The Count of Monte Cristo: A Readalong!

I have wanted to read The Count of Monte Cristo for awhile now. In truth, I should say that I've wanted to reread it, because way back, decades ago, I did read this Alexandre Dumas classic, and I remember loving it. My memory is hazy about the details, but I think I must have been in high school, so we're talking 40 years ago. One thing I'm certain of is that I had an abridged version of the novel. I can remember almost nothing about the book; it is the positive impression that has stuck with me over all these years. 

I read one of Dumas' other famous novels, The Three Musketeers, in 2022 and blogged about it as I went (the readalong blog is here, and my review is here). I had a great time reading it. This time, I'll be reading The Count of Monte Cristo with a small group of other readers, discussing the book weekly as we go, and I'll be blogging my thoughts on this post every couple of days. I find that it makes me even more engaged in the book when I'm annotating as I go, picking out favourite quotes and noting down my impressions. 

The Count of Monte Cristo was written between 1844-46, and published serially, in 18 parts in the Journal Des Débats. It was then published in novel form. And did you know that Dumas had a co-writer for many of his works? His close collaborator was Auguste Maquet, who often came up with the plots of his novels, while Dumas wrote them. At the insistence of the publisher, Maquet's name was omitted, and this led to Maquet suing Dumas in 1851 for royalties. The court, however, ruled in favour of Dumas. 

A note on translations and editions. I'll be reading the full edition, and one as close to complete as I can. I have an anonymous translation, which I usually means it's a variant of an 1846 translation by Chapman and Hall. It's the Canturbury Classics World Cloud Classics edition from 2013. It has 118 chapters and is over 1000 pages in small font, which indicates that it is not an abridged version. Regardless, most editions have some bowdlerization (where racy parts were removed in the 19th century), but apparently it's not uniform and hard to tell. There's a 1996 translation by Robin Buss that's modernised but slightly more inclusive of the text. My edition has 118 chapters, and many have 117 as they do not include a chapter called "The Past" near the end, but that chapter is easily downloadable as a pdf with a simple google search, so when it comes time I'll note that in this blog. 

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The reading plan is to read over eight weeks, with 14 chapters per week. I'll be reading Monday to Saturday with a day off on Sunday, so that is 2-3 chapters per day. 

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Day 1: Chapters 1-3

As he sails a freighter into Marseilles harbour after its captain was killed on the voyage, our hero Edmond Dantes is described as young and handsome: "He was a fine, tall, slim young fellow of eighteen or twenty with black eyes and hair as dark as a raven's wing. His whole appearance bespoke calmness and resolution peculiar to men accustomed from their cradle to contend with danger." Edmond is in line for captain of the ship, he's on great terms with his father, and he's going to marry his love Mercedes within a day or two. He's got nowhere to go but down: He's already made an enemy in the ship's accountant M. Danglars (who just seems to hate him for his youth and good fortune...), his neighbour M. Caderousse (not sure why), as well as his love Mercedes' forlorn and rejected suitor Fernand. Says Danglars: "Edmond's star is in the ascendant, and he will marry the splendid girl—he will be captain too, and laugh at us all, unless"—a sinister smile passed over Danglar's lips—"unless I take a hand in the affair." I feel that no good can come of this. 

Day 2: Chapters 4-6

The conspiracy against Edmond is afoot. "When one thinks," said Caderousse, letting his hand drop on the paper, "there is here wherewithal to kill a man more sure than if we waited at the corner of a wood to assassinate him! I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper, than of a sword or pistol." 

Edmond, too, feels a foreshadowing disquiet at his good fortune: 

Danglers: "Why, what ails you?" asked he of Edmond. "Do you fear any approaching evil? I should say that you were the happiest man alive at this instant." 

"And that is the very thing that alarms me," returned Dantes. "Man does not appear to me to be intended to enjoy felicity so unmixed; happiness is like the enchanted palaces we read of in our childhood, where fierce, fiery dragons defend the entrance and approach; and monsters of all shapes and kinds, requiring to be overcome ere victory is ours." 

I found Chapter 6 full of political context, with new characters M. de Villefort, the magistrate; and his betrothed Renee de Saint-Meran discussing the matter of prosecuting Bonapartist traitors. The first section "Analysis" of this article helped my place the context of the novel's opening, 15 years after the end of the French Revolution, and as Napoleon is exiled on Elba but preparing for a brief escape and return. The tension between the Royalists and the Bonapartists was at its height. 

https://www.enotes.com/topics/count-of-monte-cristo/in-depth

Day 3: Chapters 7-8

After Dantes has been arrested, his innocence is so convincing that M. Villefort truly believes he has done no wrong. Dantes is such a good young man, and I loved his declaration: "Alas, sir, I never had any opinions. I am hardly nineteen; I know nothing; I have no part to play. If I obtain the situation I desire, I shall owe it to M. Morrel. Thus all my opinions—I will not say public, but private—are confined to these three sentiments: I love my father, I respect M. Morrel, and I adore Mercedes. This, sir, is all I can tell you, and you see how uninteresting it is." 

It's as he settles into the terrible Chateau D'If that despair and anger first take root in Dantes. This terrible fate, "all because he had trusted Villefort's promise." And the jailer's advice: "...do not always brood over what is impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight." 

Day 4: Chapters 9-10

Though I don't feel sorry for Villefort, you've got to love Dumas' elloquent description of his plight: 

"Then the first pangs of an unending torture seized upon his heart. The man he sacrificed to his ambition, that innocent victim immolated on the alter of his father's faults, appeared to him pale and threatening, leading his affianced bride by the hand, and bringing with him remorse, not such as the ancients figured, furious and terrible, but that slow and consuming agony whose pangs are intensified from hour to hour to the very moment of death." 

Here's the Project Gutenberg illustration of Mercedes (with the scoundrel Fernand). What drama! 

Dumas also gives a summary of where each person's actions and conscience lay, with Dantes in jail: Fernand, Morrel, Caderousse, and Danglars ("The life of a man was to him of far less value than a numeral, especially when, by taking it away, he could increase the sum total of his own desires. He went to bed at his usual hour, and slept in peace.") I'm contemplating a project to see just where (with the exception of Morrel) each of these men would land in the poet Dante Alighieri's nine circles of hell. I'm reading that too, currently, and it seems very fitting. 

