XV. Le numéro 34 et le numéro 27.

XV

Number 34 and Number 27.

Dantès passed through every stage of the misfortune endured by prisoners forgotten in a dungeon.

He began with pride, which is a consequence of hope and a consciousness of innocence; then he came to doubt his own innocence, which was no poor justification for the governor's notions about his mental alienation; at length he fell from his pride, and prayed—not yet to God, but to men; God is the last resort. The wretched man, who should begin with the Lord, does not come to hope in Him until he has exhausted all other hopes.

Dantès therefore prayed that someone would be willing to take him out of his cell and put him into another, were it darker and deeper. A change, even for the worse, was still a change, and would procure Dantès a few days' distraction. He prayed that he might be granted exercise, air, books, instruments. None of this was granted him; but no matter, he kept asking. He had grown accustomed to speaking to his new jailer, though he was, if possible, even more silent than the old one; but to speak to a man, even a mute one, was still a pleasure. Dantès spoke in order to hear the sound of his own voice: he had tried to speak when he was alone, but then he frightened himself.

Often, in the time when he was free, Dantès had made a bugbear of those prison wards, composed of vagabonds, bandits, and assassins, whose ignoble merriment puts in common unintelligible orgies and frightful friendships. He came to wish to be thrown into one of those dens, so as to see other faces than that of this impassive jailer who would not speak; he regretted the galleys with their infamous garb, their chains on the foot, their brand upon the shoulder. At least the galley slaves were in the society of their fellows, they breathed the air, they saw the sky; the galley slaves were truly happy.

One day he besought the jailer to ask for him a companion, whoever it might be, though that companion should be the mad abbé of whom he had heard. Beneath the jailer's bark, however rough it may be, there always remains something of the man. This one had often, from the bottom of his heart, and though his face showed nothing of it, pitied this unhappy young man, to whom captivity was so hard; he transmitted Number 34's request to the governor; but the latter, prudent as if he had been a politician, fancied that Dantès wanted to stir up the prisoners, to hatch some plot, to aid himself with a friend in some attempt at escape, and he refused.

Dantès had exhausted the circle of human resources. As we have said must happen, he then turned to God.

All the pious thoughts scattered through the world, and gleaned by the unfortunate bowed beneath destiny, then came to refresh his mind; he recalled the prayers his mother had taught him, and found in them a meaning once unknown to him; for, to the happy man, prayer remains a monotonous and empty assemblage of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to the unfortunate that sublime language by which he speaks to God.

He prayed then, not with fervor, but with rage. In praying aloud, he no longer frightened himself at his own words; then he fell into kinds of ecstasy; he saw God blazing at each word he uttered; all the actions of his humble and lost life, he referred to the will of this powerful God, drew lessons from them, set himself tasks to accomplish, and, at the end of each prayer, slipped in the interested wish that men find far more often means to address to men than to God: And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Despite his fervent prayers, Dantès remained a prisoner.

Then his spirit grew dark, a cloud thickened before his eyes. Dantès was a simple man, without education; the past remained for him covered by that dark veil which science alone lifts. He could not, in the solitude of his cell and the desert of his thought, reconstruct vanished ages, bring back extinct peoples, rebuild ancient cities, which imagination enlarges and poetizes, and which pass before the eyes, gigantic and lit by the fire of heaven, like the Babylonian pictures of Martinn; he had only his so brief past, his so dark present, his so doubtful future: nineteen years of light to meditate upon, perhaps, in an eternal night! No distraction could therefore come to his aid: his energetic mind, which would have liked nothing better than to take flight across the ages, was forced to remain prisoner like an eagle in a cage. He then clung to one idea, that of his happiness destroyed without apparent cause and by an unheard-of fatality; he fastened upon this idea, turning it, turning it over on every side, and devouring it, so to speak, with his teeth, like Ugolino the pitiless in Dante's hell devouring the skull of Archbishop Roger. Dantès had had but a passing faith, based on power; he lost it as others lose it after success. Only, he had not profited by it.

