The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (27 page)

This plaster had been softened by damp. With a thrill of joy, Dantès saw that fragments of it could be removed. Admittedly, these fragments were so small as to be almost invisible, but after half an hour, even so, Dantès had scraped away roughly a handful. A mathematician could have calculated that after some two years’ work, provided he did not encounter the solid rock, it would be possible to dig out a passage two feet across and twenty feet deep.

Realizing this, the prisoner regretted not having devoted the long hours that had already passed, ever more slowly, to this task, instead of wasting them in hope, prayer and despair. However slow the work, how much would he have achieved in the six or so years that he had spent buried in this dungeon! The idea fired him with renewed enthusiasm.

Over the next three days, taking extraordinary care to avoid discovery, he managed to remove all the plaster and expose the stone. The wall was composed of rubble which had been strengthened in places by blocks of hewn stone. He had almost loosened one of these blocks, and he now had to shift it in its socket. He tried to do so with his nails, but made no impression, and the fragments of the pitcher which Dantès pushed into the gaps, in the hope of using them as a lever, broke when he tried to do so.

After an hour of fruitless effort, he got up, perspiring with anguish. Was he to be defeated at the very start? Would he have to wait, helpless and inactive, for his neighbour to do everything – when the man himself might become discouraged?

Then an idea occurred to him, and he stood there, smiling. Of its own accord, the sweat dried on his forehead.

Every day the jailer brought Dantès his soup in a tin pot. This pot contained soup for him and for another prisoner, because Dantès had noticed that it was always either full or half empty, depending on whether the turnkey had started his rounds, giving out the food, with Dantès or with his fellow-prisoner.

The pot had an iron handle: it was this iron handle that Dantès coveted – and would have paid for it, if required to do so, with ten years of his life.

The jailer poured the contents of the pot into Dantès’ plate. After eating his soup with a wooden spoon, Dantès would wash the plate, so that it could serve the same purpose each day.

In the evening, Dantès put his plate on the floor, half-way between the door and the table. As he came in, the jailer stepped on the plate and broke it into a thousand pieces.

This time, he had nothing to reproach Dantès with: he had been wrong to leave his plate on the floor, admittedly, but the jailer had been wrong not to look where he was walking. So he merely grumbled. Then he looked around to see where he could pour the soup. As Dantès had only that one plate, there was no alternative.

‘Leave the pot,’ Dantès said. ‘You can collect it when you bring me my dinner tomorrow.’

This advice appealed to the jailer, since it saved him the trouble of going back upstairs, then down and back up again. He left the pot. Dantès shuddered with joy.

This time, he eagerly ate the soup and the meat which, as is customary in prisons, was put in with the soup. Then, after waiting for an hour, to make sure that the jailer did not change his mind, he moved his bed, took the pot, slipped the end of the handle between the stone block which he had scraped clean of plaster and the surrounding rubble, and began to lever it. A slight movement in the stone proved to him that he was succeeding; and indeed, after an hour, the stone had been removed from the wall, leaving a gap more than one and a half feet in diameter.

Dantès carefully swept up all the plaster, distributed it around the corners of the cell, scraped at the greyish earth with a splinter from his jug and covered the plaster in earth.

Then, wanting to take full advantage of this night in which chance – or, rather, the ingenuity of the scheme that he had dreamt up – had delivered so precious an implement to him, he continued to dig eagerly. At dawn, he replaced the stone in its hole, pushed his bed against the wall and lay down on it.

His breakfast consisted of a piece of bread. The jailer came in and put it on the table.

‘What? Aren’t you bringing me a new plate?’ Dantès asked.

‘No,’ said the turnkey. ‘You break everything. You smashed your jug and it’s your fault that I broke your plate. If all the prisoners were responsible for as much damage, the government couldn’t keep up with it. We are leaving you the pot and your soup will be poured into that. In this way, perhaps you won’t destroy everything around here.’

Dantès raised his eyes to heaven and joined his hands in prayer under the blanket.

This piece of iron which he had been allowed to keep aroused a more profound wave of gratitude towards heaven in his heart than he had experienced, in his previous life, from the greatest blessings that had descended upon him.

However, he had noticed that, since he himself had started to work, the other prisoner was no longer digging.

No matter. This was no reason to give up his efforts. That evening, thanks to his new implement, he had extracted more than ten handfuls of stone filling, plaster and mortar from the wall.

When the time came for the jailer’s visit, he straightened out the twisted handle of the pot and put the receptacle back in its usual place. The turnkey poured out the standard ration of soup and meat; or, rather, of soup and fish, because this happened to be a fast day: three times a week the prisoners were given a meatless diet. That would have been another way of counting time, if Dantès had not long ago given up measuring it.

Then, after pouring out the soup, the turnkey went out.

This time Dantès wanted to ascertain whether his neighbour had in fact stopped working. He listened. All was as silent as it had been during the three days when the work was interrupted. Dantès sighed. His neighbour was clearly suspicious of him.

However, he did not give up and continued to work throughout the night. But after two or three hours of digging, he came up against an obstruction. The iron had ceased to cut, but slid across a flat surface.

Dantès felt the object with his hands and realized that he had hit a beam. It ran across – or, rather, entirely blocked – the hole that Dantès had started to dig.

Now he would have to dig over or under. The poor young man had not foreseen this obstacle.

‘Oh, my God, my God!’ he cried. ‘I have prayed so often to You that I hoped You might have heard me. My God! After having deprived me of freedom in life, oh, God! After having deprived me of the calm of death. Oh, God! When you had recalled me to life, have pity on me! God! Do not let me die in despair!’

