The Count of Monte Cristo

Language Acquisition

Dantès proves an exceptional student. Blessed with a prodigious memory, quick comprehension, and a mathematical turn of mind softened by natural poetry, he absorbs material with astonishing speed. He already knew Italian and had picked up Romaic during eastern voyages. Building on these foundations, at the end of six months he begins to speak Spanish, English, and German with ease.

Philosophy Discussed

Faria distinguishes between learning and knowledge: “Memory makes the one, philosophy the other.” Philosophy, he insists, cannot be taught directly; it is the application of the sciences to truth, “like the golden cloud in which the Messiah went up into heaven.” This distinction frames Dantès’ entire course of study, promising not just facts but the higher wisdom of how to use them.

The Escape Scheme

Faria’s sadness grows despite the relief of Dantès’ company; one thought seems to harass him incessantly. He sighs, paces, and finally exclaims, “Ah, if there were no sentinel!” Dantès instantly perceives his companion’s thought and offers to make the sentry “both blind and deaf.” Though shaken by the young man’s determination, the abbé recoils from bloodshed, and three months pass before he reopens the subject.

Digging the Level

Faria reveals his escape plan: a scale drawing of both cells and the passage between them. He proposes to drive a level, as miners do, beneath the gallery where the sentry patrols. There, a large excavation would so thoroughly loosen one of the paving stones that the soldier would plunge through, stunned and helpless, to be bound and gagged by Dantès before he could resist. From a gallery window, the rope-ladder would then carry them over the outer walls to freedom.

Hiding the Excavation

The miners labor with vigor born of long rest and brightening hope. Their only constraint is timing: each must return to his cell before the turnkey’s visits, and they have learned to detect his almost imperceptible footsteps in advance. The fresh earth from the excavation, which would have blocked the old passage, is pulverized so finely that the night wind carries it away from the windows of either cell, leaving the smallest trace impossible to discover.

Fifteen Months of Labor

More than a year is consumed in the undertaking, worked with nothing but a chisel, a knife, and a wooden lever. Yet the labor is not purely physical; throughout, Faria continues instructing Dantès, conversing in various languages and recounting the histories of nations and famous men. A man of the world who once moved in the highest society, Faria imparts to Dantès a melancholy dignity, outward polish, and the courteous polish of one bred among persons of high birth.

The Sentry’s Trap

At last, after fifteen months, the level is finished and the excavation complete beneath the gallery; the two men can clearly hear the measured tread of the sentinel overhead. They must wait for a sufficiently dark night for the final attempt, but their greatest fear is premature collapse of the doomed flagstone. To guard against this, they prop it up with a small beam discovered in the walls during their tunneling. Dantès is arranging this timber when he hears Faria’s cry of distress from his cell.

Faria’s Collapse

Dantès hastens to Faria’s dungeon and finds him standing in the middle of the room, pale as death, his forehead streaming with perspiration and his hands clenched tightly together—a figure racked by sudden, terrible suffering. The chapter closes on this alarming collapse of the abbé just as their long-sought escape is finally within reach.

KAPITEL 17. The Abbé’s Chamber

Chapter 17, “The Abbé’s Chamber,” depicts the catastrophic interruption of Dantès and Abbé Faria’s escape plan when the abbé is struck by a sudden, violent illness. The chapter traces the emergency response—Dantès’s administering of the prescribed remedy, the abbé’s grim revelation of permanent paralysis, Dantès’s solemn vow to remain with his friend, and the abbés order to conceal their excavation work.