ins,
from the sunny Mediterranean to the frozen Arctic Ocean, will reap the
benefit of my efforts and shake off the yoke of tyranny. Where shall I
begin? Ah! with France, my own country, the land that gave me birth. I
shall thus return good for evil, and Edmond Dantes, the prisoner of the
Chateau d'If, will free the masses from their galling chains. My most
potent instrument will be the public press; by means of journals I will
found, or buy, the minds of all Europeans shall become familiarized with
the theory of universal liberty and ripened for sweeping revolutions and
the establishment of republics; I will also call fiction to my aid;
struggling novelists and feuilletonists shall receive liberal subsidies
from my hand on condition that they disseminate my ideas, theories and
plans in their romances and feuilletons; thus will I reach thousands
upon thousands who hold themselves aloof from politics, and almost
insensibly they will be transformed into zealous, active partisans of
the order of things that is to be; poets, too, shall sing the praises of
freedom louder and more enthusiastically than ever before; in fine, no
instrument, no means, however humble and apparently insignificant, shall
be neglected when the proper moment arrives, but until it does arrive I
must wait, wait patiently, wait though while waiting an internal fire
consume me, and my veins throb with anxiety and expectation to the point
of bursting."

He sank into a chair, and, burying his face in his hands, was lost in
profound thought.

Meanwhile, a lovely woman, leading a beautiful girl of eight years and a
handsome boy of nine, had noiselessly entered the apartment. It was
Haydee, the wife of Monte-Cristo, Haydee grown mature and more beautiful
than ever. Her night-black tresses were gathered in two wide braids at
the back of her shapely head, so long that they reached below her waist.
Her eyes were as bright as stars, and her slender hands, tipped with
their pink nails, as white as the lily; her tiny feet, encased in
Cinderella slippers of rose-hued satin, peeped out from beneath ample
Turkish trousers, which were semi-transparent and disclosed the outlines
of her beautifully turned limbs; she wore a close-fitting gilet of
pearly silk, adorned with gilt fringe and cut low, displaying her snowy
neck and magnificent shoulders; her arms were encompassed but not hidden
by flowing sleeves of filmy gauze as fine as the tissue of a spider's
web; about h