XIV. Le prisonnier furieux et le prisonnier fou.

XIV

The Furious Prisoner and the Mad Prisoner.

About a year after the return of Louis XVIII, there was a visit from Mr. the inspector general of prisons.

Dantès heard, from the depths of his dungeon, all the rolling and creaking of these preparations, which made a great deal of noise above but which, below, would have been inappreciable sounds to any ear other than that of a prisoner accustomed to listening, in the silence of the night, to the spider weaving its web and to the periodic fall of the drop of water that takes an hour to form on the ceiling of his cell.

He guessed that something unusual was happening among the living: he had inhabited a tomb for so long that he could well regard himself as dead.

Indeed, the inspector was visiting, one after another, rooms, cells, and dungeons. Several prisoners were questioned: those whom their gentleness or their stupidity recommended to the benevolence of the administration; the inspector asked them how they were fed and what complaints they had to make.

They answered unanimously that the food was detestable and that they demanded their liberty.

The inspector then asked them if they had nothing else to tell him.

They shook their heads. What other good can prisoners demand but liberty?

The inspector turned, smiling, and said to the governor:

"I do not know why we are made to take these useless rounds. He who sees one prisoner sees a hundred; he who hears one prisoner hears a thousand; it is always the same thing: badly fed and innocent. Have you others?"

"Yes, we have the dangerous or mad prisoners, whom we keep in the dungeons."

"Let us see," said the inspector with an air of profound weariness, "let us do our duty to the end; let us go down into the dungeons."

"Wait," said the governor, "until at least two men are sent for; prisoners sometimes commit, if only out of disgust for life and to get themselves condemned to death, useless acts of despair: you could be the victim of one of those acts."

"Take your precautions, then," said the inspector.

Indeed, two soldiers were sent for and they began to descend by a staircase so foul, so infected, so moldy, that merely passing through such a place unpleasantly affected the sight, the smell, and the breath at once.

"Oh!" said the inspector, stopping halfway down, "who the devil can lodge there?"

"A most dangerous conspirator, who is particularly recommended to us as a man capable of anything."

"Is he alone?"

"Certainly."

"How long has he been there?"

"About a year."

"And he was put in this dungeon upon his arrival?"

"No, sir, but after having tried to kill the turnkey charged with bringing him his food."

"He tried to kill the turnkey?"

"Yes, sir, that very one who is lighting us, is it not true, Antoine?" asked the governor.

"He tried to kill me all the same," answered the turnkey.

"Come now! but is this man then a madman?"

"Worse than that," said the turnkey, "he is a demon."

"Do you wish to complain of him?" the inspector asked the governor.

"Useless, sir, he is punished enough as it is; besides, at present he is bordering on madness, and, according to the experience our observations give us, within another year from now he will be completely deranged."

"Upon my word, so much the better for him," said the inspector; "once quite mad, he will suffer less."

As may be seen, this inspector was a man full of humanity, and well worthy of the philanthropic functions he fulfilled.

"You are right, sir," said the governor, "and your reflection proves that you have profoundly studied the matter. Thus, we have in a dungeon, separated from this one only by some twenty feet, and into which one descends by another staircase, an old abbé, former party chief in Italy, who has been here since 1811, whose head turned toward the end of 1813, and who, since that moment, is physically unrecognizable: he wept, he laughed; he grew thin, he grew fat. Would you rather see him than this one? His madness is amusing and will not sadden you."

"I shall see both one and the other," answered the inspector; "one must do one's duty in conscience."

The inspector was on his first round and wished to give a good impression of himself to the authority.

"Let us enter this one's first, then," he added.

"Willingly," answered the governor.

And he signaled to the turnkey, who opened the door.

At the creaking of the massive locks, at the cry of the rusty hinges turning on their pivots, Dantès, crouched in a corner of his dungeon, where he received with ineffable happiness the slender ray of daylight that filtered through a narrow grated air-hole, raised his head. At the sight of an unknown man, lit by two turnkeys holding torches, and to whom the governor was speaking hat in hand, accompanied by two soldiers, Dantès guessed what it was about, and, seeing at last an opportunity to implore a superior authority, sprang forward with joined hands.

