“Take all, then – take all, I tell you, and kill me!”
“Come, come, calm yourself. You will excite your blood, and that would produce an appetite it would require a million a day to satisfy. Be more economical.”
“But when I have no more money left to pay you?” asked the infuriated Danglars.
“Then you must suffer hunger.”
“Suffer hunger?” said Danglars, becoming pale.
“Most likely,” replied Vampa, coolly.
“But you say you do not wish to kill me?”
“No.”
“And yet you will let me perish with hunger?”
“Ah, that is a different thing.”
“Well, then, wretches!” cried Danglars, “I will defy your infamous calculations! – I would rather die at once! You may torture, torment, kill me, but you shall not have my signature again!”
“As your excellency pleases,” said Vampa, as he left the cell.
Danglars, raving, threw himself on the goat-skin. Who could these men be? Who was the invisible chief? What could be his projects toward him? And why, when everyone else was allowed to be ransomed, might he not also be? Oh, yes! certainly a speedy, sudden death would be a fine means of deceiving these remorseless enemies, who appeared to pursue him with such incomprehensible vengeance. But to die? For the first time in his life Danglars contemplated death with a mixture of dread and desire; the time had come when the implacable specter which exists in the mind of every human creature arrested his sight, and called out, with every pulsation of his heart, “Thou shalt die!”
Danglars resembled a wild beast, which first flies, then despairs, and at last, by the very force of desperation, succeeds in escaping. Danglars meditated an escape; but the walls were solid rock, a man was sitting reading at the only outlet to the cell, and behind that man figures armed with guns continually passed. His resolution not to sign lasted two days, after which he offered a million for some food. They sent him a magnificent supper, and took his million.
From this time the life of the wretched prisoner was a perpetual oscillation; he suffered so much that he resolved to suffer no longer, but to yield to all his exigencies. At the end of twelve days, after having made a splendid dinner, he reckoned his accounts, and found he had only fifty thousand francs left. Then a strange reaction took place: he who had just abandoned five millions endeavored to save the fifty thousand francs he had left; and, sooner than give them up, he resolved to enter again upon his life of privation – he yielded to rays of hope resembling madness.
He, who for so long a time had forgotten God, began to think that miracles were possible; that the accursed cave might be discovered by the officers of the Papal States, who would release him; that then he would have fifty thousand remaining, which would be sufficient to save him from starvation; and, finally, he prayed that this sum might be preserved to him, and as he prayed he wept. Three days passed thus, during which the name of God was always on his lips if not in his heart. Sometimes he was delirious, and fancied he saw an old man stretched on a pallet; he, also, was dying of hunger.
On the fourth he was no longer a man, but a living corpse. He had picked up every crumb that had been left from his former meals, and was beginning to eat the matting which covered the floor of his cell. Then he entreated Peppino, as he would a guardian angel, to give him food; he offered him one thousand francs for a mouthful of bread. But Peppino did not answer. On the fifth day he dragged himself to the door of the cell.