The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (36 page)

‘Should we guard the body?’

‘Why? We shall lock the cell as if he were alive, that’s all.’

The footsteps and the voices faded, Dantès heard the groaning lock on the door and its creaking bolts, and a silence more melancholy than solitude, the silence of death, fell over all, penetrating deep into the young man’s soul. Then he slowly raised the paving-stone with his head and looked around the cell. It was empty. Dantès emerged from the tunnel.

Stretched out on the bed, weakly outlined by a dusty ray of light from the window, there was a sack of coarse cloth, under the broad folds of which one could vaguely distinguish a long, stiff shape: this was Faria’s last winding-sheet which, according to the turnkeys, had cost so little. So all was finished. Between Dantès and his old friend there was already a gulf: he could no longer see those eyes, wide open as if looking beyond death; he could no longer clasp that industrious hand which for him had lifted the veil that covered arcane matters. Faria, that good and valuable companion to whom he had become so strongly attached, now existed only in his memory. He sat down at the head of this awful bed and lapsed into a deep and bitter melancholy.

Alone! He was once more alone! He had fallen back into silence, he was faced once more with nothingness!

Alone, he no longer had even the sight or the sound of the voice of the only human being who still bound him to the earth! Would it not be better for him, like Faria, to go and ask God to explain
the enigma of life, even at the risk of passing through the dark gate of suffering? The idea of suicide had been driven away by his friend’s presence, but returned like a ghost and rose up beside Faria’s corpse.

‘If I could die,’ he said, ‘I should go where he has gone and I should certainly find him again. But how can I die? It is easy,’ he added, laughing. ‘I have only to remain here, throw myself on the first person who enters and strangle him; they will guillotine me.’

But, as often happens, in great sorrow as in great storms, the abyss lies between the crests of two waves; Dantès shrank from the idea of so dishonourable a death and rapidly went from this feeling of despair to a burning thirst for life and freedom.

‘Die! No, no!’ he cried. ‘It was not worth living so long, and suffering so much, to die now. Death was welcome previously, when I made a resolution to meet it, many years ago. But now it would truly be conceding too much to my miserable fate. No, I want to live, I want to struggle to the end. No, I want to recover the happiness that has been taken away from me. I am forgetting that, before I die, I have my enemies to punish and, who knows? – perhaps a few friends to reward. But now that I am forgotten here, I shall not escape my dungeon except in the same way as Faria.’

At these words, Edmond remained motionless, his gaze fixed, like a man who has suddenly been struck by an idea, but one that appals him. At once he got up, put his hand on his forehead as if suffering from dizziness, walked around the room two or three times and returned to the bed.

‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘Where did that idea come from? From you, God? Since only the dead leave this place freely, let us take the place of the dead.’ And, without wasting any time in reconsidering the decision, as if to avoid giving his thoughts the opportunity to annihilate his desperate resolve, he bent over the ghastly sack, opened it with the knife that Faria had made, removed the body, dragged it into his own cell, put it in his bed, covered its head with the scrap of linen that he was accustomed to wear on his own, drew his blanket over it, kissed its icy brow for the last time and tried to close the eyes, which still remained stubbornly open, terrifying because there was no thought behind them. After that, he turned the head to the wall so that the jailer, when he brought the evening meal, would think that he was asleep, as quite often happened;
then he returned to the tunnel, dragged the bed against the wall, went back to the other cell, took the needle and thread out of the wardrobe, threw off his rags so that they would feel naked flesh under the cloth, slipped into the empty sack, lay down in the same position as the body, and sewed it up from inside.

If anyone had unfortunately chanced to come in at that moment, they would have heard his heart beating.

Dantès could easily have waited until after the evening visit, but he was afraid that between now and then the governor might change his mind and take away the body. In that case, his last hope would be gone.

Now, in any case, his plan was fixed. Here is what he intended to do:

If, during the journey out of the cell, the gravediggers realized that they were carrying a living man instead of a corpse, Dantès would not give them time to gather their wits. He would split the sack from top to bottom with a sharp lunge of the knife and take advantage of their terror to escape. If they tried to stop him, he would use the knife.

If they took him to the burial ground and put him in a grave, he would allow himself to be covered with earth; then, since it was night, the gravediggers would hardly have turned their backs before he would tunnel out of the soft earth and escape. He hoped the soil would not be too heavy for him to lift it. If he was wrong and the earth proved to be too heavy, he would suffocate, and so much the better: all would be over!

Dantès had not eaten since the previous day, but he had not thought of his hunger that morning, and he still did not notice it. His position was too precarious for him to waste time on thinking of anything else.

The first danger that threatened was that the jailer, bringing him his supper at seven o’clock, would notice the substitution; luckily Dantès had many times received the jailer’s visit lying down, either through misanthropy or fatigue. In such cases the man usually put the bread and soup on the table and left without speaking to him. This time, however, the jailer might lapse from his habitual silence, say something and, when Dantès did not reply, go over to the bed and discover the deception.

As seven o’clock approached, Dantès began to suffer in earnest.
One hand was pressed against his heart, attempting to stifle its beating while the other wiped the sweat from his brow as it streamed along his temples. From time to time, a shudder would run through his whole body and seize his heart in an icy grip; at such moments he thought he would die. The hours passed without bringing any sound of movement in the fortress and Dantès realized that he had escaped the first danger, which was a good sign. Finally, at around the time appointed by the governor, footsteps were heard in the stairway. Edmond realized that the moment had come. He summoned up all his courage, holding his breath; he would have been happier could he have stifled the beating of his pulse in the same way.

