terror? However, in an hour I shall know all. Bertuccio!” cried he, striking a light hammer with a pliant handle on a small gong. “Bertuccio!”
The steward appeared at the door.
“Monsieur Bertuccio,” said the count, “did you never tell me that you had travelled in France?”
“In some parts of France—yes, excellency.”
“You know the environs of Paris, then?”
“No, excellency, no,” returned the steward, with a sort of nervous trembling, which Monte Cristo, a connoisseur in all emotions, rightly attributed to great disquietude.
“It is unfortunate,” returned he, “that you have never visited the environs, for I wish to see my new property this evening, and had you gone with me, you could have given me some useful information.”
“To Auteuil!” cried Bertuccio, whose copper complexion became livid—“I go to Auteuil?”
“Well, what is there surprising in that? When I live at Auteuil, you must come there, as you belong to my service.”
Bertuccio hung down his head before the imperious look of his master, and remained motionless, without making any answer.
“Why, what has happened to you?—are you going to make me ring a second time for the carriage?” asked Monte Cristo, in the same tone that Louis XIV pronounced the famous, “I have been almost obliged to wait.” Bertuccio made but one bound to the antechamber, and cried in a hoarse voice: