News of the arrival of the Pharaon had not yet reached the old man who was standing on a chair, engaged with trembling hands in pinning up some nasturtiums and clematis that climbed across the trellis outside his window. Suddenly, he felt himself grasped around the waist and a well-known voice exclaim behind him: "Father! My dear father!"

In this room lived Dantès' father.

"What is it, father?" the young man exclaimed, with concern. "Are you unwell?"

The old man cried out and turned around; then, seeing his son, fell into his arms, pale and trembling.

We shall leave Danglars, gripped by the demon of hatred, trying to poison the shipowner's ear with some malicious libel against his comrade, and follow Dantès who, after walking along the Canebière, took the Rue de Noailles, entered a small house on the left side of the Allées de Meilhan and hastened up the four flights of a dark stairway. There, holding the banister with one hand, while the other repressed the beating of his heart, he stopped before a half-open door through which he could see to the back of a small room.

"No, no, dear Edmond, my son, my child. No, but I was not expecting you -- and the joy, the shock of seeing you like this, unexpectedly… Oh, heavens! It is too much for me!"

"Now, then, father, calm yourself! I am really here! They always say that joy cannot harm you, which is why I came in without warning. Come now, smile; don't look at me like that, with those wild eyes. I am back and there is happiness in store for us."

"I'm pleased to hear it, my boy," the old man continued. "But what happiness? Are you going to stay with me from now on? Come, tell me about your good fortune!"

"God forgive me," the young man said, "for rejoicing at good fortune which has brought grief to the family of another. But, God knows, I never wished for it; it has happened, and I do not have the heart to grieve at it. Our good Captain Leclère is dead, father, and it seems likely that, thanks to Monsieur Morrel's support, I shall have his command. Do you understand, father? A captain at twenty! With a salary of a hundred louis1 and a share in the profits! Isn't that better than a poor sailor like myself could expect?"

"So I want you to have a little house, with the first money I earn, and a garden to grow your clematis, your nasturtiums and your honeysuckle… But what's wrong, father? You look ill!"

"Yes, my son, yes," said the old man. "This is indeed a stroke of luck."

"An instant, don't worry! It is nothing." And, his strength failing him, he leant back.

"Father!" cried the young man. "Come, have a glass of wine; it will revive you. Where do you keep your wine?"

"No, thank you, don't bother to look for it; there is no need," he replied, trying to restrain his son.

"It's a waste of time…" the old man said. "There is no wine left."

"What! No wine!" Dantès said, paling in turn as he looked from the old man's sunken and livid cheeks to the empty cupboards. "What! You have no wine left? Have you been short of money, father?"

"I am short of nothing, now that you are here," said the old man.

"Yes, indeed there is, father. Show me it." He opened one or two cupboards.

"But I left you two hundred francs," Dantès stammered, wiping the sweat from his brow, "two months ago, as I was leaving."

"Ah! You have broken my heart!"

"Yes, here I am," said the young man. "Here I am with a fine future and a little money. Here, father," he said, "take it, take it and send out for something immediately."

"But," Dantès exclaimed, "I owed Caderousse a hundred and forty francs!"

His father nodded.

"And I paid it."

"Yes," the old man mumbled.

"Oh, heaven, heaven, forgive me!" Edmond cried, falling on his knees in front of the old man.

"Pah! You are here," the old man said, with a smile. "All is forgotten, because all is well."

"Which means that you lived for three months on sixty francs!" the young man exclaimed.

"And you paid them out of the two hundred francs that I left you?"

"You know how small my needs are."

"What are you doing?"

"Yes, yes, Edmond, so you did; but when you left you forgot a small debt to my neighbour Caderousse. He reminded me of it and said that if I did not settle it on your behalf, he would go and reclaim it from Monsieur Morrel. So, you understand, I was afraid that it might do you some harm."

"And?"

"Gently, gently," the old man said, smiling. "If you don't mind, I shall go easy on your money: if people see me buying too many things at once, they will think that I had to wait for you to come back before I went shopping."

"Whose is that?" he asked.

