"Ah, you will tell all I have said, will you not, reverend sir?"
"Yes, and much more."
"What more will you say?"
"I will say he had doubtless given you the plan of this house, in the hope the count would kill you. I will say, likewise, he had apprised the count, by a note, of your intention, and, the count being absent, I read the note and sat up to await you."
"And he will be guillotined, will be not?" said Caderousse. "Promise me that, and I will die with that hope."
"I will say," continued the count, "that he followed and watched you the whole time, and when he saw you leave the house, ran to the angle of the wall to conceal himself."
"Did you see all that?"
"Remember my words: 'If you return home safely, I shall believe God has forgiven you, and I will forgive you also.'"
"And you did not warn me!" cried Caderousse, raising himself on his elbows. "You knew I should be killed on leaving this house, and did not warn me!"
"No; for I saw God's justice placed in the hands of Benedetto, and should have thought it sacrilege to oppose the designs of providence."
"God's justice! Speak not of it, reverend sir. If God were just, you know how many would be punished who now escape."
"Patience," said the abbe, in a tone which made the dying man shudder; "have patience!" Caderousse looked at him with amazement. "Besides," said the abbe, "God is merciful to all, as he has been to you; he is first a father, then a judge."
"Do you then believe in God?" said Caderousse.
"Had I been so unhappy as not to believe in him until now," said Monte Cristo, "I must believe on seeing you." Caderousse raised his clinched hands towards heaven.
"Listen," said the abbe, extending his hand over the wounded man, as if to command him to believe; "this is what the God in whom, on your death-bed, you refuse to believe, has done for you--he gave you health, strength, regular employment, even friends--a life, in fact, which a man might enjoy with a calm conscience. Instead of improving these gifts, rarely granted so abundantly, this has been your course--you have given yourself up to sloth and drunkenness, and in a fit of intoxication have ruined your best friend."
"Help!" cried Caderousse; "I require a surgeon, not a priest; perhaps I am not mortally wounded--I may not die; perhaps they can yet save my life."
"Your wounds are so far mortal that, without the three drops I gave you, you would now be dead. Listen, then."