"The Count of Monte Cristo" appeared in 1844, when Dumas had
been writing plays and stories for twenty years, and at a
period when he was most extraordinarily prolific. In that
year, assisted by his staff of compilers and transcribers, he
is said to have turned out something like forty volumes!
"Monte Cristo" first gave Dumas' novels a world-wide audience.
Its unflagging spirit, the endless surprises, and the air of
reality which was cast over the most extravagant situations
made the work worthy of the popularity it enjoyed in almost
every country in the world. The island from which it takes its
name is a barren rock rising 2,000 feet out of the sea a few
miles south of Elba. Dumas attempted to emulate Scott, and
built a château near St. Germain, which he called Monte
Cristo, costing over $125,000. It was afterwards sold for a
tenth of that sum to pay his debts.
_I.--The Conspiracy of Envy_
On February 28, 1815, the three-masted Pharaon arrived at Marseilles
from Smyrna, commanded by the first mate, young Edmond Dantès, the
captain having died on the voyage. He had left a package for the
Maréchal Bertrand on the Isle of Elba, which Dantès had duly delivered,
conversing with the exiled Emperor Napoleon himself.
The shipowner, M. Morrel, confirmed young Dantès in the command, and,
overjoyed, he hastened to his father, and then to the village of the
Catalans, near Marseilles, where the dark-eyed Mercédès, his betrothed,
impatiently awaited him.
But his good fortune excited envy. Danglars, the supercargo of the
Pharaon, wanted the command for himself, and Fernand, the Catalan cousin
of Mercédès, hated Dantès because he had won her heart. Fernand's
jealousy so took possession of him that he fell in willingly with a
scheme which the envious Danglars proposed. Making use of Dantès'
compromising visit to Elba, they addressed an anonymous denunciation to
the _procureur du roi_, which, in this period of Bonapartist plots, was
indeed a formidable matter. Caderousse, a boon companion, was at first
taken into their confidence, but as he came to think it a dangerous
trick to play the young captain, he refused to take part in it.
On the morrow the wedding-feast took place, and at two o'clock Dantès,
radiant with joy and happiness, prepared to accompany his bride to the
hotel de ville for the civil ceremony. But at that moment the measured
tread of soldiery was heard on the stairs, and a magistrate presented
himself, bearing an order for the arrest of Edmond Dantès. Resistance or
remonstrance was useless, and Dantès suffered himself to be taken to
Marseilles, where he was examined by the deputy _procureur du roi,_ M.
de Villefort. To him, on demand, he recounted the story of his visit to
Elba.
"Ah!" said Villefort, "if you have been culpable it was imprudence. Give
up this letter you have brought from Elba, and go and rejoin your
friends."
"You have it already," cried Dantès.
Villefort glanced at it, and sank into his seat, stupefied. It was
addressed to M. Noirtier, a staunch Bonapartist.
"Oh, if he knew the contents of this," murmured he, "and that Noirtier
is father of Villefort, I am lost!" He approached the fire, and cast the
fatal letter in.
"Sir," said he, "I shall detail you till this evening in the Palais de
Justice. Should anyone else interrogate you do not breathe a word of
this letter."
"I promise."
It was Villefort who seemed to entreat, and the prisoner to reassure
him.
But the doom of Edmond Dantès was cast. Sacrificed to Villefort's
ambition, he was lodged the same night in a dungeon of the gloomy
fortress-prison of the Château d'If, while Villefort posted to Paris to
warn the king that the usurper Bonaparte was meditating a landing in
France.
Napoleon returned. There followed the Hundred Days, and Louis XVIII.
again mounted the throne. M. Morrel's intercessions during Napoleon's
brief triumph for the release of Dantès but served, on the restoration
of Louis, to compromise further the unhappy prisoner, who languished in
a foul prison in the depths of the Château d'If.
In the cell next to Dantès was another political prisoner, the Abbé
Faria. He had been in the château four years when Dantès was immured,
and, with marvellously contrived tools and incredible toil, had burrowed
a tunnel through the rock fifty feet long, only to find that, instead of
leading to the outer wall of the château, whence he could have flung
himself into the sea, it led to the cell of another prisoner--Dantès. He
penetrated it after Dantès had been solitary six years.
The prisoners met every day between the visits of their gaolers. Faria
showed Dantès the products of his industry and ingenuity--his books,
written on the linen of shirts, his fish-bone pens and needles, knives,
and matches, all accomplished secretly; and beguiled much of the
weariness of confinement by educating Dantès in the sciences, history,
and languages. Dantès possessed a prodigious memory, combined with
readiness of conception, and his studies progressed rapidly. Soon Dantès
told the abbé his story, and the abbé had little difficulty in opening
the eyes of the astonished Dantès to the villainy of his supposed
friends and the deputy _procurer_. Thus was instilled into his heart a
new passion--vengeance.