The footsteps, two sets of them, stopped outside the door. Dantès guessed that this must be the two gravediggers who had come to fetch him. This suspicion became a certainty when he heard the noise that they made setting down the bier.

The door opened and a muffled light reached Dantès’ eyes. Through the cloth covering him he saw two shapes approach the bed. At the door was a third, carrying a lantern. The two who had come over to the bed each grasped one end of the sack.

‘He’s still pretty heavy, this one, for such a thin old man!’ one said, raising the head.

‘They do say that each year adds half a pound to the weight of the bones,’ the other replied, taking the feet.

‘Have you made your knot?’ the first asked.

‘It would be stupid to carry any unnecessary weight; I’ll make it when we get there.’

‘Quite right, let’s go.’

‘What knot is that?’ Dantès wondered.

They carried the supposed corpse from the bed to the bier. Edmond stiffened, the better to play dead. They put him down on the stretcher, and the funeral procession, led and lit by the man with the lantern, went up the stairs.

Suddenly, he was bathed in the fresh, sharp air of night. Dantès recognized the mistral and was filled with a sudden feeling of both delight and anguish.

The men carrying him went about twenty paces, then stopped and set the bier down on the ground. One of them went away: Dantès could hear his footsteps on the pavement.

‘Where can I be?’ he wondered.

‘You know something, he’s not at all light!’ said the one who had stayed behind, sitting down on the edge of the stretcher.

Dantès’ first instinct had been to escape, but luckily he resisted it.

‘Give us some light, here, you brute,’ said the one who had moved away. ‘Otherwise I’ll never find what I’m looking for.’

The man with the lantern obeyed, even though, as we have seen, the request was couched in rather offensive terms.

‘What can he be looking for?’ Dantès wondered. ‘No doubt a spade.’

A satisfied exclamation indicated that the gravedigger had found whatever it was he needed.

‘At last,’ the other said. ‘You made a hard job of it.’

‘Yes, but there’s nothing lost by the delay.’

At these words, he went over to Edmond, who heard something heavy and resounding being put down beside him. At the same moment, a rope was bound tightly and painfully around his feet.

‘Well, have you done the knot?’ asked the gravedigger who had remained idle.

‘And done it well,’ said the other. ‘I guarantee.’

‘In that case, let’s be going.’

And the bier was lifted and carried forward.

They took about fifty paces, then stopped to open a gate, before carrying on. The sound of waves breaking against the rocks on which the castle was built reached Dantès more and more clearly as they went on.

‘The weather is bad,’ said one of the men. ‘I’d not like to be out at sea tonight.’

‘Yes, the abbé runs a serious risk of getting wet,’ said the other – and they burst out laughing.

Dantès did not entirely understand this joke, but the hair still rose on his neck.

‘Good, here we are!’ said the first man.

‘Further on, further on,’ said the other. ‘You remember that the last one stayed behind, caught on the rocks, and the next day the governor told us what lazy devils we were.’

They took four or five steps more, still going up, then Dantès felt them take him by the head and feet and swing him.

‘One!’ said the gravediggers.

‘Two…’

‘Three!’

At this moment, Dantès felt himself being thrown into a huge void, flying through the air like a wounded bird, then falling, falling, in a terrifying descent that froze his heart. Although he was drawn downwards by some weight that sped his flight, it seemed to him that the fall lasted a century. Finally, with a terrifying noise, he plunged like an arrow into icy water, and he cried out, his cry instantly stifled by the water closing around him.

Dantès had been thrown into the sea – and a thirty-six-pound cannonball tied to his feet was dragging him to the bottom.

The sea is the graveyard of the Château d’If.

Though stunned and almost suffocated, Dantès still had the presence of mind to hold his breath and since, as we have said, his right hand was prepared for any eventuality, holding the open knife, he quickly slit the cloth and put out his arm, then his head. But then, despite his attempts to raise the cannonball, he felt himself being continually dragged down, so he bent over to search for the rope restraining his legs and, with one last despairing effort, cut it just as he was suffocating. Kicking powerfully, he rose, free, to the surface of the sea, while the weight dragged the coarse linen that had almost become his shroud down into the unknown depths.

Dantès stayed no longer than was necessary to take a breath, before diving once more: the first precaution that he had to take was to avoid being seen.

When he emerged a second time, he was already at least fifty yards from the place where he had fallen. Above him, he saw a black, lowering sky, across which the clouds were being rapidly swept by the wind, from time to time revealing a small patch of blue from which a star shone. In front of him was a dark, roaring plain, its waves starting to seethe as at the approach of a storm; while behind him, blacker than the sea, blacker than the sky, like a
threatening phantom, rose the granite giant, its sombre peak like a hand outstretched to grasp its prey. On the topmost rock was a lantern lighting two human forms.

It seemed to him that the two forms were bending uneasily over the sea: the strange gravediggers must indeed have heard the cry that escaped him as he flew through the air. So Dantès dived again and swam underwater for a considerable distance; he had once been quite used to doing this and would formerly, in the cove of the Pharo, have attracted many admirers around him, who often proclaimed him the most accomplished swimmer in Marseille.

When he came back to the surface, the lantern had vanished.

Now he must find his bearings. Of all the islands around the Château d’If, Ratonneau and Pomègue are the nearest; but Ratonneau and Pomègue are inhabited; so is the little island of Daume. The safest landfall was therefore on either Tiboulen or Lemaire, and these two islands lie a league away from the Château d’If.

Even so, it was one of these two that Dantès decided to make for: but how could he find them in the depth of the night that was deepening moment by moment around him? But then, shining like a star, he noticed the Planier lighthouse. If he swam directly towards the light, he would leave Tiboulen a little to his left; so if he were to swing a small distance to the left, he would be heading for the island.