Rage succeeded asceticism. Edmond hurled blasphemies that made the jailer recoil in horror; he dashed his body against the walls of his prison; he flew with fury upon everything around him, and above all upon himself, at the least annoyance caused him by a grain of sand, a straw, a breath of air. Then that denunciatory letter which he had seen, which Villefort had shown him, which he had touched, came back to his mind, each line blazing upon the wall like the Mane, Thecel, Pharès of Belshazzar. He told himself that it was the hatred of men and not the vengeance of God which had plunged him into the abyss where he was; he devoted those unknown men to all the torments his ardent imagination could supply the notion of, and still found the most terrible too mild and above all too short for them; for after the torment came death; and in death was, if not repose, at least the insensibility that resembles it.

By dint of saying to himself, with regard to his enemies, that calm was death, and that he who would punish cruelly needs other means than death, he fell into the gloomy inertia of suicidal ideas; woe to him who, on the slope of misfortune, stops at those dark ideas! It is one of those dead seas which spread like the azure of pure waves, but in which the swimmer feels his feet more and more ensnared in a bituminous mire that draws him to it, sucks him in, swallows him up. Once caught thus, if divine aid does not come to his help, all is finished, and every effort he makes sinks him deeper into death.

Yet this state of moral agony is less terrible than the suffering which preceded it and than the punishment which may follow it; it is a kind of dizzying consolation which shows you the gulf agape, but at the bottom of the gulf nothingness. Arrived there, Edmond found some consolation in this idea; all his pains, all his sufferings, that cortège of specters they trailed behind them, seemed to fly from that corner of his prison where the angel of death might set his silent foot. Dantès looked calmly upon his past life, with terror upon his future life, and chose that middle point which seemed to him a place of refuge.

"Sometimes," he then said to himself, "in my distant voyages, when I was still a man, and when that man, free and powerful, threw commands to other men which were executed, I have seen the sky grow dark, the sea tremble and rumble, the storm born in a corner of the heavens, and, like a gigantic eagle, beat both horizons with its two wings; then I felt that my vessel was but a powerless refuge, for my vessel, light as a feather in a giant's hand, trembled and shivered itself. Soon, at the frightful noise of the waves, the sight of the sharp rocks announced death to me, and death terrified me; I made every effort to escape it, and I united all the strength of the man and all the intelligence of the sailor to struggle with God!... That was because I was happy then, because to return to life was to return to happiness; because this death, I had not called it, I had not chosen it; because sleep at last seemed hard to me upon that bed of seaweed and pebbles; because I was indignant, I who believed myself a creature made in the image of God, to serve, after my death, as food for gulls and vultures. But today it is otherwise: I have lost all that could make me love life, today death smiles upon me like a nurse upon the child she is about to rock; but today I die as I please, and I fall asleep weary and broken, as I fell asleep after one of those evenings of despair and rage during which I had counted three thousand turns in my room, that is to say thirty thousand paces, that is to say about ten leagues."

As soon as this thought had germinated in the young man's mind, he became gentler, more smiling; he arranged himself better upon his hard bed and his black bread, ate less, slept no more, and found this remnant of existence, which he was sure to leave when he wished, tolerable, as one leaves a worn-out garment.

There were two means of dying: one was simple, it was to tie his handkerchief to a bar of the window and hang himself; the other consisted in pretending to eat and letting himself die of hunger. The first repelled Dantès strongly. He had been brought up in horror of pirates, men who are hanged from the yards of ships; hanging was therefore for him a kind of infamous punishment which he would not apply to himself; he adopted therefore the second, and began its execution that very day.

Nearly four years had elapsed in the alternations we have related. At the end of the second, Dantès had ceased to count the days and had fallen back into that ignorance of time from which the inspector had once drawn him.

Dantès had said: "I wish to die" and had chosen his kind of death; then he had looked it full in the face, and for fear of going back on his decision, he had sworn to himself to die thus. When they bring me my morning meal and my evening meal, he had thought, I will throw the food out the window and act as if I had eaten it.

He did as he had promised to do. Twice a day, through the small grated opening which let him see nothing but the sky, he threw away his provisions, at first gaily, then reflectively, then with regret; he needed the memory of the oath he had taken to have the strength to pursue this terrible design. Those foods, which had repelled him formerly, hunger, with its sharp teeth, made seem appetizing to the eye and exquisite to the smell; sometimes, he held for an hour in his hand the dish that contained them, his eyes fixed upon that piece of rotten meat or that loathsome fish, and upon that black and moldy bread. These were the last instincts of life still struggling within him and which from time to time overthrew his resolution. Then his cell no longer seemed so dark to him, his state seemed less desperate; he was still young; he must have been twenty-five or twenty-six, he had about fifty years left to live, that is to say twice what he had lived. During that immense lapse of time, what events might force the doors, overturn the walls of the Château d'If and restore him to liberty! Then, he brought his teeth near the meal which, a voluntary Tantalus, he himself removed from his mouth; but then the memory of his oath returned to his mind, and that generous nature feared too much to despise itself to break its oath. He therefore wore away, rigorous and pitiless, the little life that remained to him, and a day came when he no longer had the strength to rise to throw out through the skylight the supper they brought him.

