Villefort retained his post, but his marriage was postponed until happier times. If the Emperor remained on the throne, Gérard would require a different alliance and his father undertook to find this for him; if, on the contrary, a second Restoration brought back Louis XVIII, the influence of M. de Saint-Méran and himself would be strengthened and the marriage would be more suitable than ever.
As for Dantès, he remained a prisoner; hidden away in the depths of his dungeon he was ignorant of the downfall of Louis XVIII’s throne and the re-establishment of Napoleon.
Twice during this short revival of the Empire, which was called the Hundred Days, had M. Morrel renewed his appeal for the liberation of Dantès, and each time Villefort had quietened him with promises and hopes. Finally there was Waterloo. ae Morrel did not present himself before Villefort any more; he realized he had done all that was humanly possible for his young friend and that to make any further attempts under this second restoration would be to compromise himself unnecessarily.
When Louis XVIII remounted the throne, Villefort successfully petitioned for the post of Procureur du Roi at Toulouse, and a fortnight later he married Mademoiselle de Saint-Méran.
When Napoleon returned to France, Danglars understood the full significance of the blow he had struck at Dantès; his denunciation had been given some sort of justification and he called this extraordinary coincidence the Hand of Providence. But when Napoleon reached Paris and his voice was once more heard, imperious and powerful, Danglars grew afraid. Dantès might return any day with full information on the cause of his arrest and eager for vengeance. He, therefore, informed M. Morrel of his desire to leave the merchant service and obtained a recommendation from him to a Spanish merchant. He went to Madrid and was heard of no more for a long time.
Fernand, on the other hand, could not understand anything. Dantès was absent and that was all he cared about. What had happened to him? He did not know, neither did he care.
In the meantime the Empire made a last appeal to her soldiers, and every man, capable of bearing arms, rushed to obey the far-reaching voice of his Emperor. Fernand left Mercédès and joined up with the others, but the gloomy and terrible thought preyed upon his mind that Dantès might return now that his back was turned and marry her whom he loved. His devotion to Mercédès, the pity he pretended to have for her in her sorrow, the care with which he anticipated her least desire, had produced the effect that outward signs of devotion always produce on generous hearts: Mercédès had always been fond of him as a friend and this affection was now increased by a feeling of gratitude.
Fernand therefore went off to the army with hope in his heart, and Mercédès was now left alone. She could be seen, bathed in tears, wandering incessantly round the little village of the Catalans: at times she would stand under the fierce midday sun as motionless and dumb as a statue with her eyes fixed on Marseilles; at other times she would sit on the beach listening to the moaning of the sea, as eternal as her grief, and ask herself whether it would not be better to leap down into the abyss below than to suffer this cruel alternative of a hopeless suspense. She did not lack the courage to do this deed; it was her religion that came to her aid and saved her from suicide.
As for old Dantès, he had now lost all hope. Five months after he had been separated from his son, and almost at the very hour at which he had been arrested, the old man breathed his last in Mercédès’ arms. M. Morrel paid the expenses of the funeral and the small debts the old man had incurred during his last illness. It required more than benevolence to do this, it required courage. The South was aflame, and to help the father of a Bonapartist as dangerous as Dantès, even though he were on his deathbed, was a crime.
Chapter XII
NUMBERS 34 AND 27
Dantès passed through all the various stages of misery that affect a forgotten and forsaken prisoner in his cell. First there was pride born of hope and a consciousness of his innocence; next, he was so reduced that he began to doubt his innocence; finally his pride gave way to entreaty, yet it was not God he prayed to, for that is the last resource, but man. The wretched and miserable should turn to their Saviour first, yet they do not hope in Him until all other hope is exhausted.
Dantès begged to be taken from his dungeon and placed in another one, even though that were deeper and darker. Even a change for the worse would be welcome and would give him a few days’ distraction. He entreated his gaolers to let him go for a walk, to give him books, anything to while away the time. One day he entreated his gaoler to ask for a companion for him. The gaoler passed the request of prisoner No. 34 to the proper quarter, but the governor, being as prudent as a politician, imagined that Dantès would stir up the prisoners to mutiny, weave some plot, or make an attempt to escape, so he refused.
Dantès had now exhausted all human resources and turned toward God. All the pious thoughts which are sown broadcast in the human field and which are gleaned by the victims of a cruel fate came to comfort him; he recalled the prayers taught him by his mother and discovered in them a hidden meaning hitherto unknown to him. To the happy and prosperous man prayer is but a meaningless jumble of words until grief comes to explain to the unfortunate wretch the sublime language which is our means of communication with God.
In spite of his prayers, however, Dantès still remained a prisoner.
His gloom gave way to wrath. He began to roar out blasphemies which made even his gaoler recoil with horror, and dashed himself in a paroxysm of fury against the walls of the prison. Then there recurred to his mind the informer’s letter which Villefort had shown him. Each line of it was reflected on the walls in fiery letters. He told himself it was the hatred of men and not the vengeance of God that had thrust him into this dark abyss. He doomed these unknown men to the most cruel torments his fiery imagination was capable of conjuring up, but, even so, the most awful of these torments seemed to him too mild and too short for them, for after the torment would come death, and in death they would find, if not repose, at all events that insensibility which so nearly resembles repose.
