"Luigi Vampa," replied Monte-Cristo, sternly, "you say that young Massetti has a grudge against old Pasquale Solara! What you seek to belittle with the name of grudge is simply just indignation for an outrage such as human beings rarely commit! This you know!--you to whom Solara basely sold his daughter!--you who plotted with the aged scoundrel that the charge of abduction and murder might fall upon the Viscount's innocent shoulders when you, Luigi Vampa, were the guilty man!"
The brigand chief started and grew pale beneath the paint and cosmetics with which his visage was thickly coated.
"You have been deceived, Signor Count!" he stammered, taken at a disadvantage, but nevertheless speaking guardedly and endeavoring to put on a bold front. "The girl herself, Annunziata Solara, will swear to you that the Viscount Giovanni Massetti was her abductor and the author of her ruin!"
"Yes," replied Monte-Cristo, bitterly, "she will and does say so, for she has been completely blinded by the cunning, fiendish stratagems you resorted to, aided and abetted by that infamous miscreant old Pasquale Solara, for whom a lingering death upon the rack of the ancient Spanish Inquisition would not be a sufficient punishment!"
"You speak very confidently, Signor Count," said Vampa, resuming his cool self-possession. "Pray tell me how you are going to prove all this?"
"I should be foolish, indeed, did I do so," replied Monte-Cristo, seeing the brigand chief's trap and adroitly avoiding being caught in it. "However, suffice it to say that I can and will make good all I have asserted! Even Annunziata Solara herself shall be thoroughly convinced!"
"Signor Count," said Vampa, pleadingly, "we have long been good friends, have long understood each other perfectly. Do not let the idle tales designing persons have poured into your ears destroy that friendship and that understanding!"
"I have heard no idle tales from designing persons," retorted the Count. "What I have heard was a plain and simple statement of the truth. I know how old Solara summoned you with his signal whistle, how you bargained with him for his beautiful daughter and how you finally bought her of him! I know how you abducted the girl while her infamous father waited outside the cabin with a torch, how you bore her away in your arms through the forest, murdering her brother and in turn encountering my son Espérance and the Viscount Massetti. I know how you carried her to the hut you had prepared, how you kept her a close prisoner there guarded by members of your band until your shameful object was accomplished! I know how you wrote that letter signed Tonio which was intended to influence Annunziata's belief in the Viscount's guilt, and I know how old Solara secreted it where his daughter afterwards found and read it! Now, Luigi Vampa, are you satisfied? You said a moment ago that we have long understood each other. I hope there will be no misunderstanding on your part when I tell you that I mean to force both you and old Solara to confess your crimes and make reparation for them as far as possible!"