In 1838 Franz d'Épinay and Albert de Morcerf plan to enjoy the Carnival in Rome. While Albert visits Naples, Franz sails from Leghorn to Elba and beyond. His captain Gaetano points to Monte Cristo and offers hunting on the empty island. Franz agrees, even after hearing grim stories of smugglers, pirates, and crews drowned with iron balls tied to their necks.
At night they see a fire on shore. Gaetano swims to investigate and returns saying Spanish smugglers and two Corsican bandits are camping there. Franz decides to land anyway. The men challenge the boat in Sardinian, then welcome them after Gaetano speaks. Their chief invites Franz to supper, but only if he agrees to be blindfolded until the host says otherwise. Franz knows it may be dangerous, but curiosity wins. He lets them tie a cloth over his eyes and follows them inland.
Led through dark passages, Franz meets a pale, handsome man in Eastern dress who calls himself Sinbad the Sailor and nicknames Franz Aladdin. The underground rooms are lavish beyond belief: crimson silk walls, Arabian swords, marble halls, and a feast of pheasant, lobster, and rare fruit. Sinbad tells how he saved his mute servant Ali from mutilation by the Bey of Tunis. He speaks like a king who makes his own laws on land and sea. When Sinbad asks what force might bring a man back from solitude to society, Franz answers: revenge. Sinbad laughs but does not deny it.
Sinbad offers hashish and describes it like the paradise drug of the Old Man of the Mountain. He says one taste can open kingdoms in the mind. Franz tastes it. The world turns vivid and dreamlike. Music swells, the island seems an oasis, and stone statues in the cave appear to move and beckon. For a time Franz forgets danger, law, and Paris society. He wakes breathless among marble shadows that vanish with daylight. He cannot prove the palace existed, yet the night changes him. He has met a man who lives outside the law and speaks of Paris as if a reckoning waits there. Rome will feel different after this.
Gaetano does not sell the landing as a picnic. He tells the stories sailors keep for empty coasts: crews taken at night, iron balls at the neck, bodies that never come back to port. Franz still wants the hunt. The fire on shore should turn the boat. Gaetano swims in, comes back talking of Spanish smugglers and two Corsican bandits, and Franz chooses the beach because the danger has a host.
The welcome is a bargain. They challenge the boat in Sardinian, then feed the guests, then name the price of supper: a cloth over the eyes until the chief says otherwise. Franz agrees. The passages turn and drop until the cloth comes off in a room that has no business under a rock. Crimson silk, Arabian swords, pheasant and lobster, a pale man in Eastern dress who calls himself Sinbad and calls Franz Aladdin. The mute servant Ali stands by the door. Sinbad tells how he bought that silence back from the Bey of Tunis, a mutilation stopped with money and nerve. He speaks as if the sea has no court and the cave has no clock.
When Sinbad asks what could drag a man out of such solitude, Franz does not say love or ambition. He says revenge. Sinbad laughs and does not correct him. The hashish comes next, offered as the old paradise drug, one taste and a kingdom inside the skull. Franz takes it. Music swells. The statues in the marble hall seem to step down and beckon. Law, Paris, and the reason he came to Italy all go quiet.
He wakes among shadows that will not hold in daylight, and the passage he crossed blindfolded will not open again. Sinbad is gone. What remains is a man who can stage a palace under an island and talk about Paris as if a debt is already walking toward it. Franz cannot prove the rooms to a judge. He can prove them to himself, and that is enough to make Rome feel like a waiting room.
Morning does not give the night back. The sailors are ordinary again, the shore is a shore, and the hidden door stays a blank in the rock. Franz can describe silk and swords and a man who laughed at the word revenge. He cannot point to the corridor that led there. Albert is still in Naples, planning Carnival as if Rome were only a party. Franz now knows the island keeps a host who can blindfold a guest, feed him, drug him, and vanish before the questions start. The unanswered passage is the point. A man who can close a door that thoroughly is already practising for Paris.
