dmond Dantes, who anxiously looked out for me from
the window of yonder garret, then inhabited by his old father. Years
of grief have created an abyss between those days and the present. I
neither reproach you nor hate you, my friend. Oh, no, Edmond, it is
myself that I blame, myself that I hate! Oh, miserable creature that I
am!" cried she, clasping her hands, and raising her eyes to heaven. "I
once possessed piety, innocence, and love, the three ingredients of the
happiness of angels, and now what am I?" Monte Cristo approached her,
and silently took her hand. "No," said she, withdrawing it gently--"no,
my friend, touch me not. You have spared me, yet of all those who have
fallen under your vengeance I was the most guilty. They were influenced
by hatred, by avarice, and by self-love; but I was base, and for want
of courage acted against my judgment. Nay, do not press my hand, Edmond;
you are thinking, I am sure, of some kind speech to console me, but do
not utter it to me, reserve it for others more worthy of your kindness.
See" (and she exposed her face completely to view)--"see, misfortune
has silvered my hair, my eyes have shed so many tears that they are
encircled by a rim of purple, and my brow is wrinkled. You, Edmond, on
the contrary,--you are still young, handsome, dignified; it is because
you have had faith; because you have had strength, because you have had
trust in God, and God has sustained you. But as for me, I have been a
coward; I have denied God and he has abandoned me."

Mercedes burst into tears; her woman's heart was breaking under its load
of memories. Monte Cristo took her hand and imprinted a kiss on it; but
she herself felt that it was a kiss of no greater warmth than he would
have bestowed on the hand of some marble statue of a saint. "It often
happens," continued she, "that a first fault destroys the prospects of a
whole life. I believed you dead; why did I survive you? What good has
it done me to mourn for you eternally in the secret recesses of my
heart?--only to make a woman of thirty-nine look like a woman of fifty.
Why, having recognized you, and I the only one to do so--why was I able
to save my son alone? Ought I not also to have rescued the man that I
had accepted for a husband, guilty though he were? Yet I let him die!
What do I say? Oh, merciful heavens, was I not accessory to his death by
my supine insensibility, by my contempt for him, not remembering, or not
willing to remember, t