‘Who is it that speaks of God and despair at one and the same time?’ asked a voice which seemed to come from beneath the earth
and which, muffled by the darkness, sounded on the young man’s ears with a sepulchral tone. Edmond felt his hair rise on his head and shuffled back, still kneeling.

‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘I can hear a man’s voice!’

For the past four or five years, Edmond had heard no one speak except his jailer; and, to a prisoner, a jailer is not a man but a living door added to the oak door of his cell and a bar of flesh joined to his bars of iron.

‘In heaven’s name!’ Dantès cried. ‘Whoever spoke, speak again, even though your voice terrified me. Who are you?’

‘Tell me who you are,’ the voice demanded.

‘An unfortunate prisoner,’ Dantès said, not at all unwilling to reply.

‘Of what country?’

‘France.’

‘And your name?’

‘Edmond Dantès.’

‘Profession?’

‘Seaman.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Since February the twenty-eighth, 1815.’

‘What was your crime?’

‘I am innocent.’

‘But what were you accused of?’

‘Conspiring for the return of the emperor.’

‘What! The return of the emperor! Is he no longer on the throne, then?’

‘He abdicated in Fontainebleau in 1814 and was exiled to the island of Elba. But what of yourself? How long have you been here, if you know nothing of all that?’

‘Since 1811.’

Dantès shuddered. This man had been four years longer in prison than he had.

‘Very well. Do not dig any more,’ the voice said, speaking rapidly. ‘Just tell me at what level is the hole that you have dug?’

‘At ground level.’

‘How is it concealed?’

‘Behind my bed.’

‘Has your bed been moved since you were in the cell?’

‘Not once.’

‘What is outside your cell?’

‘A corridor.’

‘Which leads where?’

‘To the courtyard.’

‘Alas!’ the voice exclaimed.

‘Heavens above, what is the matter?’ Dantès cried.

‘The matter is that I have made a mistake, that the inaccuracy of my drawings led me astray, that I am lost for not having a compass, that a deviation the thickness of a line on my plan was equal to fifteen feet on the ground and that I mistook the wall where you have been digging for that of the castle!’

‘But then you would have come out on the sea.’

‘That is what I wanted.’

‘Suppose you had succeeded.’

‘I should have plunged into it and swum for one of the islands in the vicinity of the Château d’If, either the Ile de Daume or the Ile de Tiboulen, or even the coast itself; and then I should have been saved.’

‘Would you have managed to swim so far?’

‘God would have given me strength. But now all is lost.’

‘Lost?’

‘Yes. Seal up your hole carefully, stop working on it, take no notice of anything and wait for me to contact you.’

‘Who are you? At least tell me who you are!’

‘I am… I am Number 27.’

‘Don’t you trust me, then?’ Dantès asked.

He thought he heard a bitter laugh make its way through the stonework towards him.

‘Oh, I’m a good Christian,’ he called, guessing instinctively that the man was thinking of leaving him. ‘I swear on Christ’s name that I would allow myself to be killed rather than give away a hint of the truth to your jailers and mine. But, in heaven’s name, do not deprive me of your presence, do not deprive me of your voice or – I swear it – I shall dash my head against the wall, and you will have my death on your conscience.’

‘How old are you? Your voice sounds like that of a young man.’

‘I do not know my age, because I have had no means of measuring time since I have been here. All I know is that I was approaching nineteen when I was arrested, on February the eighteenth, 1815.’

‘Not quite twenty-six,’ the voice muttered. ‘Very well, then: at that age, men are not yet traitors.’

‘No, no! I swear it,’ Dantès said again. ‘I have already told you, and I repeat, that I would let myself be cut into pieces rather than betray you.’

‘You did well to talk to me, and you did well to beg me, because I was about to change my plans and have nothing to do with you. But I am reassured by your age. I shall join you. Expect me.’

‘When?’

‘I must calculate the risks. I shall give you a signal.’

‘But you won’t abandon me, you won’t leave me alone, you will come to me or allow me to go to you? We shall escape together and, if we cannot escape, we shall talk: you of those you love, I of those who are dear to me. You must love someone?’

‘I am alone in the world.’

‘Then you shall love me. If you are young, I shall be your friend; if you are old, your son. I have a father who must be seventy years old, if he is still alive. I loved only him and a young woman called Mercédès. My father has not forgotten me, I am sure; but as for her – God knows if she still thinks of me. I shall love you as I loved my father.’

‘Very well,’ said the prisoner. ‘Until tomorrow.’

These few words were said in tones that convinced Dantès. He asked nothing more, but got up, took the same precautions as before with the rubble he had removed from the wall, and pushed his bed back against it.

And then he gave himself over entirely to his feelings of happiness. He was certainly no longer going to be alone, he might perhaps even be free. The worst case, should he remain a prisoner, was to have a companion: captivity shared is only semi-captivity. Sighs united together are almost prayers; prayers coming from two hearts are almost acts of grace.

Throughout the day, Dantès came and went in his cell, his heart leaping with joy. From time to time this joy stifled him. At the least noise in the corridor, he leapt on to his bed, clasping his chest with his hands. Once or twice his thoughts turned to the fear that he might be separated from this stranger, whom he already loved as a friend. So he had made up his mind: at the moment when the jailer pushed his bed aside and bent over to examine the opening in the wall, he would crack his head open with the stone on which his jug
stood. He knew quite well that he would be condemned to death; but was he not about to die of boredom and despair when that miraculous sound had brought him back to life?

In the evening the jailer came. Dantès was on his bed, feeling that there he was better able to guard the unfinished opening. He must have looked at this unwelcome visitor in a peculiar manner, because the man said: ‘Come, come, are you going mad again?’