The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (34 page)

Faria handed the paper to Dantès who, this time, avidly read the following words, written in a reddish ink like rust:

            This day, April 25, 1498, hav
Alexander VI, and fearing that, not
he might wish to inherit my wealth and
        and Bentivoglio, fatally poisoned,
               my sole legatee, that I have con
                having visited it with me, that is
        Isle of Monte Cristo, all that I o
  stones, diamonds, jewels, that I al
                 may amount to nearly two mill
                 find, on lifting the twentieth
            creek eastwards in a straight line. Two
      these grottoes: the treasure is in the
           which treasure I bequeath and endow
                   sole heir.
                       April 25, 1498          
CES

‘Now,’ said the abbé, ‘read this other piece of paper.’ And he handed Dantès a second sheet with other, partially complete lines: Dantès took it and read:

ing been invited to dinner by His Holiness
content with making me pay for my cardinal’s hat
         design for me the fate of Cardinals Crapara
          I declare to my nephew Guido Spada,
          cealed in a place that he knows,
                in the grottoes of the little
       wned of gold bars, gold coin, precious
one know of the existence of this treasure which
        ion Roman écus, and that he will
           rock starting from the little
                   openings have been made in
           furthest corner away from the second,
               to him in full benefice as my
               
ARE SPADA

Faria watched him intently. ‘And now,’ he said, when he saw that Dantès had reached the bottom line, ‘put the two fragments together and judge for yourself.’

Dantès obeyed. When he put the two fragments together, they made up the following:

           This day, April 25, 1498, hav… ing been invited to dinner by His Holiness
Alexander VI, and fearing that, not… content with making me pay for my cardinal’s hat
  he might wish to inherit my wealth and… design for me the fate of Cardinals Crapara
           and Bentivoglio, fatally poisoned,… I declare to my nephew Guido Spada,
                  my sole legatee, that I have con… cealed in a place that he knows,
                      having visited it with me, that is… in the grottoes of the little
             Isle of Monte Cristo, all that I o… wned of gold bars, gold coin, precious
stones, diamonds, jewels, that I al… one know of the existence of this treasure which
               may amount to nearly two mill… ion Roman écus, and that he will
                       find, on lifting the twentieth… rock starting from the little
            creek eastwards in a straight line. Two… openings have been made in
         these grottoes: the treasure is in the… furthest corner away from the second,
              which treasure I bequeath and endow… to him in full benefice as my
                  sole heir.
                       April 25, 1498     
CES… ARE SPADA

‘Now, finally, do you understand?’ asked Faria.

‘This was Cardinal Spada’s last will and testament that they had been hunting all that time?’ said Edmond, still incredulous.

‘Yes, a thousand times yes.’

‘Who pieced it together in this way?’

‘I did: with the help of the remaining fragment, I guessed what was missing by measuring the length of the lines against that of the paper and uncovering the hidden meaning by means of what was plain, as one might be guided in a tunnel by a glimmer of light from above.’

‘So what did you do when you were sure of what you knew?’

‘I wanted to go there, and I did in fact leave at once, taking with me the start of my great work on the unity of the kingdom of Italy. But I had been under surveillance by the imperial police which, at that time, wanted to divide the provinces – even though later, when his son was born, Napoleon wanted the opposite. The police did not know the reason for my hasty departure, but it aroused suspicion and, just as I was taking ship at Piombino, I was arrested.

‘Now,’ Faria went on, looking at Dantès with an almost paternal expression, ‘now, my friend, you know as much as I do. If we should ever manage to escape together, half of my treasure is yours; if I should die here and you alone escape, all of it belongs to you.’

‘But surely,’ Dantès asked hesitantly, ‘is there not someone in the world who has a more legitimate claim to it than we do?’

‘No, have no fear on that point. The family is entirely extinct. In any event, the last Count of Spada made me his heir; by bequeathing me this breviary, he symbolically bequeathed to me also what it contained. No, no, calm yourself: if we can put our hands on this fortune, we can enjoy it without any scruples.’

‘And you say that the treasure consists of…’

‘Two million Roman
écus
, worth around thirteen million of our money.’

‘Impossible!’ Dantès exclaimed, staggered by the enormity of the sum.

‘Impossible? Why impossible?’ the old man asked. ‘The Spadas were one of the oldest and most powerful families of the fifteenth century. In any event, at a time when there was no speculation and no industry, such collections of gold and jewels were not rare, and there are still today Roman families who are dying of hunger beside a million in diamonds and precious stones handed down in trust, which they cannot touch.’

Edmond thought he must be dreaming; he hovered between joy and disbelief.

‘The only reason that I kept this secret from you for so long,’ Faria went on, ‘was firstly in order to test you, and secondly to surprise you. If we had escaped together before my cataleptic fit, I should have taken you to Monte Cristo. Now,’ he added, sighing, ‘you will have to take me. Well, Dantès, aren’t you going to thank me?’

‘This treasure is yours, my friend,’ said Dantès. ‘It belongs to you alone and I have no right to it. We are not related.’

‘You are my son, Dantès!’ the old man cried. ‘You are the child of my captivity. My priestly office condemned me to celibacy: God sent you to me both to console the man who could not be a father and the prisoner who could not be free.’

And he held out his good arm to the young man, who fell weeping on his breast.

Now that the treasure, which had been for so long the object of the abbé’s meditations, might ensure the future happiness of the man whom Faria loved truly as a son, it doubled in worth in his eyes. Every day, he dwelt on the amount, explaining to Dantès how much a man could do nowadays, in the way of good to his friends, with a fortune of thirteen or fourteen millions. Then Dantès’ face clouded, because he recalled the oath of vengeance that he had taken and he considered how much, nowadays, with a fortune of thirteen or fourteen millions, a man could do in the way of harm to his enemies.

