The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) by Alexandre Dumas Read Free Book Online Page B

paid them out of the two hundred francs that I left you?’
    His father nodded.
    ‘Which means that you lived for three months on sixty francs!’ the young man exclaimed.
    ‘You know how small my needs are.’
    ‘Oh, heaven, heaven, forgive me!’ Edmond cried, falling on his knees in front of the old man.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Ah! You have broken my heart!’
    ‘Pah! You are here,’ the old man said, with a smile. ‘All is forgotten, because all is well.’
    ‘Yes, here I am,’ said the young man. ‘Here I am with a fine future and a little money. Here, father,’ he said, ‘take it, take it and send out for something immediately.’
    He emptied the contents of his pockets on the table: a dozen gold coins, five or six five-franc pieces and some small change.
    Old Dantès’ face lit up.
    ‘Whose is that?’ he asked.
    ‘Mine! Thine! Ours, of course! Take it, buy some food and enjoy yourself. There will be more tomorrow.’
    ‘Gently, gently,’ the old man said, smiling. ‘If you don’t mind, I shall go easy on your money: if people see me buying too many things at once, they will think that I had to wait for you to come back before I went shopping.’
    ‘Do as you think best, but first of all, father, get yourself a housemaid: I don’t want you to live on your own from now on. I have some contraband coffee and some excellent tobacco in a little chest in the hold. You will have it tomorrow. But, hush! Someone is coming.’
    ‘That will be Caderousse, who has learned of your arrival and is no doubt coming to welcome you back.’
    ‘There’s a fellow who says one thing and thinks another,’ Edmond muttered. ‘No matter. He is a neighbour who has helped us in the past, so let him come in.’
    Just as Edmond finished saying this under his breath, the black, bearded head of Caderousse appeared on the landing, framed in the outer door. A man of twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, he was holding a piece of cloth which, being a tailor, he was about to fashion into the lining of a jacket.
    ‘You’re back again, then, Edmond?’ he said, with a thick Marseille accent and a broad smile, revealing teeth as white as ivory.
    ‘As you can see, neighbour, and entirely at your service,’ Dantès replied, this polite formula barely disguising his coldness towards the man.
    ‘Thank you, thank you. Fortunately, I need nothing; in fact, it is sometimes others who need me.’ Dantès bridled. ‘I am not saying that for you, my boy. I lent you money and you returned it. That’s how things are done between good neighbours, and we’re quits.’
    ‘We are never quits towards those who have done us a favour,’ said Dantès. ‘Even when one ceases to owe them money, one owes them gratitude.’
    ‘There is no sense in speaking of that: what’s past is past. Let’s talk about your happy return, young man. I just happened to go down to the harbour to fetch some brown cloth, when I met our friend Danglars. “You’re in Marseille?” I exclaimed. “Yes, as you see.” “I thought you were in Smyrna.” “It could well be, because I have just come back from there.” “And where is young Edmond, then?” “At his father’s, I suppose,” Danglars told me. So I came at once,’ Caderousse concluded, ‘to have the pleasure of shaking the hand of a friend.’
    ‘Dear Caderousse,’ the old man said. ‘He is so fond of us.’
    ‘Indeed, I am, and I hold you in all the greater esteem, since honest people are so rare! But it seems you have come into money, my boy?’ the tailor went on, glancing at the handful of gold and silver that Dantès had emptied on to the table.
    The young man observed a flash of greed light up his neighbour’s dark eyes. ‘Heavens, no!’ he said casually. ‘That money is not mine. I was just telling my father that I was afraid he might have wanted for something while I was away and, to reassure me, he emptied his purse on the table. Come, father,’ he continued. ‘Put that