第十七章: 长老的房间 The Abbé's Cell_基督山伯爵

"Good," said the abbé. "It is only a quarter past twelve, so we still have a few hours ahead of us."

Dantès looked around, to find the clock on which the abbé had been able to tell the time so precisely.

After passing through the underground passage, bent over but still without too much difficulty, Dantès arrived at the far end of the tunnel where it entered the abbé's cell. At this point it narrowed to allow just enough room for a man to squeeze through. The floor of the abbé's cell was paved and it was by lifting one of the stones, in the darkest corner, that he had begun the laborious tunnelling that had brought him to Dantès.

"Look at that ray of sunlight shining through my window," said the abbé. "Now look at the lines I have drawn on the wall. Thanks to these lines, which take account of the double movement of the earth and its course round the sun, I know the time more accurately than if I had a watch, because the mechanism of a watch may be damaged, while that of the earth and the sun never can."

"Come, now," he said to the abbé. "I am impatient to see your treasures."

Dantès understood nothing of this explanation: he had always thought, seeing the sun rise behind the mountains and set in the Mediterranean, that it moved, and not the earth. He considered almost impossible this "double movement" of the earth which he did not perceive, even though he inhabited it, and he saw contained in each of the other man's words the mysteries of a science that would be as exciting to explore as the mines of gold and diamonds he had visited while still almost a child on a journey that he had made to Gujarat and Golconda.

Faria took three or four linen rolls out of the precious cupboard, wound over on themselves like rolls of papyrus: these were bands of cloth, about four inches wide and eighteen long. Each one was numbered and covered with writing which Dantès could read, because it was in the abbé's mother-tongue, Italian, and, as a Provençal, Dantès understood it perfectly.

The abbé went over to the chimney and, with the chisel which he still had in his hand, moved the stone that had once formed the hearth of the fire, behind which there was a fairly deep hole. In this, he concealed all the objects he had mentioned to Dantès.

"What do you wish to see first?" he asked.

"Show me your great work on the monarchy in Italy."

"Yes," said Dantès, "I can see. And now, please show me the pens with which you wrote this work."

"See," the abbé told him, "it is all there. It is now about a week since I wrote the word 'end' at the foot of the sixty-eighth roll. Two of my shirts and all the handkerchiefs I had have gone into it. If ever I should regain my freedom and find a printer in Italy who dares to print the work, my reputation will be made."

"Look," said Faria, and showed the young man a small stick, six inches long and as thick as the handle of a paintbrush, at the end of which one of the fishbones that the abbé had mentioned was tied with thread; still stained with ink, it had been shaped to a point and split like an ordinary pen-nib.

Dantès studied it and looked around for the implement that could have served to sharpen the nib so finely.

"Ah, yes. The penknife?" said Faria. "This is my masterpiece. I made it, as I did this other knife, out of an old iron candlestick."

The penknife cut like a razor. As for the other, it had the advantage of being able to serve both as a cutting implement and as a dagger.

"Now, only one thing still puzzles me," said Dantès, "which is that the days were long enough for you to accomplish all this."

"I separate the fat from the meat that they bring me, melt it and obtain a kind of solid oil from it. Look: this is my candle." He showed Dantès a sort of lamp, like those they use to illuminate public places.

"I pretended to have a skin disease and asked for sulphur, which they gave me."

"The nights! Are you a cat? Can you see in the dark?"

"No, but God has given mankind enough intelligence to compensate for the inadequacies of his senses. I found light."

"But what about a match…?"

"I had the nights," Faria replied.

"How?"

"How did you light it?"

Dantès examined these various objects as closely as -- in curiosity shops in Marseille -- he had sometimes studied the tools made by savages, brought back from the South Seas by captains on long-haul voyages.

"Here are my two flints and some scorched linen."

"As for the ink," said Faria, "you know how I manage. I make it as and when I need it."

Dantès put all the objects he was holding on the table and bowed his head, overawed by the perseverance and strength of this spirit.

