“Look!” said Faria, showing to the young man a slender stick about six inches long, and much resembling the size of the handle of a fine painting-brush, to the end of which was tied, by a piece of thread, one of those cartilages of which the abbe had before spoken to Dantes; it was pointed, and divided at the nib like an ordinary pen. Dantes examined it with intense admiration, then looked around to see the instrument with which it had been shaped so correctly into form.
“Ah, yes,” said Faria; “the penknife. That’s my masterpiece. I made it, as well as this larger knife, out of an old iron candlestick.” The penknife was sharp and keen as a razor; as for the other knife, it would serve a double purpose, and with it one could cut and thrust.
Dantes examined the various articles shown to him with the same attention that he had bestowed on the curiosities and strange tools exhibited in the shops at Marseilles as the works of the savages in the South Seas from whence they had been brought by the different trading vessels.
“As 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.”
“One thing still puzzles me,” observed Dantes, “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 God has supplied man with the intelligence that enables him to overcome the limitations of natural conditions. I furnished myself with a light.”
“You did? Pray tell me how.”
“I separated the fat from the meat served to me, melted it, and so made oil — here is my lamp.” So saying, the abbe exhibited a sort of torch very similar to those used in public illuminations.
“But light?”
“Here are two flints and a piece of burnt linen.”
“And matches?”
“I pretended that I had a disorder of the skin, and asked for a little sulphur, which was readily supplied.” Dantes laid the different things he had been looking at on the table, and stood with his head drooping on his breast, as though overwhelmed by the perseverance and strength of Faria’s mind.
“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.” They put the stone back in its place; the abbe 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. Dantes 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?”
“I tore up several of my shirts, and ripped out the seams in the sheets of my bed, during my three years’ imprisonment at Fenestrelle; and when I was removed to the Chateau 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 abbe, as, opening his ragged vestments, he showed Dantes 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 Dantes was, in fact, busily occupied by the idea that a person so intelligent, ingenious, and clear-sighted as the abbe might probably be able to solve the dark mystery of his own misfortunes, where he himself could see nothing.
“What are you thinking of?” asked the abbe 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 Dantes, “upon the enormous degree of intelligence and ability you must have employed to reach the high perfection to which you have attained. What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?”
“Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.”
“No,” replied Dantes. “I know nothing. Some of your words are to me quite empty of meaning. You must be blessed indeed to possess the knowledge you have.”
The abbe smiled. “Well,” said he, “but you had another subject for your thoughts; 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 great and undeserved misfortune. I would fain fix the source of it on man that I may no longer vent reproaches upon heaven.”
“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 Mercedes.”
“Come,” said the abbe, closing his hiding-place, and pushing the bed back to its original situation, “let me hear your story.”
Dantes obeyed, and commenced what he called his history, but which consisted only of the account of a voyage to India, and two or three voyages to 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 marshal; his interview with that personage, and his receiving, in place of the packet brought, a letter addressed to a Monsieur Noirtier — his arrival at Marseilles, and interview with his father — his affection for Mercedes, and their nuptial feast — his arrest and subsequent examination, his temporary detention at the Palais de Justice, and his final imprisonment in the Chateau d’If. From this point everything was a blank to Dantes — he knew nothing more, not even the length of time he had been imprisoned.
The abbe remained silent so Edmond allowed his mind to wander and as it usually did his mind brought thoughts of Mercedes. The scent of her skin and her hair so black, like a raven’s wing. The few moments the night preceding their betrothal dinner, he spent time imagining the wedding night, the wedding bed to be more precise. The bed he made up perfectly for the pair of them in the house he shared with his father.
Those imaginings, up until now had remained un-recollected, swamped his memory. Oh how he had planned, precisely, how he might romance his bride, have her swooning at his feet. Mercedes was not similar to other women with their delicate sensibilities and faint natures. She had the spark of life, something that reminded him a little of the sea with its gentle rolling waves and magnificent storms.
