The Count of Monte Cristo

Back Forward Menu

of twenty years of age, even when they are torn with remorse. Now, here
we are obliged to own that Andrea ought to have felt remorse, but that
he did not. This was the plan which had appealed to him to afford the
best chance of his security. Before daybreak he would awake, leave the
inn after rigorously paying his bill, and reaching the forest, he would,
under pretence of making studies in painting, test the hospitality of
some peasants, procure himself the dress of a woodcutter and a hatchet,
casting off the lion's skin to assume that of the woodman; then, with
his hands covered with dirt, his hair darkened by means of a leaden
comb, his complexion embrowned with a preparation for which one of his
old comrades had given him the recipe, he intended, by following the
wooded districts, to reach the nearest frontier, walking by night and
sleeping in the day in the forests and quarries, and only entering
inhabited regions to buy a loaf from time to time.

Once past the frontier, Andrea proposed making money of his diamonds;
and by uniting the proceeds to ten bank-notes he always carried about