so patiently
and laboriously for so long a space of time, that they might now come
and crush me with this secret. Sometimes, as Hamlet says--

'Foul deeds will rise,
Tho' all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes;'

but, like a phosphoric light, they rise but to mislead. The story has
been told by the Corsican to some priest, who in his turn has repeated
it. M. de Monte Cristo may have heard it, and to enlighten himself--but
why should he wish to enlighten himself upon the subject?" asked
Villefort, after a moment's reflection, "what interest can this M. de
Monte Cristo or M. Zaccone,--son of a shipowner of Malta, discoverer
of a mine in Thessaly, now visiting Paris for the first time,--what
interest, I say, can he take in discovering a gloomy, mysterious, and
useless fact like this? However, among all the incoherent details given
to me by the Abbe Busoni and by Lord Wilmore, by that friend and that
enemy, one thing appears certain and clear in my opinion--that in
no period, in no case, in no circumstance, could there have been any
contact between him and me."

But Villefort uttered words which even he himself did not believe. He
dreaded not so much the revelation, for he could reply to or deny its
truth;--he cared little for that mene, tekel, upharsin, which appeared
suddenly in letters of blood upon the wall;--but what he was really
anxious for was to discover whose hand had traced them. While he
was endeavoring to calm his fears,--and instead of dwelling upon the
political future that had so often been the subject of his ambitious
dreams, was imagining a future limited to the enjoyments of home, in
fear of awakening the enemy that had so long slept,--the noise of a
carriage sounded in the yard, then he heard the steps of an aged person
ascending the stairs, followed by tears and lamentations, such as
servants always give vent to when they wish to appear interested in
their master's grief. He drew back the bolt of his door, and almost
directly an old lady entered, unannounced, carrying her shawl on her
arm, and her bonnet in her hand. The white hair was thrown back from her
yellow forehead, and her eyes, already sunken by the furrows of age, now
almost disappeared beneath the eyelids swollen with grief. "Oh, sir,"
she said; "oh, sir, what a misfortune! I shall die of it; oh, yes, I
shall certainly die of it!"

And then, falling upon the chair nearest the door, she burst into a
paroxysm of sobs. The