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THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
By ALEXANDRE DUMAS, SR. O N February 28, 1815, Edmond Dantes sailed into Marseilles. He was but nineteen years of age and ardently in love. His conscience was clear; he had violated no law. Yet the next night he was in a cell in the gloomy Chateau d'If, a fortress on a bare rock off Marseilles. And fourteen years were to pass before he strode again in the sunlight. Three men had wrought his ruin. Danglars envied Edmond's rapid promotion. Fernand was crazed with love for Mercedes, Edmond's beloved. Danglars wrote and Fernand despatched a letter warning the authorities to intercept the missive Edmond was bearing to Paris. Chance decreed that this warning, addressed to Villefort's father, fell into the hands of the unscrupulous Villefort himself. Of this dark intrigue Edmond knew nothing. At his captain's dying request, he had called at Elba, where he had seen the captive Napoleon and been intrusted with a sealed letter. Villefort, a turncoat devoted to the aristocracy, had changed his name to make men forget that his father was a Bonapartist. He destroyed the incriminating letter before Edmond's eyes and promised that the lad should soon be free. Even as he spoke the words he knew that in the disappearance of this youth lay his own security. Thus it happened that while the Corsican came out of Elba by stealth and rode to Paris amid tumultuous cheers, Edmond lay in a dungeon. The thunder of the guns at Waterloo did not penetrate the walls of the Chateau d'If. Napoleon was borne away to St. Helena; the Hundred Days were over. And Dantes knew naught of these things. He ate out his heart in thoughts of Mercedes and wondered what mad freak of fortune had thrust him away from the world of men. Days dragged into years. He lost track of time. Confined in a black and slimy dun- neon, he saw only his jailer. There were moments when he hoped, hours when he despaired, weeks when he raved in impotent anger. Four years rolled past. He was starving himself to death. Then he heard a rasping, scratching noise. The spark of human hope burned anew. He swallowed his broth; he must win back his strength. Somewhere near him was a human mole, burrowing stealthily, worming toward free-dom. Four days later a section of flooring fell in and out of a dark tunnel sprang an old man. He was the Abbe Faria, a prisoner for eight years. His tunnel, dug with arduous toil, had failed to reach the sunlight, but it led to fellowship. Unsuspected by their ,jailers, the two men met daily and studied unweariedly. Out of his ripe wisdom and his prodigious memory, the abbe taught Edmond mathematics, history, and languages. Less guileless than Edmond, he was able to prove, from the youth's own story, that Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort were responsible for his living death. So Edmond had a new incentive for freedom. He sought revenge. The abbe revealed, too, the secret of the great treasure of gold and jewels that lay in a cave on Monte Cristo, an uninhabited island off Italy. The years rolled on. Another attempt to escape was frustrated by the paralysis of the abbe's right side. Edmond refused to leave him. He was a very different man from the carefree sailor who had been so suddenly jerked from the gaiety of a marriage feast to the gloom of a dungeon. He was a man of the world-educated, cynical. One night he heard a cry of anguish. Hurriedly he rolled aside the great stone that concealed the tunnel opening, crawled swiftly to his neighbor's cell. He found him writhing in agony. At dawn he was dead. That night Edmond carried the corpse to his own cell and laid it on his own bed, face to the wall, so that the jailer would think it Edmond asleep. Secreting a crude knife with which to effect an escape, he then sewed himself into the coarse ,sack in which the jailers had put the body. Two men later bore out the supposed corpse, weighted the legs with a great iron ball, and swung the sack powerfully. Edmond suddenly realized that he was falling from a great height. He had been flung from the chateau roof into the sea. He screamed aloud as he struck the water, and then the weight dragged him into the ice-cold depths. He ripped open the sack, convulsively cut the rope that was knotted to the shot, and rose to the surface. He had not forgotten how to swim. He struck out in the blackness for an islet. Just as he was losing hope, his knee struck rock. He staggered to his feet and above him rose a gloomy mass, his goal. At daybreak he flung himself into the sea and was pulled aboard an outward-bound bark. Each moment Marseilles receded farther into the distance. He learned from his shipmates that it was February 28, 1829. He had been shut away from the world for fourteen years. He wondered what had be-come of Mercedes. Then he thought of Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort. A baleful light flickered in his hard eyes. Edmond had fallen in with a band of smugglers. On one of their voyages he gazed eagerly at a granite mass rose-hued in the dawn. It was Monte Cristo. A few weeks later chance brought him to the island. None of his comrades suspected the leaping thoughts that thronged in Edmond's mind. They were simple folk, easily deceived. Edmond fell from a rock and complained that he was so hurt that he could not move. He was confident, he insisted, that he could cure himself if he were left here. At last they sailed away. When the boat was out of sight he leaped to his feet, seized his pickax, and cried, "Open Sesame!" He was alone on Monte Cristo. Following the clues of the abbe's ancient manuscript, he located the great slab of rock overgrown with vegetation. He slashed at the edges with his pickax and made a hole. With his horn of powder he easily blasted the rock away. Before him was an iron ring embedded in a flagstone. He raised it and saw a flight of stairs. With hope mingled with a strange misgiving he descended, broke open a passage into an inner cave, and dug away the earth over an oak coffer bound with iron. He burst it open and there blazed gold coins, bars of gold, diamonds. rubies, and pearls that glittered in glorious profusion. When Edmond came back to France it was as the Count of Monte Cristo-fabulously wealthy, romantic in appearance, a performer of miracles. His betrayers had risen to heights of fame and affluence. Danglars ww., a wealthy banker; Fernand an honored warrior; Villefort high in office. Mercedes, believing Edmond dead, had yielded to Fernand's importunate pleadings and had married him. Zealously did the Count of Monte Cristo devote his days and nights to ruin these three. Usually it was in his own unrecognized personality that he dazzled Paris with his feasts, his extravagances, his prodigal outlays. Every one paid court to this mysterious stranger who rained gold about him. Sometimes he disguised himself-now as the Abbe Busoni, now as the Italian Zazzone, now as the English Lord Wilmore, now as Sinbad the Sailor. He tortured Danglars, Fernand, Villefort methodically and yet so skilfully that they did not know the hand that directed the blows that fell upon them. Piece by piece Danglar's fortune was lopped away. At last he was beggared, the bitterest blow that could have befallen him. Fernand, enmeshed slowly in revelations of his guilty past, finally blew out his brains; Villefort, his crimes dragged into the light of day, went raving mad. Mercedes, made poor but happy in the love of her devoted son, lived on, penitent. Yet were there those whom Monte Cristo rewarded. The noble Morrel, his former employer, was saved from bankruptcy by a mysterious Englishman who presented him with notes he could not meet. And on the uninhabited island of Monte Cristo Morrel's son, true and tried as his father, learned that Villefort's daughter, the girl who had remained fine through all vicissitudes, still lived. She stood beside him on the pinnacle of the island and they looked with blurred eyes into the distance, where each moment a ship grew fainter and fainter. It was bearing from their sight the man who had once been Edmond Dantes. With him was the radiant Haydee, the mysterious princess whose beauty had outshone all the beauties of Paris. In her love Edmond had at last forgotten all that he did not now want to remember. |