World Literature Classics Library: The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 157 The Hand of God
Caderos was still crying miserably: "Mr. Elder, help! Help!"

"What is it?" asked Monte Cristo.

"Help me!" cried Caderos, "I have been murdered, and I am dying!"

"We are coming, you have to hold on!"

"Ah, it's over! You came too late, and you came here just to see me die. How hard these stabs are! How much blood did I bleed!" He lost consciousness after speaking.

Ali and his master picked up the wounded man and carried him into a room.When he arrived at the house, Monte Cristo signaled Ali to untie Caderos' clothes, and Monte Cristo saw three wounds on Caderos' body. "My God!" said Monte Cristo, "sometimes your retribution is long overdue, but I think that once it falls from the sky, it is perfect and complete." Ali glanced at his master, as if Asking what to do. "Go to M. de Villefort, the prosecutor. He lives in Saint-Honoré. Send him here. On your way out, wake the porter so he can fetch a doctor."

Ali went out, leaving only the false elder and the still unconscious Caderos in the room.When the unfortunate fellow opened his eyes again, the Count was sitting a few paces away from him, looking at him with dark, pitiful eyes, his mouth moving as if in whispered prayers.

"I want a doctor, Monsieur Elder, I want a doctor!" said Caderos.

"I've already gone to ask for a doctor." The elder replied.

"I know that asking for it won't save my life, but the doctor may let me breathe a little more. I can't die right away. I want to sue him."

"Sue who?"

"The murderer who killed me."

"Do you know who he is?"

"Of course I do! Yes, I know the fellow, he's Benedetto."

"The young Corsican?"

"it's him."

"Is your accomplice?"

"Yes. He drew the picture of the earl's building for me. He must hope that I can kill the earl so that he can inherit the earl's property. If the earl kills me, he can get rid of me , he waited for me on the street and killed me."

"I sent for the doctor and the prosecutor at the same time."

"It's too late, too late," Cuderos said. "I feel like I'm bleeding dry."

"Wait a little longer," said Monte Cristo.He walked out and returned to the room five minutes later with a vial.

The eyes of the dying man were terrified, and during the few minutes when Monte Cristo was gone, Caderos stared at the door, feeling instinctively that he could be saved. Fate, you should come in through this door. "Come on, Mr. Elder! Come on!" he said. "I think I'm going to faint again."

Monte Cristo went up and poured three or four drops from the vial on Cuderosse's purple lips.Caderos took a deep breath. "Oh!" he said, "you gave me a life-saving potion, some more... more..."

"Two more drops and you will die immediately," said the elder.

"Oh! Come on, I'm going to sue that scoundrel."

"If you have anything to sue, I'll write it down for you, okay? You can sign it at the end."

"Okay...okay..." Caderos said, his eyes lit up at the thought of revenge after his death.

So Monte Cristo wrote Caderos' statement:
I was assassinated by Benedetto, a Corsican who was serving my sentence in Toulon with me in the same iron chains, number 59 in prison.

"Hurry up! Hurry up!" said Caderousse. "I'm about to lose my signature."

Monte Cristo handed the pen to Caderousse, and Caderousse signed it with all his strength, then fell down on the bed again, and said: "Please repeat the following, Mr. Elder, and you must tell them that he is now named Andra Cavallecanti, at the Prince Hotel, and .

The elder opened the vial and let Caderousse smell it, and Caderousse opened his eyes again.Driven by a desire for vengeance, he survived a coma. "Ah! You can say those things, don't you, Monsieur the Elder?"

"Yes, I will tell them all, and there are many other things to tell."

"what's the situation?"

"I will tell them that he drew you the plan of this building, and that he hoped that the earl would kill you. I will tell them that he wrote to the earl before it happened, and I will say, The earl is not here, so I received this letter and waited for you to break in overnight."

"He's going to be guillotined, isn't he?" said Cudeross, "he's going to be guillotined, can you tell me that? I'm going to die with this hope, and I'm going to die with a certainty." .”

"I will tell them," went on the count, "that he followed you, watched you all the time, and when he saw that you were about to climb over the wall, he ran to the corner of the wall and hid himself."

