The two young men looked at Morcerf as if to say,—“Are you mad, or are you laughing at us?”
“And I also,” said Morrel thoughtfully, “have heard something like this from an old sailor named Penelon.”
“Ah,” cried Albert, “it is very lucky that M. Morrel comes to aid me; you are vexed, are you not, that he thus gives a clew to the labyrinth?”
“My dear Albert,” said Debray, “what you tell us is so extraordinary.”
“Ah, because your ambassadors and your consuls do not tell you of them—they have no time. They are too much taken up with interfering in the affairs of their countrymen who travel.”
“Now you get angry, and attack our poor agents. How will you have them protect you? The Chamber cuts down their salaries every day, so that now they have scarcely any. Will you be ambassador, Albert? I will send you to Constantinople.”
“No, lest on the first demonstration I make in favor of Mehemet Ali, the Sultan send me the bowstring, and make my secretaries strangle me.”
“You say very true,” responded Debray.
“Yes,” said Albert, “but this has nothing to do with the existence of the Count of Monte Cristo.”
“Pardieu! everyone exists.”