The Count left rcédès’s house with a heavy heart, knowing he’d probably never see her again. Ever since young Edward’s death, sothing fundantal had shifted inside Monte Cristo. He’d climbed the mountain of his revenge through a long, twisted path, only to find himself staring into an abyss of doubt on the other side.
The conversation with rcédès had stirred up too many mories. He needed to push them down, to fight against them. A man like the Count couldn’t afford to wallow in lancholy, that kind of darkness might linger in ordinary minds, but it would destroy soone like him.
Have I made a mistake? he wondered. Have I miscalculated sowhere along the way?
"No," he muttered to himself. "I can’t have been wrong. I must be looking at the past through the wrong lens."
His thoughts spiraled. What if I’ve been following the wrong path this whole ti? What if the goal I’ve been chasing was never the right one? Can one hour be enough to prove that everything I built my hopes on was impossible, maybe even blasphemous?
The idea threatened to drive him mad.
The reason I feel this way now is because I don’t fully understand my own past anymore, he realized. The past is like the landscape behind us when we walk, it becos blurry as we move forward. I’m like soone who got wounded in a dream. They feel the pain but can’t rember when or how they got hurt.
He clenched his fists. "Co on, then. Regenerate yourself. You extravagant fool, you awakened drear, you all-powerful visionary, you unstoppable millionaire, go back and review your past life. Rember the starvation, the misery. Revisit the places where fate and despair found you."
He looked down at his expensive clothes, his rings.
"Too many diamonds. Too much gold and splendor reflecting back at now. Monte Cristo can’t see Dantès anymore through all this shine. Hide the diamonds. Bury the gold. Trade the riches for poverty, freedom for a prison cell, a living body for a corpse."
Still muttering to himself, Monte Cristo walked down a familiar street. It was the sa route he’d been dragged through twenty-four years ago by silent guards in the dead of night. The houses that now looked cheerful and lively had been dark and shuttered back then.
"Yet they’re the sa houses," he whispered. "The only difference is daylight instead of darkness. The sun makes everything look so different."
He made his way toward the waterfront and found the spot where he’d been forced onto a boat all those years ago. A pleasure boat with a striped awning drifted by, and Monte Cristo called out to the owner. The boatman imdiately rowed over, eager for a paying custor.
The weather was perfect. The evening sun, red and blazing, was sinking into the ocean’s embrace. The water looked smooth as glass, occasionally broken by fish leaping to escape unseen predators. On the horizon, fishing boats floated like white seagulls, along with rchant ships heading toward distant islands.
Despite the serene beauty around him, the Count pulled his cloak tighter and could only think of that terrible voyage years ago. Every detail ca flooding back. The solitary light burning at the fishing village, his first glimpse of the fortress prison that told him where they were taking him, his desperate struggle with the guards when he tried to throw himself overboard, the crushing despair when they overpowered him, the cold touch of a rifle barrel against his forehead.
All of it crashed over him in vivid, horrifying clarity.
Like dried-up streams that slowly fill again after autumn rains, the Count felt his heart gradually flooding with the sa bitterness that had once nearly destroyed Edmond Dantès. The clear sky, the swift boats, the brilliant sunshine, all of it vanished from his perception. In his mind, the heavens turned black, and the massive fortress lood like the ghost of a mortal enemy.
As they reached the shore, the Count instinctively shrank back toward the far end of the boat.
"Sir, we’re at the landing," the boatman called out gently.
Monte Cristo rembered that on this exact spot, on this sa rock, guards had violently dragged him forward and forced him up the slope at bayonet-point. The journey had felt endless to Dantès back then, but Monte Cristo found it far too short now. Every stroke of the oars awakened new mories, rising up like the spray of seawater.
The fortress hadn’t held any prisoners since the recent revolution. Now it was just inhabited by a guard stationed there to prevent smuggling. A caretaker waited at the entrance, ready to show curious visitors around this monunt that had once been a place of terror.
The Count asked if any of the old jailers still worked there, but they’d all been pensioned off or moved to other jobs. The current caretaker had only started in 1830.
Monte Cristo visited his old cell. He saw again the dim light trying uselessly to penetrate the narrow opening. His eyes found the spot where his bed had stood, now removed, and behind it, the fresh stones that marked where another prisoner had broken through the wall.
His legs trembled. He sat down on a log.
"Are there any stories connected with this prison?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. "Besides the one about soone being poisoned here? Any legends about these dismal cells where n imprisoned their fellow human beings?"
"Yes, sir. The old jailer Antoine told one about this very dungeon."
