hat it was for my sake he had become a traitor and
a perjurer? In what am I benefited by accompanying my son so far, since
I now abandon him, and allow him to depart alone to the baneful climate
of Africa? Oh, I have been base, cowardly, I tell you; I have abjured
my affections, and like all renegades I am of evil omen to those who
surround me!"

"No, Mercedes," said Monte Cristo, "no; you judge yourself with too
much severity. You are a noble-minded woman, and it was your grief
that disarmed me. Still I was but an agent, led on by an invisible and
offended Deity, who chose not to withhold the fatal blow that I was
destined to hurl. I take that God to witness, at whose feet I have
prostrated myself daily for the last ten years, that I would have
sacrificed my life to you, and with my life the projects that were
indissolubly linked with it. But--and I say it with some pride,
Mercedes--God needed me, and I lived. Examine the past and the present,
and endeavor to dive into futurity, and then say whether I am not a
divine instrument. The most dreadful misfortunes, the most frightful
sufferings, the abandonment of all those who loved me, the persecution
of those who did not know me, formed the trials of my youth; when
suddenly, from captivity, solitude, misery, I was restored to light
and liberty, and became the possessor of a fortune so brilliant,
so unbounded, so unheard-of, that I must have been blind not to be
conscious that God had endowed me with it to work out his own great
designs. From that time I looked upon this fortune as something confided
to me for an especial purpose. Not a thought was given to a life which
you once, Mercedes, had the power to render blissful; not one hour
of peaceful calm was mine; but I felt myself driven on like an
exterminating angel. Like adventurous captains about to embark on some
enterprise full of danger, I laid in my provisions, I loaded my weapons,
I collected every means of attack and defence; I inured my body to the
most violent exercises, my soul to the bitterest trials; I taught my
arm to slay, my eyes to behold excruciating sufferings, and my mouth
to smile at the most horrid spectacles. Good-natured, confiding, and
forgiving as I had been, I became revengeful, cunning, and wicked, or
rather, immovable as fate. Then I launched out into the path that was
opened to me. I overcame every obstacle, and reached the goal; but woe
to those who stood in my pathway!"

"Enough," said Me