Day 5: Chapters 11-12

It is interesting to read the passages with King Louis XVIII. Dumas is writing this circa 1845 and the present action, as Napoleon escapes Elba, is in 1815. Dumas would have been in his early teens at the time. Thus, he's writing about events 30 years old. The French Revolution had just ended in 1799 so approximately 45 years before the book was written. That's like me writing about Regan, then the Clintons (and I should also say Pierre Trudeau, Mulroney and Chrétien), the fall of the Berlin wall, or Chernobyl. So I suspect that Dumas must have had a very distinct feeling for the time, and a notion of how these characters would have behaved. 

Louis XVIII: "To fall," continued King Louis, who at the first glance had sounded the abyss on which the monarchy hung suspended—"to fall, and learn of that fall by telegraph! Oh, I would rather mount the scaffold of my brother, Louis XVI, than thus descend the staircase a the Tuileries driven away by ridicule." 

And from a truly fictional character, the Bonapartist Noirtier, this chilling sentiment: "In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas—no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all."

Day 6: Chapters 13-14

How quickly political fortunes rise and fall. Villefort has landed on his feet, though any mention of Dantes fills him with dread. When M. Morrel pleads his case once again, and names Edmond Dantes, "Villefort would probably have rather stood opposite the muzzle of a pistol at five-and-twenty paces than have heard this name spoken..." Regardless, Villefort digs his heels in deeper, deceiving M. Morrel into writing a damning letter that might be used against Dantes. 

I welcome the return to Dantes, in his dungeon hell. As the inspector arrives for his annual perusal of the prisoners, the jailers discuss the fact that many prisoners in the dungeon cells go mad. Speaking about Dantes: 

"...Besides, he is almost mad now, and in another year will be quite so." 

"So much the better for him; he will suffer less," said the inspector. He was, as this remark shows, a man full of philanthropy, and in every way fit for his office." 

Such an interesting way that Dumas wrote this interchange. On the surface, this way of thinking probably showed compassion and an understanding of the way of the world at this time. Today, it drips with sarcasm. I wonder what Dumas was thinking as he wrote this? 

Day 7: Break

Day 8: Chapters 15-17

So much happens in these chapters! First, the imprisoned Dantes with little hope. Unlike some older prisoners who have years of experience to at least occupy their minds, Dantes has little. 

"Nineteen years of light to reflect upon in eternal darkness! No distraction could come to his aid; his energetic spirit that would have exalted in this revisiting the past was imprisoned like an eagle in a cage. He clung to one idea—that of his happiness, destroyed, without apparent cause, by an unheard of fatality; he considered and reconsidered this idea, devoured it (so to speak) as the implacable Ugolino devours the skull of Archbishop Roger in the Inferno of Dante." 

We see this idea of his rumination on the reason he is locked away. At this point he has no answer, but now he meets the Abbé, and parses the events out, all will change. 

I absolutely admire the Abbé Faria, amazed at the things he's made, and the tomes he's written, sometimes in his own blood. And he helps Dantes figure out who must have framed him.  And though it seems an innocuous passage, I can't help but think that this is a turning point. Dantes the innocent young man, to Dantes the realist: 

Faria bent on him his penetrating eye. "I regret now," said he, "having helped you in your late inquiries, or having given you the information I did." 

"Why so?" inquired Dantes. 

"Because it has instilled a new passion in your heart—that of vengeance." 

Dantes smiled. "Let us talk of something else," said he. 

I imagine Dantes' smile here being cynical and perhaps anticipatory. 

Day 9: Chapters 18-20

In Chapter 18, the conniving Borgia family makes an appearance, trying to steal fortunes. A "breviary" is the crucial inheritance that leads to the Abbé Faria's treasure. A word before today that I'm not sure I've ever heard, a breviary is a "a book of the prayers, hymns, psalms, and readings for the canonical hours," as per the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The tangible possibility of great wealth weighs heavy on Dantes' mind: 

"...Dantes's countenance became gloomy, for the oath of vengeance he had taken recurred to his memory, and he reflected how much ill, in these times, a man with thirteen or fourteen millions could do to his enemies." 

I love the relationship between Dantes and the Abbé Faria, and could almost feel Dantes' grief as the older man lay dying. With the Abbé's final words ("Monte Cristo, forget not Monte Cristo!") and a daring escape, I think the novel is at a critical turning point. 

Day 10: Chapters 21-22

Fourteen years of captivity! A devastating realisation for Dantes. "Then his eyes lighted up with hatred as he thought of the three men who had caused him so long and wretched a captivity. He renewed against Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort the oath of implacable vengeance he had made in his dungeon." No mention of Caderousse, and I wonder if he will figure in the future. 

When he first sees himself in the mirror, beard shorn and hair trimmed, Edmond "smiled when he beheld himself: it was impossible that his best friend—if, indeed, he had any friend left—could recognize him; he could not recognize himself." Slowly, Dantes is hardening, the carefree youth transforming into a man who has been so wronged. I thought it telling when a customs officer is killed in a skirmish with Dantes and his new smuggler crew that "whether from heat of blood produced by the encounter, or the chill of human sentiment, this sight had made but slight impression upon him. Dantes was on the way he desired to follow, and was moving toward the end he wished to achieve; his heart was in a fair way of petrifying in his bosom." 

Day 11: Chapters 23-24

These two chapters are a master class in writing tension: the tension that Dantes is warring with in his own mind. The exquisitely painful liminal state of potential. On one hand, Dantes dreams of the treasure, even quite literally: 

"The night was one of feverish distraction, and it its progress visions of good and evil passed through Dantes's mind...He ascended into grottos paved with emeralds, with panels of rubies, and the roof glowing with diamond stalactites." 

On the other hand, he cannot bear to believe in the riches. He persuades himself it's not real. "Come...be a man. I am accustomed to adversity...the heart breaks when, after having been elated by flattering hopes, it sees all its illusions destroyed." After telling himself this: "Now that I expect nothing, now that I entertain not the slightest hopes, the end of this adventure becomes simply a matter of curiosity." Then, he can proceed. 

At each obstacle, he continues to battle between hope and despair.  I'm sure we all know the feeling. We have hope, for example, that we might get accepted to a university or program we want. Until the letter comes in the mail, we have hope that we may get in...it's still open to possibility. When the envelope arrives in the mail and we hold it in our hands, the answer is tangible. And when we open the letter and read the words, we are either in or out. Potential moves to reality, and that can never be undone. 

So when Dantes finds a chest, and just opens it, this hit me so realistically: 

"The hinges yielded in their turn and fell, still holding in their grasp fragments of the wood, and the chest was open. 

