The Count of Monte Cristo

Jeweller Returns, Accepts Hospitality

Jeweller Returns, Accepts Hospitality In the terrifying silence following the thunderclap, a knock comes at the door. Caderousse, pale and breathless, gathers up the gold and notes with trembling hands. The voice outside identifies itself as Joannes the jeweller. La Carconte, with a horrid smile, mocks her husband for thinking he had offended the good God. She opens the door to the drenched jeweller, who explains that the storm has made his return to Beaucaire impossible, and that he has come back to accept their offer of hospitality. Caderousse, sweating and stammering, can barely speak, while La Carconte double-locks the door behind the unsuspecting guest, sealing his fate.

第四十五章 The Rain of Blood

This is Chapter 45, “The Rain of Blood”, which chronicles the violent murder of a jeweller at the inn of Caderousse and La Carconte, the narrator’s wrongful arrest for the crime, and his eventual exoneration with the help of Abbé Busoni. Bertuccio continues his confession to the Count of Monte Cristo, recounting how he obtained his position through an abbé’s recommendation and then returning to Corsica to find his sister Assunta murdered by his adopted son Benedetto, who, aided by two accomplices, tortured her over a brazier to force her to reveal her money; she died of her burns after they locked the house and fled with the stolen cash, never to be seen again. The Count absolves Bertuccio but reminds him that his true guilt lay in failing to restore the Villefort infant to its mother, then dismisses him to wander the garden alone, murmuring over the very spot where the child’s grave was dug. The party returns to Paris, where the Count surveys his new Champs-Élysées residence with an uncanny familiarity, instructs Ali to keep his Greek and French attendants strictly separate, and welcomes the beautiful Haydée, who is escorted by a tapestried passage to a concealed suite within the house.