"No one had entered the house since I had left it.It was five o'clock in the afternoon; I ascended into the red room, and waited for night.There all the thoughts which had disturbed me during my year of constant agony came back with double force.The Corsican, who had declared the vendetta against me, who had followed me from Nimes to Paris, who had hid himself in the garden, who had struck me, had seen me dig the grave, had seen me inter the child, -- he might become acquainted with your person, -- nay, he might even then have known it.Would he not one day make you pay for keeping this terrible secret? Would it not be a sweet revenge for him when he found that I had not died from the blow of his dagger? It was therefore necessary, before everything else, and at all risks, that I should cause all traces of the past to disappear -- that I should destroy every material vestige; too much reality would always remain in my recollection.It was for this I had annulled the lease -- it was for this I had come -- it was for this I was waiting.Night arrived; I allowed it to become quite dark.Iwas without a light in that room; when the wind shook all the doors, behind which I continually expected to see some spy concealed, I trembled.I seemed everywhere to hear your moans behind me in the bed, and I dared not turn around.My heart beat so violently that I feared my wound would open.
At length, one by one, all the noises in the neighborhood ceased.I understood that I had nothing to fear, that Ishould neither be seen nor heard, so I decided upon descending to the garden.
"Listen, Hermine; I consider myself as brave as most men, but when I drew from my breast the little key of the staircase, which I had found in my coat -- that little key we both used to cherish so much, which you wished to have fastened to a golden ring -- when I opened the door, and saw the pale moon shedding a long stream of white light on the spiral staircase like a spectre, I leaned against the wall, and nearly shrieked.I seemed to be going mad.At last Imastered my agitation.I descended the staircase step by step; the only thing I could not conquer was a strange trembling in my knees.I grasped the railings; if I had relaxed my hold for a moment, I should have fallen.Ireached the lower door.Outside this door a spade was placed against the wall; I took it, and advanced towards the thicket.I had provided myself with a dark lantern.In the middle of the lawn I stopped to light it, then I continued my path.
"It was the end of November, all the verdure of the garden had disappeared, the trees were nothing more than skeletons with their long bony arms, and the dead leaves sounded on the gravel under my feet.My terror overcame me to such a degree as I approached the thicket, that I took a pistol from my pocket and armed myself.I fancied continually that I saw the figure of the Corsican between the branches.Iexamined the thicket with my dark lantern; it was empty.Ilooked carefully around; I was indeed alone, -- no noise disturbed the silence but the owl, whose piercing cry seemed to be calling up the phantoms of the night.I tied my lantern to a forked branch I had noticed a year before at the precise spot where I stopped to dig the hole.
"The grass had grown very thickly there during the summer, and when autumn arrived no one had been there to mow it.
Still one place where the grass was thin attracted my attention; it evidently was there I had turned up the ground.I went to work.The hour, then, for which I had been waiting during the last year had at length arrived.How Iworked, how I hoped, how I struck every piece of turf, thinking to find some resistance to my spade! But no, Ifound nothing, though I had made a hole twice as large as the first.I thought I had been deceived -- had mistaken the spot.I turned around, I looked at the trees, I tried to recall the details which had struck me at the time.A cold, sharp wind whistled through the leafless branches, and yet the drops fell from my forehead.I recollected that I was stabbed just as I was trampling the ground to fill up the hole; while doing so I had leaned against a laburnum; behind me was an artificial rockery, intended to serve as a resting-place for persons walking in the garden; in falling, my hand, relaxing its hold of the laburnum, felt the coldness of the stone.On my right I saw the tree, behind me the rock.I stood in the same attitude, and threw myself down.I rose, and again began digging and enlarging the hole; still I found nothing, nothing -- the chest was no longer there!""The chest no longer there?" murmured Madame Danglars, choking with fear.
Think not I contented myself with this one effort,"continued Villefort."No; I searched the whole thicket.Ithought the assassin, having discovered the chest, and supposing it to be a treasure, had intended carrying it off, but, perceiving his error, had dug another hole, and deposited it there; but I could find nothing.Then the idea struck me that he had not taken these precautions, and had simply thrown it in a corner.In the last case I must wait for daylight to renew my search.I remained the room and waited.""Oh, heavens!"
When daylight dawned I went down again.My first visit was to the thicket.I hoped to find some traces which had escaped me in the darkness.I had turned up the earth over a surface of more than twenty feet square, and a depth of two feet.A laborer would not have done in a day what occupied me an hour.But I could find nothing -- absolutely nothing.