The soldiers immediately crossed bayonets, for they thought the prisoner was throwing himself upon the inspector with evil intentions.

The inspector himself took a step backward.

Dantès saw that he had been presented as a man to be feared.

Then he gathered into his gaze all that the heart of man can contain of gentleness and humility, and, expressing himself with a sort of pious eloquence that astonished the bystanders, he tried to touch the soul of his visitor.

The inspector listened to Dantès's speech to the end, then, turning toward the governor:

"He will turn to devotion," he said in a low voice; "he is already disposed to gentler feelings. See, fear has its effect upon him; he recoiled before the bayonets; now, a madman recoils before nothing: I have made some very curious observations on this subject at Charenton."

Then, turning back toward the prisoner:

"In short, what do you ask?"

"I ask what crime I have committed; I ask that I be given judges; I ask that my trial be instituted; I ask, finally, that I be shot if I am guilty, but also that I be set at liberty if I am innocent."

"Are you well fed?" asked the inspector.

"Yes, I believe so, I know nothing of it. But that matters little; what should matter, not only to me, an unhappy prisoner, but still to all the officials administering justice, but still to the king who governs us, is that an innocent man not be the victim of an infamous denunciation and die beneath the bolts cursing his tormentors."

"You are very humble today," said the governor; "you have not always been thus. You spoke very differently, my dear friend, the day you wanted to brain your guard."

"That is true, sir," said Dantès, "and I ask that man's pardon very humbly, he who has always been good to me.... But, what would you have? I was mad, I was furious."

"And you are no longer?"

"No, sir, for captivity has bent me, broken me, annihilated me.... I have been here so long!"

"So long?... and at what time were you arrested?" asked the inspector.

"On 28 February 1815, at two o'clock in the afternoon."

The inspector calculated.

"We are at 30 July 1816; what do you say, then? You have been a prisoner only seventeen months."

"Only seventeen months!" repeated Dantès. "Ah! sir, you do not know what seventeen months of prison are: seventeen years, seventeen centuries; especially for a man who, like me, was touching happiness, for a man who, like me, was about to marry a beloved woman, for a man who saw an honorable career opening before him, and to whom everything is lacking in an instant; who, from the midst of the fairest day, falls into the deepest night, who sees his career destroyed, who knows not if she who loved him still loves him, who is ignorant whether his old father is dead or alive. Seventeen months of prison, for a man accustomed to the air of the sea, to the independence of the sailor, to space, to immensity, to the infinite! Sir, seventeen months of prison is more than all the crimes designated by the most odious names in human language deserve. Have pity on me, then, sir, and ask for me, not indulgence, but rigor; not a favor, but a judgment; judges, sir, I ask only for judges; one cannot refuse an accused man judges."

"Very well," said the inspector, "we shall see."

Then, turning toward the governor:

"Indeed," he said, "the poor devil moves me. As we go up, you will show me his jail register."

"Certainly," said the governor; "but I believe you will find terrible notes against him."

"Sir," continued Dantès, "I know that you cannot get me out of here by your own decision; but you can transmit my request to the authority, you can provoke an inquiry, you can, finally, have me brought to trial: a trial is all I ask; let me know what crime I have committed, and to what penalty I am condemned; for, you see, uncertainty is the worst of all torments."

"Enlighten me," said the inspector.

"Sir," cried Dantès, "I understand, by the sound of your voice, that you are moved. Sir, tell me to hope."

"I cannot tell you that," answered the inspector; "I can only promise you to examine your file."

"Oh! then, sir, I am free, I am saved."

"Who had you arrested?" asked the inspector.

"M. de Villefort," answered Dantès. "See him and come to an understanding with him."

"M. de Villefort has not been at Marseille for a year, but at Toulouse."

"Ah! that no longer surprises me," murmured Dantès; "my only protector is far away."