Sometimes he said to himself: “When I was still a man, strong and free, commanding other men, I have seen the heavens open, the sea rage and foam, the storm rise in a patch of sky and like a gigantic eagle beat the two horizons with its wings. Then I felt that my ship was but a weak refuge from the tempest, for did it not shiver and shake like a feather in the hand of a giant? Soon the sight of the sharp rocks, coupled with the frightful noise of the waves, announced to me that death was near, and death terrified me. I exerted all my efforts to escape it, and I combined all my man’s strength with all my sailor’s skill in that terrible fight against God! For to me life was happy then, and to escape from the jaws of death was to return to happiness. I had no use for death; I loathed the thought of sleeping my last sleep on a bed of hard rocks and seaweed, or of serving after my death as food for gulls and vultures, I who was made in the image of God! Now, however, it is quite a different matter. I have lost all that bound me to life; now death smiles on me as a nurse smiles on the child she is about to rock to sleep; now welcome death!”
No sooner had this idea taken possession of the unhappy young man than he became more calm and resigned; he felt more contented with his hard bed and black bread, ate less, slept not at all, and almost found his miserable existence supportable, for could he not cast it off at will as one casts off old clothes?
There were two ways of dying open to him. One was quite simple; it was only a question of tying his handkerchief to a bar of the window and hanging himself. The other way was by starving himself. Hanging seemed to him a disgraceful thing, so he decided upon the second course.
Nearly four years had passed since he had taken this resolution; at the end of the second year he ceased to count the days.
Dantès had said to himself, “I will die,” and had chosen his mode of death; he had weighed the matter well, but, being afraid he might go back on his resolution, he had sworn to himself that he would starve himsel
f to death. “When the gaoler brings me my food in the morning and evening,” he said to himself, “I shall throw it through the window and he will think I have eaten it.” He kept his word. At first he threw it away with pleasure, then with deliberation, and finally with regret. It was only the remembrance of his oath that gave him the strength to carry out this dreadful purpose. The food which he had once loathed, hunger now made pleasant to the eye and delicious to the smell. At times he would hold his plate in his hand for an hour, his eyes fixed on the morsel of putrid meat or tainted fish and the black and mouldy bread. It was the last instincts of life struggling within him and breaking down his resolution. At length came the day when he had no longer the strength to raise himself to throw his supper away. The next day he could no longer see and scarcely hear; the gaoler thought he was seriously ill. All at once, toward nine in the evening, just as he was hoping that death would come soon, Dantès heard a dull sound on the wall against which he was lying.
So many loathsome animals had made their noises in his cell that little by little he had grown accustomed to them and did not let them disturb his sleep. This time, however, whether it was that his senses had become intensified by his long abstinence, or that the noise was louder or more significant than usual, Edmond raised his head to hear better. And what he heard was an even scraping noise as though caused by an enormous claw, a powerful tooth, or the pressure of some sharp instrument on the stone. Though weakened, the young man’s brain seized on the idea that is ever present to the mind of a prisoner: liberty. The noise lasted for about three hours, then Edmond heard the sound of something crumbling away and all was silence again.
Some hours later the scraping was continued again, but this time louder and nearer. Edmond’s interest was aroused, and the noise seemed almost like a companion to him. “As it continues even in daylight,” he thought to himself, “it must be some unfortunate prisoner trying to escape. Oh, if I were only near and could help him! But I must ascertain this. I have only to knock on the wall and if it is an ordinary workman, he will instantly cease working and will endeavour to discover who it is that knocks, and why he knocks; and then, as his work is lawful, he will soon resume it. If, on the contrary, it is a prisoner, the noise I make will alarm him; he will be afraid of being discovered; he will cease his work and only resume it at night when he believes every one to be in bed and asleep.”
Edmond went to a corner of the cell, detached a stone that had become loosened with the damp, and knocked three times on the wall, just where the sound had been loudest. At the first knock the noise stopped as if by magic. Edmond listened intently all through that day but there was complete silence. “It is a prisoner,” Dantès said with inexpressible joy.
Three days—seventy-two deadly hours—passed without a repetition of the noise. One evening, however, after the gaoler had paid his last visit, Dantès, who had his ear to the wall, thought he heard an almost imperceptible sound. He moved away, paced round the cell several times to calm himself, and then returned to the same spot. There could be no doubt about it: something was happening on the other side of the wall. The prisoner had recognized the danger of his previous tactics and had substituted the crowbar for the chisel.
Encouraged by this discovery, Edmond resolved to help the untiring worker. He looked round for some object he could use as a tool, but could discover nothing. He had no knife or sharp instrument; the only iron in the cell was that at the windows, and he had already proved the impossibility of moving the bars.
He had but one resource, and this was to break his pitcher and use one of the jagged fragments. Accordingly he dashed the pitcher to the ground, and, choosing two or three of the sharp, broken bits, hid them under his bed; the others he left scattered about the floor. The breaking of the jug was such a natural accident that it would cause no suspicion.
