do not cite this custom in your favor. You are included in the
conscription, Fernand, and are only at liberty on sufferance, liable at
any moment to be called upon to take up arms. Once a soldier, what would
you do with me, a poor orphan, forlorn, without fortune, with nothing but
a half-ruined hut and a few ragged nets, the miserable inheritance left by
my father to my mother, and by my mother to me? She has been dead a year,
and you know, Fernand, I have subsisted almost entirely on public charity.
Sometimes you pretend I am useful to you, and that is an excuse to share
with me the produce of your fishing, and I accept it, Fernand, because you
are the son of my father's brother, because we were brought up together,
and still more because it would give you so much pain if I refuse. But I
feel very deeply that this fish which I go and sell, and with the produce
of which I buy the flax I spin,--I feel very keenly, Fernand, that this is
charity." "And
if it were, Mercижdииs, poor and lone as you are, you
suit me as well as the daughter of the first shipowner or the richest
banker of Marseilles! What do such as we desire but a good wife and
careful housekeeper, and where can I look for these better than in
you?" "Fernand,"
answered Mercижdииs, shaking her head, "a
woman becomes a bad manager, and who shall say she will remain an honest
woman, when she loves another man better than her husband? Rest content
with my friendship, for I say once more that is all I can promise, and I
will promise no more than I can bestow." "I
understand," replied Fernand, "you can endure your own
wretchedness patiently, but you are afraid to share mine. Well, Mercижdииs, beloved by you, I would tempt fortune; you would
bring me good luck, and I should become rich. I could extend my occupation
as a fisherman, might get a place as clerk in a warehouse, and become in
time a dealer myself." "You
could do no such thing, Fernand; you are a soldier, and if you remain at
the Catalans it is because there is no war; so remain a fisherman, and
contented with my friendship, as I cannot give you more." "Well,
I will do better, Mercижdииs. I will be a sailor; instead of
the costume of our fathers, which you despise, I will wear a varnished
hat, a striped shirt, and a blue jacket, with an anchor on the buttons.
Would not that dress please you?" "What
do you mean?" asked Mercижdииs, with an angry
glance,--"what do you mean? I do not understand you?" "I
mean, Mercижdииs, that you are thus harsh and
cruel with me, because you are expecting some one who is thus attired; but
perhaps he whom you await is inconstant, or if he is not, the sea is so to
him." "Fernand,"
cried Mercижdииs, "I believed you were
good-hearted, and I was mistaken! Fernand, you are wicked to call to your
aid jealousy and the anger of God! Yes, I will not deny it, I do await,
and I do love him of whom you speak; and, if he does not return, instead
of accusing him of the inconstancy which you insinuate, I will tell you
that he died loving me and me only." The young girl made a gesture of
rage. "I understand you, Fernand; you would be revenged on him
because I do not love you; you would cross your Catalan knife with his
dirk. What end would that answer? To lose you my friendship if he were
conquered, and see that friendship changed into hate if you were victor.
Believe me, to seek a quarrel with a man is a bad method of pleasing the
woman who loves that man. No, Fernand, you will not thus give way to evil
thoughts. Unable to have me for your wife, you will content yourself with
having me for your friend and sister; and besides," she added, her
eyes troubled and moistened with tears, "wait, wait, Fernand; you
said just now that the sea was treacherous, and he has been gone four
months, and during these four months there have been some terrible
storms." Fernand
made no reply, nor did he attempt to check the tears which flowed down the
cheeks of Mercижdииs, although for each of these
tears he would have shed his heart's blood; but these tears flowed for
another. He arose, paced a while up and down the hut, and then, suddenly
stopping before Mercижdииs, with his eyes glowing and his
hands clinched,--"Say, Mercижdииs,"
he said, "once for all, is this your final determination?" "I
love Edmond Dantииs,"
the young girl calmly replied, "and none but Edmond shall ever be my
husband." "And
you will always love him?" "As
long as I live." Fernand
let fall his head like a defeated man, heaved a sigh that was like a
groan, and then suddenly looking her full in the face, with clinched teeth
and expanded nostrils, said,--"But if he is dead"-- "If
he is dead, I shall die too." "If
he has forgotten you"-- "Mercижdииs!" called a joyous voice from without,--"Mercижdииs!" "Ah,"
exclaimed the young girl, blushing with delight, and fairly leaping in
excess of love, "you see he has not forgotten me, for here he
is!" And rushing towards the door, she opened it, saying, "Here,
Edmond, here I am!" Fernand,
pale and trembling, drew back, like a traveller at the sight of a serpent,
and fell into a chair beside him. Edmond and Mercижdииs
were clasped in each other's arms. The burning Marseilles sun, which shot
into the room through the open door, covered them with a flood of light.