"Had M. de Villefort any motive of hatred against you?" asked the inspector.

"None, sir; and indeed he was kind to me."

"I may then rely upon the notes he left concerning you or that he will give me?"

"Entirely, sir."

"Very well, wait."

Dantès fell to his knees, raising his hands toward heaven, and murmuring a prayer in which he commended to God this man who had descended into his prison, like the Savior going to deliver the souls from hell.

The door closed again; but the hope that had descended with the inspector remained shut up in Dantès's dungeon.

"Do you wish to see the jail register at once?" asked the governor; "or to pass on to the abbé's dungeon?"

"Let us finish with the dungeons all at once," answered the inspector. "If I went back up into the daylight, I might perhaps no longer have the courage to continue my sad mission."

"Ah! that one is not a prisoner like the other, and his madness, his, is less saddening than the reason of his neighbor."

"And what is his madness?"

"Oh! a strange madness: he believes himself possessor of an immense treasure. The first year of his captivity, he offered the government a million, if the government would set him at liberty; the second year, two millions; the third, three millions; and so progressively. He is in his fifth year of captivity: he is going to ask to speak to you in secret, and will offer you five millions."

"Ah! ah! it is curious indeed," said the inspector; "and what do you call this millionaire?"

"The Abbé Faria."

"No. 27!" said the inspector.

"It is here. Open, Antoine."

The turnkey obeyed, and the curious gaze of the inspector plunged into the dungeon of the _mad abbé_.

That is what the prisoner was generally called.

In the middle of the chamber, within a circle traced on the earth with a piece of plaster detached from the wall, lay a man almost naked, so fallen into rags were his clothes. He was drawing very clear geometric lines in this circle, and appeared as occupied with resolving his problem as Archimedes was when he was killed by a soldier of Marcellus. Thus he did not so much as stir at the noise the dungeon door made in opening, and seemed to awake only when the light of the torches lit with unusual brightness the damp ground upon which he was working. Then he turned around and saw with astonishment the numerous company that had just descended into his dungeon.

Immediately he rose quickly, took a blanket thrown over the foot of his miserable bed, and draped himself hastily so as to appear in a more decent state to the eyes of the strangers.

"What do you ask?" said the inspector, without varying his formula.

"I, sir!" said the abbé with a surprised air; "I ask nothing."

"You do not understand," resumed the inspector; "I am an agent of the government, I have a mission to descend into the prisons and to listen to the complaints of the prisoners."

"Oh! then, sir, it is another thing," cried the abbé quickly; "and I hope we are going to understand each other."

"See," said the governor in a low voice, "does it not begin as I told you?"

"Sir," continued the prisoner, "I am the Abbé Faria, born at Rome, I was twenty years secretary to Cardinal Rospigliosi; I was arrested, I do not quite know why, toward the beginning of the year 1811; since that moment, I have been claiming my liberty from the Italian and French authorities."

"Why before the French authorities?" asked the governor.

"Because I was arrested at Piombino and because I presume that, like Milan and Florence, Piombino has become the chief town of some French department."

The inspector and the governor looked at each other laughing.

"The devil, my dear," said the inspector, "your news of Italy is not fresh."

"It dates from the day I was arrested, sir," said the Abbé Faria; "and as His Majesty the Emperor had created the royalty of Rome for the son whom heaven had just given him, I presume that, pursuing the course of his conquests, he has accomplished the dream of Machiavelli and of Caesar Borgia, which was to make of all Italy a single and unique kingdom."

"Sir," said the inspector, "Providence has happily brought some change to that gigantic plan of which you seem quite a warm partisan."

"It is the only means of making of Italy a strong, independent, and happy State," answered the abbé.

"That is possible," answered the inspector; "but I have not come here to conduct with you a course of ultramontane politics, but to ask you, as I have already done, if you have any complaints to make concerning the manner in which you are fed and lodged."

