The Count of Monte Cristo

The Tavern Conference

Dantès is tossed about on these doubts and wishes when the patron, having great confidence in him and being very desirous of retaining him, takes him by the arm one evening and leads him to a tavern on the Via del’ Oglio, where the leading smugglers of Leghorn congregate to discuss affairs connected with their trade. Dantès has already visited this maritime Bourse two or three times, and seeing all these hardy free-traders who supply the coast for nearly two hundred leagues, he has asked himself what power might not that man attain who should give the impulse of his will to all these contrary and diverging minds. This time a great matter is under discussion, connected with a vessel laden with Turkey carpets, stuffs of the Levant, and cashmeres. It is necessary to find some neutral ground for an exchange and then try to land these goods on the coast of France. If successful, the profit would be enormous—fifty or sixty piastres each for the crew. The patron of La Jeune Amélie proposes as a landing place the Island of Monte Cristo, which being completely deserted and having neither soldiers nor revenue officers, seems to have been placed in the midst of the ocean by Mercury, the god of merchants and robbers. At the mention of Monte Cristo, Dantès starts with joy; he rises to conceal his emotion and takes a turn around the smoky tavern where all the languages of the known world are jumbled in a lingua franca.

Decision to Land

When he again joins the two persons discussing the matter, it has been decided that they should touch at Monte Cristo and set out the following night. Edmond, being consulted, is of opinion that the island affords every possible security and that great enterprises to be well done should be done quickly. Nothing is altered in the plan, and orders are given to get under weigh the next night, and, wind and weather permitting, to make the neutral island by the following day.