At first they saw nothing around them. Their intense happiness isolated
them from all the rest of the world, and they only spoke in broken words,
which are the tokens of a joy so extreme that they seem rather the
expression of sorrow. Suddenly Edmond saw the gloomy, pale, and
threatening countenance of Fernand, as it was defined in the shadow. By a
movement for which he could scarcely account to himself, the young Catalan
placed his hand on the knife at his belt. "Ah,
your pardon," said Dantииs,
frowning in his turn; "I did not perceive that there were three of
us." Then, turning to Mercижdииs, he inquired, "Who is this
gentleman?" "One
who will be your best friend, Dantииs, for he is my friend, my cousin, my brother; it is
Fernand--the man whom, after you, Edmond, I love the best in the world. Do
you not remember him?" "Yes!"
said Dantииs,
and without relinquishing Mercижdииs hand clasped in one of his own,
he extended the other to the Catalan with a cordial air. But Fernand,
instead of responding to this amiable gesture, remained mute and
trembling. Edmond then cast his eyes scrutinizingly at the agitated and
embarrassed Mercижdииs, and then again on the gloomy and menacing Fernand.
This look told him all, and his anger waxed hot. "I
did not know, when I came with such haste to you, that I was to meet an
enemy here." "An
enemy!" cried Mercижdииs, with an angry look at her
cousin. "An enemy in my house, do you say, Edmond! If I believed
that, I would place my arm under yours and go with you to Marseilles,
leaving the house to return to it no more." Fernand's
eye darted lightning. "And should any misfortune occur to you, dear
Edmond," she continued with the same calmness which proved to Fernand
that the young girl had read the very innermost depths of his sinister
thought, "if misfortune should occur to you, I would ascend the
highest point of the Cape de Morgion and cast myself headlong from
it." Fernand
became deadly pale. "But you are deceived, Edmond," she
continued. "You have no enemy here--there is no one but Fernand, my
brother, who will grasp your hand as a devoted friend." And
at these words the young girl fixed her imperious look on the Catalan,
who, as if fascinated by it, came slowly towards Edmond, and offered him
his hand. His hatred, like a powerless though furious wave, was broken
against the strong ascendancy which Mercижdииs exercised over him. Scarcely,
however, had he touched Edmond's hand than he felt he had done all he
could do, and rushed hastily out of the house. "Oh,"
he exclaimed, running furiously and tearing his hair--"Oh, who will
deliver me from this man? Wretched--wretched that I am!" "Hallo,
Catalan! Hallo, Fernand! where are you running to?" exclaimed a
voice. The
young man stopped suddenly, looked around him, and perceived Caderousse
sitting at table with Danglars, under an arbor. "Well",
said Caderousse, "why don't you come? Are you really in such a hurry
that you have no time to pass the time of day with your friends?" "Particularly
when they have still a full bottle before them," added Danglars.
Fernand looked at them both with a stupefied air, but did not say a word. "He
seems besotted," said Danglars, pushing Caderousse with his knee.
"Are we mistaken, and is Dantииs triumphant in spite of all we have believed?"
"Why,
we must inquire into that," was Caderousse's reply; and turning
towards the young man, said, "Well, Catalan, can't you make up your
mind?" Fernand
wiped away the perspiration steaming from his brow, and slowly entered the
arbor, whose shade seemed to restore somewhat of calmness to his senses,
and whose coolness somewhat of refreshment to his exhausted body. "Good-day,"
said he. "You called me, didn't you?" And he fell, rather than
sat down, on one of the seats which surrounded the table. "I
called you because you were running like a madman, and I was afraid you
would throw yourself into the sea," said Caderousse, laughing.
