The Count of Monte-Cristo/Volume 5/Chapter 110
CHAPTER CX
THE DEED OF ACCUSATION
HE judges took their places in the midst of the most profound silence; the jury took their seats; Villefort, the object of unusual attention, and we had almost said of general admiration, sat in the arm-chair, and cast a tranquil glance around him. Every person looked with astonishment on that grave and severe face, the calm expression of which fraternal griefs had been unable to disturb; and the aspect of a man who was a stranger to all human emotions excited a kind of terror.
"Gendarmes!" said the president, "lead in the accused."
At these words the public attention became more intense, and all eyes were turned toward the door through which Benedetto was to enter. The door soon opened, and the accused appeared.
The same impression was experienced by all present; and no one was deceived by the expression of his countenance. His features bore no sign of that deep emotion which stops the beating of the heart and blanches the cheek. His hands, gracefully placed, one upon his hat, the other in the opening of his white waistcoat, were not at all tremulous; his eye was calm, and even brilliant. Scarcely had he entered the hall, when he glanced at the whole body of magistrates and assistants: his eye rested longer on the president, and still more so on the procureur du roi.
By the side of Andrea was placed the lawyer who was to conduct his defense, and who had been chosen by the court; for Andrea disdained to pay any attention to those details, to which he appeared to attach no importance. The lawyer was a young man with light hair, and whose face expressed a hundred times more emotion than that which characterized the prisoner. 
The president called for the deed of accusation, drawn up, as we know, by the clever and implacable pen of De Villefort. During the reading of this, which was long, and would have crushed any one else, the public attention was continually drawn toward Andrea, who bore
the burden with Spartan unconcern. Villefort had never been So concise and eloquent: the crime was represented under the liveliest colors; the former life of the prisoner, his transformation, a review of his life from the earliest period, were set forth with all the talent that a knowl edge of human life could furnish to a mind like that of the procureur du roi. Benedetto was thus for ever lost in public opinion before the sentence of the law could be pronounced.
Andrea paid no attention to the successive charges which were brought against him. Villefort, who examined him attentively, and who no doubt practiced upon him all the psychological studies he was accustomed to use, in vain endeavored to make him lower his eyes, not withstanding the depth and profundity of his gaze. At length the deed was read.
"Accused," said the president, "your name and surname?"
Andrea rose.
"Excuse me, M. le Président," he said, in a clear voice, "but I see you are going to adopt a course of questions through which I cannot follow you. I have an idea, which I will justify by-and-by, of being an exception to ordinary criminals. Allow me, then, if you please, to answer in different order, or I will not do so at all."
The astonished president looked at the jury, who themselves looked upon the procureur du roi. The whole assembly manifested great surprise; but Andrea appeared quite unmoved.
"Your age?" said the president: "will you answer that question?"
"I will answer that question, as well as the rest, M. le Président, but in its turn."
"Your age?" repeated the president.
"I am twenty-one years old; or rather I shall be in a few days, as I was born the night of the 27th of September, 1817."
M. de Villefort, who was busy taking down some notes, raised his head at the mention of this date.
"Where were you born?" continued the president.
"At Auteuil, near Paris."
M. de Villefort a second time raised his head, looked at Benedetto, as if he had been gazing at the head of Medusa, and became livid. As for Benedetto, he gracefully wiped his lips with a fine cambric pocket-handkerchief.
"Your profession?"
"First I was a forger," answered Andrea, as calmly as possible; "then I became a thief; and, lately, have become an assassin."
A murmur, or rather storm, of indignation burst from all parts of the assembly. The judges themselves appeared stupefied; and the jury manifested tokens of disgust for a cynicism so unexpected from a fashionable man. M. de Villefort pressed his hand upon his brow, which, at first pale, had become red and burning; then he suddenly rose, and looked around as though he had lost his senses—he wanted air. "Are you looking for anything, "M. le Procureur du Roi?"" asked Benedetto, with his most pleasing smile.
M. de Villefort answered nothing, but sat, or rather threw himself down again upon his chair.
"And now, will you consent to tell your name?" said the president. "The brutal affectation with which you have enumerated and classified your crimes, which you call a profession, calls for a severe reprimand on the part of the court, both in the name of morality, and for the respect due to humanity. You appear to consider this a point of honor, and it may be for this reason you have delayed acknowledging your name. You wished it to be preceded by all these titles."
