my taking a solemn oath never to utter the name mentioned in
the address."

"Noirtier!" repeated the abbe; "Noirtier!--I knew a person of that
name at the court of the Queen of Etruria,--a Noirtier, who had been a
Girondin during the Revolution! What was your deputy called?"

"De Villefort!" The abbe burst into a fit of laughter, while Dantes
gazed on him in utter astonishment.

"What ails you?" said he at length.

"Do you see that ray of sunlight?"

"I do."

"Well, the whole thing is more clear to me than that sunbeam is to you.
Poor fellow! poor young man! And you tell me this magistrate expressed
great sympathy and commiseration for you?"

"He did."

"And the worthy man destroyed your compromising letter?"

"Yes."

"And then made you swear never to utter the name of Noirtier?"

"Yes."

"Why, you poor short-sighted simpleton, can you not guess who this
Noirtier was, whose very name he was so careful to keep concealed?
Noirtier was his father."

Had a thunderbolt fallen at the feet of Dantes, or hell opened its
yawning gulf before him, he could not have been more completely
transfixed with horror than he was at the sound of these unexpected
words. Starting up, he clasped his hands around his head as though to
prevent his very brain from bursting, and exclaimed, "His father! his
father!"

"Yes, his father," replied the abbe; "his right name was Noirtier de
Villefort." At this instant a bright light shot through the mind of
Dantes, and cleared up all that had been dark and obscure before.
The change that had come over Villefort during the examination, the
destruction of the letter, the exacted promise, the almost supplicating
tones of the magistrate, who seemed rather to implore mercy than to
pronounce punishment,--all returned with a stunning force to his memory.
He cried out, and staggered against the wall like a drunken man, then
he hurried to the opening that led from the abbe's cell to his own, and
said, "I must be alone, to think over all this."

When he regained his dungeon, he threw himself on his bed, where the
turnkey found him in the evening visit, sitting with fixed gaze and
contracted features, dumb and motionless as a statue. During these hours
of profound meditation, which to him had seemed only minutes, he had
formed a fearful resolution, and bound himself to its fulfilment by a
solemn oath.

Dantes was at length roused from his revery by the voice of Faria,
who, having also been v