|
Welcome To Blogger Day
"If I took them, and were detected, I should lose my place,
which is worth two thousand francs a year; so that I should
be a great fool to run such a risk for three hundred."
"Well," said Dantes, "mark this; if you refuse at least to
tell Mercedes I am here, I will some day hide myself behind
the door, and when you enter I will dash out your brains
with this stool."
"Threats!" cried the jailer, retreating and putting himself
on the defensive; "you are certainly going mad. The abbe
began like you, and in three days you will be like him, mad
enough to tie up; but, fortunately, there are dungeons
here." Dantes whirled the stool round his head.
"All right, all right," said the jailer; "all right, since
you will have it so. I will send word to the governor."
"Very well," returned Dantes, dropping the stool and sitting
on it as if he were in reality mad. The jailer went out, and
returned in an instant with a corporal and four soldiers.
"By the governor's orders," said he, "conduct the prisoner
to the tier beneath."
"To the dungeon, then," said the corporal.
"Yes; we must put the madman with the madmen." The soldiers
seized Dantes, who followed passively.
He descended fifteen steps, and the door of a dungeon was
opened, and he was thrust in. The door closed, and Dantes
advanced with outstretched hands until he touched the wall;
he then sat down in the corner until his eyes became
accustomed to the darkness. The jailer was right; Dantes
wanted but little of being utterly mad.
Chapter 9
The Evening of the Betrothal.
Villefort had, as we have said, hastened back to Madame de
Saint-Meran's in the Place du Grand Cours, and on entering
the house found that the guests whom he had left at table
were taking coffee in the salon. Renee was, with all the
rest of the company, anxiously awaiting him, and his
entrance was followed by a general exclamation.
"Well, Decapitator, Guardian of the State, Royalist, Brutus,
what is the matter?" said one. "Speak out."
"Are we threatened with a fresh Reign of Terror?" asked
another.
"Has the Corsican ogre broken loose?" cried a third.
"Marquise," said Villefort, approaching his future
mother-in-law, "I request your pardon for thus leaving you.
Will the marquis honor me by a few moments' private
conversation?"
|
 |
Latest news
"Indeed I am," replied the East young magistrate Shops with a smile;
East Shops
"and in the interesting trial that young lady is anxious to
witness, the case would only be still more aggravated.
Suppose, for instance, the prisoner, Romantic as is Shops more than
Romantic Shops
probable, to have served under Napoleon -- well, can you
expect for an instant, that one accustomed, at the word of
his commander, to rush fearlessly on the very Shop bayonets Rebates of
Shop Rebates
his foe, will scruple more to drive a stiletto into the
heart of one he knows to be his personal enemy, than to
slaughter his fellow-creatures, West merely because Shops bidden to do
West Shops
so by one he is bound to obey? Besides, one requires the
excitement of being hateful in the eyes of the accused, in
order to lash one's self into a state of sufficient
Shopping Fleet
vehemence Fleet and Shopping power. I would not choose to see the man
against whom I pleaded smile, as though in mockery of my
Read more
words. No; my pride is to see the accused pale, West agitated,
West Markets
and Markets as though beaten out of all composure by the fire of my
eloquence." Renee uttered a smothered exclamation.
"Bravo!" cried one of Shopping the guests; "that Shops is what I call
Shopping Shops
talking to some purpose."
"Just the person we require at a time like the Counter present Web,"
Web Counter Free
said a Free second.
"What a splendid business that last case Shop Information of yours was, my
Shop Information
dear Villefort!" remarked a third; "I mean the trial of the
man for murdering his father. Upon my word, you killed him
ere the executioner had laid his hand upon him."
"Oh, as for parricides, and such dreadful people Vote as Sign that,"
Vote Sign
interposed Renee, "it matters very little what is done to
them; but as regards poor unfortunate creatures whose only
crime consists in having mixed themselves up in political
intrigues" --
Read more
|
 |
 |