The Count of Monte Cristo

The Limits of Vengeance

A quarter of an hour afterwards the door of Valentine’s room opened, and Monte Cristo reappeared. Pale, with a dull eye and heavy heart, all the noble features of that face, usually so calm and serene, were overcast by grief. In his arms he held the child, whom no skill had been able to recall to life. Bending on one knee, he placed it reverently by the side of its mother, with its head upon her breast. Then, rising, he went out, and meeting a servant on the stairs, he asked: “Where is M. de Villefort?” The servant, instead of answering, pointed to the garden. Monte Cristo ran down the steps and, advancing towards the spot designated, beheld Villefort, encircled by his servants, with a spade in his hand, and digging the earth with fury. “It is not here!” he cried. “It is not here!” And then he moved farther on and began again to dig. Monte Cristo approached him and said in a low voice, with an expression almost humble: “Sir, you have indeed lost a son; but——” Villefort interrupted him; he had neither listened nor heard. “Oh, I will find it,” he cried; “you may pretend he is not here, but I will find him, though I dig forever!” Monte Cristo drew back in horror. “Oh,” he said, “he is mad!” And as though he feared that the walls of the accursed house would crumble around him, he rushed into the street, for the first time doubting whether he had the right to do as he had done. “Oh, enough of this—enough of this,” he cried; “let me save the last.”

Villefort’s Descent into Madness

The scene at the house revealed the full horror of Monte Cristo’s vengeance. Villefort, who had prided himself on his inflexible justice, now found himself facing the complete destruction of everything he held dear. His wife, driven to poison herself and their child rather than face his judgment, had enacted a terrible revenge. When Monte Cristo showed him the bodies, asking “are you well avenged?”, the magistrate’s remaining sanity shattered. He could not comprehend the scope of what had happened—that his own rigid moralism had driven his wife to such desperation. His attempts to dig in the garden for a phantom child, his incoherent ravings about finding what was not there, showed that his mind had completely broken under the weight of his losses. The man who had once condemned others with such certainty now wandered in hopeless confusion, his reason utterly destroyed.