Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 1).djvu/217

Rh mous degree of intelligence you must have employed to reach the high perfection to which you have attained. What would you not have accomplished free?"

"Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would have evaporated in follies; it needs trouble to hollow out various mysterious mines of human intelligence. Pressure is required, you know, to crush the beam: captivity has collected into one single focus all the floating faculties of my mind; they have come into close contact in the narrow space; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced—from electricity the lightning, from whose flash we have light."

"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 was this: that while you had related to me all the particulars of your past life, you were perfectly unacquainted with mine."

"Your life, my young friend, has not been of sufficient length to admit of any very important events."

"It admits of a terrible misfortune which I have not deserved. I would fain know who has been the author of it, that I may no longer accuse Heaven, as I have done, but charge men with my woes."

"Then you profess ignorance of the crime with which you are charged?"

"I do, indeed; and this I swear by the two beings most dear to me upon earth—my father and Mercédès."

"Come," said the abbé, closing his hiding-place, and pushing the bed back to its original situation, "let me hear your story."

Dantès obeyed, and commenced what he called his history, but which consisted only of the account of a voyage to India, and two or three in the Levant, until he arrived at the recital of his last cruise, with the death of Captain Leclere, and the receipt of a packet to be delivered by himself to the grand-maréchal; his interview with that personage, and his receiving, in place of the packet brought, a letter addressed to M. Noirtier; his arrival at Marseilles, and interview with his father; his affection for Mercédès, and their nuptial fête; his arrest and subsequent examination in the temporary prison of the Palais de Justice, ending in his final imprisonment in the Château d'If.