Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road and the Count of Maddy Cristo.

This is your host, John Haggardorn, and this is Chapter 16, a learned Italian.

Seizing in his arms, the friends so long and ardently desired, Dantes almost carried him

towards the window in order to obtain a better view of his features by the aid of the imperfect

light that struggled to the grating.

He was a man of small stature, with hair blanched rather by suffering and sorrow than by age.

He had a deep set, penetrating eye, almost buried beneath the thick gray eyebrow, and a long,

and still black beard reaching down to his breast.

His thin face, deeply furrowed by care, and the bold outline of his strongly marked features,

betokened the man more accustomed

to exercise his mental faculties than his physical strength.

Large drops of perspiration were now standing on his brow, while the garments that hung about

him were so ragged that one could only guess at the pattern upon which they had originally

been fashioned.

The stranger might have numbered 60 or 65 years, but a certain briskness and appearance of vigor

in his movements made it probable that he was aged more from captivity than from course of time.

He received the enthusiastic greeting of his young acquaintance with evident pleasure,

as though his chilled affections were rekindled and invigorated by his contact with one so warm and ardent. He thanked him with

grateful cordiality for his kindly welcome, although he must at that moment have been suffering

bitterly to find another dungeon where he had finally reckoned on discovering a means of regaining

his liberty. Let us first see, said he, whether it is possible to remove the traces of my entrance here.

Our future tranquility depends upon our jailers being entirely ignorant of it.

...