Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 5).djvu/224

204 "Could the prisoners see each other?" he asked.

"Oh! no, sir, it was expressly forbidden; but they eluded the vigilance of the guards, and made a passage from one dungeon to the other?"

"And which of them made the passage?"

"Oh, it must have been the young man, certainly, for he was strong and industrious, while the abbé was aged and weak; besides, his mind was too vacillating to allow him to carry out an idea."

"Blind fools!" murmured the count.

"However, be that as it may, the young man made a passage, how, or by what means, no one knows; but he made it, and there is the trace yet remaining of the proof. Do you see it?" And the man held the torch to the wall.

"Ah! yes; truly," said the count, in a voice hoarse from emotion.

"The result was, the two men communicated together; how long they did so, nobody knows. One day the old man fell ill and died. Now guess what the young man did?"

"Go on!"

"He carried off the corpse, which he placed in his own bed with its face to the wall; then he entered the empty dungeon, closed the entrance, and slid himself into the sack which had contained the dead body. Did you ever hear of such an idea?"

Monte-Cristo closed his eyes, and seemed again to experience all the sensations he had felt when the coarse canvas, yet moist with the cold dews of death, had touched his face.

The jailer continued:

"Now this was his project; he fancied they buried the dead at the Château-d'If, and imagining they would not expend much labor on the grave of a prisoner, he calculated on raising the earth with his shoulders; but unfortunately, their arrangements at the château frustrated his projects; they never buried their dead; they merely attached a heavy cannon-ball to the feet, and then threw them into the sea. This is what was done. The young man was thrown from the top of the gallery; the corpse was found on the bed next day, and the whole truth was guessed; for the men who performed the office then mentioned what they had not dared to speak of before, namely, that at the moment the corpse was thrown into the deep, they heard a shriek, which was almost immediately stifled by the water in which it disappeared."

The count breathed with difficulty; the cold drops ran down his forehead, and his heart was full of anguish.

"No," he muttered, "the doubt I felt was but the commencement of forgetfulness; but here the wound reopens, and the heart again thirsts for vengeance. And the prisoner," he continued aloud, "was he ever heard of afterward?"