They put the stone back, the abbé spread a little dust over it, ran his foot across it to disguise any evidence of unevenness on the surface, went over to his bed and pushed it to one side. Behind the head of the bed, hidden beneath a stone that formed an almost perfectly hermetic lid, was a hole, with inside it a rope ladder of between twenty-five and thirty feet in length. Dantès examined it; it was strong enough to sustain any weight.

"First of all, some shirts that I had, then the sheets from my bed which I unpicked, in my three years' captivity in Fenestrelle. When I was transported to the Château d'If, I found the means to bring the threads with me and I carried on working after I arrived here."

"Who supplied you with the rope for this wonderful contrivance?" he asked.

"That is not all," said Faria. "One should not hide all one's treasure in a single place. Let's close this one."

"Did no one notice that your bed-linen no longer had any hems?"

"With this needle." The abbé, parting a shred of his clothes, showed Dantès a long, sharp fishbone, still threaded, which he carried with him. "Yes," he continued. "At first I thought of loosening the bars and escaping through this window, which is a little wider than yours, as you can see; I should have widened it still further during my escape. But I noticed that the window gives access only to an inner courtyard, so I abandoned the plan as being too risky. However, I kept the ladder in case some opportunity should arise for one of those escapes I mentioned, which are the outcome of chance."

"I resewed it."

"What with?"

Dantès appeared to be examining the ladder, while his mind was actually on something else; an idea had entered his head. It was that this man, so intelligent, so ingenious and so deep in understanding, might see clearly in the darkness of his own misfortune and make out something that he had failed to see.

"What are you thinking about?" the abbé asked with a smile, imagining that Dantès' silence must indicate a very high degree of admiration.

"Perhaps nothing: the overflowing of my brain might have evaporated in mere futilities. Misfortune is needed to plumb certain mysterious depths in the understanding of men; pressure is needed to explode the charge. My captivity concentrated all my faculties on a single point. They had previously been dispersed, now they clashed in a narrow space; and, as you know, the clash of clouds produces electricity, electricity produces lightning and lightning gives light."

"Firstly, I am thinking of one thing, which is the vast knowledge that you must have expended to attain the point that you have reached. What might you not have done, had you been free?"

"No, I know nothing," said Dantès, ashamed of his ignorance. "Some of the words that you use are void of all meaning for me; how lucky you are to know so much!"

The abbé smiled: "You said a moment ago that you were thinking of two things."

"Yes."

"You have only told me one of them. What is the other?"

"The other is that you have told me about your life, but you know nothing about mine."

"Entirely innocent, I swear it by the heads of the two people whom I hold most dear, my father and Mercédès."

"Your life, young man, has been somewhat short to contain any events of importance."

"So you claim to be innocent of the crime with which you are charged?"

"It does contain one terrible misfortune," said Dantès; "a misfortune that I have not deserved. And I should wish, so that I may no longer blaspheme against God as I have occasionally done, to have some men whom I could blame for my misfortune."

"Well then," said the abbé, closing the hiding-place and putting his bed back in its place. "Tell me your story."

Dantès told what he called his life story, which amounted to no more than a voyage to India and two or three voyages to the Levant, until finally he arrived at his last journey, the death of Captain Leclère, the packet that the captain gave him for the marshal, the interview with the marshal, the letter he was handed, addressed to a certain M. Noirtier; and, after that, his return to Marseille, his reunion with his father, his love for Mercédès, his betrothal, his arrest, his interrogation, his temporary confinement at the Palais de Justice, and then his final imprisonment in the Château d'If. From that point, Dantès knew nothing more, not even the amount of time that he had been a prisoner.

"That is not the answer, because that answer is wanting in both logic and common sense. Everything, my good friend, is relative, from the king who stands in the way of his designated successor to the employee who impedes the supernumerary: if the king dies, the successor inherits a crown; if the employee dies, the supernumerary inherits a salary of twelve hundred livres. These twelve hundred livres are his civil list: they are as necessary to his survival as the king's twelve million. Every individual, from the lowest to the highest on the social scale, is at the centre of a little network of interests, with its storms and its hooked atoms, like the worlds of Descartes; except that these worlds get larger as one goes up: it is a reverse spiral balanced on a single point. So let's get back to your world: you were about to be appointed captain of the Pharaon?"

