"What?"
"That while the writing of different persons done with the right hand
varies, that performed with the left hand is invariably uniform."
"You have evidently seen and observed everything."
"Let us proceed."
"Oh, yes, yes!"
"Now as regards the second question."
"I am listening."
"Was there any person whose interest it was to prevent your marriage
with Mercedes?"
"Yes; a young man who loved her."
"And his name was"--
"Fernand."
"That is a Spanish name, I think?"
"He was a Catalan."
"You imagine him capable of writing the letter?"
"Oh, no; he would more likely have got rid of me by sticking a knife
into me."
"That is in strict accordance with the Spanish character; an
assassination they will unhesitatingly commit, but an act of cowardice,
never."
"Besides," said Dantes, "the various circumstances mentioned in the
letter were wholly unknown to him."
"You had never spoken of them yourself to any one?"
"To no one."
"Not even to your mistress?"
"No, not even to my betrothed."
"Then it is Danglars."
"I feel quite sure of it now."
"Wait a little. Pray, was Danglars acquainted with Fernand?"
"No--yes, he was. Now I recollect"--
"What?"
"To have seen them both sitting at table together under an arbor at Pere
Pamphile's the evening before the day fixed for my wedding. They were in
earnest conversation. Danglars was joking in a friendly way, but Fernand
looked pale and agitated."
"Were they alone?"
"There was a third person with them whom I knew perfectly well, and who
had, in all probability made their acquaintance; he was a tailor named
Caderousse, but he was very drunk. Stay!--stay!--How strange that it
should not have occurred to me before! Now I remember quite well, that
on the table round which they were sitting were pens, ink, and paper.
Oh, the heartless, treacherous scoundrels!" exclaimed Dantes, pressing
his hand to his throbbing brows.
"Is there anything else I can assist you in discovering, besides the
villany of your friends?" inquired the abbe with a laugh.
"Yes, yes," replied Dantes eagerly; "I would beg of you, who see so
completely to the depths of things, and to whom the greatest mystery
seems but an easy riddle, to explain to me how it was that I underwent
no second examination, was never brought to trial, and, above all, was
condemned without ever having had sentence passed on me?"
"That is altogether a different and more serious matter," responded the
abbe. "The ways of justice are frequently too dark and mysterious to
be easily penetrated. All we have hitherto done in the matter has been
child's play. If you wish me to enter upon the more difficult part of
the business, you must assist me by the most minute information on every
point."
"Pray ask me whatever questions you please; for, in good truth, you see
more clearly into my life than I do myself."
"In the first place, then, who examined you,--the king's attorney, his
deputy, or a magistrate?"
"The deputy."
"Was he young or old?"
"About six or seven and twenty years of age, I should say."
"So," answered the abbe. "Old enough to be ambitions, but too young to
be corrupt. And how did he treat you?"
"With more of mildness than severity."
"Did you tell him your whole story?"
"I did."
"And did his conduct change at all in the course of your examination?"
"He did appear much disturbed when he read the letter that had brought
me into this scrape. He seemed quite overcome by my misfortune."
"By your misfortune?"
"Yes."
"Then you feel quite sure that it was your misfortune he deplored?"
"He gave me one great proof of his sympathy, at any rate."
"And that?"
"He burnt the sole evidence that could at all have criminated me."
"What? the accusation?"
"No; the letter."
"Are you sure?"
"I saw it done."
"That alters the case. This man might, after all, be a greater scoundrel
than you have thought possible."
"Upon my word," said Dantes, "you make me shudder. Is the world filled
with tigers and crocodiles?"
"Yes; and remember that two-legged tigers and crocodiles are more
dangerous than the others."
"Never mind; let us go on."
"With all my heart! You tell me he burned the letter?"
"He did; saying at the same time, 'You see I thus destroy the only proof
existing against you.'"
"This action is somewhat too sublime to be natural."
"You think so?"
"I am sure of it. To whom was this letter addressed?"
"To M. Noirtier, No. 13 Coq-Heron, Paris."
"Now can you conceive of any interest that your heroic deputy could
possibly have had in the destruction of that letter?"
"Why, it is not altogether impossible he might have had, for he made me
promise several times never to speak of that letter to any one, assuring
me he so advised me for my own interest; and, more than this, he
insisted on my taking a solemn oath never to utter the name mentioned in
the address."
"Noirtier!" repeated the abbe; "Noirtier!--I knew a person of that
name at the court of the Queen of Etruria,--a Noirtier, who had been a
Girondin during the Revolution! What was your deputy called?"
"De Villefort!" The abbe burst into a fit of laughter, while Dantes
gazed on him in utter astonishment.
"What ails you?" said he at length.
"Do you see that ray of sunlight?"
"I do."
"Well, the whole thing is more clear to me than that sunbeam is to you.
Poor fellow! poor young man! And you tell me this magistrate expressed
great sympathy and commiseration for you?"
"He did."
"And the worthy man destroyed your compromising letter?"
"Yes."
"And then made you swear never to utter the name of Noirtier?"
"Yes."
"Why, you poor short-sighted simpleton, can you not guess who this
Noirtier was, whose very name he was so careful to keep concealed?
Noirtier was his father."
Had a thunderbolt fallen at the feet of Dantes, or hell opened its
yawning gulf before him, he could not have been more completely
transfixed with horror than he was at the sound of these unexpected
words. Starting up, he clasped his hands around his head as though to
prevent his very brain from bursting, and exclaimed, "His father! his
father!"
