of Monte Pulciano, was the bill of fare. Dantes
went on, looking from time to time behind and around about him. Having
reached the summit of a rock, he saw, a thousand feet beneath him, his
companions, whom Jacopo had rejoined, and who were all busy preparing
the repast which Edmond's skill as a marksman had augmented with a
capital dish.

Edmond looked at them for a moment with the sad and gentle smile of
a man superior to his fellows. "In two hours' time," said he, "these
persons will depart richer by fifty piastres each, to go and risk their
lives again by endeavoring to gain fifty more; then they will return
with a fortune of six hundred francs, and waste this treasure in some
city with the pride of sultans and the insolence of nabobs. At
this moment hope makes me despise their riches, which seem to me
contemptible. Yet perchance to-morrow deception will so act on me, that
I shall, on compulsion, consider such a contemptible possession as the
utmost happiness. Oh, no!" exclaimed Edmond, "that will not be. The
wise, unerring Faria could not be mistaken in this one thing. Besides,
it were better to die than to continue to lead this low and wretched
life." Thus Dantes, who but three months before had no desire but
liberty had now not liberty enough, and panted for wealth. The cause was
not in Dantes, but in providence, who, while limiting the power of man,
has filled him with boundless desires.

Meanwhile, by a cleft between two walls of rock, following a path worn
by a torrent, and which, in all human probability, human foot had never
before trod, Dantes approached the spot where he supposed the grottos
must have existed. Keeping along the shore, and examining the smallest
object with serious attention, he thought he could trace, on certain
rocks, marks made by the hand of man.

Time, which encrusts all physical substances with its mossy mantle, as
it invests all things of the mind with forgetfulness, seemed to have
respected these signs, which apparently had been made with some degree
of regularity, and probably with a definite purpose. Occasionally the
marks were hidden under tufts of myrtle, which spread into large bushes
laden with blossoms, or beneath parasitical lichen. So Edmond had
to separate the branches or brush away the moss to know where the
guide-marks were. The sight of marks renewed Edmond fondest hopes. Might
it not have been the cardinal himself who had first traced them, in
order that they might