construction of all the others, so that at the end of six months he began to speak Spanish, English, and German.
In strict accordance with the promise made to the abbé, Dantès spoke no more of escape. Perhaps the delight his studies afforded him left no room for such thoughts; perhaps the recollection that he had pledged his word (on which his sense of honor was keen) kept him from referring in any way to the possibilities of flight.
Days, even months, passed by unheeded in one rapid and instructive course. At the end of a year Dantès was a new man.
Dantès observed, however, that Faria, in spite of the relief his society afforded, daily grew sadder; one thought seemed incessantly to harass and distract his mind. Sometimes he would fall into long reveries, sigh heavily and involuntarily, then suddenly rise, and, with folded arms, begin pacing the confined space of his dungeon. One day he stopped all at once, and exclaimed:
“Ah, if there were no sentinel!”
“There shall not be one a minute longer than you please,” said Dantès, who had followed the working of his thoughts as accurately as though his brain were enclosed in crystal so clear as to display its minutest operations.
“I have already told you,” answered the abbé, “that I loathe the idea of shedding blood.”
“And yet the murder, if you choose to call it so, would be simply a measure of self-preservation.”
“No matter! I could never agree to it.”
“Still, you have thought of it?”