The Count of Monte Cristo
yawning gulf before him, he could not have been more completely
transfixed with horror than he was at the sound of these unexpected
words. Starting up, he clasped his hands around his head as though to
prevent his very brain from bursting, and exclaimed, “His father! his
father!”
“Yes, his father,” replied the abbé; “his right name was Noirtier de
Villefort.”
At this instant a bright light shot through the mind of Dantès, and
cleared up all that had been dark and obscure before. The change that
had come over Villefort during the examination, the destruction of the
letter, the exacted promise, the almost supplicating tones of the
magistrate, who seemed rather to implore mercy than to pronounce
punishment,—all returned with a stunning force to his memory. He cried
out, and staggered against the wall like a drunken man, then he hurried
to the opening that led from the abbé’s cell to his own, and said, “I
must be alone, to think over all this.”
When he regained his dungeon, he threw himself on his bed, where the
turnkey found him in the evening visit, sitting with fixed gaze and
contracted features, dumb and motionless as a statue. During these
hours of profound meditation, which to him had seemed only minutes, he
had formed a fearful resolution, and bound himself to its fulfilment by
a solemn oath.
Dantès was at length roused from his reverie by the voice of Faria,
who, having also been visited by his jailer, had come to invite his
fellow-sufferer to share his supper. The reputation of being out of his
mind, though harmlessly and even amusingly so, had procured for the
abbé unusual privileges. He was supplied with bread of a finer, whiter
quality than the usual prison fare, and even regaled each Sunday with a
small quantity of wine. Now this was a Sunday, and the abbé had come to
ask his young companion to share the luxuries with him.
Dantès followed him; his features were no longer contracted, and now
wore their usual expression, but there was that in his whole appearance
that bespoke one who had come to a fixed and desperate resolve. Faria
bent on him his penetrating eye.
“I regret now,” said he, “having helped you in your late inquiries, or
having given you the information I did.”
“Why so?” inquired Dantès.
“Because it has instilled a new passion in your heart—that of
vengeance.”
Dantès smiled. “Let us talk of something else,” said he.
Again the abbé looked at him, then mournfully shook his head; but in
accordance with Dantès’ request, he began to speak of other matters.
The elder prisoner was one of those persons whose conversation, like
that of all who have experienced many trials, contained many useful and
important hints as well as sound information; but it was never
egotistical, for the unfortunate man never alluded to his own sorrows.
Dantès listened with admiring attention to all he said; some of his
remarks corresponded with what he already knew, or applied to the sort
of knowledge his nautical life had enabled him to acquire. A part of
the good abbé’s words, however, were wholly incomprehensible to him;
but, like the aurora which guides the navigator in northern latitudes,
opened new vistas to the inquiring mind of the listener, and gave
fantastic glimpses of new horizons, enabling him justly to estimate the
delight an intellectual mind would have in following one so richly
gifted as Faria along the heights of truth, where he was so much at
home.
“You must teach me a small part of what you know,” said Dantès, “if
only to prevent your growing weary of me. I can well believe that so
learned a person as yourself would prefer absolute solitude to being
tormented with the company of one as ignorant and uninformed as myself.
If you will only agree to my request, I promise you never to mention
another word about escaping.”
The abbé smiled.
“Alas, my boy,” said he, “human knowledge is confined within very
narrow limits; and when I have taught you mathematics, physics,
history, and the three or four modern languages with which I am
acquainted, you will know as much as I do myself. Now, it will scarcely
require two years for me to communicate to you the stock of learning I
possess.”
“Two years!” exclaimed Dantès; “do you really believe I can acquire all
these things in so short a time?”
“Not their application, certainly, but their principles you may; to
learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory
makes the one, philosophy the other.”
“But cannot one learn philosophy?”
“Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to
truth; it is like the golden cloud in which the Messiah went up into
heaven.”
“Well, then,” said Dantès, “What shall you teach me first? I am in a
hurry to begin. I want to learn.”
“Everything,” said the abbé. And that very evening the prisoners
sketched a plan of education, to be entered upon the following day.
Dantès possessed a prodigious memory, combined with an astonishing
quickness and readiness of conception; the mathematical turn of his
mind rendered him apt at all kinds of calculation, while his naturally
poetical feelings threw a light and pleasing veil over the dry reality
of arithmetical computation, or the rigid severity of geometry. He
already knew Italian, and had also picked up a little of the Romaic
dialect during voyages to the East; and by the aid of these two
languages he easily comprehended the construction of all the others, so
that at the end of six months he began to speak Spanish, English, and
German.
In strict accordance with the promise made to the abbé, Dantès spoke no
more of escape. Perhaps the delight his studies afforded him left no
room for such thoughts; perhaps the recollection that he had pledged
his word (on which his sense of honor was keen) kept him from referring
in any way to the possibilities of flight. Days, even months, passed by
unheeded in one rapid and instructive course. At the end of a year
Dantès was a new man. Dantès observed, however, that Faria, in spite of
the relief his society afforded, daily grew sadder; one thought seemed
incessantly to harass and distract his mind. Sometimes he would fall
into long reveries, sigh heavily and involuntarily, then suddenly rise,
and, with folded arms, begin pacing the confined space of his dungeon.
