you can have of all it has cost me to
effect a purpose so unexpectedly frustrated, that you talk of beginning
over again. In the first place, I was four years making the tools I
possess, and have been two years scraping and digging out earth, hard
as granite itself; then what toil and fatigue has it not been to remove
huge stones I should once have deemed impossible to loosen. Whole days
have I passed in these Titanic efforts, considering my labor well repaid
if, by night-time I had contrived to carry away a square inch of this
hard-bound cement, changed by ages into a substance unyielding as the
stones themselves; then to conceal the mass of earth and rubbish I dug
up, I was compelled to break through a staircase, and throw the
fruits of my labor into the hollow part of it; but the well is now so
completely choked up, that I scarcely think it would be possible to add
another handful of dust without leading to discovery. Consider also that
I fully believed I had accomplished the end and aim of my undertaking,
for which I had so exactly husbanded my strength as to make it just hold
out to the termination of my enterprise; and now, at the moment when I
reckoned upon success, my hopes are forever dashed from me. No, I repeat
again, that nothing shall induce me to renew attempts evidently at
variance with the Almighty's pleasure."

Dantes held down his head, that the other might not see how joy at the
thought of having a companion outweighed the sympathy he felt for the
failure of the abbe's plans.

The abbe sank upon Edmond's bed, while Edmond himself remained standing.
Escape had never once occurred to him. There are, indeed, some things
which appear so impossible that the mind does not dwell on them for an
instant. To undermine the ground for fifty feet--to devote three years
to a labor which, if successful, would conduct you to a precipice
overhanging the sea--to plunge into the waves from the height of fifty,
sixty, perhaps a hundred feet, at the risk of being dashed to pieces
against the rocks, should you have been fortunate enough to have escaped
the fire of the sentinels; and even, supposing all these perils past,
then to have to swim for your life a distance of at least three miles
ere you could reach the shore--were difficulties so startling and
formidable that Dantes had never even dreamed of such a scheme,
resigning himself rather to death. But the sight of an old man clinging
to life with so desperate a courag