continued my path.
"It was the end of November, all the verdure of the garden had
disappeared, the trees were nothing more than skeletons with their
long bony arms, and the dead leaves sounded on the gravel under my
feet. My terror overcame me to such a degree as I approached the
thicket, that I took a pistol from my pocket and armed myself. I
fancied continually that I saw the figure of the Corsican between
the branches. I examined the thicket with my dark lantern; it was
empty. I looked carefully around; I was indeed alone, — no noise
disturbed the silence but the owl, whose piercing cry seemed to be
calling up the phantoms of the night. I tied my lantern to a forked
branch I had noticed a year before at the precise spot where I
stopped to dig the hole.
"The grass had grown very thickly there during the summer, and
when autumn arrived no one had been there to mow it. Still one
place where the grass was thin attracted my attention; it evidently
was there I had turned up the ground. I went to work. The hour,
then, for which I had been waiting during the last year had at
length arrived. How I worked, how I hoped, how I struck every piece
of turf, thinking to find some resistance to my spade! But no, I
found nothing, though I had made a hole twice as large as the
first. I thought I had been deceived — had mistaken the spot. I
turned around, I looked at the trees, I tried to recall the details
which had struck me at the time. A cold, sharp wind whistled
through the leafless branches, and yet the drops fell from my
forehead. I recollected that I was stabbed just as I was trampling
the ground to fill up the hole; while doing so I had leaned against
a laburnum; behind me was an artificial rockery, intended to serve
as a resting-place for persons walking in the garden; in falling,
my hand, relaxing its hold of the laburnum, felt the coldness of
the stone. On my right I saw the tree, behind me the rock. I stood
in the same attitude, and threw myself down. I rose, and againin the same attitude, and threw myself down. I rose, and again
began digging and enlarging the hole; still I found nothing,
nothing — the chest was no longer there!"
"The chest no longer there?" murmured Madame Danglars, choking
with fear.
Think not I contented myself with this one effort," continued
Villefort. "No; I searched the whole thicket. I thought the
assassin, having discovered the chest, and supposing it to be a
treasure, had intended carrying it off, but, perceiving his error,
had dug another hole, and deposited it there; but I could find
nothing. Then the idea struck me that he had not taken these
precautions, and had simply thrown it in a corner. In the last case
I must wait for daylight to renew my search. I remained the room
and waited."
"Oh, heavens!"
When daylight dawned I went down again. My first visit was to
the thicket. I hoped to find some traces which had escaped me in
the darkness. I had turned up the earth over a surface of more than
twenty feet square, and a depth of two feet. A laborer would not
have done in a day what occupied me an hour. But I could find
nothing — absolutely nothing. Then I renewed the search. Supposing
it had been thrown aside, it would probably be on the path which
led to the little gate; but this examination was as useless as the
first, and with a bursting heart I returned to the thicket, which
now contained no hope for me."
"Oh," cried Madame Danglars, "it was enough to drive you
mad!"
"I hoped for a moment that it might," said Villefort; "but that
happiness was denied me. However, recovering my strength and my
ideas, `Why,' said I, `should that man have carried away the
corpse?'"
"But you said," replied Madame Danglars, "he would require it as
a proof."
"Ah, no, madame, that could not be. Dead bodies are not kept a
year; they are shown to a magistrate, and the evidence is taken.
Now, nothing of the kind has happened."
"What then?" asked Hermine, trembling violently.
"Something more terrible, more fatal, more alarming for us — the"Something more terrible, more fatal, more alarming for us — the
child was, perhaps, alive, and the assassin may have saved it!"
Madame Danglars uttered a piercing cry, and, seizing Villefort's
hands, exclaimed, "My child was alive?" said she; "you buried my
child alive? You were not certain my child was dead, and you buried
it? Ah" —
Madame Danglars had risen, and stood before the procureur, whose
hands she wrung in her feeble grasp. "I know not; I merely suppose
so, as I might suppose anything else," replied Villefort with a
look so fixed, it indicated that his powerful mind was on the verge
of despair and madness. "Ah, my child, my poor child!" cried the
baroness, falling on her chair, and stifling her sobs in her
handkerchief. Villefort, becoming somewhat reassured, perceived
that to avert the maternal storm gathering over his head, he must
inspire Madame Danglars with the terror he felt. "You understand,
then, that if it were so," said he, rising in his turn, and
approaching the baroness, to speak to her in a lower tone, "we are
lost. This child lives, and some one knows it lives — some one is
in possession of our secret; and since Monte Cristo speaks before
us of a child disinterred, when that child could not be found, it
is he who is in possession of our secret."
"Just God, avenging God!" murmured Madame Danglars.
Villefort's only answer was a stifled groan.
"But the child — the child, sir?" repeated the agitated
mother.
"How I have searched for him," replied Villefort, wringing his
hands; "how I have called him in my long sleepless nights; how I
have longed for royal wealth to purchase a million of secrets from
a million of men, and to find mine among them! At last, one day,
when for the hundredth time I took up my spade, I asked myself
again and again what the Corsican could have done with the child. A
child encumbers a fugitive; perhaps, on perceiving it was still
alive, he had thrown it into the river."
"Impossible!" cried Madame Danglars: "a man may murder another