Edmond was seized with vertigo; he cocked his gun and laid it beside him. He then closed his eyes as children do in order that they may see in the resplendent night of their own imagination more stars than are visible in the firmament; then he reopened them, and stood motionless with amazement." 

Day 12: Chapters 25-26

Returning home after a long absence can be bittersweet, and I can only imagine how it feels for Dantes as he traverses the Marseilles streets of his youth. "Each step he trod oppressed his heart with fresh emotion; his first and most indelible recollections were there; not a tree, not a street that he passed but seemed filled with dear and cherished memories." 

And I loved chapter 26. Dumas writes this so well, with we the readers being in on the secret of the abbé's identity, while Caderousse sees only what he expects. Says the abbé: "...I am firmly persuaded that, sooner or later, the good will be rewarded, and the wicked punished." Perhaps I'm missing something, but I'm still not sure where the tailor-turned-innkeeper Caderousse falls on this metric. My favourite side character here is his sickly but astute wife La Carconte. She's like a cautionary Greek chorus, sounding warnings from upstairs. 

"Gaspard!" cried La Carconte, "do as you will; you are master—but if you take my advice you'll hold your tongue." 

I suspect this is good advice! 

Day 13: Chapters 27-28

It's interesting: I guess I have my answer about Caderousse. He's the bystander, the guy who didn't do the right thing, but didn't actively harm Dantes. "I understand—you allowed matters to take their course, that was all," says Dantes, as the abbé. And because Caderousse was remorseful about his actions, and likely because he always had a care for the old father Dantes who lived above him, Edmond will hear his story, and award him with a diamond. Not that Dantes has any illusions as to the innkeeper's character: 

"Oh, you are a man of God, sir," cried Caderousse, "for no one knew that Edmond had given you this diamond, and you might have kept it." 

"Which," said the abbé to himself, "you would have done." 

I can't skip over one comment by Dantes/the abbé when he learns that Mercedes agrees to marry Fernand a year and a half after his capture. "So that," said the abbé, with a bitter smile, "that makes eighteen months in all. What more could the most devoted lover desire?" Then he murmured the words of the English poet, "Frailty, thy name is woman." 

I'll be waiting to see how Dumas treats Mercedes in the action to come. When I read The Three Musketeers, I had a problem with the treatment of the main female character Milady (see my critique here) and I'm crossing my fingers that the author is more forgiving in this novel. 

More evidence-gathering by Dantes will bring him to his visit with M. Morrel in the next chapter. 

Day 14: Break

Day 15: Chapters 29-31:

And now we return to the honest and kind M. Morrel. Again, I find that Dumas has a great talent for fleshing out a side character, one who we'll probably never see again, Morrel's cashier, Cocles. In one sentence, I get a feel for the man: "He was, however, the same Cocles, good, patient, devoted, but inflexible on the subject of arithmetic, the only point on which he would have stood firm against the world, even against M. Morrel; and strong in the multiplication table, which he had at his fingers' ends, no matter what scheme or what trap was laid to catch him." 

Dumas also writes the hopeless M. Morrel and his decision to end his life so compassionately. How his family notices him calm and determined in the days before September 5; how his daughter Julie hugs him, and feels her father's agitation. "In the evening, Julie told her mother that although he was apparently so calm, she had noticed that her father's heart beat violently." The exchange between father and son kind of hit me, and made me wonder how different things were in 19th century Europe than now, with this type of honourable suicide. I suspect that these discussions of honour may have been more aligned with that society. 

After the scene on the dock that could rival any big-time Hollywood movie feel good ending, we come to a turning point for Dantes. "And now," said the unknown, "farewell kindness, humanity, and gratitude! Farewell to all the feelings that expand the heart! I have been heaven's substitute to recompense the good—now the god of vengeance yields to me his power to punish the wicked!"

I hardly know what to make of the next chapter "Italy: Sinbad the Sailor." A different Dantes indeed! The "half-kindness" tale of rescuing the servant Ali, and the hasihsh...What's happened to our Dantes? The hashish scenes were quite descriptive. Dantes waxing poetic about the drug: "It is only by comparing the pains of actual being with the joys of the assumed existence that you would desire to live no longer, but to dream thus forever." It ends with Franz's super erotic dream (picture from Project Gutenberg) I'm keen to see what Dantes' plan is here! 

Day 16: Chapters 32-34:

These chapters present quite a change in tone for the book. The action is centred on the young men Franz (as he returns from Monte Cristo) and his friend Albert, the Vicomte de Morcerf. I had to look back but yes, this appears to be Mercedes and Fernand's son. He's not very likeable as written, rather very entitled and frivolous. He endorses "a delighted philosophy which believes that nothing is impossible to a full purse or well-lined pocketbook." 

They've come to see the Carnival of Rome, and the city is overcrowded and inconvenient. But as the two men prepare to visit the Colosseum in the evening, the innkeeper warns them of their route: ruthless brigand Luigi Vampa is about and may kidnap them. Thus begins the long origin story of Vampa, as told by the innkeeper. In parts, the story is pretty violent.  Curiously, "Sinbad the Sailor" has a bit part. Intriguing! I'm left to puzzle where this is all leading. 

I enjoyed this description of jealousy (on Luigi's part): "It was like an acute pain which gnawed at his heart, and then thrilled through his whole body...every pulse beat with violence, and it seemed as though a bell were ringing in his ears....it seemed as if the whole world was turning around with him, and all the voices of hell were whispering in his ears ideas of murder and assassination." 

The Carnival of Rome took place before Lent over many days, beginning in medieval times. Franz and Albert ask to rent a space overlooking the Corso, and indeed, that's where much of the main action occurred, in the Via del Corso where races were run (Corso means race in Italian). I love that I'm getting the opportunity to visit this spectacle in the 1800s with Dumas. Here's a great article:

The ancient Roman Carnival (tourismoroma.it)

Day 17: Chapters 35-36

There are so many little details that I wanted to linger on in the chapter "The Colosseum." Like how there's always an excess of tour guides at historical sites, and with their own agendas. And I'm curious about the opera Parisina, one I've never heard of. Did you know that Gaetano Donizetti wrote 69 operas? The only one I've heard of is Lucia di Lammermoor (1835). Dumas writes of the passionate and famous duet between Parisina and her husband Azzo. It's called "Ugo," and starts with an abrupt "UGO!". Here's the link. It's these kinds of details that make me feel like I'm there, in Rome, with Franz in the mid-1800s. 

