“go on.”
“It was Danglars who wrote the denunciation with his left hand, that his writing might not be recognized, and Fernand who put it in the post.”
“But,” exclaimed the abbé suddenly, “you were there yourself.”
“I!” said Caderousse, astonished; “who told you I was there?”
The abbé saw he had overshot the mark, and he added quickly—“No one; but in order to have known everything so well, you must have been an eyewitness.”
“True, true!” said Caderousse in a choking voice, “I was there.”
“And did you not remonstrate against such infamy?” asked the abbé; “if not, you were an accomplice.”
“Sir,” replied Caderousse, “they had made me drink to such an excess that I nearly lost all perception. I had only an indistinct understanding of what was passing around me. I said all that a man in such a state could say; but they both assured me that it was a jest they were carrying on, and perfectly harmless.”
“Next day—next day, sir, you must have seen plain enough what they had been doing, yet you said nothing, though you were present when Dantès was arrested.”
“Yes, sir, I was there, and very anxious to speak; but Danglars restrained me. > ‘If he should really be guilty,’ said he, ‘and did really put in to the Island of Elba; if he is really charged with a letter for the Bonapartist committee at Paris, and if they find this letter upon him, those who have supported him will pass for his accomplices.’ I confess I had my fears, in the state in which politics then were, and