After his failed attempt at ending his life, he decided to refuse food and water, certain hunger and thirst would, eventually, prove more efficient killers.

Two days passed rather easily. He was already used to being hungry, and it was not the first time he had spent a couple of days without eating. The third day was harder, especially since he was also refusing water. His stomach started hurting, burning even, but he persisted. By the fourth day, he could hardly move at all, and he rejoiced in the thought that it would all be over soon enough.

He again failed, though. The reason why he failed, however, was also what, eventually, ended up saving him: hope.

On that particular occasion, it took the form of an old priest calling himself the Abbot de Mairé.

The man had dug a tunnel, hoping to escape the fortress, but, instead, ended up in Diego's cell. Finding the young man half-dead, he hurried to force some water down his throat, saving his life and finding himself a companion, if not freedom.

The Californian stared at him for the longest time, then slowly sat in his bed and reached to touch the old man. He was the most beautiful sight he had seen in years. The abbot must have felt the same for, moments later, they embraced each other like two old friends who had spent years apart.

After recounting to him how he had dug a tunnel to escape but, at one point, he must have mistaken the calculations, the priest took him to his cell and showed him everything he had managed to do while there: matches, candles, digging tools, writing utensils; even a needle and threads for sewing, all created by using the leftovers of their meals, plates and whatever else he could find in his cell. "A little imagination and some knowledge of chemistry, Diego, and you can do wonders!" the man explained.

ZZZ

"So you don't know why you are here, nor how you came to be in this place?" the elderly man asked him a few days later, while he and Diego were taking a break from digging a new tunnel, in the right direction, for once.

"I was never told. I was never given a trial, nor even interrogated." The young man answered. "All I was told is that it had to do with some crimes my father had supposedly committed… But my father is the best man I know. He spent his life defending others. True, he was a soldier in his youth, but the only people he had ever harmed were those trying to harm him or his friends."

"Not to mention that arresting you for his crimes seems absurd. Perhaps you did something… Something you didn't even know you were doing… Or you didn't know might anger Bonaparte," the priest suggested.

"I've thought of that. For years now I've wondered what it was to have brought me here… But I am still to find an answer. Perhaps it was but a big mistake and nobody cares to undo it."

"No… That can't be it. You told me they asked you for your name when they arrested you."

"Yes… Perhaps they didn't believe me and still thought I was someone else…"

"No, my friend. The fact that they arrested you knowing who you are excludes the possibility this might be a mistake."

"But I did nothing to warrant my arrest."

"Perhaps you made enemies. It's why I'm here, as well. I've never broken the law. But someone wanted to know something I refused to say, and put me here because I wouldn't tell him." The abbot said. "Diego… tell me about you! What sort of person were you? What did you do since arriving in Madrid?"

"I… I always tried to be a good person. I have… maybe had… a grandfather I visited every week. I was a good student, the best in my year. I used to spend my time seeing the sights and visiting as much as I could. I was in the Orient and all around the Mediterranean, even in Rome, all thanks to a friend who had a fast ship. During the university year I was mostly studying in the University's library, or fencing with Sir Kendall, my master. I won several prizes thanks to his teachings."

"Perhaps your enemy is someone who envies your accomplishments."

"I also considered that. I did defeat a young, ambitious man from one of the military academies in three of the tournaments I had won. His name was Gilberto. Gilberto Risendo. He seemed friendly, but something always seemed strange about him… he was a peculiar sort of man. When I agreed to a rematch after some wine, and he won, he seemed to consider ending the job… and my life," Diego said, then remained pensive. "My friend, Emmanuel stopped him just in time, but he remained convinced that Risendo would have gone through with it; that he would have killed me, had he not interfered."

"So you did have an enemy…" the older man uttered.

"Perhaps… He was the one man who knew I was in prison. He'd visited me a day or two after I was captured. He was the one to tell me that, from what he knew, the reason for my incarceration had to do with my father's crimes before leaving for California. But I can't imagine anything he might have done. My father was always a good man…" Diego said.

"People change, Diego. Wouldn't it be possible that your own father changed? That, when you were born, he was not the man you knew later? Or that he had made a mistake in his past? Something that would cause the affected party, of a descendant, perhaps, to plot a revenge that included depriving him of his only son?"

"No! No!" the caballero said, standing up and pacing the cell. "My father… My father took in a deaf-mute orphaned boy when I brought him home. My father helps people! I know his heart, and a man cannot become good all of a sudden. Whatever it was, it must have been a mistake... Or a lie… Besides, if it truly was Gilberto behind this, there is still something that doesn't fit…"

"What?"

