"What do you want, M. Bertuccio?" said he.
"Your excellency has not stated the number of guests."
"Ah, true."
"How many covers?"
"Count for yourself."
"Is every one here, your excellency?"
"Yes."
Bertuccio glanced through the door, which was ajar.
The count watched him.
"Good heavens!" he exclaimed.
"What is the matter?" said the count.
"That woman—that woman!"
"Which?"
"The one with a white dress and so many diamonds—the fair one."
"Madame Danglars?"
"I do not know her name; but it is she, sir, it is she!"
"Whom do you mean?"
"The woman of the garden!—she that was enciente—she who was walking while she waited for"—Bertuccio stood at the open door, with his eyes starting and his hair on end.
"Waiting for whom?"
Bertuccio, without answering, pointed to Villefort with something of the gesture Macbeth uses to point out Banquo.
"Oh, oh," he at length muttered, "do you see?"
"What?
Who?"
"Him!"
"Him!—M. de Villefort, the king's attorney?
Certainly I see him."
"Then I did not kill him?"
"Really, I think you are going mad, good Bertuccio," said the count.
"Then he is not dead?"
"No; you see plainly he is not dead.
Instead of striking between the sixth and seventh left ribs, as your countrymen do, you must have struck higher or lower, and life is very tenacious in these lawyers, or rather there is no truth in anything you have told me—it was a fright of the imagination, a dream of your fancy.
You went to sleep full of thoughts of vengeance; they weighed heavily upon your stomach; you had the nightmare—that's all.
Come, calm yourself, and reckon them up—M. and Madame de Villefort, two; M. and Madame Danglars, four; M. de Chateau-Renaud, M. Debray, M. Morrel, seven; Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, eight."
"Eight!" repeated Bertuccio.
"Stop!
You are in a shocking hurry to be off—you forget one of my guests.
Lean a little to the left. Stay! look at M. Andrea Cavalcanti, the young man in a black coat, looking at Murillo's Madonna; now he is turning."
This time Bertuccio would have uttered an exclamation, had not a look from Monte Cristo silenced him.
"Benedetto?" he muttered; "fatality!"
"Half-past six o'clock has just struck, M. Bertuccio," said the count severely; "I ordered dinner at that hour, and I do not like to wait;" and he returned to his guests, while Bertuccio, leaning against the wall, succeeded in reaching the dining-room.
Five minutes afterwards the doors of the drawing-room were thrown open, and Bertuccio appearing said, with a violent effort,
"The dinner waits."
The Count of Monte Cristo offered his arm to Madame de Villefort.
"M. de Villefort," he said, "will you conduct the Baroness Danglars?"
Villefort complied, and they passed on to the dining-room.
Chapter 63.
The Dinner.
It was evident that one sentiment affected all the guests on entering the dining-room.
Each one asked what strange influence had brought them to this house, and yet astonished, even uneasy though they were, they still felt that they would not like to be absent.
The recent events, the solitary and eccentric position of the count, his enormous, nay, almost incredible fortune, should have made men cautious, and have altogether prevented ladies visiting a house where there was no one of their own sex to receive them; and yet curiosity had been enough to lead them to overleap the bounds of prudence and decorum.