The Count of Monte Cristo

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"Look!" said Faria, showing to the young man a slender stick about
six inches long, and much resembling the size of the handle of a fine
painting-brush, to the end of which was tied, by a piece of thread, one
of those cartilages of which the abbe had before spoken to Dantes;
it was pointed, and divided at the nib like an ordinary pen. Dantes
examined it with intense admiration, then looked around to see the
instrument with which it had been shaped so correctly into form.

"Ah, yes," said Faria; "the penknife. That's my masterpiece. I made
it, as well as this larger knife, out of an old iron candlestick." The
penknife was sharp and keen as a razor; as for the other knife, it would
serve a double purpose, and with it one could cut and thrust.

Dantes examined the various articles shown to him with the same
attention that he had bestowed on the curiosities and strange tools
exhibited in the shops at Marseilles as the works of the savages in the
South Seas from whence they had been brought by the different trading