ld just recollect having visited during a voyage made in his
earliest youth.

"Come," said he to the abbe, "I am anxious to see your treasures."

The abbe smiled, and, proceeding to the disused fireplace, raised,
by the help of his chisel, a long stone, which had doubtless been the
hearth, beneath which was a cavity of considerable depth, serving as a
safe depository of the articles mentioned to Dantes.

"What do you wish to see first?" asked the abbe.

"Oh, your great work on the monarchy of Italy!"

Faria then drew forth from his hiding-place three or four rolls of
linen, laid one over the other, like folds of papyrus. These rolls
consisted of slips of cloth about four inches wide and eighteen long;
they were all carefully numbered and closely covered with writing,
so legible that Dantes could easily read it, as well as make out the
sense--it being in Italian, a language he, as a Provencal, perfectly
understood.

"There," said he, "there is the work complete. I wrote the word finis at
the end of the sixty-eighth strip about a week ago. I have torn up two
of my shirts, and as many handkerchiefs as I was master of, to complete
the precious pages. Should I ever get out of prison and find in all
Italy a printer courageous enough to publish what I have composed, my
literary reputation is forever secured."

"I see," answered Dantes. "Now let me behold the curious pens with which
you have written your work."

"Look!" said Faria, showing to the young man a slender stick about
six inches long, and much resembling the size of the handle of a fine
painting-brush, to the end of which was tied, by a piece of thread, one
of those cartilages of which the abbe had before spoken to Dantes;
it was pointed, and divided at the nib like an ordinary pen. Dantes
examined it with intense admiration, then looked around to see the
instrument with which it had been shaped so correctly into form.

"Ah, yes," said Faria; "the penknife. That's my masterpiece. I made
it, as well as this larger knife, out of an old iron candlestick." The
penknife was sharp and keen as a razor; as for the other knife, it would
serve a double purpose, and with it one could cut and thrust.

Dantes examined the various articles shown to him with the same
attention that he had bestowed on the curiosities and strange tools
exhibited in the shops at Marseilles as the works of the savages in the
South Seas from whence they had been brought by the different tradin