The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 113. The Past

Monte Cristo wondered if his vengeance had gone too far, if Valentine, Edward, and fleeing servants would have wanted so many innocent lives destroyed. He took a boat to the Château d’If to see his old dungeon. The concierge told the story of prisoner 34, a Bonapartist naval officer who hid in a dead man’s sack to escape, was thrown into the sea, never seen again. Monte Cristo saw the mark of his shoulders on the wall, the scratch from his despair, Faria’s carved inscription: “Oh, God, preserve my memory!” He found strips of cloth bearing Faria’s manuscript on the kingdoms of Italy, with the epigraph: “Thou shalt tear out the dragons’ teeth, and shall trample the lions under foot, saith the Lord.” He tipped the concierge generously and returned to Marseilles. He found Morrel leaning against his parents’ tomb, told him the story of a man imprisoned 14 years who lost his father and lover but found peace. He told Morrel to meet him on the Island of Monte Cristo on 5 October, where the yacht Eurus would wait in Bastia; if he still wished to die, the pistols and poison would be his. Morrel promised to come, his voice steady for the first time since Valentine’s death. A white steam plume rose from the steamer taking Monte Cristo to Italy; Morrel watched from the quay. Monte Cristo looked back at the cemetery and the old Dantès house, whispered Haydée’s name, and sailed east into the sunset, his vengeance complete but his heart heavy with the cost of innocent lives lost.

(Word count: 2694)

Chapter 114. Peppino

After the Count of Monte Cristo’s steamer vanishes behind Cape Morgiou, disgraced French banker Baron Danglars races post from Florence to Rome, shouting the only Italian he knows—“Allegro!” and “Moderato!”—at his postilions, his tarnished Legion of Honor ribbon marking his mission to withdraw 5 million francs from Thomson & French. At La Storta, he tucks a folded letter of credit into his pocket, murmuring “Good! I have it still!” before street urchin Peppino slips from the crowd to follow him to the bank, where a clerk confirms his 5 million franc withdrawal on the Count’s account. Danglars emerges radiant; Peppino mounts the rear of his calash as it rolls away, plotting to turn him over to bandit chief Luigi Vampa. Back at the Hôtel d’Espagne, Danglars strutted through bowing guests, beggars styling him “your excellency” for a dozen silver coins. He placed the precious pocketbook under his pillow and slept soundly for the first time in five sleepless nights, waking late the next morning to a hearty breakfast. The next morning, Danglars orders post horses for the Ancona road, planning to travel on to Venice to receive part of his fortune before continuing to Vienna to settle. Three leagues out of Rome at dusk, his postilion refuses his questions, replying only “Non capisco.” Danglars settles back to sleep, but the carriage does not stop. He wakes to shadowy figures surrounding him on a ruined road, his postilion gone. A voice barks “Dentro la testa!” and a rider appears at his window; unaware it means “Duck inside,” Danglars obeys. The carriage turns, and he spots the great aqueducts, once on his right, now on his left: they are returning to Rome. Remembering Albert de Morcerf’s stories of Roman bandits, his blood runs cold at the sight of Caracalla’s circus and the Appian Way. The carriage stops, a man orders “Scendi!” and Danglars stumbles out into the dark, surrounded by four armed men. Peppino leads him through a rock fissure so tight the portly banker squeezes through, eyes shut, into catacombs, where a sentinel challenges them. Peppino announces a prisoner for the captain, and they enter a vast rock-hewn crypt where Luigi Vampa reads Plutarch’s Life of Alexander. “The man is tired,” Vampa says, not looking up. “Conduct him to his bed.” Danglars fears the bed is a coffin, but Peppino leads him to a small dry cell with a goat-skin covered grass bed. Danglars brightens: he recognizes the cell Morcerf was ransomed from for 4,000 crowns, and calculates his own ransom at twice that—8,000 crowns—leaving him nearly 5 million francs, enough to rebuild his life. Comforted, he falls asleep with the calm of the Macedonian king Vampa studied.