Monte-Cristo was touched to the very depths of his soul; M. and Mme. Morrel were equally affected. The Count, however, instantly decided what was to be done. Tenderly, compassionately, embracing his daughter, he said to her, in a soothing voice: "My child, for the present it is best that you do not go to Giovanni. I will see him for you and without delay put a plan in operation that I do not doubt will result in his speedy cure. I know a wondrous physician whose skill is so great that he can almost restore the dead to life. He belongs to the despised race of Jews, but is a good as well as a marvellous man. His name is Dr. Israel Absalom and he resides here in Rome, within the walls of the shunned and execrated Ghetto, near the Capitoline Mount. I will go to him at once and take him to young Massetti. My daughter, rest assumed that this learned Hebrew will work another miracle and give your lover back to you and in all the glory of his mind and manhood! Be content, therefore, to remain where you are for a brief period, with our devoted friend Valentine as your companion and comforter."
"Yes, Zuleika," said Mme. Morrel, persuasively, "be content to remain with me. I will not quit you even for an instant. We will talk of Giovanni, of the happiness and joy the future has in store for both of you, and, believe me, the hours will pass on rapid wings!"
As Valentine spoke she gently disengaged the girl from her father's neck and passed her arm lovingly around her slender waist. Zuleika's head sank upon her friend's shoulder.
"I yield to my father's solicitations and to your own, Valentine," she said, submissively. "You are older and wiser than I am and what you say is without doubt for the best. I will remain and trust to the wondrous physician."
"I have heard a great deal of this Dr. Absalom since I have been in Rome," said M. Morrel, addressing Monte-Cristo. "The common people regard him as a magician and the higher classes as a cunning charlatan, but, if his legitimate scientific skill is generally denied, his brilliant and marvellous success, even in cases that the best Roman physicians have abandoned as hopeless, is universally admitted."
"Dr. Absalom is neither a magician nor a charlatan," answered Monte-Cristo, warmly, "but a physician of the utmost experience and of the highest possible attainments. He is bent beneath the weight of years and arduous study, yet his eye is as keen and his perception as acute as if he were a youth of twenty. No man knows either his age or his history. I met him long ago in Athens, where I had the good fortune to rescue him from the clutches of a howling mob of ruffians who had seized upon him and were about to slay him as a sorcerer because he had taken into his hut and cured of the plague a wretched Greek who had been cast into the streets to die! For my sake he will save Giovanni!"