“A Treatise in Chains” (The Count of Monte Cristo, Chapter 16 – Part 11)

While Dantès equates escape with salvation, Faria introduces a different form of liberation: thought. In this passage, the abbé explains how he’s spent years not just digging through stone—but writing a political philosophy in secret, by hand, with self-made tools. Ink, paper, even the pen itself—constructed from the scraps of captivity.

The plan to escape may have failed—but the mind escaped long ago.

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