mate monarch is he who is loved by his people."

"That's right!" cried Morrel. "I like to hear you speak thus, and I
augur well for Edmond from it."

"Wait a moment," said Villefort, turning over the leaves of a register;
"I have it--a sailor, who was about to marry a young Catalan girl. I
recollect now; it was a very serious charge."

"How so?"

"You know that when he left here he was taken to the Palais de Justice."

"Well?"

"I made my report to the authorities at Paris, and a week after he was
carried off."

"Carried off!" said Morrel. "What can they have done with him?"

"Oh, he has been taken to Fenestrelles, to Pignerol, or to the
Sainte-Marguerite islands. Some fine morning he will return to take
command of your vessel."

"Come when he will, it shall be kept for him. But how is it he is not
already returned? It seems to me the first care of government should be
to set at liberty those who have suffered for their adherence to it."

"Do not be too hasty, M. Morrel," replied Villefort. "The order of
imprisonment came from high authority, and the order for his liberation
must proceed from the same source; and, as Napoleon has scarcely been
reinstated a fortnight, the letters have not yet been forwarded."

"But," said Morrel, "is there no way of expediting all these
formalities--of releasing him from arrest?"

"There has been no arrest."

"How?"

"It is sometimes essential to government to cause a man's disappearance
without leaving any traces, so that no written forms or documents may
defeat their wishes."

"It might be so under the Bourbons, but at present"--

"It has always been so, my dear Morrel, since the reign of Louis XIV.
The emperor is more strict in prison discipline than even Louis himself,
and the number of prisoners whose names are not on the register is
incalculable." Had Morrel even any suspicions, so much kindness would
have dispelled them.

"Well, M. de Villefort, how would you advise me to act?" asked he.

"Petition the minister."

"Oh, I know what that is; the minister receives two hundred petitions
every day, and does not read three."

"That is true; but he will read a petition countersigned and presented
by me."

"And will you undertake to deliver it?"

"With the greatest pleasure. Dantes was then guilty, and now he is
innocent, and it is as much my duty to free him as it was to condemn
him." Villefort thus forestalled any danger of an inquiry, which,
however improb