The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (42 page)

The island was deserted and the sun, at its zenith, seemed to be gazing down with its fiery eye. In the distance, little fishing boats spread their wings over a sea of sapphire blue.

Dantès had eaten nothing so far, but he could not think of wasting time on food at such a moment; he took a swig of rum and went back into the cavern with renewed vigour. The pick that had seemed so heavy had become light again and he raised it like a feather and eagerly returned to work.

After a few blows he noticed that the stones were not cemented but simply laid one on top of the other and covered with the plaster that we mentioned. He inserted the point of the pick into the gap between them, put his weight on the handle and was overjoyed to see the stone fall down at his feet. After that, he only had to pull each stone towards him with the head of the pickaxe and, one by one, they fell down beside the first.

He could have got through as soon as the gap was opened, but by a few minutes’ delay he put off certainty and clung to hope.

Finally, after a last moment of hesitation, Dantès went from the first cavern into the second. It was lower, darker and more frightening than the first. The air, which only came through the opening he had just made, had the musty smell that he had been surprised not to find in the first cavern. Before entering, he allowed the outside air time to freshen this dead atmosphere.

On the left of the opening was a deep, dark corner – though, as we have said, there was no such thing as darkness for Dantès’ eyes. He peered into the second cavern; it was as empty as the first.

The treasure, if there was one, was buried in this dark corner.

The agonizing moment had come. There were two feet of soil to dig: that was all that remained to him between the summit of happiness and the depth of despair.

He went over to the corner and, as if driven by a sudden resolve, attacked the soil boldly. At the fifth or sixth stroke of the pick, iron rang against iron.

Never had a funereal tolling or resounding death-knell produced such an effect on the person who heard it. If Dantès had found nothing, he would undoubtedly not have gone any whiter. He dug again in the same place and met with the same resistance, but not the same sound.

‘It’s a wooden casket, bound in iron,’ he said.

At that moment a shadow passed swiftly across the daylight.

Dantès dropped the pick, grasped his gun, returned through the hole and hurried out into the light. A wild goat had leapt above the main entrance to the caverns and was grazing a few yards away. It was a good opportunity to make sure of his dinner, but Dantès was afraid that the gunshot would attract someone’s attention.

He thought for a moment, then cut a branch from a resinous
tree, went to light it at the still-smoking fire where the smugglers had cooked their dinner, and returned with this torch. He did not want to miss a single detail of what he was about to see.

He brought the torch down to the rough hole that he had started to make and confirmed that he had not been wrong: his blows had landed alternately on iron and wood. He planted the torch in the ground and resumed his work.

Rapidly he uncovered an area about three feet long by two feet wide and could see an oak chest bound in wrought iron. In the centre of the lid, on a silver plate that the earth had not tarnished, shone the arms of the Spada family: a sword lying vertically across an oval shield (that being the shape of Italian shields), with a cardinal’s hat above it. Dantès recognized it at once: Faria had often drawn it for him.

Now there could be no further doubt. This was the treasure. No one would have taken such precautions to hide an empty box in this place.

In a moment he had cleared all round the casket and revealed by turns the lock in the middle, between two padlocks, and the handles at each end. The whole was worked and engraved in the manner of the time, when art made the basest metals precious.

Dantès took the casket by its handles and tried to lift it; it was impossible. He tried to open it; the lock and the padlocks were shut and these faithful guards did not seem to want to give up their treasure.

Finally he put the head of the pickaxe between the box and its lid, and pressed down on the handle. The lid groaned, then broke apart. A wide gap opened in the boards, making the iron bindings unnecessary: they too fell off, though with their tenacious fingers still grasping fragments of the boards. The box was open.

Dantès felt faint. He took his gun, loaded it and placed it beside him. At first he shut his eyes, as children do when they want to count more stars in the shimmering darkness of their imagination than they can in a still light sky; then he opened them and was dazzled.

The casket was divided into three compartments.

In the first were gold
écus
, gleaming with wild radiance. In the second were unpolished ingots, neatly stacked, with nothing of gold about them – except the weight and worth of gold. Finally, in the third compartment, half full, Edmond plunged his hand into
fistfuls of diamonds, pearls and rubies, then let them fall in a shimmering fountain which gave off the sound of hailstones on a window-pane.

After touching, feeling and plunging his trembling hands into the gold and precious stones, Edmond got up and ran through the caves with the wild exultation of a man on the brink of madness. He leapt on to a rock from which he could see the sea, but saw nothing. He was alone, entirely alone, with this incalculable, unimagined, fabulous wealth, and it belonged to him. But was he asleep or awake? Was he inside a dream or grappling with reality?

He needed to see his gold again, but he felt that he would not at that moment have the strength to bear the sight of it a second time. For a short while he clasped the top of his head with his hands, as if to hold in his reason. Then he set off across the island, not only running away from the beaten track – there are no beaten tracks on Monte Cristo – but altogether aimlessly, scaring the mountain goats and the seabirds by his cries and gesticulations. Then, by a roundabout route, he came back, still doubting, plunged through the first and second caverns, and found himself confronted by this mine of gold and diamonds.

This time he fell to his knees, convulsively clasping both hands to his beating heart and muttering a prayer that God alone could understand.

At length he felt calmer – and yet happier, because it was only from then on that he started to believe in his happiness.

Then he began to count his fortune. There were a thousand gold ingots, each of two or three pounds. Next to these, he piled 25,000 gold
écus
, each worth perhaps twenty-four francs in today’s money, each bearing the head of Pope Alexander VI or his predecessors – and he observed that the compartment was only half empty. Finally, he measured ten times the capacity of his joined hands in pearls, precious stones and diamonds, many of which were in settings made by the finest goldsmiths of the time, giving them great additional value on top of their intrinsic worth.