The next day he no longer saw, he hardly heard. The jailer believed in a serious illness; Edmond hoped in a speedy death.

The day passed thus: Edmond felt a vague numbness, not without a certain well-being, gaining upon him. The nervous twinges of his stomach had grown drowsy; the burning of his thirst had calmed; when he closed his eyes, he saw a multitude of bright gleams like those will-o'-the-wisps that run by night over miry ground: it was the twilight of that unknown country called death. Suddenly, in the evening, about nine o'clock, he heard a dull noise against the wall he was lying alongside.

So many unclean animals had come to make their noise in this prison that, little by little, Edmond had accustomed his sleep not to be troubled by so small a thing; but this time, whether his senses were exalted by abstinence, or whether the noise was really louder than usual, or whether at that supreme moment everything acquired importance, Edmond raised his head to hear better.

It was a regular scratching which seemed to indicate either an enormous claw, or a powerful tooth, or finally the pressure of some instrument upon stones.

Though weakened, the young man's brain was struck by that banal idea constantly present to the minds of prisoners: liberty. This noise arrived so exactly at the moment when all noise was about to cease for him, that it seemed to him God was at last showing pity for his sufferings and sending him this noise to warn him to stop at the edge of the tomb where his foot already staggered. Who could know if one of his friends, one of those beloved beings he had thought of so often that he had worn out his mind upon them, was not occupying himself with him at this moment and seeking to lessen the distance that separated them?

But no, doubtless Edmond was mistaken, and it was one of those dreams that float at the door of death.

However, Edmond kept listening to that noise. The noise lasted about three hours, then Edmond heard a kind of crumbling, after which the noise ceased.

A few hours later, it resumed, louder and nearer. Already Edmond was interested in this work which kept him company; suddenly the jailer entered.

For about eight days since he had resolved to die, for four days since he had begun to put this plan into execution, Edmond had not addressed a word to this man, not answering him when he had spoken to ask of what illness he believed himself stricken, and turning toward the wall when he was looked at too attentively. But today, the jailer might hear this dull rustling, be alarmed at it, put an end to it, and thus disturb perhaps that something of hope, the very idea of which charmed the last moments of Dantès.

The jailer was bringing breakfast.

Dantès raised himself on his bed, and, swelling his voice, began to speak on every possible subject, on the bad quality of the food he brought, on the cold suffered in this cell, murmuring and grumbling so as to have the right to cry louder, and wearying the jailer's patience, who precisely that day had solicited for the sick prisoner a broth and fresh bread, and who was bringing him this broth and this bread.

Happily, he believed Dantès to be delirious; he set the food upon the rickety bad table on which he was accustomed to set it, and withdrew.

Free then, Edmond resumed listening with joy.

The noise became so distinct that, now, the young man heard it without effort.

"No doubt," he said to himself, "since this noise continues, despite the daylight, it is some unhappy prisoner like me who is working at his deliverance. Oh! if I were near him, how I would help him!"

Then, suddenly, a dark cloud passed over this dawn of hope in that brain accustomed to misfortune and which could only with difficulty return to human joys; this idea at once arose, that this noise was caused by the work of some laborers whom the governor employed upon repairs to a neighboring room.

It was easy to make sure; but how risk a question? Certainly it was quite simple to wait for the jailer's arrival, to make him listen to this noise, and to see the face he would make in listening to it; but to give oneself such satisfaction, was it not to betray interests very precious for a very short satisfaction? Unfortunately, Edmond's empty head was deafened by the humming of an idea; he was so weak that his mind floated like a vapor, and could not condense around a thought. Edmond saw but one means of restoring clearness to his reflection and lucidity to his judgment; he turned his eyes toward the broth still steaming which the jailer had just set upon the table, rose, went staggering to it, took the cup, raised it to his lips, and swallowed the draught it contained with an unspeakable sensation of well-being.

