The Count of Monte Cristo

Villefort Questions Why the Corpse Was Taken

Villefort questions why the corpse of the child was taken by the Corsican, rejecting Madame Danglars’s suggestion that he needed it as proof, since such evidence would be presented to a magistrate rather than kept for a year. He concludes that no such legal use was made of the body and proposes a more terrifying alternative.

Villefort Suggests the Child May Have Survived

Villefort suggests the chilling possibility that the child may have survived and that the assassin, out of some unknown motive, saved it instead of killing it. This terrifying supposition leaves Madame Danglars in despair over the fate of her offspring.

Madame Danglars Reacts to Her Child Possibly Being Alive

Madame Danglars reacts with violent emotion, crying out that her child was alive and accusing Villefort of burying the child without certainty of its death. She wrings his hands and collapses in grief, while Villefort, on the verge of madness, looks on with a fixed, desperate expression.

Foundling Hospital Clue to the Child’s Location

Villefort, attempting to redirect the mother’s anguish into shared terror, points out that if the child is alive and someone knows it, that person possesses their secret, and Monte Cristo’s mention of a disinterred child implicates him. Madame Danglars, in her turn, wonders aloud whether the child might have been thrown into the river or given to a foundling hospital, with Villefort confirming he investigated both possibilities.

The Lost Trail of the Woman Who Claimed the Child

Villefort explains that on the night of September 20th, a child was brought to the foundling hospital wrapped in a torn fine linen napkin marked with half a baron’s crown and the letter H, which matched the Danglars family mark. Although a woman eventually came to claim the child with the matching half of the napkin six months later, Villefort’s agents traced her only as far as Châlons before losing her trail forever, leaving the child unaccounted for.