Anyway, back to the story. I was struck by how the Countess at the opera is genuinely afraid of the vampiric man across the theatre in the opera box. "...the gentleman, whose history I am unable to furnish, seems to me as though he had just been dug up; he looks more like a corpse permitted by some friendly gravedigger to quit his tomb for awhile..." and, as per Lord Byron's description of vampires: "Oh, he is the exact personification of what I have been led to expect! The coal-black hair, large bright, glittering eyes, in which a wild, unearthly fire seems burning, the same ghastly paleness." 

The whole section in which the Count of Monte Cristo expounds on our preoccupation with death, and then the vehement idea that justice is not served by a quick execution, was riveting. He's changed so much! "If a man had by unheard-of and excruciating tortures destroyed your father, your mother, your betrothed—a being who, when torn from you, left a desolation, a wound that never closes, in your breast—do you think that the reparation that society gives you is sufficient when it interposes the knife of the guillotine between the base of the occiput and the trapezal muscles of the murderer, and allows him who has caused us years of moral sufferings to escape with a few moments of physical pain?" 

He ends his speech with noting he'd fight a duel for a petty crime: "...understand me, I would fight a duel for a trifle, for an insult, for a blow...Oh, I would fight for such a cause; but in return for a slow, profound, eternal torture, I would give back the same, were it possible; and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as the Orientalists say—our masters in everything, those favoured creatures who have formed for themselves a life of dreams and a paradise of realities." 

The narrative has indeed turned towards vengeance. 

Day 18: Chapters 37-38

Franz is shaken by witnessing an execution, perhaps nonplussed by how quickly the carnival-goers—and the Count—shake it off and dress for the carnival. 

"Well," asked he of the count, "what has, then, happened?"

"Nothing," replied the count; "only, as you see, the carnival as commenced. Make haste and dress yourself."

"In fact," said Franz,"this horrible scene has passed away like a dream."

"It is but a dream, a nightmare, that has disturbed you."

"Yes, that I have suffered; but the culprit?"

"That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate." 

Albert loves the count, but Franz has misgivings. The count "had the power of fascination," and "exercised over him also the ascendency a strong mind always acquires over a mind less domineering." He's "Truly, a Byronic hero!" A Byronic hero is kind of a dark, classic bad boy character. It maybe sounds about right, at least at this point in the story?

More carnival to enjoy, as Dumas paints a beautiful picture in words of the thousands of candles (moccoletti) marking the end of the festival. Fifty thousand lights: "Suppose that all the stars had descended from the sky and mingled in a wild dance on the face of the earth; the whole accompanied by cries that were never heard in any other part of the world." 

With Albert's misadventure we meet Luigi Vampa again, and in the catacombs Franz astutely notices the count's hand tremor ("a singular shudder") as he reaches out to shake Albert's hand.  

Day 19: Chapters 39-40

Not so many pages in today's reading, and I'm a bit sad to see the end of Rome and the carnival. The Count's plan becomes clearer, as he's now secured an invitation to Paris at the behest of Albert de Morcerf. "My father, the Comte de Morcerf, although of Spanish origin, posesses considerable influence, both at the court of France and Madrid, and I unhesitatingly place the best services of myself, and all to whom my life is dear, at your disposal." 

Franz...I love his suspicious mind, drawn to the count yet kind of afraid of him. He's so sensible! "...of what country is the count, what is his native tongue, whence does he derive his immense fortune, and what were those events of his early life—a life as marvelous as unknown—that have tinctured his succeeding years with so dark and gloomy a misanthropy?" I'm going to miss Franz d'Epinay as he exits stage left at the end of Chapter 39. I wonder if he'll be back? 

Finally, to Paris, and a description of a privileged youth. His mom has chosen his housing, a pavilion across the court from the main house. "There were not lacking, however, evidences of what we may call the intelligent egoism of a youth who is charmed with the indolent, careless life of an only son, and who lives, as it were, in a gilded cage." 

As a couple of Albert's young friends arrive for a late breakfast, I'm anxiously awaiting the count's arrival at precisely 10:30 am. 

Day 20: Chapters 41-42 (to the end of "The Presentation")

The banter of friends in this chapter, as they prepare to settle down for breakfast at Albert's home, is so of the time in 1838 that I just have to admit that I won't understand it without doing excessive research. 

"M. de Château-Renaud, a handsome young man of thirty, gentleman all over—that is, with the figure of a Guiche and the wit of a Mortemart—took Albert's hand."  

I'm so tempted to look up those names...but no, I'll let it go. 

They keep exclaiming that there is no Count of Monte Cristo, just before he shows up at 10:30 am on the dot.

"No, his name is the Count of Monte Cristo." 

"There is no Count of Monte Cristo," said Debray. 

And later: 

"There are no Italian banditti," said Debray. 

"No vampire," cried Beauchamp.

"No Count of Monte Cristo," added Debray.

We know he's a fiction. Though the character exists, it's a persona, and these lines are thus fun to read with double meaning. 

Finally the Count meets the Morcerfs. I loved this line as Mercedes thanks him from the bottom of her heart for saving her son Albert. He responds: 

"Madame," said he, "the count and yourself recompense too generously a simple action. To save a man, to spare a father's feelings, or a mother's sensibility, is not to do a good action, but a simple deed of humanity." 

Ouch. It's exactly what Fernand never did for Edmond. 

Day 21: Break

Day 22: Chapters 43-45 (starting at "Monsieur Bertuccio")

Today I went down a bit of a rabbit hole about how rich the Count actually is; basically, how much would a 1838 franc be in today's Canadian dollar. He paid 20,000 francs each for a horse. It's difficult with a basic internet search to figure this out, but one source said that one franc in the early 1800s would be about 10-20 modern British pounds. That's about 27 Canadian dollars if you use the midrange, so 20,000 francs would be $540,000 Canadian dollars for a horse. Hmm. But later, he pays 50,000 francs for a house, which would be $1.35 million Canadian dollars, which seems reasonable. Here's my dubious source at tumblr. 

Dumas comes at the Count's new scheme a bit sideways once again. He had me looking back through the book for more about who Bertuccio was, as I couldn't figure out why he was so scared to go to Auteuil to see the new villa. As they near, "Bertuccio, crouched in the corner of the carriage, began to examine with a feverish anxiety every house they passed." 

