The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (top 10 novels to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
- Performer: 0140449264
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“Then you pity him?” said the count.
“Ma foi, yes; though he was in his own element.”
“What do you mean?”
“The report was that he had been a naval officer, who had been confined for plotting with the Bonapartists.”
“Great is truth,” muttered the count, “fire cannot burn, nor water drown it! Thus the poor sailor lives in the recollection of those who narrate his history; his terrible story is recited in the chimney-corner, and a shudder is felt at the description of his transit through the air to be swallowed by the deep.” Then, the count added aloud, “Was his name ever known?”
“Oh, yes; but only as No. 34.”
“Oh, Villefort, Villefort,” murmured the count, “this scene must often have haunted thy sleepless hours!”
“Do you wish to see anything more, sir?” said the concierge.
“Yes, especially if you will show me the poor abbé’s room.”
“Ah! No. 27.”
“Yes; No. 27.” repeated the count, who seemed to hear the voice of the abbé answering him in those very words through the wall when asked his name.
“Come, sir.”
“Wait,” said Monte Cristo, “I wish to take one final glance around this room.”
“This is fortunate,” said the guide; “I have forgotten the other key.”
“Go and fetch it.”
“I will leave you the torch, sir.”
“No, take it away; I can see in the dark.”
“Why, you are like No. 34. They said he was so accustomed to darkness that he could see a pin in the darkest corner of his dungeon.”
“He spent fourteen years to arrive at that,” muttered the count.
The guide carried away the torch. The count had spoken correctly. Scarcely had a few seconds elapsed, ere he saw everything as distinctly as by daylight. Then he looked around him, and really recognized his dungeon.
“Yes,” he said, “there is the stone upon which I used to sit; there is the impression made by my shoulders on the wall; there is the mark of my blood made when one day I dashed my head against the wall. Oh, those figures, how well I remember them! I made them one day to calculate the age of my father, that I might know whether I should find him still living, and that of Mercédès, to know if I should find her still free. After finishing that calculation, I had a minute’s hope. I did not reckon upon hunger and infidelity!” and a bitter laugh escaped the count.
He saw in fancy the burial of his father, and the marriage of Mercédès. On the other side of the dungeon he perceived an inscription, the white letters of which were still visible on the green wall:
“‘Oh, God!’” he read, “‘preserve my memory!’”
“Oh, yes,” he cried, “that was my only prayer at last; I no longer begged for liberty, but memory; I dreaded to become mad and forgetful. Oh, God, thou hast preserved my memory; I thank thee, I thank thee!”
At this moment the light of the torch was reflected on the wall; the guide was coming; Monte Cristo went to meet him.
“Follow me, sir;” and without ascending the stairs the guide conducted him by a subterraneous passage to another entrance. There, again, Monte Cristo was assailed by a multitude of thoughts. The first thing that met his eye was the meridian, drawn by the abbé on the wall, by which he calculated the time; then he saw the remains of the bed on which the poor prisoner had died. The sight of this, instead of exciting the anguish experienced by the count in the dungeon, filled his heart with a soft and grateful sentiment, and tears fell from his eyes.
“This is where the mad abbé was kept, sir, and that is where the young man entered;” and the guide pointed to the opening, which had remained unclosed. “From the appearance of the stone,” he continued, “a learned gentleman discovered that the prisoners might have communicated together for ten years. Poor things! Those must have been ten weary years.”
Dantès took some louis from his pocket, and gave them to the man who had twice unconsciously pitied him. The guide took them, thinking them merely a few pieces of little value; but the light of the torch revealed their true worth.
“Sir,” he said, “you have made a mistake; you have given me gold.”
“I know it.”
The concierge looked upon the count with surprise.
“Sir,” he cried, scarcely able to believe his good fortune—“sir, I cannot understand your generosity!”
“Oh, it is very simple, my good fellow; I have been a sailor, and your story touched me more than it would others.”
“Then, sir, since you are so liberal, I ought to offer you something.”
“What have you to offer to me, my friend? Shells? Straw-work? Thank you!”
“No, sir, neither of those; something connected with this story.”
“Really? What is it?”
“Listen,” said the guide; “I said to myself, ‘Something is always left in a cell inhabited by one prisoner for fifteen years,’ so I began to sound the wall.”
“Ah,” cried Monte Cristo, remembering the abbé’s two hiding-places.
“After some search, I found that the floor gave a hollow sound near the head of the bed, and at the hearth.”
“Yes,” said the count, “yes.”
“I raised the stones, and found——”
“A rope-ladder and some tools?”
“How do you know that?” asked the guide in astonishment.
“I do not know—I only guess it, because that sort of thing is generally found in prisoners’ cells.”
“Yes, sir, a rope-ladder and tools.”
“And have you them yet?”
“No, sir; I sold them to visitors, who considered them great curiosities; but I have still something left.”
“What is it?” asked the count, impatiently.
“A sort of book, written upon strips of cloth.”
