The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (32 page)

‘I am finished,’ the abbé said. ‘Listen to me. I am about to have a terrible, perhaps fatal seizure; I can feel that it is coming. I suffered the same in the year before my imprisonment. There is only one cure for this sickness, which I shall tell you: run to my room, lift up the leg of the bed, which is hollow, and you will find there a little flask, half full of red liquid. Bring it; or, rather, no, I might be discovered here. Help me to return to my room while I still have some strength. Who knows what might happen while the seizure is on me?’

Dantès kept his head, despite the immensity of the disaster, and went down into the tunnel, dragging his unfortunate companion behind him; and taking him, with infinite care, to the far end of the tunnel, found himself at last in the abbé’s room, where he put him on the bed.

‘Thank you,’ said the abbé, shivering in every limb as though he had been immersed in icy water. ‘This is what will happen: I shall fall into a cataleptic fit. I may perhaps remain motionless and not make a sound. But I might also froth at the mouth, stiffen, cry out. Try to ensure that my cries are not heard: this is important, because otherwise they may take me to another room and we should be separated for ever. When you see me motionless, cold and, as it were, dead – and only at that moment, you understand – force my teeth apart with the knife and pour eight to ten drops of the liquid into my mouth. In that case, I may perhaps revive.’

‘Perhaps?’ Dantès exclaimed, pitifully.

‘Help me! Help!’ the abbé cried. ‘I am… I am dy…’

The seizure was so sudden and so violent that the unhappy man could not even finish the word. A cloud, rapid and dark as a storm at sea, passed over his brow. His eyes dilated, his lips twisted and his cheeks became purple. He thrashed, foamed, roared. But, as he had been instructed, Dantès stifled the cries beneath the blanket. The fit lasted two hours. Then, totally inert, pale and cold as marble, bent like a reed broken underfoot, he fell, stiffened in one final convulsion and paled to a livid white.

Edmond waited for this semblance of death to invade the whole
body and chill it to the very heart. Then he took the knife, put the blade between the man’s teeth, prised the jaws apart with infinite care, measured ten drops of the red liquid one after the other and waited.

An hour passed without the old man making the slightest movement. Dantès feared that he might have waited too long and sat, clasping his head in both hands, looking at him. Finally, a slight colour appeared on the old man’s lips; the look returned to his eyes, which had remained open, but blank, throughout; he uttered a faint sigh and moved slightly.

‘Saved! He is saved!’ Dantès cried.

The sick man still could not speak, but with evident anxiety he held out his hand towards the door. Dantès listened and heard the jailer’s steps. It was almost seven o’clock and Dantès had not been able to take any account of time. He leapt to the opening, dived into it, pulled the paving-stone back behind him and went back to his cell. A moment later, his own door opened and the jailer, as usual, found the prisoner sitting on his bed.

No sooner was his back turned and the sound of his footsteps receding down the corridor than Dantès left his food uneaten and, a prey to terrible anxiety, went back down the tunnel, pushed up the stone with his head and returned to the abbé’s cell.

The abbé had regained consciousness, but was still stretched on his bed, motionless and exhausted.

‘I did not expect to see you again,’ he told Dantès.

‘Why not?’ the young man asked. ‘Did you expect to die?’

‘No, but everything is ready for your escape and I expected you to take this opportunity.’

Dantès reddened with indignation.

‘Alone! Without you!’ he cried. ‘Did you really believe me capable of doing that?’

‘I see now that I was mistaken,’ said the sick man. ‘Oh, I am very weak, broken, finished…’

‘Take heart. Your strength will return,’ said Dantès, sitting on the bed beside Faria and taking his hands.

The abbé shook his head: ‘Last time the fit lasted half an hour, and after it I felt hungry and got up by myself. Today, I cannot move my right leg or my right arm. My head is muddled, which proves there is some effusion on the brain. The third time, I shall either remain entirely paralysed, or I shall die at once.’

