at!" he continued, "can I have been following a false
path?--can the end which I proposed be a mistaken end?--can one hour
have sufficed to prove to an architect that the work upon which
he founded all his hopes was an impossible, if not a sacrilegious,
undertaking? I cannot reconcile myself to this idea--it would madden
me. The reason why I am now dissatisfied is that I have not a clear
appreciation of the past. The past, like the country through which we
walk, becomes indistinct as we advance. My position is like that of
a person wounded in a dream; he feels the wound, though he cannot
recollect when he received it. Come, then, thou regenerate man,
thou extravagant prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou all-powerful
visionary, thou invincible millionaire,--once again review thy past
life of starvation and wretchedness, revisit the scenes where fate
and misfortune conducted, and where despair received thee. Too many
diamonds, too much gold and splendor, are now reflected by the mirror in
which Monte Cristo seeks to behold Dantes. Hide thy diamonds, bury thy
gold, shroud thy splendor, exchange riches for poverty, liberty for a
prison, a living body for a corpse!" As he thus reasoned, Monte Cristo
walked down the Rue de la Caisserie. It was the same through which,
twenty-four years ago, he had been conducted by a silent and nocturnal
guard; the houses, to-day so smiling and animated, were on that night
dark, mute, and closed. "And yet they were the same," murmured Monte
Cristo, "only now it is broad daylight instead of night; it is the sun
which brightens the place, and makes it appear so cheerful."

He proceeded towards the quay by the Rue Saint-Laurent, and advanced to
the Consigne; it was the point where he had embarked. A pleasure-boat
with striped awning was going by. Monte Cristo called the owner, who
immediately rowed up to him with the eagerness of a boatman hoping for a
good fare. The weather was magnificent, and the excursion a treat.

The sun, red and flaming, was sinking into the embrace of the welcoming
ocean. The sea, smooth as crystal, was now and then disturbed by the
leaping of fish, which were pursued by some unseen enemy and sought for
safety in another element; while on the extreme verge of the horizon
might be seen the fishermen's boats, white and graceful as the sea-gull,
or the merchant vessels bound for Corsica or Spain.

But notwithstanding the serene sky, the gracefully formed boats, and
the go