The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
‘I am innocent.’
‘But what were you accused of?’
‘Conspiring for the return of the emperor.’
‘What! The return of the emperor! Is he no longer on the throne, then?’
‘He abdicated in Fontainebleau in 1814 and was exiled to the island of Elba. But what of yourself? How long have you been here, if you know nothing of all that?’
‘Since 1811.’
Dantès shuddered. This man had been four years longer in prison than he had.
‘Very well. Do not dig any more,’ the voice said, speaking rapidly. ‘Just tell me at what level is the hole that you have dug?’
‘At ground level.’
‘How is it concealed?’
‘Behind my bed.’
‘Has your bed been moved since you were in the cell?’
‘Not once.’
‘What is outside your cell?’
‘A corridor.’
‘Which leads where?’
‘To the courtyard.’
‘Alas!’ the voice exclaimed.
‘Heavens above, what is the matter?’ Dantès cried.
‘The matter is that I have made a mistake, that the inaccuracy of my drawings led me astray, that I am lost for not having a compass, that a deviation the thickness of a line on my plan was equal to fifteen feet on the ground and that I mistook the wall where you have been digging for that of the castle!’
‘But then you would have come out on the sea.’
‘That is what I wanted.’
‘Suppose you had succeeded.’
‘I should have plunged into it and swum for one of the islands in the vicinity of the Château d’If, either the Ile de Daume or the Ile de Tiboulen, or even the coast itself; and then I should have been saved.’
‘Would you have managed to swim so far?’
‘God would have given me strength. But now all is lost.’
‘Lost?’
‘Yes. Seal up your hole carefully, stop working on it, take no notice of anything and wait for me to contact you.’
‘Who are you? At least tell me who you are!’
‘I am… I am Number 27.’
‘Don’t you trust me, then?’ Dantès asked.
He thought he heard a bitter laugh make its way through the stonework towards him.
‘Oh, I’m a good Christian,’ he called, guessing instinctively that the man was thinking of leaving him. ‘I swear on Christ’s name that I would allow myself to be killed rather than give away a hint of the truth to your jailers and mine. But, in heaven’s name, do not deprive me of your presence, do not deprive me of your voice or – I swear it – I shall dash my head against the wall, and you will have my death on your conscience.’
‘How old are you? Your voice sounds like that of a young man.’
‘I do not know my age, because I have had no means of measuring time since I have been here. All I know is that I was approaching nineteen when I was arrested, on February the eighteenth, 1815.’
‘Not quite twenty-six,’ the voice muttered. ‘Very well, then: at that age, men are not yet traitors.’
‘No, no! I swear it,’ Dantès said again. ‘I have already told you, and I repeat, that I would let myself be cut into pieces rather than betray you.’
‘You did well to talk to me, and you did well to beg me, because I was about to change my plans and have nothing to do with you. But I am reassured by your age. I shall join you. Expect me.’
‘When?’
‘I must calculate the risks. I shall give you a signal.’
‘But you won’t abandon me, you won’t leave me alone, you will come to me or allow me to go to you? We shall escape together and, if we cannot escape, we shall talk: you of those you love, I of those who are dear to me. You must love someone?’
‘I am alone in the world.’
‘Then you shall love me. If you are young, I shall be your friend; if you are old, your son. I have a father who must be seventy years old, if he is still alive. I loved only him and a young woman called Mercédès. My father has not forgotten me, I am sure; but as for her – God knows if she still thinks of me. I shall love you as I loved my father.’
‘Very well,’ said the prisoner. ‘Until tomorrow.’
These few words were said in tones that convinced Dantès. He asked nothing more, but got up, took the same precautions as before with the rubble he had removed from the wall, and pushed his bed back against it.
And then he gave himself over entirely to his feelings of happiness. He was certainly no longer going to be alone, he might perhaps even be free. The worst case, should he remain a prisoner, was to have a companion: captivity shared is only semi-captivity. Sighs united together are almost prayers; prayers coming from two hearts are almost acts of grace.
Throughout the day, Dantès came and went in his cell, his heart leaping with joy. From time to time this joy stifled him. At the least noise in the corridor, he leapt on to his bed, clasping his chest with his hands. Once or twice his thoughts turned to the fear that he might be separated from this stranger, whom he already loved as a friend. So he had made up his mind: at the moment when the jailer pushed his bed aside and bent over to examine the opening in the wall, he would crack his head open with the stone on which his jug stood. He knew quite well that he would be condemned to death; but was he not about to die of boredom and despair when that miraculous sound had brought him back to life?
In the evening the jailer came. Dantès was on his bed, feeling that there he was better able to guard the unfinished opening. He must have looked at this unwelcome visitor in a peculiar manner, because the man said: ‘Come, come, are you going mad again?’
Dantès did not answer, fearing that the emotion in his voice might betray him.
The jailer left, shaking his head.
When night came, Dantès thought that his neighbour would take advantage of the silence and darkness to resume their conversation, but he was wrong. The night passed but no sound came to relieve his feverish expectation. But the following day, after the morning visit, when he had just moved his bed away from the wall, he heard three knocks, equally spaced. He fell to his knees.
