“It is quite wonderful, M. le President, how entirely you have read my thoughts,” said Benedetto, in his softest voice and most polite manner. “This is, indeed, the reason why I begged you to alter the order of the questions.”
The public astonishment had reached its height. There was no longer any deceit or bravado in the manner of the accused. The audience seemed like some thunder-cloud about to burst over the gloomy scene.
“Well!” said the president; “your name?”
“I cannot tell you my name, since I do not know it; but I know my father’s, and will pronounce it.”
A painful flash of dread blinded Villefort’s eyes. Drops of perspiration poured from his cheeks on the papers which he grasped with a convulsive hand.
“Repeat your father’s name,” said the president.
Not a whisper, not a breath was heard in that vast assembly; everyone waited anxiously.
“My father is procureur du roi,” replied Andrea calmly.
“Procureur du roi?” said the president, stupefied, and without noticing the agitation which spread over the face of M. de Villefort – “procureur du roi?”
“Yes; and if you wish to know his name, I will tell it, – he is named Villefort,”
The explosion, which had been so long restrained from a feeling of respect to the court of justice, now burst forth like thunder from the breasts of all present; the court itself did not seek to restrain the movement of the multitude. The exclamations, the insults addressed to Benedetto, who remained perfectly unconcerned, the energetic gestures, the movement of the gendarmes, the sneers of the scum of the crowd – always sure to rise to the surface in case of any disturbance – all this lasted five minutes, before the door-keepers and magistrates were able to restore silence. In the midst of this tumult the voice of the president was heard to exclaim:
“Are you playing with justice, accused, and do you dare set your fellow-citizens an example of disorder which even in these times has never been equaled.”
Several persons hurried up to M. de Villefort, who was nearly buried in his chair, offering him consolation, encouragement, and protestations of zeal and sympathy. Order was reestablished in the hall, with the exception of a few who still moved and whispered. A lady, it was said had just fainted; they had supplied her with a smelling-bottle, and she had recovered. During the scene of tumult, Andrea had turned his smiling face toward the assembly; then, leaning with one hand on the oaken rail of his bench, in the most graceful attitude possible, he said:
“Gentlemen, I assure you I had no idea of insulting the court, or of making a useless disturbance in the presence of this honorable assembly. They ask my age; I tell it. They ask where I was born; I answer. They ask my name; I cannot give it, since my parents abandoned me. But though I cannot give my own name, not possessing one, I can tell them my father’s. Now, I repeat, my father is named M. de Villefort, and I am ready to prove it.”
There was an energy, a conviction, and a sincerity in the manner of the young man, which silenced the tumult. All eyes were turned for a moment toward the procureur du roi, who sat as motionless as though a thunderbolt had changed him into a corpse.
“Gentlemen!” said Andrea, commanding silence by his voice and manner; “I owe you the proofs and explanations of what I have said.”
“But,” said the irritated president, “in the preliminary examination you called yourself Benedetto, declared yourself an orphan, and claimed Corsica as your country.”
“I then said anything I pleased, in order that the solemn declaration I have just made should not be withheld, which otherwise would certainly have been the case. I now repeat that I was born at Auteuil on the night of the 27th of September, 1817, and that I am the son of the procureur du roi M. de Villefort. Do you wish for any further details? I will give them. I was born in No. 28, Rue de la Fontaine, in a room hung with red damask; my father took me in his arms, telling my mother I was dead; wrapped me in a napkin marked with an H and an N; and carried me into a garden, where he buried me alive.”
A shudder ran through the assembly when they saw that the confidence of the prisoner increased in proportion with the terror of M. de Villefort.
“But how have you become acquainted with all these details?” asked the president.
“I will tell you, M. le President. A man who had sworn a Corsican vengeance against my father, and had long watched his opportunity to kill him, had introduced himself that night into the garden in which my father buried me. He was concealed in a thicket; he saw my father bury something in the ground, and stabbed him in the midst of the operation; then, thinking the deposit might contain some treasure, he turned up the ground, and found me still living. The man carried me to the Foundling Hospital, where I was inscribed under the number 37. Three months afterward, a woman traveled from Rogliano to Paris to fetch me, and having claimed me as her son, carried me away. Thus, you see, though born in Paris, I was brought up in Corsica.”