ts of this," murmured he, "and that Noirtier
is father of Villefort, I am lost!" He approached the fire, and cast the
fatal letter in.

"Sir," said he, "I shall detail you till this evening in the Palais de
Justice. Should anyone else interrogate you do not breathe a word of
this letter."

"I promise."

It was Villefort who seemed to entreat, and the prisoner to reassure
him.

But the doom of Edmond Dantes was cast. Sacrificed to Villefort's
ambition, he was lodged the same night in a dungeon of the gloomy
fortress-prison of the Chateau d'If, while Villefort posted to Paris to
warn the king that the usurper Bonaparte was meditating a landing in
France.

Napoleon returned. There followed the Hundred Days, and Louis XVIII.
again mounted the throne. M. Morrel's intercessions during Napoleon's
brief triumph for the release of Dantes but served, on the restoration
of Louis, to compromise further the unhappy prisoner, who languished in
a foul prison in the depths of the Chateau d'If.

In the cell next to Dantes was another political prisoner, the Abbe
Faria. He had been in the chateau four years when Dantes was immured,
and, with marvellously contrived tools and incredible toil, had burrowed
a tunnel through the rock fifty feet long, only to find that, instead of
leading to the outer wall of the chateau, whence he could have flung
himself into the sea, it led to the cell of another prisoner--Dantes. He
penetrated it after Dantes had been solitary six years.

The prisoners met every day between the visits of their gaolers. Faria
showed Dantes the products of his industry and ingenuity--his books,
written on the linen of shirts, his fish-bone pens and needles, knives,
and matches, all accomplished secretly; and beguiled much of the
weariness of confinement by educating Dantes in the sciences, history,
and languages. Dantes possessed a prodigious memory, combined with
readiness of conception, and his studies progressed rapidly. Soon Dantes
told the abbe his story, and the abbe had little difficulty in opening
the eyes of the astonished Dantes to the villainy of his supposed
friends and the deputy _procurer_. Thus was instilled into his heart a
new passion--vengeance.

_II.--The Cemetery of the Chateau d'If_

More than seven years passed thus when coming into the abbe's dungeon
one night, Dantes found him stricken with paralysis. His right arm and
leg remained paralysed after the seizure. When Dantes next visited