"It is quite wonderful, M. le Président, how entirely you have read my thoughts," said Benedetto, in his softest voice and most polite manner. "This is, indeed, the reason why I begged you to alter the order of the questions."
The public astonishment had reached its height. There was no longer any deceit or bravado in the manner of the accused. The audience seemed like some thunder-cloud about to burst over the gloomy scene.
"Well!" said the president; "your name?"
"I cannot tell you my name, since I do not know it; but I know my father's, and will pronounce it."
A painful flash of dread blinded Villefort's eyes. Drops of perspiration poured from his cheeks on the papers which he grasped with a convulsive hand.
"Repeat your father's name," said the president.
Not a whisper, not a breath was heard in that vast assembly; every one waited anxiously.
"My father is procureur du roi," replied Andrea calmly.
"Procureur du roi?" said the president, stupefied, and without noticing the agitation which spread over the face of M. de Villefort—"procureur du roi?"
"Yes; and if you wish to know his name, I will tell it,—he is named Villefort,"
The explosion, which had been so long restrained from a feeling of respect to the court of justice, now burst forth like thunder from the breasts of all present; the court itself did not seek to restrain the movement of the multitude. The exclamations, the insults addressed to Benedetto, who remained perfectly unconcerned, the energetic gestures, the movement of the gendarmes, the sneers of the scum of the crowd—always sure to rise to the surface in case of any disturbance—all this lasted five minutes, before the door-keepers and magistrates were able to restore silence. In the midst of this tumult the voice of the president was heard to exclaim:
"Are you playing with justice, accused, and do you dare set your fellow-citizens an example of disorder which even in these times has never been equaled."
Several persons hurried up to M. de Villefort, who was nearly buried in his chair, offering him consolation, encouragement, and protestations of zeal and sympathy. Order was reestablished in the hall, with the exception of a few who still moved and whispered. A lady, it was said had just fainted; they had supplied her with a smelling-bottle, and she had recovered. During the scene of tumult, Andrea had turned his smiling face toward the assembly; then, leaning with one hand on the oaken rail of his bench, in the most graceful attitude possible, he said:
"Gentlemen, I assure you I had no idea of insulting the court, or of making a useless disturbance in the presence of this honorable assembly. They ask my age; I tell it. They ask where I was born; I answer. They ask my name; I cannot give it, since my parents abandoned me. But though I cannot give my own name, not possessing one, I can tell them my father's. Now, I repeat, my father is named M. de Villefort, and I am ready to prove it."
There was an energy, a conviction, and a sincerity in the manner of the young man, which silenced the tumult. All eyes were turned for a moment toward the procureur du roi, who sat as motionless as though a thunderbolt had changed him into a corpse.
"Gentlemen!" said Andrea, commanding silence by his voice and manner; "I owe you the proofs and explanations of what I have said."
"But," said the irritated president, "in the preliminary examination you called yourself Benedetto, declared yourself an orphan, and claimed Corsica as your country."
"I then said anything I pleased, in order that the solemn declaration I have just made should not be withheld, which otherwise would certainly have been the case. I now repeat that I was born at Auteuil on the night of the 27th of September, 1817, and that I am the son of the procureur du roi, M. de Villefort. Do you wish for any further details? I will give them. I was born in No. 28, Rue de la Fontaine, in a room hung with red damask; my father took me in his arms, telling my mother I was dead; wrapped me in a napkin marked with an H and an N; and carried me into a garden, where he buried me alive."
A shudder ran through the assembly when they saw that the confidence of the prisoner increased in proportion with the terror of M. de Villefort.
"But how have you become acquainted with all these details?" asked the president.
"I will tell you, M. le Président. A man who had sworn a Corsican vengeance against my father, and had long watched his opportunity to kill him, had introduced himself that night into the garden in which my father buried me. He was concealed in a thicket; he saw my father bury something in the ground, and stabbed him in the midst of the operation; then, thinking the deposit might contain some treasure, he turned up the ground, and found me still living. The man carried me to the Foundling Hospital, where I was inscribed under the number 37. Three months afterward, a woman traveled from Rogliano to Paris to fetch me, and having claimed me as her son, carried me away. Thus, you see, though born in Paris, I was brought up in Corsica."
