o such close contact,
M. Dantes, the Deputy from Marseilles, remained as much of a mystery as
ever. Marrast, though now devotedly attached to him, admitted that he
was totally unable to fathom either his designs, or his methods of
accomplishing them, while Lamartine, who was in his company a large
portion of the time, when questioned concerning him, replied that all he
knew of M. Dantes was that he was a firm friend of the cause and an
untiring worker in the interest of the weary and oppressed masses.

Debray, though he had no tangible foundation for it, could not get rid
of the idea that the dangerous Deputy and the Count of Monte-Cristo were
one and the same individual, but Beauchamp, with the usual incredulity
of journalists, scoffed at the notion, and Chateau-Renaud derided it
whenever it was mentioned in his presence.

That M. Dantes had great wealth was, however, generally admitted, though
whence it was derived or in what manner it was invested no one could
tell. It was now no longer a secret that he had purchased and resided in
the magnificent mansion formerly owned by the Count de Morcerf, in the
Rue du Helder, and this circumstance, while it vastly augmented the
interest attaching to him, did not in the least detract from the
enthusiasm felt for him by the working classes.

It was night. In a large chamber, richly furnished, but dimly lighted,
in the mansion in the Rue du Helder, the same apartment once inhabited
by the Countess de Morcerf, motionless, and seemingly lifeless, with a
countenance as pale as alabaster, and as still, lay M. Dantes, the
Deputy from Marseilles. Although, in the ashy pallor of the lips and
brow, and the fixed, serene, almost stern aspect of the immovable face,
might be read unmistakable evidence of an exhausting and dangerous
constitutional shock to the system, yet none of that emaciation, over
which broods the shadow of the angel of death, resulting from protracted
illness, was there to be seen. The broad white forehead--the raven hair,
sparsely sprinkled with silver--the round temples--the delicately
penciled brow, encircling, like a sable arch, the large and
almond-formed eye--the full calm lip, and the chiseled chin and
nostril--all these were as perfect now as when last before the reader.
The cheek was, perhaps, slightly sunken, but it could not be more pallid
than when last beheld; and but for that nameless quietude--that "rapture
of repose," as Lord Byron well expresses it--t