"When I was arrested, those men came straight at me. How could they have known who I was? A stranger on the street… Unless…" saying that, he started pacing the room. "There was an incident, in my first year at the university. An older colleague, Ignacio de Soto, was expelled at the end of the year, just as he was about to graduate. He had been cheating on his exams, and it all came out when I saw him losing a sheet of paper and called after him. I picked it up and a professor saw it first. He was expelled a few days later, after it came to light that he had had developed a method to find out the exam subjects before the exams. Almost a year later, I met him during a fencing competition from which he was disqualified after a friend of mine witnessed him bribe a competitor and warned the organizers, who also witnessed him blackmailing another competitor. Coincidentally, the day I was arrested, he came to me in the street, clearly aware I had been visiting my grandfather. He came to greet me, then left just before the soldiers found me."

The older man remained pensive for a while, before asking: "That does seem to point out that he might have led the soldiers to you, since I can't imagine they would have known you otherwise."

"He betrayed me like…" Diego said with a sad chuckle.

"Like?"

"Judas…" Diego said as he became pensive. "When he was expelled from the university, he went on to join the same military academy as Gilberto. But, still… even if they would have had me arrested, how would they have had the power to get the French to bring me here as they did? And under what pretense"

"Documents can be forged, Diego…" the abbot said, also considering that question. "What military school was it?" he then asked.

"Ha?"

"The one they both attended…"

"The Academy in Segovia, if I remember correctly…"

"There you have it, then…"

"What?"

"A few years back… I once heard the guards talking as they passed by my cell. They said that about half of the military academy in Segovia joined Napoleon's troops even before they entered Madrid. Apparently the Bonapartes were very generous with the Spanish traitors."

"But… Do you really think they might have gone to such extremes to destroy me? I did nothing wrong… Even if Gilberto might have a grudge against my father somehow… for some reason I can't possibly understand, I still did nothing wrong! And De Soto… he might have disliked me, but have me arrested and sent here?"

"If he blames you for his expulsion, he would have surely felt in his right to destroy your future. As for this Gilberto… I guess you should find out what he meant by your father's crimes before understanding his reason. When we'll be free, I will help you with that."

Diego tried to put on a grateful smile, but he was not feeling very grateful at the time, nor particularly joyful, so he ended up frowning instead.

"Gilberto Risendo and Ignacio de Soto…" he muttered as he returned to digging the tunnel.

On the third anniversary of his arrival to the fortress, the Commander again whipped him with ten lashes before having him returned to the cell. The abbot washed the wounds, and, using the molded bread they were given, his own spit and some other foul-smelling ingredient Diego didn't want to ask about, he made an ointment to prevent infection. This time, the open wounds healed leaving little or no scars, and the young man recovered in a matter of days.

From then on, he started digging faster, spending most of his days and nights in the tunnel, hoping freedom was not far away. Furthermore, he started exercising, strengthening his body, and slowly recovering his former shape.

Whenever he and the abbot were together, one digging and the other one taking out the debris, the abbot took on teaching his companion, and rapidly turned out to be just the man Diego needed to finish what he had started the day he first put foot in the University of Madrid.

The young man had a brilliant mind and a very solid foundation in music, art, literature, languages, and the sciences. The abbot's knowledge, though, far surpassed his own. In fact, at times, Diego wondered whether the elderly man had somehow assimilated an entire library, for he was that knowledgeable.

When he had been arrested, the Californian was fluent in Latin and French, and knew a bit of English. After a year spent with the priest, he was also fluent in English and Italian, and was as knowledgeable as a university professor in economics, geometry, astronomy, geography, and geology. A little over a year later, he was also proficient in Arabic and German, knew as much about architecture, hermeneutics, and medicine as the old man, and had found a true passion for chemistry.

As for the abbot, he was certainly glad to share all he had learned, for, inwardly, he was fearing that said knowledge was the only part of him that might one day leave that miserable place.

With the commander of the prison changing a little after the third anniversary of his incarceration, the "anniversary thrashing" stopped, and the food they were given became just a little better, which was not to say that the place was not just as hellish for the young don and his companion.

The priest's fears proved right about a month before the fifth anniversary of Diego's arrival at Chateau D'If, one day when, as the young man had gone to take out the debris from their digging, a few wrong moves by the old man caused the tunnel to collapse on top of him.