Chapter 62

written by him the day that my father had taken a desperate resolution, and this diamond was given by the generous unknown to my sister as her dowry.”

Monte Cristo opened the letter, and read it with an indescribable feeling of delight. It was the letter written (as our readers know) to Julie, and signed “Sinbad the Sailor.”

“Unknown you say, is the man who rendered you this service—unknown to you?”

“Yes; we have never had the happiness of pressing his hand,” continued Maximilian. “We have supplicated Heaven in vain to grant us this favor, but the whole affair has had a mysterious meaning that we cannot comprehend—we have been guided by an invisible hand,—a hand as powerful as that of an enchanter.”

“Oh,” cried Julie, “I have not lost all hope of some day kissing that hand, as I now kiss the purse which he has touched. Four years ago, Penelon was at Trieste—Penelon, count, is the old sailor you saw in the garden, and who, from quartermaster, has become gardener—Penelon, when he was at Trieste, saw on the quay an Englishman, who was on the point of embarking on board a yacht, and he recognized him as the person who called on my father the fifth of June, 1829, and who wrote me this