The Count of Monte Cristo

Caderousse and Dantès

Caderousse and Dantès After Caderousse retrieves a bottle of Cahors from a trap-door, he finds the abbé seated on a stool, with the appeased dog Margotin nestled between his knees. The priest asks if Caderousse is quite alone, learning that his wife is ill and bedridden. Asks if he is married, observing the scanty furnishings. Caderousse sighs that he is not a rich man, but says a man does not thrive the better for being honest, sustaining the abbé’s searching gaze and claiming to be an honest man, though he allows that not everyone can say as much.

The Fate of Edmond Dantès

The Fate of Edmond Dantès The abbé remarks that the good will be rewarded and the wicked punished, to which Caderousse bitterly replies that such words belong to the priest’s profession and one is free to believe them. The priest declares he can perhaps prove him wrong, then states he must first be satisfied that Caderousse is the person he seeks, asking if he knew a young sailor named Dantès around 1814 or 1815. Caderousse flushes and exclaims that Edmond was his intimate friend. The priest reveals that Dantès died a wretched, hopeless, heart-broken prisoner at the galleys of Toulon, and Caderousse, deathly pale, wipes tears from his eyes with his red handkerchief, murmuring that good people are never rewarded on earth.

The Diamond

The Diamond The priest continues that Dantès, even in dying, swore he was ignorant of the cause of his detention, which Caderousse affirms was the truth. Dantès had besought the priest to clear up the mystery and his memory. A rich Englishman, Dantès’s fellow prisoner released during the second restoration, possessed a diamond of immense value, which he gave to Dantès as gratitude for nursing him through a severe illness. Dantès preserved it rather than risk having it taken by treacherous jailers, intending to use the proceeds to make his fortune upon release. Caderousse, with eager, glowing looks, asks if it was a stone of immense value.