Then he had the courage to stop there: he had heard tell that unhappy shipwrecked men, picked up, exhausted by hunger, had died from having gluttonously devoured too substantial food. Edmond set upon the table the bread he already held almost within reach of his mouth, and went back to lie down. Edmond no longer wished to die.

Soon, he felt day return to his brain; all his ideas, vague and almost ungraspable, resumed their places in that marvelous chessboard, where one square more perhaps suffices to establish the superiority of man over animals. He could think and fortify his thought with reasoning.

Then he said to himself:

"The test must be attempted, but without compromising anyone. If the worker is an ordinary laborer, I have only to strike against my wall, at once he will cease his task to try to guess who strikes and to what end. But as his work will be not only lawful but even commanded, he will soon resume it. If, on the contrary, it is a prisoner, the noise I make will frighten him; he will fear discovery; he will cease his work and not resume it until this evening, when he believes everyone couched and asleep."

Thereupon, Edmond rose again. This time, his legs no longer wavered and his eyes were without dazzlement. He went to a corner of his prison, detached a stone mined by dampness, and came back to strike the wall at the very spot where the resonance was most sensible.

He struck three blows.

From the first, the noise had ceased, as if by enchantment.

Edmond listened with all his soul. An hour passed, two hours passed, no new noise was heard; Edmond had produced on the other side of the wall an absolute silence.

Full of hope, Edmond ate a few mouthfuls of his bread, swallowed a few gulps of water, and, thanks to the powerful constitution with which nature had endowed him, found himself about as before.

The day passed, the silence still lasted.

Night came without the noise having begun again.

"It is a prisoner," said Edmond with an unspeakable joy.

Thenceforth his head caught fire, life returned to him violent from being so active.

The night passed without the least noise being heard.

Edmond did not close his eyes that night.

Day returned; the jailer re-entered bringing provisions. Edmond had already devoured the old; he devoured the new, listening unceasingly for that noise which did not return, trembling lest it had ceased forever, making ten or twelve leagues in his cell, shaking for whole hours the iron bars of his air-hole, restoring elasticity and vigor to his limbs by an exercise long disused, disposing himself at last to take his coming destiny body to body, as does, in stretching his arms and rubbing his body with oil, the wrestler who is about to enter the arena. Then, in the intervals of this feverish activity, he listened whether the noise returned, impatient at the prudence of that prisoner who did not divine that he had been distracted in his work of liberty by another prisoner, who had at least as great haste to be free as himself.

Three days passed, seventy-two mortal hours counted minute by minute!

At length one evening, as the jailer had just made his last visit, as for the hundredth time Dantès pressed his ear to the wall, it seemed to him that an imperceptible shaking answered dully within his head, brought into rapport with the silent stones.

Dantès drew back to reseat his shaken brain, made a few turns about the room, and replaced his ear at the same spot.

There was no doubt, something was being done on the other side; the prisoner had recognized the danger of his maneuver and had adopted some other, and, no doubt to continue his work with more security, he had substituted the lever for the chisel.

Emboldened by this discovery, Edmond resolved to come to the aid of the indefatigable worker. He began by moving his bed, behind which it seemed to him the work of deliverance was being accomplished, and sought with his eyes an object with which he might attack the wall, make the damp cement fall, loosen a stone at last.

Nothing presented itself to his view. He had neither knife nor cutting instrument; iron only at his bars, and he had so often assured himself that his bars were well set, that it was no longer even worth trying to shake them.

For all furniture, a bed, a chair, a table, a bucket, a jug.

To this bed there were iron tenons, but these tenons were set into the wood by screws. A screwdriver would have been needed to draw these screws and tear out these tenons.

To the table and the chair, nothing; to the bucket, there had once been a handle, but this handle had been removed.

There remained for Dantès but one resource, which was to break his jug and, with one of the pieces of sandstone cut to an angle, set to work.

He let the jug fall upon a paving-stone, and the jug flew into fragments.

Dantès chose two or three sharp fragments, hid them in his straw mattress, and left the others scattered on the earth. The breaking of his jug was too natural an accident for anyone to be concerned at it.

