Edmond was obliged to assist him, for otherwise he would not have been able to enter by the small aperture which led to Dantes' chamber.
"Here I am, pursuing you remorselessly," he said with a benignant smile.
"You thought to escape my munificence, but it is in vain.

Listen to me." Edmond saw there was no escape, and placing the old man on his bed, he seated himself on the stool beside him.
"You know," said the abbe, "that I was the secretary and intimate friend of Cardinal Spada, the last of the princes of that name.

I owe to this worthy lord all the happiness I ever knew.

He was not rich, although the wealth of his family had passed into a proverb, and I heard the phrase very often, 'As rich as a Spada.' But he, like public rumor, lived on this reputation for wealth; his palace was my paradise.

I was tutor to his nephews, who are dead; and when he was alone in the world, I tried by absolute devotion to his will, to make up to him all he had done for me during ten years of unremitting kindness.