英语小说网

Dantès embraced this new friend for whom he had waited so long and with such impatience, and drew him over to the window, so that the faint light that seeped from outside into the cell would illuminate his face.

He was short in stature, with hair whitened by suffering more than by age, a penetrating eye hidden beneath thick, grizzled brows, and a still-black beard that extended to his chest. The leanness of his face, which was deeply furrowed, and the firm moulding of his features implied a man more accustomed to exercise his spiritual than his physical faculties. This newcomer's brow was bathed in sweat.

He appeared to be at least sixty-five, though some agility in his movements suggested that he might be younger than he appeared after his long captivity.

He showed a kind of pleasure on receiving the young man's effusions: for a moment, a soul chilled to its depth seemed to be heated and to melt in contact with the other's ardour. He thanked him with some warmth for his cordiality, though he must have been deeply disappointed at finding another dungeon where he had expected to find freedom.

As for his clothes, their original form was impossible to make out, for they were in tatters.

"This stone was very crudely cut out," he said, shaking his head. "Don't you have any tools?"

"Fifty feet!" Dantès cried, in a kind of terror.

"I should be most curious to see these products of your patient efforts," Dantès said.

"I have made myself a few. Apart from a file, I have everything I need: chisel, pliers, a lever."

"Well then, to start with, here is a chisel." He showed him a strong, sharpened blade fixed in a beechwood handle.

"How did you make that?" Dantès asked.

"Keep your voice down, young man, keep your voice down. They often listen at the prisoners' doors."

"First of all," he said, "let us see if we can disguise the traces of my entry from your jailers. All our future peace of mind depends on their not knowing what has happened."

"From one of the pegs from my bed. This is the tool with which I dug almost the whole of the passage that brought me here -- roughly fifty feet."

He bent down towards the opening, took the stone, which he lifted easily despite its weight, and put it back into the hole.

"Do you have any?" Dantès asked in astonishment.

"No matter."

"They know that I am alone."

"Yes, that is approximately the distance between my cell and yours. But I miscalculated the curve, not having any geometrical instrument with which to draw up a relative scale: instead of a forty-foot ellipse, the measurement was fifty feet. As I told you, I was expecting to reach the outer wall, break through it and throw myself into the sea. I followed the line of the corridor that runs outside your room, instead of going underneath it -- and all my labour is in vain, because this corridor leads to a courtyard full of guards."

"Of course -- but, to start with, one of them is solid rock: it would take ten miners, fully equipped, ten years' work to cut through it. This one here must be contiguous with the foundations of the governor's quarters: we should break into cellars, which are clearly locked, and be recaptured. The other wall… Wait a moment, what is beyond the other wall?"

"True," said Dantès. "But this corridor only touches on one wall of my room, and there are four of them."

"You are telling me that you dug fifty feet to reach me here?"

Dantès obeyed, climbed on to the table and, guessing his companion's intentions, pressed his back against the wall and held out his cupped hands. The man who had taken the number of his cell -- and whose true name Dantès still did not know -- climbed up with more agility than one might have expected from a man of his age, like a cat or a lizard, first on to the table, then from the table on to Dantès' hands, then from his hands on to his shoulders. Bent double, because the roof of the dungeon prevented him from standing upright, he thrust his head between the first row of bars and in that way could see outside and downwards.

This side of the dungeon was the one with the tiny window through which the daylight shone: the opening narrowed progressively as it went towards the light. Even though a child could not have passed through it, it was furnished with three rows of iron bars, which would have reassured the most distrustful jailer as to the impossibility of escape.

As he asked the question, the newcomer pulled the table over to the window.

"Climb up here," he told Dantès.

"So, what now?"

"I saw the shako of a soldier and the tip of his rifle: I jumped back quickly because I was afraid he might see me."

"Well?" Dantès asked.

"What did you guess?" the young man asked anxiously, jumping down after him.

And he slipped down past Dantès on to the table and from there jumped to the ground.

"Now, tell me who you are," Dantès said.

The old prisoner thought for a while, then said: "Yes, that's it. The fourth wall of your dungeon overlooks a gallery on the outside of the castle, a sort of walkway along which patrols can march or sentries keep watch."