When the story concluded, the abbé was deep in thought; then, after a moment, he said: "There is a very profound axiom in law, which is consistent with what I told you a short time ago, and it is this: unless an evil thought is born in a twisted mind, human nature is repelled by crime. However, civilization has given us needs, vices and artificial appetites which sometimes cause us to repress our good instincts and lead us to wrongdoing. Hence the maxim: if you wish to find the guilty party, first discover whose interests the crime serves! Whose interests might be served by your disappearance?"

"No one's, for heaven's sake! I was so insignificant!"

"Could anyone have overheard your conversation?"

"Very well. Now, was anyone present at your last meeting with Captain Leclère?"

"No, we were alone."

"Supercargo."

"Yes."

"Danglars."

"Really? And what was the man's name?"

"No, I was well-loved on board. If the sailors could have chosen their own leader, I am sure that they would have picked me. Only one man had a reason to dislike me: a short time before, I had quarrelled with him and challenged him to a duel, which he refused."

"You were about to marry a beautiful young woman?"

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

"No, if the choice had been mine, because I thought I had discovered some irregularities in his accounts."

"Was it in anyone's interest that you should not become captain of the Pharaon? Was it in anyone's interest that you should not marry Mercédès? Answer the first question first: order is the key to all problems. Would anyone gain by your not becoming captain of the Pharaon?"

"What was his position on board?"

"Yes."

"I put it into my briefcase."

"Danglars as well as anyone else?"

"Yes."

"I held it in my hand."

"So it was only when you returned on board that you put the letter into the briefcase?"

"So that when you came back on board the Pharaon, anyone could have seen that you were carrying a letter?"

"Did you have your briefcase with you? How could a briefcase intended to contain an official letter fit into a sailor's pocket?"

"That is right."

"No one."

"You are right: my briefcase was on board."

"What did you do with the letter between Porto Ferrajo and the ship?"

"Yes, the door was open and… wait! Yes, yes, Danglars went past just at the moment when Captain Leclère gave me the packet to deliver to the marshal."

"Good," the abbé said. "Now we are getting somewhere. Did you take anyone off the ship with you when you anchored on Elba?"

"What did you do with it?"

"Yes, by the Grand Marshal."

"You were given a letter."

"Now, listen carefully and concentrate your memory: do you remember the precise terms in which the denunciation was phrased?"

"Danglars as well as anyone else."

"Indeed, I do. I read it three times, and every word is etched on my memory."

"Repeat it to me."

The abbé shrugged his shoulders. "It is as clear as daylight, and you must have a very simple and kind heart not to have guessed the truth immediately."

"And what was the writing of the anonymous letter?"

Dantès paused to gather his thoughts, then said: "Here it is, word for word: The crown prosecutor is advised, by a friend of the monarchy and the faith, that one Edmond Dantès, first mate of the Pharaon, arriving this morning from Smyrna, after putting in at Naples and Porto Ferrajo, was entrusted by Murat with a letter for the usurper and by the usurper with a letter to the Bonapartist committee in Paris. Proof of his guilt will be found when he is arrested, since the letter will be discovered either on his person, or at the house of his father, or in his cabin on board the Pharaon."

"Do you think so?" Dantès exclaimed. "Oh, it would be most dastardly."

"What was Danglars' handwriting like, normally?"

"A fine, copperplate hand."

"A Spanish name…?"

The abbé smiled: "Disguised, surely?"

"Is there anything that you haven't seen or observed?"

"It's astonishing," he said. "That writing is so like the other."

"Writing that leant backwards."

"Was there someone who stood to gain if you did not marry Mercédès?"

"Called?"

"Yes, a young man who was in love with her."

