XVII. La chambre de l'abbé.

XVII

The Abbé's Chamber.

After passing, bending low but nevertheless with tolerable ease, through the underground passage, Dantès arrived at the opposite end of the corridor which opened into the abbé's chamber. There the passage narrowed and offered scarcely space enough for a man to slip through on hands and knees. The abbé's chamber was paved with flagstones; it was by raising one of those stones placed in the darkest corner that he had begun the laborious operation of which Dantès had seen the end.

Scarcely had he entered and risen to his feet than the young man examined this chamber with great attention. At first sight it presented nothing peculiar.

“Good,” said the abbé, “it is but a quarter past twelve, and we still have some hours before us.”

Dantès looked about him, seeking the clock by which the abbé could have read the hour so precisely.

“Look at that ray of daylight coming through my window,” said the abbé, “and look at the lines I have traced upon the wall. Thanks to those lines, which are combined with the double movement of the earth and the ellipse it describes around the sun, I know the hour more exactly than if I had a watch, for a watch gets out of order, whereas the sun and the earth never do.”

Dantès had understood nothing of this explanation; he had always believed, seeing the sun rise behind the mountains and set in the Mediterranean, that it was the sun which moved and not the earth. This double movement of the globe he inhabited, and of which he was nevertheless unconscious, seemed to him almost impossible; in each of his interlocutor’s words he saw mysteries of science as admirable to fathom as those mines of gold and diamonds he had visited on a journey he had made almost still a child in Guzarate and Golconde.

“Come,” he said to the abbé, “I am eager to examine your treasures.”

The abbé went toward the fireplace, displaced with the chisel he always held in his hand the stone which had formerly formed the hearth and which concealed a rather deep cavity; it was in this cavity that all the objects of which he had spoken to Dantès were enclosed.

“What do you wish to see first?” he asked him.

“Show me your great work on the monarchy in Italy.”

Faria drew from the precious cupboard three or four rolls of linen twisted upon themselves like leaves of papyrus: they were bands of cloth about four inches wide and eighteen long. These bands, numbered, were covered with a writing Dantès could read, for they were written in the abbé’s mother tongue, that is to say in Italian, a dialect which, being a Provençal, Dantès understood perfectly.

“See,” said he to him, “all is there; it is some eight days since I wrote the word Fin at the foot of the sixty-eighth band. Two of my shirts and all the handkerchiefs I had have passed into it; if ever I become free again and there is found in all Italy a printer bold enough to print me, my reputation is made.”

“Yes,” answered Dantès, “I see. And now show me, I pray you, the pens with which this work was written.”

“See,” said Faria. And he showed the young man a little stick six inches long, as thick as the handle of a brush, at the end and around which was tied by a thread one of those cartilages, still stained with ink, of which the abbé had spoken to Dantès; it was elongated into a nib and split like an ordinary pen. Dantès examined it, seeking with his eyes the instrument with which it could have been cut so correctly.

“Ah! yes,” said Faria, “the penknife, is it not? That is my masterpiece; I made it, as well as the knife you see here, with an old iron candlestick.”

The penknife cut like a razor. As for the knife, it had the advantage of serving at once as knife and poniard. Dantès examined these various objects with the same attention with which, in the curiosity shops of Marseille, he had sometimes examined instruments executed by savages and brought from the southern seas by deep-sea captains.

“As for the ink,” said Faria, “you know how I proceed; I make it as I need it.”

“Now, I wonder at one thing,” said Dantès, “that the days sufficed you for all this work.”

“I had the nights,” answered Faria.

“The nights! Are you then of the nature of cats and do you see clearly at night?”

“No; but God has given man intelligence to aid the poverty of his senses: I procured myself light.”

“How so?”

“From the meat they bring me I separate the fat, I melt it down and draw from it a kind of compact oil. See, here is my candle.”

And the abbé showed Dantès a sort of lantern, like those used in public illuminations.

“But fire?”

“Here are two flints and some burnt linen.”

“But matches?”

“I feigned a skin disease, and asked for sulphur, which was granted me.”

