CHAPITRE 106. Dividing the Proceeds
Chapter 106. Dividing the Proceeds describes the clandestine meetings of a mysterious lodger and a veiled lady at an apartment in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where the lodger is revealed to be Lucien Debray and the lady to be Madame Danglars. After Baron Danglars flees Paris to escape financial ruin, he leaves his wife a cold and accusatory farewell letter. Debray, with chilling composure, settles their financial partnership and hands over 1,340,000 francs before dismissing the baroness without comfort. Above their room, Mercédès and Albert de Morcerf are shown living in quiet poverty, the fallen countess and her son enduring their changed circumstances with dignified but evident suffering.
The Mysterious Lodger
The first floor of the house on the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where Albert de Morcerf has settled his mother, is occupied by a mysterious gentleman whose face the concierge has never seen. In winter he buries his chin in a large red handkerchief, and in summer he conveniently blows his nose as he approaches the door. Rumored to be a person of high rank who demands strict incognito, he is left unwatched. He arrives at four o’clock with clockwork regularity, though he never spends the night, and a discreet servant ensures that a fire is lit in winter or ices are laid out in summer by half-past three.
The Veiled Lady
About twenty minutes after the mysterious gentleman arrives, a carriage draws up and a lady alights, always dressed in black or dark blue and heavily veiled. She glides through the lodge like a shadow, ascends without a sound, and taps in a peculiar manner at the first-floor door. Her face, like that of the gentleman, remains unknown to the discretion-perfect concierges. She departs first, her carriage driving off unpredictably to the right or left, and the gentleman follows shortly after, well muffled in his cravat or handkerchief.
Lucien Debray
The day after Monte Cristo’s visit to Danglars, the mysterious lodger arrives at ten in the morning instead of his usual four o’clock. A cab soon arrives and the veiled lady hurries upstairs, crying out, “Oh, Lucien—oh, my friend!”—revealing the lodger’s name to the concierge, who vows silence to his wife. Lucien, identified as Lucien Debray, calms the agitated woman, who confides that a great event has occurred. Their conversation centers on Danglars’s sudden departure and the unsettling letter he has left behind for his wife.
Danglars’ Flight
Madame Danglars reveals to Debray that Danglars left the previous night at ten o’clock. His horses carried him to the Charenton barrier, where a post-chaise waited. He entered it with his valet de chambre, claiming to be bound for Fontainebleau, and left her a letter. Debray reads the letter, which begins “Madame and most faithful wife,” and Danglars’s coldly candid explanations reveal that he has fled to escape creditors, accusing his wife of pillaging their fortune.
The Farewell Letter
Danglars’s farewell letter bitterly explains his flight: he received five millions only to be hit with another demand for the same sum, and chose to vanish rather than face the ruin. He accuses Madame Danglars of having transformed their house into a vast ruin while enriching herself, telling her she was rich but little respected when he married her and remains so now. He sarcastically restores her “liberty,” invites her to find gold among the ashes, and signs off as her “very devoted husband, Baron Danglars.” After reading it, Debray folds the letter, and Madame Danglars, who sees her husband as inflexible in resolutions concerning his own interests, declares she is now free forever.
Dividing the Proceeds
Debray coolly recommends that Madame Danglars leave Paris, then meticulously settles their six-month partnership. From her 100,000-franc capital, the two have amassed 2,400,000 francs—1,200,000 for each—plus 80,000 francs in interest. He produces 1,340,000 francs in banknotes, a stock certificate, and a banker’s check, the entire fortune having been concealed in a chest under a closet. Despite Madame Danglars’s desperate hope for a kind word, Debray offers only cold detachment, and she leaves in dignified silence. Afterward, he cancels his entries, calculates 1,060,000 francs remain, and regretfully notes the death of Mademoiselle de Villefort, whom he would have married. An Asmodeus-like vision would have seen, above this scene of financial division, the room of Mercédès and Albert.
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