The Count of Monte Cristo

Condemned to Die

Valentine, bathed in tears, declares she sees she is condemned to die. Monte Cristo insists she will not die because he has foreseen all the plots—her enemy is conquered now that she is known. He promises she will live to be happy and make happy a noble heart.

A Promise of Protection

Monte Cristo instructs Valentine that to ensure her safety, she must rely on him completely. She must blindly take whatever he gives her, though she admits she would prefer to die for her own sake. He warns her to trust no one—not even her father.

Blind Obedience

Valentine asks what she must do, and Monte Cristo repeats she must blindly take what he gives her. She must not confide in anyone, not even her father, though she desperately asks if her father is not involved in the fearful plot.

The Father’s Failure

Monte Cristo confirms her father is not engaged in the plot but criticizes that a man accustomed to judicial accusations should have recognized these deaths were unnatural. He should have watched over her, emptied that glass, and risen against the assassin. He murmurs that it should have been “spectre against spectre.”

A Choice to Live

Valentine declares she will do all she can to live because two beings who love her will die if she dies—her grandfather and Maximilian. Monte Cristo promises to watch over them as he has watched over her.

The Count’s Promise

Valentine surrenders completely, asking what will befall her. Monte Cristo instructs her not to be alarmed no matter what suffering comes—not to fear even if she loses sight, hearing, consciousness, or wakes in a sepulchral vault. She should reassure herself that a friend, a father who lives for her happiness and Maximilian’s watches over her.

The Emerald Box

In the extremity of her terror, Valentine joins her hands and begins to pray. Monte Cristo gently touches her arm and draws the velvet coverlet to her throat. He produces the little emerald box from his waistcoat pocket and opens the golden lid.

The Pastille

Monte Cristo takes a pastille about the size of a pea from the box and places it in Valentine’s hand. She looks at him with veneration, interrogating him silently. He confirms she should take it. Valentine carries the pastille to her mouth and swallows it. Monte Cristo bids her farewell, promising to try to sleep since she is saved.

Saved

Monte Cristo watches until Valentine gradually falls asleep under the narcotic’s effects. He then empties three-quarters of the poisoned glass into the fireplace, leaving it on the table so it will appear she drank it. After a farewell glance at Valentine, who sleeps with angelic innocence, he disappears.

CHAPITRE 102. Valentine

On the night in question, Madame de Villefort crept into the darkened room where the dying lamp cast a sickly reddish glow over Valentine’s motionless form. After silently emptying the remaining poison from the girl’s glass into the ashes and carefully wiping away all evidence of her crime, she approached the bed and confirmed that Valentine had ceased to breathe, her lips white as wax, her nails turning blue, and her body cold to the touch. The poisoner withdrew stealthily from the room, but not before the lamp’s final flicker startled her into dropping the curtain like a funeral pall over her victim’s head, and she lingered momentarily in the contemplation of death she herself had wrought. Two hours of darkness followed before a cold light revealed the scene to the arriving nurse, who initially mistook Valentine’s state for peaceful sleep until the terrible rigidity of the arm convinced her something was dreadfully wrong, and she screamed for help. M. d’Avrigny and Villefort rushed to the room, and when the doctor confirmed Valentine’s death with solemn finality, Morrel also appeared at the threshold, having found the servants’ quarters abandoned and Noirtier’s expression filled with alarm as the old man desperately signed that something terrible had befallen his granddaughter. D’Avrigy’s chemical analysis of the glass—revealing the poison now caused a blood-red reaction with nitric acid—unmasked the murder even as Madame de Villefort collapsed dead or unconscious on her own floor, leaving Villefort buried in grief and the house deserted by terrified servants who fled the accursed premises.