‘No, no. Don’t worry. You shall not die. If you do have a third fit, it will be in freedom. We shall save you as we did this time – and better than this time, because we shall have all the necessary help.’

‘My friend,’ the old man said, ‘do not deceive yourself. The blow that has just struck me has condemned me to prison for ever. To escape, one must be able to walk.’

‘We shall wait a week, a month, two months if necessary. During this time, your strength will return. Everything is ready for our escape and we are free to choose our own time. When the day comes that you feel strong enough to swim, then we shall carry out our plan.’

‘I shall never swim,’ said Faria. ‘This arm is paralysed, not for a day, but for ever. Lift it yourself, feel its weight.’

The young man raised the arm, which fell back, inert. He sighed.

‘You are convinced now, Edmond, aren’t you? Believe me, I know what I am saying: since the first attack of this sickness, I have thought about it constantly. I was expecting this, because it is a hereditary illness; my father died on the third attack and so did my grandfather. The doctor who made up this potion for me, who is none other than the celebrated Cabanis, predicted the same fate for me.’

‘The doctor was wrong,’ Dantès exclaimed. ‘As for your paralysis, it does not bother me. I shall take you on my shoulders and support you as I swim.’

‘My child,’ the abbé said, ‘you are a seaman, you are a swimmer, and you must know that a man carrying such a burden could not swim fifty strokes in the sea. You must not let yourself pursue phantoms which do not deceive even your generous heart: I shall remain here until the hour of my deliverance which can no longer be any other than the hour of my death. As for you, flee, begone! You are young, agile and strong. Do not bother about me, I release you from your oath.’

‘Very well,’ said Dantès. ‘Then I, too, shall remain.’ And, standing up and solemnly extending his hand above the old man’s head: ‘I swear by the blood of Christ that I shall not leave you until your death.’

Faria looked at the young man – so noble, so simple, so exalted – and read the sincerity of his affection and the fidelity of his vow on a face that was lit with an expression of the purest devotion.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I accept. Thank you.’

Then, holding out his hand, he added: ‘You may perhaps be rewarded for your disinterested devotion. But as I cannot – and you will not – escape, we must block the underground passage beneath the gallery. The soldier might notice the hollow sound of the place we have excavated as he walks there, and call for an inspector: in that event we should be discovered and separated. Go and do this; unfortunately I cannot help you. Spend all night at the task if necessary, and do not return until tomorrow morning, after the jailer’s visit. I shall have something important to tell you.’

Dantès took the abbé’s hand; he was reassured with a smile, and he left, in a spirit of respectful obedience and devotion to his old friend.

The following morning, when Dantès returned to the cell of his fellow-prisoner, he found him sitting up, his face calm. In the sole ray of light that penetrated through the narrow window of his cell, he was holding something in his left hand – the only one, it will be remembered, that he could still use. It was an open sheet of paper which had been so long tightly rolled up that it was still resistant to being flattened. Saying nothing, he showed it to Dantès.

‘What is this?’ the young man asked.

‘Look carefully,’ the abbé said with a smile.

‘I am looking as carefully as I can and see nothing except a piece of paper, half-consumed by fire, with Gothic characters written on it in some unusual kind of ink.’

‘This paper, my friend…’ said Faria, ‘I can now confess everything to you, since I have tested you… This paper is my treasure, and from today half of it belong to you.’

Dantès felt a cold sweat on his forehead. Until now (and for how long!) he had refrained from speaking with Faria about this treasure, the origin of the charge of madness levelled against the poor abbé. With instinctive tact, Edmond preferred not to touch on this tender spot, and Faria, for his part, had said nothing. He
took the old man’s silence to mean that he had regained his reason; but now, these few words, which had escaped Faria’s lips after such a desperate crisis, seemed to imply a serious relapse into a state of mental alienation.

‘Your treasure?’ Dantès muttered.

