Esperance beheld all this. He rushed forward, only to be stopped by iron bars.
This terrible scene had been most adroitly managed. The house at Courberrie belonged to Danglars, and had been the scene of many ignoble orgies. The opening through which Esperance looked was not more than thirty feet from Jane. He called, but she could not hear him. Then all was suddenly dark. The lights returned in a few minutes, and Jane was seen alone.
"Jane! Jane!" cried Esperance. Suddenly a door opened. Esperance saw an old man enter the room. He went up to Jane with a hideous smile on his face. It was Laisangy.
Of all the crimes that Benedetto had committed, this was the most infamous!
Esperance caught the iron bars and shook them violently, and with such enormous strength that one of them was loosened. Esperance passed through them and stood in a corridor, but there was a sheet of plate glass still between him and Jane. This glass he broke with his clenched hands, and Esperance sprang at the throat of Danglars and threw him to the other end of the room. Then, taking Jane in his arms, he cried:
"Jane! my beloved—do you not hear me? I am Monte-Cristo."
"Monte-Cristo!" repeated a hoarse voice.
Esperance half turned.
Danglars had staggered up from the floor, and was gazing at Esperance with eyes fairly starting from his head. With his deadly pallor and a gash on his cheek from the glass through which he had passed, Esperance bore a striking resemblance to his father. He looked as Dantès looked the day his infamous companion betrayed him at Marseilles. Danglars was appalled.
"Edmond Dantès!" he cried in agony, raising his arms high above his head, and wildly clutching the air for support. Then he fell forward on his face in an attack of apoplexy.