“Will your excellency deign to open it?” said the delighted Bertuccio, “and you will find gloves in it.”
Elsewhere the count found everything he required—smelling-bottles, cigars, knick-knacks.
“Good,” he said; and M. Bertuccio left enraptured, so great, so powerful, and real was the influence exercised by this man over all who surrounded him.
At precisely six o’clock the clatter of horses’ hoofs was heard at the entrance door; it was our captain of Spahis, who had arrived on Médéah. “I am sure I am the first,” cried Morrel; “I did it on purpose to have you a minute to myself, before everyone came. Julie and Emmanuel have a thousand things to tell you. Ah, really this is magnificent! But tell me, count, will your people take care of my horse?”
“Do not alarm yourself, my dear Maximilian—they understand.”
“I mean, because he wants petting. If you had seen at what a pace he came—like the wind!”
“I should think so,—a horse that cost 5,000 francs!” said Monte Cristo, in the tone which a father would use towards a son.
“Do you regret them?” asked Morrel, with his open laugh.
“I? Certainly not,” replied the count. “No; I should only regret if the horse had not proved good.”
“It is so good, that I have distanced M. de Château-Renaud, one of the best riders in France, and M. Debray, who both mount the minister’s Arabians; and close on their heels are the horses of Madame Danglars, who always go at six leagues an hour.”