The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (26 page)

There were two ways for him to die. The first was simple: it involved fixing his kerchief to one of the bars on the window and hanging himself. The alternative was to pretend to eat and allow himself to die of hunger. Dantès was very loath to adopt the first course. He had been brought up with a horror of pirates, people who are hanged from the yardarm, so he saw hanging as an ignominious method of execution which he did not want to apply to himself. Consequently he chose the second way and began to carry out his decision that very day.

Almost four years had passed while his mood fluctuated in the way we have described. At the end of the second, Dantès had ceased to count the days and lapsed back into the unawareness of time from which the inspector’s visit had roused him.

Having said ‘I wish to die’ and chosen his own death, Dantès had given thought to the implications and, afraid that he might change his mind, had sworn to himself that he would die in this way. ‘When they bring me my morning and evening meals,’ he thought, ‘I shall throw the food out of the window, and so appear to have eaten it.’

He did as he had promised. Twice a day, he threw his food out of the little barred opening which gave him no more than a glimpse of the sky, first joyfully, then thoughtfully and finally with regret. He had to remind himself of the oath he had sworn to find the strength to pursue his awful resolution. Seen with the eyes of hunger, this food, which had formerly disgusted him, appeared appetizing to look at and smelled exquisite. Sometimes he held the plate containing it for an hour in his hand, staring at the piece of rotten meat or repulsive fish, and the mouldy black bread. The last instinct of survival struggled within him and occasionally defeated his resolve. At such times, his dungeon seemed less dark and his situation less desperate. He was still young, he must be about twenty-five or twenty-six, so he had roughly fifty years left to live, that is to say twice as long as he had lived so far. In this vast expanse
of time, how many different events might unlock the doors and break down the walls of the Château d’If, and set him free! At such times he put his lips towards the meal that, like a deliberate Tantalus, he was snatching from his own mouth. But then he would remember the oath which his nature was too generous to break for fear that he might end by despising himself. So, firm and implacable, he summoned up the little remnant of life that remained to him, until the day came when they brought him his supper and he was too weak to get up and throw it out of the window.

The next day he was unable to see and could hardly hear.

The jailer thought he was seriously ill. Edmond hoped for a quick death.

So the day passed. Edmond felt himself overtaken by a numbing sense of drowsiness, which was not altogether unpleasant. The cramps in his stomach had died down and his burning thirst had calmed. When he closed his eyes, he saw a host of brilliant lights like those will-o’-the-wisps that hover at night over marshlands: this was the twilight of that unknown country known as death. Suddenly, in the evening at about nine o’clock, he heard a dull sound on the wall beside which he was lying.

So many verminous creatures used to make noises in the prison that Edmond had gradually become accustomed to sleeping through them; but this time, either because his senses were heightened by abstinence or because the noise really was louder than usual, or because at this final moment everything acquires some importance, Edmond raised his head so that he could hear better.

It was a regular scratching that seemed to suggest a huge claw or powerful teeth, or else the tapping of some implement on the stones. Weak as he was, the young man’s brain was struck by an ordinary notion which is constantly present in a prisoner’s mind: freedom. This noise came so aptly at the moment when, for him, every noise was about to cease, that he felt God must finally be taking pity on his suffering an sending him this noise to warn him to stop on the edge of the grave above which his foot was already poised. Who knows? Perhaps one of his friends, one of those beloved beings about whom he had thought so much that his mind was worn out with it, might be concerned for him at this moment and trying to lessen the distance between them.

No, Edmond must surely be mistaken: this was one of the hallucinations that hover around the doors of death.

However, he kept listening to the noise. It lasted about three hours, then he heard a sort of crumbling sound and the noise ceased.

A few hours later, it resumed, louder and nearer. Edmond was already interested in this burrowing that kept him company. Then, suddenly, the jailer came in.

In the week since he had decided to die and for the four days since he had begun to carry out his plan, Edmond had not spoken a word to the man, had not replied when he asked what Edmond thought was the matter with him, and had turned his face to the wall when he was too closely observed. But today the jailer might hear the dull grating sound, become alarmed by it and take steps to end it, thus perhaps upsetting that flicker of hope, the very idea of which delighted Dantès in his last hours.

The jailer was bringing his lunch.

Dantès raised himself on his bed and, in as loud a voice as he could muster, began to talk about everything: about the poor quality of the food he was given and the coldness of his dungeon, muttering and complaining so that he would have an excuse to speak louder. He tried the patience of the jailer, who had actually requested clear broth and fresh bread that day for his sick prisoner and was bringing them to him.

Fortunately, he imagined that Dantès was delirious. He put the food down on the miserable rickety table where he usually left it, and went out.

As soon as he was free to do so, Edmond joyfully went back to listen. The noise had become so clear that the young man could now hear it easily.

‘There’s no doubt about it,’ he thought. ‘Since the noise is continuing, even by day, it must be some unfortunate prisoner like myself who is trying to escape. Oh, if only I was beside him! How willingly I would help!’

Then, suddenly, a dark cloud passed across this first light of hope, in a mind accustomed to misfortune and unable easily to revert to feelings of joy: the idea struck him that the noise was caused by some workmen whom the governor was employing to repair one of the neighbouring cells.