"You can clearly see that it is impossible to escape through your cell."

"Are you sure?"

"So, let God's will be done," said the old prisoner, a look of profound resignation crossing his face. With a mixture of astonishment and admiration, Dantès looked at this man who, with such philosophical resignation, could give up the hope that he had nurtured for so long.

Immediately, he drew his head back sharply. "Oh, oh!" he said. "I guessed as much."

"You can console me and support me, because you seem to me a person of exceptional strength."

"Why, yes, I will if you like and if it still interests you, now that I can no longer be of any use to you."

The abbé smiled sadly.

"No, Louis XVIII."

"I am Abbé Faria. I have been a prisoner in the Château d'If since 1811, as you already know, but I spent three years before that in the fortress of Fenestrelle. In 1811 I was transferred from Piedmont to France. Then it was that I learned that Fate -- who at the time appeared to be his servant -- had given Napoleon a son and that while still in his cradle this child had been named King of Rome. At that time I could never have guessed what you told me a moment ago: that four years later the colossus would be overturned. So who rules in France? Napoleon II?"

Dantès looked at this man, who had momentarily forgotten his own fate so that he might contemplate that of the world.

"Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI! Heaven's decrees are shrouded in mystery. Why did Providence choose to bring down the one whom she had raised up, and raise the one she had brought down?"

"Yes, indeed, yes," he went on. "It is just as in England: after Charles I, Cromwell; after Cromwell, Charles II. Then perhaps after James II, some son-in-law or other, some relative, some Prince of Orange, a Stathouder who will appoint himself king. And then: new concessions to the people, a constitution, liberty! You will see all this, young man," he said, turning to Dantès and examining him with deep, shining eyes, like those of a prophet. "You are still young enough, you will see this."

"Yes, if I ever get out of here."

"That's true," said Abbé Faria. "We are prisoners. Sometimes I forget it and, because my eyes penetrate the walls that enclose me, think myself at liberty."

"Me? Because in 1807 I dreamed up the plan that Napoleon tried to carry out in 1811; because, like Machiavelli, I wanted a single, great empire, solid and strong, to emerge from all those petty principalities that make Italy a swarm of tyrannical but feeble little kingdoms; because I thought I had discovered my Cesare Borgia in a royal simpleton who pretended to agree with me, the better to betray me. This was the ambition of Alexander VI and Clement VII. It will always fail, because they tried in vain, and even Napoleon could not succeed. Without any doubt, Italy is accursed." He bowed his head.

"But why are you imprisoned?"

Dantès could not understand how a man could risk his life in such a cause. He did, indeed, know Napoleon, since he had seen and spoken to him, but on the other hand he had no idea who Clement VII and Alexander VI were. He was beginning to share the opinion of his jailer, which was that generally held in the Château d"If. "Aren't you the priest who is said to be… ill?"

"You mean, who is thought to be mad?"

"Yes," Faria went on, with a bitter laugh. "Yes, I am the one they think is mad. I am the one who has for so long entertained visitors to the prison and who would amuse the little children if there were any in this sojourn of hopeless agony."

"I can see that escape is impossible. It is a rebellion against God to attempt something that God does not wish to be achieved."

"But why be discouraged? It would be asking too much of Providence if you were to expect to succeed at the first attempt. Why not start out again in a different direction?"

For a short time Dantès did not move or speak. "So, you have abandoned any idea of escape?"

"I didn't like to say it," Dantès replied, smiling.

"Can you imagine what I have done so far, you who speak about beginning again? Do you realize that it took me four years to make the tools that I have? Do you realize that for the past two years I have been digging and scraping in earth as hard as granite? Do you know that I have had to lay bare stones that I would never previously have thought I could shift, that whole days were spent in these titanic efforts and that, by the evening, I was happy when I had removed a square inch of the old mortar, which had become as hard as the stone itself? Do you realize that to accommodate all the soil and all the stones that I dug up, I had to break through into a stairway and bury the rubble bit by bit in the stairwell; and that the well is now full so that I could not fit another handful of dust into it? Finally, do you realize that I thought my labours were at an end, that I felt I had just enough strength to complete the task, and that God has now not only set back my goal but removed it, I know not where? Oh, let me tell you, and repeat it: I shall not take another step to try and regain my freedom, since God's will is for me to have lost it for ever."

