The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 102. Valentine – Chapter 112. The Departure

In the dying hours of a Paris night, Madame de Villefort crept into Valentine’s darkened room. The lamp guttered low, casting its reddish glow across the motionless young woman on the bed. The poisoner worked with terrible efficiency: she emptied the remaining draught into the ashes, wiped the glass clean, and approached to confirm her work. Valentine’s lips had turned the color of wax, her nails were blue, and her arm hung stiffly from the bed, the fingers rigid in death. The mother-poisoner lingered in the grip of an irresistible fascination, holding the curtain like a funeral pall until a final flicker of the lamp startled her into retreat.

Two hours of darkness passed before the nurse arrived, mistook the corpse for sleep, and only realized the truth when she tried to move that terrible rigid arm. Her scream brought d’Avrigny and Villefort. The doctor’s confirmation was solemn and final. Morrel appeared at the threshold, drawn by the abandoned household and Noirtier’s silent alarm. The old man had tried desperately to warn the household, but no servant remained to answer.

When d’Avrigny tested the contents of the glass, the blood-red reaction of nitric acid told the story. The doctor murmured that the poison had been changed, but the evidence was damning. At that moment Madame de Villefort collapsed, falling lifeless or unconscious in her own chamber. Villefort, buried in grief, was surrounded by silence, his household deserted, his secrets multiplying like poison in his veins.

The funeral brought Paris out in force. Black carriages wound through the streets toward Père-Lachaise, where the Villefort vault stood ready. The Morrel family, Debray, Château-Renaud, Beauchamp—all came. The Count of Monte Cristo mingled with the mourners, his attention fixed on a single figure: Maximilian Morrel, pale and trembling, who had come not to mourn but to die.

After the ceremonies, the Count followed the young man home. At the Morrel residence in the Rue Meslay, he broke through the locked door to find Maximilian seated at his desk, pistols at his side, a farewell letter half-written. The young man’s grief had turned to fury, his love to despair, and he had resolved to follow Valentine into death. The Count seized the pistols, the letter, the young man himself, and declared his intention to prevent this murder. When Morrel cried out in anger, the Count threw off his mask: “I am the Edmond Dantès who nursed you, a child, on my knees.”

The revelation broke Morrel utterly. He staggered from the room crying for Julie and Emmanuel, who rushed up to find their brother prostrate before the man who had saved their father from suicide a decade ago. Monte Cristo wept with them, the iron-hearted count undone by gratitude at last. He agreed to leave the purse, that holy relic, in Julie’s keeping, and the family embraced him as their guardian angel.

But Monte Cristo had not come merely to comfort. He pressed Morrel with a father’s authority, urging him to hope, telling him of his own terrible despair in the Château d’If. He proposed a sacred pact: Morrel would live under his care for one month, and if, by the fifth of September—the tenth anniversary of the Count’s saving Morrel’s father—he was not cured of his grief, the Count would give him pistols and poison. Morrel, shaken yet obedient, accepted with childlike reverence, and was bidden to take Haydée’s place in the Count’s household.

In the same hours, Danglars’ house had become a theater of betrayal. The Count had called on the banker that very morning, requested five million francs as partial settlement of his account, and departed with the bonds just as the receiver-general arrived to collect the same sum for charity. Danglars had been forced to pay, sweating with terror, his face a mask of nervous laughter. Now, in a secret apartment on the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the banker had left a farewell letter for his wife and fled Paris by post-chaise, leaving her to discover that her husband had absconded with everything and her lover, Debray, cared nothing for her grief.

The baroness hastened to her secret lover to seek comfort and found, instead, the cold arithmetic of a stockbroker. Debray handed over 1,340,000 francs—her share of their six months of profitable speculation—and dismissed her to her fate with the suggestion that she travel and cultivate the appearance of ruin. She left in dignified silence, her heart full of unshed tears, while Debray calmly calculated what a pity it was that Valentine de Villefort was dead, for she would have suited him admirably as a wife.

Above Debray’s chamber, in a humble apartment hung with the cheapest paper, Mercédès and her son Albert faced a different kind of poverty. They had surrendered Morcerf’s fortune to the hospitals and now possessed only a few thousand francs and the dreams of a young man who had sold himself as a substitute in the Spahis for two thousand francs. Albert carefully calculated the cost of sending his mother to Marseilles, selling his watch and seals, keeping for himself only eighty francs. He announced that he had engaged himself for the regiment and would soon depart for Africa. Mercédès, that noble and broken woman, accepted the sacrifice with a smile, asking only that he live and be happy.

In the meantime, Andrea Cavalcanti—now known to the world as Benedetto—had been cast into the Lions’ Den of La Force prison, the most dangerous quarter of that grim institution. There, surrounded by thieves and murderers, he had deployed the arts of his Corsican upbringing, using the Masonic sign Caderousse had taught him to escape the violence of his fellow prisoners. He had been sustained by a single hope: that some powerful protector would reach down to save him. His wait was rewarded when Bertuccio, his former steward, arrived to visit him in a private room. The old servant hinted darkly that powerful hands had arranged his fortunes, and that the man who called himself the Count of Monte Cristo was no stranger to his destiny. Before Bertuccio could reveal the name of Benedetto’s father, the examining magistrate’s arrival cut short the interview.

The trial of Benedetto for the murder of Caderousse drew all of Parisian society to the Palais de Justice. The courtroom buzzed with speculation, and Debray, Château-Renaud, and Beauchamp, secure in their privileged seats, exchanged witticisms about the deaths multiplying at Villefort’s house and the Count of Monte Cristo’s mysterious involvement.

When the accused was brought forward, the spectacle took a turn none had anticipated. Benedetto, perfectly composed, refused to give his name, declaring that he knew only his father’s. When pressed, he announced to a stunned courtroom that his father was the king’s attorney himself, M. de Villefort. He detailed the night of his birth in the red-draped room at Auteuil, his father’s attempt to bury him alive in the garden, and his rescue by a vengeful Corsican who had been watching the procureur. The assembly erupted; Villefort rose, staggered, and in a hoarse voice confessed everything before collapsing. Madame Danglars fainted in the gallery, her veil falling away. The trial was adjourned amid chaos.