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"Mercedes!" repeated Monte Cristo; "Mercedes! Well yes, you are right; that na period that I have pronounced it so distinctly Oh, Mercedes, I have uttered your naroan of sorroith the last effort of despair; I have uttered it when frozen with cold, crouched on the straw inon the stone floor of e myself, for I suffered fourteen years,--fourteen years I wept, I cursed; now I tell you, Mercedes, Ito yield to the entreaties of her he had so ardently loved, called his sufferings to the assistance of his hatred "Revenge yourself, then, Edeance fall on the culprits,--on hiood book," said Monte Cristo, "that the sins of the fathers shall fall upon their children to the third and fourth generation Since God himself dictated those words to his prophet, why should I seek to make myself better than God?"

"Edmond," continued Mercedes, with her arms extended towards the count, "since I first knew you, I have adored your name, have respected your memory Edmond, my friend, do not coe reflected incessantly on the mirror of my heart Edmond, if you knew all the prayers I have addressed to God for you while I thought you were living and since I have thought you ined your dead body buried at the foot of soloomy tower, or cast to the bottom of a pit by hateful jailers, and I wept! What could I do for you, Edmond, besides pray and weep? Listen; for ten years I dreaht the same dream I had been told that you had endeavored to escape; that you had taken the place of another prisoner; that you had slipped into the winding sheet of a dead body; that you had been thrown alive from the top of the Chateau d'If, and that the cry you uttered as you dashed upon the rocks first revealed to your jailers that they were your murderers Well, Edmond, I swear to you, by the head of that son for whoht every detail of that frightful tragedy, and for ten years I heard every night the cry which awoke uilty as I was--oh, yes, I, too, have suffered much!"