had a heavy burden upon my conscience?”
“Yes; but as he said you would make an excellent steward, I concluded you had stolen—that was all.”
“Oh, your excellency!” returned Bertuccio in deep contempt.
“Or, as you are a Corsican, that you had been unable to resist the desire of making a ‘stiff,’ as you call it.”
“Yes, my good master,” cried Bertuccio, casting himself at the count’s feet, “it was simply vengeance—nothing else.”
“I understand that, but I do not understand what it is that galvanizes you in this manner.”
“But, monsieur, it is very natural,” returned Bertuccio, “since it was in this house that my vengeance was accomplished.”
“What! my house?”
“Oh, your excellency, it was not yours, then.”
“Whose, then? The Marquis de Saint-Méran, I think, the concierge said. What had you to revenge on the Marquis de Saint-Méran?”
“Oh, it was not on him, monsieur; it was on another.”
“This is strange,” returned Monte Cristo, seeming to yield to his reflections, “that you should find yourself without any preparation in a house where the event happened that causes you so much remorse.”
“Monsieur,” said the steward, “it is fatality, I am sure. First, you purchase a house at Auteuil—this house is the one where I have committed an assassination; you descend to the garden by the same staircase by which he descended; you stop at the spot where he received the blow; and two