Dantès set down the objects he held upon the table and bowed his head, crushed beneath the perseverance and strength of that mind.

“That is not all,” continued Faria; “for one must not put all one’s treasures in a single hiding-place; let us close this one.”

They set the flagstone in its place; the abbé scattered a little dust upon it, passed his foot over it to make all trace of a seam disappear, advanced toward his bed and moved it.

Behind the headboard, concealed by a stone which closed it with almost perfect airtightness, was a hole, and in that hole a rope ladder twenty-five to thirty feet long.

Dantès examined it: it was of a solidity proof against all trial.

“Who furnished you the rope necessary for this marvellous work?” asked Dantès.

“First some shirts I had, then the sheets of my bed which, during three years of captivity at Fenestrelle, I unravelled. When I was transferred to the Château d’If, I found means to bring this ravelled thread with me; here I continued the work.”

“But did they not perceive that the sheets of your bed had no longer a hem?”

“I resewed them.”

“With what?”

“With this needle.”

And the abbé, opening a rag of his garments, showed Dantès a long, sharp fishbone still threaded, which he carried about him.

“Yes,” continued Faria, “I had at first thought of loosening those bars and escaping by this window, which is a little wider than yours, as you see, and which I should have widened still further at the moment of my escape; but I perceived that this window gave upon an inner court, and I renounced my project as too hazardous. However, I kept the ladder for an unforeseen circumstance, for one of those escapes of which I spoke to you, and which chance procures.”

Dantès, while seeming to examine the ladder, thought this time of something else; an idea had crossed his mind. It was that this man, so intelligent, so ingenious, so profound, might perhaps see clearly into the obscurity of his own misfortune, where he himself had never been able to distinguish anything.

“What are you thinking of?” asked the abbé, smiling, and taking Dantès’ absorption for admiration carried to the highest degree.

“I am thinking of one thing first,” said he, “of the enormous sum of intelligence it must have cost you to arrive at the point you have reached; what then would you have done free?”

“Nothing, perhaps: this overflow of my brain would have evaporated in trifles. Misfortune is needed to dig certain mysterious mines hidden in human intelligence; pressure is needed to make powder explode. Captivity gathered all my faculties, floating here and there, upon a single point; they clashed in a narrow space; and, as you know, from the shock of clouds results electricity, from electricity lightning, from lightning light.”

“No, I know nothing,” said Dantès, cast down by his ignorance; “a part of the words you utter are for me empty words; you are very happy to be so learned, you!”

The abbé smiled.

“You were thinking of two things, you said just now?”

“Yes.”

“And you have made known to me only the first; what is the second?”

“The second is that you have related your life to me, and you do not know mine.”

“Your life, young man, is too short to contain events of any importance.”

“It contains an immense misfortune,” said Dantès; “a misfortune I did not deserve; and I should like, in order no longer to blaspheme God as I have sometimes done, to be able to lay my misfortune at the door of men.”

“Then you claim to be innocent of the deed imputed to you?”

“Completely innocent, on the heads of the only two persons dear to me, on the head of my father and of Mercédès.”

“Come,” said the abbé, closing his hiding-place and pushing his bed back to its place, “tell me your story.”

Dantès then related what he called his history, which was confined to a voyage in India and two or three voyages in the Levant; finally, he came to his last crossing, to the death of Captain Leclère, to the packet given him for the grand marshal, to the interview with the grand marshal, to the letter given him and addressed to one M. Noirtier; finally to his arrival at Marseille, to his interview with his father, to his love for Mercédès, to his betrothal feast, to his arrest, to his examination, to his provisional imprisonment in the palace of justice, and lastly to his definitive imprisonment in the Château d’If. Arrived there, Dantès knew nothing more, not even how long he had remained a prisoner.

The recital ended, the abbé reflected profoundly.

“There is,” said he after a moment, “a maxim of law of great depth, and which comes back to what I was saying to you just now, that unless the evil thought be born with a falsified organization, human nature recoils from crime. However, civilization has given us needs, vices, artificial appetites which sometimes have the influence of making us stifle our good instincts and which lead us to evil. Hence this maxim: If you would discover the guilty, seek first him to whom the crime committed can be useful! To whom could your disappearance have been useful?”