It would be easy to find out, but how could he risk asking? Of course, he could just wait for the jailer to come, ask him to listen to the noise and judge his reaction; but if he were to satisfy his
curiosity in this way, might he not sacrifice some more precious interest for a very short-lived gain? Unfortunately, Edmond’s head was an empty vessel, deafened by the buzzing of a single idea; he was so weak that his mind drifted like a whiff of smoke and could not fasten on a single thought. He could see only one way to sharpen his wits and recover the lucidity of his judgement: he turned towards the still-steaming broth that the jailer had just put down on the table, got up, staggered over to it, took the cup, raised it to his lips and drank down the liquid that it contained with an unspeakable sensation of well-being.

He had the resolution to leave it at that: he had heard that when unfortunate, shipwrecked mariners had been picked up in the last extremity of starvation, they had died after gorging themselves on too much solid food. Edmond put the bread – which he was already raising to his lips – back on the table and returned to his bed. He no longer wished to die.

He soon felt that some light was once again penetrating his brain: all his vague and almost indefinable ideas resumed their place on that marvellous chessboard where perhaps a single extra square is enough to ensure the superiority of men over animals. He was able to think and to strengthen his thoughts by reasoning.

So he told himself: ‘I must carry out a test, but without compromising anyone. If the person I can hear is an ordinary workman, I have only to knock against the wall and he will immediately stop what he is doing to try and guess who is knocking and why. But since he will not only be working legitimately, but also to orders, he will soon resume what he was doing. If, on the contrary, he is a prisoner, he will be alarmed by the noise that I make. He will be afraid of being found out, so he will stop work and only come back to it this evening, when he imagines everyone to be in bed and asleep.’

Edmond got up again. This time his legs were steady and his eyes could see clearly. He went over to a corner of the cell, took out a stone that had been loosened by the damp, and came back in order to tap it against the wall at the very point where the echoing sound was loudest.

He knocked three times.

At the first knock, the noise stopped, as if by magic.

Edmond listened intently. An hour passed, then two, but no further sound could be heard. He had created a total silence on the far side of the wall.

Full of hope, he ate a few crumbs of the bread, swallowed some mouthfuls of water and, thanks to the powerful constitution with which nature had endowed him, was more or less restored to himself.

The day went by and the silence continued. Night came, and the noise had still not resumed.

‘It’s a prisoner,’ Edmond thought, with inexpressible joy. At this, his mind began to race and life returned to him, with all the more force for having something to exercise it upon.

The night passed without him hearing the slightest sound. That night, Edmond did not close his eyes.

Daylight returned and the jailer came in with more food. Edmond had already eaten his previous meal and he devoured this one, continually listening out for the noise, which did not come, fearful that it might have ceased for ever. He walked ten or twelve leagues around his dungeon, spending whole hours shaking the iron bars on his window to restore to his limbs the strength and elasticity that they had lost over a long period without exercise, in short preparing himself for the struggle with whatever fate had in store for him, like a wrestler flexing his arms and rubbing his body with oil before he enters the ring. Then, between these periods of feverish activity, he listened to hear if the sound had returned, growing impatient with the caution shown by this prisoner who had not guessed that it was another like himself who had disturbed him in his efforts to escape – another prisoner whose eagerness to be free was at least as great as his own.

Three days went by, seventy-two deadly hours which he counted, minute by minute.

Finally, one evening when the jailer had just paid his final visit, when Dantès pressed his ear to the wall for the hundredth time, he thought that a barely perceptible scratching echoed in his head as it rested against the silent stones.

Dantès moved back to compose his whirling brain, walked a few times round the room, then put his ear again to the same spot.

There was no doubt: something was happening on the other side. The prisoner had recognized the danger of his earlier method and had changed it: certainly, in order to carry on the work in greater security, he was using a lever instead of a chisel.

Encouraged by the discovery, Edmond decided to come to the assistance of this indefatigable workman. He began by moving his
bed, behind which he judged that the burrowing was taking place, and looked around for some object which he could use to chip away at the wall, dig out the damp cement and eventually dislodge a stone. But he could see nothing. He had no knife or other cutting implement, no metal except iron bars, and he had tested these bars often enough to know that they were firmly set and that it was not even worth the effort of trying to loosen them.

His only furniture was a bed, a chair, a table, a bucket and a pitcher.

Certainly, there were iron brackets on the bed, but they were fixed to the wood with screws; it would take a screwdriver to turn these and take off the brackets.

There was nothing on the table and chair. The bucket had once had a handle, but it had been removed.

Only one thing remained for Dantès to do, which was to break the pitcher and set to work with one of the earthenware fragments shaped to a point. He swung the pitcher against a stone and it shattered.

He chose two or three pointed fragments and hid them in his mattress, leaving the rest scattered around on the floor: the breaking of the pitcher was too natural an occurrence for it to arouse any comment.

Edmond had the whole night to work, but he made little progress in the dark because he had to feel his way and he realized that he was blunting his crude implement against a piece of stone harder than it. So he put his bed back and waited for daylight. Recovering hope, he had recovered patience.

Throughout that night he listened, hearing the unknown miner continue his subterranean burrowing.

Day came and the jailer entered. Dantès told him that, the evening before, while he was taking a drink straight from the pitcher, it had slipped out of his hands and broken on the ground. The jailer went off, grumbling, to get a new pitcher, without even bothering to take away the pieces from the previous one. He returned a few moments later, told the prisoner to be more careful and then left.

Dantès was overjoyed at hearing the sound of the bolt which previously used to make his heart sink every time it slammed shut. He listened to the noise of footsteps fading and, when it died away, hurried over to his bed and pulled it aside. By the dim light of day that entered the dungeon, he could see that he had achieved nothing
by his efforts the night before, because he had attacked the stone itself, instead of the plaster around it.