The priest studied Caderousse with a long, searching look, as if inviting the same scrutiny in return. Seeing nothing but surprise and confusion in the innkeeper’s face, he decided to end the silent stare-down.
"You are, I presume, Mr. Caderousse?" he asked, speaking with a strong Italian accent.
"Yes, sir," Caderousse answered, even more surprised by the question than by the preceding silence. "I am Gaspard Caderousse, at your service."
"Gaspard Caderousse," the priest repeated. "Yes, the first and last names match. You used to live on Fourth Street, on the fourth floor?"
"And you worked as a tailor?"
"True, I was a tailor until the trade died out. It gets so hot here that I swear the respectable people will eventually go naked! But speaking of heat, isn’t there something I can offer you to drink?"
"Yes. Let me have a bottle of your best wine, and then we can continue our conversation where we left off."
"As you wish, sir," said Caderousse. Eager not to lose this rare chance to sell one of his few remaining bottles of good wine, he quickly lifted a trapdoor in the floor of the room that served as both parlor and kitchen.
When he emerged from his underground wine cellar five minutes later, he found the priest sitting on a wooden stool with his elbow on the table. Margotin, whose hostility seemed to have been calmed by the visitor’s request for refreshments, had crept up and made himself comfortable between the man’s knees, resting his long, skinny neck on the priest’s lap while staring intently at his face.
"Are you quite alone?" the priest asked as Caderousse set down the bottle and glass.
"Completely alone," Caderousse replied, "or practically so. My poor wife, who is the only other person here, is bedridden with illness and can’t help me at all, poor thing."
"You’re married, then?" the priest said with apparent interest, glancing around at the sparse furnishings.
"Ah, sir," Caderousse sighed, "as you can see, I’m not a rich man. But in this world, being honest doesn’t make you prosper."
The priest fixed him with a penetrating stare.
"Yes, honest, I can certainly say that about myself," Caderousse continued, meeting the priest’s gaze steadily. "I can truthfully boast of being an honest man. And," he added significantly, placing his hand on his chest and shaking his head, "that’s more than everyone can say nowadays."
"So much the better for you, if what you say is true," the priest replied. "I firmly believe that sooner or later, good people will be rewarded and the wicked will be punished."
"Those are the kind of words that belong to your profession," Caderousse answered, "and you do well to repeat them. But," he added with a bitter expression, "a person is free to believe them or not."
"You’re wrong to speak that way," the priest said. "Perhaps I can prove to you personally just how wrong you are."
"What do you mean?" Caderousse asked, looking surprised.
"First, I need to make sure you’re the person I’m looking for."
"What kind of proof do you need?"
"Did you, in 1814 or 1815, know anything about a young sailor named Dantès?"
"Dantès? Did I know poor dear Edmond? Why, Edmond Dantès and I were close friends!" Caderousse exclaimed. His face flushed dark as he caught the priest’s penetrating gaze, and the clear, calm eye of his questioner seemed to grow feverish with intensity.
"You remind me," the priest said, "that the young man I asked about was said to bear the name of Edmond."
"Said to bear the name!" Caderousse repeated, becoming excited and eager. "Why, that was his name as truly as mine is Gaspard Caderousse! But tell me, please, what has become of poor Edmond? Did you know him? Is he alive and free? Is he doing well and happy?" Nᴇw novel chapters are publɪshed on novel-fire.net
"He died a more wretched, hopeless, heartbroken prisoner than the criminals who pay for their crimes in the worst prisons."
Deadly pallor followed the flush on Caderousse’s face. He turned away, and the priest saw him wiping tears from his eyes with the corner of the red handkerchief wrapped around his head.
"Poor fellow, poor fellow!" Caderousse murmured. "Well, there’s another proof that good people are never rewarded on this earth, and that only the wicked prosper. Ah," he continued in the colorful language of the south, "the world gets worse and worse. Why doesn’t God, if he really hates the wicked as they say he does, send down fire from heaven and destroy them all?"
"You speak as though you loved this young Dantès," the priest observed, ignoring his companion’s outburst.
"And so I did," Caderousse replied, "though once, I confess, I envied his good fortune. But I swear to you, sir, I swear by everything a man holds dear, that since then I have deeply and sincerely regretted his unhappy fate."
There was a brief silence while the priest’s searching gaze studied the innkeeper’s troubled features.
"You knew the poor boy, then?" Caderousse continued.
"I was called to see him on his deathbed, so I could give him religious comfort."
"And what did he die of?" Caderousse asked in a choked voice.
"What do you think young, strong men die of in prison when they’re barely thirty years old, if not from imprisonment itself?"
Caderousse wiped away the large beads of sweat that had gathered on his forehead.
"But the strangest part of the story," the priest continued, "is that Dantès, even in his dying moments, swore by his crucified Savior that he had no idea why he had been imprisoned."
"And he was telling the truth," Caderousse murmured. "How could he have known otherwise? The poor fellow was telling you the truth."
"And for that reason, he begged me to try to solve a mystery he had never been able to understand, and to clear his name if any stain had fallen on it."
The priest’s gaze became even more fixed and seemed to rest with barely concealed satisfaction on the gloomy depression that was rapidly spreading across Caderousse’s face.