“To no one, my God! I was so little of anything.”

“Do not answer thus, for the answer lacks both logic and philosophy; all is relative, my dear friend, from the king who hinders his future successor, to the clerk who hinders the supernumerary: if the king dies, the successor inherits a crown; if the clerk dies, the supernumerary inherits twelve hundred livres of salary. Those twelve hundred livres of salary are his civil list; they are as necessary to him to live as the twelve millions of a king. Every individual, from the lowest to the highest degree of the social scale, groups around him a whole little world of interests, having its eddies and its barbed atoms, like the worlds of Descartes. Only, these worlds keep ever widening as they rise. It is a reversed spiral which rests upon its point by a play of equilibrium. Let us come back then to your own world. You were about to be named captain of the Pharaon?”

“Yes.”

“You were about to marry a beautiful young girl?”

“Yes.”

“Had any one an interest in your not becoming captain of the Pharaon? Had any one an interest in your not marrying Mercédès? Answer the first question first, order is the key to all problems. Had any one an interest in your not becoming captain of the Pharaon?”

“No; I was much liked on board. If the sailors could have elected a chief, I am sure they would have elected me. One man alone had some motive to bear me ill will: I had had, some time before, a quarrel with him, and I had proposed a duel which he refused.”

“Come now? This man, what was his name?”

“Danglars.”

“What was he on board?”

“Chief clerk.”

“If you had become captain, would you have kept him in his post?”

“No, if the thing had depended on me, for I had thought I remarked some irregularities in his accounts.”

“Good. Now, did any one assist at your last conversation with Captain Leclère?”

“No, we were alone.”

“Could any one have overheard your conversation?”

“Yes, for the door was open; and indeed… wait… yes, yes, Danglars passed just at the moment when Captain Leclère was giving me the packet destined for the grand marshal.”

“Good,” said the abbé, “we are on the track. Did you bring any one ashore with you when you touched at the island of Elba?”

“No one.”

“Were you given a letter?”

“Yes, by the grand marshal.”

“This letter, what did you do with it?”

“I put it in my portfolio.”

“You had then your portfolio about you? How could a portfolio meant to contain an official letter fit in a sailor’s pocket?”

“You are right, my portfolio was on board.”

“It was then only on board that you enclosed the letter in the portfolio?”

“Yes.”

“From Porto-Ferrajo to on board, what did you do with this letter?”

“I held it in my hand.”

“When you went back on board the Pharaon, every one could then see that you held a letter?”

“Yes.”

“Danglars like the others?”

“Danglars like the others.”

“Now, listen well; gather all your memories: do you recall in what terms the denunciation was worded?”

“Oh! yes, I read it over three times, and every word of it remained in my memory.”

“Repeat it to me.”

Dantès collected himself an instant.

“Here it is,” said he, “textually:

“‘The king’s attorney is informed by a friend of the throne and of religion that the named Edmond Dantès, mate of the ship Pharaon, arrived this morning from Smyrna, after touching at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, was charged by Murat with a packet for the usurper, and by the usurper with a letter for the Bonapartist committee of Paris.

“‘Proof of his crime will be found by arresting him, for this letter will be found upon him, or at his father’s, or in his cabin on board the Pharaon.’”

The abbé shrugged his shoulders.

“It is clear as day,” said he; “you must have had a very naive and very good heart not to have guessed the thing at first.”

“You think so?” cried Dantès. “Ah! that would be infamous indeed!”

“What was the ordinary handwriting of Danglars?”

“A fine running hand.”

“What was the handwriting of the anonymous letter?”

“A reversed handwriting.”

The abbé smiled.

“Counterfeited, was it not?”

“Bold enough to be counterfeited.”

“Wait,” said he.

He took his pen, or rather what he called thus, dipped it in the ink and wrote with his left hand, upon a cloth prepared for that purpose, the two or three first lines of the denunciation.

Dantès drew back and looked almost with terror at the abbé.

