stone, and with it knocked against the wall where the sound came.
He struck thrice. At the first blow the sound ceased, as if by
magic.
Edmond listened intently; an hour passed, two hours passed, and
no sound was heard from the wall — all was silent there.
Full of hope, Edmond swallowed a few mouthfuls of bread and
water, and, thanks to the vigor of his constitution, found himself
well-nigh recovered.
The day passed away in utter silence — night came without
recurrence of the noise.
"It is a prisoner," said Edmond joyfully. The night passed in
perfect silence. Edmond did not close his eyes.
In the morning the jailer brought him fresh provisions — he had
already devoured those of the previous day; he ate these listening
anxiously for the sound, walking round and round his cell, shaking
the iron bars of the loophole, restoring vigor and agility to his
limbs by exercise, and so preparing himself for his future destiny.
At intervals he listened to learn if the noise had not begun again,
and grew impatient at the prudence of the prisoner, who did not
guess he had been disturbed by a captive as anxious for liberty as
himself.
Three days passed — seventy-two long tedious hours which he
counted off by minutes!
At length one evening, as the jailer was visiting him for the
last time that night, Dantes, with his ear for the hundredth time
at the wall, fancied he heard an almost imperceptible movement
among the stones. He moved away, walked up and down his cell to
collect his thoughts, and then went back and listened.
The matter was no longer doubtful. Something was at work on the
other side of the wall; the prisoner had discovered the danger, and
had substituted a lever for a chisel.
Encouraged by this discovery, Edmond determined to assist the
indefatigable laborer. He began by moving his bed, and looked
around for anything with which he could pierce the wall, penetrate
the moist cement, and displace a stone.
He saw nothing, he had no knife or sharp instrument, the windowHe saw nothing, he had no knife or sharp instrument, the window
grating was of iron, but he had too often assured himself of its
solidity. All his furniture consisted of a bed, a chair, a table, a
pail, and a jug. The bed had iron clamps, but they were screwed to
the wood, and it would have required a screw-driver to take them
off. The table and chair had nothing, the pail had once possessed a
handle, but that had been removed.
Dantes had but one resource, which was to break the jug, and
with one of the sharp fragments attack the wall. He let the jug
fall on the floor, and it broke in pieces.
Dantes concealed two or three of the sharpest fragments in his
bed, leaving the rest on the floor. The breaking of his jug was too
natural an accident to excite suspicion. Edmond had all the night
to work in, but in the darkness he could not do much, and he soon
felt that he was working against something very hard; he pushed
back his bed, and waited for day.
All night he heard the subterranean workman, who continued to
mine his way. Day came, the jailer entered. Dantes told him that
the jug had fallen from his hands while he was drinking, and the
jailer went grumblingly to fetch another, without giving himself
the trouble to remove the fragments of the broken one. He returned
speedily, advised the prisoner to be more careful, and
departed.
Dantes heard joyfully the key grate in the lock; he listened
until the sound of steps died away, and then, hastily displacing
his bed, saw by the faint light that penetrated into his cell, that
he had labored uselessly the previous evening in attacking the
stone instead of removing the plaster that surrounded it.
The damp had rendered it friable, and Dantes was able to break
it off — in small morsels, it is true, but at the end of half an
hour he had scraped off a handful; a mathematician might have
calculated that in two years, supposing that the rock was not
encountered, a passage twenty feet long and two feet broad, might
be formed.encountered, a passage twenty feet long and two feet broad, might
be formed.
The prisoner reproached himself with not having thus employed
the hours he had passed in vain hopes, prayer, and despondency.
During the six years that he had been imprisoned, what might he not
have accomplished?
In three days he had succeeded, with the utmost precaution, in
removing the cement, and exposing the stone-work. The wall was
built of rough stones, among which, to give strength to the
structure, blocks of hewn stone were at intervals imbedded. It was
one of these he had uncovered, and which he must remove from its
socket.
Dantes strove to do this with his nails, but they were too weak.
The fragments of the jug broke, and after an hour of useless toil,
he paused.
Was he to be thus stopped at the beginning, and was he to wait
inactive until his fellow workman had completed his task? Suddenly
an idea occurred to him — he smiled, and the perspiration dried on
his forehead.
The jailer always brought Dantes' soup in an iron saucepan; this
saucepan contained soup for both prisoners, for Dantes had noticed
that it was either quite full, or half empty, according as the
turnkey gave it to him or to his companion first.
The handle of this saucepan was of iron; Dantes would have given
ten years of his life in exchange for it.
The jailer was accustomed to pour the contents of the saucepan
into Dantes' plate, and Dantes, after eating his soup with a wooden
spoon, washed the plate, which thus served for every day. Now when
evening came Dantes put his plate on the ground near the door; the
jailer, as he entered, stepped on it and broke it.
This time he could not blame Dantes. He was wrong to leave it
there, but the jailer was wrong not to have looked before him.
The jailer, therefore, only grumbled. Then he looked about for
something to pour the soup into; Dantes' entire dinner service
consisted of one plate — there was no alternative.
"Leave the saucepan," said Dantes; "you can take it away when