Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 62: Ghosts. (continued)

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."