“Oh! it is astonishing,” cried he, “how this handwriting resembles that one.”

“That is because the denunciation had been written with the left hand. I have observed one thing,” continued the abbé.

“Which?”

“That all handwritings traced with the right hand are varied, and that all handwritings traced with the left hand resemble one another.”

“Have you then seen and observed all?”

“Let us continue.”

“Oh! yes, yes.”

“Pass to the second question.”

“I am listening.”

“Had any one an interest in your not marrying Mercédès?”

“Yes! a young man who loved her.”

“His name?”

“Fernand.”

“Is that a Spanish name?”

“He was a Catalan.”

“Do you believe this one capable of writing the letter?”

“No! this one would have given me a stab of a knife. That is all.”

“Yes, that is in the Spanish nature: a murder, yes; a cowardice, no.”

“Besides,” continued Dantès, “he was ignorant of all the details set down in the denunciation.”

“You had given them to no one? Not even to your mistress?”

“Not even to my betrothed.”

“It is Danglars.”

“Oh! now I am sure of it.”

“Wait… Danglars knew Fernand?”

“No… yes… I remember…”

“What?”

“The eve of my marriage I saw them seated together under the arbor of Father Pamphile. Danglars was friendly and bantering, Fernand was pale and troubled.”

“Were they alone?”

“No, they had with them a third companion, well known to me, who no doubt had brought them together, a tailor named Caderousse; but he was already drunk. Wait, wait… How did I not recall this? Near the table where they drank were an inkstand, paper, pens. (Dantès put his hand to his forehead.) Oh! the infamous wretches! the infamous wretches!”

“Do you wish to know something else?” said the abbé, laughing.

“Yes, yes, since you go to the bottom of things, everything, since you see clearly in all things, I wish to know why I was examined but once, why I was given no judges, and how I am condemned without trial.”

“Oh! this,” said the abbé, “is a little more grave; justice has sombre and mysterious ways difficult to penetrate. What we have done hitherto for your two friends was child’s play; upon this subject I must be given the most precise indications.”

“Come, question me, for in truth you see more clearly into my life than I myself.”

“Who examined you? was it the king’s attorney, the substitute, the examining magistrate?”

“It was the substitute.”

“Young or old?”

“Young: seven or eight and twenty.”

“Good! not yet corrupted, but already ambitious,” said the abbé. “What were his manners with you?”

“Rather gentle than severe.”

“Did you tell him all?”

“All.”

“And did his manners change in the course of the examination?”

“For an instant, they were altered, when he had read the letter which compromised me; he seemed overwhelmed by my misfortune.”

“By your misfortune?”

“Yes.”

“And are you quite sure it was your misfortune he pitied?”

“He gave me a great proof of his sympathy, at least.”

“Which?”

“He burnt the only piece which could compromise me.”

“Which? the denunciation?”

“No, the letter.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“It passed before me.”

“That is another thing; this man might be a deeper scoundrel than you believe.”

“You make me shudder, upon my honor!” said Dantès. “Is the world then peopled with tigers and crocodiles?”

“Yes; only the tigers and crocodiles on two feet are more dangerous than the others.”

“Let us continue, let us continue.”

“Willingly; he burnt the letter, you say?”

“Yes, saying to me: ‘You see, there exists only that proof against you, and I annihilate it.’”

“That conduct is too sublime to be natural.”

“You think so?”

“I am sure of it. To whom was this letter addressed?”

“To M. Noirtier, Rue Coq-Héron, No. 13, Paris.”

“Can you surmise that your substitute had some interest in this letter’s disappearing?”

“Perhaps; for he made me promise two or three times, in my interest, he said, to speak to no one of this letter, and he made me swear not to pronounce the name written on the address.”

“Noirtier?” repeated the abbé… “Noirtier? I knew a Noirtier at the court of the former queen of Etruria, a Noirtier who had been a Girondin under the Revolution. What was your substitute called, you?”

“De Villefort.”

The abbé burst out laughing.

Dantès looked at him with stupefaction.

“What is the matter?” said he.

