Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 1).djvu/224

204 "I must be alone, to think over all this."

When he regained his dungeon, he threw himself on his bed, where the turnkey found him at his evening visit, sitting with fixed gaze and contracted features, still and motionless as a statue; but, during these hours of deep meditation, which to him had seemed but as minutes, he had formed a fearful resolution, and bound himself to its fulfillment by a solemn oath.

Dantès was at length roused from his reverie by the voice of Faria, who, having also been visited by his jailer, had come to invite his fellow-sufferer to share his supper. The reputation of being out of his mind, though harmlessly and even amusingly so, had procured for the abbé greater privileges than were allowed to prisoners in general. He was supplied with bread of a finer, whiter description than the usual prison fare, and each Sunday with a small quantity of wine; the present day chanced to be Sunday, and the abbé came, delighted at having such luxuries to offer his new friend.

Dantès followed him; his features had lost their contraction, and now wore their usual expression; but there was that in his whole appearance that bespoke one who had come to a fixed resolve. Faria bent on him his penetrating eye.

"I regret now," said he, "having helped you in your late inquiries, or having given you the information I did."

"Why so?" inquired Dantès.

"Because it has instilled a new passion in your heart—that of vengeance."

A bitter smile played over the features of the young man. "Let us talk of something else," said he.

Again the abbé looked at him, then mournfully shook his head; but, in accordance with Dantès' request, he began to speak of other matters. The elder prisoner was one of those persons whose conversation, like that of all who have experienced many trials, contained many useful hints as well as sound information; but it was never egotistical, for the unfortunate man never alluded to his own sorrows. Dantès listened with admiring attention to all he said; some of his remarks corresponded with what he already knew, or applied to the sort of knowledge his nautical life had enabled him to acquire. A part of the good abbé's words, however, were wholly incomprehensible to him; but, like those auroras boreales which light the navigators in northern latitudes, they sufficed to open to the inquiring mind of the listener fresh views and new horizons, illumined by the meteoric flash, enabling him justly to estimate the delight an intellectual mind would have in following this towering spirit in all the giddiest heights of science, moral, social, or philosophical.