"Wait," he said, taking his pen -- or the implement that he called a pen -- dipping it in the ink and writing with his left hand, on a ready-prepared piece of cloth, the first two or three lines of the denunciation. Dantès started back and looked at the abbé with something close to terror.

"I am listening."

"That is because the denunciation was written with the left hand. I have noticed something," the abbé added, "which is that while all handwriting written with the right hand varies, all that done with the left hand looks the same."

"He is a Catalan."

"Fernand."

"What about the second question?"

"Let's continue."

"Very firm for a disguised hand."

"Yes, willingly."

"Two days before my wedding, I saw them sitting together at Père Pamphile's. Danglars was friendly and merry, Fernand pale and troubled."

"No one."

"Do you think him capable of writing this letter?"

"No… Or… Yes: I remember…"

"In any case," Dantès went on, "he knew none of the details which were in the denunciation."

"You confided them to no one?"

"Not even my fiancée."

"No! He would have put a knife in me, quite simply."

"Wait: did Danglars know Fernand?"

"No, they had someone else with them, someone I know well, who had no doubt introduced them to each other, a tailor called Caderousse; but he was already drunk. Wait… wait… How did I forget this? Near the table where they were drinking, there was an inkwell, some paper and pens…" (Dantès drew his hand across his brow). "Oh, the villains! The villains!"

"Now I am sure of it."

"Not even your mistress?"

"Were they alone?"

"What do you remember?"

"Yes, that is like a Spaniard: a killing, certainly, but a cowardly act, no."

"It must be Danglars."

"Yes, since you understand everything, since you can see everything clearly, I want to know why I was only interrogated once, why I was not given judges to try me and why I have been condemned unheard."

"Young: twenty-six or twenty-seven."

"Young or old?"

"Did his manner change in the course of the interrogation?"

"Who interrogated you? Was it the crown prosecutor, the deputy or the investigating magistrate?"

"Ah, there now," said the abbé, "that is rather more serious. Justice has dark and mysterious ways which are hard to fathom. So far, with your two friends, what we did was child's play, but on this other matter you must be as accurate as you can possibly be."

"Kind rather than harsh."

"The deputy."

"Did you tell him everything?"

"Everything."

"Good! Not yet corrupt, but already ambitious," the abbé said. "What was his manner towards you?"

"You ask the questions, because you truly seem to see into my life more clearly than I do myself."

"Do you want to know anything else?" the abbé said, smiling.

"Yes."

"For a moment, it changed, when he had read the letter that compromised me. He seemed to be overwhelmed by my misfortune."

"Such behaviour was too good to be true."

"Do you think so?"

"Continue, tell me more."

"That's another matter; the man may be a deeper-dyed villain than you imagine."

"In what way?"

"Gladly. You say he burned the letter?"

"Are you sure?"

"I saw it with my own eyes."

"By your misfortune?"

"No, the other letter."

"I swear, you are frightening me!" said Dantès. "Is the world full of tigers and crocodiles, then?"

"Yes, except that the tigers and crocodiles with two legs are more dangerous than the rest."

"Yes, and as he did so said to me: "You see, this is the only proof against you, and I am destroying it.""

"What was that? The denunciation?"

"Are you quite sure that it was your misfortune that he felt?"

"He burned the only document that could compromise me."

"He gave me every evidence of his sympathy, at any rate."

"I am certain. To whom was the letter addressed?"

"Do you see that ray of sunlight?" the abbé asked.

"Perhaps. He did make me promise two or three times, in my own interests, as he said, not to mention the letter to anyone, and he made me swear not to speak the name that was written on the address."

"Noirtier?" the abbé repeated. "Noirtier… I used to know a Noirtier at the court of the former Queen of Etruria, a Noirtier who was a Girondin during the Revolution. And what was the name of this deputy of yours?"

"Yes."

"Have you any reason to believe that your deputy had some reason to want this letter to disappear?"