It becomes clear, very gradually, that Bertruccio has a history with this exact house. A coincidence? Of course not, there are no coincidences to be had where the Count is concerned. To his servant Bertuccio, who clearly has a tale to tell, the Count says, "I am very glad to tell you, that while you gesticulate, you wring your hands and roll your eyes like a man possessed by a devil who will not leave him; and I have always observed that the devil most obstinate to be expelled is a secret." (I love that last bit!)

And later, as uttered by Bertruccio, this feels like a handy sentence to have in your back pocket just in case you meet your nemesis:

"From this moment I declare the vendetta against you, so protect yourself as well as you can, for the next time we meet your last hour has come." 

Bertruccio's vendetta ultimately yields a horrible child, and I have no clue what role this youngster will play. 

Day 23: Chapters 46-48

My version of the book's Chapter 45 is called "The Rain of Blood." If that's not an attention grabber, I don't know what is. 

I'd been a bit confused with the characters, but now it's clear that Edmond Dantes has many personas. He's the Abbé Busoni too, which makes Bertruccio's story much clearer. The servent thinks he's killed M. Villefort in his vendetta, but perhaps it's not so, suggests the Count: "...for the wicked are not so easily disposed of, for God seems to have them under his special watch-caret o make of them instruments of his vengeance." 

I sense that we're getting to know the Count a bit more in these chapters, as Dumas shows him voicing his reflections, his inner feelings. Just a bit. In the backyard at Auteuil, with melancholy:

"I have no fear of ghosts, and I have never heard it said that so much harm had been done by the dead during six thousand years as is wrought by the living in a single day." 

And later, we're now privy to his thoughts about his upcoming plans: "Excellent," murmured the Count of Monte Cristo to himself, as he came away. "All has gone according to my wishes. The domestic peace of this family is henceforth in my hands. Now then, to play another master stroke, by which I shall gain the heart of both husband and wife—delightful!" 

With Danglars making his appearance, it's fun to see Dumas use outward appearance to reflect his inner, malicious character. I suppose it's not right; outer appearance doesn't reflect inner character, but all the same, he's just so visual in his decriptions of Danglars that it's over the top. He creates a caricature of a villain. His glance is "cunning," his lips "drawn in over the teeth," and "his cheekbones were broad and projecting, a never-failing proof of audacity and craftiness." 

Though he's hardly unbiased, the Count says, "How comes it that all do not retreat in aversion at the sight of that flat, receding, serpentlike forehead, round, vulture-shaped head, and sharp-hooked nose, like the beak of a buzzard?" 

Day 24: Chapters 49-50 (Ideology/Haidee)

I wasn't quite sure what Dumas was doing when Villefort visits the Count, but I think that he wrote the Count as completely over the top so that he came off as a nonsensical egotist who thinks he's basically some sort of super-being. The Count is an "invisible or exceptional being" blessed by God and he tells Villefort that he is one of these "marked and invisible beings." Villefort is nonplussed by this man who is uber-rich but doesn't conform to the societal niceties and is completely eccentric, perhaps mad. And he tells Villefort that he has made a deal with Satan, perhaps sacrificing his soul to become "an agent of Providence." 

The chapter ends with Villefort mentioning his father Noirtier, who did evil in his life, and has been struck down by a stroke, while Villefort is enjoying excellent fortune. 

"What is your deduction from this compensation, sir?" inquired Monte Cristo. 

"My deduction is," replied Villefort, "that my father, led away by his passions, has committed some fault unknown to human justice, but marked by the justice of God. That God, desirous in his mercy to punish but one person, has visited this justice on him alone." 

Monte Cristo, with a smile on his lips, uttered in the depths of his soul a groan which would have made Villefort fly but had he heard it.

I've been wondering if Monte Cristo will wreak vengeance on just the adults, or their children as well. This passage may provide a clue. 

As for Haidee, I can't quite figure out if this teenager is Monte Cristo's lover, or if it is a platonic father-daughter dynamic. I get the sense she's in love with him, but he seems to feel for her as if she was his kid. "I love you as a child." 

Day 25: Chapters 51-52 (The Morrel Family/Pyramus and Thisbe

Again, the setting is matched to the character, at the Morrel's home, "Everything in the charming retreat, from the warble of the birds to the smile of the mistress, breathed tranquility and repose." The Morrels' goodness and gratitude are so genuine and unexpected for the Count that he is completely moved. It was nice to see. He mentions a new character, Lord Wilmore, who may have been the Morrels' benefactor those years ago, another Edmond Dantes persona, I suspect. 

"Madame," replied Monte Cristo gravely, and gazing earnestly on the two liquid pearls that trickled down Julie's cheeks, "had Lord Wilmore seen what I now see, he would become attached to life, for the tears you shed would reconcile him to mankind." 

It seems that M. Morrel senior may have guessed something of Edmond's involvement, and it further seems that Julie may be on to him. 

The plot thickens with an unexpected connection between Valentine de Villefort and Maximilian Morrel. Pyramus and Thisbe are ill-fated lovers from Greek mythology who died and were probably an inspiration for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. 

Day 26: Chapters 53-54 (Toxicology/Robert Le Diable)

I kind of lost the thread of the particulars occasionally as Monte Cristo and Madame de Villefort talked poisons, but I get the overall gist: perhaps Madame will poison someone? "There are so many elixirs of every kind as there are caprices and peculiarities in the physical and moral nature of humanity, and I will say further—the art of these chemists is capable with the utmost precision to accommodate and proportion the remedy and the bane to yearnings for love and desires for vengeance. "

The Count also speaks a bit about his own situation in parallel to the matter at hand, and I always like that. "But suppose one pass, as is permissible in philology, from the word itself to its softened synonym, then, instead of committing an ignoble assassination you make an 'elimination;' you merely and simply remove from your path the individual who is in your way, and that without shock or violence, without the display of the sufferings which, in the case of becoming a punishment, make a martyr of the victim, and a butcher, in every sense of the word, of him who inflicts them. Then there will be no blood, no groans, no convulsions, and above all, no consciousness of that horrid and compromising moment of accomplishing the act—then one escapes the clutch of the human law, which says, 'Do not disturb society!'"

More insights into the characters. Eugenie Danglars seems an interesting sort, mannish by way of description and very artistic, devoted to music. She is one person who's not into Monte Cristo, and seems more interested in Haidee. Haidee, it seems, has found an enemy in the Count de Morcef. Monte Cristo's plan gets more and more complicated with each chapter. I imagine him with one of those big cork boards with pictures and notes and red yarn connecting them all as per a detective. Or these days, I suppose he  would have a master spreadsheet of vengeance.  

