Edmond Dantes Part 6

Beauchamp, the journalist, sat at his desk in his editorial sanctum early one bright morning in the autumn of 1841. He had gone to work long before his usual hour, for important movements were on foot, the political atmosphere was agitated and Paris was in a state of feverish excitement; besides, Beauchamp had that day printed in his journal a dispatch from Algeria that would be certain to cause a great sensation, and, with the proper spirit of pride, the journalist desired to be at his post that he might receive the numerous congratulations his friends could not fail to offer, as the dispatch had appeared in his paper alone.

The sanctum had not an attractive look; in fact, it was rather dilapidated, while, in addition, the disorder occasioned by the previous night's work had not been repaired, and all was chaos and confusion.

Beauchamp was busily engaged in glancing over the rival morning papers when Lucien Debray entered and seated himself at another desk. The Ministerial Secretary smiled upon the journalist in a knowing way, and the latter, nodding to him with an air of triumph, silently pointed to the pile of journals he had finished examining. Lucien took them up, and without a word began scanning their contents.

"Glorious news that from the army in Algeria!" cried Chateau-Renaud, rus.h.i.+ng into the sanctum.

"Glorious, indeed!" replied the editor, looking up from the paper over which he was hurriedly skimming. On the huge table at his side, as well as beneath it, and under his feet and his capacious arm-chair, nothing was to be seen but newspapers.

"Take a chair, Renaud, if you can find one, and help yourself to the news. You see I have Lucien similarly engaged yonder."

The Ministerial Secretary glanced up from his papers, returned his friend's salutation and resumed his reading. He was dressed with his customary elegance and richness, but his form and face were fuller than when last before the reader, and his brown hair was besprinkled with gray.

"I congratulate you, Beauchamp, on being the first to give the news,"

continued Chateau-Renaud. "Not a paper in Paris but your own has a line from the army this morning."

"Rather congratulate me and my paper on having a friend at court."

"Ha! and that explains the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that an opposition journal has intelligence, which only the Bureau of War could have antic.i.p.ated! Treason--treason!"

The editor and the Secretary exchanged significant smiles.

"Oh! I don't doubt that your favors are reciprocal," continued the young aristocrat, laughing. "I've half a mind to be something useful myself--Minister--editor--anything but an idler and a law-giver--just to experience the exquisite sensation of a new pleasure--the pleasure of revealing and publis.h.i.+ng to the world something it knew not before. Why, you two fellows, in this dark and dirty little room, are the two greatest men in Paris this morning--or were, rather, before your paper, Beauchamp, laid before the world what only you and Lucien knew previously. Oh! the delight, the rapture of knowing something that n.o.body else knows, and then of making the revelation!"

"And this news from Algeria is really important," remarked the editor.

"Important! So important that it will be before the Chambers this morning," replied the Secretary.

"So I supposed," said the Deputy, "and called to learn additional particulars, if you had any, on my way to the Chambers."

"We gave all we had, my dear Lycurgus, and for that were indebted to an official dispatch, telegraphed to the War Office, and faithfully re-telegraphed to us by our well-beloved Lucien."

"It's true, then, as I have sometimes suspected, that the wires radiate from the Minister's sanctum to the editor's?" was the laughing rejoinder.

"It must be so, or there's witchcraft in it. There's witchcraft, at any rate, in this new invention. Speed, secrecy, security and surety--no eastern genius of Arabian fiction can be compared to the electric telegraph; and how Ministers or editors continued to keep the world in va.s.salage, as they always have done, without this ready slave, seems now scarce less wonderful than the invention itself. Instead of detracting from the power of the press, the telegraph renders it more powerful than ever."

"But affairs in Algeria--is not the news splendid!" cried the editor.

"Why did we not all become Spahis and win immortality, as some of our generals have?"

"As to immortality," said the Secretary, "we should have been far more likely to win the phantom as dead men than as living heroes."

"Debray was at the raising of the siege of Constantine," said Beauchamp laughing, "and knows all about the honors of war."

"Yes, indeed, and all about the raptures of starvation, of cold and hunger, after victory, and the ecstatic felicity of being pursued by six Bedouins, and after having slain five having my own neck encircled by the yataghan of the sixth!"

