“Counting his treasures,” replied the governor.
Faria replied to this sarcasm with a glance of profound contempt. They went out. The turnkey closed the door behind them.
“He was wealthy once, perhaps?” said the inspector.
“Or dreamed he was, and awoke mad.”
“After all,” said the inspector, “if he had been rich, he would not have been here.”
So the matter ended for the Abbé Faria. He remained in his cell, and this visit only increased the belief in his insanity.
Caligula or Nero, those treasure-seekers, those desirers of the impossible, would have accorded to the poor wretch, in exchange for his wealth, the liberty he so earnestly prayed for. But the kings of modern times, restrained by the limits of mere probability, have neither courage nor desire. They fear the ear that hears their orders, and the eye that scrutinizes their actions. Formerly they believed themselves sprung from Jupiter, and shielded by their birth; but nowadays they are not inviolable.
It has always been against the policy of despotic governments to suffer the victims of their persecutions to reappear. As the Inquisition rarely allowed its victims to be seen with their limbs distorted and their flesh lacerated by torture, so madness is always concealed in its cell, from whence, should it depart, it is conveyed to some gloomy hospital, where the doctor has no thought for man or mind in the mutilated being the jailer delivers to him. The very madness of the Abbé Faria, gone mad in prison, condemned him to perpetual captivity.
The inspector kept his word with Dantès; he examined the register, and found the following note concerning him:
Edmond Dantès: