trated into the darkness of the past, and that you have read, by the
light of what torch I know not, every page of my life; but perhaps I
may be more honorable in my shame than you under your pompous coverings.
No--no, I am aware you know me; but I know you only as an adventurer
sewn up in gold and jewellery. You call yourself in Paris the Count of
Monte Cristo; in Italy, Sinbad the Sailor; in Malta, I forget what. But
it is your real name I want to know, in the midst of your hundred names,
that I may pronounce it when we meet to fight, at the moment when I
plunge my sword through your heart."

The Count of Monte Cristo turned dreadfully pale; his eye seemed to
burn with a devouring fire. He leaped towards a dressing-room near his
bedroom, and in less than a moment, tearing off his cravat, his coat
and waistcoat, he put on a sailor's jacket and hat, from beneath which
rolled his long black hair. He returned thus, formidable and implacable,
advancing with his arms crossed on his breast, towards the general,
who could not understand why he had disappeared, but who on seeing him
again, and feeling his teeth chatter and his legs sink under him, drew
back, and only stopped when he found a table to support his clinched
hand. "Fernand," cried he, "of my hundred names I need only tell you
one, to overwhelm you! But you guess it now, do you not?--or, rather,
you remember it? For, notwithstanding all my sorrows and my tortures,
I show you to-day a face which the happiness of revenge makes young
again--a face you must often have seen in your dreams since your
marriage with Mercedes, my betrothed!"

The general, with his head thrown back, hands extended, gaze fixed,
looked silently at this dreadful apparition; then seeking the wall to
support him, he glided along close to it until he reached the door,
through which he went out backwards, uttering this single mournful,
lamentable, distressing cry,--"Edmond Dantes!" Then, with sighs which
were unlike any human sound, he dragged himself to the door, reeled
across the court-yard, and falling into the arms of his valet, he said
in a voice scarcely intelligible,--"Home, home." The fresh air and the
shame he felt at having exposed himself before his servants, partly
recalled his senses, but the ride was short, and as he drew near his
house all his wretchedness revived. He stopped at a short distance from
the house and alighted.

The door was wide open, a hackney-coach was standing in th