They had no money; she was to have worn a simple gown with beading at the hem, hand sewn. Great care would have been taken to preserve her clothing as he stripped every inch of it from her flesh. Then once she was spread before him like a feast he would take her as he willed and she would give no objection. Her sweet voice even sounded through his head.
“Edmond, husband, how would you have me?”
“In every way, Mercedes, in all ways.”
“Then join me, I wish to look upon you as well.”
He used considerable less care in his own disrobement before joining her on the bed.
“There you are.” Mercedes tentatively reached out and gripped the neck of Edmond, drawing him to her lips for a kiss. Edmond was the only man Mercedes had ever known but he treated her with respect and care and Edmond could feel the tension humming under her skin as she initiated the contact.
He could never think ill of her. She might climb a top his knees and straddle him like a horse and he still would only love and cherish her. The altered course his mind veered toward brought a new image to mind, one of Mercedes, nude and astride him, her hair streaming behind her in a heavy curtain. It was an erotic thought just at the inception. Edmond could feel the tight grip of her knees surrounding his lower body and it caused a lustful haze unlike any he felt previously.
Even in his musings she still played the innocent.
“Am I doing this correctly, my husband?”
“Say it again.” Edmond pleaded.
“Husband.”
No more powerful a word had ever reverberated throughout Edmond’s brain. The sound of the word “husband” falling from Mercedes lips had his manhood erect and straining against the tattered cloth of his pants. Edmond listened to the whisper of those lips with outward calm and reserve, the abbe none the wiser, but inside his heart, a rapid beating signified his utter ruin at the hand of his beloved.
She undid him completely. In his mind he gripped the milk white flesh of her hips and drew her onto his erect manhood. A soft sigh and a hushed groan were all the sounds the two made. He did not hurry. Mercedes was a woman of exacting patience, and Edmond was content on learning how that exactitude might pay in his favor.
It took only moments for her to gain her bearings and then moments further to choose the correct gait with which to ride him. Edmond took great pleasure as she experimented with the sensations coursing through them both. She tilted forward her hands catching the hard planes of Edmond’s chest, sprinkled with sparse hair she spread between her fingers.
Once she found the seat she sought, the wonderful sensations transversed to heavenly. Edmond fixed on her face a searching, penetrating gaze before running his palms up the gentle curve of her waist. Her skin fairly gleamed and Edmond would have had the sensation of idleness with Mercedes doing all the giving of pleasure. It was a fantasy after all, Edmond could do with some pleasure in any form, fantasy or fiction.
Mercedes increased the pressure and angle from which she moved and it brought Edmond to the edge of completion in only seconds.
“My love, are you close to your own end?”
A bright pink blush suffused her cheeks and she ducked her head, nodding. Edmond scooped her up from behind her buttocks and quickly flipped them both. Mercedes took his weight from the bottom. He felt a sharper edge to his need in this position and he was content to drive himself into Mercedes until he rang every last shout of pleasure she possessed.
“Edmond. Husband.” Mercedes shouted fractured syllables of those words as she gripped his arms, tethering herself in reality through her climax. Her tight little muscles squeezing and adding to the pressure already cupping him.
Edmond resumed his pace, letting her ride out the sensations as she neared his own completion. He did not cry out or utter even a whisper as he poured his seed inside of her. It was enough, another memory, another fantasy to add to the collection growing in an ever increasing catalog in his mind. He still held her, in this dream of his, held her flush along his own body, completely wrapped between her appendages. Legs, hands, arms, and toes intertwined so that neither of them could see where one ended and the other began.
“How do the words Madame Dantes sound to you?”
Mercedes smiled up at him.
“Wonderful. Monsieur. Perfect, even.”
That final kiss was too much for Edmond. Dragging himself from her lips even in fantasy was too much for him. He was shocked back to the present by the abbe’s furious thinking. Something he’d grown accustomed to, the man could not sit still to think, he had to move at least some part to get the maximum effect of his knowledge. A tear escaped the corner of his eye but he ignored it, waiting for the abbe’s speech.
His recital finished, the abbe reflected long and earnestly.
