read it with an
indescribable feeling of delight. It was the letter written (as our
readers know) to Julie, and signed "Sinbad the Sailor." "Unknown you
say, is the man who rendered you this service--unknown to you?"

"Yes; we have never had the happiness of pressing his hand," continued
Maximilian. "We have supplicated heaven in vain to grant us this
favor, but the whole affair has had a mysterious meaning that we
cannot comprehend--we have been guided by an invisible hand,--a hand as
powerful as that of an enchanter."

"Oh," cried Julie, "I have not lost all hope of some day kissing that
hand, as I now kiss the purse which he has touched. Four years ago,
Penelon was at Trieste--Penelon, count, is the old sailor you saw in the
garden, and who, from quartermaster, has become gardener--Penelon, when
he was at Trieste, saw on the quay an Englishman, who was on the point
of embarking on board a yacht, and he recognized him as the person
who called on my father the fifth of June, 1829, and who wrote me this
letter on the fifth of September. He felt convinced of his identity, but
he did not venture to address him."

"An Englishman," said Monte Cristo, who grew uneasy at the attention
with which Julie looked at him. "An Englishman you say?"

"Yes," replied Maximilian, "an Englishman, who represented himself as
the confidential clerk of the house of Thomson & French, at Rome. It was
this that made me start when you said the other day, at M. de Morcerf's,
that Messrs. Thomson & French were your bankers. That happened, as
I told you, in 1829. For God's sake, tell me, did you know this
Englishman?"

"But you tell me, also, that the house of Thomson & French have
constantly denied having rendered you this service?"

"Yes."

"Then is it not probable that this Englishman may be some one who,
grateful for a kindness your father had shown him, and which he himself
had forgotten, has taken this method of requiting the obligation?"

"Everything is possible in this affair, even a miracle."

"What was his name?" asked Monte Cristo.

"He gave no other name," answered Julie, looking earnestly at the count,
"than that at the end of his letter--'Sinbad the Sailor.'"

"Which is evidently not his real name, but a fictitious one."

Then, noticing that Julie was struck with the sound of his voice,--

"Tell me," continued he, "was he not about my height, perhaps a little
taller, with his chin imprisoned, as it were, in a high crava