"Why, when a man has friends, they are not only to offer him a glass
of wine, but, moreover, to prevent his swallowing three or four pints of
water unnecessarily!" Fernand
gave a groan, which resembled a sob, and dropped his head into his hands,
his elbows leaning on the table. "Well,
Fernand, I must say," said Caderousse, beginning the conversation,
with that brutality of the common people in which curiosity destroys all
diplomacy, "you look uncommonly like a rejected lover;" and he
burst into a hoarse laugh. "Bah!"
said Danglars, "a lad of his make was not born to be unhappy in love.
You are laughing at him, Caderousse." "No,"
he replied, "only hark how he sighs! Come, come, Fernand," said
Caderousse, "hold up your head, and answer us. It's not polite not to
reply to friends who ask news of your health." "My
health is well enough," said Fernand, clinching his hands without
raising his head. "Ah,
you see, Danglars," said Caderousse, winking at his friend,
"this is how it is; Fernand, whom you see here, is a good and brave
Catalan, one of the best fishermen in Marseilles, and he is in love with a
very fine girl, named Mercижdииs; but it appears, unfortunately,
that the fine girl is in love with the mate of the Pharaon; and as the
Pharaon arrived to-day--why, you understand!" "No;
I do not understand," said Danglars. "Poor
Fernand has been dismissed," continued Caderousse. "Well,
and what then?" said Fernand, lifting up his head, and looking at
Caderousse like a man who looks for some one on whom to vent his anger;
"Mercижdииs is not accountable to any person, is she? Is she
not free to love whomsoever she will?" "Oh,
if you take it in that sense," said Caderousse, "it is another
thing. But I thought you were a Catalan, and they told me the Catalans
were not men to allow themselves to be supplanted by a rival. It was even
told me that Fernand, especially, was terrible in his vengeance." Fernand
smiled piteously. "A lover is never terrible," he said. "Poor
fellow!" remarked Danglars, affecting to pity the young man from the
bottom of his heart. "Why, you see, he did not expect to see Dantииs return so suddenly--he thought
he was dead, perhaps; or perchance faithless! These things always come on
us more severely when they come suddenly." "Ah,
ma foi, under any circumstances," said Caderousse, who drank as he
spoke, and on whom the fumes of the wine began to take
effect,--"under any circumstances Fernand is not the only person put
out by the fortunate arrival of Dantииs;
is he, Danglars?" "No,
you are right--and I should say that would bring him ill-luck." "Well,
never mind," answered Caderousse, pouring out a glass of wine for
Fernand, and filling his own for the eighth or ninth time, while Danglars
had merely sipped his. "Never mind--in the meantime he marries Mercижdииs--the lovely Mercижdииs--at
least he returns to do that." During
this time Danglars fixed his piercing glance on the young man, on whose
heart Caderousse's words fell like molten lead. "And
when is the wedding to be?" he asked. "Oh,
it is not yet fixed!" murmured Fernand. "No,
but it will be," said Caderousse, "as surely as Dantииs will be captain of the Pharaon--eh,
Danglars?" Danglars
shuddered at this unexpected attack, and turned to Caderousse, whose
countenance he scrutinized, to try and detect whether the blow was
premeditated; but he read nothing but envy in a countenance already
rendered brutal and stupid by drunkenness. "Well,"
said he, filling the glasses, "let us drink to Captain Edmond Dantииs, husband of the beautiful
Catalane!" Caderousse
raised his glass to his mouth with unsteady hand, and swallowed the
contents at a gulp. Fernand dashed his on the ground. "Eh,
eh, eh!" stammered Caderousse. "What do I see down there by the
wall, in the direction of the Catalans? Look, Fernand, your eyes are
better than mine. I believe I see double. You know wine is a deceiver; but
I should say it was two lovers walking side by side, and hand in hand.
Heaven forgive me, they do not know that we can see them, and they are
actually embracing!" Danglars
did not lose one pang that Fernand endured. "Do
you know them, Fernand?" he said. "Yes,"
was the reply, in a low voice. "It is Edmond and Mercижdииs!" "Ah,
see there, now!" said Caderousse; "and I did not recognize them!