One day he stopped all at once, and exclaimed:
“Ah, if there were no sentinel!”
“There shall not be one a minute longer than you please,” said Dantès,
who had followed the working of his thoughts as accurately as though
his brain were enclosed in crystal so clear as to display its minutest
operations.
“I have already told you,” answered the abbé, “that I loathe the idea
of shedding blood.”
“And yet the murder, if you choose to call it so, would be simply a
measure of self-preservation.”
“No matter! I could never agree to it.”
“Still, you have thought of it?”
“Incessantly, alas!” cried the abbé.
“And you have discovered a means of regaining our freedom, have you
not?” asked Dantès eagerly.
“I have; if it were only possible to place a deaf and blind sentinel in
the gallery beyond us.”
“He shall be both blind and deaf,” replied the young man, with an air
of determination that made his companion shudder.
“No, no,” cried the abbé; “impossible!”
Dantès endeavored to renew the subject; the abbé shook his head in
token of disapproval, and refused to make any further response. Three
months passed away.
“Are you strong?” the abbé asked one day of Dantès. The young man, in
reply, took up the chisel, bent it into the form of a horseshoe, and
then as readily straightened it.
“And will you engage not to do any harm to the sentry, except as a last
resort?”
“I promise on my honor.”
“Then,” said the abbé, “we may hope to put our design into execution.”
“And how long shall we be in accomplishing the necessary work?”
“At least a year.”
“And shall we begin at once?”
“At once.”
“We have lost a year to no purpose!” cried Dantès.
“Do you consider the last twelve months to have been wasted?” asked the
abbé.
“Forgive me!” cried Edmond, blushing deeply.
“Tut, tut!” answered the abbé, “man is but man after all, and you are
about the best specimen of the genus I have ever known. Come, let me
show you my plan.”
The abbé then showed Dantès the sketch he had made for their escape. It
consisted of a plan of his own cell and that of Dantès, with the
passage which united them. In this passage he proposed to drive a level
as they do in mines; this level would bring the two prisoners
immediately beneath the gallery where the sentry kept watch; once
there, a large excavation would be made, and one of the flag-stones
with which the gallery was paved be so completely loosened that at the
desired moment it would give way beneath the feet of the soldier, who,
stunned by his fall, would be immediately bound and gagged by Dantès
before he had power to offer any resistance. The prisoners were then to
make their way through one of the gallery windows, and to let
themselves down from the outer walls by means of the abbé’s ladder of
cords.
Dantès’ eyes sparkled with joy, and he rubbed his hands with delight at
the idea of a plan so simple, yet apparently so certain to succeed.
That very day the miners began their labors, with a vigor and alacrity
proportionate to their long rest from fatigue and their hopes of
ultimate success. Nothing interrupted the progress of the work except
the necessity that each was under of returning to his cell in
anticipation of the turnkey’s visits. They had learned to distinguish
the almost imperceptible sound of his footsteps as he descended towards
their dungeons, and happily, never failed of being prepared for his
coming. The fresh earth excavated during their present work, and which
would have entirely blocked up the old passage, was thrown, by degrees
and with the utmost precaution, out of the window in either Faria’s or
Dantès’ cell, the rubbish being first pulverized so finely that the
night wind carried it far away without permitting the smallest trace to
remain.
More than a year had been consumed in this undertaking, the only tools
for which had been a chisel, a knife, and a wooden lever; Faria still
continuing to instruct Dantès by conversing with him, sometimes in one
language, sometimes in another; at others, relating to him the history
of nations and great men who from time to time have risen to fame and
trodden the path of glory. The abbé was a man of the world, and had,
moreover, mixed in the first society of the day; he wore an air of
melancholy dignity which Dantès, thanks to the imitative powers
bestowed on him by nature, easily acquired, as well as that outward
polish and politeness he had before been wanting in, and which is
seldom possessed except by those who have been placed in constant
intercourse with persons of high birth and breeding.
At the end of fifteen months the level was finished, and the excavation
completed beneath the gallery, and the two workmen could distinctly
hear the measured tread of the sentinel as he paced to and fro over
their heads. Compelled, as they were, to await a night sufficiently
dark to favor their flight, they were obliged to defer their final
attempt till that auspicious moment should arrive; their greatest dread
now was lest the stone through which the sentry was doomed to fall
should give way before its right time, and this they had in some
measure provided against by propping it up with a small beam which they
had discovered in the walls through which they had worked their way.
Dantès was occupied in arranging this piece of wood when he heard
Faria, who had remained in Edmond’s cell for the purpose of cutting a
peg to secure their rope-ladder, call to him in a tone indicative of