ether.

"We are friends; are we not?" she asked.

"Oh, madame, I do not presume to call myself your friend, but at all
times I am your most respectful servant." The countess left with an
indescribable pang in her heart, and before she had taken ten steps the
count saw her raise her handkerchief to her eyes. "Do not my mother and
you agree?" asked Albert, astonished.

"On the contrary," replied the count, "did you not hear her declare that
we were friends?" They re-entered the drawing-room, which Valentine and
Madame de Villefort had just quitted. It is perhaps needless to add that
Morrel departed almost at the same time.

Chapter 72. Madame de Saint-Meran.

A gloomy scene had indeed just passed at the house of M. de Villefort.
After the ladies had departed for the ball, whither all the entreaties
of Madame de Villefort had failed in persuading him to accompany them,
the procureur had shut himself up in his study, according to his custom,
with a heap of papers calculated to alarm any one else, but which
generally scarcely satisfied his inordinate desires. But this time the
papers were a mere matter of form. Villefort had secluded himself, not
to study, but to reflect; and with the door locked and orders given that
he should not be disturbed excepting for important business, he sat down
in his arm-chair and began to ponder over the events, the remembrance of
which had during the last eight days filled his mind with so many gloomy
thoughts and bitter recollections. Then, instead of plunging into the
mass of documents piled before him, he opened the drawer of his desk,
touched a spring, and drew out a parcel of cherished memoranda, amongst
which he had carefully arranged, in characters only known to himself,
the names of all those who, either in his political career, in money
matters, at the bar, or in his mysterious love affairs, had become his
enemies.

Their number was formidable, now that he had begun to fear, and yet
these names, powerful though they were, had often caused him to smile
with the same kind of satisfaction experienced by a traveller who from
the summit of a mountain beholds at his feet the craggy eminences, the
almost impassable paths, and the fearful chasms, through which he has so
perilously climbed. When he had run over all these names in his memory,
again read and studied them, commenting meanwhile upon his lists, he
shook his head.

"No," he murmured, "none of my enemies would have waited