The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) Read Online Free PDF Page B

terms I am quite willing to admit the impossibility of translation, while still having in practical terms to engage in it and to believe that everything must, to some extent, be translatable. I feel no obligation to avoid smoothing the reader’s path and none, on the other hand, to ‘getting in the way’ from time to time. Above all, I want to convey some of the pleasure of reading Dumas to those who cannot do so in the original language and, through my one, particular version (since no translation can everbe definitive), to reveal aspects of his work that are not to be found in any of the other existing versions. This is a new translation and consequently a new interpretation of a great – and great popular – novel. If nothing else, most people would surely agree that it is long overdue.

The Count of Monte Cristo

I
MARSEILLE – ARRIVAL

    On February 24, 1815, the lookout at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the arrival of the three-master
Pharaon
, coming from Smyrna, Trieste and Naples. As usual, a coastal pilot immediately left the port, sailed hard by the Château d’If, and boarded the ship between the Cap de Morgiou and the island of Riou.
    At once (as was also customary) the terrace of Fort Saint-Jean 1 was thronged with onlookers, because the arrival of a ship is always a great event in Marseille, particularly when the vessel, like the
Pharaon
, has been built, fitted out and laded in the shipyards of the old port and belongs to an owner from the town.
    Meanwhile the ship was drawing near, and had successfully negotiated the narrows created by some volcanic upheaval between the islands of Calseraigne and Jarre; it had rounded Pomègue and was proceeding under its three topsails, its outer jib and its spanker, but so slowly and with such melancholy progress that the bystanders, instinctively sensing some misfortune, wondered what accident could have occurred on board. Nevertheless, those who were experts in nautical matters acknowledged that, if there had been such an accident, it could not have affected the vessel itself, for its progress gave every indication of a ship under perfect control: the anchor was ready to drop and the bowsprit shrouds loosed. Next to the pilot, who was preparing to guide the
Pharaon
through the narrow entrance to the port of Marseille, stood a young man, alert and sharp-eyed, supervising every movement of the ship and repeating each of the pilot’s commands.
    One of the spectators on the terrace of Fort Saint-Jean had been particularly affected by the vague sense of unease that hovered among them, so much so that he could not wait for the vessel to come to land; he leapt into a small boat and ordered it to be rowed out to the
Pharaon
, coming alongside opposite the cove of La Réserve. When he saw the man approaching, the young sailor left his place beside the pilot and, hat in hand, came and leant on the bulwarks of the ship.
    He was a young man of between eighteen and twenty, tall, slim, with fine dark eyes and ebony-black hair. His whole demeanourpossessed the calm and resolve peculiar to men who have been accustomed from childhood to wrestle with danger.
    ‘Ah, it’s you, Dantès!’ the man in the boat cried. ‘What has happened, and why is there this air of dejection about all on board?’
    ‘A great misfortune, Monsieur Morrel!’ the young man replied. ‘A great misfortune, especially for me: while off Civita Vecchia, we lost our good Captain Leclère.’
    ‘And the cargo?’ the ship owner asked brusquely.
    ‘It has come safe to port, Monsieur Morrel, and I think you will be content on that score. But poor Captain Leclère…’
    ‘What happened to him, then?’ the shipowner asked, visibly relieved. ‘So what happened to the good captain?’
    ‘He is dead.’
    ‘Lost overboard?’
    ‘No, Monsieur, he died of an apoplectic fever, in terrible agony.’ Then, turning back to his crew, he said: ‘Look lively, there! Every man to his station to drop