“Listen,” continued the abbé. “When you had betrayed your friend, God began not to strike, but to warn you. Poverty overtook you. You had already passed half your life in coveting that which you might have honorably acquired; and already you contemplated crime under the excuse of want, when God worked a miracle in your behalf, sending you, by my hands, a fortune⁠—brilliant, indeed, for you, who had never possessed any. But this unexpected, unhoped-for, unheard-of fortune sufficed you no longer when you once possessed it; you wished to double it, and how?⁠—by a murder! You succeeded, and then God snatched it from you, and brought you to justice.”

“It was not I who wished to kill the Jew,” said Caderousse; “it was La Carconte.”

“Yes,” said Monte Cristo, “and God⁠—I cannot say in justice, for his justice would have slain you⁠—but God, in his mercy, spared your life.”

“ Pardieu! to transport me for life, how merciful!”