"Did you see all this with your own eyes?"

"Do you think what I told you? I said, 'If you come back safely to where you live, then I think God has forgiven you, so I will forgive you.'"

"But you didn't warn me!" cried Caderos, leaning on his elbows on the bed, trying to get up, "you knew that I would be killed when I went out from here, and you didn't warn me! "

"I didn't tell you, because I have seen that God's verdict for you is in Benedetto's hands. If I go against God's will at this time, I will commit sacrilege."

"God's judgment! Don't talk to me about it, Mr. Elder. If God does judge, you know better than anyone. Some people should have been punished long ago, and they are still doing well."

"Wait patiently!" said the elder, in such a tone that the dying man could not help trembling, "Wait patiently!"

Caderos looked at the elder in astonishment.

"In addition," the elder continued, "God is merciful to all people, and he was also merciful to you. God is a loving father first, and then a judge."

"Ah! So you believe in God?" said Caderousse.

"If I'm still in a daze and don't believe in God," said Monte Cristo, "seeing you like this at this moment, I have no doubts in God."

Caderos raised his cramped hands toward the sky.

"Listen to me," said the elder, putting his hand lightly on Caderos, as if he were preaching to him, "you will not understand until you die, and you will not believe in God. Look at what God has done for you. .God gives you health, gives you strength, lets you have a reliable job. He even allows you to have your own friends. All in all, the life God gives you is the sweet life that human beings should have. It's a once-in-a-lifetime time for God's gift to be in such fullness, and you've turned a blind eye to it. Look at what you've done. You've been idle, drunk, and once you got so drunk that you turned your back on a good friend of yours."

"Help!" cried Caderousse. "I don't need a priest, I want a doctor. My wound may not be fatal, I may not die, I may be saved!"

"Your injury is completely fatal. If I hadn't given you three drops of potion just now, you would have died a long time ago. Listen carefully!"

"Ah!" Caderousse murmured, "You are such a strange priest. People are dying. Instead of giving a few words of comfort, you make people despair."

"Listen," the elder went on, "when you turned your back on your friends, God warned you, but didn't punish you. You were poor, you didn't have enough to eat, and you wanted to live a good life in the rest of your life. The good life you dreamed of, at that time you excused your livelihood and started to plot evil. But God created a miracle for you. Just when you were struggling, God sent you a fortune through my hand. You are worthless The fellow has never had any property, and the property given to you is very considerable to you, but it comes out of nowhere, and you never dreamed of it. Once you have property that you have never heard of in your life, you are greedy. It’s not enough, you want to double it again. How do you double it? Kill people and get more money. Your property has doubled, but God took this property back from you and escorted you to the court of the world.”

"I didn't intend to kill the Jew," said Caderos. "It was the 'Calcomte' who did."

"Yes," said Monte Cristo, "so God is always—I cannot say just this time, because God should have sentenced you to death, and God is always merciful to convince your judges. After listening to your words, I finally moved my heart of compassion and left you a way to survive."

"That's right, sentence me to hard labor for life! How lenient it is!"

"That clemency to you, you shameless wretch, seemed to you a favor when the sentence was first pronounced. Your cowardly and cruel heart trembled at the thought of death, but when you heard that you were sentenced to life in hard labor, Your heart was beating wildly with joy, and you said to yourself, like all convicts: 'There is a way out of the convict prison, and there is no way out of the grave.' You You are right, because the door of the convict prison was accidentally opened for you. An Englishman visiting Toulon, he once made a wish to save two sinners who were like dogs, and it happened that he took a fancy to you and your Companion. Fortune has once again befallen you, and you have money and peace again, and you can live like a man again, after spending the rest of your life in a convict prison. And then, you shameless You want to take the risk again, this is the third time. You get more than you can ever own in a lifetime, but you say to yourself: 'this is not enough', you are obsessed, for no reason committed the third crime. You finally angered God, and God punished you."

Caderos was looking worse and worse. "Water!" he said, "I'm thirsty . . . I'm burning badly!"

