Bidding Valentine remain where she was, her husband drew close beside Giovanni and suddenly placed his hand on his shoulder. The Viscount started at this unexpected interruption of his sombre reverie and hastily glanced at the intruder. His eyes, however, had a stony, uncomprehending stare, expressing neither surprise nor fear.
"Giovanni Massetti," said Maximilian, "listen to me! I am a friend!"
The young man replied, in a low, discordant voice: "Who is it mentions Giovanni Massetti? There was once a man who bore that name, but he is dead, dead to the world!"
"I have told you I am a friend," resumed M. Morrel. "I have come to save you!"
"A friend!--a friend!" cried the maniac, with a burst of bitter, mocking laughter that pierced Maximilian through and through like a sharp-pointed, keen-edged stiletto and made Valentine shudder as if she had come in contact with polar ice. "A friend!--a friend! Come to save me--me! ha! ha! ha! A labor of Hercules with no Hercules to accomplish it! You are mad, my poor fellow! Besides, I am not Giovanni Massetti--I am a King, an Emperor! Behold my sceptre and my crown!"
He pointed to his tall staff and the wreath of ivy leaves encircling his head, pointed triumphantly and with all the dignity of a throned monarch.
It was a pitiful sight, in the highest degree pitiful, this spectacle of intellect overthrown, of the glorious mental light of youthful manhood which had became clouded and obscured.
Maximilian was deeply affected, but, knowing full well that all his firmness, resolution and resources would be requisite in dealing with the wretched man he had come so far to aid, he controlled his emotion and said, in a comparatively steady voice: "Giovanni Massetti, in the name of the woman you love, in the name of Zuleika, Monte-Cristo's daughter, I conjure you to be calm and hear me. I am her ambassador, I come to you from her!"
The young man put his hand to his forehead and seemed to be striving to collect his scattered senses.
"Zuleika?--Zuleika?" he murmured. "Monte-Cristo's daughter? Yes, yes, I have heard of her before--a long time back in the dreary past! I read of her in some book of history or the verses of some oriental poet. She was a Queen!--yes, she was a Queen! Well, what of this Zuleika?"
He stood as if waiting for some Arabian romance to be unfolded to him, with parted lips and a vacant smile sorrowful to see.
Since his interview with the old Count Massetti Maximilian's hope for the success of his difficult mission had been but a very slender thread. Now that thread was stretched to its utmost tension, and Zuleika's ambassador felt that it must shortly snap asunder and vanish irrecoverably. Love is ever a potent influence with man but this poor demented creature appeared to have lost even the faintest conception of the crowning passion of life, since Zuleika's name, the name of his betrothed, had failed to awaken his memory or touch a sympathetic chord in his bosom.