“Do you see that ray of daylight?” asked the abbé.

“Yes.”

“Well, all is clearer to me now than that transparent and luminous ray. Poor child, poor young man! and this magistrate was good to you.”

“Yes.”

“This worthy substitute burnt, annihilated the letter?”

“Yes.”

“This honest purveyor of the executioner made you swear never to pronounce the name of Noirtier?”

“Yes.”

“This Noirtier, poor blind man that you are, do you know what this Noirtier was? ‘This Noirtier was his father!’”

Lightning falling at Dantès’ feet and digging him an abyss at whose bottom hell opened would have produced upon him an effect less sudden, less electric, less crushing, than those unexpected words; he rose, seizing his head in both hands as if to keep it from bursting.

“His father! his father!” cried he.

“Yes, his father, who is called Noirtier de Villefort,” resumed the abbé.

Then a fulgurant light traversed the prisoner’s brain; all that had remained obscure to him was at that instant illuminated with a dazzling day. Those tergiversations of Villefort during the examination, that letter destroyed, that oath exacted, that voice almost suppliant of the magistrate who, instead of threatening, seemed to implore, all came back to his memory; he uttered a cry, staggered an instant like a drunken man; then, darting through the opening which led from the abbé’s cell to his own:

“Oh!” said he, “I must be alone to think of all this.”

And, on arriving in his dungeon, he fell upon his bed, where the turnkey found him in the evening, seated, his eyes fixed, his features contracted, but motionless and mute as a statue.

During those hours of meditation, which had flowed like seconds, he had taken a terrible resolution and made a formidable oath.

A voice drew Dantès from this reverie; it was that of the abbé Faria, who, having in his turn received the visit of his jailer, came to invite Dantès to sup with him. His recognized quality of madman, and above all of diverting madman, won the old prisoner some privileges, such as that of having somewhat whiter bread and a little flask of wine on Sundays. Now, it happened to be Sunday, and the abbé came to invite his young companion to share his bread and wine.

Dantès followed him: all the lines of his face had resumed their accustomed places, but with a stiffness and a firmness, if one may say so, which betrayed a resolution taken.

The abbé looked at him fixedly.

“I am sorry to have aided you in your researches and to have told you what I told you,” said he.

“Why so?” asked Dantès.

“Because I have infused into your heart a sentiment which was not there: revenge.”

Dantès smiled.

“Let us speak of something else,” said he.

The abbé looked at him yet an instant and sadly shook his head; then, as Dantès had prayed him, he spoke of something else.

The old prisoner was one of those men whose conversation, like that of those who have suffered much, contains numerous lessons and sustains an unfailing interest; but it was not selfish, and this unhappy man never spoke of his misfortunes.

Dantès listened to each of his words with admiration: some corresponded to ideas he already had and to knowledge within the province of his sailor’s estate, others touched upon unknown things, and, like those aurora borealis which light navigators in southern latitudes, showed the young man new landscapes and horizons illuminated with fantastic gleams. Dantès understood the happiness there would be for an intelligent organization to follow this lofty spirit upon the moral, philosophical, or social heights where it was accustomed to disport itself.

“You should teach me a little of what you know,” said Dantès, “were it only not to bore yourself with me. It seems to me now that you must prefer solitude to a companion without education and without depth like me. If you consent to what I ask, I engage never to speak to you again of escaping.”

The abbé smiled.

“Alas! my child,” said he, “human science is very bounded, and when I shall have taught you mathematics, physics, history, and the three or four living languages I speak, you will know what I know: now, all this science, I shall be scarce two years in pouring it from my mind into yours.”

“Two years!” said Dantès; “do you think I could learn all these things in two years?”

“In their application, no; in their principles, yes: to learn is not to know; there are the learned and the men of science: it is memory which makes the one, it is philosophy which makes the other.”

“But can one not learn philosophy?”

“Philosophy is not learned; philosophy is the union of acquired sciences with the genius which applies them: philosophy is the bursting cloud upon which Christ set his foot to reascend to heaven.”

“Come,” said Dantès, “what do you teach me first? I am eager to begin, I thirst for knowledge.”

