ar to me," replied Faria, "to free me if what I tell you prove true,
and I will stay here while you go to the spot."

"Are you well fed?" repeated the inspector.

"Monsieur, you run no risk, for, as I told you, I will stay here; so
there is no chance of my escaping."

"You do not reply to my question," replied the inspector impatiently.

"Nor you to mine," cried the abbe. "You will not accept my gold; I will
keep it for myself. You refuse me my liberty; God will give it me." And
the abbe, casting away his coverlet, resumed his place, and continued
his calculations.

"What is he doing there?" said the inspector.

"Counting his treasures," replied the governor.

Faria replied to this sarcasm with a glance of profound contempt. They
went out. The turnkey closed the door behind them.

"He was wealthy once, perhaps?" said the inspector.

"Or dreamed he was, and awoke mad."

"After all," said the inspector, "if he had been rich, he would not have
been here." So the matter ended for the Abbe Faria. He remained in his
cell, and this visit only increased the belief in his insanity.

Caligula or Nero, those treasure-seekers, those desirers of the
impossible, would have accorded to the poor wretch, in exchange for his
wealth, the liberty he so earnestly prayed for. But the kings of modern
times, restrained by the limits of mere probability, have neither
courage nor desire. They fear the ear that hears their orders, and the
eye that scrutinizes their actions. Formerly they believed themselves
sprung from Jupiter, and shielded by their birth; but nowadays they are
not inviolable.

It has always been against the policy of despotic governments to suffer
the victims of their persecutions to reappear. As the Inquisition rarely
allowed its victims to be seen with their limbs distorted and their
flesh lacerated by torture, so madness is always concealed in its cell,
from whence, should it depart, it is conveyed to some gloomy hospital,
where the doctor has no thought for man or mind in the mutilated being
the jailer delivers to him. The very madness of the Abbe Faria, gone mad
in prison, condemned him to perpetual captivity.

The inspector kept his word with Dantes; he examined the register, and
found the following note concerning him:--

Edmond Dantes:

Violent Bonapartist; took an active part in the return from Elba.

The greatest watchfulness and care to be exercised.

This note was in a different hand from the rest