Jon Hagadorn

This is your host and storyteller, John Hagedorn.

As we continue with the Count of Monte Cristo, today chapters 115 and 116.

And now chapter 115, Luigi Vampa's Bill of Fair.

We awake from every sleep except the one dreaded by danglers.

He awoke.

To a Parisian accustomed to silken curtains, walls hung with velvet drapery, and the soft perfume of burning wood.

the white smoke of which diffuses itself in graceful curves around the room.

The appearance of the whitewashed cell which greeted his eyes on awakening seemed like the continuation of some disagreeable dream, but in such a situation a single moment suffices to change the strongest doubt into certainty.

"'Yes, yes,' he murmured.

"'I am in the hands of the brigands of whom Albert de Morsurf spoke.'

His first idea was to breathe, that he might know whether he was wounded.

He borrowed this from Don Quixote, the only book he'd ever read, but which he still lightly remembered.

"'No,' he cried, "'they have not wounded, but perhaps they have robbed me,' and he thrust his hands into his pockets.

They were untouched.

The hundred louis he had preserved for his journey from Rome to Venice were in his trousers' pocket.'

and in that of his great-coat he found the little note-case containing the letter of credit for five million and fifty thousand francs.

"'Singular bandits!'

he exclaimed.

"'They have left me my purse and pocket-book.

As I was saying last night, they intend me to be ransomed.