when he brought the evening meal, believe that he was
asleep, as was his frequent custom; entered the tunnel
again, drew the bed against the wall, returned to the other
cell, took from the hiding-place the needle and thread,
flung off his rags, that they might feel only naked flesh
beneath the coarse canvas, and getting inside the sack,
placed himself in the posture in which the dead body had
been laid, and sewed up the mouth of the sack from the
inside.

He would have been discovered by the beating of his heart,
if by any mischance the jailers had entered at that moment.
Dantes might have waited until the evening visit was over,
but he was afraid that the governor would change his mind,
and order the dead body to be removed earlier. In that case
his last hope would have been destroyed. Now his plans were
fully made, and this is what he intended to do. If while he
was being carried out the grave-diggers should discover that
they were bearing a live instead of a dead body, Dantes did
not intend to give them time to recognize him, but with a
sudden cut of the knife, he meant to open the sack from top
to bottom, and, profiting by their alarm, escape; if they
tried to catch him, he would use his knife to better
purpose.

If they took him to the cemetery and laid him in a grave, he
would allow himself to be covered with earth, and then, as
it was night, the grave-diggers could scarcely have turned
their backs before he would have worked his way through the
yielding soil and escaped. He hoped that the weight of earth