The Count of Monte Cristo. Alexandre Dumas

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СКАЧАТЬ for the ink,” said Faria, “I told you how I managed to obtain that—and I only just make it from time to time, as I require it.”

      “There is one thing puzzles me still,” observed Dantès, “and that is how you managed to do all this by daylight?”

      “I worked at night also,” replied Faria.

      “Night!—why, for Heaven’s sake, are your eyes like cats’, that you can see to work in the dark?”

      “Indeed they are not; but a beneficent Creator has supplied man with intelligence and ability to supply the want of the power you allude to. I furnished myself with a light quite as good as that possessed by the cat.”

      “You did?—Pray tell me how.”

      “I separated the fat from the meat served to me, melted it, and made a most capital oil; here is my lamp.” So saying, the abbé exhibited a sort of vessel very similar to those employed upon the occasion of public illuminations.

      “But how do you procure a light?”

      “Oh, here are two flints, and a morsel of burnt linen.”

      “And your matches?”

      “Were easily prepared,—I feigned a disorder of the skin, and asked for a little sulphur, which was readily supplied.”

      Dantès laid the different things he had been looking at gently on the table, and stood with his head drooping on his breast, as though overwhelmed by the persevering spirit and strength of character developed in each fresh trait of his new-found friend’s conduct.

      “You have not seen all yet,” continued Faria, “for I did not think it wise to trust all my treasures in the same hiding-place; let us shut this one up, and then you shall see what else I have to display.”

      Dantès helped him to replace the stone as they first found it; the abbé sprinkled a little dust over it to conceal the traces of its having been removed, rubbed his foot well on it to make it assume the same appearance as the other, and then, going towards his bed, he removed it from the spot it stood in. Behind the head of the bed, and concealed by a stone fitting in so closely as to defy all suspicion, was a hollow space, and in this space a ladder of cords between twenty-five and thirty feet in length.

      Dantès closely and eagerly examined it,—he found it firm, solid, and compact enough to bear any weight.

      “Who supplied you with the materials for making this wonderful work?” asked Dantès.

      “No one but myself. I tore up several of my shirts, and unravelled the sheets of my bed, during my three years’ imprisonment at Fenestrelle; and when I was removed to the Château d’If, I managed to bring the ravellings with me, so that I have been able to finish my work here.”

      “And was it not discovered that your sheets were unhemmed?”

      “Oh, no! for when I had taken out the thread I required, I hemmed the edges over again.”

      “With what?”

      “With this needle!” said the abbé, as, opening his ragged vestments, he showed Dantès a long, sharp fish-bone, with a small perforated eye for the thread, a small portion of which still remained in it. “I once thought,” continued Faria, “of removing these iron bars, and letting myself down from the window, which, as you see, is somewhat wider than yours—although I should have enlarged it still more preparatory to my flight;—however, I discovered that I should merely have dropped into a sort of inner court, and I therefore renounced the project altogether as too full of risk and danger. Nevertheless, I carefully preserved my ladder against one of those unforeseen opportunities of which I spoke just now, and which sudden chance frequently brings about.”

      While affecting to be deeply engaged in examining the ladder, the mind of Dantès was, in fact, busily occupied by the idea that a person so intelligent, ingenious, and clear-sighted as the abbé, might probably be enabled to dive into the dark recesses of his own misfortunes, and cause that light to shine upon the mystery connected with them he had in vain sought to elicit.

      “What are you thinking of?” asked the abbé smilingly, imputing the deep abstraction in which his visitor was plunged to the excess of his awe and wonder.

      “I was reflecting, in the first place,” replied Dantès, “upon the enormous degree of intelligence and ability you must have employed to reach the high perfection to which you have attained;—if you thus surpass all mankind while but a prisoner, what would you not have accomplished free?”

      “Possibly nothing at all;—the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; it needs trouble and difficulty and danger to hollow out various mysterious and hidden mines of human intelligence. Pressure is required, you know, to ignite powder: captivity has collected into one single focus all the floating faculties of my mind; they have come into close contact in the narrow space in which they have been wedged, and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced—from electricity comes the lightning, from whose flash we have light amid our greatest darkness.”

      “Alas, no!” replied Dantès; “I know not that these things follow in such natural order. Oh, I am very ignorant; and you must be blessed, indeed, to possess the knowledge you have.”

      The abbé smiled. “Well,” said he, “but you had another subject for your thoughts besides admiration for me; did you not say so just now?”

      “I did!”

      “You have told me as yet but one of them,—let me hear the other.”

      “It was this:—that while you had related to me all the particulars of your past life, you were perfectly unacquainted with mine.”

      “Your life, my young friend, has not been of sufficient length to admit of your having passed through any very important events.”

      “It has been long enough to inflict on me a misfortune so great, so crushingly overwhelming, that unconscious as I am of having in any way deserved it, I would fain know who, of all mankind, has been the accursed author of it, that I may no longer accuse Heaven, as I have done in my fury and despair, of wilful injustice towards an innocent and injured man.”

      “Then you profess ignorance of the crime with which you are charged?”

      “I do, indeed; and this I swear by the two beings most dear to me upon earth—my father and Mercédès.”

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

      Dantès obeyed, and commenced what he called his history, but which consisted only of the account of a voyage to India and two or three in the Levant, until he arrived at the recital of his last cruise, with the death of Captain Leclere, and the receipt of a packet to be delivered by himself to the grand-maréchal; his interview with that personage, and his receiving in place of the packet brought a letter addressed to M. Noirtier—his arrival at Marseilles and interview with his father—his affection for Mercédès and their nuptial fête—his arrest and subsequent examination in the temporary prison of the Palais de Justice, ending in his final imprisonment in the Château d’If. From the period of his arrival all was a blank to Dantès—he knew nothing, not even the length of time he had been imprisoned. His recital СКАЧАТЬ