“Wait a moment,” said Villefort, turning over the leaves of a register; “I have it—a sailor, who was about to marry a young Catalan girl. I recollect now; it was a very serious charge.”
“How so?”
“You know that when he left here he was taken to the Palais de Justice.”
“Well?”
“I made my report to the authorities at Paris, and a week after he was carried off.”
“Carried off!” said Morrel. “What can they have done with him?”
“Oh, he has been taken to Fenestrelles, to Pignerol, or to the Sainte-Marguérite islands. Some fine morning he will return to take command of your vessel.”
“Come when he will, it shall be kept for him. But how is it he is not already returned? It seems to me the first care of government should be to set at liberty those who have suffered for their adherence to it.”
“Do not be too hasty, M. Morrel,” replied Villefort. “The order of imprisonment came from high authority, and the order for his liberation must proceed from the same source; and, as Napoleon has scarcely been reinstated a fortnight, the letters have not yet been forwarded.”
“But,” said Morrel, “is there no way of expediting all these formalities—of releasing him from arrest?”
“There has been no arrest.”
“How?”
“It is sometimes essential to government to cause a man’s disappearance without leaving any traces, so that no written forms or documents may