still, to speak to a man, even though mute, was
something. Dantes spoke for the sake of hearing his own voice; he had
tried to speak when alone, but the sound of his voice terrified him.
Often, before his captivity, Dantes' mind had revolted at the idea of
assemblages of prisoners, made up of thieves, vagabonds, and murderers.
He now wished to be amongst them, in order to see some other face
besides that of his jailer; he sighed for the galleys, with the infamous
costume, the chain, and the brand on the shoulder. The galley-slaves
breathed the fresh air of heaven, and saw each other. They were very
happy. He besought the jailer one day to let him have a companion, were
it even the mad abbe.

The jailer, though rough and hardened by the constant sight of so much
suffering, was yet a man. At the bottom of his heart he had often had a
feeling of pity for this unhappy young man who suffered so; and he laid
the request of number 34 before the governor; but the latter sapiently
imagined that Dantes wished to conspire or attempt an escape, and
refused his request. Dantes had exhausted all human resources, and he
then turned to God.

All the pious ideas that had been so long forgotten, returned; he
recollected the prayers his mother had taught him, and discovered a new
meaning in every word; for in prosperity prayers seem but a mere
medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first
understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the
pity of heaven! He prayed, and prayed aloud, no longer terrified at
the sound of his own voice, for he fell into a sort of ecstasy. He
laid every action of his life before the Almighty, proposed tasks to
accomplish, and at the end of every prayer introduced the entreaty
oftener addressed to man than to God: "Forgive us our trespasses as
we forgive them that trespass against us." Yet in spite of his earnest
prayers, Dantes remained a prisoner.

Then gloom settled heavily upon him. Dantes was a man of great
simplicity of thought, and without education; he could not, therefore,
in the solitude of his dungeon, traverse in mental vision the history of
the ages, bring to life the nations that had perished, and rebuild the
ancient cities so vast and stupendous in the light of the imagination,
and that pass before the eye glowing with celestial colors in Martin's
Babylonian pictures. He could not do this, he whose past life was so
short, whose present so melanchol