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Rh "I was merely called to see him when on his dying-bed, that I might administer to him the consolations of religion."

"And of what did he die?" asked Caderousse in a choking voice.

"Of what, think you, do men die in prison, when they die in their

thirtieth year, unless it be of the prison itself?" Caderousse wiped away the large beads of perspiration that gathered on his brow.

"But the strangest part of the story is," resumed the abbé, that"that [sic] Dantès, even in his dying moments, swore by his crucified Redeemer that he was utterly ignorant of the cause of his imprisonment."

"And so he was," murmured Caderousse. "How should he have