"Well, everything is now clearer to me than that brightly shining ray of light. My poor child, you poor young man! And this magistrate was good to you?"

"Yes."

"To Monsieur Noirtier, 13, rue Coq-Héron, Paris."

"This noble deputy burned the letter, destroyed it?"

"What's the matter?" he asked.

The abbé burst out laughing, and Dantès looked at him in astonishment.

"This honest purveyor of souls to the dungeon made you swear never to speak the name of Noirtier?"

"Villefort."

"He did."

"Yes, his father, who is called Noirtier de Villefort," the abbé said.

"Correct."

"This Noirtier, poor blind fool that you are, do you know who this Noirtier was? This Noirtier was his father!"

If a shaft of lightning had fallen at Dantès' feet and opened an abyss with hell in its depths, it would not have produced a more startling or electric or overwhelming effect on him than these unexpected words. He got up and clasped his head in both hands, as if to prevent it from bursting. "His father? His father!" he cried.

At this, a devastating flash of light burst inside the prisoner's head and the picture that he had not previously understood was instantly bathed in dazzling light. He recalled everything: Villefort's shilly-shallying during the interrogation, the letter he had destroyed, the promise he had elicited and the almost pleading tone of the magistrate's voice -- which, instead of threatening him, seemed to be begging. He gave a cry and staggered for a moment like a drunken man; then, rushing to the opening that led from the abbé's cell to his own, he exclaimed: "Ah! I must be alone to consider this."

During those hours of meditation, which had passed like seconds, he had made a fearful resolution and sworn a terrible oath.

When he reached his dungeon, he fell on the bed and it was there that the turnkey found him that evening, still sitting, his eyes staring and his features drawn, motionless and silent as a statue.

A voice roused Dantès from his reverie: it was the Abbé Faria who, after being visited in his turn by the jailer, had come to invite Dantès to take supper with him. As a certified madman, above all as an entertaining madman, the old prisoner enjoyed certain privileges, among them that of having bread that was a little whiter than the rest and a small jar of wine on Sundays. This happened to be a Sunday and the abbé was asking Dantès to share his bread and wine.

"I regret having helped you in your investigation and said what I did to you," he remarked.

Dantès followed him. His expression had returned to normal and his features were composed, but with a strength and firmness, as it were, that implied a settled resolve. The abbé looked closely at him.

The abbé gave him a further brief look and sadly shook his head; then, as Dantès had requested, he began to talk of other things.

"Why is that?" Dantès asked.

"Because I have insinuated a feeling into your heart that was not previously there: the desire for revenge."

Dantès smiled and said: "Let us change the subject."

The old prisoner was one of those men whose conversation, like that of everyone who has known great suffering, contains many lessons and is continually interesting; but it was not self-centred: the unfortunate man never spoke about his own troubles.

Dantès listened to every word with admiration. Some of what the abbé said concurred with ideas that he already had and things that he knew from his profession as a seaman, while others touched on the unknown and, like the aurora borealis giving light to sailors in northern latitudes, showed the young man new lands and new horizons, bathed in fantastic colours. Dantès understood the happiness of an intelligence that could follow such a mind on the moral, philosophical and social peaks where it habitually roamed.

"Two years!" said Dantès. "Do you think I could learn all this in two years?"

"You must teach me a little of what you know," he said, "if only to avoid becoming bored by my company. I now feel that you must prefer solitude to an uneducated and narrow-minded companion like myself. If you agree, I undertake not to mention escape to you again."

"But can't one learn philosophy?"

The abbé smiled. "Alas, my child," he said, "human knowledge is very limited and when I have taught you mathematics, physics, history and the three or four modern languages that I speak, you will know everything that I know; and it will take me scarcely two years to transfer all this knowledge from my mind to yours."

"In their application, no; but the principles, yes. Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory, the second philosophy."

"Philosophy cannot be taught. Philosophy is the union of all acquired knowledge and the genius that applies it: philosophy is the shining cloud upon which Christ set His foot to go up into heaven."