“Everything!” said the abbé.

Indeed, that very evening the two prisoners settled a plan of education which began to be executed the next day. Dantès had a prodigious memory, an extreme facility of conception: the mathematical disposition of his mind rendered him apt to understand all by calculation, while the poetry of the sailor corrected all that the demonstration reduced to the dryness of figures or the rectitude of lines could have too material. He already knew, moreover, Italian and a little Romaic, which he had learned on his voyages in the Orient. With these two languages, he soon understood the mechanism of all the others, and, at the end of six months, he began to speak Spanish, English, and German. As he had said to the abbé Faria, whether the distraction the study afforded him stood him in place of liberty, or whether he was, as we have already seen, a rigid observer of his word, he spoke no more of escaping, and the days flowed for him rapid and instructive. At the end of a year, he was another man.

As for the abbé Faria, Dantès remarked that, despite the distraction his presence had brought to his captivity, he grew gloomier every day. An incessant and eternal thought seemed to besiege his mind; he fell into deep reveries, sighed involuntarily, rose suddenly, crossed his arms and walked sombrely around his prison.

One day, he stopped short in the middle of one of those circles a hundred times repeated which he described around his chamber, and cried:

“Ah! if there were but no sentinel!”

“There will be no sentinel save as you wish,” replied Dantès, who had followed his thought through the box of his brain as through crystal.

“Ah! I told you,” resumed the abbé, “I recoil from a murder.”

“And yet this murder, if committed, will be by instinct of our preservation, by a sentiment of personal defense.”

“No matter, I could not.”

“And yet you think of it?”

“Ceaselessly, ceaselessly,” murmured the abbé.

“And you have found a means, have you not?” said Dantès quickly.

“Yes, if it could come to pass that a blind and deaf sentinel were placed upon the gallery.”

“She shall be blind, she shall be deaf,” answered the young man with an accent of resolution which appalled the abbé.

“No, no!” cried he; “impossible.”

Dantès would have detained him upon this subject, but the abbé shook his head and refused to answer further.

Three months elapsed.

“Are you strong?” asked the abbé one day of Dantès.

Dantès, without answering, took the chisel, twisted it like a horseshoe and straightened it again.

“Would you engage to kill the sentinel only at the last extremity?”

“Yes, upon my honor.”

“Then,” said the abbé, “we may execute our design.”

“And how long shall we need to execute it?”

“A year, at least.”

“But could we set to work?”

“At once.”

“Oh! see, we have lost a year,” cried Dantès.

“Do you find you have lost it?” said the abbé.

“Oh! pardon, pardon,” cried Edmond, reddening.

“Hush!” said the abbé; “man is never but a man; and you are still one of the best I have known. See, here is my plan.”

The abbé then showed Dantès a drawing he had traced: it was the plan of his chamber, of Dantès’, and of the corridor joining one to the other. In the middle of this gallery he established a shaft like that practised in mines. This shaft led the two prisoners beneath the gallery where the sentinel walked; once arrived there, they made a wide excavation, loosened one of the flagstones forming the floor of the gallery; the flagstone, at a given moment, sank under the weight of the soldier, who disappeared engulfed in the excavation; Dantès precipitated himself upon him at the moment when, all stunned by his fall, he could not defend himself, bound him, gagged him, and then both, passing by one of the windows of this gallery, descended along the outer wall by aid of the rope ladder and escaped.

Dantès clapped his hands and his eyes sparkled with joy; this plan was so simple that it must succeed.

The same day, the miners set to work with the more ardor that this labor succeeded a long rest, and, according to all probability, only continued the intimate and secret thought of each of them.

Nothing interrupted them but the hour at which each was forced to return to his own place to receive the visit of the jailer. They had, moreover, taken the habit of distinguishing, by the imperceptible noise of steps, the moment when this man descended, and never was either taken unawares. The earth they extracted from the new gallery, which would have ended by filling the old corridor, was thrown little by little, and with unheard-of precautions, by one or the other of the two windows of Dantès’ dungeon or of Faria’s; they pulverized it carefully, and the night wind bore it far away without leaving traces.