"And how chanced it that you saved your head, Lucien?" asked the Count.

"Save it--I didn't save it; but a most excellent friend of mine--a friend in need--galloped up and saved it for me."

"Yes," replied Beauchamp, "our gallant friend, Maximilian Morrel, the Captain of Spahis--now colonel of a regiment, and in the direct line of promotion to the first vacant baton--eh, Lucien? A lucky thing to save the head of one of the War Office from a Bedouin's yataghan. Up--up--up, like a balloon, has this young Spahi risen ever since."

"You are wrong, Beauchamp. Not like a balloon. Rather like a planet.

Maximilian Morrel is one of the most gallant young men in the French army, and step by step, from rank to rank, has he hewn his own path with his good sabre, in a strong hand, nerved by a brave heart and proud ambition, to the position he now holds."

"His name I see among the immortals in the dispatch of this morning.

Well, well, Morrel is a splendid fellow, no doubt, but it's a splendid thing to have friends in the War Office, nevertheless, who will give that splendor a chance to s.h.i.+ne--will plant the lighted candle in a candlestick, and not smother its beams under a bushel."

"Morrel has now been in Africa five whole years," said the Secretary--"a few months only excepted after his marriage with Villefort's fair daughter, Valentine, (as was said) when he was indulged with a furlough for his honeymoon."

"She is not in Paris?" asked Beauchamp.

"No; she leads the life of a perfect recluse with her child, during her husband's absence, at his villa somewhere in the south--near Ma.r.s.eilles, where the department forwards her letters."

"Yet she is said to be a magnificent woman," remarked the Count.

"Wonderful!" cried Beauchamp. "A magnificent woman and a recluse!"

"Oh! but it was a love-match of the most devoted species, you must remember."

"True; she was to have married our friend, Franz d'Epinay."

"And died to save herself from that fate, I suppose--and afterwards was resurrected and blessed Morrel with her hand and heart, and the most exquisite person that even a jaded voluptuary could covet.

Happy--happy--happy man!"

"Apropos of dying," said the Secretary, "do you remember how fast people died at M. de Villefort's house about that time?"

"Horrible! A whole family of two or three generations, one after the other! First M. and Madame de Saint-Meran--then Barrois, the old servant of M. Noirtier--then Valentine, and, last of all, Madame de Villefort and Edward, her idol. No wonder that M. le Procureur du Roi himself went mad under such an acc.u.mulation of horrors! By the by, Debray, is M. de Villefort still an inmate of the Maison Royale de Charenton?"

"I know nothing to the contrary," replied the Secretary, who had resumed his paper, and to whom the subject seemed not altogether agreeable. "He is an incurable." Then, as if to turn the subject, he continued: "Apropos of the immortals of Algeria, here is a name that seems destined even to a more rapid apotheosis than that of the favored Morrel."

"You mean Joliette?" said the editor. "Who, in the name of all that is mysterious and heroic, is this same Joliette? I have found it impossible to discover, with all the means at the command of the press."

"And I, with all the means at the command of the Government. All we can discover is this--that he is a man of about twenty-five; that he enlisted at Ma.r.s.eilles, and in less than three years has risen from the ranks to the command of a battalion. His career has been most brilliant."

"And to whose favor does he owe his wonderful advancement, Beauchamp?"

asked the Deputy, laughing.

"To that of Marshal Bugeaud, Governor-General of Algeria."

"Ah!"

"Who has indulged him with an appointment in every forlorn hope!"

"Excellent!" cried the Count. "What more could a man resolved to be a military immortal desire? Immortality the goal--two paths conduct to it--each sure--death--life!--the former the shorter, and, perhaps, the surer! But there is one name I never see in the war dispatches. Do you ever meet with it, Messrs. editor and Secretary--I mean the name of our brilliant friend, Albert de Morcerf? The rumor ran that, after the disgrace and suicide of the Count, his father, he and his mother went south, and he later to Africa."

"I have hardly seen the name of Morcerf in print since the paragraph headed 'Yanina' in my paper, about which poor Albert was so anxious to fight me."