World Literature Classics Library: The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 24 Nos. 34 and 27 (3)
At dawn he pushed the rock back into the hole, pushed the bed against the wall, and got into bed and lay down.Breakfast was just a loaf of bread, and the guard came in and put it on the table.

"Look, you didn't bring me another basin, did you?" asked Dantès.

"No," said the guard, "you always break things. If you break your own water jug, it's not counted, and you caused me to trample on your basin. If all the prisoners in the prison destroy things like this, the government will punish you." I can’t take it anymore! I’ll keep the pot here, and you can just pour the soup into the pot in the future, so you don’t have to destroy anything in the future.”

Dantès raised his eyes and folded his hands under the sheet.

Being able to keep this iron artifact for him made him feel an impulse to be grateful to God. He had received various blessings in his life, but he had never felt such a passion to be grateful to God.However, he found that after he started working, the prisoners over there stopped.Regardless of it, you must not stop yourself because of it.That person doesn't dig here, he can dig there.So he kept busy throughout the day, relying on the pan as a tool, and in the evening he pulled out more than ten handfuls of gravel, lime mortar and cement from the wall.When the guard was about to come, he straightened the iron handle of the pan and put it back in place.The guard poured soup and meat into the pot, no, this time it was soup and fish, because no meat was eaten on this day, and the prisoners could not eat meat three times a week.This was also a method of calculating dates, but Dantès had long since put it aside.The guard poured the soup and left.

Now Dantès intends to find out whether the prisoner next to him really didn't dig anymore? He listened, and it was the same as the last time he stopped for three consecutive days, and he couldn't hear any movement.Dantès couldn't help sighing, obviously that person couldn't trust him.But he was not discouraged, and continued to dig at night.But after two or three hours of hard work, we encountered obstacles. The iron tools couldn't bear the strength, but just slipped on a flat surface.Dantès touched it with his hand, and found that it was a beam, which passed right through, or rather completely blocked the hole that Dantès had dug, and now had to go around it from above or from below.The unfortunate youth never expected such obstacles.

"Oh, my God, my God!" he cried, "I have prayed enough to you to hear my prayers. God, you have robbed me of my birth Freedom, deprived me of the peace of death, you have awakened my courage to live, God, have mercy on me! Don't let me die in despair!"

"Who brings God and despair together?" asked a vigorous voice, which seemed to come from the ground, dull in a dark cave, and sounded to Edmund like a voice in a tomb, Immediately, he felt his hair stand on end, so he fell to his knees and stepped back.

"Ah," he said softly, "I heard someone talking." For four or five years, Edmund had only heard the guard talking, and in the eyes of the prisoner, the guard was not a human being. A living door, a fence of blood and flesh beyond the bars of the window.

"For heaven's sake," cried Dantès, "you have spoken, and though your voice frightens me, go on. Who are you?"

"Who are you?" the voice asked.

"An unhappy prisoner," replied Edmund, and he answered it with alacrity.

"Which country?"

"French."

"What is your name?"

"Edmond Dantès."

"what occupation?"

"Seaman."

"When did you come in?"

"April 1815, 2."

"What crime?"

"I am innocent."

"What crime are you charged with?"

"Say I conspired to plot the emperor's return."

"What? The emperor is back? So the emperor is not here?"

"He abdicated at Fontainebleau in 1814, and was exiled to the Isle of Elba. But when did you come here? How come you don't know these things?"

"From 1811."

Dantès shuddered. This man had been in prison for four years longer than him.

"Well, you don't dig any more," said the voice hastily, "but tell me how high you dig?"

"As high as the ground."

"How is the hole concealed?"

"There is a bed blocking the front."

"Did they move your bed when you were locked up?"

"there has never been."

"Which way is your cell door facing?"

"Towards the corridor."

"Where's the corridor?"

"Direct access to the yard."

"Hi!" the voice murmured.

"Oh, my God, what's the matter?" cried Dantès.

"What happened, I made a mistake in my own calculations, a little flaw in the drawing delayed me, a little flaw in the compasses ruined me, I made a wrong line on the drawing, it was actually 15 feet wrong, I count this wall you dug as a castle wall!"

"Aren't you going to dig to the seaside?"

"I thought so."

"What if you dig it?"

"I'll jump into the sea and swim away. I can swim to some of the small islands around the Château d'If, to the Isle of Dumme, to the Isle of Tiburon, or even to the coast, and I'll do it."