"The food is what it is in all prisons," answered the abbé, "that is to say, very bad; as for the lodging, you see it, it is damp and unhealthy, but nevertheless tolerable enough for a dungeon. Now, it is not of that that we must speak, but of revelations of the highest importance and interest that I have to make to the government."

"Here we are," said the governor in a low voice to the inspector.

"This is why I am so happy to see you," continued the abbé, "although you have disturbed me in a very important calculation, which, if it succeeds, will perhaps change the system of Newton. Can you grant me the favor of a private interview?"

"Eh! what did I say!" said the governor to the inspector.

"You know your man," answered the latter, smiling. Then, turning back toward Faria:

"Sir," he said, "what you ask of me is impossible."

"However, sir," resumed the abbé, "if it were a question of making the government gain an enormous sum, a sum of five millions, for example?"

"Upon my word," said the inspector, turning in his turn toward the governor, "you had predicted even the figure."

"Let us see," resumed the abbé, perceiving that the inspector was making a motion to withdraw, "it is not necessary that we be absolutely alone; the governor may assist at our interview."

"My dear sir," said the governor, "unfortunately we know beforehand and by heart what you will say. It is a question of your treasures, is it not?"

Faria looked at this mocking man with eyes in which a disinterested observer would certainly have seen flash the lightning of reason and of truth.

"Undoubtedly," said he; "of what would you have me speak, if not of that?"

"Mr. Inspector," continued the governor, "I can relate this story as well as the abbé, for it is four or five years that my ears have been worn out with it."

"That proves, Mr. Governor," said the abbé, "that you are like those of whom Scripture speaks, who have eyes and see not, who have ears and hear not."

"My dear sir," said the inspector, "the government is rich and has, thank God, no need of your money; keep it, then, for the day you leave prison."

The abbé's eye dilated; he seized the inspector's hand.

"But if I do not leave prison," said he, "if, against all justice, they keep me in this dungeon, if I die there without having bequeathed my secret to anyone, this treasure will then be lost! Is it not better that the government profit by it, and I too? I will go as high as six millions, sir; yes, I will abandon six millions, and I will content myself with the rest if they will restore me my liberty."

"Upon my word," said the inspector in a half-voice, "if one did not know that this man is mad, he speaks with so convincing an accent that one would believe he tells the truth."

"I am not mad, sir, and I do indeed tell the truth," replied Faria, who, with that peculiar fineness of hearing peculiar to prisoners, had not lost a single word of the inspector. "This treasure of which I speak exists very really, and I offer to sign a treaty with you, by virtue of which you will conduct me to the place indicated by me; the earth will be searched before our eyes, and if I lie, if nothing is found, if I am a madman, as you say, well! you will bring me back to this same dungeon, where I shall remain eternally, and where I shall die without asking anything further either of you or of anyone."

The governor began to laugh.

"Is your treasure very far?" he asked.

"About a hundred leagues from here," said Faria.

"The thing is not ill invented," said the governor; "if all prisoners wished to amuse themselves by walking their guards for a hundred leagues, and if the guards consented to make such a promenade, it would be an excellent chance that the prisoners would secure for themselves to take to their heels as soon as they found the opportunity, and during such a journey the opportunity would certainly present itself."

"It is a known means," said the inspector; "and monsieur does not even have the merit of invention." Then, turning back toward the abbé:

"I asked you if you were well fed?" said he.

"Sir," answered Faria, "swear to me upon Christ to deliver me if I have told you the truth, and I will indicate the place where the treasure is buried."

"Are you well fed?" repeated the inspector.

"Sir, you risk nothing thus, and you see well that it is not to secure myself a chance of escape, since I shall remain in prison while the journey is made."

"You do not answer my question," resumed the inspector with impatience.

"Nor you my request!" cried the abbé. "Be accursed then like the other senseless men who would not believe me! You will not have my gold, I shall keep it; you refuse me liberty, God will send it to me. Go, I have nothing more to say."

And the abbé, throwing back his blanket, picked up his piece of plaster, and went to sit down again in the middle of his circle, where he continued his lines and his calculations.

