g my father's name to her, but perhaps she will allude to him
of her own accord in the course of the recital, and you have no idea
how delighted I should be to hear our name pronounced by such beautiful
lips." Monte Cristo turned to Haidee, and with an expression of
countenance which commanded her to pay the most implicit attention to
his words, he said in Greek,--"Tell us the fate of your father; but
neither the name of the traitor nor the treason." Haidee sighed deeply,
and a shade of sadness clouded her beautiful brow.

"What are you saying to her?" said Morcerf in an undertone.

"I again reminded her that you were a friend, and that she need not
conceal anything from you."

"Then," said Albert, "this pious pilgrimage in behalf of the prisoners
was your first remembrance; what is the next?"

"Oh, then I remember as if it were but yesterday sitting under the shade
of some sycamore-trees, on the borders of a lake, in the waters of which
the trembling foliage was reflected as in a mirror. Under the oldest and
thickest of these trees, reclining on cushions, sat my father; my mother
was at his feet, and I, childlike, amused myself by playing with his
long white beard which descended to his girdle, or with the diamond-hilt
of the scimitar attached to his girdle. Then from time to time there
came to him an Albanian who said something to which I paid no attention,
but which he always answered in the same tone of voice, either 'Kill,'
or 'Pardon.'"

"It is very strange," said Albert, "to hear such words proceed from the
mouth of any one but an actress on the stage, and one needs constantly
to be saying to one's self, 'This is no fiction, it is all reality,' in
order to believe it. And how does France appear in your eyes, accustomed
as they have been to gaze on such enchanted scenes?"

"I think it is a fine country," said Haidee, "but I see France as it
really is, because I look on it with the eyes of a woman; whereas my own
country, which I can only judge of from the impression produced on my
childish mind, always seems enveloped in a vague atmosphere, which is
luminous or otherwise, according as my remembrances of it are sad or
joyous."

"So young," said Albert, forgetting at the moment the Count's command
that he should ask no questions of the slave herself, "is it possible
that you can have known what suffering is except by name?"

Haidee turned her eyes towards Monte Cristo, who, making at the same
time some impe