"In the loge on the first tier, next to the Minister's and directly opposite to that of M. Dantès?"
"Ah! two officers of the Spahis and two most exquisite women!" exclaimed Debray. "They belong, doubtless, to the African party in the Minister's loge. Your lorgnette, Count. What a splendid woman!"
Hardly had the Secretary raised the glass to his eyes before he dropped it with the exclamation:
"A miracle! a miracle!"
"What?" cried both of the other young men, turning to the box at which Debray was gazing.
"Messieurs, do you remember the fair Valentine de Villefort, whose untimely and mysterious demise all the young people of Paris so much bewailed, some two or three years ago, and whose lovely remains, we, with our own eyes, saw deposited in the Saint-Méran and de Villefort vault at Père Lachaise, one bitter cold autumn evening, and there listened most patiently and piously to a whole breviary of mournful speeches, declarative of the said Valentine's most superlative excellence?"
"Undoubtedly, we remember it well," was the reply.
"Then behold, and never dare to doubt the reappearance of the dead again to the ocular organs of humanity."
"Valentine de Villefort!" exclaimed the Count, after a careful and scrutinizing survey, "by all that's supernatural; and more exquisitely lovely than ever!"