Sometimes it astounds me how much he looks like her, my Mercédès, so
beautiful in the bloom of her youth. Her son inherited that same effortless
grace and innocence of beauty that I can remember on her unlined face so
clearly, all those years ago when my life was still my own. The only trace
of his traitorous father that Albert bears is in his title, the Viscount de
Morcerf.
A name is an easily dismissed detail, how well we have all learned that lesson, I more than any other. How many names have I had? How many titles have passed under my feet and crossed my brow? Am I the same man with each new name that I bear or less of one with each.I could not say.
Sometimes I feel that I am less of a man, of a human, than is possible. I thought, in the folly of my youth, that when a man lost his soul, he died. Yet I find myself here in Paris, a city bereft of its own soul, and I exist. I am alive, by all appearances.
Wonders have ceased to amaze me. I have seen the world and tasted all that it has to offer and there are only two things that I now desire, two things left unseen and out of my grasp. God eludes me, I have traveled to the ends of the earth and His divinity had escaped me in all but my mission. I am myself the only proof I have ever seen that there is a God, the work that I do for him is my constant prayer.
I have sought God and I have sought Mercédès. It is the chaste love of my Lord that I seek now, that object of my earthly passions has shown me no more than betrayal and cowardice. See here, in all her glory, Woman! Yet how can we blame her, such a fragile creature, when she was formed from Man's own rib? A perfect ideal, yet she was made of tainted stuff.
And so I lay the Catalane bride down to rest at the side of her husband, of Edmond Dantès. Let the tomb be sealed, as those children shall rise no more.
In Albert, I see what she once was. Between the sins of the father and the blush of his mother's girlhood, both so fresh in my accursed memory, Albert emerges like a holy flame. As fire cleanses, this young man shall burn his past away to ashes and from the ashes, he shall rise again.
I will see to it, I promise that. This I do in memory of the ghostly Catalane girl who looks out at me through the wide eyes of this Parisian youth, she who speaks to me with his rosy lips and whispers of a time long ago and a time that is yet to come.
A name is an easily dismissed detail, how well we have all learned that lesson, I more than any other. How many names have I had? How many titles have passed under my feet and crossed my brow? Am I the same man with each new name that I bear or less of one with each.I could not say.
Sometimes I feel that I am less of a man, of a human, than is possible. I thought, in the folly of my youth, that when a man lost his soul, he died. Yet I find myself here in Paris, a city bereft of its own soul, and I exist. I am alive, by all appearances.
Wonders have ceased to amaze me. I have seen the world and tasted all that it has to offer and there are only two things that I now desire, two things left unseen and out of my grasp. God eludes me, I have traveled to the ends of the earth and His divinity had escaped me in all but my mission. I am myself the only proof I have ever seen that there is a God, the work that I do for him is my constant prayer.
I have sought God and I have sought Mercédès. It is the chaste love of my Lord that I seek now, that object of my earthly passions has shown me no more than betrayal and cowardice. See here, in all her glory, Woman! Yet how can we blame her, such a fragile creature, when she was formed from Man's own rib? A perfect ideal, yet she was made of tainted stuff.
And so I lay the Catalane bride down to rest at the side of her husband, of Edmond Dantès. Let the tomb be sealed, as those children shall rise no more.
In Albert, I see what she once was. Between the sins of the father and the blush of his mother's girlhood, both so fresh in my accursed memory, Albert emerges like a holy flame. As fire cleanses, this young man shall burn his past away to ashes and from the ashes, he shall rise again.
I will see to it, I promise that. This I do in memory of the ghostly Catalane girl who looks out at me through the wide eyes of this Parisian youth, she who speaks to me with his rosy lips and whispers of a time long ago and a time that is yet to come.