The Count of Monte Cristo

Back Forward Menu

again read and studied them, commenting meanwhile upon his lists, he
shook his head.

"No," he murmured, "none of my enemies would have waited so patiently
and laboriously for so long a space of time, that they might now come
and crush me with this secret. Sometimes, as Hamlet says--

      'Foul deeds will rise,
      Tho' all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes;'

but, like a phosphoric light, they rise but to mislead. The story has
been told by the Corsican to some priest, who in his turn has repeated
it. M. de Monte Cristo may have heard it, and to enlighten himself--but
why should he wish to enlighten himself upon the subject?" asked
Villefort, after a moment's reflection, "what interest can this M. de
Monte Cristo or M. Zaccone,--son of a shipowner of Malta, discoverer
of a mine in Thessaly, now visiting Paris for the first time,--what