Hallo, Dantииs!
hello, lovely damsel! Come this way, and let us know when the wedding is
to be, for Fernand here is so obstinate he will not tell us." "Hold
your tongue, will you?" said Danglars, pretending to restrain
Caderousse, who, with the tenacity of drunkards, leaned out of the arbor.
"Try to stand upright, and let the lovers make love without
interruption. See, look at Fernand, and follow his example; he is
well-behaved!" Fernand,
probably excited beyond bearing, pricked by Danglars, as the bull is by
the bandilleros, was about to rush out; for he had risen from his seat,
and seemed to be collecting himself to dash headlong upon his rival, when
Mercижdииs, smiling and graceful, lifted up her lovely head,
and looked at them with her clear and bright eyes. At this Fernand
recollected her threat of dying if Edmond died, and dropped again heavily
on his seat. Danglars looked at the two men, one after the other, the one
brutalized by liquor, the other overwhelmed with love. "I
shall get nothing from these fools," he muttered; "and I am very
much afraid of being here between a drunkard and a coward. Here's an
envious fellow making himself boozy on wine when he ought to be nursing
his wrath, and here is a fool who sees the woman he loves stolen from
under his nose and takes on like a big baby. Yet this Catalan has eyes
that glisten like those of the vengeful Spaniards, Sicilians, and
Calabrians, and the other has fists big enough to crush an ox at one blow.
Unquestionably, Edmond's star is in the ascendant, and he will marry the
splendid girl--he will be captain, too, and laugh at us all,
unless"--a sinister smile passed over Danglars' lips--"unless I
take a hand in the affair," he added. "Hallo!"
continued Caderousse, half-rising, and with his fist on the table,
"hallo, Edmond! do you not see your friends, or are you too proud to
speak to them?" "No,
my dear fellow!" replied Dantииs, "I am not proud, but I am happy, and
happiness blinds, I think, more than pride." "Ah,
very well, that's an explanation!" said Caderousse. "How do you
do, Madame Dantииs?"
Mercижdииs courtesied gravely, and said--"That is not my
name, and in my country it bodes ill fortune, they say, to call a young
girl by the name of her betrothed before he becomes her husband. So call
me Mercижdииs, if you please." "We
must excuse our worthy neighbor, Caderousse," said Dantииs, "he is so easily
mistaken." "So,
then, the wedding is to take place immediately, M. Dantииs," said Danglars, bowing to
the young couple. "As
soon as possible, M. Danglars; to-day all preliminaries will be arranged
at my father's, and to-morrow, or next day at latest, the wedding festival
here at La Rииserve.
My friends will be there, I hope; that is to say, you are invited, M.
Danglars, and you, Caderousse." "And
Fernand," said Caderousse with a chuckle; "Fernand, too, is
invited!" "My
wife's brother is my brother," said Edmond; "and we, Mercижdииs and I, should be very sorry if he were absent at
such a time." Fernand
opened his mouth to reply, but his voice died on his lips, and he could
not utter a word. "To-day
the preliminaries, to-morrow or next day the ceremony! You are in a hurry,
captain!" "Danglars,"
said Edmond, smiling, "I will say to you as Mercижdииs said just now to Caderousse, 'Do not give me a
title which does not belong to me'; that may bring me bad luck." "Your
pardon," replied Danglars, "I merely said you seemed in a hurry,
and we have lots of time; the Pharaon cannot be under weigh again in less
than three months." "We
are always in a hurry to be happy, M. Danglars; for when we have suffered
a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune. But it
is not selfishness alone that makes me thus in haste; I must go to
Paris." "Ah,
really?--to Paris! and will it be the first time you have ever been there,
Dantииs?" "Yes."
"Have
you business there?" "Not
of my own; the last commission of poor Captain Leclere; you know to what I
allude, Danglars--it is sacred. Besides, I shall only take the time to go
and return." "Yes,
yes, I understand," said Danglars, and then in a low tone, he added,
"To Paris, no doubt to deliver the letter which the grand marshal
gave him. Ah, this letter gives me an idea--a capital idea! Ah; Dantииs, my friend, you are not yet
registered number one on board the good ship Pharaon;" then turning
towards Edmond, who was walking away, "A pleasant journey," he
cried. "Thank
you," said Edmond with a friendly nod, and the two lovers continued
on their way, as calm and joyous as if they were the very elect of heaven.
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