g carriage was in readiness.

Villefort rose, or rather sprang, from his chair, hastily opened one
of the drawers of his desk, emptied all the gold it contained into
his pocket, stood motionless an instant, his hand pressed to his head,
muttered a few inarticulate sounds, and then, perceiving that his
servant had placed his cloak on his shoulders, he sprang into the
carriage, ordering the postilions to drive to M. de Saint-Meran's. The
hapless Dantes was doomed.

As the marquis had promised, Villefort found the marquise and Renee
in waiting. He started when he saw Renee, for he fancied she was again
about to plead for Dantes. Alas, her emotions were wholly personal: she
was thinking only of Villefort's departure.

She loved Villefort, and he left her at the moment he was about to
become her husband. Villefort knew not when he should return, and Renee,
far from pleading for Dantes, hated the man whose crime separated her
from her lover.

Meanwhile what of Mercedes? She had met Fernand at the corner of the Rue
de la Loge; she had returned to the Catalans, and had despairingly cast
herself on her couch. Fernand, kneeling by her side, took her hand, and
covered it with kisses that Mercedes did not even feel. She passed the
night thus. The lamp went out for want of oil, but she paid no heed to
the darkness, and dawn came, but she knew not that it was day. Grief had
made her blind to all but one object--that was Edmond.

"Ah, you are there," said she, at length, turning towards Fernand.

"I have not quitted you since yesterday," returned Fernand sorrowfully.

M. Morrel had not readily given up the fight. He had learned that Dantes
had been taken to prison, and he had gone to all his friends, and
the influential persons of the city; but the report was already in
circulation that Dantes was arrested as a Bonapartist agent; and as the
most sanguine looked upon any attempt of Napoleon to remount the throne
as impossible, he met with nothing but refusal, and had returned home
in despair, declaring that the matter was serious and that nothing more
could be done.

Caderousse was equally restless and uneasy, but instead of seeking, like
M. Morrel, to aid Dantes, he had shut himself up with two bottles of
black currant brandy, in the hope of drowning reflection. But he did not
succeed, and became too intoxicated to fetch any more drink, and yet not
so intoxicated as to forget what had happened. With his elbows on the
table he