ended, a smile on his lips, and murmuring that last word of
human philosophy, "Perhaps!" But instead of the darkness, and the thick
and mephitic atmosphere he had expected to find, Dantes saw a dim and
bluish light, which, as well as the air, entered, not merely by the
aperture he had just formed, but by the interstices and crevices of
the rock which were visible from without, and through which he could
distinguish the blue sky and the waving branches of the evergreen oaks,
and the tendrils of the creepers that grew from the rocks. After having
stood a few minutes in the cavern, the atmosphere of which was rather
warm than damp, Dantes' eye, habituated as it was to darkness, could
pierce even to the remotest angles of the cavern, which was of granite
that sparkled like diamonds. "Alas," said Edmond, smiling, "these are
the treasures the cardinal has left; and the good abbe, seeing in a
dream these glittering walls, has indulged in fallacious hopes."

But he called to mind the words of the will, which he knew by heart. "In
the farthest angle of the second opening," said the cardinal's will. He
had only found the first grotto; he had now to seek the second.
Dantes continued his search. He reflected that this second grotto must
penetrate deeper into the island; he examined the stones, and sounded
one part of the wall where he fancied the opening existed, masked for
precaution's sake. The pickaxe struck for a moment with a dull sound
that drew out of Dantes' forehead large drops of perspiration. At last
it seemed to him that one part of the wall gave forth a more hollow and
deeper echo; he eagerly advanced, and with the quickness of perception
that no one but a prisoner possesses, saw that there, in all
probability, the opening must be.

However, he, like Caesar Borgia, knew the value of time; and, in
order to avoid fruitless toil, he sounded all the other walls with his
pickaxe, struck the earth with the butt of his gun, and finding nothing
that appeared suspicious, returned to that part of the wall whence
issued the consoling sound he had before heard. He again struck it, and
with greater force. Then a singular thing occurred. As he struck the
wall, pieces of stucco similar to that used in the ground work of
arabesques broke off, and fell to the ground in flakes, exposing a large
white stone. The aperture of the rock had been closed with stones, then
this stucco had been applied, and painted to imitate granite. Dantes
st