"As he descended from the tribune his friends thronged around him, anxious about his health. He quieted their apprehensions with his peculiar smile of assurance, but I observed that his white handkerchief was spotted with blood, and he almost immediately left the Chamber."
"That man will kill himself in the cause he has espoused," remarked Debray. "See how ghastly he now looks. But so much the better for the Ministry. He is a formidable foe. Indeed, that loge contains the two most powerful opponents of the Government."
"And who are those men just entering the box?" asked Beauchamp.
"None other than the two rival astronomers of Europe," said Debray, "and yet most intimate friends. The taller and elder, the one with gray hair, a dark, sharp Bedouin countenance, and that large, wild, black eye, with a smile of mingled sarcasm and humor ever on his thin lip, is Emanuel Arago. The other, the short, robust man, with fair complexion, sandy hair, bright blue eye and vivacious expression, is Le Verrier, the most tireless star-gazer science has produced since Galileo. But hush! the curtain is up."
"Oh! it matters not," said the Count; "only Gennaro and the Spaniard appear in the second act, and I have neither eyes nor ears save for the Duchess to-night. But who are those, Beauchamp?"
"Where?"
"In the loge on the first tier, next to the Minister's and directly opposite to that of M. Dantès?"
"Ah! two officers of the Spahis and two most exquisite women!" exclaimed Debray. "They belong, doubtless, to the African party in the Minister's loge. Your lorgnette, Count. What a splendid woman!"
Hardly had the Secretary raised the glass to his eyes before he dropped it with the exclamation: "A miracle! a miracle!"
"What?" cried both of the other young men, turning to the box at which Debray was gazing.
"Messieurs, do you remember the fair Valentine de Villefort, whose untimely and mysterious demise all the young people of Paris so much bewailed, some two or three years ago, and whose lovely remains, we, with our own eyes, saw deposited in the Saint-Méran and de Villefort vault at Père Lachaise, one bitter cold autumn evening, and there listened most patiently and piously to a whole breviary of mournful speeches, declarative of the said Valentine's most superlative excellence?"
"Undoubtedly, we remember it well," was the reply.
"Then behold, and never dare to doubt the reappearance of the dead again to the ocular organs of humanity."
"Valentine de Villefort!" exclaimed the Count, after a careful and scrutinizing survey, "by all that's supernatural; and more exquisitely lovely than ever!"
"Then it was true, after all, the strange story we heard," said Beauchamp, "of the young lady's resurrection and marriage to Maximilian Morrel, somewhere far away in parts unknown?"