so; but as his occupation is sanctioned by the governor, he
will soon resume it. If, on the contrary, it is a prisoner,
the noise I make will alarm him, he will cease, and not
begin again until he thinks every one is asleep."

Edmond rose again, but this time his legs did not tremble,
and his sight was clear; he went to a corner of his dungeon,
detached a stone, and with it knocked against the wall where
the sound came. He struck thrice. At the first blow the
sound ceased, as if by magic.

Edmond listened intently; an hour passed, two hours passed,
and no sound was heard from the wall -- all was silent
there.

Full of hope, Edmond swallowed a few mouthfuls of bread and
water, and, thanks to the vigor of his constitution, found
himself well-nigh recovered.

The day passed away in utter silence -- night came without
recurrence of the noise.

"It is a prisoner," said Edmond joyfully. The night passed
in perfect silence. Edmond did not close his eyes.

In the morning the jailer brought him fresh provisions -- he
had already devoured those of the previous day; he ate these
listening anxiously for the sound, walking round and round
his cell, shaking the iron bars of the loophole, restoring
vigor and agility to his limbs by exercise, and so preparing
himself for his future destiny. At intervals he listened to
learn if the noise had not begun again, and grew impatient
at the prudence of the prisoner, who did not guess he had
been disturbed by a captive as anxious for liberty as
himself.

Three days passed -- seventy-two long tedious hours which he
counted off by minutes!

At length one evening, as the jailer was visiting him for
the last time that night, Dantes, with his ear for the
hundredth time at the wall, fancied he heard an almost
imperceptible movement among the stones. He moved away,
walked up and down his cell to collect his thoughts, and
then went back and listened.

The matter was no longer doubtful. Something was at work on
the other side of the wall; the prisoner had discovered the
danger, and had substituted a lever for a chisel.

Encouraged by this discovery, Edmond determined to assist
the indefatigable laborer. He began by moving his bed, and
looked around for anything with which he could pierce the
wall, penetrate the moist cement, and displace a stone.

He saw nothing, he had no knife or sharp instrument, the
window grating was of iron, but he had too often assured
himself of its solidity. All his furniture consisted of a
bed, a chair, a table, a pail, and a jug. The bed had iron
clamps, but they were screwed to the wood, and it would have
required a screw-driver to take them off. The table and
chair had nothing, the pail had once possessed a handle, but
that had been removed.

Dantes had but one resource, which was to break the jug, and
with one of the sharp fragments attack the wall. He let the
jug fall on the floor, and it broke in pieces.

Dantes concealed two or three of the sharpest fragments in
his bed, leaving the rest on the floor. The breaking of his
jug was too natural an accident to excite suspicion. Edmond
had all the night to work in, but in the darkness he could
not do much, and he soon felt that he was working against
something very hard; he pushed back his bed, and waited for
day.

All night he heard the subterranean workman, who continued
to mine his way. Day came, the jailer entered. Dantes told
him that the jug had fallen from his hands while he was
drinking, and the jailer went grumblingly to fetch another,
without giving himself the trouble to remove the fragments
of the broken one. He returned speedily, advised the
prisoner to be more careful, and departed.

Dantes heard joyfully the key grate in the lock; he listened
until the sound of steps died away, and then, hastily
displacing his bed, saw by the faint light that penetrated
into his cell, that he had labored uselessly the previous
evening in attacking the stone instead of removing the
plaster that surrounded it.

The damp had rendered it friable, and Dantes was able to
break it off -- in small morsels, it is true, but at the end
of half an hour he had scraped off a handful; a
mathematician might have calculated that in two years,
supposing that the rock was not encountered, a passage
twenty feet long and two feet broad, might be formed.

The prisoner reproached himself with not having thus
employed the hours he had passed in vain hopes, prayer, and


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