The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (28 page)

Dantès did not answer, fearing that the emotion in his voice might betray him.

The jailer left, shaking his head.

When night came, Dantès thought that his neighbour would take advantage of the silence and darkness to resume their conversation, but he was wrong. The night passed but no sound came to relieve his feverish expectation. But the following day, after the morning visit, when he had just moved his bed away from the wall, he heard three knocks, equally spaced. He fell to his knees.

‘Is that you?’ he said. ‘I am here!’

‘Has your jailer left?’ the voice asked.

‘Yes,’ Dantès said. ‘He will not be back until this evening. We have twelve hours’ freedom.’

‘So it is safe for me to act?’ asked the voice.

‘Yes, yes; don’t delay, do it now, I beg you.’

Dantès was half inside the opening and, at this moment, the portion of ground on which he was resting his two hands seemed to give way beneath him. He plunged back, while a mass of earth, rubble and broken stones fell away into a hole that had opened up beneath the opening which he himself had made. Then, in the bottom of this dark hole, the depth of which he was unable to assess, he saw a head appear, then some shoulders and finally a whole man, who emerged, with a fair degree of agility, from the pit they had dug.

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.

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

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.

‘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.’

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

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

‘Do you have any?’ Dantès asked in astonishment.

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

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

‘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.

‘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.’

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

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

‘They know that I am alone.’

‘No matter.’

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

‘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.’

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

‘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?’

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.

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.

Immediately, he drew his head back sharply.

‘Oh, oh!’ he said. ‘I guessed as much.’

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

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

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.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘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.

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

‘So, what now?’

‘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.

‘Now, tell me who you are,’ Dantès said.

‘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.’

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

The abbé smiled sadly.

‘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?’

‘No, Louis XVIII.’

‘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?’

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

‘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.’

‘But why are you imprisoned?’

‘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.

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?’

‘I didn’t like to say it,’ Dantès replied, smiling.

‘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.’

For a short time Dantès did not move or speak.

‘So, you have abandoned any idea of escape?’

‘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?’

‘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.