More than a year passed in this work executed with a chisel, a knife, and a wooden lever for sole instruments; during this year, and while working, Faria continued to instruct Dantès, speaking to him now in one language, now in another, teaching him the history of nations and of great men who leave from time to time behind them one of those luminous traces called glory. The abbé, a man of the world and of high society, had moreover, in his manners, a sort of melancholy majesty from which Dantès, thanks to the spirit of assimilation with which nature had endowed him, knew how to extract that elegant politeness he lacked and those aristocratic ways which are usually acquired only by contact with the elevated classes or the society of superior men.

At the end of fifteen months, the hole was finished; the excavation was made beneath the gallery; they heard the sentinel pass and repass, and the two workmen, who were forced to await a dark and moonless night to render their escape still more certain, had but one fear: that of seeing the too hasty soil collapse of itself beneath the soldier’s feet. They obviated this inconvenience by placing a sort of small beam, which they had found in the foundations as a support. Dantès was occupied in placing it, when he suddenly heard the abbé Faria, who had remained in the young man’s chamber, where he was on his side employed in sharpening a peg meant to hold the rope ladder, calling him with an accent of distress. Dantès re-entered quickly, and perceived the abbé, standing in the middle of the chamber, pale, the sweat on his brow and his hands clenched.

“Oh! my God!” cried Dantès, “what is it, and what ails you?”

“Quick, quick!” said the abbé; “listen to me.”

Dantès looked at Faria’s livid face, his eyes circled with a bluish ring, his white lips, his bristling hair; and, with terror, let fall the chisel he held in his hand.

“But what is the matter?” cried Edmond.

“I am lost!” said the abbé. “Listen to me. A terrible evil, perhaps mortal, is about to seize me; the fit is coming, I feel it: already I was struck by it the year before my imprisonment. For this evil there is but one remedy, I will tell you it: run quickly to my place, lift the foot of the bed; that foot is hollow, you will find there a small flask half full of a red liquid, bring it; or rather, no, no, I might be surprised here; help me back to my place while I still have some strength. Who knows what will happen during the fit?”

Dantès, without losing his head, though the misfortune which struck him was immense, descended into the corridor, dragging his unhappy companion after him, and conducting him, with infinite pain, to the opposite end, found himself again in the abbé’s chamber, which he deposited upon his bed.

“Thanks,” said the abbé, shivering in all his limbs as if he came out of icy water. “Here is the evil coming, I am going to fall in catalepsy; perhaps I shall make no movement, perhaps I shall utter no complaint; but perhaps also I shall foam, stiffen, cry out; try that my cries be not heard, that is important, for then perhaps they would change my chamber, and we should be separated forever. When you see me motionless, cold and dead, so to speak, only at that instant, do you hear well, loosen my teeth with the knife, pour into my mouth eight to ten drops of this liquid, and perhaps I shall return.”

“Perhaps?” cried Dantès sorrowfully.

“Help! help!” cried the abbé; “I am… I am dy…”

The fit was so sudden and so violent that the unhappy prisoner could not even finish the word begun; a cloud passed over his brow, rapid and dark as the tempests of the sea; the crisis dilated his eyes, twisted his mouth, reddened his cheeks; he agitated himself, foamed, roared; but as he had himself recommended, Dantès stifled his cries beneath the coverlet. This lasted two hours. Then, more inert than a mass, paler and colder than marble, more broken than a reed trampled underfoot, he fell, stiffened yet again in a last convulsion and became livid. Edmond waited until this seeming death had invaded the body and chilled even to the heart; then he took the knife, introduced the blade between the teeth, loosened with infinite pain the clenched jaws, counted one after another ten drops of the red liquid, and waited. An hour elapsed without the old man making the least movement. Dantès feared he had waited too late, and looked at him, his two hands plunged in his hair. At last a slight color appeared on his cheeks; his eyes, constantly remained open and dull, recovered their gaze; a faint sigh escaped his mouth; he made a movement.

“Saved! saved!” cried Dantès.