He had the whole night to work in, but, groping about in the dark, he did not make much headway, and he soon found that he blunted his instrument against the hard stone. He laid down his tool and waited for the morning. Hope had given him patience.
All night long he listened to the unknown miner at his subterranean work. Day came, the gaoler entered. Dantès told him the pitcher had fallen from his hands as he was drinking out of it the previous evening. The gaoler went grumbling to fetch another one without even taking the trouble to pick up the bits of the old one.
The grinding of the lock in the door which had always caused Dantès a pang now gave him inexpressible joy. He listened for the last of the dying footsteps and then, hastily moving his bed away, he saw by the faint ray of light that penetrated his cell, how useless had been his work of the previous night in attacking the hard stone instead of the plaster surrounding it.
The damp had rendered the plaster friable, and Dantès’ heart beat with joy when he saw it break off in little bits: they were but tiny atoms, it is true, but within half an hour he had scraped away nearly a handful. A mathematician would have calculated that if he worked like that for about two years, and if he did not encounter a rock, he might succeed in excavating a passage two feet square and twenty feet deep.
In three days he managed, with untold precautions, to lay bare a stone. The wall was made of ashlars,af for the greater solidity of which a freestone had been placed at intervals. It was one of these freestones which Dantès had now laid bare, and which he must now dislodge. He used his nails, but they were useless tools; the fragments of the pitcher broke whenever he tried to make them do the duty of a crowbar. After an hour of useless toil, he paused, his forehead bathed in perspiration. Was he to be thus stopped at the beginning, and must he wait, inert and useless, while his neighbour, who was perhaps growing weary, should accomplish all?
Suddenly an idea occurred to him. He stood up smiling; the perspiration on his forehead dried.
The gaoler always brought him his soup in a tin saucepan with an iron handle. It was this iron handle he longed for, and he would have given ten years of his life to get it. The contents of the saucepan were always poured into Dantès’ plate; this he ate with his wooden spoon and washed his plate in readiness for the next day.
On the evening in question Dantès placed his plate on the floor, half-way between the door and the table. When the gaoler entered, he stepped on it and broke it to pieces. This time the gaoler could not blame Dantès; it is true he should not have left his plate on the floor, but then, the gaoler should have looked where he was going. He contented himself with grumbling and looked around for some other vessel for Dantès soup.
“Leave the saucepan,” the prisoner said, “you can take it again when you bring me my breakfast in the morning.”
This advice suited the gaoler as it spared him the necessity of going up and down the many steps again. He left the saucepan.
Dantès was trembling with delight. He ate his soup and meat hastily, and then, after waiting an hour to make sure the gaoler would not change his mind, he set himself to the task of dislodging the freestone, using the saucepan handle as a lever. At the end of an hour he had extricated the stone, leaving a hole of more than a foot and a half in diameter. Dantès collected all the plaster very carefully, carried it into the corners of the cell and, with a piece of broken earthenware, scraped some of the grey earth from the floor and strewed it over the plaster.
He continued to work all night and at dawn of day replaced the stone, pushed the bed up against the wall, and lay down to sleep.
His breakfast consisted of a piece of bread which the gaoler placed on the table.
“Aren’t you going to bring me another plate?” Dantès asked.
“No, you break everything. First of all there was your pitcher, then you made me break your plate. You can keep the saucepan now and your soup will be poured into that.”
Dantès lifted up his eyes to Heaven, joined his hands under the coverlet, and said a prayer of thanks. The piece of iron which had been left him created in him a feeling of gratitude toward God stronger than any he had felt for the great
est blessings in past years.
He worked all day unremittingly; thanks to his new instrument he had scraped out more than ten handfuls of broken stone, plaster, and cement by the end of the day. He continued working all through the night, but after two or three hours he encountered an obstacle. The iron did not grip any more, it simply slid off a smooth surface. He touched the obstacle with his hand and soon recognized it as a beam. It crossed, or rather blocked the hole that Dantès had commenced. It now meant that he had to dig either above or below it.
“Oh, my God! my God!” he cried, “I prayed so fervently that I hoped Thou hadst heard my prayer. My God! after having deprived me of my liberty! after having deprived me of the peace of death, oh, my God! and after calling me back to existence, have pity on me, oh, my God! and let me not die of despair!”
“Who speaks of God and of despair in the same breath?” said a voice that seemed to come from under the ground and sounded sepulchral to the young man. His hair stood on end and he drew back.
“Ah,” he murmured, “I hear a man’s voice!”
Edmond had not heard any man’s voice but that of his gaoler for the past four or five years, and to a prisoner a gaoler is not a man; he is but a living door added to his oaken door; he is but a bar of flesh added to his bar of iron.
“In Heaven’s name,” Dantès cried out, “speak once more, though the sound of your voice frightened me. Who are you?”
“And who are you?” the voice asked.
“An unhappy prisoner,” replied Dantès, who had no difficulty in answering this question.
“What nationality?”
“French.”
“Your name?”
“Edmond Dantès.”
“Your profession?”
“A sailor.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since February twenty-eighth, eighteen-fifteen.”
“Your crime?”
Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 10