The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count Departs for Italy, Leaving Morrel Behind

The Count announces he has urgent business in Italy and must depart immediately, leaving Morrel alone in his struggle against misfortune, comparing him to Ganymede borne aloft by the eagle sent by God. When Morrel asks when he leaves, the Count replies that the steamer already waits and within an hour he will be far away. He invites Morrel to accompany him to the harbor, and the two depart together as the white steam rises from the black chimney; within an hour, the steamer vanishes into the fogs of the night on the distant horizon.

第一百十四章 Peppino

Chapter 114, titled “Peppino,” follows Baron Danglars as he travels post from Florence to Rome, visits the Thomson & French bank to withdraw a massive sum of five millions, and is subsequently shadowed by Peppino, a Roman bandit. After returning triumphantly to his hotel with the fortune, Danglars departs Rome for Venice but is ambushed on the road, his carriage taken over by mysterious riders. He is brought along a circuitous route back toward Rome and eventually recognizes the Appian Way, realizing he has fallen into the hands of Roman banditti. Peppino guides him through a narrow fissure into the underground bandit hideout carved from ancient sepulchres. Peppino drags the terrified Danglars into a rock-hewn crypt where the bandit captain Luigi Vampa sits reading Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, and after briefly ordering his men to show Danglars to a bed, the captain has his prisoner conducted down a staircase to a small dry cell furnished with dried grass and goat-skins. Reassured by the genuine bed, the bolted door, and the recollection that Albert de Morcerf had once been confined in that very chamber and ransomed at 4,000 crowns, Danglars calculates that his own value will be set at 8,000 crowns, leaving him with roughly five million francs, and he falls asleep with the same ease as the hero whose biography Vampa is studying.