Faria smiled and said: ‘Yes. Edmond, your heart is noble in every respect and I realize, from your pallor and the shudder that you gave, what you are thinking. No, have no fear, I am not mad. This treasure exists, Dantès, and if I am unable to possess it, you shall. No one wished to listen to me or to believe me because they assumed I was mad. But you, who must know that I am not, listen to me, and afterwards believe me or not as you will.’

‘Alas!’ Edmond thought. ‘He has suffered a relapse indeed! This misfortune is all that we lacked.’

Then, aloud, he said: ‘My friend, perhaps your seizure has tired you. Why not rest a little? Tomorrow, if you wish, I shall listen to your story, but today I want to nurse you back to health, nothing more. In any case,’ he said, smiling, ‘are we in a hurry to find a treasure here?’

‘Very much so, Edmond,’ the old man replied. ‘Who knows if tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, I shall have my third seizure? In that case, all would be finished! Yes, it’s true, I have often thought with bitter delight of these riches, which would make the fortune of ten families, knowing that they are beyond the reach of my persecutors: that idea was my revenge, and I savoured it slowly in the darkness of my cell and the despair of my imprisonment. But now, out of love for you, I have forgiven the world, and now that I see you young, with your future before you, now that I think of all the happiness that such a revelation can bring you, I am impatient of delay and tremble at the idea that I might not be able to give all this buried wealth to so worthy an owner as you.’

Edmond turned away with a sigh.

‘You persist in your incredulity, Edmond. Do my accents not convince you? I see that you require further proof. Well, read this paper which I have not shown to anybody.’

‘Tomorrow, my friend,’ Edmond said, loath to participate in the old man’s folly. ‘I thought we had agreed not to speak of this until tomorrow.’

‘We shall speak of it tomorrow, but read the paper today.’

‘I must avoid upsetting him,’ Edmond thought. And he took the
paper, half of which was missing, no doubt as the result of some accident. He read as follows:

This treasure which may amount to two
Roman écus in the furthest cor
of the second opening, which
to him in full benefice as
itor

April 25, 149

‘Well?’ said Faria, when the young man had finished reading.

‘All I can see here,’ said Dantès, ‘are broken lines and unconnected words. The letters have been partly burned off and the words are unintelligible.’

‘To you, my friend, reading them for the first time; but to me, when I have gone pale bending over them night after night, reconstructing each sentence, completing each thought…’

‘And you think you have found the intended meaning?’

‘I am sure of it. Judge for yourself. But first let me tell you the history of this piece of paper.’

‘Hush!’ Dantès cried. ‘Footsteps! Someone is coming… I must go… Farewell!’

And, happy at this opportunity to avoid the story and an explanation that would surely have confirmed his friend’s malady, he slid like a viper through the narrow passage while Faria, roused to febrile activity by terror, pushed back the stone with his foot and covered it with a cloth, so as to hide the disturbance in the dust which he had not had time to conceal.

His visitor was the governor who, having learned of Faria’s accident from the jailer, had come to judge for himself how serious it was. Faria received him sitting down, was careful to avoid any compromising movement and managed to conceal the deadly paralysis that had already stricken one half of his body. He was afraid that the governor might take pity on him and put him in some more healthy cell, thus separating him from his young companion. Luckily this was not the case and the governor left, convinced that his poor madman, for whom in the depths of his heart he felt some degree of affection, was only suffering from a slight indisposition.

Meanwhile Edmond was sitting on his bed with his head in his hands and trying to collect his thoughts. Since he had first met
Faria, everything about the man had spoken of such reasoning, such grandeur, such logical consistency, that he could not understand how this supreme wisdom over all others could be combined with unreason about this one single matter: was it that Faria was wrong about his treasure, or that everyone else was wrong about Faria? Dantès remained in his cell the whole day, not daring to return to his friend’s. In this way he was trying to delay the moment when he would learn for certain that the abbé was mad: such a certainty would be appalling to him.