Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 1).djvu/110

90 four gendarmes. He had advanced at first, but stopped at sight of this fresh accession of force.

"Are you come to fetch me?" asked he.

"Yes," replied a gendarme.

"By the orders of the deputy of the king's procureur?"

"I believe so."

"Well," said Dantès, "I am ready to follow you."

The conviction that they came from M. de Villefort relieved all Dantès' apprehensions; he advanced calmly, and placed himself in the center of the escort. A carriage waited at the street door, the coach man was on the box, and an exempt seated behind him.

"Is this carriage for me?" said Dantès.

"It is for you," replied a gendarme.

Dantès was about to speak, but feeling himself urged forward, and having neither the power nor the intention to resist, he mounted the steps, and was in an instant seated inside between two gendarmes; the two others took their places opposite, and the carriage rolled heavily over the stones.

The prisoner glanced at the windows—they were grated; he had changed his prison for another that was conveying him he knew not whither. Through the close-barred grating, however, Dantès saw they were passing through the Rue Caisserie, and by the Quay Saint-Laurent and the Rue Taramis, to the quay. Soon he saw, through the grating of the coach and the railing of the edifice, the gleam of the lights of La Consigne.

The carriage stopped, the exempt descended, approached the guard house, a dozen soldiers came out and formed themselves in order; Dantès saw the reflection of their muskets by the light of the lamps on the quay.

"Can all this military force be summoned on my account?" thought he.

The exempt opened the door, which was locked, and, without speaking a word, answered Dantès' question; for he saw between the ranks of the soldiers a passage formed from the carriage to the port. The two gendarmes who were opposite to him descended first, then he was ordered to alight, and the gendarmes on each side of him followed his example. They advanced toward a boat, which a custom-house officer held near the quay by a chain.

The soldiers looked at Dantès with an air of stupid curiosity. In an instant he was placed in the stern-sheets of the boat, between the gendarmes, whilst the exempt stationed himself at the bow; a shove sent the boat adrift, and four sturdy oarsmen impelled it rapidly toward the Pilon. At a shout from the boat, the chain that closes the