The Count of Monte Cristo. Alexandre Dumas
chisel, a long stone which had doubtless been the hearth, beneath which was a cavity of considerable depth, serving as a safe depository of the articles mentioned to Dantès.
“What do you wish to see first?” asked the abbé.
“Oh! your great work on the monarchy of Italy!”
Faria then drew forth from its hiding-place three or four rolls of linen, laid one over the other, like the folds of papyrus found in mummy-cases; these rolls consisted of slips of cloth about four inches wide, and eighteen long; they were all carefully numbered and closely covered with writing, so legible that Dantès could easily read it, as well as make out the sense—it being in Italian, a language he, as a Provençal, perfectly understood.
“There!” said he, “there is the work complete—I wrote the word finis at the end of the last page about a week ago. I have torn up two of my shirts, and as many handkerchiefs as I was master of, to complete the precious pages. Should I ever get out of prison, and find a printer courageous enough to publish what I have composed, my literary reputation is for ever secured.”
“I see,” answered Dantès. “Now let me behold the curious pens with which you have written your work.”
“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 abbé had before spoken to Dantès—it was pointed, and divided at the nib like an ordinary pen.
Dantès examined it with intense admiration; then looked around to see the instrument with which it had been shaped so correctly into form.
“Ah, I see!” said Faria; “you are wondering where I found my penknife, are not you? Well, I must confess that I look upon that article of my ingenuity as the very perfection of all my handiworks. I made it, as well as this knife, out of an old iron candlestick.” The penknife was sharp and keen as a razor;—as for the other knife, it possessed the double advantage of being capable of serving either as a dagger or a knife.
Dantès examined the various articles shown to him with the same attention 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.”
“There is one thing puzzles me still,” observed Dantès, “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 a beneficent Creator has supplied man with intelligence and ability to supply the want of the power you allude to. I furnished myself with a light quite as good as that possessed by the cat.”
“You did?—Pray tell me how.”
“I separated the fat from the meat served to me, melted it, and made a most capital oil; here is my lamp.” So saying, the abbé exhibited a sort of vessel very similar to those employed upon the occasion of public illuminations.
“But how do you procure a light?”
“Oh, here are two flints, and a morsel of burnt linen.”
“And your matches?”
“Were easily prepared,—I feigned a disorder of the skin, and asked for a little sulphur, which was readily supplied.”
Dantès laid the different things he had been looking at gently on the table, and stood with his head drooping on his breast, as though overwhelmed by the persevering spirit and strength of character developed in each fresh trait of his new-found friend’s conduct.
“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, and then you shall see what else I have to display.”
Dantès helped him to replace the stone as they first found it; the abbé 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.
Dantès 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?” asked Dantès.
“No one but myself. I tore up several of my shirts, and unravelled the sheets of my bed, during my three years’ imprisonment at Fenestrelle; and when I was removed to the Château 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 abbé, as, opening his ragged vestments, he showed Dantès 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 Dantès was, in fact, busily occupied by the idea that a person so intelligent, ingenious, and clear-sighted as the abbé, might probably be enabled to dive into the dark recesses of his own misfortunes, and cause that light to shine upon the mystery connected with them he had in vain sought to elicit.
“What are you thinking of?” asked the abbé 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 Dantès, “upon the enormous degree of intelligence and ability you must have employed to reach the high perfection to which you have attained;—if you thus surpass all mankind while but a prisoner, what would you not have accomplished free?”
“Possibly nothing at all;—the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; it needs trouble and difficulty and danger to hollow out various mysterious and hidden mines of human intelligence. Pressure is required, you know, to ignite powder: captivity has collected into one single focus all the floating faculties of my mind; they have come into close contact in the narrow space in which they have been wedged, and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced—from electricity comes the lightning, from whose flash we have light amid our greatest darkness.”
“Alas, no!” replied Dantès; “I know not that these things follow in such natural order. Oh, I am very ignorant; and you must be blessed, indeed, to possess the knowledge you have.”
The abbé smiled. “Well,” said he, “but you had another subject for your thoughts besides admiration for me; 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