THE PLOT.

We left Esperance in the house at Courberrie just when the panels had been thrown open. He uttered a cry of horror. What did he see? Around a table covered with glasses sat a number of women singing drunken songs, and among these women sat one pale as a ghost, and this one was Jane!

Ah! poor child! Of what terrible machination was she the victim?

Benedetto, who required her as a tool for his vengeance, had carried her through the subterranean passage, she all the time entirely unconscious. He laid her on a sofa, and stood with folded arms looking down upon her. Did he feel the smallest emotion of pity? No, not he! He was only asking himself if the girl was so attractive that Esperance would really feel her loss as much as his enemies wished. Suddenly she sighed a long, strange, fluttering sigh. Benedetto leaned over her anxiously. What if she were to die now! He must hasten. Everything had been arranged. He opened her teeth with the blade of a knife, and poured down her throat a few drops of a clear white liquor. It was an anesthetic whose terrible properties he well understood. Jane would see, Jane would hear, and Jane would suffer, but as she could neither speak nor move all resistance would be impossible. And, that night she was carried to the house at Courberrie, what terrible agony she suffered! She knew that she was in the power of an enemy, that she had been torn from him whom she loved better than life, and from whose lips she had just heard oaths of eternal fidelity. With a heart swelling with agony she could not utter a sound. Her soul was alive, but her body was motionless. Suddenly the room in which she lay was brilliantly illuminated. A crowd of women came pouring in and such women! My readers who remember Jane’s past can readily imagine that the girl regarded this scene as a hideous dream. She even fancied that she saw her mother.

Esperance beheld all this. He rushed forward, only to be stopped by iron bars.

This terrible scene had been most adroitly managed. The house at Courberrie belonged to Danglars, and had been the scene of many ignoble orgies. The opening through which Esperance looked was not more than thirty feet from Jane. He called, but she could not hear him. Then all was suddenly dark. The lights returned in a few minutes, and Jane was seen alone.

“Jane! Jane!” cried Esperance. Suddenly a door opened. Esperance saw an old man enter the room. He went up to Jane with a hideous smile on his face. It was Laisangy.

Of all the crimes that Benedetto had committed, this was the most infamous!

Esperance caught the iron bars and shook them violently, and with such enormous strength that one of them was loosened. Esperance passed through them and stood in a corridor, but there was a sheet of plate glass still between him and Jane. This glass he broke with his clenched hands, and Esperance sprang at the throat of Danglars and threw him to the other end of the room. Then, taking Jane in his arms, he cried:

“Jane! my beloved do you not hear me? I am Monte-Cristo.”

“Monte-Cristo!” repeated a hoarse voice.

Esperance half turned.

Danglars had staggered up from the floor, and was gazing at Esperance with eyes fairly starting from his head. With his deadly pallor and a gash on his cheek from the glass through which he had passed, Esperance bore a striking resemblance to his father. He looked as Dantes looked the day his infamous companion betrayed him at Marseilles. Danglars was appalled.

“Edmond Dantes!” he cried in agony, raising his arms high above his head, and wildly clutching the air for support. Then he fell forward on his face in an attack of apoplexy.

Esperance laid Jane again on the sofa, and ran to his assistance. He lifted him from the floor. The banker was dead.

Esperance was as if stunned. The strange events, coming one after the other, affected his reason. He believed himself the victim of a hideous nightmare. He heard a sigh and turned back to Jane, who seemed to be trying to throw off the stupor that had weighed her down. The effect of the narcotic was probably passing off. She raised her hands and pressed them to her forehead. Esperance forgot everything else, and falling at Jane’s feet he cried, in an agony of entreaty.

“Oh! Jane, awake! I must take you from this terrible place. Jane, awake!”

The girl’s eyes moved.

“Who speaks my name?” she whispered.

“It is I I, who loves Esperance!”

Jane opened her eyes quickly.

“Esperance! Oh! not here it must not be!”

She began to sob convulsively.

“I know all, my beloved!” he answered, soothingly, “I know the snare that was laid for you. But why do you repel me, dearest?”

“Ah! you do not know,” she said, amid her sobs. “Those women those songs. Ah! let me die!”

“No, do not say that! We are surrounded by enemies, but I fear them not. Come, we must leave this place.”

But, with her brain still excited by opium, she continued to resist.

“Jane, you know me? I am Esperance. Let us fly, and find our happiness together. Jane dear Jane!”

His voice was so tender and so persuasive that suddenly the terror-stricken expression left the girl’s face. She placed her hands on his shoulder, and contemplated him in a sort of ecstasy.

“Yes, I remember. Esperance, how I love you!”

At this instant, like a chorus behind the scenes, there came the shouts of ribald laughter. She fell on the floor, crying: “Alas! alas! I am accursed!”

The door of the room was thrown open, and a man entered. This man was Benedetto.