The Count of Monte Cristo

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just a quarter past twelve o'clock." Instinctively Dantes turned round
to observe by what watch or clock the abbe had been able so accurately
to specify the hour.

"Look at this ray of light which enters by my window," said the abbe,
"and then observe the lines traced on the wall. Well, by means of these
lines, which are in accordance with the double motion of the earth, and
the ellipse it describes round the sun, I am enabled to ascertain the
precise hour with more minuteness than if I possessed a watch; for that
might be broken or deranged in its movements, while the sun and earth
never vary in their appointed paths."

This last explanation was wholly lost upon Dantes, who had always
imagined, from seeing the sun rise from behind the mountains and set in
the Mediterranean, that it moved, and not the earth. A double movement
of the globe he inhabited, and of which he could feel nothing, appeared
to him perfectly impossible. Each word that fell from his companion's