The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask & The Three Musketeers (3 Books in One Edition). Alexandre Dumas

has he done?” asked Albert.

      “Oh, nothing worth speaking of,” said Morrel; “M. de Chateau-Renaud exaggerates.”

      “Not worth speaking of?” cried Chateau-Renaud; “life is not worth speaking of! — that is rather too philosophical, on my word, Morrel. It is very well for you, who risk your life every day, but for me, who only did so once” —

      “We gather from all this, baron, that Captain Morrel saved your life.”

      “Exactly so.”

      “On what occasion?” asked Beauchamp.

      “Beauchamp, my good fellow, you know I am starving,” said Debray: “do not set him off on some long story.”

      “Well, I do not prevent your sitting down to table,” replied Beauchamp, “Chateau-Renaud can tell us while we eat our breakfast.”

      “Gentlemen,” said Morcerf, “it is only a quarter past ten, and I expect some one else.”

      “Ah, true, a diplomatist!” observed Debray.

      “Diplomat or not, I don’t know; I only know that he charged himself on my account with a mission, which he terminated so entirely to my satisfaction, that had I been king, I should have instantly created him knight of all my orders, even had I been able to offer him the Golden Fleece and the Garter.”

      “Well, since we are not to sit down to table,” said Debray, “take a glass of sherry, and tell us all about it.”

      “You all know that I had the fancy of going to Africa.”

      “It is a road your ancestors have traced for you,” said Albert gallantly.

      “Yes? but I doubt that your object was like theirs — to rescue the Holy Sepulchre.”

      “You are quite right, Beauchamp,” observed the young aristocrat. “It was only to fight as an amateur. I cannot bear duelling since two seconds, whom I had chosen to arrange an affair, forced me to break the arm of one of my best friends, one whom you all know — poor Franz d’Epinay.”

      “Ah, true,” said Debray, “you did fight some time ago; about what?”

      “The devil take me, if I remember,” returned Chateau-Renaud. “But I recollect perfectly one thing, that, being unwilling to let such talents as mine sleep, I wished to try upon the Arabs the new pistols that had been given to me. In consequence I embarked for Oran, and went from thence to Constantine, where I arrived just in time to witness the raising of the siege. I retreated with the rest, for eight and forty hours. I endured the rain during the day, and the cold during the night tolerably well, but the third morning my horse died of cold. Poor brute — accustomed to be covered up and to have a stove in the stable, the Arabian finds himself unable to bear ten degrees of cold in Arabia.”

      “That’s why you want to purchase my English horse,” said Debray, “you think he will bear the cold better.”

      “You are mistaken, for I have made a vow never to return to Africa.”

      “You were very much frightened, then?” asked Beauchamp.

      “Well, yes, and I had good reason to be so,” replied Chateau-Renaud. “I was retreating on foot, for my horse was dead. Six Arabs came up, full gallop, to cut off my head. I shot two with my double-barrelled gun, and two more with my pistols, but I was then disarmed, and two were still left; one seized me by the hair (that is why I now wear it so short, for no one knows what may happen), the other swung a yataghan, and I already felt the cold steel on my neck, when this gentleman whom you see here charged them, shot the one who held me by the hair, and cleft the skull of the other with his sabre. He had assigned himself the task of saving a man’s life that day; chance caused that man to be myself. When I am rich I will order a statue of Chance from Klagmann or Marochetti.”

      “Yes,” said Morrel, smiling, “it was the 5th of September, the anniversary of the day on which my father was miraculously preserved; therefore, as far as it lies in my power, I endeavor to celebrate it by some” —

      “Heroic action,” interrupted Chateau-Renaud. “I was chosen. But that is not all — after rescuing me from the sword, he rescued me from the cold, not by sharing his cloak with me, like St. Martin, but by giving me the whole; then from hunger by sharing with me — guess what?”

      “A Strasbourg pie?” asked Beauchamp.

      “No, his horse; of which we each of us ate a slice with a hearty appetite. It was very hard.”

      “The horse?” said Morcerf, laughing.

      “No, the sacrifice,” returned Chateau-Renaud; “ask Debray if he would sacrifice his English steed for a stranger?”

      “Not for a stranger,” said Debray, “but for a friend I might, perhaps.”

      “I divined that you would become mine, count,” replied Morrel; “besides, as I had the honor to tell you, heroism or not, sacrifice or not, that day I owed an offering to bad fortune in recompense for the favors good fortune had on other days granted to us.”

      “The history to which M. Morrel alludes,” continued Chateau-Renaud, “is an admirable one, which he will tell you some day when you are better acquainted with him; to-day let us fill our stomachs, and not our memories. What time do you breakfast, Albert?”

      “At half-past ten.”

      “Precisely?” asked Debray, taking out his watch.

      “Oh, you will give me five minutes’ grace,” replied Morcerf, “for I also expect a preserver.”

      “Of whom?”

      “Of myself,” cried Morcerf; “parbleu, do you think I cannot be saved as well as any one else, and that there are only Arabs who cut off heads? Our breakfast is a philanthropic one, and we shall have at table — at least, I hope so — two benefactors of humanity.”

      “What shall we do?” said Debray; “we have only one Monthyon prize.”

      “Well, it will be given to some one who has done nothing to deserve it,” said Beauchamp; “that is the way the Academy mostly escapes from the dilemma.”

      “And where does he come from?” asked Debray. “You have already answered the question once, but so vaguely that I venture to put it a second time.”

      “Really,” said Albert, “I do not know; when I invited him three months ago, he was then at Rome, but since that time who knows where he may have gone?”

      “And you think him capable of being exact?” demanded Debray.

      “I think him capable of everything.”

      “Well, with the five minutes’ grace, we have only ten left.”

      “I will profit by them to tell you something about my guest.”

      “I beg pardon,” interrupted Beauchamp; “are there any materials for an article in what you are going to tell us?”

      “Yes, and for a most curious one.”

      “Go on, then, for I see I shall not get to the Chamber this morning, and I must make up for it.”

      “I was at Rome during the last Carnival.”

      “We know that,” said Beauchamp.

      “Yes, but what you do not know is that I was carried off by bandits.”

      “There are no bandits,” cried Debray.

      “Yes there are, and most hideous, or rather most admirable ones, for I found them ugly enough to frighten me.”

      “Come, my dear Albert,” said Debray, “confess that your cook is behindhand, that the oysters have not arrived from Ostend or Marennes, and that, like Madame de Maintenon, you are going to replace the dish by a story. Say so at once;