“Do you really think so? Ah, that would indeed be infamous.”
“How did Danglars usually write?”
“In a handsome, running hand.”
“And how was the anonymous letter written?”
“Backhanded.”
Again the abbe smiled. “Disguised.”
“It was very boldly written, if disguised.”
“Stop a bit,” said the abbe, taking up what he called his pen, and, after dipping it into the ink, he wrote on a piece of prepared linen, with his left hand, the first two or three words of the accusation. Dantes drew back, and gazed on the abbe with a sensation almost amounting to terror.
“How very astonishing!” cried he at length. “Why your writing exactly resembles that of the accusation.”
“Simply because that accusation had been written with the left hand; and I have noticed that” —
“What?”
“That while the writing of different persons done with the right hand varies, that performed with the left hand is invariably uniform.”
“You have evidently seen and observed everything.”
“Let us proceed.”
“Oh, yes, yes!”
“Now as regards the second question.”
“I am listening.”
“Was there any person whose interest it was to prevent your marriage with Mercedes?”
“Yes; a young man who loved her.”
“And his name was” —
“Fernand.”
“That is a Spanish name, I think?”
“He was a Catalan.”
“You imagine him capable of writing the letter?”
“Oh, no; he would more likely have got rid of me by sticking a knife into me.”
“That is in strict accordance with the Spanish character; an assassination they will unhesitatingly commit, but an act of cowardice, never.”
“Besides,” said Dantes, “the various circumstances mentioned in the letter were wholly unknown to him.”
“You had never spoken of them yourself to any one?”
“To no one.”
“Not even to your mistress?”
“No, not even to my betrothed.”
“Then it is Danglars.”
“I feel quite sure of it now.”
“Wait a little. Pray, was Danglars acquainted with Fernand?”
“No — yes, he was. Now I recollect” —
“What?”
“To have seen them both sitting at table together under an arbor at Pere Pamphile’s the evening before the day fixed for my wedding. They were in earnest conversation. Danglars was joking in a friendly way, but Fernand looked pale and agitated.”
“Were they alone?”
“There was a third person with them whom I knew perfectly well, and who had, in all probability made their acquaintance; he was a tailor named Caderousse, but he was very drunk. Stay! — stay! — How strange that it should not have occurred to me before! Now I remember quite well, that on the table round which they were sitting were pens, ink, and paper. Oh, the heartless, treacherous scoundrels!” exclaimed Dantes, pressing his hand to his throbbing brows.
“Is there anything else I can assist you in discovering, besides the villainy of your friends?” inquired the abbe with a laugh.
“Yes, yes,” replied Dantes eagerly; “I would beg of you, who see so completely to the depths of things, and to whom the greatest mystery seems but an easy riddle, to explain to me how it was that I underwent no second examination, was never brought to trial, and, above all, was condemned without ever having had sentence passed on me?”
“That is altogether a different and more serious matter,” responded the abbe. “The ways of justice are frequently too dark and mysterious to be easily penetrated. All we have hitherto done in the matter has been child’s play. If you wish me to enter upon the more difficult part of the business, you must assist me by the most minute information on every point.”
“Pray ask me whatever questions you please; for, in good truth, you see more clearly into my life than I do myself.”
“In the first place, then, who examined you, — the king’s attorney, his deputy, or a magistrate?”
“The deputy.”
“Was he young or old?”
“About six or seven and twenty years of age, I should say.”
“So,” answered the abbe. “Old enough to be ambitions, but too young to be corrupt. And how did he treat you?”
“With more of mildness than severity.”
“Did you tell him your whole story?”
“I did.”
“And did his conduct change at all in the course of your examination?”
“He did appear much disturbed when he read the letter that had brought me into this scrape. He seemed quite overcome by my misfortune.”
“By your misfortune?”
“Yes.”
“Then you feel quite sure that it was your misfortune he deplored?”
“He gave me one great proof of his sympathy, at any rate.”
“And that?”
“He burnt the sole evidence that could at all have criminated me.”
“What? the accusation?”
“No; the letter.”
“Are you sure?”
“I saw it done.”
“That alters the case. This man might, after all, be a greater scoundrel than you have thought possible.”
“Upon my word,” said Dantes, “you make me shudder. Is the world filled with tigers and crocodiles?”
“Yes; and remember that two-legged tigers and crocodiles are more dangerous than the others.”
“Never mind; let us go on.”
“With all my heart! You tell me he burned the letter?”
“He did; saying at the same time, ‘You see I thus destroy the only proof existing against you.’”
“This action is somewhat too sublime to be natural.”
“You think so?”
“I am sure of it. To whom was this letter addressed?”
“To M. Noirtier, No. 13 Coq-Heron, Paris.”
“Now can you conceive of any interest that your heroic deputy could possibly have had in the destruction of that letter?”
“Why, it is not altogether impossible he might have had, for he made me promise several times never to speak of that letter to any one, assuring me he so advised me for my own interest; and, more than this, he insisted on my taking a solemn oath never to utter the name mentioned in the address.”
“Noirtier!” repeated the abbe; “Noirtier! — I knew a person of that name at the court of the Queen of Etruria, — a Noirtier, who had been a Girondin during the Revolution! What was your deputy called?”
“De Villefort!” The abbe burst into a fit of laughter, while Dantes gazed on him in utter astonishment.
“What ails you?” said he at length.
“Do you see that ray of sunlight?”
“I do.”
“Well, the whole thing is more clear to me than that sunbeam is to you. Poor fellow! poor young man! And you tell me this magistrate expressed great sympathy and commiseration for you?”
“He did.”
“And the worthy man destroyed your compromising letter?”
“Yes.”
“And then made you swear never to utter the name of Noirtier?”
“Yes.”
“Why, you poor short-sighted simpleton, can you not guess who this Noirtier was, whose very name he was so careful to keep concealed? Noirtier was his father.”
Had a thunderbolt fallen at the feet of Dantes, or hell opened its 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 abbe; “his right name was Noirtier de Villefort.” At this instant a bright light shot thro
ugh the mind of Dantes, 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 abbe’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 fulfillment by a solemn oath.
Dantes was at length roused from his revery 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 abbe 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 abbe had come to ask his young companion to share the luxuries with him. Dantes followed; 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 Dantes.
“Because it has instilled a new passion in your heart — that of vengeance.”
Dantes smiled. “Let us talk of something else,” said he.
Again the abbe looked at him, then mournfully shook his head; but in accordance with Dantes’ 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. Dantes 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 abbe’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 Dantes, “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 abbe 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 Dantes; “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 Dantes, “What shall you teach me first? I am in a hurry to begin. I want to learn.”
“Everything,” said the abbe. And that very evening the prisoners sketched a plan of education, to be entered upon the following day. Dantes 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 abbe, Dantes 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 Dantes was a new man. Dantes 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 Dantes, 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 abbe, “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 abbe.
“And you have discovered a means of regaining our freedom, have you not?” asked Dantes 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 abbe; “impossible!” Dantes endeavored to renew the subject; the abbe shook his head in token of disapproval, and refused to make any further response. Three months passed away.
“Are you strong?” the abbe asked one day of Dantes. 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 abbe, “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 Dantes.
“Do you consider the last twelve months to have been wasted?” asked the abbe.
“Forgive me!” cried Edmond, blushing deeply.
“Tut, tut!” answered the abbe, “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 abbe then showed Dantes the sketch he had made for their escape. It consisted of a plan of his own cell and that of Dantes, 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 larg
e 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 Dantes 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 abbe’s ladder of cords. Dantes’ 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 Dantes’ 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 Dantes 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 abbe 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 Dantes, 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.
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