Monte Cristo opened the letter, and read it with an indescribable feeling of delight. It was the letter written (as our readers know) to Julie, and signed “Sinbad the Sailor.”
“Unknown you say, is the man who rendered you this service—unknown to you?”
“Yes; we have never had the happiness of pressing his hand,” continued Maximilian. “We have supplicated Heaven in vain to grant us this favor, but the whole affair has had a mysterious meaning that we cannot comprehend—we have been guided by an invisible hand,—a hand as powerful as that of an enchanter.”
“Oh,” cried Julie, “I have not lost all hope of some day kissing that hand, as I now kiss the purse which he has touched. Four years ago, Penelon was at Trieste—Penelon, count, is the old sailor you saw in the garden, and who, from quartermaster, has become gardener—Penelon, when he was at Trieste, saw on the quay an Englishman, who was on the point of embarking on board a yacht, and he recognized him as the person who called on my father the fifth of June, 1829, and who wrote me this letter on the fifth of September. He felt convinced of his identity, but he did not venture to address him.”
“An Englishman,” said Monte Cristo, who grew uneasy at the attention with which Julie looked at him. “An Englishman you say?”
“Yes,” replied Maximilian, “an Englishman, who represented himself as the confidential clerk of the house of Thomson & French, at Rome. It was this that made me start when you said the other day, at M. de Morcerf’s, that Messrs. Thomson & French were your bankers. That happened, as I told you, in 1829. For God’s sake, tell me, did you know this Englishman?”