Escape from Chateau d'If

The death of Abbe Faria, the only friend and teacher Edmond Dantes had known during his long imprisonment, plunged the young sailor into a despair so profound that it bordered on madness. For weeks he had lived for the intellectual companionship and the shared dream of escape; now he was alone again, facing nothingness. The idea of suicide, which Faria's presence had driven away, returned to hover over the corpse. Yet in the very depths of this grief, a desperate and audacious plan was born: Dantes would take the place of the dead man and be carried out of the fortress.

The Substitution

Dantes' plan was born of a terrible necessity. The dead, he knew, were not buried at the Chateau d'If but simply thrown into the sea with a thirty-six-pound cannonball tied to their feet. If he could take Faria's place in the sack, he might be flung into the water, cut himself free, and swim to freedom. Without giving himself time to reconsider, he bent over the appalling shroud, opened it with the knife Faria had made, drew the corpse from the sack, and bore it along the tunnel to his own chamber. He laid the body on his couch, tied around its head the rag he wore at night, covered it with his counterpane, and turned the head towards the wall so that the jailer might believe he was asleep. Then he returned to the other cell, took the needle and thread from the hiding-place, flung off his rags, got inside the sack, and sewed up the mouth of the sack from the inside.

The Descent into the Sea

When the grave-diggers came, they carried the sack to the edge of the rocks. Dantes felt himself swung to and fro, then flung into the air like a wounded bird, falling, falling, with a rapidity that made his blood curdle. With a horrible splash, he darted like an arrow into the ice-cold water, and as he did so he uttered a shrill cry, stifled in a moment by his immersion beneath the waves. Dantes had been flung into the sea, and was dragged into its depths by a thirty-six-pound shot tied to his feet. The sea is the cemetery of the Chateau d'If.

The Struggle for Life

Although stunned and almost suffocated, Dantes had sufficient presence of mind to hold his breath. His right hand, prepared for every chance, held his knife open. He rapidly ripped up the sack, extricated his arm, and then his body. But in spite of all his efforts to free himself from the shot, he felt it dragging him down still lower. He bent his body, and by a desperate effort severed the cord that bound his legs, at the moment when it seemed as if he were actually strangled. With a mighty leap he rose to the surface of the sea, while the shot dragged down to the depths the sack that had so nearly become his shroud. He waited only to get breath, and then dived, in order to avoid being seen. When he arose a second time, he was fifty paces from where he had first sunk.

The Aftermath and Transformation

The escape from the Chateau d'If was not merely a physical liberation; it was the catalyst for a profound psychological and social metamorphosis. The fourteen years of imprisonment had already changed Dantes from the open, smiling young sailor into a man of deep thought and implacable will. The escape itself, a feat of extraordinary courage and cunning, confirmed his new identity as a man capable of anything. He was no longer the naive Edmond Dantes who had been arrested at his betrothal feast; he was a man forged in suffering, ready to claim the treasure of Monte Cristo and to execute the vengeance he had sworn against those who had wronged him. The escape also marked the beginning of his physical transformation, as he swam to the island of Tiboulen, was rescued by the smugglers of The Young Amelia, and began the process of becoming the Count of Monte Cristo.