"Everything, then!" said the abbé.

"Come then," said Dantès. "What will you teach me first? I am eager to begin, I am athirst for knowledge."

So that evening the two prisoners drew up an educational syllabus which they began to carry out the following day. Dantès had a remarkable memory and found concepts very easy to grasp: a mathematical cast of mind made him able to understand everything by calculating it, while a seafarer's poetry compensated for whatever was too materialistic in arguments reduced to dry figures and straight lines. Moreover he already knew Italian and a little Romaic, which he had picked up on his journeys to the East. With those two languages, he soon understood the workings of all the rest, and after six months had started to speak Spanish, English and German.

As he promised Abbé Faria, he no longer spoke of escape, either because the enjoyment of study compensated him for his loss of freedom, or because (as we have seen) he would always keep his word strictly, once he had given it, and the days passed quickly and instructively. After a year, he was a different man.

As for Abbé Faria, Dantès noticed that, though the older man's captivity had been lightened by his presence, he grew more melancholy by the day. One pervasive and incessant thought seemed to plague his mind. He would fall into deep reveries, give an involuntary sigh, leap suddenly to his feet, cross his arms and pace gloomily around his cell.

One day, he stopped abruptly while pacing for the hundredth time around his room, and exclaimed: "Oh! If only there was no sentry!"

"There need be no sentry, if only you would agree to it," said Dantès, who had followed the train of thought inside his head as if there were a crystal window in his skull.

"I have told you," the abbé said, "I abhor the idea of murder."

"But you think about it?"

"Yet if this murder were to be committed, it would be through our instinct for self-preservation, through an impulse of self-defence."

"No matter, I cannot do it."

"Continually," the abbé muttered.

"And you have thought of a plan, haven't you?" Dantès asked eagerly.

"Yes, if only we could station a blind and deaf sentry on that walkway."

Dantès wanted to pursue the subject, but the abbé shook his head and refused to say any more about it.

"How long will it take?"

"Are you strong?" the abbé asked Dantès one day.

"Would you undertake only to kill the sentry as a last resort?"

Without saying anything, Dantès took the chisel, bent it into a horseshoe and then straightened it again.

"Oh! Forgive me, forgive me," Edmond said, blushing.

"Then we can carry out our plan," said the abbé.

"No, no," he exclaimed. "Impossible!"

Three months passed.

"A year, at least."

The abbé showed Dantès a drawing he had made: it was a plan of his own room, that of Dantès and the passageway linking them. From the middle of this he had drawn a side-tunnel like those they use in mines. This would take the two prisoners beneath the walkway where the sentry kept guard. Once they had reached this, they would carve out a broad pit and loosen one of the paving-stones on the floor of the gallery. At a chosen moment this paving-stone would give way beneath the soldier's feet and he would fall into the pit. Dantès would jump on him as, stunned by his fall, he was unable to defend himself; he would tie him up and gag him, and the two of them, climbing through one window of the gallery, would go down the outside wall with the help of the rope ladder, and escape.

"But we can start work?"

"Look at that!" Dantès cried. "We have wasted a year!"

"At once."

"Hush," said the abbé. "A man is only a man, and you are one of the best I have ever encountered. Now, here is my plan."

"Yes, on my honour."

"Do you think it was wasted?" the abbé asked.

"He will be blind, he will be deaf," the young man said, with a grim resolve that terrified the abbé.

Dantès clapped his hands; his eyes shone with joy: the plan was so simple that it was bound to succeed.

That same day, the tunnellers set to work, all the more eagerly since they had been idle for a long time and, quite probably, each had secretly been longing for this resumption of physical labour.

Nothing interrupted their work except the time when they were both obliged to go back to their cells for the jailer's visit. Moreover they had grown accustomed to detecting the almost imperceptible sound of his footsteps and could tell precisely when the man was coming down, so neither of them was ever taken by surprise. The soil that they dug out of their new tunnel, which would eventually have filled up the old one, was thrown bit by bit, with extreme caution, through one or other of the windows in Dantès' or Faria's dungeon: it was ground up so fine that the night wind carried it away without a trace.

