Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 1).djvu/190

170 Dantès had but one resource, which was to break the jug, and with one of the sharp fragments attack the wall. He let the jug fall on his floor, and it broke in pieces.

Dantès concealed two or three of the sharpest fragments in his bed, leaving the rest on the floor. The breaking of his jug was too natural an accident to excite suspicion. Edmond had all the night to work in, but in the darkness he could not do much, and he soon felt his instrument was blunted against something hard; he pushed back his bed and awaited the day,—with hope, patience had returned.

All night he heard the subterranean workman, who continued to mine his way. The day came, the jailer entered. Dantès told him the jug had fallen from his hands in drinking, and the jailer went grumblingly to fetch another, without giving himself the trouble to remove the fragments of the broken one. He returned speedily, recommended the prisoner to be more careful, and departed.

Dantès heard joyfully the key grate in the lock—a sound that hitherto had chilled him to the heart. He listened until the sound of steps died away, and then, hastily displacing his bed, saw, by the faint light that penetrated into his cell, that he had labored uselessly the previous evening in attacking the stone instead of removing the plaster that surrounded it.

The damp had rendered it friable, and Dantès saw joyfully the plaster detach itself, in small morsels, it is true; but at the end of half an hour he had scraped off a handful. A mathematician might have calculated that in two years, supposing that the rock was not encountered, a passage, twenty feet long and two feet square, might be formed.

The prisoner reproached himself with not having thus employed the hours he had passed in hopes, prayers, and despair. In six years, the time he had been confined, what might he not have accomplished!

This idea imparted new energy, and in three days he had succeeded, with the utmost precaution, in removing the cement and exposing the stone; the wall was formed of rough stones, to give solidity to which were imbedded, at intervals, blocks of hewn stone. It was one of these he had uncovered, and which he must remove from its socket.

Dantès strove to do so with his nails, but they were too weak. The fragments of the jug broke, and after an hour of useless toil, Dan paused with anguish on his brow.

Was he to be thus stopped at the beginning, and was he to wait inactive until his fellow-workman had completed his toils! Suddenly an idea occurred to him,—he smiled, and the perspiration dried on his forehead.