Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 5).djvu/299

 "What will you pay if I give you some bread and water?"

"I've no money."

"You have sixteen millions and more," rejoined Allut; and he gave Picaud such details respecting the deposits of his funds in England, Germany, Italy, and France, that the miser felt his whole body shiver.

"You are dreaming!"

"You may dream, then, that you are eating."

Allut went away and remained absent all the night; about seven in the morning he returned and had breakfast. The sight of the viands redoubled Picaud's torments of hunger.

"Give me something to eat!" he said.

"What will you pay if I give you some bread and water?"

"Nothing."

"Well, we'll see who is tired first!"

And he went away again.

He returned at three in the afternoon; Picaud had had no food for twenty-eight hours, and implored pity from his jailer, to whom he offered twenty sous for a pound of bread.

"Listen!" said Allut, "here are my terms. I will give you something to eat twice a day, and you will pay for each meal twenty-five thousand francs."

Picaud groaned, and writhed on his bed, while the other remained motionless.

"This is my last word. Choose; take your time. You had no pity on your friends; I will be pitiless toward you!"

The wretched prisoner passed the rest of the day and the following night in the rage of hunger and despair; his moral anguish reached its climax; hell was in his heart. His sufferings were such that he was seized with tetanus, as if the nerves were torn; his head wandered, the rays of heavenly intelligence were extinguished beneath this flood of passions carried to their furthest limit. Allut, pitiless as he was, was quick to perceive that the human frame could be tortured too much; his old friend was no longer capable of discernment; he was a mere machine, still sensible to physical pain, but incapable of fighting against it or repelling it. He had to renounce his hope of getting a word from him. Allut fell into despair at the thought that if Picaud died no means were left by which he could get hold of his victim's immense property. In his rage he struck himself, but detecting a diabolical smile on the livid face of Picaud, he flung himself on him like a wild beast, bit him, stabbed his eyes, disemboweled him, and then, rushing from the spot, left Paris and crossed to England.

In that country he fell sick, in 1828, and confessed to a French Catholic priest. In his repentance for his crimes he dictated to the