Day 27: Chapters55-56 (A Flurry in Stocks/Major Cavalcanti)

I'm guessing that Monte Cristo is setting the stage with young Albert and M. Debray for some sort of reverse-insider trading that will lose Madame Danglars a fortune and teach her a lesson. I sense someone will be out a ton of money at some point due to Monte Cristo's scheming. 

Next on the scene is a new character, Major Cavalcanti, "a man who ranks among the most ancient nobility of Italy, whose name Dante has celebrated in the tenth canto of The Inferno..."

I'm not even sure what to make of the chapter "Major Cavalcanti." My best take is that the Major is actually who he says he is (at some point I thought he might be an actor being coached by Monte Cristo) but is perhaps befuddled or in the early stages of dementia, and is being fed information by the Count as to his role to play in society. Is the story about a lost son real? Fake? Who knows? 

In Dante's Inferno, Cavalcante de Cavalcanti, the father of one of Dante's real-life best friends Guido, is in the 6th circle of hell where heretics are punished. Cavalcanti the elder asks Dante the character where his son is and misinterprets Dante's words to mean that his son is dead. I suppose this may relate directly to the story here! 

Day 28: Break

Day29: Chapters 57-59 (Andrea Cavalcanti/In the Lucerne Patch/M.Noirtier de Villefort)

Aha! I was right to be suspicious of those Cavalcantis. They're just some morally and financially strapped guys who will play-act as the Cavalcanti men. That was so cleverly written by Dumas; keeping us all guessing. I cannot wait to see the mayhem that they create on Saturday at the Count's country house. 

Valentine is not as taken with Monte Cristo as Maximillian is. Maximillian says, "I feel as if it were ordained that this man should be associated with all the good which the future may have in store for me, and sometimes it really seems as if his eye was able to see what was to come, and his hand endowed with the power of directing events according to his own will." And a few paragraphs later: "This man evidently possesses the power of influencing events, both as regards men and things. I never saw more simple tastes united to greater magnificence." 

Dumas does quite a job of describing M. Noirtier, the victim of a stroke, who can only see and hear, and uses his piercing looks and eye movements to communicate. 

"...the look by which he gave expression to his inner life was like the distant gleam of a candle which a traveler sees by night across some desert place, and knows that a living being dwells beyond the silence and obscurity....In short, his whole appearance produced on the mind the impression of a corpse with living eyes..."

Noirtier loves his granddaughter Valentine fiercely, and I'm curious what he'll do once the notary he's asked for shows up. 

Day 30: Chapters 60-62 (The Will/The Telegraph/How a Gardener May Get Rid of the Dormice That Eat His Peaches

I do love this system of communication that M. Noirtier uses with Valentine, and ends up writing a whole new will despite that fact that he's only got his eyes to communicate with. And now that there's much talk of Franz d'Epinay, I'm quite looking forward to seeing him arrive in Paris for a re-entry into the story. What will happen in the Valentine-Maximillian-Franz triangle? I can't wait to find out. 

Doesn't it ring true that sometimes we just don't want to know how modern gadgets work? I have little idea how my laptop actually produces the document I'm typing now, and I'm sure I don't care too much. Perhaps it's enough to know that I could learn if I wanted to. The Count loves the mystery of the telegraph, a new technology in his time. He fancies the telegraph stations as occupied by "genies, sylphs, gnomes, in short of all the ministers of occult sciences..." He wants to visit a telegraph station, but only a rural one, run by a "simpleton," who will not lecture him on the way it works.

"The moment I understand there will no longer exist a telegraph for me; it will be nothing more than a sign from M. Duchatel, or from M. Montalivet, transmitted to the prefect of Bayonne, mystified by two Greek words, tele, graphein. It is the insect with black claws, and the awful word which I wish to retain in my imagination in all its purity and all its importance." 

On to a chapter that I loved! I love the gardener/telegraph worker, because I love to grow veggies, and I totally get the consternation of mice and rats and racoons eating my veg. The gardener is counting his strawberries, not one unaccounted for. He eats the half of the nectarine that the mice didn't ravage. I've done the same metric with, for example, a cucumber from my garden that's had a few bites taken out of it. I think I may have taken the bargain that this man did too, for a chance at gardening bliss with a nice plot of land.  And Monte Cristo has saved the gardener from dormice while dealing an initial blow to Danglars. 

Day 31: Chapters 63-64 (Ghosts/The Dinner)

The house at Auteuil has been transformed, but not so much so that M. de Villefort and Madame Danglars are not uneasy. And I was wondering when our no-good Benedetto was going to show up! 

At dinner with the assorted guests, I get the sense that this is truly the beginning of our journey with Monte Cristo in observing the fruit of all his preparations. The dinner itself was described magnificently, all the guests in awe of the preparations and exoticism. In answer to the guests' amazement at the food, he says: 

"Gentlemen...you will admit that, when arrived at a certain degree of fortune, the superfluities of life are all that can be desired; and the ladies will allow that, after having risen to a certain eminence of position, the ideal alone can be more exalted. Now, to follow out this reasoning, what is the marvelous?—that which we do not understand. What is it that we really desire?—that which we cannot obtain."

Later, Monte Cristo is describing his feelings about one particular room in his new home, that is quite dramatic and evokes a gloomy feeling in him. It's a bedchamber: 

"There was, above all, one room," continued Monte Cristo, "very plain in appearance, hung with red damask, which, I know not why, appeared to me quite dramatic." 

"Why so?" said Danglars; "why dramatic?"

"Can we account for instinct?" said Monte Cristo. "Are there not some places where we seem to breathe sadness?—why, we cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections—an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places—which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place." 

There's something Shakespearean about the whole thing: so many players, so many past sins, so many secrets. The stage is set!  

Day 32: Chapters 65-66 (The Beggar/A Conjugal Scene)

It seems that Caderousse is a bad penny that keeps turning up; I didn't really think we'd see him again, but I really should have known better by now. I'm slightly puzzled as to how he knows the evil child-turned disreputable young man Benedetto/Andrea Cavalcanti but they clearly are familiar with one another. Caderousse will demand his share of Benedetto's newly found wealth. "Don't be angry, my boy; you know well enough what it is to be unfortunate, and misfortunes make us jealous." Thus, he demands and acquires favours from Benedetto. 

