II

by Wilkie Collins

Two more events needed to unfold before the story could move from its beginning to its conclusion.

As we adjusted to the strange sensation of freedom after the long oppression of our past, I received a call from the friend who had first employed me in wood engraving. He wanted to express his continued concern for my well-being. His employers had tasked him with a trip to Paris to investigate a new development in his field, something they were eager to evaluate. Unfortunately, his own commitments left him no time for the journey, and he kindly suggested that I take his place. I didn’t hesitate to accept the offer. If I succeeded in this mission, it could lead to a permanent position at the illustrated newspaper where I was currently only a part-time contributor.

The next day, I gathered my things and prepared for the trip. As I said goodbye to Laura once more—under such different circumstances—I was struck by a serious thought that had crossed both my wife’s mind and mine before: Marian’s future. Did we have the right to let our selfish love accept the devotion of such a generous spirit? Shouldn’t we, as a true expression of our gratitude, forget ourselves and focus solely on her? I attempted to voice these concerns when we found a moment alone before my departure. She took my hand, silencing me before I could finish.

“After everything the three of us have been through together,” she said, “there’s no parting between us until the final goodbye. My heart and my happiness, Walter, are with you and Laura. Just wait a little longer until there are children’s voices around your fire. I’ll teach them to speak for me in their own way, and the first lesson they’ll share with their parents will be—We can’t spare our aunt!”

I didn’t make the journey to Paris alone. At the last minute, Pesca decided to join me. He hadn’t regained his usual cheerfulness since that night at the opera, and he thought a week away might lift his spirits.

I completed the task I had been given and prepared the necessary report by the fourth day of our stay in Paris. I planned to dedicate the fifth day to sightseeing and enjoying the city with Pesca.

Our hotel was too full for us to stay on the same floor. My room was on the second floor, while Pesca’s was above me on the third. On the morning of the fifth day, I went upstairs to check if the Professor was ready to go out. Just as I reached the landing, I noticed his door slightly ajar. A long, delicate hand—definitely not Pesca’s—held it open. I could hear Pesca’s voice speaking eagerly in low tones, “I remember the name, but I don’t know the man. You saw at the opera he was so changed that I couldn’t recognize him. I’ll send the report—I can do no more.”

“No more needs to be done,” replied a second voice. The door swung open, and a pale man with a scar on his cheek—the same man I had seen following Count Fosco’s cab a week earlier—stepped out. He nodded as I moved aside to let him pass, gripping the banister tightly as he descended the stairs.

I pushed open Pesca’s door and entered his room. He was curled up in a corner of the sofa, seeming to shrink away from me as I approached.

“Am I interrupting?” I asked. “I didn’t realize you had a visitor until I saw him leave.”

“No visitor,” Pesca replied eagerly. “I saw him today for the first time—and the last.”

“I’m afraid he brought you bad news?”

“Horrible news, Walter! Let’s go back to London. I don’t want to stay here—I regret coming at all. The misfortunes of my youth weigh heavily on me,” he said, turning his face to the wall. “They haunt me in my later years. I try to forget them, but they refuse to forget me!”

“I’m afraid we can’t leave until this afternoon,” I replied. “Would you like to come out with me in the meantime?”

“No, my friend, I’ll stay here. But let’s go back today—please, let’s go back.”

I assured him we would leave Paris that afternoon. The night before, we had planned to climb the Cathedral of Notre Dame, guided by Victor Hugo’s beautiful novel. There was nothing in Paris I was more eager to see, so I set off for the church alone.

As I approached Notre Dame along the river, I passed the grim Morgue, the city’s dead house. A large crowd gathered outside, buzzing with curiosity about something inside that fed their appetite for horror.

I would have continued on to the church if I hadn’t overheard a conversation between two men and a woman at the edge of the crowd. They had just come from the Morgue, and their discussion about the dead body they had seen described it as that of a large man, marked by a strange symbol on his left arm.

As soon as I heard those words, I stopped and joined the throng moving inside. A vague sense of foreboding had already settled in when I heard Pesca’s voice through the open door and caught a glimpse of the stranger’s face as he passed me on the hotel stairs. Now, the truth was laid bare before me—revealed in the chance words that reached my ears. Someone else’s vengeance had followed that doomed man from the theater to his doorstep, and from there to his refuge in Paris. It was another reckoning that had called him to face his fate, exacting the ultimate price for his life. The moment I had pointed him out to Pesca at the theater, while that stranger was nearby, was the moment that sealed his fate. I recalled the turmoil in my heart as we stood face to face, the struggle I faced before I could let him slip away, and I shuddered at the memory.

Slowly, inch by inch, I pushed my way through the crowd, getting closer to the large glass screen that separated the living from the dead at the Morgue. I edged nearer until I was right behind the front row of spectators, able to look inside.

There he lay, unclaimed and unknown, exposed to the casual curiosity of a French crowd. This was the grim end of a life filled with wasted talent and heartless crime. In the serene stillness of death, his broad, strong face and head confronted us with such grandeur that the women around me gasped in admiration, exclaiming in high-pitched unison, “What a handsome man!” The fatal wound had been inflicted with a knife or dagger, right over his heart. No other signs of violence marred his body, except for the left arm, where I saw two deep cuts shaped like the letter T, completely erasing the mark of the Brotherhood. His clothes, hanging above him, revealed that he had been aware of his peril—they were garments meant to disguise him as a French worker. For a few moments, I forced myself to take in these details through the glass screen. I can’t elaborate further because I saw no more.

The few facts I later learned about his death—partly from Pesca and partly from other sources—can be summarized here before I move on.

His body was pulled from the Seine in the disguise I mentioned, with nothing found on him to reveal his name, status, or home. The hand that struck him was never identified, and the circumstances surrounding his death remained a mystery. I’ll leave it to others to draw their own conclusions about the assassination’s secret, just as I have drawn mine. I will note that the foreigner with the scar was a member of the Brotherhood, accepted in Italy after Pesca had left his homeland. Additionally, the two cuts in the shape of a T on the dead man’s arm indicated the Italian word “Traditore,” showing that justice had been served by the Brotherhood on a traitor. That’s all I can contribute to the enigma of Count Fosco’s death.

The body was identified the day after I saw it, through an anonymous letter sent to his wife. Madame Fosco buried him in the Père la Chaise cemetery. To this day, fresh funeral wreaths are placed on the ornamental bronze railings around the tomb by the Countess herself. She lives in strict seclusion at Versailles. Not long ago, she published a biography of her late husband. The book sheds no light on his true identity or the secret history of his life; it is mostly a tribute to his domestic virtues, a claim of his exceptional abilities, and a list of the honors he received. The circumstances of his death are mentioned only briefly, summed up on the last page with the line, “His life was a long affirmation of the rights of the aristocracy and the sacred principles of Order, and he died a martyr to his cause.”