"His name I see among the immortals in the dispatch of this morning. Well, well, Morrel is a splendid fellow, no doubt, but it's a splendid thing to have friends in the War Office, nevertheless, who will give that splendor a chance to shine--will plant the lighted candle in a candlestick, and not smother its beams under a bushel."
"Morrel has now been in Africa five whole years," said the Secretary--"a few months only excepted after his marriage with Villefort's fair daughter, Valentine, (as was said) when he was indulged with a furlough for his honeymoon."
"She is not in Paris?" asked Beauchamp.
"No; she leads the life of a perfect recluse with her child, during her husband's absence, at his villa somewhere in the south--near Marseilles, where the department forwards her letters."
"Yet she is said to be a magnificent woman," remarked the Count.
"Wonderful!" cried Beauchamp. "A magnificent woman and a recluse!"
"Oh! but it was a love-match of the most devoted species, you must remember."
"True; she was to have married our friend, Franz d'Epinay."
"And died to save herself from that fate, I suppose--and afterwards was resurrected and blessed Morrel with her hand and heart, and the most exquisite person that even a jaded voluptuary could covet. Happy--happy--happy man!"
"Apropos of dying," said the Secretary, "do you remember how fast people died at M. de Villefort's house about that time?"
"Horrible! A whole family of two or three generations, one after the other! First M. and Madame de Saint-Méran--then Barrois, the old servant of M. Noirtier--then Valentine, and, last of all, Madame de Villefort and Edward, her idol. No wonder that M. le Procureur du Roi himself went mad under such an accumulation of horrors! By the by, Debray, is M. de Villefort still an inmate of the Maison Royale de Charenton?"
"I know nothing to the contrary," replied the Secretary, who had resumed his paper, and to whom the subject seemed not altogether agreeable. "He is an incurable." Then, as if to turn the subject, he continued: "Apropos of the immortals of Algeria, here is a name that seems destined even to a more rapid apotheosis than that of the favored Morrel."
"You mean Joliette?" said the editor. "Who, in the name of all that is mysterious and heroic, is this same Joliette? I have found it impossible to discover, with all the means at the command of the press."
"And I, with all the means at the command of the Government. All we can discover is this--that he is a man of about twenty-five; that he enlisted at Marseilles, and in less than three years has risen from the ranks to the command of a battalion. His career has been most brilliant."