The Count of Monte Cristo

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to it under penalty of breaking your word."

"I will keep it," returned Morcerf; "but I fear that you will be much
disappointed, accustomed as you are to picturesque events and fantastic
horizons. Amongst us you will not meet with any of those episodes with
which your adventurous existence has so familiarized you; our Chimborazo
is Mortmartre, our Himalaya is Mount Valerien, our Great Desert is the
plain of Grenelle, where they are now boring an artesian well to water
the caravans. We have plenty of thieves, though not so many as is said;
but these thieves stand in far more dread of a policeman than a lord.
France is so prosaic, and Paris so civilized a city, that you will not
find in its eighty-five departments--I say eighty-five, because I do
not include Corsica--you will not find, then, in these eighty-five
departments a single hill on which there is not a telegraph, or a grotto
in which the commissary of police has not put up a gaslamp. There is but
one service I can render you, and for that I place myself entirely
at your orders, that is, to present, or make my friends present, you