The Count of Monte Cristo

Mercédès Declares Her Love for Edmond

Fernand proposes to change his circumstances for her sake, offering to expand his fishing, take a position as a warehouse clerk, and rise to become a dealer himself. Mercédès shakes her head, telling him that he is a soldier held at home only because there is no war, and that he should remain a fisherman and accept her friendship. Pressing further, Fernand suggests he might become a sailor and dress in the striped shirt, varnished hat, and blue jacket of a seafarer to please her. Mercédès, angered and uncomprehending, demands to know what he means. Fernand answers bitterly that she treats him cruelly because she is awaiting someone in that very attire, and warns that the man she awaits may be faithless, or that the sea may be faithless to him. Mercédès fires back, accusing Fernand of cruelty for calling on jealousy and the anger of God, and confesses openly that she does await and love that man, and that if he does not return she will believe he died faithful to her alone. As the tears fall, she admits that the sea has been treacherous these past four months and that terrible storms have passed. Fernand, knowing that every tear is for another, paces the hut in helpless fury and demands her final answer. Mercédès declares calmly that she loves Edmond Dantès and that none but Edmond shall ever be her husband, and that she will love him as long as she lives.

The Return of Edmond Dantès

Crushed, Fernand asks what she would do if Edmond were dead. She answers that she would die too. Before he can press further, a joyous voice calls, “Mercédès!” from outside, and the young girl, blushing with delight, leaps up crying that Edmond has not forgotten her and rushes to the door, throwing it open to welcome him. Fernand, pale and trembling, recoils as if confronted by a serpent and drops into a chair. Edmond and Mercédès fall into each other’s arms in a flood of Marseilles sunlight, so absorbed in one another that at first they seem unaware of anything else. At length Edmond perceives Fernand’s gloomy, threatening face in the shadow and instinctively puts his hand on his knife.

Fernand’s Humiliation

Edmond, frowning, apologizes for not seeing that there were three of them and asks Mercédès who the stranger is. Mercédès answers that he is Fernand, her cousin, her brother, the man who, after Edmond, she loves best in the world, and that he will be Edmond’s best friend. Edmond extends his hand cordially, but Fernand does not respond. Reading the situation in a single glance at Mercédès and at Fernand, Edmond’s anger rises, and he declares that he did not know he would meet an enemy in the house. Mercédès, furious, warns that if she believed that she would take his arm and leave for Marseilles never to return. Turning to Fernand, she fixes him with an imperious look and tells him that if any misfortune befell Edmond, she would cast herself from the Cape de Morgiou, forcing Fernand to confront the depth of her resolve. Fernand goes deadly pale, but under Mercédès’s ascendancy he slowly steps forward and offers Edmond his hand; the moment he touches it he knows he has given all he can, and he rushes from the house. Outside, tearing his hair, he cries out for anyone to deliver him from this man, calling himself wretched. A voice calls after the fleeing Fernand.

The Arbor: Caderousse and Danglars

Caderousse, sitting at a table with Danglars beneath an arbor, hails the distraught Fernand, who had been running furiously past. Caderousse and Danglars invite him to join them; Caderousse jokes that he feared Fernand would throw himself into the sea, and that friends must not only offer wine but also keep a man from swallowing unnecessary water. Fernand, pale and exhausted, stumbles into the arbor’s shade. Caderousse bluntly remarks that Fernand looks like a rejected lover, while Danglars affects sympathy, murmuring that Dantès’s sudden return must have struck Fernand hard. Fernand, clenching his hands, says his health is good enough. Caderousse, already growing drunk, makes plain the situation: Fernand, a fine Catalan fisherman, is in love with Mercédès, but Mercédès loves the mate of the Pharaon, who has just arrived. Danglars feigns not to understand until Caderousse spells it out that Fernand has been dismissed. Fernand, lifting his head like a man looking for someone on whom to vent his anger, insists that Mercédès is free to love whom she will, but Caderousse goads him by saying the Catalans are not men to be supplanted, and Fernand himself, he has heard, is terrible in his vengeance. Fernand replies only with a piteous smile that a lover is never terrible.