Days, even months, passed by unheeded in one rapid and instructive course.

At the end of a year Dantes was a new man.

Dantes observed, however, that Faria, in spite of the relief his society afforded, daily grew sadder; one thought seemed incessantly to harass and distract his mind.

Sometimes he would fall into long reveries, sigh heavily and involuntarily, then suddenly rise, and, with folded arms, begin pacing the confined space of his dungeon.

One day he stopped all at once, and exclaimed, "Ah, if there were no sentinel!" "There shall not be one a minute longer than you please," said Dantes, who had followed the working of his thoughts as accurately as though his brain were enclosed in crystal so clear as to display its minutest operations.
"I have already told you," answered the abbe, "that I loathe the idea of shedding blood." "And yet the murder, if you choose to call it so, would be simply a measure of self-preservation." "No matter! I could never agree to it." "Still, you have thought of it ?" "Incessantly, alas!" cried the abbe.
"And you have discovered a means of regaining our freedom, have you not ?" asked Dantes eagerly.
"I have; if it were only possible to place a deaf and blind sentinel in the gallery beyond us." "He shall be both blind and deaf," replied the young man, with an air of determination that made his companion shudder.
"No, no," cried the abbe; "impossible!" Dantes endeavored to renew the subject; the abbe shook his head in token of disapproval, and refused to make any further response.