He saw the sun go down and daylight fade little by little. He was afraid that someone would surprise him if he stayed in the cave, so he came out holding his gun. His supper was a piece of ship’s biscuit and a few mouthfuls of wine. Then he replaced the stone and lay down on it, sleeping for a few hours with his body covering the entrance to the cave. This night was both terrible and delicious, a
night such as this man of powerful feelings had experienced only once or twice before in his life.

Day broke. Dantès had been waiting for it for a long time. At the sun’s first rays, he got up and, as he had done on the previous day, climbed to the highest point on the island to look around. As before, everything was deserted.

Edmond went down, lifted the rock, filled his pockets with precious stones and replaced the boards and the iron bindings of the casket as best he could; then he covered it with earth, which he trampled down and scattered with sand, to make the newly turned soil look similar to the rest. He went out of the cave, replaced the entrance, piled stones of various sizes around it, put earth into the gaps, planted myrtle and heather in them, and watered these new plants to make them seem well established. Finally, he covered the traces of his footprints around the spot and waited impatiently for the return of his companions. There was no sense now in spending his time looking at this gold and these diamonds, and staying on Monte Cristo like a dragon guarding a useless treasure: he must return to life and take his place among men and in society, with the rank, influence and power that are bestowed in this world by wealth – that first and greatest of forces that a human being can control.

The smugglers returned on the sixth day. From afar, Dantès recognized the
Jeune-Amélie
by its cut and its gait: it was limping into port like a wounded Philoctetes. When his companions stepped ashore, Dantès told them that he was considerably better, though he continued to complain. Then in turn he listened to the smugglers’ tales. They had certainly been successful, but hardly had the cargo been off-loaded than they learned that a brig of the excise from Toulon had just left harbour and was heading in their direction. They took flight at once, regretting that Dantès, who knew how to get so much greater speed out of the vessel, was not there to guide them. The following boat soon came into view, but they managed
to escape under cover of night and by rounding the Cap Corse. In short, the voyage had not been unsuccessful and everyone, particularly Jacopo, expressed regret that Dantès had not been with them, so that he could have his share of the profits they had brought back, a share which amounted to fifty
piastres
.

Edmond remained impassive. He did not even smile when they emphasized how much he would have benefited by leaving the island; and, since the
Jeune-Amélie
had called at Monte Cristo only to pick him up, he embarked the same evening and went with the boat to Leghorn. There he went to visit a Jew and sold four of his smallest diamonds for five thousand francs apiece. The Jew might have enquired how a mere seaman came into possession of such things, but he was careful not to ask; he was making a thousand francs on each diamond.

The next day Dantès bought a new boat which he gave to Jacopo, together with a hundred
piastres
so that he could engage a crew, all on condition that Jacopo went to Marseille and asked for news of an old man called Louis Dantès, living in the Allées de Meilhan, and a young woman from the Catalan village, named Mercédès.

Now it was Jacopo’s turn to think he was dreaming. Edmond told him that he had become a sailor on an impulse, because his family would not give him money to support himself; but that on arriving in Leghorn he had received a bequest from an uncle who had made him his sole heir. This story seemed plausible enough, in view of Dantès’ superior upbringing, and Jacopo did not for a moment doubt that his former comrade had told him the truth.

In addition, since Edmond’s contract of service with the
Jeune-Amélie
had ended, he said farewell to the master, who at first tried to dissuade him but, having learnt the same story as Jacopo about the inheritance, abandoned hope of overcoming his former employee’s resolve.

The next day Jacopo set sail for Marseille; he was to pick Edmond up on Monte Cristo. The same day Dantès himself left without saying where he was going, bidding farewell to the crew of the
Jeune-Amélie
with a splendid present and to the master with the promise that he would hear from him again one day.

Dantès was going to Genoa.

He arrived at the moment when they were testing a little yacht ordered by an Englishman who, having heard it said that the Genoese were the best boat-builders in the Mediterranean, had
decided to have a yacht built there. He had settled on a price of forty thousand francs; Dantès offered sixty, on condition that the boat was delivered to him that same day. The Englishman had gone on a trip to Switzerland while the boat was being completed. He was not due to return for three weeks or a month, so the boat-builder reckoned he would have time to start building another. Dantès took him to a Jewish banker, who led them behind his shop and counted out sixty thousand francs for the boat-builder.

The latter offered Dantès his services to find a crew, but Dantès thanked him and said that he was used to sailing by himself and that the only thing he wanted was for the man to build him, in the cabin behind the bed, a secret cupboard with three hidden compartments in it. He gave the measurements for the compartments, and they were completed by the following day.

Two hours later Dantès sailed out of Genoa, followed by the stares of a crowd of inquisitive onlookers who wanted to see this Spanish gentleman who was in the habit of sailing on his own.

He succeeded brilliantly: with the help of the rudder, and without needing to leave it, he put his boat through its paces, so that it seemed like an intelligent being, ready to obey the slightest command. Silently, Dantès agreed that the Genoese deserved their reputation as the finest boat-builders in the world.

The crowd looked after the little ship until it was out of sight, then fell to discussing where it was going. Some said Corsica, others Elba; there were those ready to bet that he was heading for Spain, but some argued just as warmly that he was en route for Africa. No one thought to mention the island of Monte Cristo.

Dantès was bound for Monte Cristo.

He reached the island around the end of the second day. The ship handled superbly and he had covered the distance in thirty-five hours. He recognized every inch of the coast and, instead of making for the usual port, he dropped anchor in the little creek.