Edmond had the whole night to work; but in the darkness, the work went badly, for he had to work by feel, and he soon felt that he was blunting the shapeless instrument against a harder sandstone. He therefore pushed back his bed and waited for day. With hope, patience had returned to him.

All night he listened and heard the unknown miner continue his subterranean work.

Day came, the jailer entered. Dantès told him that, in drinking from the jug the evening before, it had escaped his hand and broken in falling. The jailer went off grumbling to fetch a new jug, without even taking the trouble to carry away the pieces of the old one.

He came back an instant after, recommended more care to the prisoner and went out.

Dantès listened with an unspeakable joy to the creaking of the lock which, each time it closed again formerly, had wrung his heart. He listened to the sound of steps grow distant, then when that sound was extinguished, he bounded toward his cot which he displaced, and, by the light of the faint ray of day that penetrated his cell, could see the useless work he had done the previous night, by addressing himself to the body of the stone instead of addressing the plaster that surrounded its extremities.

Dampness had rendered this plaster friable.

Dantès saw with a joyful beating of the heart that this plaster detached itself in fragments; these fragments were almost atoms, it is true; but at the end of half an hour, however, Dantès had detached about a handful. A mathematician might have calculated that, with about two years of this work, supposing one met not the rock, one could dig oneself a passage of two square feet and twenty feet deep.

The prisoner then reproached himself for not having employed in this work those long successively elapsed hours, always slower, which he had lost in hope, in prayer, and in despair.

For about six years that he had been shut in this cell, what work, however slow, might he not have completed!

And this idea gave him a new ardor.

In three days, he managed, with unheard-of precautions, to remove all the cement and lay the stone bare: the wall was made of rubble stones among which, to add to the solidity, from time to time a cut stone had been placed. It was one of those cut stones that he had almost loosened, and which it was now a question of shaking in its socket.

Dantès tried with his nails, but his nails were insufficient for that.

The pieces of the jug introduced into the intervals broke when Dantès wished to use them as a lever.

After an hour of useless attempts, Dantès rose, sweat and anguish upon his brow.

Was he then to be stopped thus at the very beginning, and must he wait, inert and useless, until his neighbor who on his side might perhaps weary, had done everything!

Then an idea passed through his mind; he remained standing and smiling; his brow damp with sweat dried of itself.

The jailer brought Dantès' soup every day in a tin saucepan. This saucepan contained his soup and that of a second prisoner, for Dantès had remarked that this saucepan was either entirely full, or half empty, according as the turnkey began the distribution of food with him or with his companion.

This saucepan had an iron handle; it was this iron handle that Dantès coveted and that he would have paid, if they had asked it of him in exchange, with ten years of his life.

The jailer poured the contents of this saucepan into Dantès' plate. After eating his soup with a wooden spoon, Dantès washed this plate which thus served every day.

In the evening Dantès set his plate on the ground, midway from the door to the table; the jailer on entering stepped on the plate and broke it into a thousand pieces.

This time, there was nothing to say against Dantès: he had had the fault of leaving his plate on the ground, true, but the jailer had had that of not looking at his feet.

The jailer therefore contented himself with grumbling.

Then he looked around him for something in which he could pour the soup; Dantès' furniture was limited to that single plate, there was no choice.

"Leave the saucepan," said Dantès, "you will take it back when you bring me my breakfast tomorrow."

This advice flattered the jailer's laziness, who thus had no need to go up, come down, and go up again.

He left the saucepan.

Dantès trembled with joy.

This time, he ate his soup and the meat which, according to prison custom, was put with the soup, quickly. Then, after waiting an hour, to be certain the jailer would not think better of it, he displaced his bed, took his saucepan, introduced the end of the handle between the cut stone denuded of its cement and the neighboring rubble, and began to use it as a lever.

A slight oscillation proved to Dantès that the work was succeeding.

In effect, at the end of an hour, the stone was drawn from the wall, where it made an excavation of more than a foot and a half in diameter.

Dantès carefully gathered all the plaster, carried it into the corners of his prison, scraped the grayish earth with one of the fragments of his jug and covered the plaster with earth.

Then, wishing to profit by this night when chance, or rather the skillful combination he had imagined, had put into his hands so precious an instrument, he continued to dig with ardor.

At daybreak, he replaced the stone in its hole, pushed his bed against the wall and lay down.

Breakfast consisted of a piece of bread; the jailer entered and set this piece of bread on the table.