“Go and fetch it, my good fellow; and if it be what I hope, you will do well.”
“I will run for it, sir;” and the guide went out.
Then the count knelt down by the side of the bed, which death had converted into an altar.
“Oh, second father,” he exclaimed, “thou who hast given me liberty, knowledge, riches; thou who, like beings of a superior order to ourselves, couldst understand the science of good and evil; if in the depths of the tomb there still remain something within us which can respond to the voice of those who are left on earth; if after death the soul ever revisit the places where we have lived and suffered,—then, noble heart, sublime soul, then I conjure thee by the paternal love thou didst bear me, by the filial obedience I vowed to thee, grant me some sign, some revelation! Remove from me the remains of doubt, which, if it change not to conviction, must become remorse!” The count bowed his head, and clasped his hands together.
“Here, sir,” said a voice behind him.
Monte Cristo shuddered, and arose. The concierge held out the strips of cloth upon which the Abbé Faria had spread the riches of his mind. The manuscript was the great work by the Abbé Faria upon the kingdoms of Italy. The count seized it hastily, his eyes immediately fell upon the epigraph, and he read:
“Thou shalt tear out the dragons’ teeth, and shall trample the lions under foot, saith the Lord.”
“Ah,” he exclaimed, “here is my answer. Thanks, father, thanks.” And feeling in his pocket, he took thence a small pocket-book, which contained ten bank-notes, each of 1,000 francs.
“Here,” he said, “take this pocket-book.”
“Do you give it to me?”
“Yes; but only on condition that you will not open it till I am gone;” and placing in his breast the treasure he had just found, which was more valuable to him than the richest jewel, he rushed out of the corridor, and reaching his boat, cried, “To Marseilles!”
Then, as he departed, he fixed his eyes upon the gloomy prison.
“Woe,” he cried, “to those who confined me in that wretched prison; and woe to those who forgot that I was there!”
As he repassed the Catalans, the count turned around and burying his head in his cloak murmured the name of a woman. The victory was complete; twice he had overcome his doubts. The name he pronounced, in a voice of tenderness, amounting almost to love, was that of Haydée.
On landing, the count turned towards the cemetery, where he felt sure of finding Morrel. He, too, ten years ago, had piously sought out a tomb, and sought it vainly. He, who returned to France with millions, had been unable to find the grave of his father, who had perished from hunger. Morrel had indeed placed a cross over the spot, but it had fallen down and the grave-digger had burnt it, as he did all the old wood in the churchyard.
The worthy merchant had been more fortunate. Dying in the arms of his children, he had been by them laid by the side of his wife, who had preceded him in eternity by two years. Two large slabs of marble, on which were inscribed their names, were placed on either side of a little enclosure, railed in, and shaded by four cypress-trees. Morrel was leaning against one of these, mechanically fixing his eyes on the graves. His grief was so profound that he was nearly unconscious.
“Maximilian,” said the count, “you should not look on the graves, but there;” and he pointed upwards.
“The dead are everywhere,” said Morrel; “did you not yourself tell me so as we left Paris?”
“Maximilian,” said the count, “you asked me during the journey to allow you to remain some days at Marseilles. Do you still wish to do so?”
“I have no wishes, count; only I fancy I could pass the time less painfully here than anywhere else.”
“So much the better, for I must leave you; but I carry your word with me, do I not?”
“Ah, count, I shall forget it.”
“No, you will not forget it, because you are a man of honor, Morrel, because you have taken an oath, and are about to do so again.”
“Oh, count, have pity upon me. I am so unhappy.”
“I have known a man much more unfortunate than you, Morrel.”
“Impossible!”
“Alas,” said Monte Cristo, “it is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!”
“What can be more wretched than the man who has lost all he loved and desired in the world?”
“Listen, Morrel, and pay attention to what I am about to tell you. I knew a man who like you had fixed all his hopes of happiness upon a woman. He was young, he had an old father whom he loved, a betrothed bride whom he adored. He was about to marry her, when one of the caprices of fate,—which would almost make us doubt the goodness of Providence, if that Providence did not afterwards reveal itself by proving that all is but a means of conducting to an end,—one of those caprices deprived him of his mistress, of the future of which he had dreamed (for in his blindness he forgot he could only read the present), and cast him into a dungeon.”
“Ah,” said Morrel, “one quits a dungeon in a week, a month, or a year.”
“He remained there fourteen years, Morrel,” said the count, placing his hand on the young man’s shoulder. Maximilian shuddered.
“Fourteen years!” he muttered.
“Fourteen years!” repeated the count. “During that time he had many moments of despair. He also, Morrel, like you, considered himself the unhappiest of men.”
“Well?” asked Morrel.
“Well, at the height of his despair God assisted him through human means. At first, perhaps, he did not recognize the infinite mercy of the Lord, but at last he took patience and waited. One day he miraculously left the prison, transformed, rich, powerful. His first
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