The Count of Monte Cristo

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"Edmond," continued Mercedes, with her arms extended towards the count,
"since I first knew you, I have adored your name, have respected your
memory. Edmond, my friend, do not compel me to tarnish that noble and
pure image reflected incessantly on the mirror of my heart. Edmond, if
you knew all the prayers I have addressed to God for you while I thought
you were living and since I have thought you must be dead! Yes, dead,
alas! I imagined your dead body buried at the foot of some gloomy tower,
or cast to the bottom of a pit by hateful jailers, and I wept! What
could I do for you, Edmond, besides pray and weep? Listen; for ten
years I dreamed each night the same dream. I had been told that you had
endeavored to escape; that you had taken the place of another prisoner;
that you had slipped into the winding sheet of a dead body; that you had
been thrown alive from the top of the Chateau d'If, and that the cry you
uttered as you dashed upon the rocks first revealed to your jailers that
they were your murderers. Well, Edmond, I swear to you, by the head
of that son for whom I entreat your pity,--Edmond, for ten years I saw
every night every detail of that frightful tragedy, and for ten years