s I myself bore the appellation
of Gaspard Caderousse; but tell me, I pray, what has become of poor
Edmond? Did you know him? Is he alive and at liberty? Is he prosperous
and happy?"

"He died a more wretched, hopeless, heart-broken prisoner than the
felons who pay the penalty of their crimes at the galleys of Toulon."

A deadly pallor followed the flush on the countenance of Caderousse, who
turned away, and the priest saw him wiping the tears from his eyes with
the corner of the red handkerchief twisted round his head.

"Poor fellow, poor fellow!" murmured Caderousse. "Well, there, sir, is
another proof that good people are never rewarded on this earth, and
that none but the wicked prosper. Ah," continued Caderousse, speaking
in the highly colored language of the south, "the world grows worse and
worse. Why does not God, if he really hates the wicked, as he is said to
do, send down brimstone and fire, and consume them altogether?"

"You speak as though you had loved this young Dantes," observed the
abbe, without taking any notice of his companion's vehemence.

"And so I did," replied Caderousse; "though once, I confess, I envied
him his good fortune. But I swear to you, sir, I swear to you, by
everything a man holds dear, I have, since then, deeply and sincerely
lamented his unhappy fate." There was a brief silence, during which
the fixed, searching eye of the abbe was employed in scrutinizing the
agitated features of the inn-keeper.

"You knew the poor lad, then?" continued Caderousse.

"I was called to see him on his dying bed, that I might administer to
him the consolations of religion."

"And of what did he die?" asked Caderousse in a choking voice.

"Of what, think you, do young and strong men die in prison, when
they have scarcely numbered their thirtieth year, unless it be of
imprisonment?" Caderousse wiped away the large beads of perspiration
that gathered on his brow.

"But the strangest part of the story is," resumed the abbe, "that
Dantes, even in his dying moments, swore by his crucified Redeemer, that
he was utterly ignorant of the cause of his detention."

"And so he was," murmured Caderousse. "How should he have been
otherwise? Ah, sir, the poor fellow told you the truth."

"And for that reason, he besought me to try and clear up a mystery he
had never been able to penetrate, and to clear his memory should any
foul spot or stain have fallen on it."

And here the look of the abbe, becoming