"Well, are you not bringing me another plate?" asked Dantès.

"No," said the turnkey; "you are a break-everything, you have destroyed your jug, and you are the cause that I broke your plate; if all prisoners did as much damage, the government could not stand it. You are left the saucepan, your soup will be poured into it; that way you will not break your household, perhaps."

Dantès raised his eyes to heaven and joined his hands under his cover. This piece of iron that remained to him caused in his heart a burst of gratitude more vivid toward heaven than the greatest goods that had befallen him in his past life had ever caused him.

Only, he had remarked that, since he had begun to work, the prisoner—his neighbor—no longer worked.

No matter, that was no reason to cease his task; if his neighbor did not come to him, it was he who would go to his neighbor.

All day he worked without relaxation; in the evening, thanks to his new instrument, he had drawn from the wall more than ten handfuls of debris of rubble, plaster and cement.

When the hour of the visit arrived, he straightened as best he could the twisted handle of his saucepan and put the vessel back in its accustomed place. The turnkey poured into it the ordinary ration of soup and meat, or rather of soup and fish, for that day was a lean day, and three times a week the prisoners were made to eat lean. That would have been still a means of calculating time, if for long Dantès had not abandoned that calculation.

Then, the soup poured, the turnkey withdrew. This time, Dantès wished to assure himself whether his neighbor had really ceased to work.

He listened.

All was silent as during those three days when the works had been interrupted.

Dantès sighed; it was evident his neighbor distrusted him.

However, he did not lose heart and continued to work all night; but after two or three hours of labor, he met an obstacle. The iron no longer bit and slipped upon a flat surface.

Dantès touched the obstacle with his hands and recognized that he had reached a beam.

This beam crossed, or rather entirely barred, the hole Dantès had begun.

Now, it was necessary to dig above or below.

The unhappy young man had not thought of this obstacle.

"Oh! my God, my God!" he cried, "I had however prayed to you so much, that I hoped you had heard me. My God! after having taken from me the liberty of life, my God! after having taken from me the calm of death, my God! who have recalled me to existence, my God! have pity on me, do not leave me to die in despair!"

"Who speaks of God and of despair at the same time?" articulated a voice which seemed to come from underground and which, dulled by opacity, reached the young man with a sepulchral accent.

Edmond felt his hair stand up on his head, and he recoiled upon his knees.

"Ah!" he murmured, "I hear a man speaking."

It was four or five years since Edmond had heard anyone speak but his jailer, and for the prisoner the jailer is not a man: he is a living door added to his door of oak; he is a bar of flesh added to his bars of iron.

"In the name of heaven!" cried Dantès, "you who have spoken, speak again, though your voice has terrified me; who are you?"

"Who are you yourself?" asked the voice.

"An unhappy prisoner," replied Dantès, who for his part made no difficulty of answering.

"Of what country?"

"French."

"Your name?"

"Edmond Dantès."

"Your profession?"

"Sailor."

"How long have you been here?"

"Since the 28th of February, 1815."

"Your crime?"

"I am innocent."

"But of what are you accused?"

"Of having conspired for the return of the Emperor."

"How! for the return of the Emperor! the Emperor is no longer on the throne then?"

"He abdicated at Fontainebleau in 1814 and was relegated to the island of Elba. But you yourself, how long have you been here, that you are ignorant of all this?"

"Since 1811."

Dantès shuddered; this man had four years more of prison than he.

"Very well, dig no more," said the voice, speaking very quickly; "only tell me at what height is the excavation you have made?"

"Level with the ground."

"How is it hidden?"

"Behind my bed."

"Has your bed been disturbed since you have been in prison?"

"Never."

"Upon what does your room open?"

"Upon a corridor."

"And the corridor?"

"Leads to the courtyard."

"Alas!" murmured the voice.

"Oh! my God! what then is the matter?" cried Dantès.

"It is that I was mistaken, that the imperfection of my drawings deceived me, that the want of a compass has ruined me, that a line of error upon my plan equaled fifteen feet in reality, and that I took the wall you are digging for that of the citadel!"

"But then you were coming out at the sea?"

"That was what I wanted."

"And if you had succeeded!"

"I would have thrown myself into the water, I would have gained one of the islands surrounding the Château d'If, either the island of Daume, or the island of Tiboulen, or even the coast, and then I was saved."

