glass upon the
table.

"Well!" resumed the Catalan, as he saw the final glimmer of Caderousse's
reason vanishing before the last glass of wine.

"Well, then, I should say, for instance," resumed Danglars, "that if
after a voyage such as Dantes has just made, in which he touched at the
Island of Elba, some one were to denounce him to the king's procureur as
a Bonapartist agent"--

"I will denounce him!" exclaimed the young man hastily.

"Yes, but they will make you then sign your declaration, and confront
you with him you have denounced; I will supply you with the means of
supporting your accusation, for I know the fact well. But Dantes cannot
remain forever in prison, and one day or other he will leave it, and
the day when he comes out, woe betide him who was the cause of his
incarceration!"

"Oh, I should wish nothing better than that he would come and seek a
quarrel with me."

"Yes, and Mercedes! Mercedes, who will detest you if you have only the
misfortune to scratch the skin of her dearly beloved Edmond!"

"True!" said Fernand.

"No, no," continued Danglars; "if we resolve on such a step, it would
be much better to take, as I now do, this pen, dip it into this ink, and
write with the left hand (that the writing may not be recognized) the
denunciation we propose." And Danglars, uniting practice with theory,
wrote with his left hand, and in a writing reversed from his usual
style, and totally unlike it, the following lines, which he handed to
Fernand, and which Fernand read in an undertone:--

"The honorable, the king's attorney, is informed by a friend of the
throne and religion, that one Edmond Dantes, mate of the ship Pharaon,
arrived this morning from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples
and Porto-Ferrajo, has been intrusted by Murat with a letter for the
usurper, and by the usurper with a letter for the Bonapartist committee
in Paris. Proof of this crime will be found on arresting him, for the
letter will be found upon him, or at his father's, or in his cabin on
board the Pharaon."

"Very good," resumed Danglars; "now your revenge looks like
common-sense, for in no way can it revert to yourself, and the matter
will thus work its own way; there is nothing to do now but fold the
letter as I am doing, and write upon it, 'To the king's attorney,' and
that's all settled." And Danglars wrote the address as he spoke.

"Yes, and that's all settled!" exclaimed Caderousse, who, by a last
effort of intelle