Chapter 24: The Weight of Ambition: II
Mercédès burst into tears. As Villefort tried to push past her, she grabbed his arm.
"At least tell me where he is! I just need to know if he’s alive or dead!"
"I don’t know. He’s no longer my responsibility," Villefort lied.
Desperate to end this painful encounter, he shoved past her and slammed his door shut, as if he could lock out the guilt that was eating at him. But guilt isn’t so easily banished. Like a soldier carrying an arrow wound, he carried this pain with him as he returned to the salon, where he collapsed into a chair with a sigh that was almost a sob.
For the first time in his life, the crushing weight of genuine remorse seized his heart. The innocent man he had sacrificed for his own ambition appeared in his mind’s eye, pale, accusing, leading his heartbroken fiancée by the hand.
This wasn’t the dramatic, mythical guilt he’d read about in books, but something far worse. A slow, consuming agony that would intensify with every passing hour until the day he died.
For a moment, he hesitated. Throughout his career, he had sent countless criminals to their deaths with his eloquent arguments, and he had never felt a moment’s regret because they had been guilty, or at least, he had believed they were guilty.
But this was different. This time, he had destroyed an innocent man’s happiness. This time, he wasn’t the judge, he was the executioner.
As these thoughts tormented him, he felt a new sensation rising in his chest, filling him with nameless dread. It was like the way an injured person instinctively cringes when someone reaches toward their wound. But Villefort’s wound would never heal, or if it did, it would only reopen even more painfully than before.
If, at that moment, Renée had walked in and begged him to show mercy, or if the beautiful Mercédès had appeared and said, "In God’s name, please give me back my fiancé," his cold, trembling hands would have signed Dantès’ release immediately. But no voice broke the silence of the chamber. The only interruption came when Villefort’s servant entered to tell him his traveling carriage was ready.
Villefort sprang from his chair, hastily opened a desk drawer, and emptied all the gold it contained into his pockets. He stood motionless for an instant, pressing his hand to his head and muttering incoherently. Then, seeing that his servant had placed his traveling cloak on his shoulders, he rushed to the carriage and ordered the drivers to take him back to the Saint-Méran estate.
Poor Dantès’ fate was sealed.
As promised, Villefort found the marquise and Renée waiting for him. He was startled when he saw Renée, fearing she was about to plead for Dantès’s life. But her emotions were entirely personal, she was only thinking about Villefort’s departure.
She loved Villefort deeply, and he was leaving her just as they were about to be married. He had no idea when he would return, and Renée, far from wanting to help Dantès, actually hated the man whose supposed crime was separating her from her beloved.
Meanwhile, what of Mercédès? After her encounter with Villefort, she had met her cousin Fernand at the corner of Loge Street. She had returned to her home in the fishing village and thrown herself onto her bed in despair. Fernand knelt beside her, taking her hand and covering it with kisses that she didn’t even feel.
She spent the entire night this way. The oil lamp burned out, but she didn’t notice the darkness. Dawn came, but she didn’t realize it was morning. Grief had blinded her to everything except thoughts of Edmond.
"Oh, you’re there," she said finally, turning toward Fernand.
"I haven’t left your side since yesterday," Fernand replied sadly.
Monsieur Morrel, Dantès’s employer, hadn’t given up the fight easily. When he learned that Dantès had been arrested and imprisoned, he had gone to all his friends and every influential person in the city. But word had already spread that Dantès was arrested as a supporter of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Since even the most optimistic people considered Napoleon’s return to power impossible, Morrel met with nothing but refusals. He had returned home in despair, declaring that the situation was hopeless and nothing more could be done.
Caderousse was equally restless and worried, but instead of trying to help Dantès like Morrel had, he shut himself up at home with two bottles of blackcurrant brandy, hoping to drown his troubled thoughts in alcohol. It didn’t work.
He became too drunk to fetch more liquor, but not drunk enough to forget what had happened. With his elbows on the table, he sat between two empty bottles while horrific visions danced in the flickering candlelight, nightmarish phantoms like something out of a dark fairy tale.
Only Danglars was content and happy. He had eliminated a rival and secured his own position aboard the merchant ship Pharaon. Danglars was one of those men born with a calculator for a heart, who saw everything in terms of profit and loss.
A human life meant less to him than a number on a ledger, especially when destroying it could advance his own interests. He went to bed at his usual time and slept peacefully.
After receiving Salvieux’s letter of introduction, Villefort embraced Renée, kissed the marquise’s hand, shook the marquis’s hand, and departed for Paris via the Aix road.
Old Dantès, Edmond’s father, was dying of anxiety, desperate to know what had happened to his son.
But we know exactly what had become of Edmond.