"Would you then have been able to swim so far?"

"God would have given me the strength; and now all is lost."

"All?"

"Yes. Stop up your hole carefully, work no more, occupy yourself with nothing, and await news from me."

"Who are you at least... tell me who you are?"

"I am... I am... Number 27."

"Do you then distrust me?" asked Dantès.

Edmond thought he heard a bitter laugh pierce the vault and rise to him.

"Oh! I am a good Christian," he cried, divining instinctively that this man was thinking of abandoning him; "I swear to you by Christ that I would rather be killed than let the shadow of the truth appear to your torturers and to mine; but, in the name of heaven, do not deprive me of your presence, do not deprive me of your voice, or, I swear to you, for I am at the end of my strength, I will dash my head against the wall, and you will have my death to reproach yourself with!"

"What age are you? your voice seems that of a young man."

"I do not know my age, for I have not measured time since I have been here. What I know is that I was about to be nineteen years old when I was arrested, the 18th of February, 1815."

"Not quite twenty-six," murmured the voice. "Come, at that age one is not yet a traitor."

"Oh! no, no! I swear it to you," repeated Dantès. "I have already told you so and I tell you again, I would be cut to pieces rather than betray you."

"You did well to speak to me; you did well to entreat me, for I was going to form another plan and withdraw from you. But your age reassures me, I will join you, wait for me."

"When?"

"I must calculate our chances; let me give you the signal."

"But you will not abandon me, you will not leave me alone, you will come to me, or you will permit me to come to you? We will flee together, and if we cannot flee, we will speak, you of the people you love, I of the people I love. You must love someone?"

"I am alone in the world."

"Then you will love me; if you are young, I will be your comrade; if you are old, I will be your son. I have a father who must be seventy years old, if he still lives; I loved none but him and a young girl who was called Mercédès. My father has not forgotten me, I am sure; but she—God knows if she still thinks of me. I will love you as I loved my father."

"It is well," said the prisoner, "until tomorrow."

These few words were said with an accent that convinced Dantès; he asked no more, rose, took the same precautions for the debris drawn from the wall that he had already taken, and pushed his bed against the wall.

Thenceforth, Dantès abandoned himself wholly to his happiness; he was certainly no longer to be alone, perhaps even he was to be free; the worst that could happen, if he remained a prisoner, was to have a companion; now, shared captivity is but half a captivity. Complaints put in common are almost prayers; prayers made by two are almost thanksgivings.

All day, Dantès went and came in his cell, his heart bounding with joy. From time to time, this joy stifled him: he sat upon his bed, pressing his breast with his hand. At the least noise he heard in the corridor, he bounded toward the door. Once or twice, this fear that he might be separated from this man whom he did not know, and whom yet he already loved as a friend, passed through his brain. Then he was decided: at the moment the jailer should move his bed, lower his head to examine the opening, he would break his head with the paving-stone on which his jug had stood.

He would be condemned to death, he knew it well; but was he not about to die of boredom and despair at the very moment when this miraculous noise had restored him to life?

In the evening the jailer came; Dantès was upon his bed, from there it seemed to him he better guarded the unfinished opening. Doubtless he regarded the importunate visitor with a strange eye, for the latter said to him:

"Come, are you going to become mad again?"

Dantès answered nothing, he feared the emotion of his voice would betray him.

The jailer withdrew shaking his head.

Night being come, Dantès believed his neighbor would profit by the silence and the darkness to renew conversation with him, but he was mistaken; the night passed without any noise answering his feverish expectation. But the next day, after the morning visit, and as he had just moved his bed from the wall, he heard three blows struck at equal intervals; he precipitated himself upon his knees.

"Is it you?" said he; "here I am!"

"Is your jailer gone?" asked the voice.

"Yes," answered Dantès, "he will not return until this evening, we have twelve hours of liberty."

"I may then act?" said the voice.

"Oh! yes, yes, without delay, this instant, I beseech you."

Thereupon, the portion of earth upon which Dantès, half lost in the opening, leaned his two hands seemed to give way beneath him; he threw himself backward, while a mass of detached earth and stones precipitated itself into a hole which had just opened below the opening he himself had made; then, at the bottom of this dark hole whose depth he could not measure, he saw appear a head, shoulders, and at last a whole man who emerged with sufficient agility from the excavation that had been practiced.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”