ed for fourteen years in the Chateau d'If.

Another prisoner was there, the Abbe Faria. This prisoner was supposed
to be mad, because he had offered to buy his liberty with millions. The
Abbe imparted to Dantes the secret of the treasure concealed by the
Spadas in the caverns of the island of Monte-Cristo, a desolate rock in
the Mediterranean. And this was not all, the old man had also imparted
other secrets to his young companion.

And now Dantes was master of the treasure of the Spadas, and he started
to find his old father and his fiancee. He swore to avenge himself on
those who had betrayed him. He left the rock. He went to his father's
house. His father had died of hunger. Mercedes, his fiancee, was married
to another--to one of the three men who had woven the plot that had cost
Dantes fourteen years of his youth. One was named Danglars, a rival
claimant to the title of captain. The second was a drunken man, more
weak than wicked. The third was Fernando Mondego, a fisherman, who loved
Mercedes. And it was this Fernando who had married Mercedes, and was now
known by the title of the Comte de Morcerf. Caderousse, still poor, kept
a wine shop, and Danglars was one of the first bankers in Paris.

Another enemy, and perhaps the most infamous of them all, was the
magistrate, de Villefort, who, knowing the innocence of Dantes, had
nevertheless sentenced him to prison. Because Dantes in his explanation
used the name of Noirtier, who was the father of Villefort, and said
that the letters he brought from the island of Elba were given to him by
this man, de Villefort, lest his own position should be compromised, got
rid of this person as soon as possible, and sent him to the Chateau d'If
for fourteen years.

These were the crimes that Dantes swore to punish. He did so. Danglars
the banker he ruined. Fernando the fisherman, known when Dantes returned
as the Comte de Morcerf, was accused in the Chamber of Peers of having
betrayed Ali-Pacha of Jamna, and of selling his daughter Haydee to a
Turkish merchant. His infamy was proved by Haydee herself, and Fernando
Mondego was for ever dishonored. The wretched man, knowing that the blow
came from Monte-Cristo, went to him to provoke a quarrel. Then
Monte-Cristo said to him:

"Look me full in the face, Fernando, and you will understand the whole.
I am Edmond Dantes." And the man fled. Within an hour he blew out his
brains.

Then came the turn of de Villefort. His wife, a pervers