The Count of Monte Cristo

Assunta Reclaims the Child Benedetto

After a successful six-week expedition to Lucca and Leghorn, Bertuccio returned home to find a sumptuous cradle in Assunta’s chamber holding a sleeping baby seven or eight months old. Overjoyed—since abandoning the child had been his only sadness since the procureur’s assassination—Bertuccio learned that Assunta had used the half of the linen, along with a record of the day and hour of deposit, to travel to Paris and reclaim the infant. The asylum raised no objection. Monte Cristo comments that this is faith rather than philosophy, and Bertuccio concedes that Heaven used the infant as their instrument of punishment.

Benedetto’s Corrupt Childhood and Rejection of Smuggling

The child Benedetto manifested a perverse nature early despite Assunta’s indulgent upbringing. Lovely with deep blue eyes, fair complexion, and light hair, he preferred stolen chestnuts and dried apples to the delicacies Assunta procured for him, and at five or six he stole a louis from the neighbor Wasilio and lied about acquiring a monkey chained to a tree. When Bertuccio threatened to strike him, Benedetto defiantly declared, “You cannot beat me; you have no right, for you are not my father”—a revelation that left Bertuccio too shaken to punish the child whose father he had killed. By eleven, Benedetto consorted with the worst young men in Bastia, and when Bertuccio tried to recruit him into the smuggling life at twelve, Benedetto laughed off the offer as madness, preferring his indolence supported by Assunta’s money.

1829 Rhône Smuggling Raid and Bertuccio’s Escape

Bertuccio resolved to apprentice Benedetto as a clerk on a ship to redirect his corruption, and departed for France in 1829, when restored tranquillity and the Beaucaire fair had redoubled customs vigilance. Their expedition began well, anchoring a vessel with a double hold along the Rhône between Beaucaire and Arles, but on the evening of 3rd June, a cabin-boy reported a detachment of customs officers and gendarmes approaching stealthily. With the vessel already surrounded, the terrified Bertuccio dropped through a port into the Rhône, dived, and swam through a newly dug ditch to the canal running from Beaucaire to Aigues-Mortes, making his way toward the tailor-turned-innkeeper from Nîmes on the road from Bellegarde to Beaucaire.