The Count of Monte Cristo

Danglars Visits Thomson & French Bank

Impatient, Danglars leaves the hotel on foot with his cicerone, ordering the carriage to follow or wait at the bank, and arrives before it. He enters Thomson & French and announces himself as “Baron Danglars,” then disappears through an inner door led by an attendant while his shadow follows him in and sits silently on a bench in the anteroom.

Peppino Tails Danglars Into the Bank

Peppino, the man who has tailed Danglars, takes a seat on a bank anteroom bench while his French mark is conducted to an inner room. After five minutes of silent waiting, the confidential clerk at the first desk greets Peppino familiarly by name, revealing that Peppino has come to learn what business the large Frenchman transacts at the bank. The clerk explains that bandits were pre-informed of the arrival but needs to observe the transaction to learn the exact sum.

Peppino Learns of Danglars’ Large Withdrawal

After ten minutes, the clerk returns beaming with news that the sum is enormous—five or six millions—drawn on the receipt of the Count of Monte Cristo. Peppino learns the precise amount of five millions and, upon Danglars emerging radiant with joy, follows him out of the bank, the banker clutching a letter in his pocketbook.

Danglars Returns to His Hotel

Back at the Hôtel d’Espagne, Danglars leaps into the waiting carriage and, when asked about sightseeing, declares he came not to see but to “touch,” rapping his pocketbook. He orders the driver to return to the hotel, “Casa Pastrini.” Ten minutes later, the baron retires to his room and places his pocketbook under his pillow, while Peppino stations himself outside the door after whispering instructions to one of the descendants of Marius and the Gracchi, who runs toward the Capitol.

Peppino Follows Danglars to the Hotel

Peppino bides his time on the hotel bench with a game of morra against the facchini, losing three crowns but consoling himself with a bottle of Orvieto while Danglars sleeps poorly through the night despite retiring early. The following morning, after a hearty breakfast, Danglars orders post-horses at noon, but papal police formalities and the posting-master’s idleness delay the departure until three o’clock.

Danglars Departs Rome for Venice

A crowd gathers as Danglars emerges triumphantly from the hotel, flattered to be called “your excellency” by beggars whom he rewards with silver coins. He orders the Ancona road, intending to travel through Venice to collect part of his fortune before proceeding to Vienna for the remainder and settling there as a man of pleasure. Having slept poorly for several nights, he dozes in the luxurious English calash, occasionally jolted awake by broken aqueducts glimpsed through the window.

Danglars Is Ambushed on the Road

Expecting to wake at a posting-house, Danglars opens his eyes to find the carriage stopped at what seems a ruin where shadowy figures move about. When he opens the door, a strong hand pushes him back and the carriage continues rolling. Questioning the postilion yields only menacing commands of “Dentro la testa!” and Danglars notices cloaked riders flanking both sides of the carriage, eventually realizing they have described a circle and are bringing him back toward Rome.

Danglars Is Taken to the Appian Way Bandit Hideout

Danglars’s terror peaks when the moon reveals ancient monuments and he recognizes Caracalla’s circus, confirming his location on the Appian Way and his fate at the hands of Roman banditti—recalling Albert de Morcerf’s tales. The carriage stops and Danglars descends, following Peppino and three silent sentinels down a path into a hollowed-out bandit lair where sepulchres line the walls like dark eyes, and a sentinel strikes his carbine rings in greeting.

Chapter 114. Peppino

Peppino drags the terrified Danglars into a rock-hewn crypt where the bandit captain Luigi Vampa sits reading Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, and after briefly ordering his men to show Danglars to a bed, the captain has his prisoner conducted down a staircase to a small dry cell furnished with dried grass and goat-skins. Reassured by the genuine bed, the bolted door, and the recollection that Albert de Morcerf had once been confined in that very chamber and ransomed at 4,000 crowns, Danglars calculates that his own value will be set at 8,000 crowns, leaving him with roughly five million francs, and he falls asleep with the same ease as the hero whose biography Vampa is studying.