“There is,” said he, at the end of his meditations, “a clever maxim, which bears upon what I was saying to you some little while ago, and that is, that unless wicked ideas take root in a naturally depraved mind, human nature, in a right and wholesome state, revolts at crime. Still, from an artificial civilization have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and wickedness. From this view of things, then, comes the axiom that if you visit to discover the author of any bad action, seek first to discover the person to whom the perpetration of that bad action could be in any way advantageous. Now, to apply it in your case, — to whom could your disappearance have been serviceable?”
“To no one, by heaven! I was a very insignificant person.”
“Do not speak thus, for your reply evinces neither logic nor philosophy; everything is relative, my dear young friend, from the king who stands in the way of his successor, to the employee who keeps his rival out of a place. Now, in the event of the king’s death, his successor inherits a crown, — when the employee dies, the supernumerary steps into his shoes, and receives his salary of twelve thousand livres. Well, these twelve thousand livres are his civil list, and are as essential to him as the twelve millions of a king. Everyone, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place on the social ladder, and is beset by stormy passions and conflicting interests, as in Descartes’ theory of pressure and impulsion. But these forces increase as we go higher, so that we have a spiral which in defiance of reason rests upon the apex and not on the base. Now let us return to your particular world. You say you were on the point of being made captain of the Pharaon?”
“Yes.”
“And about to become the husband of a young and lovely girl?”
“Yes.”
“Now, could anyone have had any interest in preventing the accomplishment of these two things? But let us first settle the question as to its being the interest of any one to hinder you from being captain of the Pharaon. What say you?”
“I cannot believe such was the case. I was generally liked on board, and had the sailors possessed the right of selecting a captain themselves, I feel convinced their choice would have fallen on me. There was only one person among the crew who had any feeling of ill-will towards me. I had quarreled with him some time previously, and had even challenged him to fight me; but he refused.”
“Now we are getting on. And what was this man’s name?”
“Danglars.”
“What rank did he hold on board?”
“He was supercargo.”
“And had you been captain, should you have retained him in his employment?”
“Not if the choice had remained with me, for I had frequently observed inaccuracies in his accounts.”
“Good again! Now then, tell me, was any person present during your last conversation with Captain Leclere?”
“No; we were quite alone.”
“Could your conversation have been overheard by anyone?”
“It might, for the cabin door was open — and — stay; now I recollect, — Danglars himself passed by just as Captain Leclere was giving me the packet for the grand marshal.�
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“That’s better,” cried the abbe; “now we are on the right scent. Did you take anybody with you when you put into the port of Elba?”
“Nobody.”
“Somebody there received your packet, and gave you a letter in place of it, I think?”
“Yes; the grand marshal did.”
“And what did you do with that letter?”
“Put it into my portfolio.”
“You had your portfolio with you, then? Now, how could a sailor find room in his pocket for a portfolio large enough to contain an official letter?”
“You are right; it was left on board.”
“Then it was not till your return to the ship that you put the letter in the portfolio?”
“No.”
“And what did you do with this same letter while returning from Porto-Ferrajo to the vessel?”
“I carried it in my hand.”
“So that when you went on board the Pharaon, everybody could see that you held a letter in your hand?”
“Yes.”
“Danglars, as well as the rest?”
“Danglars, as well as others.”
“Now, listen to me, and try to recall every circumstance attending your arrest. Do you recollect the words in which the information against you was formulated?”
“Oh yes, I read it over three times, and the words sank deeply into my memory.”
“Repeat it to me.”
Dantes paused a moment, then said, “This is it, word for word: ‘The king’s attorney is informed by a friend to the throne and religion, that one Edmond Dantes, mate on board the Pharaon, this day arrived from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, has been entrusted by Murat with a packet for the usurper; again, by the usurper, with a letter for the Bonapartist Club in Paris. This proof of his guilt may be procured by his immediate arrest, as the letter will be found either about his person, at his father’s residence, or in his cabin on board the Pharaon.’”
The abbe shrugged his shoulders. “The thing is clear as day,” said he; “and you must have had a very confiding nature, as well as a good heart, not to have suspected the origin of the whole affair.”
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