More than a year passed in this work, undertaken with no other implements than a chisel, a knife and a wooden lever. Throughout that year, even as they worked, Faria continued to instruct Dantès, speaking to him sometimes in one language, sometimes in another, teaching him the history of the nations and the great men who from time to time have left behind them one of those luminous trails that are known as glory. A man of the world and of high society, the abbé also had a sort of melancholy majesty in his bearing -- from which Dantès, endowed by nature with an aptitude for assimilation, was able to distil the polite manners that he had previously lacked and an aristocratic air which is usually acquired only by association with the upper classes or by mixing with those of superior attainments.

In fifteen months the tunnel was complete. They had dug out a pit beneath the gallery and could hear the sentry passing backwards and forwards above them; the two workmen, who were obliged to wait for a dark and moonless night to make their escape more certain, had only one fear: that the floor might give way prematurely under the soldier's feet. To guard against this, they put in place a sort of little beam, which they had found in the foundations. Dantès was just fixing this when he suddenly heard a cry of distress from Abbé Faria, who had stayed in the young man's cell sharpening a peg which was to hold the rope ladder. Dantès hurried back and found the abbé standing in the middle of the room, pale-faced, his forehead bathed in sweat and his fists clenched.

"Oh, my God!" Dantès cried. "What is it? What is wrong?"

"Quickly," the abbé said. "Listen to what I say."

Dantès looked at Faria's livid features, his eyes ringed with blue, his white lips and his hair, which was standing on end. In terror, he let the chisel fall from his hand.

"But what is the matter?" he cried.

"I am finished," the abbé said. "Listen to me. I am about to have a terrible, perhaps fatal seizure; I can feel that it is coming. I suffered the same in the year before my imprisonment. There is only one cure for this sickness, which I shall tell you: run to my room, lift up the leg of the bed, which is hollow, and you will find there a little flask, half full of red liquid. Bring it; or, rather, no, I might be discovered here. Help me to return to my room while I still have some strength. Who knows what might happen while the seizure is on me?"

Dantès kept his head, despite the immensity of the disaster, and went down into the tunnel, dragging his unfortunate companion behind him; and taking him, with infinite care, to the far end of the tunnel, found himself at last in the abbé's room, where he put him on the bed.

"Thank you," said the abbé, shivering in every limb as though he had been immersed in icy water. "This is what will happen: I shall fall into a cataleptic fit. I may perhaps remain motionless and not make a sound. But I might also froth at the mouth, stiffen, cry out. Try to ensure that my cries are not heard: this is important, because otherwise they may take me to another room and we should be separated for ever. When you see me motionless, cold and, as it were, dead -- and only at that moment, you understand -- force my teeth apart with the knife and pour eight to ten drops of the liquid into my mouth. In that case, I may perhaps revive."

"Perhaps?" Dantès exclaimed, pitifully.

The seizure was so sudden and so violent that the unhappy man could not even finish the word. A cloud, rapid and dark as a storm at sea, passed over his brow. His eyes dilated, his lips twisted and his cheeks became purple. He thrashed, foamed, roared. But, as he had been instructed, Dantès stifled the cries beneath the blanket. The fit lasted two hours. Then, totally inert, pale and cold as marble, bent like a reed broken underfoot, he fell, stiffened in one final convulsion and paled to a livid white.

"Help me! Help!" the abbé cried. "I am… I am dy…"

Edmond waited for this semblance of death to invade the whole body and chill it to the very heart. Then he took the knife, put the blade between the man's teeth, prised the jaws apart with infinite care, measured ten drops of the red liquid one after the other and waited.

An hour passed without the old man making the slightest movement. Dantès feared that he might have waited too long and sat, clasping his head in both hands, looking at him. Finally, a slight colour appeared on the old man's lips; the look returned to his eyes, which had remained open, but blank, throughout; he uttered a faint sigh and moved slightly.

