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Updated: June 21, 2025
Sanselme had terrible attacks of frenzy, and the woman, when she was able to move, had risen from her bed and gone to the door of her room, where she stood with terror and anguish imprinted on every feature, and if any one entered the room she would press both hands on her breast and utter a terrible shriek.
He called himself her intendant, and was anxious to perform the most menial offices, and in these felt as if he were in a measure making amends for the past. He had one aspiration, that of paternal martyrdom. Gently and with paternal affection Sanselme soothed the girl's shame and despair.
Sanselme forgot all his prudence and ran in the direction of the cries. He found a woman struggling with three drunken men, trying to tear from them a young girl about thirteen, simply dressed. The girl was struggling, but oddly enough she did not utter a sound. "Don't put on these airs, Zelda," said one of the ruffians, "let the little girl have a fling too. You have had yours."
And because of his crime, she was condemned and despised. She was driven away, and gave birth to her child. And then, to live and to give bread to this child, she had become what she was. Sanselme took the hand of the dying woman. "And the child?" he asked. "Where is she?" The woman looked at him with her big dark eyes. For the first time she seemed conscious of his presence.
He shook off the hand on his wrist and began to run. He saw the wreck a foot or two from the shore, and with one leap he reached it, having little idea of the danger that awaited him there. The mad woman followed him and tried to put her arms around him. "You shall never leave me again, Benedetto!" she murmured. Sanselme saw and heard it all. It seemed to him that it was some frightful nightmare.
"This woman is ill," answered Sanselme, roughly, who now understood the kind of a place he was in. "Get out of my way!" he added. "Ill! Oh! what stuff. Come on, though. I will see to this to-morrow!" And she took down a lantern from the wall and led the way up the creaking stairs. Two or three men came out of the lower room at the same moment. "Is that Zelda?" they shouted.
"Too late!" cried Sanselme, "but I will save her." And he in his turn leaped into the water. He was a vigorous swimmer, as will be remembered by our readers. When he rose to the surface after his plunge, he looked around, and at some distance beheld a dark spot. He swam toward it and seized the woman's arm. She was just sinking.
She advancing and Benedetto retreating, the two reached the other end of the wreck; their feet slipped, there was a dull sound as they fell, and the water opened to receive them. Sanselme leaned over. He could see nothing, and heard not another sound. In the morning a corpse was found leaning over the gunwale, with eyes open. One sailor said to another: "A drunken man the less in the world!"
My readers have not forgotten the romantic episode that followed Jane's suicide. How happened it that our old friends Fanfar and Bobichel were near and able to save the life of Sanselme? It is a very simple matter. Monte-Cristo had said to Fanfar, "I trust my son to you. You love me, love him, also. Be to him what you have been to me."
He sat near Sanselme's bed, and in the next room the mad woman was asleep, crouching on the floor near the door. Fanfar looked at the man before him, and his unerring instinct told him that this livid, worn face had known not only great sorrow, but terrible remorse. Sanselme said something. Fanfar leaned over him to hear more distinctly. "My daughter; dead! dead!"
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