Old Dantès' face lit up.

He emptied the contents of his pockets on the table: a dozen gold coins, five or six five-franc pieces and some small change.

"Mine! Thine! Ours, of course! Take it, buy some food and enjoy yourself. There will be more tomorrow."

"That will be Caderousse, who has learned of your arrival and is no doubt coming to welcome you back."

"Do as you think best, but first of all, father, get yourself a housemaid: I don't want you to live on your own from now on. I have some contraband coffee and some excellent tobacco in a little chest in the hold. You will have it tomorrow. But, hush! Someone is coming."

"There's a fellow who says one thing and thinks another," Edmond muttered. "No matter. He is a neighbour who has helped us in the past, so let him come in."

"You're back again, then, Edmond?" he said, with a thick Marseille accent and a broad smile, revealing teeth as white as ivory.

"As you can see, neighbour, and entirely at your service," Dantès replied, this polite formula barely disguising his coldness towards the man.

Just as Edmond finished saying this under his breath, the black, bearded head of Caderousse appeared on the landing, framed in the outer door. A man of twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, he was holding a piece of cloth which, being a tailor, he was about to fashion into the lining of a jacket.

"Thank you, thank you. Fortunately, I need nothing; in fact, it is sometimes others who need me." Dantès bridled. "I am not saying that for you, my boy. I lent you money and you returned it. That's how things are done between good neighbours, and we're quits."

"We are never quits towards those who have done us a favour," said Dantès. "Even when one ceases to owe them money, one owes them gratitude."

"There is no sense in speaking of that: what's past is past. Let's talk about your happy return, young man. I just happened to go down to the harbour to fetch some brown cloth, when I met our friend Danglars. 'You're in Marseille?' I exclaimed. 'Yes, as you see.' 'I thought you were in Smyrna.' 'It could well be, because I have just come back from there.' 'And where is young Edmond, then?' 'At his father's, I suppose,' Danglars told me. So I came at once," Caderousse concluded, "to have the pleasure of shaking the hand of a friend."

"Indeed not, my boy," said Caderousse. "I need nothing and, thank God, my business holds body and soul together. Keep your money, keep it; one can never have too much. Still, I am obliged for your offer, as much as if I had taken advantage of it."

"Dear Caderousse," the old man said. "He is so fond of us."

"It was well meant," said Dantès.

"Indeed, I am, and I hold you in all the greater esteem, since honest people are so rare! But it seems you have come into money, my boy?" the tailor went on, glancing at the handful of gold and silver that Dantès had emptied on to the table.

The young man observed a flash of greed light up his neighbour's dark eyes. "Heavens, no!" he said casually. "That money is not mine. I was just telling my father that I was afraid he might have wanted for something while I was away and, to reassure me, he emptied his purse on the table. Come, father," he continued. "Put that money back in your pocket -- unless, of course, our neighbour needs some for himself, in which case it is at his disposal."

"So why did you refuse, son?" the old man asked.

"I don't doubt that it was. So, I learn that you are on good terms with Monsieur Morrel, sly one that you are?"

"So that I could come straight back here, father," the young man answered. "I was anxious to see you."

"What do you mean: refuse dinner?" Old Dantès asked. "Did he invite you to dinner?"

"Yes, father," said Edmond, smiling at his father's astonishment on learning of this high honour.

"Monsieur Morrel has always been very good to me," Dantès answered.

"In that case, you were wrong to refuse dinner with him."

"He must have been put out by it, that good Monsieur Morrel," Caderousse remarked. "When one hopes to be made captain, it is a mistake to get on the wrong side of one's owner."

"I explained the reason for my refusal and I hope he understood it."

"Even so, to be promoted to captain, one must flatter one's bosses a little."

"I expect to become captain without that," Dantès retorted.

"So much the better! All your old friends will be pleased for you and I know someone over there, behind the Citadelle de Saint-Nicholas, who will not be unhappy about it, either."

"Go, child," Old Dantès said. "And may God bless you as much in your wife as He has blessed me in my son."

