4 The two prisoners

Chapter 4 The two prisoners For hours, Edmond sat slumped against the cell wall, clutching his knees to his chest. He was convinced he would be released any moment. But that moment never came. Hours turned into days. Slowly, Edmond's confusion boiled into anger. Each time the guards brought him food, he smashed the bowl against the door and yelled until his voice ran dry. "I am innocent!" he cried.

Days became weeks and then months. Edmond curled up in the dark, haunted by memories. At first he thought about Mercedes, but more and more he became obsessed with Fernand and Danglars. He was certain they wrote the letter accusing him of treason. Months grew into years. By then, Edmond's wedding suit hung like rags around his skeleton frame. His nails grew long and filthy, and lice crawled in his tangled beard. All day the scurrying sound of rats echoed around his cramped cell. The noise seemed to be coming from under the ground. Edmond pressed his ear to the floor, listening for hours. How he envied their freedom!

Then, one day, the ground began to tremble. One of the stones shuddered and rose. Edmond scrabbled back in fright as a head emerged from the ground- a tangled mass of white hair and beard with two bulging eyes in between. It was another prisoner! The old man glared at Edmond cowering in the corner. "Curses!" he cried. "I have dug the wrong way. I thought I was escaping the prison, not digging deeper inside." Edmond crawled closer and peered into the man's tunnel. For the first time in years, a smile spread across his filthy face. "Let me help you dig in the other direction," he said.

"It would take years," the man replied. "I have years." The old man smiled, showing his black and brown teeth. "So do I," he said. "Follow me!" Edmond slid into the tunnel and wriggled like a worm through the narrow space. He rose into another cell, as dark and dingy as his own. The old man bowed. "My name is Abbé Faria," he said. "Abbé?" Edmond replied. That meant priest. "Why are you in prison?" "Because I knew a secret that I wouldn't tell the King." "What secret?" The old man smiled again. "It is a secret," he said.

The Abbé skipped across his cell and tapped one of the stones in the opposite wall. "If we dig this way for about five years, we should come out near the sea." He handed Edmond a digging tool made from a bent iron bed leg. "Let's get started." That first night, they barely dug an inch into the wall. But each night after, Edmond crawled from his cell and they continued scraping at the rock. As they dug, Edmond told the Abbé about Mercedes, and his hunger for revenge against Fernand and Danglars. But whenever he asked about the Abbé's secret, the priest just smiled and kept digging.

Each night they met, and each night the tunnel grew longer. Then, around twenty years after Edmond was thrown into Chateau D'If, the Abbé called excitedly from the end of the tunnel. "Edmond, I see daylight!" Edmond's heart raced. They had reached the end. But as he scurried closer, the tunnel walls began to tremble. Zigzag cracks splintered along the roof. "Abbé!" Edmond cried. "Come back." But it was too late. Rocks crashed down as the tunnel collapsed.