_II.--The Cemetery of the Château d'If_
More than seven years passed thus when coming into the abbé's dungeon
one night, Dantès found him stricken with paralysis. His right arm and
leg remained paralysed after the seizure. When Dantès next visited him
the abbé showed him a paper, half-burnt, and rolled in a cylinder.
"This paper," said Faria, "is my treasure; and if I have not been
allowed to possess it, you will. Who knows if another attack may not
come, and all be finished?"
The abbé had been secretary to the last of the Counts of Spada, one of
the most powerful families of mediaeval Italy, and he, dying in poverty,
had left Faria an old breviary, which had been in the family since the
days of the Borgias. In this, by chance, Faria found a piece of yellowed
paper, on which, when put in the fire, writing began to appear. From the
remains of the paper he made out during the early days of his
imprisonment, that a Cardinal Spada, at the end of the fifteenth
century, fearing poisoning at the hands of Pope Alexander VI., had
buried in the Island of Monte Cristo, a rock between Corsica and Elba,
all his ingots, gold, money, and jewels, amounting then to nearly two
million Roman crowns.
"The last Count of Spada made me his heir," said the abbé. "The treasure
now amounts to nearly thirteen millions of money!"
The abbé remained paralysed, and had given up all hope of enjoying the
treasure himself; and presently another seizure took him, and one night
Dantès was alone with the corpse.
Next morning the preparations for burying the dead man were made, the
body being placed in a sack and left in the cell till the evening.
Dantès came into the cell again.
"Ah!" he muttered. "Since the dead leave this dungeon, let me assume the
place of the dead!"
Opening the sack, he took out the dead body of his friend, and dragged
it through the tunnel to his own cell. Placing it on his own bed, he
covered it with the rags he wore himself. Then he sewed himself in the
sack with one of the abbé's needles. In his hand he held the dead man's
knife, and with palpitating heart awaited events.
Slowly the hours dragged on, until at length he heard the heavy
footsteps of the gaolers descending to the cell. They lifted the sack,
and carried him on a bier through the castle passages, until they came
to a door, which was opened. On passing through this, the noise of the
waves was heard as they dashed on the rocks below.
Then Dantès felt that they took him by the head and by the heels, and
flung him into the sea, into whose depths he was dragged by a thirty-
six-pound shot tied to his feet. The sea is the cemetery of Château
d'If!
Although giddy, and almost suffocated, he had yet sufficient presence of
mind to hold his breath; and as his right hand held his knife, he
rapidly ripped up the sack, extricated his arm, and then, by a desperate
effort, severed the cord that bound his legs at the moment he was
suffocating. With a vigorous spring he rose to the surface, paused to
breathe, and then dived again, in order to avoid being seen. When he
rose again, he struck boldly out to sea, and, fortunately, was picked up
by a sailing-vessel.
Now at liberty, fourteen years after his arrest, he renewed an oath of
implacable vengeance against Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort. Nor was
it long before he had discovered the secret cave in the island of Monte
Cristo, with all its dazzling wealth, as the Abbe Faria had truly
foretold. He now stood possessed of such means of vengeance as never in
his wildest dreams had any innocent prisoner hoped to be able to
command.
_III.--Vengeance Begins_
Some two years later Caspar Caderousse, the keeper of an inn near
Beaucaire, was lounging listlessly at his door, when a traveller on
horseback dismounted at his door and entered. The visitor--Monte
Cristo--gave the name of Abbe Busoni, and astonished Caderousse by
showing a minute knowledge of his earlier history. The abbé explained
that he had been present at the death of Edmond Dantès in prison, and
said that even in his dying moments the prisoner had protested he was
utterly ignorant of the cause of his imprisonment.
"And so he was!" exclaimed Caderousse. "How should he have been
otherwise?"
The abbè had heard of the death of Edmond's aged father, and now he was
told the old man had died of starvation.
"Thus Heaven recompenses virtue," said Caderousse. "I am in destitution
and shall die of hunger, as old Dantès did, whilst Fernand and Danglars
roll in wealth. All their malpractices have turned to luck. Danglars
speculated and made a fortune. He is a millionaire, and now Count
Danglars. Fernand played traitor at the battle of Ligny, and that served
for his recommendation to the Bourbons. Afterwards he became Count de
Morcerf, and got a considerable sum by the betrayal of Ali Pasha in the
Greek war of independence."