it
of your having passed through any very important events."

"It has been long enough to inflict on me a great and undeserved
misfortune. I would fain fix the source of it on man that I may no
longer vent reproaches upon heaven."

"Then you profess ignorance of the crime with which you are charged?"

"I do, indeed; and this I swear by the two beings most dear to me upon
earth,--my father and Mercedes."

"Come," said the abbe, closing his hiding-place, and pushing the bed
back to its original situation, "let me hear your story."

Dantes obeyed, and commenced what he called his history, but which
consisted only of the account of a voyage to India, and two or three
voyages to the Levant until he arrived at the recital of his last
cruise, with the death of Captain Leclere, and the receipt of a packet
to be delivered by himself to the grand marshal; his interview with that
personage, and his receiving, in place of the packet brought, a letter
addressed to a Monsieur Noirtier--his arrival at Marseilles, and
interview with his father--his affection for Mercedes, and their nuptual
feast--his arrest and subsequent examination, his temporary detention at
the Palais de Justice, and his final imprisonment in the Chateau d'If.
From this point everything was a blank to Dantes--he knew nothing
more, not even the length of time he had been imprisoned. His recital
finished, the abbe reflected long and earnestly.

"There is," said he, at the end of his meditations, "a clever maxim,
which bears upon what I was saying to you some little while ago, and
that is, that unless wicked ideas take root in a naturally depraved
mind, human nature, in a right and wholesome state, revolts at crime.
Still, from an artificial civilization have originated wants, vices, and
false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle
within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and
wickedness. From this view of things, then, comes the axiom that if you
visit to discover the author of any bad action, seek first to discover
the person to whom the perpetration of that bad action could be in any
way advantageous. Now, to apply it in your case,--to whom could your
disappearance have been serviceable?"

"To no one, by heaven! I was a very insignificant person."

"Do not speak thus, for your reply evinces neither logic nor philosophy;
everything is relative, my dear young friend, from the king who stands
in the way of his succe