"Yes, his father," replied the abbe; "his right name was Noirtier de
Villefort." At this instant a bright light shot through the mind of
Dantes, and cleared up all that had been dark and obscure before.
The change that had come over Villefort during the examination, the
destruction of the letter, the exacted promise, the almost supplicating
tones of the magistrate, who seemed rather to implore mercy than to
pronounce punishment,--all returned with a stunning force to his memory.
He cried out, and staggered against the wall like a drunken man, then
he hurried to the opening that led from the abbe's cell to his own, and
said, "I must be alone, to think over all this."
When he regained his dungeon, he threw himself on his bed, where the
turnkey found him in the evening visit, sitting with fixed gaze and
contracted features, dumb and motionless as a statue. During these hours
of profound meditation, which to him had seemed only minutes, he had
formed a fearful resolution, and bound himself to its fulfilment by a
solemn oath.
Dantes was at length roused from his revery by the voice of Faria,
who, having also been visited by his jailer, had come to invite his
fellow-sufferer to share his supper. The reputation of being out of his
mind, though harmlessly and even amusingly so, had procured for the
abbe unusual privileges. He was supplied with bread of a finer, whiter
quality than the usual prison fare, and even regaled each Sunday with a
small quantity of wine. Now this was a Sunday, and the abbe had come to
ask his young companion to share the luxuries with him. Dantes followed;
his features were no longer contracted, and now wore their usual
expression, but there was that in his whole appearance that bespoke one
who had come to a fixed and desperate resolve. Faria bent on him his
penetrating eye: "I regret now," said he, "having helped you in your
late inquiries, or having given you the information I did."
"Why so?" inquired Dantes.
"Because it has instilled a new passion in your heart--that of
vengeance."
Dantes smiled. "Let us talk of something else," said he.
Again the abbe looked at him, then mournfully shook his head; but in
accordance with Dantes' request, he began to speak of other matters. The
elder prisoner was one of those persons whose conversation, like that
of all who have experienced many trials, contained many useful
and important hints as well as sound information; but it was never
egotistical, for the unfortunate man never alluded to his own sorrows.
Dantes listened with admiring attention to all he said; some of his
remarks corresponded with what he already knew, or applied to the sort
of knowledge his nautical life had enabled him to acquire. A part of the
good abbe's words, however, were wholly incomprehensible to him; but,
like the aurora which guides the navigator in northern latitudes, opened
new vistas to the inquiring mind of the listener, and gave fantastic
glimpses of new horizons, enabling him justly to estimate the delight an
intellectual mind would have in following one so richly gifted as Faria
along the heights of truth, where he was so much at home.
"You must teach me a small part of what you know," said Dantes, "if only
to prevent your growing weary of me. I can well believe that so learned
a person as yourself would prefer absolute solitude to being tormented
with the company of one as ignorant and uninformed as myself. If you
will only agree to my request, I promise you never to mention another
word about escaping." The abbe smiled. "Alas, my boy," said he, "human
knowledge is confined within very narrow limits; and when I have
taught you mathematics, physics, history, and the three or four modern
languages with which I am acquainted, you will know as much as I do
myself. Now, it will scarcely require two years for me to communicate to
you the stock of learning I possess."
"Two years!" exclaimed Dantes; "do you really believe I can acquire all
these things in so short a time?"
"Not their application, certainly, but their principles you may; to
learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory
makes the one, philosophy the other."
"But cannot one learn philosophy?"
"Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to
truth; it is like the golden cloud in which the Messiah went up into
heaven."
"Well, then," said Dantes, "What shall you teach me first? I am in a
hurry to begin. I want to learn."
"Everything," said the abbe. And that very evening the prisoners
sketched a plan of education, to be entered upon the following day.
Dantes possessed a prodigious memory, combined with an astonishing
quickness and readiness of conception; the mathematical turn of his
mind rendered him apt at all kinds of calculation, while his naturally
poetical feelings threw a light and pleasing veil over the dry reality
of arithmetical computation, or the rigid severity of geometry. He
already knew Italian, and had also picked up a little of the Romaic
dialect during voyages to the East; and by the aid of these two
languages he easily comprehended the construction of all the others, so
that at the end of six months he began to speak Spanish, English, and
German. In strict accordance with the promise made to the abbe, Dantes
spoke no more of escape. Perhaps the delight his studies afforded him
left no room for such thoughts; perhaps the recollection that he had
pledged his word (on which his sense of honor was keen) kept him from
referring in any way to the possibilities of flight. Days, even months,
passed by unheeded in one rapid and instructive course. At the end of
a year Dantes was a new man. Dantes observed, however, that Faria, in
spite of the relief his society afforded, daily grew sadder; one thought
seemed incessantly to harass and distract his mind. Sometimes he would
fall into long reveries, sigh heavily and involuntarily, then suddenly
rise, and, with folded arms, begin pacing the confined space of his
dungeon. One day he stopped all at once, and exclaimed, "Ah, if there
were no sentinel!"
"There shall not be one a minute longer than you please," said Dantes,
who had followed the working of his thoughts as accurately as though
his brain were enclosed in crystal so clear as to display its minutest
operations.
"I have already told you," answered the abbe, "that I loathe the idea of
shedding blood."
"And yet the murder, if you choose to call it so, would be simply a
measure of self-preservation."
"No matter! I could never agree to it."
"Still, you have thought of it?"
"Incessantly, alas!" cried the abbe.
"And you have discovered a means of regaining our freedom, have you
not?" asked Dantes eagerly.
"I have; if it were only possible to place a deaf and blind sentinel in
the gallery beyond us."