The scene between M. and Madame Danglars was enlightening, mostly because it gave another intimate glimpse into the social politics of the time, and specifically into marital mores amongst a certain class. I wonder if the "looking the other way" with respect to extra-marital affairs and relationships is as Dumas writes here. Particularly, with respect to Madame Danglars and her liaison with Dubray. All this insider trading, too! The Danglars engage in such mundane but awful unlawfulness. 

I keep running across sentences in which Dumas drops cultural references and names, and I have to wonder if his readers in the 1840s would just understand all of them. I don't, and it would take me twice as long if I looked all of them up. Today, I read this sentence as Danglars talks about his financial woes and Madame Danglars tells him to "keep your ill humour at home in your money boxes." 

"My money boxes are my Pactolus, as, I think, M. Demoustier says, and I will not retard its course, or disturb its calm." 

I researched that Pactolus is a river in Turkey that in ancient times was known to carry gold particles and provided riches to the kingdom of Lydia. It plays a central role in the myth of King Midas. M. Demoustier was more difficult to trace. I think it must be Charles-Albert Demoustier, who wrote Lettres à Emilie sur la mythologie in 1798, but I can find no more on the subject. 

Day 33: Chapters 67-68 (Matrimonial Projects/ At the Office of the King's Attorney)

Danglars has money troubles, and Monte Cristo observes him with some concern: 

"You look careworn; really, you alarm me. Melancholy in a capitalist, like the appearance of a comet, presages some misfortune to the world."  

Then, he proceeds to insult Danglars while lecturing him on economic theory, calling the banker a "third-rate fortune." When Danglars protests, the Count conceeds that maybe his is a second-rate fortune after all! 

Madame Danglars, in the meantime, visits M. de Villefort, who tells her that her infant born so many years ago at the house at Auteuil may be alive. 

"It is true, then that our actions leave their traces—some sad, others bright—on our paths; it is true that every step in our lives is like the course of an insect on the sands—it leaves its track! Alas, to many the ptqh is traced by tears." 

And now, Villefort pales as he begins to suspect that the Count of Monte Cristo may know more than any of them had realised. "Well, I understand what I now have to do," replied Villefort. "In less than one week from this time I will ascertain who this M. de Monte Cristo is, whence he comes, where he goes, and why he speaks in our presence of children that have been disinterred in a garden." 

Day 34: Chapters 69-70 (A Summer Ball/The Inquiry)

I'm still not sure how Monte Cristo feels towards young Albert de Morcerf. As Albert returns to Paris after a few days away, the Count acts standoffish and a bit cold to him, but still councils the young man about his unwanted engagement to Eugenie Danglars. And it appears Franz is coming back to Paris! As for Mercedes, the Comtesse de Morcerf, Albert assures him that she views him most favourably though she has no idea about his particulars. 

"Then I am also a puzzle to your mother? I should have thought her too reasonable to be led by imagination."

A problem, dear count, for everyone—for my mother as well as others; much studied but not solved, you still remain an enigma, do not fear." 

This leads into the next chapter, where Villefort is pursuing the truth behind Monte Cristo's past, and his connection to the Auteuil house. Now Monte Cristo has a new name: he was "Zaccone" in his youth, according to abbé Busoni and Lord Wilmore. As these are both Edmond Dantes, I had a fun time imagining him running from place to place to play his roles and making up various histories for the Count that contradict one another. Villefort comes away reassured, but no more certain about Monte Cristo's past. 

This is a picture from The Inquiry chapter on Project Gutenberg, and it must be of Lord Wilmore, though the picture is not labelled. 

Day 35: Break:

Day 36: Chapters 71-73 (The Ball/Bread and Salt/Madame de Saint-Meran)

The most exciting parts of The Ball and Bread and Salt are the interaction between Mercedes and Monte Cristo. It feels slightly different than saying "between Mercedes and Edmond," for is Edmond even truly present anymore? Some passages make me think so. When Mercedes offers her arm to go out into the garden: 

"Turning towards Monte Cristo, she added, "Count, will you oblige me with your arm?"

The count almost staggered at these simple words; then he fixed his eyes on Mercedes. It was only a glance, but it seemed to the countess to have lasted for a century, so much was expressed in that one look. 

They walk the grounds, and she urges him to eat some of the fruit from the greenhouse; he refuses. Then they talk about their history: of love lost, of betrayal and disappointment...but all in parallel to actual events. I don't know, I am not certain that Mercedes knows who he is, as they were speaking privately and could have let the truth come out. But she might. 

Though Villefort's fears had been assuaged by his inquiries into the Count's past, he's still suspicious. He has a long list of enemies, but still cannot see how Monte Cristo could know his secrets. He cannot think how any of his enemies would wait so many years to extract revenge anyhow. I think he will continue to investigate Monte Cristo, and I wonder how close to the truth he will get. 

Day 37: Chapters 74-76 (The Promise/The Villefort Family Vault/A Signed Statement)

This scene with Maximilian and Valentine was so dramatic, and I had to roll my eyes at Max's behaviour towards Valentine's decision to go along with the marriage to Franz that she so dreads. She sees no way out of it; he wants her to flee her family and go to his sister's house, where they will marry. And when Valentine says she cannot, he threatens suicide. It is a fantastic example of a most manipulative passive-aggressive stance; I could picture Maximilian saying his lines: 

"I will, then, wait until the last moment, and when my misery is certain, irremediable, hopeless...at the corner of some wood, on the brink of some abyss, on the bank of some river, I will put an end to my existence, as certainly as I am the son of the most honest man who ever lived in France." 

...and then looking sideways at Valentine's horror, checking to see if he has changed her mind. I can imagine Dumas wrote it as intending Maximilian as being very sincere, but that's just not the way I read it. 

And, of course, Valentine does change her mind, and will resist marrying Franz! 

Poison rears it's head again: perhaps Madame de Saint-Meran has been murdered, and Villefort will hide the fact. It all leads to an expedited marriage for Valentine and Franz, but at the last minute M. Noirtier has an ace up his sleeve, a letter about Franz' father from 1815 that may change Franz's appetite for the marital union. 

Day 38: Chapters 77-78 (Progress of Cavalcanti the Younger/Haidee)

Monte Cristo seems to have set the stage for M. Danglars to desire young Cavalcanti as a suitor for his daughter, in place of Albert de Morcerf. Danglars comes off as very shallow, and he certainly has a keen eye for anything that will make his family richer. As he speaks with Monte Cristo about Cavalcanti, the count comes off as more cautious. 