Monte Cristo shuddered. Antoine had been his jailer. He’d almost forgotten the man’s na and face, but hearing it now brought everything rushing back, the bearded face, the brown jacket, the bunch of keys and their constant jingling.
The Count turned around, half-expecting to see Antoine’s ghost in the corridor, made darker by the caretaker’s torch.
"Would you like to hear the story, sir?"
"Yes," Monte Cristo said, pressing his hand to his chest to calm his racing heart. "Tell ." He was terrified he might hear his own story.
"This cell," the caretaker began, "was apparently occupied so ti ago by a very dangerous prisoner. What made him so dangerous was how resourceful he was. Another man was imprisoned in the fortress at the sa ti, but he wasn’t dangerous, just a poor, mad priest."
"Mad?" Monte Cristo repeated. "What was his madness?"
"He claid he’d give millions to anyone who would free him."
The Count looked up, but he couldn’t see the sky. A stone ceiling blocked his view of the heavens. He thought about how the guards must have seen a similar barrier between themselves and understanding what the old priest had really been offering.
"Could the prisoners see each other?" he asked.
"Oh no, sir. It was strictly forbidden. But they outsmarted the guards and dug a passage between their cells."
"Which one made the passage?"
"Had to be the young man, obviously. He was strong and hardworking, while the priest was old and weak. Besides, the priest’s mind was too unstable to follow through on sothing like that."
"Blind fools," the Count muttered under his breath.
"Anyway," the caretaker continued, "the young man dug a tunnel, no one knows exactly how, but he did it. You can still see the evidence. Look here." He held the torch up to the wall.
"Yes, I see it," the Count said hoarsely.
"So the two n were able to communicate. How long they did this, nobody knows. One day the old man got sick and died. Now guess what the young one did?"
"Tell ."
"He carried the corpse to his own bed and positioned it facing the wall. Then he went into the empty cell, closed up the entrance, and climbed into the burial sack that had held the dead body. Can you imagine such an idea?"
Monte Cristo closed his eyes. He could feel again the rough canvas, still cold and damp with the moisture of death, touching his face.
The caretaker went on, "His plan was clever. He figured they buried the dead here at the fortress, and assud they wouldn’t bother digging a deep grave for a prisoner. He thought he could push through the earth with his shoulders. Unfortunately, the fortress arrangents ruined his plan. They don’t bury the dead here, they just tie a heavy cannonball to their feet and throw them into the sea."
The Count’s breathing beca difficult. Cold sweat ran down his forehead.
"That’s what happened," the caretaker said. "They threw the young man from the top of the rocks. The next day they found the corpse in the bed and figured out the whole truth. The n who did the job finally admitted what they’d been too afraid to ntion before, that when they threw the body into the water, they heard a scream. It was cut off almost imdiately as the sea swallowed him up."
The Count could hardly breathe. His heart filled with anguish.
"The doubt I felt was just the beginning of forgetting," he muttered. "But here the wound reopens. Here my heart thirsts for vengeance again."
Louder, he asked, "And the prisoner? Was he ever heard from again?"
"Oh no, of course not. One of two things must have happened, either he hit the water flat, and the impact from that height killed him instantly, or he went in upright, and the weight dragged him straight to the bottom. Poor man."
"You pity him?" the Count asked.
"Sure, even though he was in his elent."
"What do you an?"
"The rumor was he’d been a naval officer, imprisoned for plotting with revolutionaries."
"Truth is powerful," the Count murmured. "Fire cannot burn it, water cannot drown it. So the poor sailor lives on in the mories of those who tell his story. His terrible tale gets told around firesides, and people shudder when they hear how he flew through the air and was swallowed by the deep."
Then, aloud, "Was his na ever known?"
"Only as Number 34."
"Villefort," the Count whispered. "This scene must haunt your sleepless nights."
"Do you want to see anything else, sir?"
"Yes. Show the priest’s room."
"Ah, Number 27."
"Yes, Number 27," the Count repeated, rembering how the old man’s voice had co through the wall, answering that very number when asked his na.
"Follow , sir."
"Wait," Monte Cristo said. "I want one last look around this room."
"Lucky you said that, I forgot the other key."
"Go get it."
"I’ll leave you the torch, sir."
"No, take it. I can see in the dark."
"Ha! Just like Number 34. They said he got so used to darkness he could spot a pin in the blackest corner of his cell."
"He spent fourteen years learning that," the Count muttered.
The guide left with the torch. The Count had spoken the truth, within seconds, his eyes adjusted until he could see everything clearly.
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