Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 1).djvu/214

194 Faria then drew forth from his hiding-place three or four rolls of linen, laid one over the other like the folds of papyrus. These rolls con sisted of slips of cloth about four inches wide and eighteen long; they were all carefully numbered and closely covered with writing, so legible that Dantes 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 sixty-eighth strip 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 to publish what I have composed, my reputation is 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 abbe 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. "My penknife? That was a master-piece! 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; and I only just make it 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 his wants. I furnished myself with a light."

"You did?"

"I separated the fat from the meat served to me, melted it, and made a sort of oil—here is my lamp." So saying, the abbe exhibited a sort