The sick man still could not speak, but with evident anxiety he held out his hand towards the door. Dantès listened and heard the jailer's steps. It was almost seven o'clock and Dantès had not been able to take any account of time. He leapt to the opening, dived into it, pulled the paving-stone back behind him and went back to his cell. A moment later, his own door opened and the jailer, as usual, found the prisoner sitting on his bed.

"Saved! He is saved!" Dantès cried.

No sooner was his back turned and the sound of his footsteps receding down the corridor than Dantès left his food uneaten and, a prey to terrible anxiety, went back down the tunnel, pushed up the stone with his head and returned to the abbé's cell.

The abbé had regained consciousness, but was still stretched on his bed, motionless and exhausted.

"Why not?" the young man asked. "Did you expect to die?"

"I did not expect to see you again," he told Dantès.

"No, but everything is ready for your escape and I expected you to take this opportunity."

The abbé shook his head: "Last time the fit lasted half an hour, and after it I felt hungry and got up by myself. Today, I cannot move my right leg or my right arm. My head is muddled, which proves there is some effusion on the brain. The third time, I shall either remain entirely paralysed, or I shall die at once."

"I see now that I was mistaken," said the sick man. "Oh, I am very weak, broken, finished…"

Dantès reddened with indignation. "Alone! Without you!" he cried. "Did you really believe me capable of doing that?"

"Take heart. Your strength will return," said Dantès, sitting on the bed beside Faria and taking his hands.

"No, no. Don't worry. You shall not die. If you do have a third fit, it will be in freedom. We shall save you as we did this time -- and better than this time, because we shall have all the necessary help."

"My friend," the old man said, "do not deceive yourself. The blow that has just struck me has condemned me to prison for ever. To escape, one must be able to walk."

"We shall wait a week, a month, two months if necessary. During this time, your strength will return. Everything is ready for our escape and we are free to choose our own time. When the day comes that you feel strong enough to swim, then we shall carry out our plan."

The young man raised the arm, which fell back, inert. He sighed.

"The doctor was wrong," Dantès exclaimed. "As for your paralysis, it does not bother me. I shall take you on my shoulders and support you as I swim."

"You are convinced now, Edmond, aren't you? Believe me, I know what I am saying: since the first attack of this sickness, I have thought about it constantly. I was expecting this, because it is a hereditary illness; my father died on the third attack and so did my grandfather. The doctor who made up this potion for me, who is none other than the celebrated Cabanis, predicted the same fate for me."

"I shall never swim," said Faria. "This arm is paralysed, not for a day, but for ever. Lift it yourself, feel its weight."

"My child," the abbé said, "you are a seaman, you are a swimmer, and you must know that a man carrying such a burden could not swim fifty strokes in the sea. You must not let yourself pursue phantoms which do not deceive even your generous heart: I shall remain here until the hour of my deliverance which can no longer be any other than the hour of my death. As for you, flee, begone! You are young, agile and strong. Do not bother about me, I release you from your oath."

"Very well," said Dantès. "Then I, too, shall remain." And, standing up and solemnly extending his hand above the old man's head: "I swear by the blood of Christ that I shall not leave you until your death."

"Very well," he said. "I accept. Thank you." Then, holding out his hand, he added: "You may perhaps be rewarded for your disinterested devotion. But as I cannot -- and you will not -- escape, we must block the underground passage beneath the gallery. The soldier might notice the hollow sound of the place we have excavated as he walks there, and call for an inspector: in that event we should be discovered and separated. Go and do this; unfortunately I cannot help you. Spend all night at the task if necessary, and do not return until tomorrow morning, after the jailer's visit. I shall have something important to tell you."

Dantès took the abbé's hand; he was reassured with a smile, and he left, in a spirit of respectful obedience and devotion to his old friend.

Faria looked at the young man -- so noble, so simple, so exalted -- and read the sincerity of his affection and the fidelity of his vow on a face that was lit with an expression of the purest devotion.