There was a moment's silence, during which one could have fancied the hall empty, so profound was the stillness.
"Proceed!" said the president.
"Certainly, I might have lived happily among those good people, who adored me; but my perverse disposition prevailed over the virtues which my adopted mother endeavored to instill into my heart. I increased in wickedness till I committed crime. One day when I cursed Providence for making me so wicked, and ordaining me to such a fate, my adopted father said to me, 'Do not blaspheme, unhappy child! the crime is your father's, not yours; your father's, who devoted you to death, or to a life of misery, in case, by a miracle, you should escape.' Since then I ceased to blaspheme, but I cursed my father. This is why I have uttered the words for which you blame me; this is why I have filled this whole assembly with horror. If I have committed an additional crime, punish me; but if you will allow that ever since the day of my birth my fate has been sad, bitter, and lamentable, then pity me."
"But your mother?" asked the president.
"My mother thought me dead; she is not guilty. I did not even wish to know her name, nor do I know it."
Just then a piercing cry, ending in a sob, burst from the center of the crowd, who encircled the lady who had before fainted, and who now fell into a violent fit of hysterics. She was carried out of the hall, and in doing so, the thick veil which concealed her face dropped off, and Madame Danglars was recognized. Notwithstanding his shattered nerves, the stunning sensation in his ears, and the species of madness which turned his brain, Villefort rose as he perceived her.
"The proofs! the proofs!" said the president; "remember this tissue of horrors must be supported by the clearest proofs."
"The proofs?" said Benedetto, laughing; "do you want proofs?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, look at M. de Villefort, and then ask me for proofs."
Every one turned toward the procureur du roi, who, unable to bear the universal gaze now riveted on him alone, advanced, staggering, into the midst of the tribunal, with his hair disheveled, and his face indented with the mark of his nails. The whole assembly uttered a long murmur of astonishment.
"Father!" said Benedetto, "I am asked for proofs, do you wish me to give them!"
"No, no, it is useless!" stammered M. de Villefort, in a hoarse voice; "no, it is useless!"
"How useless?" cried the president, "what do you mean!"
"I mean that I feel it impossible to struggle against this deadly weight which crushes me. Gentlemen, I know I am in the hands of an avenging God! We need no proofs; everything related by this young man is true."
A dull, gloomy silence, like that which precedes some awful phenomenon of nature, covered with a pall of lead the assembly, who shuddered in dismay.
"What! M. de Villefort," cried the president, "do you yield to an hallucination? What! are you no longer in possession of your senses? This strange, unexpected, terrible accusation has disordered your reason. Come, recover."
The procureur du roi shook his head; his teeth chattered like those of a man under a violent attack of fever, and yet he was deadly pale.
"I am in possession of all my senses, sir," he said; "my body alone suffers, as you may suppose. I acknowledge myself guilty of all the young man has brought against me, and from this hour hold myself at the disposal of the procureur du roi who will succeed me."
And as he spoke these words with a hoarse, choking voice, he staggered toward the door, which was mechanically opened by a door-keeper. The whole assembly were dumb with astonishment at the revelation and confession which had produced a catastrophe so different to that which had been expected during the last fortnight by the Parisian world.
"Well," said Beauchamp, "let them now say that drama is unnatural!"
"Ma foi!" said Château-Renaud, "I would rather end my career like M. de Morcerf; a pistol-shot seems quite delightful, compared with this catastrophe."
"And then, it kills," said Beauchamp.
"And I, too, who thought of marrying his daughter," said Debray. "She did well to die, poor girl!"
"The sitting is adjourned, gentlemen," said the president; "fresh inquiries will be made, and the case will be tried next session by another magistrate."
As for Andrea, who was as calm and more interesting than ever, he left the hall, escorted by gendarmes, who involuntarily paid him some attention.
"Well, what do you think of this, my fine fellow?" asked Debray of the sergent-de-ville, slipping a louis into his hand.
"There will be extenuating circumstances," he replied.