Dantes told him that the jug had fallen from his hands while he was drinking, and the jailer went grumblingly to fetch another, without giving himself the trouble to remove the fragments of the broken one.

He returned speedily, advised the prisoner to be more careful, and departed.
Dantes heard joyfully the key grate in the lock; he listened until the sound of steps died away, and then, hastily displacing his bed, saw by the faint light that penetrated into his cell, that he had labored uselessly the previous evening in attacking the stone instead of removing the plaster that surrounded it.
The damp had rendered it friable, and Dantes was able to break it off--in small morsels, it is true, but at the end of half an hour he had scraped off a handful; a mathematician might have calculated that in two years, supposing that the rock was not encountered, a passage twenty feet long and two feet broad, might be formed.
The prisoner reproached himself with not having thus employed the hours he had passed in vain hopes, prayer, and despondency.

During the six years that he had been imprisoned, what might he not have accomplished?
In three days he had succeeded, with the utmost precaution, in removing the cement, and exposing the stone-work.

The wall was built of rough stones, among which, to give strength to the structure, blocks of hewn stone were at intervals imbedded.

It was one of these he had uncovered, and which he must remove from its socket.
Dantes strove to do this with his nails, but they were too weak.