The Count of Monte Cristo

First Floor Modern Art Salon

Descending to the first floor, Albert leads Monte Cristo into the salon filled with works of modern artists, including landscapes by Dupré, Arabian cavaliers by Delacroix, aquarelles of Notre Dame by Boulanger, flower paintings by Diaz, designs by Decamp, pastels by Giraud and Müller, and sketches torn from Dauzats’ “Travels in the East.” Monte Cristo surprises Albert by instantly naming each artist without seeking the signatures, many of which are only initials, demonstrating that each style and author was well known to him.

Bedchamber Mercédès Portrait

In the elegantly simple bedchamber, a single portrait signed by Léopold Robert, set in a carved and gilded frame, commands attention. Monte Cristo is visibly moved, taking three rapid steps toward it and stopping suddenly to gaze at the depiction of a dark-complexioned young woman of twenty-five or twenty-six in a picturesque Catalan fisherwoman’s costume, with red and black bodice and golden pins in her hair, looking out at the sea. Albert misinterprets the count’s interest, calling her a charming mistress, only to correct him: it is his mother, Mercédès, painted in this fancy costume six or eight years earlier.

Morcerf Portrait Backstory

Albert explains the portrait’s backstory: the countess had it painted during her husband’s absence, apparently intending a pleasant surprise, but the picture somehow displeased Count de Morcerf, whose indifference to art—as an assiduous peer at the Luxembourg and a mediocre amateur—overcame its value as one of Léopold Robert’s finest works. Mercédès, an excellent painter unwilling to part with it, placed it with Albert. Albert notes that the picture seems to exercise a malign influence, for his mother rarely sees it without weeping, and this disagreement is the only one in their otherwise harmonious marriage of over twenty years.