“Are you well fed?” said the inspector.
“I believe so; I don’t know; it’s of no consequence. What matters really, not only to me, but to officers of justice and the king, is that an innocent man should languish in prison, the victim of an infamous denunciation, to die here cursing his executioners.”
“You are very humble today,” remarked the governor; “you are not so always; the other day, for instance, when you tried to kill the turnkey.”
“It is true, sir, and I beg his pardon, for he has always been very good to me, but I was mad.”
“And you are not so any longer?”
“No; captivity has subdued me—I have been here so long.”
“So long?—when were you arrested, then?” asked the inspector.
“The 28th of February, 1815, at half-past two in the afternoon.”
“Today is the 30th of July, 1816,—why, it is but seventeen months.”
“Only seventeen months,” replied Dantès. “Oh, you do not know what is seventeen months in prison!—seventeen ages rather, especially to a man who, like me, had arrived at the summit of his ambition—to a man, who, like me, was on the point of marrying a woman he adored, who saw an honorable career opened before him, and who loses all in an instant—who sees his prospects destroyed, and is ignorant of the fate of his affianced wife, and whether his aged father be still living! Seventeen months’ captivity to a sailor accustomed to the boundless ocean, is a worse punishment than human crime ever merited. Have pity on me, then, and ask for me, not intelligence, but a trial; not pardon, but a verdict—a trial, sir, I ask only for a trial; that, surely, cannot be denied to one who is accused!”