"Now I beg of you, don't go off your head. It's a month now you have been thinking of this marriage, and you must see that it throws some responsibilty on me, for it was at my house you met this young Cavalcanti, whom I do not really know at all." [says the Count]

"But I do." [Danglars]

"Have you made inquiry?"

"Is there any need of that! Does not his appearance speak for him? And he is very rich."

In the next chapter, we hear the tragic story of Haidee, and the betrayal of her father at the hands of the French soldier (who we know is Albert's father Fernand). Albert is sympathetic, but none the wiser that his father betrayed her father. At the end of the story, Monte Cristo comforts her: 

Monte Cristo arose and approached her, took her hand, and said to her in Romaic, "Calm yourself, my dear child, and take courage in remembering that there is a God who will punish traitors."

Given that we know Monte Cristo's low opinion on how God adequately punishes the guilty, I take from this remark that Monte Cristo is himself the god who will avenge Haidee. 

Day 39: Chapters 79-80 (We Hear From Yanina/The Lemonade)

Engagements broken everywhere: Valentine and Franz are over, and we'll see if Maximilian Morrel can take the honour of being Valentine's new fiancé. Eugenie Danglars seems fated not to marry Albert de Morcerf, for when her father Fernand visits his friend Danglars, M. Danglars tries to—kind of—call the whole thing off. He wants young Andrea Cavalcanti's fortune, but doesn't want to come out and say it. I feel Morcerf's frustration as Danglars won't just say what he means: 

"These are all so many empty words, my dear sir," said Morcerf; "they might satisfy a new acquaintance, but the Comte de Morcerf does not rank in that list; and when a man like him comes to another, recalls to him his plighted word, and this man fails to redeem the pledge, he has at least the right to exact from him a good reason for so doing." 

Later, I was taken with the description of young Morrel arriving at Valentine's home: "On arriving at the house, Morrel was not even out of breath ,for love lends wings to our desires." 

But all is not well in the Villefort household, as another individual falls to poison. The doctor notes, "People die very suddenly in your house, M. de Villefort." 

I had a look at brucine, the compound that everyone seems to be poisoned with in the book, and found this article. It gives more information that you'll ever need or want to know about brucine, but if you skip to the latter sections it discusses the uses as a poison, and the remedies. It also mentions brucine in literature and talks about The Count of Monte Cristo. 

Article on brucine (grokipedia). 

Day 40: Chapters 81-82 (The Accusation/The Room of the Retired Baker)

The doctor M. D'Avrigny is so dramatic, but I suppose I might be too if I was the attending physician at a house where people kept falling dead. He's discovered a serial killer:

"Well, sir, you have in your establishment, or in your family, perhaps, one of the frightful monstrosities of which each century produces only one. Locusta and Agrippina, living at the same time, were an exception, and proved the determination of Providence to effect the entire ruin of the Roman empire, sullied by so many crimes...All these women had been, or were, beautiful. The same flower of innocence had flourished, or was still flourishing, on their brow, that is seen on the brow of the culprit in your house." 

I'll admit I somehow didn't see this coming: "Mademoiselle de Villefort is the culprit—she is the poisoner!" The treachery of—I think—Madame de Villefort is the real poison here. 

When young Cavalcanti/Benedetto meets up with the avaricious Caderousse again, I had to laugh as he drew up an exact floor plan of Monte Cristo's house for Caderousse. Watching Caderousse break in to the Count's house should be fun! 

Day 41: Chapters 83-84 (The Burglary/The Hand of God)

These two chapters taken together were the perfect way to end this week of reading. Wow! 

"From his past life, from his resolution to shrink from nothing, the count had acquired an inconceivable relish for the contests in which he had engaged, sometimes against nature, that is to say, against God, and sometimes against the world, that is, against the devil."

I enjoyed the abbé's and Caderousse's discussion about God as Caderousse lay dying. Caderousse is a non-believer, but the abbé/Monte Cristo tries to make him see that "God" (in quotes because I'm not sure if Monte Cristo is a believer) has given Caderousse so many opportunities to redeem himself— has been quite forgiving to him all these years—and Caderousee has failed to live up to these chances time and time again. Monte Cristo conflates himself with God: 

"Silence," said the abbé; "you will force the last drop of blood from your veins. What! You will not believe in God when he is striking you dead? You will not believe in him, who requires but a prayer, a word, a tear, and he will forgive?" 

Finally Monte Cristo whispers his true identity to Caderousse. Interestingly, Dumas does not let us, the readers, hear the words: "And his almost closed lips uttered a name so low that the count himself appeared afraid to hear it." 

The chapter ends with the first of Monte Cristo's enemies struck down, and what he utters now would strike fear into the hearts of the others, if they had any inkling of what was to come: 

"One!" said the count mysteriously, his eyes fixed on the corpse, disfigured by so awful a death.

Day 42: Break

*Note* For the rest of the readalong, I'm reading two chapters per day

Day 43: Chapters 85-86 (Beauchamp/The Journey)

Taken together, for me the most important theme in these chapters is the debate of whether the sins of the father should be visited on their children. There are differing points of view. It's been a question that I've been pondering as I read this book. Certainly, Monte Cristo is using the children of his enemies as pawns in his grand plan of revenge, but I'm not sure where his limit is. 

Beauchamp, returning from Yanina with news that Fernand de Morcerf is indeed the individual who betrayed the Ali Pasha, tells a horrified Albert: 

"I hastened to you," continued Beauchamp, "to tell you, Albert, that in this changing age, the faults of a father cannot revert upon his children. Few have passed through this revolutionary period, in teh midst of which we were born, without some strain of infamy or blood to soil the uniform of the soldier, or the gown of the magistrate."

Later, when Albert has journeyed to Normandy for a short vacation with the Count, and is delivered a letter containing a new newspaper article that explicitly names his father as the betrayer in Yanina, Albert is overcome. 

"Albert opened the letter with fear, uttered a shriek on reading the first line, and seized the paper. His sight was dimmed, his legs sank under him, and he would have fallen had not Florentin supported him. 

"Poor young man," said Monte Cristo in a low voice; "it is then true that the sin of the father shall fall on the children to the third and fourth generation." 

It's become more apparent that the children won't be spared, with Valentine marked as a poisoner, Albert's reputation on the edge of ruin, and Eugenie set to marry her half-brother Benedetto/Cavalcanti (who is also a murderer, and very poor). Perhaps they won't pay the ultimate price, but the road will not be easy for them.