"Can you swim it?"

"God will give me strength, but now it's all over."

"It's all over?"

"Yes, you should carefully plug the hole first, don't dig any more, don't move anything now, and listen to my news."

"But you are... have to tell me who you are?"

"I am...I am...Number 27."

"Are you wary of me?" Dantès asked, and he seemed to hear a bitter laughter pass through the beam and reach his ears.He instinctively guessed again that the man wanted to shake him off, and cried out, "Ah, I am a good Christian, and I swear to you by Christ, that I would rather die than confide in your and my executioner. You can't avoid me, you can't stop talking to me. I swear to you, I'm at the end of my rope, I'm going to bang my head against the wall and you'll regret it."

"How old are you? You sound young."

"I don't even know how old I am, because I haven't counted the date since I came here. I only know that I was almost 1815 when I was arrested on February 2, 28."

"Not yet 26 years old," said the voice softly, "Mum, people of this age will not be unreliable."

"Oh, no, no, I swear to you," said Dantès, "I said that just now, and I will say it to you again. I would rather be chopped into meat than betrayed. you."

"Fortunately, you spoke to me like this and asked me like this. I wanted to redesign a picture to avoid you, but your age reassures me that I will come to you again. Just wait."

"Wait until when?"

"I have to figure out what opportunities I have first, so just listen to me give you a signal."

"But don't abandon me, don't leave me here alone. Come to me, or let me go to you. We can run away together, and if we can't, we can talk, tell you The ones I love, I'll tell you about the ones I love. Who are you supposed to be in love with?"

"I'm all alone in this world."

"Then you will love me, and if you are young, I am your friend, and if you are old, I am your son. I have a father, who would be seventy if I were alive. I only love my father and a girl named Mercedes. My father will not forget me, I am sure, God knows whether the girl will miss me or not. I will love as my father Your."

"Okay then," said the prisoner opposite, "see you tomorrow."

Although he didn't say much, Dantès felt very at ease when he heard that tone.He didn't ask any more questions, stood up by himself, cleaned up the muck from the wall as before, and pushed the bed against the wall.Now that Dantès was completely immersed in happiness, he would no longer be alone in the future, and perhaps he could be free, and even if he was always in prison, he had a friend in trouble.When two people are imprisoned together, the suffering is reduced by half; when everyone complains together, it is tantamount to praying, and when two people pray together, it is simply doing good.Dantès was so excited that he walked up and down the small room all day, sometimes he was so happy that he couldn't breathe, so he sat on the bed and massaged his chest with his hands.Hearing a noise in the corridor, he leapt for the door.Once or twice he had a sudden flash of fear that the prison would separate him from this fellow prisoner whom he did not know but loved as a friend.So he made up his mind that if the guard moved the bed away and poked his head in to see the hole, he'd smash the guy's head with the water-pot rock.The prison was going to kill him, he knew it was going to happen, but wasn't he just a man dying of worry and despair? It was only the magic voice that brought him back to life.

In the evening, when the guards came to the cell, Dantès was lying on the bed. He felt that this could hide the unfinished hole more tightly.He fixed his eyes on the annoying untimely guard, probably with an unusual expression, for the guard was asking him:

"Look, are you crazy again?"

Dantès didn't answer, fearing that his agitation would reveal his true feelings.The guard shook his head and left the cell.It was getting dark, and Dantès thought that the prisoner over there would come to talk to him again in the silence and darkness, but he was wrong. He waited anxiously all night, but there was still no voice to answer him.But the next morning, when the guard came, he had just moved the bed away from the wall when he heard three even taps, and immediately knelt on the ground.

"Is that you?" he said, "here I am!"

"Has your guard gone?" the voice asked.

"Going away," replied Dantès, "we will not come until the evening, and we have twelve hours at our liberty."

"Then I can do it?" said the voice.

"Oh, yes, yes, don't delay any longer, do it now, I beg you."

Dantès had already stretched half of his body into the hole, and as soon as he finished speaking, the ground he was supporting seemed to collapse, and he immediately retracted his body, and a large pile of earth and stones sank, just as he was digging. Below the hole was another hole, into which earth and stones had fallen. It was so dark that he could not tell how deep it was, but at the bottom of the hole first a head, then shoulders, and finally the whole body appeared. The man came out of the hole quite nimbly.

(End of this chapter)