Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 3).djvu/270

250 discovered the chest, and supposing it to be a treasure, had intended carrying it off; but, perceiving his error, had dug another hole and deposited it; but there was nothing. Then the idea struck me that he had not taken these precautions, and had simply thrown it in a corner. In the last case I must wait for daylight to make my research. I regained the room and waited."

"Oh, Heaven!"

"When daylight dawned I went down again. My first visit was the thicket. I hoped to find some traces which had escaped me in the dark. I had turned up the earth over a surface of more than twenty feet square, and a depth of two feet. A laborer would not have done in a day what occupied me an hour. But I could find nothing―absolutely nothing. Then I renewed the search. Supposing it had been thrown aside, it would probably be on the path which led to the little gate; but this examination was as useless as the first, and with a bursting heart I returned to the thicket, which now contained no hope for me."

"Oh," cried Madame Danglars, "it was enough to drive you mad!"

"I hoped for a moment that it might," said Villefort; "but that happiness was denied me. However, recovering my strength and my ideas, 'Why,' said I, 'should that man have carried away the corpse?'"

"But you said," replied Madame Danglars, "he would require it as proof."

"Ah, no, madame, that could not be. Dead bodies are not kept a year; they are shown to a magistrate, and the evidence is taken. Now, nothing of the kind has happened."

"What then?" asked Hermine, trembling violently.

"Something more terrible, more fatal, more alarming for us! the― child was, perhaps, alive, and the assassin may have saved it!"

Madame Danglars uttered a piercing cry, and, seizing Yillefort's hands, exclaimed:

"My child was alive!"―"you buried my child alive! You were not certain my child was dead, and you buried it. Ah"

Madame Danglars had risen and stood before the procureir, whose hands she wrung in her feeble grasp.

"I know not; I merely say this, as I might say anything else," replied Villefort, with a look so fixed, it indicated that this powerful mind was on the verge of despair and madness.

"Ah, my child, my poor child!" cried the baroness, falling on her chair, and stifling her sobs in her handkerchief. Villefort, becoming somewhat re-assured, perceived that to avert the maternal storm gathering over his head he must inspire Madame Danglars with the terror he felt.