‘Is that you?’ he said. ‘I am here!’
‘Has your jailer left?’ the voice asked.
‘Yes,’ Dantès said. ‘He will not be back until this evening. We have twelve hours’ freedom.’
‘So it is safe for me to act?’ asked the voice.
‘Yes, yes; don’t delay, do it now, I beg you.’
Dantès was half inside the opening and, at this moment, the portion of ground on which he was resting his two hands seemed to give way beneath him. He plunged back, while a mass of earth, rubble and broken stones fell away into a hole that had opened up beneath the opening which he himself had made. Then, in the bottom of this dark hole, the depth of which he was unable to assess, he saw a head appear, then some shoulders and finally a whole man, who emerged, with a fair degree of agility, from the pit they had dug.
XVI
AN ITALIAN SCHOLAR
Dantès embraced this new friend for whom he had waited so long and with such impatience, and drew him over to the window, so that the faint light that seeped from outside into the cell would illuminate his face.
He was short in stature, with hair whitened by suffering more than by age, a penetrating eye hidden beneath thick, grizzled brows, and a still-black beard that extended to his chest. The leanness of his face, which was deeply furrowed, and the firm moulding of his features implied a man more accustomed to exercise his spiritual than his physical faculties. This newcomer’s brow was bathed in sweat.
As for his clothes, their original form was impossible to make out, for they were in tatters.
He appeared to be at least sixty-five, though some agility in his movements suggested that he might be younger than he appeared after his long captivity.
He showed a kind of pleasure on receiving the young man’s effusions: for a moment, a so
‘First of all,’ he said, ‘let us see if we can disguise the traces of my entry from your jailers. All our future peace of mind depends on their not knowing what has happened.’
He bent down towards the opening, took the stone, which he lifted easily despite its weight, and put it back into the hole.
‘This stone was very crudely cut out,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Don’t you have any tools?’
‘Do you have any?’ Dantès asked in astonishment.
‘I have made myself a few. Apart from a file, I have everything I need: chisel, pliers, a lever.’
‘I should be most curious to see these products of your patient efforts,’ Dantès said.
‘Well then, to start with, here is a chisel.’ He showed him a strong, sharpened blade fixed in a beechwood handle.
‘How did you make that?’ Dantès asked.
‘From one of the pegs from my bed. This is the tool with which I dug almost the whole of the passage that brought me here – roughly fifty feet.’
‘Fifty feet!’ Dantès cried, in a kind of terror.
‘Keep your voice down, young man, keep your voice down. They often listen at the prisoners’ doors.’
‘They know that I am alone.’
‘No matter.’
‘You are telling me that you dug fifty feet to reach me here?’
‘Yes, that is approximately the distance between my cell and yours. But I miscalculated the curve, not having any geometrical instrument with which to draw up a relative scale: instead of a forty-foot ellipse, the measurement was fifty feet. As I told you, I was expecting to reach the outer wall, break through it and throw myself into the sea. I followed the line of the corridor that runs outside your room, instead of going underneath it – and all my labour is in vain, because this corridor leads to a courtyard full of guards.’
‘True,’ said Dantès. ‘But this corridor only touches on one wall of my room, and there are four of them.’
‘Of course – but, to start with, one of them is solid rock: it would take ten miners, fully equipped, ten years’ work to cut through it. This one here must be contiguous with the foundations of the governor’s quarters: we should break into cellars, which are clearly locked, and be recaptured. The other wall… Wait a moment, what is beyond the other wall?’
This side of the dungeon was the one with the tiny window through which the daylight shone: the opening narrowed progressively as it went towards the light. Even though a child could not have passed through it, it was furnished with three rows of iron bars, which would have reassured the most distrustful jailer as to the impossibility of escape.
As he asked the question, the newcomer pulled the table over to the window.
‘Climb up here,’ he told Dantès.
Dantès obeyed, climbed on to the table and, guessing his companion’s intentions, pressed his back against the wall and held out his cupped hands. The man who had taken the number of his cell – and whose true name Dantès still did not know – climbed up with more agility than one might have expected from a man of his age, like a cat or a lizard, first on to the table, then from the table on to Dantès’ hands, then from his hands on to his shoulders. Bent double, because the roof of the dungeon prevented him from standing upright, he thrust his head between the first row of bars and in that way could see outside and downwards.
Immediately, he drew his head back sharply.
‘Oh, oh!’ he said. ‘I guessed as much.’
And he slipped down past Dantès on to the table and from there jumped to the ground.
‘What did you guess?’ the young man asked anxiously, jumping down after him.
The old prisoner thought for a while, then said: ‘Yes, that’s it. The fourth wall of your dungeon overlooks a gallery on the outside of the castle, a sort of walkway along which patrols can march or sentries keep watch.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I saw the shako of a soldier and the tip of his rifle: I jumped back quickly because I was afraid he might see me.’
‘Well?’ Dantès asked.
‘You can clearly see that it is impossible to escape through your cell.’
‘So, what now?’
