Using the Saucepan Handle as a Lever
Dantès devours his food rapidly and waits an hour to ensure the jailer will not return. He then removes his bed, inserts the point of the saucepan handle between the hewn stone and the rough stones of the wall, and uses it as a lever. A slight oscillation confirms success, and after an hour, the stone is extricated, leaving a cavity a foot and a half in diameter.
Concealing the Excavation and Continuing Work
Dantès carefully conceals his work by collecting the plaster, carrying it into the corner of his cell, and covering it with earth. He toils without ceasing to make the best use of his time. At dawn, he replaces the stone, pushes his bed back against the wall, and lies down. When the jailer enters and sees no plate, Dantès is given the saucepan permanently—an outcome that fills him with profound gratitude.
Encountering a Blocking Beam
After the jailer’s visit, Dantès straightens the saucepan handle, returns it to its place, and continues working. That evening, after two or three hours of labor, he encounters an obstacle: the iron makes no impression but meets a smooth surface. He discovers it is a beam that crosses, or rather blocks up, the hole he has made, necessitating digging above or below it.
Dantès’ Despair Over the Obstacle
The realization that he must dig around the beam overwhelms Dantès with despair. He had not anticipated this obstacle. Turning to God in anguish, he laments that after being deprived of liberty, of death, and then recalled to existence, he is now to be left to die in despair—his earnest prayers seemingly unheard.
Hearing the Voice of Prisoner No. 27
As Dantès murmurs his despairing prayer, a voice that seems to come from beneath the earth responds. The sound, deadened by distance, appears hollow and sepulchral. Dantès’ hair stands on end as he rises to his knees, overwhelmed to hear a human voice after four or five years of speaking only with his jailer—a man he considers merely a living barrier of flesh and blood.
No. 27 Reveals His Wrong-Angle Mistake
The two prisoners exchange identities and histories. Dantès reveals he is a French sailor, Edmond Dantès, imprisoned since February 28, 1815, accused of conspiring for the emperor’s return. The voice, No. 27, has been imprisoned since 1811—four years longer. No. 27 instructs Dantès to stop digging and describes his excavation’s position, then reveals he took the wrong angle in his plans, coming out fifteen feet from his intended location. He had taken Dantès’ wall for the fortress’s outer wall, hoping to reach the sea and swim to the Île de Daume or Île de Tiboulen, but now all is lost.
Agreement to Collaborate on Escape
No. 27 initially intends to abandon Dantès and form a new plan, but Dantès pleads with him, swearing by Christ that he will never betray his fellow prisoner and even threatening to dash his brains out against the wall if abandoned. When Dantès reveals he is not yet twenty-six years old, No. 27 is reassured of his sincerity. Dantès offers his love for his elderly father and Mercédès as proof of his trustworthiness, promising to love No. 27 as a comrade or son. No. 27 agrees to wait and promises to give the signal.
No. 27 Enters Dantès’ Cell
After dispersing the fragments and replacing his bed, Dantès spends an anxious day and night. The next morning, as he removes his bed from the wall, he hears three knocks. He confirms the jailer is gone, and suddenly the floor beneath his hands gives way. A mass of stones and earth disappears into a passage, and from its depths emerges the head, shoulders, and finally the body of a man who springs lightly into Dantès’ cell, ending years of solitary confinement.
CHAPITRE 16. A Learned Italian
Chapter 16, “A Learned Italian,” centers on the encounter between Edmond Dantès and the Abbé Faria, an elderly fellow prisoner who has tunnelled into Dantès’s cell at the Château d’If. The chapter details the elder man’s appearance, his years-long escape attempt and its failure, his identity and political backstory, Dantès’s new plan to escape, and Faria’s moral refusal to harm a sentry. Chapter 16, “A Learned Italian,” continues the deepening conversation between Dantès and the Abbé Faria within the Château d’If. After Faria’s earlier revelation that Dantès himself had unknowingly thought of the possibility of exchange rather than escape, the chapter follows Dantès’s wonder at the old priest’s extraordinary self-education and resourcefulness. Faria explains how he has spent years studying historical prison escapes, manufacturing his own writing materials from prison scraps, composing a major treatise on shirt-linen, and mastering multiple languages — all while confined. The chapter closes with Faria inviting Dantès to follow him back through the subterranean passage to view his life’s work firsthand.
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