The Count of Monte Cristo

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.

第十六章 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.