The abbé did not know Monte Cristo, but Dantès knew it. He had often sailed past this island, which lies twenty-five miles from Pianosa, between Corsica and Elba; once he had even dropped anchor there. The island was, had always been and is still utterly deserted: it is a rock of almost conical shape, which appears to have been thrown up by some volcanic cataclysm from the depths to the surface of the sea.

Dantès made a plan of the island for Faria, and Faria gave Dantès advice on the best way to recover the treasure. But Dantès was considerably less enthusiastic and above all less confident than the old man. Admittedly he was now quite certain that Faria was not mad, and the means by which he had arrived at the discovery that had made others believe him insane only added to Dantès’ admiration for him. But he could also not believe that the cache, assuming that it had ever existed, existed still; and, while he did not consider the treasure as a chimera, he did at least think of it as absent.

However, as if destiny wanted to deprive the prisoners of their last hope and let them know that they were condemned to prison for life, a new misfortune struck. The gallery beside the sea, which had been crumbling for many years, was rebuilt, the stone courses were repaired and the hole that had already been half excavated by Dantès was filled with huge blocks of stone. Without the precautions that (as the reader will remember) had been suggested to Dantès by the abbé, the misfortune would have been greater still,
because the attempted escape would have been discovered and they would certainly have been separated. In any case, a new door, stronger and more impenetrable than the rest, had been closed before them.

‘You see,’ the young man told Faria wistfully. ‘God wishes to deprive me even of the merit of what you call my devotion to you. I promised to stay with you for ever and I am no longer free to break my promise. I shall no more have the treasure than you will: neither one of us will leave this place. Moreover, my true treasure, my friend, is not the one that awaits me under the dark rocks of Monte Cristo, but your presence, and the time that we spend together for five or six hours a day, in spite of our jailers; it is those rays of understanding that you have shone into my brain and the languages that you have implanted in my memory and which now grow there, putting out further branches of language in their turn. The many sciences that you have brought within my grasp by the depth of your own knowledge of them and the clarity of the basic principles which you have derived from them – this is my treasure, my friend, this is what you have given to make me rich and happy. Believe me, and console yourself; this is worth more to me than tons of gold and trunkloads of diamonds, even if they were not uncertain, like those clouds which can be seen in the morning above the sea and which appear to be dry land, but which evaporate, disperse and fade away as one approaches them. Having you close to me for as long as possible, hearing your eloquent voice as it enlightens my mind, re-tempering my soul, making my whole being capable of great and awe-inspiring deeds if ever I should be free, filling my mind and soul so thoroughly that the despair to which I was ready to give way when I met you can no longer find any place in them – this is my fortune. It is not a chimera. I truly owe it to you, and all the sovereigns on earth, were they all Cesare Borgias, could not succeed in taking it away from me.’

For the two unfortunates, these days, if not exactly happy, did at least speed past as quickly as those that followed. Faria, who had kept silent about the treasure for many years, now spoke incessantly about it. As he had predicted, he remained paralysed in the right arm and left leg, and had almost lost any hope of being able to enjoy the fortune himself, but he continually dreamed that his young companion might be freed, or escape, and would enjoy
it for him. Fearing that the letter might be mislaid or lost one day, he obliged Dantès to learn it by heart; and, since the first day, Dantès had known it from the first word to the last. Then he destroyed the second half, convinced that if the first was found, no one would be able to understand its true meaning. Sometimes whole hours passed in which Faria gave Dantès instructions, to be carried out when he was free. And, once he was free, from the very day, hour, instant of his freedom, he must have no thought except that of somehow reaching Monte Cristo, remaining alone there under some pretext and, once there, once alone, trying to find the wonderful grottoes and searching the spot indicated in the letter: this, you may remember, was the furthest angle of the second opening.

Meanwhile, the hours passed, if not quickly, at least bearably. Faria, as we said, had not recovered the use of his hand and foot, but his mind was perfectly clear and, apart from the moral precepts which we have mentioned, he had taught his young companion the patient and noble craft of the prisoner, which is to make something out of nothing. So they were constantly occupied, Faria to ward off old age, Dantès in order to forget a past that was now almost extinct, and which only hovered in the furthest depths of his memory like a distant light flickering in the darkness. So time passed, as it does for those lives which have remained untroubled by misfortune and which continue calmly and mechanically under the eye of Providence. But beneath this calm surface, in the young man’s heart, and also perhaps in that of the older one, there were many suppressed emotions and stifled sighs, which emerged when Faria was alone and Edmond had gone back to his own cell.

One night Edmond woke up with a start, thinking he had heard a cry. He opened his eyes and tried to penetrate the darkness.

He faintly heard his name; or, rather, a plaintive voice trying to speak his name.

He rose up on his bed, sweat rising to his forehead, and listened. There was no doubt. The cry was coming from his friend’s dungeon.

‘Good God!’ he muttered. ‘Could it be… ?’

He moved his bed, pushed aside the stone, rushed into the passage and reached the far end; the paving-stone was up.

In the vague, shimmering light of the lamp (which has already been mentioned), Edmond could see the old man: pale, still standing, clinging to his wooden bedpost. His face was already contorted
by those fearful symptoms that Edmond now recognized, which had so terrified him when he saw them for the first time.

‘So, my friend,’ said Faria, in a resigned voice, ‘you understand? I don’t need to tell you anything.’

Edmond cried out in pain and sorrow, and – completely losing his head – ran to the door, shouting: ‘Help! Help!’

Faria still had enough strength to restrain him.