Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 5).djvu/222

202 "Sir, we have reached the shore."

Monte-Cristo remembered that on that very spot, on the same rock, he had been violently dragged by the guards, who forced him to ascend the slope at the points of their bayonets. The journey had seemed very long to Dantès, but Monte-Cristo found it equally short. Each stroke of the oar seemed to reawaken a new crowd of ideas, which sprang up with the froth of the sea.

There had been no prisoners confined in the Château-d'If since the revolution of July; it was only inhabited by a guard placed for the prevention of smuggling. A concierge waited at the door to exhibit this monument of curiosity to visitors, once a scene of terror. Still, although he was acquainted with all these details, when he passed beneath the vaulted archway, and descended the dark stairs leading to the dungeons he had asked to see, an icy pallor overspread his cheek, and drove back a chilly perspiration to his very heart.

The count inquired whether any of the ancient jailers were still there; but they had all been pensioned, or had passed on to some other employment. The concierge who conducted him had only been there since 1830. He visited his own dungeon. He again beheld the dull light vainly endeavoring to penetrate the narrow opening. His eyes rested upon the spot where his bed, since then removed, had stood, and behind the bed the new stones indicated where the breach made by the Abbé Faria had been. Monte-Cristo felt his limbs tremble; he seated himself upon a log of wood.

"Are there any stories connected with this prison besides the one relating to the imprisonment of Mirabeau?" asked the count; "are there any traditions respecting these dismal abodes, in which it is difficult to believe men can ever have imprisoned their fellow-creatures?"

"Yes, sir;" replied the man, "indeed, the jailer Antoine told me one connected with this very dungeon."

Monte-Cristo shuddered; Antoine had been his jailer. He had almost forgotten his name and face, but on hearing the former pronounced, memory recalled his person as he used to see it, his face encircled by a beard, wearing a brown jacket, with the bunch of keys, the jingling of which he still seemed to hear. The count turned round, and fancied he saw him in the corridor, rendered still darker by the torch carried by the concierge.

"Would you like to hear the story, sir?"

"Yes, relate it," said Monte-Cristo, pressing his hand to his heart to still its violent beatings: he felt afraid of hearing his own history.

"This dungeon," said the concierge, "was, it appears, a long time ago occupied by a very dangerous prisoner, the more so since he was full of