Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 3).djvu/195

 

OT on the same night as he stated, but the next morning, the Count of Monte-Cristo went out by the Barrière d’Enfer, taking the road to Orléans. Leaving the village of Linas, without stopping at the telegraph, which, at the moment the count passed, threw out its long bony arms, he reached the tower of Montlhéry, situated, as every one knows, upon the highest point of the plain of that name. At the foot of the hill the count dismounted, and began to ascend the mountain by a little winding path, about eighteen inches wide; when he reached the summit he found himself stopped by a hedge, upon which green fruit had succeeded to red and white flowers.

Monte-Cristo looked for the door of the inclosure, and was not long in finding it. It was a little wooden gate, working on willow hinges, and fastened with a nail and string. The count soon understood its mechanism, and the door opened. He then found himself in a little garden, about twenty feet long by twelve wide, bounded on one side by part of the hedge, in which was formed the ingenious machine we have named a door; and on the other by the old tower, covered with ivy and studded with wild flowers.

No one would have thought, to have seen it thus wrinkled and yet adorned, like an old lady whose grandchildren come to greet her on her birthday, that it could have related some terrible scenes, if it could have added a voice to the menacing ears which an old proverb awards to walls.

The garden was crossed by a path of red gravel, edged by a border of thick box, of many years’ growth, and of a tone and color that would have delighted the heart of Delacroix, our modern Rubens. This path