The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Part two

“You are quite right, Beauchamp,” observed the young aristocrat. “It was only to fight as an amateur. I cannot bear duelling since two seconds, whom I had chosen to arrange an affair, forced me to break the arm of one of my best friends, one whom you all know — poor Franz d’Epinay.”

“Ah, true,” said Debray, “you did fight some time ago; about what?”

“The devil take me, if I remember,” returned Chateau-Renaud. “But I recollect perfectly one thing, that, being unwilling to let such talents as mine sleep, I wished to try upon the Arabs the new pistols that had been given to me. In consequence I embarked for Oran, and went from thence to Constantine, where I arrived just in time to witness the raising of the siege. I retreated with the rest, for eight and forty hours. I endured the rain during the day, and the cold during the night tolerably well, but the third morning my horse died of cold. Poor brute — accustomed to be covered up and to have a stove in the stable, the Arabian finds himself unable to bear ten degrees of cold in Arabia.”

“That’s why you want to purchase my English horse,” said Debray, “you think he will bear the cold better.”

“You are mistaken, for I have made a vow never to return to Africa.”

“You were very much frightened, then?” asked Beauchamp.

“Well, yes, and I had good reason to be so,” replied Chateau-Renaud. “I was retreating on foot, for my horse was dead. Six Arabs came up, full gallop, to cut off my head. I shot two with my double-barrelled gun, and two more with my pistols, but I was then disarmed, and two were still left; one seized me by the hair (that is why I now wear it so short, for no one knows what may happen), the other swung a yataghan, and I already felt the cold steel on my neck, when this gentleman whom you see here charged them, shot the one who held me by the hair, and cleft the skull of the other with his sabre. He had assigned himself the task of saving a man’s life that day; chance caused that man to be myself. When I am rich I will order a statue of Chance from Klagmann or Marochetti.”

“Yes,” said Morrel, smiling, “it was the 5th of September, the anniversary of the day on which my father was miraculously preserved; therefore, as far as it lies in my power, I endeavor to celebrate it by some” —

“Heroic action,” interrupted Chateau-Renaud. “I was chosen. But that is not all — after rescuing me from the sword, he rescued me from the cold, not by sharing his cloak with me, like St. Martin, but by giving me the whole; then from hunger by sharing with me — guess what?”

“A Strasbourg pie?” asked Beauchamp.

“No, his horse; of which we each of us ate a slice with a hearty appetite. It was very hard.”

“The horse?” said Morcerf, laughing.

“No, the sacrifice,” returned Chateau-Renaud; “ask Debray if he would sacrifice his English steed for a stranger?”

“Not for a stranger,” said Debray, “but for a friend I might, perhaps.”

“I divined that you would become mine, count,” replied Morrel; “besides, as I had the honor to tell you, heroism or not, sacrifice or not, that day I owed an offering to bad fortune in recompense for the favors good fortune had on other days granted to us.”

“The history to which M. Morrel alludes,” continued Chateau-Renaud, “is an admirable one, which he will tell you some day when you are better acquainted with him; to-day let us fill our stomachs, and not our memories. What time do you breakfast, Albert?”

“At half-past ten.”

“Precisely?” asked Debray, taking out his watch.

“Oh, you will give me five minutes’ grace,” replied Morcerf, “for I also expect a preserver.”

“Of whom?”

“Of myself,” cried Morcerf; “parbleu, do you think I cannot be saved as well as any one else, and that there are only Arabs who cut off heads? Our breakfast is a philanthropic one, and we shall have at table — at least, I hope so — two benefactors of humanity.”