‘So, let God’s will be done,’ said the old prisoner, a look of profound resignation crossing his face.
With a mixture of astonishment and admiration, Dantès looked at this man who, with such philosophical resignation, could give up the hope that he had nurtured for so long.
‘Now, tell me who you are,’ Dantès said.
‘Why, yes, I will if you like and if it still interests you, now that I can no longer be of any use to you.’
‘You can console me and support me, because you seem to me a person of exceptional strength.’
The abbé smiled sadly.
‘I am Abbé Faria. I have been a prisoner in the Château d’If since 1811, as you already know, but I spent three years before that in the fortress of Fenestrelle. In 1811 I was transferred from Piedmont to France. Then it was that I learned that Fate – who at the time appeared to be his servant – had given Napoleon a son and that while still in his cradle this child had been named King of Rome. At that time I could never have guessed what you told me a moment ago: that four years later the colossus would be overturned. So who rules in France? Napoleon II?’
‘No, Louis XVIII.’
‘Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI! Heaven’s decrees are shrouded in mystery. Why did Providence choose to bring down the one whom she had raised up, and raise the one she had brought down?’
Dantès looked at this man, who had momentarily forgotten his own fate so that he might contemplate that of the world.
‘Yes, indeed, yes,’ he went on. ‘It is just as in England: after Charles I, Cromwell; after Cromwell, Charles II. Then perhaps after James II, some son-in-law or other, some relative, some Prince of Orange, a Stathouder who will appoint himself king. And then: new concessions to the people, a constitution, liberty! You will see all this, young man,’ he said, turning to Dantès and examining him with deep, shining eyes, like those of a prophet. ‘You are still young enough, you will see this.’
‘Yes, if I ever get out of here.’
‘That’s true,’ said Abbé Faria. ‘We are prisoners. Sometimes I forget it and, because my eyes penetrate the walls that enclose me, think myself at liberty.’
‘But why are you imprisoned?’
‘Me? Because in 1807 I dreamed up the plan that Napoleon tried to carry out in 1811; because, like Machiavelli, I wanted a single, great empire, solid and strong, to emerge from all those petty principalities that make Italy a swarm of tyrannical but feeble little kingdoms; because I thought I had discovered my Cesare Borgia in a royal simpleton who pretended to agree with me, the better to betray me. This was the ambition of Alexander VI and Clement VII. It will always fail, because they tried in vain, and even Napoleon could not succeed. Without any doubt, Italy is accursed.’
He bowed his head.
Dantès could not understand how a man could risk his life in such a cause. He did, indeed, know Napoleon, since he had seen and spoken to him, but on the other hand he had no idea who Clement VII and Alexander VI were. He was beginning to share the opinion of his jailer, which was that generally held in the Château d’If.
‘Aren’t you the priest who is said to be… ill?’
‘You mean, who is thought to be mad?’
‘I didn’t like to say it,’ Dantès replied, smiling.
‘Yes,’ Faria went on, with a bitter laugh. ‘Yes, I am the one they think is mad. I am the one who has for so long entertained visitors to the prison and who would amuse the little children if there were any in this sojourn of hopeless agony.’
For a short time Dantès did not move
‘So, you have abandoned any idea of escape?’
‘I can see that escape is impossible. It is a rebellion against God to attempt something that God does not wish to be achieved.’
‘But why be discouraged? It would be asking too much of Providence if you were to expect to succeed at the first attempt. Why not start out again in a different direction?’
‘Can you imagine what I have done so far, you who speak about beginning again? Do you realize that it took me four years to make the tools that I have? Do you realize that for the past two years I have been digging and scraping in earth as hard as granite? Do you know that I have had to lay bare stones that I would never previously have thought I could shift, that whole days were spent in these titanic efforts and that, by the evening, I was happy when I had removed a square inch of the old mortar, which had become as hard as the stone itself? Do you realize that to accommodate all the soil and all the stones that I dug up, I had to break through into a stairway and bury the rubble bit by bit in the stairwell; and that the well is now full so that I could not fit another handful of dust into it? Finally, do you realize that I thought my labours were at an end, that I felt I had just enough strength to complete the task, and that God has now not only set back my goal but removed it, I know not where? Oh, let me tell you, and repeat it: I shall not take another step to try and regain my freedom, since God’s will is for me to have lost it for ever.’
Edmond lowered his head, so that the man would not perceive that the joy of having a companion was preventing him from sympathizing, as he should, with the prisoner’s torment at his failure to escape. Abbé Faria slumped down on Edmond’s bed, while Edmond remained standing.
The young man had never thought about escape. There are things that seem so impossible that one instinctively avoids them and doesn’t even consider attempting them. To dig fifty feet beneath the ground, to spend three years on this task, only to arrive – if you were successful – at a sheer precipice above the sea; to descend fifty, sixty, perhaps a hundred feet, only to fall and crush your head against the rocks – if the sentries had not already shot you; and, even supposing you managed to evade all these dangers, to be faced with swimming a distance of a league – all this was too much for one not to resign oneself; and, as we have seen already, Dantès had almost resigned himself to the point of death.