pa coolly.

"But you say you do not wish to kill me?"

"No."

"And yet you will let me perish with hunger?"

"Ah, that is a different thing."

"Well, then, wretches," cried Danglars, "I will defy your infamous
calculations--I would rather die at once! You may torture, torment, kill
me, but you shall not have my signature again!"

"As your excellency pleases," said Vampa, as he left the cell. Danglars,
raving, threw himself on the goat-skin. Who could these men be? Who was
the invisible chief? What could be his intentions towards him? And why,
when every one else was allowed to be ransomed, might he not also be?
Oh, yes; certainly a speedy, violent death would be a fine means of
deceiving these remorseless enemies, who appeared to pursue him with
such incomprehensible vengeance. But to die? For the first time in his
life, Danglars contemplated death with a mixture of dread and desire;
the time had come when the implacable spectre, which exists in the mind
of every human creature, arrested his attention and called out with
every pulsation of his heart, "Thou shalt die!"

Danglars resembled a timid animal excited in the chase; first it flies,
then despairs, and at last, by the very force of desperation, sometimes
succeeds in eluding its pursuers. Danglars meditated an escape; but the
walls were solid rock, a man was sitting reading at the only outlet to
the cell, and behind that man shapes armed with guns continually passed.
His resolution not to sign lasted two days, after which he offered a
million for some food. They sent him a magnificent supper, and took his
million.

From this time the prisoner resolved to suffer no longer, but to have
everything he wanted. At the end of twelve days, after having made a
splendid dinner, he reckoned his accounts, and found that he had only
50,000 francs left. Then a strange reaction took place; he who had just
abandoned 5,000,000 endeavored to save the 50,000 francs he had left,
and sooner than give them up he resolved to enter again upon a life of
privation--he was deluded by the hopefulness that is a premonition of
madness. He who for so long a time had forgotten God, began to
think that miracles were possible--that the accursed cavern might be
discovered by the officers of the Papal States, who would release him;
that then he would have 50,000 remaining, which would be sufficient to
save him from starvation; and finally he prayed that this sum might
be preserved to him, a