The sick man could not yet speak, but he extended with visible anxiety the hand toward the door. Dantès listened, and heard the steps of the jailer: it was going to be seven o’clock and Dantès had not had leisure to measure the time.

The young man bounded toward the opening, sank into it, replaced the flagstone above his head, and returned to his own place.

An instant after, his door opened in its turn, and the jailer, as usual, found the prisoner seated on his bed.

Scarcely had he turned his back, scarcely had the noise of steps been lost in the corridor, than Dantès, devoured by uneasiness, took without thinking of eating the path he had just come, and, lifting the flagstone with his head, re-entered the abbé’s chamber.

The latter had recovered consciousness, but he was still stretched, inert and without strength, upon his bed.

“I no longer counted on seeing you again,” said he to Dantès.

“Why so?” asked the young man; “did you count then on dying?”

“No; but all is ready for your flight, and I counted that you would flee.”

The red of indignation colored Dantès’ cheeks.

“Without you!” cried he; “did you truly believe me capable of that?”

“Now, I see I was mistaken,” said the sick man. “Ah! I am very weak, very broken, very undone.”

“Courage, your strength will return,” said Dantès, sitting near Faria’s bed and taking his hands. The abbé shook his head.

“The last time,” said he, “the fit lasted half an hour, after which I was hungry and rose alone; today, I cannot move either my leg or my right arm; my head is embarrassed, which proves an effusion on the brain. The third time, I shall remain entirely paralyzed or die on the spot.”

“No, no, reassure yourself, you will not die; this third fit, if it takes you, will find you free. We shall save you as this time, and better than this time, for we shall have all necessary succor.”

“My friend,” said the old man, “do not deceive yourself; the crisis which has just passed has condemned me to perpetual imprisonment: to flee, one must be able to walk.”

“Well, we will wait eight days, a month, two months, if need be; in that interval your strength will return; all is prepared for our flight, and we have liberty to choose the hour and moment. The day you feel strength enough to swim, well, that day we shall put our plan in execution.”

“I shall swim no more,” said Faria; “this arm is paralyzed, not for a day, but forever. Lift it yourself, and see what it weighs.”

The young man lifted the arm, which fell back insensible. He uttered a sigh.

“You are convinced now, are you not, Edmond?” said Faria; “believe me, I know what I say: since the first attack I had of this evil, I have not ceased to reflect upon it. I expected it, for it is a family inheritance; my father died at the third crisis, my grandfather also. The physician who compounded me this liquid, and who is none other than the famous Cabanis, predicted me the same end.”

“The physician is mistaken,” cried Dantès; “as for your paralysis, it does not hinder me, I will take you on my shoulders and swim sustaining you.”

“Child,” said the abbé, “you are a sailor, you are a swimmer, you must therefore know that a man burdened with such a load would not make fifty strokes in the sea. Cease to let yourself be abused by chimeras of which your excellent heart is not even the dupe: I shall therefore remain here until sounds the hour of my deliverance, which can now be no other than that of death. As for you, flee, depart! You are young, adroit and strong, do not concern yourself about me, I release you from your word.”

“Very well,” said Dantès; “then I too shall remain.”

Then, rising and extending a solemn hand over the old man:

“By the blood of Christ, I swear not to quit you but at your death!”

Faria considered this young man so noble, so simple, so elevated, and read upon his features, animated by the expression of the purest devotion, the sincerity of his affection and the loyalty of his oath.

“Come,” said the sick man, “I accept; thanks.”

Then, extending him the hand:

“You will perhaps be rewarded for this disinterested devotion,” said he to him; “but as I cannot and you will not depart, it is important that we stop up the tunnel made beneath the gallery: the soldier may discover in walking the sonorousness of the mined place, call the attention of an inspector, and then we should be discovered and separated. Go do this work, in which unfortunately I can no longer aid you; employ the whole night in it, if need be, and return only tomorrow morning after the jailer’s visit; I shall have something important to tell you.”

Dantès took the abbé’s hand, who reassured him with a smile, and went out with the obedience and respect he had vowed to his old friend.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”