"What is he doing there?" said the inspector, withdrawing.

"He is counting his treasures," answered the governor. Faria replied to this sarcasm with a glance imbued with the most supreme contempt.

They went out. The jailer closed the door behind them.

"He will indeed have possessed some treasures," said the inspector going up the staircase.

"Or he will have dreamed he possessed them," answered the governor; "and the next day he woke up mad."

"Indeed," said the inspector with the naïveté of corruption; "had he been really rich, he would not be in prison."

Thus ended the adventure for the Abbé Faria. He remained a prisoner, and, following this visit, his reputation as a merry madman increased still more.

Caligula or Nero, those great seekers of treasures, those desirers of the impossible, would have lent ear to the words of this poor man and would have granted him the air he desired, the space he esteemed at so high a price, and the liberty he offered to pay so dearly. But the kings of our days, maintained within the limit of the probable, no longer have the boldness of will; they fear the ear that listens to the orders they give, the eye that scrutinizes their actions; they no longer feel the superiority of their divine essence; they are crowned men, that is all. Formerly, they believed themselves, or at least declared themselves, sons of Jupiter, and retained something of the ways of the god their father: one does not easily control what passes beyond the clouds; today, kings are easily overtaken. Now, as it has always been repugnant to despotic government to show in broad daylight the effects of prison and of torture; as there are few examples of a victim of the inquisitions having been able to reappear with crushed bones and bleeding wounds, so madness, that ulcer born in the mire of dungeons following moral tortures, almost always hides with care in the place where it was born, or, if it issues thence, goes to bury itself in some dark hospital, where the physicians recognize neither the man nor the thought in the shapeless wreck that the weary jailer transmits to them.

The Abbé Faria, having become mad in prison, was condemned, by his very madness, to a perpetual prison.

As for Dantès, the inspector kept his word. On going up to the governor's, he had the jail register presented to him. The note concerning the prisoner was conceived in these terms:

_Edmond Dantès: Raging Bonapartist: took an active part in the return from the Isle of Elba._

_To be kept in the greatest secrecy and under the strictest surveillance._

This note was in a different handwriting and a different ink from the rest of the register, which proved that it had been added since Dantès's incarceration.

The accusation was too positive to attempt to combat it. The inspector therefore wrote beneath the bracket:

"Nothing to be done."

This visit had, so to speak, revived Dantès since he had entered prison; he had forgotten to count the days, but the inspector had given him a new date and Dantès had not forgotten it. Behind him, he wrote upon the wall, with a piece of plaster detached from his ceiling, 30 July 1816, and, from that moment, he made a notch every day so that the measure of time should escape him no more.

The days passed, then the weeks, then the months: Dantès was still waiting; he had begun by fixing a term of fifteen days to his liberty. In giving to the following up of his affair half the interest he had appeared to feel, the inspector must have had enough of fifteen days. These fifteen days elapsed, he said to himself that it was absurd of him to believe that the inspector would have occupied himself with him before his return to Paris; now, his return to Paris could not take place until his round was finished, and his round could last a month or two; he gave himself therefore three months instead of fifteen days. The three months elapsed, another reasoning came to his aid, which made him grant himself six months; but these six months elapsed, putting the days end to end, he found that he had waited ten months and a half. During these ten months, nothing had been changed in the regime of his prison; no consoling news had reached him; the questioned jailer was mute, as usual. Dantès began to doubt his senses, to believe that what he took for a memory was nothing other than a hallucination of his brain, and that this consoling angel that had appeared in his prison had descended there upon the wing of a dream.

At the end of a year, the governor was changed; he had obtained the direction of the fort of Ham; he took with him several of his subordinates and, among others, Dantès's jailer. A new governor arrived; it would have been too long for him to learn the names of his prisoners, he had only their numbers represented to him. This horrible furnished lodging was composed of fifty rooms; their inhabitants were called by the number of the room they occupied, and the unhappy young man ceased to be called by his Christian name of Edmond or his surname of Dantès, he was called No. 34.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”