"We hired a small sail boat and a guide and made an excursion to one of the small islands in the harbor to visit the Castle D'If. The ancient fortress had a melancholy history. It has been used as a prison for political offenders for two or three hundred years, and its dungeon walls are scarred with the rudely carved names of many and many a captive who fretted his life away here, and left no record of himself but these sad epitaphs wrought with his own hands...
"The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-chambers at home are wide--fifteen feet. We saw the damp, dismal cells in which two of Dumas' heroes passed their confinement--heroes of "Monte Cristo." It was here that the brave Abbé wrote a book with his own blood; with a pen made of a piece of iron hoop; and by the light of a lamp made out of shreds of cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food; and then dug through the thick walls with a trifling instrument which he wrought himself out of a stray piece of iron or table cutlery, and freed Dantes from his chains. It was a pity that so many weeks of dreary labor should come to naught at last."
P.82-84, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, by Mark Twain (Library of America, NY: 1984)
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, EXCERPT...
"We hired a small sail boat and a guide and made an excursion to one of the small islands in the harbor to visit the Castle D'If. The ancient fortress had a melancholy history. It has been used as a prison for political offenders for two or three hundred years, and its dungeon walls are scarred with the rudely carved names of many and many a captive who fretted his life away here, and left no record of himself but these sad epitaphs wrought with his own hands...
"The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-chambers at home are wide--fifteen feet. We saw the damp, dismal cells in which two of Dumas' heroes passed their confinement--heroes of "Monte Cristo." It was here that the brave Abbé wrote a book with his own blood; with a pen made of a piece of iron hoop; and by the light of a lamp made out of shreds of cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food; and then dug through the thick walls with a trifling instrument which he wrought himself out of a stray piece of iron or table cutlery, and freed Dantes from his chains. It was a pity that so many weeks of dreary labor should come to naught at last."
P.82-84, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, by Mark Twain (Library of America, NY: 1984)