“Ah, I recollect,” replied the count; “did you not say something of an infant?”

“Yes, excellency; I hastened to the river, sat down on the bank, and with my knife forced open the lock of the box. In a fine linen cloth was wrapped a newborn child. Its purple visage, and its violet-colored hands showed that it had perished from suffocation, but as it was not yet cold, I hesitated to throw it into the water that ran at my feet. After a moment I fancied that I felt a slight pulsation of the heart, and as I had been assistant at the hospital at Bastia, I did what a doctor would have done⁠—I inflated the lungs by blowing air into them, and at the expiration of a quarter of an hour, it began to breathe, and cried feebly. In my turn I uttered a cry, but a cry of joy.

“ ‘God has not cursed me then,’ I cried, ‘since he permits me to save the life of a human creature, in exchange for the life I have taken away.’ ”

“And what did you do with the child?” asked Monte Cristo. “It was an embarrassing load for a man seeking to escape.”