e 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 V