"By which you mean," Dantès said, smiling, but barely concealing his anxiety, "that if I were not a captain…"

"His wife!" said Caderousse. "Hold on, old man, hold on! As far as I know, she's not that yet!"

"Oh, yes," Caderousse continued, "and some with good prospects, too. But, of course, you are going to be a captain, so she'll be sure not to refuse you."

"Yes, father," Dantès resumed. "And, with your permission, now that I've seen you, now that I know you are well and that you have all you need, I would like to ask your leave to go and visit Les Catalans."

"Because Mercédès is a beautiful girl, and beautiful girls are never short of admirers, especially that one: there are dozens of them after her."

"Never mind," said Caderousse, "never mind. You have done well to hurry back, my boy."

"Why?"

"No," Edmond replied, "but in all probability she soon will be."

"Mercédès?" the old man said.

"Really?" Edmond said with a smile, not entirely concealing a hint of unease.

"Ah! Ah!" said Caderousse.

"I am going at once," said Edmond. He embraced his father, nodded to Caderousse and left.

"So much the better! When one is going to get married, it is always a good thing to have faith. But enough of that. Take my advice, lad: don't waste any time in telling her of your return and letting her know about your aspirations."

"Well?" Danglars asked. "Did you see him?"

"Come, now," the young man said. "I have a better opinion than you of women in general, and Mercédès in particular, and I am persuaded that, whether I were a captain or not, she would remain faithful to me."

Caderousse stayed a moment longer, then, taking his leave of the elder Dantès, followed the young man down and went to find Danglars who was waiting for him on the corner of the Rue Senac.

"I have just left them," said Caderousse.

"Patience!" Danglars said. "It seems to me that he is in rather too much of a hurry."

"And did he talk about his hope of being made captain?"

"He spoke of it as though he had already been appointed."

"My God, it would be a fine thing indeed if he wasn't," said Caderousse. "Otherwise there will be no talking to him."

"Madly. He has gone there now; but, unless I am gravely mistaken, he will not find things altogether to his liking."

"Nothing, I was talking to myself. Is he still in love with the beautiful Catalan?"

"Huh!" said Danglars. "He's not one yet."

"Why, it seems Monsieur Morrel has given him his word."

"If we really want," said Danglars, "he will stay as he is, and perhaps even become less than he is."

"Indeed I did, though I could well have accepted, since I am the one who gave him the first silver coins he ever had in his hands. But now Monsieur Dantès has no need of anyone: he is going to be a captain."

"What do you mean?"

"So he is pleased?"

"You refused?"

"He is even insolent about it. He has already offered me his services, like some superior personage; he wanted to lend me money, like some banker or other."

"What does it matter?"

"Explain."

"This is more important than you may think. You don't like Dantès, do you?"

"I have no positive proof, but I have seen things, as I said, that make me think the future captain will not be pleased with what he finds around the Chemin des Vieilles-Infirmeries."

"I imagine so: what else does a fine lad of twenty-one do to a pretty girl of seventeen?"

"What have you seen? Come on, tell me."

"Ah, indeed! And do you think this cousin is courting her?"

"Well, I have observed that every time Mercédès comes into town, she is accompanied by a large Catalan lad, with black eyes, ruddy cheeks, very dark in colour and very passionate, whom she calls 'my cousin'."

"Well, then: tell me what you know about the Catalan woman."

"Suppose we were to go in the same direction, stop in the Réserve and, over a glass of La Malgue wine, learn what we can learn."

"Who would tell us anything?"

"We shall be on the spot and we'll see what has happened from Dantès' face."

"I don't like arrogance."

"Let's go then," said Caderousse. "But you are paying?"

"He left before me."

"And you say that Dantès has gone to Les Catalans?"

Old Pamphile had seen Dantès go by less than two minutes before. Certain that he was in Les Catalans, they sat under the budding leaves of the plane-trees and sycamores, in the branches of which a happy band of birds was serenading one of the first fine days of spring.

"Certainly," Danglars replied.

The two of them set off at a brisk pace for the spot they had mentioned and, when they arrived, called for a bottle and two glasses.