Edmond lowered his head, so that the man would not perceive that the joy of having a companion was preventing him from sympathizing, as he should, with the prisoner's torment at his failure to escape. Abbé Faria slumped down on Edmond's bed, while Edmond remained standing.

The young man had never thought about escape. There are things that seem so impossible that one instinctively avoids them and doesn't even consider attempting them. To dig fifty feet beneath the ground, to spend three years on this task, only to arrive -- if you were successful -- at a sheer precipice above the sea; to descend fifty, sixty, perhaps a hundred feet, only to fall and crush your head against the rocks -- if the sentries had not already shot you; and, even supposing you managed to evade all these dangers, to be faced with swimming a distance of a league -- all this was too much for one not to resign oneself; and, as we have seen already, Dantès had almost resigned himself to the point of death.

But now that he had seen an old man clasping on to life with such energy and giving him the example of such desperate resolve, he started to reflect and to measure his courage. Another man had attempted to do something that he had not even thought of doing; another, less young, less strong and less agile than himself, had succeeded, by sheer skill and patience, in acquiring all the implements he needed for this incredible task, which had failed only because of a failure of measurement; someone else had done all this, so nothing was impossible for Dantès. Faria had dug fifty feet, he would dig a hundred; Faria, at the age of fifty, had spent three years on the work; he was only half Faria's age, he could afford six; Faria, the priest, the learned churchman, had not shrunk from the prospect of swimming from the Château d'If to the islands of Daume, Ratonneau or Lemaire; so would he, Edmond the sailor, Dantès the bold swimmer, who had so often plunged to the bottom of the sea to fetch a branch of coral -- would he shrink from swimming a league? How long did it take to swim a league: one hour? And had he not spent whole hours on end in the sea without setting foot on shore? No, Dantès needed only to be encouraged by example. Anything that another man had done or could have done, Dantès would do.

He thought for a moment. "I have found what you were looking for," he told the old man.

"At the most."

Faria shivered, and looked up with an expression that announced that if Dantès was telling the truth, his companion's despair would be short-lived. "You?" he asked. "Come, now, what have you found?"

"Yes."

"One moment," the abbé replied. "My good friend, you do not realize the nature of my resolve or the use that I intend to make of my strength. As for patience, I have been patient enough, in resuming every morning the work that I left the night before, and, every night, that which I left in the morning. But you must understand this, young man: I thought that I was serving God by freeing one of His creatures who, being innocent, had not been condemned."

"The tunnel that you dug to reach here from your own cell extends in the same direction as the outer gallery. Is that so?"

"It can only be some fifteen feet away from it?"

"Well, around the middle of this tunnel we will dig another at right-angles to it. This time, you will take your measurements more carefully. We will come out on to the exterior gallery. We shall kill the sentry and escape. All we need, for this plan to succeed, is resolve, and you have that; and strength, which I have. I say nothing of patience: you have demonstrated it already and I shall do the same."

"No, and I do not wish to become so. Up to now, I thought I was dealing only with things, but you are suggesting that I deal with men. I can cut through a wall and destroy a staircase, but I shall not cut through a man's breast and destroy his life."

Dantès made a small gesture of surprise and said: "Do you mean that, when you might be free, you would be deterred by such considerations?"

"I never thought of doing it."

"What of you?" asked Faria. "Why have you never bludgeoned your jailer one evening with the leg of your table, then put on his clothes and tried to escape?"

"Well, then," said Dantès. "What is different now; have you found yourself guilty since you met me?"

"Because you have an instinctive horror at the idea of such a crime, to the point where it has never even entered your head," the old man continued. "For, in simple and permitted matters, our natural appetites warn us not to exceed the boundaries of what is permissible for us. The tiger, which spills blood in the natural course of things, because this is its state of being, its destiny, needs only for its sense of smell to inform it that a prey is within reach; immediately it leaps towards this prey, falls on it and tears it apart. That is its instinct, which it obeys. But mankind, on the contrary, is repelled by blood. It is not the laws of society that condemn murder, but the laws of nature."