Monte Cristo gave him a glass of water.

"Benedetto, you bastard," Cudeross said, handing over the water glass, "let him run away."

"No one can escape, let me explain to you, Caderos... Benedetto will definitely be punished!"

"And you, you deserve to be punished," said Caderousse, "because you have not done your duty as a priest. . . . When Benedet hurts me, you must stop him."

"Me?" said the count, with a slight smile that chilled the dying man, "you stabbed my chest wire vest, broke your own knife, and asked me to stop Benedet Do, don't let him kill you! Yes, if I see you bow your head and plead guilty, maybe I will really stop Benedet from killing you, but once I see you are so vicious, With murderous intent, I will leave it to God."

"I don't believe in God!" shouted Cudeross. "You don't believe in God yourself. . . . You're lying! You're lying!"

"Shut up!" said the elder. "Are you screaming so that the last drops of blood in your veins will be spurted out? Ah! You don't believe in God, but you are punished by God to die! Ah! You don't believe it!" God, but God can forgive you with just one prayer, one word, one tear. God could have let the murderer's dagger finish you, but God gave you a quarter of an hour to repent. Repent , you shameless person, repent!"

"No," said Caderousse, "no, I do not repent, there can be no God, no providence, everything is accidental."

"God exists, and God exists," said Monte Cristo. "The proof is that you don't believe in God, so you lie here in despair. But I, I stand in front of you. I am not only rich , happy, and safe, because I folded my hands devoutly in front of God. You refuse to believe in God until you die, but you still believe in God deep down in your heart.”

"I want to ask you, who are you?" asked Caderousse, looking feebly at the count.

"See who I am," said Monte Cristo, holding up the candle, and moving it towards his face.

"Uh, elder... Elder Buzzoni..."

Monte Cristo took off the wig that had transformed his appearance, and his beautiful black hair fell from his ears, matching his fair face perfectly.

"Oh!" said Cudeross, startled, "if it hadn't been for the black hair, I should have said you were the Englishman, I should have said you were Lord Weymar."

"I am neither Elder Buzzoni nor Lord Weymar," said Monte Cristo. "Think about it, think about the past, and think about it from your early memories."

The count's words seemed to produce a magnetic vibration which revived the poor wretch's exhausted mind for the last time. "Oh! yes," said he, "I seem to have seen you before, as if I knew you some time ago."

"Yes, Cuderos, yes, you have seen me, yes, you have known me before."

"But who are you? Since you have seen me, since you have known me before, why did you watch me die without saving me?"

"Because you are beyond salvation, Cuderos, because your wounds are fatal. Had you been saved, I would have seen the last of God's mercy on you, and, I swear by my father's grave, I They will try to save your life and persuade you to repent and start a new life."

"By your father's grave?" said Cudeross, cheered up by the last spark of life, and he half-raised himself to see who it was, and at this moment he uttered what is commonly known as The most sacred oath that can be said, "Oh, who are you?"

The count stared intently at Caderos's dying state, and he knew it was a flashback.So he stepped closer to the dying man, looked at him peacefully and sadly, leaned into his ear and said, "I am... I am..." The count moved his lips slightly, and said something name, but very quietly, as if the Count himself was afraid to hear it.

Caderus, who had already stood up and knelt, suddenly opened his arms, and the man shrank back suddenly, then put his hands together, and raised them up with the last bit of strength: "Oh, my God, my God!" He said, "Forgive me, for I refuse to believe that you exist, that you are man's Father in heaven, and you are man's judge on earth. My God, Lord, I have been blind to you for a long time. , my God, Lord, forgive me! My God, Lord, accept me!" With his eyes closed, Caderos uttered his last breath, uttering his last breath. In one breath, he fell back on his back, and the blood immediately stuck to the sides of his wide and deep wounds, and he died.

"One," said the count mysteriously, his eyes fixed on the hideous corpse tortured by a horrible death. Ten minutes later, both the doctor and the prosecutor arrived. One was accompanied by the concierge, and the other was accompanied by Ali. Elder Buzzoni, who was praying for the deceased, received them both.

(End of this chapter)