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The big vessel, with reefed sails and yards crossed over her masts, drawn by a tug from Marseilles, rocking over a sweep of rolling waves which subsided gently on becoming calm, passed in front of the Château d'If, then under all the gray rocks of the roadstead, which the setting sun covered with a golden vapor; and she entered the ancient port, in which are packed together, side by side, ships from every part of the world, pell mell, large and small, of every shape and every variety of rigging, soaking like a "bouillabaise" of boats in this basin too limited in extent, full of putrid water, where shells touch each other, rub against each other, and seem to be pickled in the juice of the vessels.
And after having assured himself that the prisoner was gone, the deputy procureur hastened to the house of his betrothed. The Chateau D'If. The commissary of police, as he traversed the ante-chamber, made a sign to two gendarmes, who placed themselves one on Dantes' right and the other on his left.
Its history teems with exciting incidents of plague, fire, sacking, siege, and hand-to-hand fighting, so it is quite in keeping that it should take so important a part in the present conflict. It was here Monte Cristo was hurled from the Chateau d'If in the sack from which he cut his escape. Francis the First besieged it in vain, and it prospered under King Rene.
One evening, some weeks after it had begun, Hugh Flaxman, hearing from Rose of the success of the experiment, went down to hear his new acquaintance tell the story of Monte Cristo's escape from the Château d'If. He started an hour earlier than was necessary, and with an admirable impartiality he spent that hour at St. Wilfrid's hearing vespers.
The young girl, without being intimidated by this rude welcome, said through her sobs that the only favor she now came to ask for her father was that his prison might be changed, and that he might be removed from the Chateau d'If, the dampness of which was ruining his health, to the citadel of Strasburg. "No, no," cried the Emperor, "don't count on that.
Dantes pressed the gendarme's hand as though he would crush it. "You think, then," said he, "that I am taken to the Chateau d'If to be imprisoned there?" "It is probable; but there is no occasion to squeeze so hard." "Without any inquiry, without any formality?" "All the formalities have been gone through; the inquiry is already made." "And so, in spite of M. de Villefort's promises?"
"As I have already told you, sir, he was a very dangerous man; and, fortunately, by his own act disembarrassed the government of the fears it had on his account." "How was that?" "How? Do you not comprehend?" "No." "The Chateau d'If has no cemetery, and they simply throw the dead into the sea, after fastening a thirty-six pound cannon-ball to their feet."
"Well, then," resumed Faria with a bitter smile, "let me answer your question in full, by acknowledging that I am the poor mad prisoner of the Chateau d'If, for many years permitted to amuse the different visitors with what is said to be my insanity; and, in all probability, I should be promoted to the honor of making sport for the children, if such innocent beings could be found in an abode devoted like this to suffering and despair."
At the door of the Travellers' he entered a brougham; and, driving to the French Embassy in Albert Gate, he alighted, IN DIFFERENT TOGS, quite the swell, and LET HIMSELF IN WITH HIS OWN LATCH-KEY. In fact, Sir, this conspirator of barbers' shops, this prisoner of the Chateau d'If, this climber of Corsican eyries, is to-day the French Minister accredited to the Court of St. James's!
He fancied that they buried the dead at the Chateau d'If, and imagining they would not expend much labor on the grave of a prisoner, he calculated on raising the earth with his shoulders, but unfortunately their arrangements at the Chateau frustrated his projects. They never buried the dead; they merely attached a heavy cannon-ball to the feet, and then threw them into the sea.
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