"Moreover," Faria went on, "in the course of nearly twelve years that I have spent in prison, I have mentally gone over all famous escapes; only very rarely do they succeed. Fortunate escapes, those which succeed fully, are the ones that have been prepared carefully and over a long period of time. That is how the Duc de Beaufort escaped from the Château de Vincennes, Abbé Dubuquoi from the Fort-l'Evêque, Latude from the Bastille. There are also some opportunities that occur by chance; those are the best. Let us await such an opportunity and, believe me, if it comes, let us take advantage of it."

"I did other things as well."

"What were they?"

"I wrote or I studied."

"You were able to wait," said Dantès, sighing. "This long labour occupied your every moment and, when you did not have that to distract you, you were consoled by hope."

Dantès was struck dumb: this was indeed the explanation of what had gone on, without him knowing it, in his mind -- or, rather, in his soul: some thoughts come from the head, others from the heart.

"You have written it?"

"You make paper, pens and ink?" Dantès exclaimed.

"Do they give you paper, pens and ink, then?"

"When you come to visit me," he said, "I shall show you a whole book, the product of the thoughts, the research and meditations of my entire life, which I contemplated writing in the shadow of the Colosseum in Rome, beneath the column of St Mark's in Venice, on the banks of the Arno in Florence -- and which I never suspected that my jailers would one day leave me ample time to complete between the four walls of the Château d'If. It is a Treatise on the Prospects for a General Monarchy in Italy. It will make one large in-quarto volume."

"No," said the abbé, "but I make them for myself."

"Yes."

Dantès looked admiringly at the man, but found it hard to credit what he was saying. Faria noticed this shadow of a doubt.

"So you are a chemist…"

"On two shirts. I have invented a preparation that makes linen as smooth and even as parchment."

"A little. I knew Lavoisier and I am a friend of Cabanis."

"But that must mean you know several languages?"

"In Rome, I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library. By reading and re-reading them, I discovered that one hundred and fifty books, carefully chosen, give you, if not a complete summary of human knowledge, at least everything that it is useful for a man to know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and re-reading these hundred and fifty volumes, so that when I was arrested I knew them more or less by heart. In prison, with a slight effort of memory, I recalled them entirely. So I can recite to you Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Strada, Jornadès, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli and Bossuet; I mention only the most important…"

"You are studying it?" Dantès exclaimed.

"I speak five living languages: German, French, Italian, English and Spanish. I can understand modern Greek with the help of Ancient Greek, but I speak it poorly; I am studying it now."

"But, for such a work, you must have needed to do historical research. Do you have any books?"

Increasingly astonished, Edmond began to consider this man's faculties almost supernatural. He wanted to catch him out on some point or other, so he went on: "But if they did not give you a pen, with what did you manage to write this huge treatise?"

"I made very good pens, which would be found superior to ordinary ones if the substance was known, out of the soft bones from the heads of those big whiting that they sometimes serve us on fast days. In this way, I always looked forward to Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, because they offered me at least a hope of increasing my stock of pens. I have to admit that my historical work is my favourite occupation. When I go back to the past, I forget the present. I walk free and independently through history, and forget that I am a prisoner."

"Yes, I have compiled a vocabulary of the words that I know and have arranged them, combined them, turned them one way, then the other, so as to make them sufficient to express my thoughts. I know about one thousand words, which is all I absolutely need, though I believe there are a hundred thousand in dictionaries. Of course I shall not be a polished speaker, but I shall make myself understood perfectly, which is good enough."

"But ink?" Dantès asked. "How did you make ink?"

"There used to be a chimney in my dungeon," Faria said. "This chimney was doubtless blocked up some time before my arrival but, previously, fires had been built there for many years, so the whole of the inside was coated with soot. I dissolve the soot in part of the wine that they give me every Sunday, and it makes excellent ink. For particular notes which must stand out from the text, I prick my fingers and write with my blood."

"And when can I see all this?" Dantès asked.

"At once! At once!" the young man exclaimed.

"Whenever you wish," Faria replied.

"Then follow me," said the abbé; and he disappeared down the underground passage. Dantès followed him.