Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 5).djvu/248

 

E awake from every sleep except the one dreaded by Danglars. He awoke. To a Parisian accustomed to silken curtains, walls is 4 hung with velvet drapery, and the soft perfume which rises from the burning wood in fireplaces, or falls from satin canopies, the appearance of the whitewashed cell which greeted his eyes on awaking seemed like the continuation of some disagreeable dream. At the touch of the goat-skin coverlet he fancied he was dreaming of Lapps and Samoides. But in such a situation a single moment suffices to change the strongest doubt into certainty.

"Yes, yes," he murmured, "I am in the hands of the brigands of whom Albert de Morcerf spoke." His first idea was to breathe, that he might know whether he was wounded. He borrowed this from "Don Quixote," the only book—not that he had ever read it—of which he still remembered anything.

"No," he cried, "they have not wounded, but perhaps they have robbed me!" and he thrust his hands into his pockets. They were untouched; the hundred louis he had reserved for his journey from Rome to Venice were in his trousers pocket, and in that of his great-coat he found the little note-case containing his letter of credit for five million fifty thousand francs.

"Singular bandits!" he exclaimed; "they have left me my purse and pocket-book. As I was saying last night, they intend me to be ransomed. Hello! here is my watch! Let me see what time it is."

Danglars' watch, one of Breguet's chefs-d'œuvre, which he had carefully wound up on the previous night, struck half-past five. Without this, Danglars would have been quite ignorant of the time, for daylight did not reach his cell. Should he demand an explanation from the bandits, or should he wait patiently for them to propose it? The last