As soon as the Count's horses turned the corner of the boulevard, Albert burst into loud, forced laughter. He asked Monte Cristo the same question Charles IX once asked Catherine de' Medici after Saint Bartholomew: how had he played his little part? He meant Andrea Cavalcanti, the Count's protégé, who was now courting Eugénie Danglars while Albert himself was pushed aside. Eugénie barely spoke to him, and her friend Mademoiselle d'Armilly would not speak at all. Monte Cristo said he was not helping Cavalcanti win Eugénie, but he admitted something worse for Albert. Baron Danglars had asked him to get a clear answer from the Comte de Morcerf about the marriage. Albert sighed that the Count seemed determined to marry him off whether he liked it or not.
They arrived at Monte Cristo's house on the Champs-Élysées. Baptistin brought tea in an instant, as if by magic, and when Albert wished to smoke, Ali appeared with two chibouques of latakia. Albert admired how the Count's servants seemed to know his wishes before he spoke. Then he heard a guzla and learned that Haydée, a beautiful Albanian girl, lived in the house. Monte Cristo agreed to present Albert to her, but only if Albert swore two things: he would tell no one about the meeting, and he would never say that his father had served hers. Albert gave his word on his honor.
Haydée received them in a room hung with Indian silks. She spoke to Albert in Italian because he knew no Greek. Monte Cristo told her in Greek not to name the traitor who destroyed her father. She began with her earliest memory at three years old. Her mother Vasiliki, whose name meant royal, took her through the streets of Yanina to beg alms for prisoners, saying that whoever gives to the poor lends to the Lord. They filled their purse and sent the money to a convent without telling her father.
Her next clear memory was at four, sitting under sycamore trees by a lake. Her father Ali Tepelini, Pasha of Yanina, rested on cushions while Albanian messengers came to him one after another. He answered each with a single word: Kill, or Pardon. To Albert it sounded like a play, not real life. Haydée said France looked plain to her grown eyes, but Yanina still glowed in her childish memory like a dream wrapped in light or shadow.
When she was four, soldiers betrayed the pasha. Her mother woke her in terror and led her down a staircase crowded with servants carrying gold, jewels, and trunks. Armed Greek guards followed. Her father came last in his splendid robes, leaning on his favorite Selim. They crossed a lake in a muffled boat to a kiosk called the kataphygion, his hidden refuge. Below it lay a cavern holding sixty thousand pouches of gold and two hundred barrels of gunpowder. Selim stood guard with a lighted match, ready to blow up the kiosk, the treasure, the women, and Ali himself if the signal came.
For days they waited underground while Ali watched the lake from above. One morning he saw boats approaching and hoped the Sultan's pardon had arrived. A messenger claimed the emperor forgave him and held out a ring. Selim refused to trust his eyes in the dark and made the man place the ring in a ray of light. It looked real, but it was a trick. Four of the Sultan's soldiers stabbed Selim at once. Through a crack in the wall Haydée and her mother watched enemies demand Ali's head. He laughed, shot two men, and fought until fire and bullets tore the room apart. Her father died in flame and smoke while she and her mother fainted below.
Kourchid, the Turkish commander, claimed them as spoils of war. On the road to Constantinople, Haydée saw her father's severed head over the city gate with a sign naming him Pasha of Yanina. Her mother cried out and died on the spot. Haydée was sold in the slave market, later bought by the Sultan, and finally purchased by Monte Cristo in Constantinople. She kissed the Count's hand and said his kindness was her only comfort after so much grief. Albert listened in horror and wonder, barely able to speak. Twice he nearly asked about the French messenger or his father's service to Ali, but Monte Cristo silenced him each time. Monte Cristo told him to finish his coffee. The story was ended, but Yanina had now entered the Morcerf drawing room long before the newspapers would dare to print it. When Albert stepped back into the Paris night, he carried Haydée's voice like a warning he did not yet know how to read. The Count watched him go without pity and without hurry, as if the ruin were already growing roots.
