The Count of Monte Cristo

by Alexandre Dumas

  3. Adamastor: A giant who guarded the Cape of Good Hope, invented by the Portuguese poet Camöes in his epic, The Lusiads (V, 39–40).

  4. Bourgeois Gentilhomme: A reference to Molière’s play, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (IV, 3), where the central character, Monsieur Jourdain, is amazed when confronted by a man, supposed to be a Turk, who says the words ‘bel-men’, which are interpreted as meaning: ‘You must go with him to prepare for the ceremony and then see your daughter and conclude her marriage.’ ‘What!’ Jourdain exclaims. ‘All that in two words!’

  5. The Huguenots: An opera, with music by Meyerbeer and libretto by Eugène Scribe and Emile Deschamps (1836).

  6. yataghan: A Turkish sword.

  7. Appert: Benjamin-Nicholas-Marie Appert (1797–?), whom Dumas had known in the early 1820s, when both were employed by the Duc d’Orléans, and a philanthropist who devoted himself to aiding convicts; not the now better-known Nicholas Appert (1750–1841), inventor of a process for preserving food. The man in the blue cloak is Edmé Champion (1764–1852), a diamond merchant who devoted his later years to relief of the poor.

  XXXIII

  ROMAN BANDITS

  1. moccoletti: Little candles.

  2. affettatore: Rogue, swindler.

  3. Corneille’s ‘Qu’il morût…’: In Pierre Corneille’s play Horace (III, 4), where the hero’s old father says unhesitatingly that his son should have died rather than (as he believes) sacrifice his honour – in the event, the younger Horace turns out to have had a cleverer plan than his father gave him credit for.

  4. Florian: Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–94), the author of sentimental romances.

  5. Léopold Robert or Schnetz: Both the Swiss artist Léopold Robert (1794–1835) and the French painter Jean-Victor Schnetz (1787–1870) were pupils of David and painted scenes of the Roman countryside.

  6. Avernus: The entry to Hell, according to Virgil (see Aeneid, VI, line 126).

  XXXIV

  AN APPARITION

  1. Martial: Roman poet (c. AD 40–104), famous for his epigrams. The reference here is to his De Spectaculis: his praise of the Colosseum was well rewarded by the Emperors Titus and Domitian.

  2. Parisina: From a poem by Byron, with music by Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848), who was also the composer of Lucia di Lammermoor, from Scott’s novel, The Bride of Lammermoor. Parisina (1833) tells of the love of Parisina (sung by La Spech) for Ugo (Napoleone Moriani), the illegitimate son of her husband, Azzo (Domenico Coselli). Dumas met Coselli in Naples in 1835.

  3. Countess G—: It is clear from the manuscript that Dumas is thinking of Byron’s mistress, Countess Teresa Guiccioli.

  4. Lord Ruthwen: The short novel, Lord Ruthwen, or The Vampire (first published in 1819 in the New Monthly Magazine), was written by Byron’s companion and physician, Dr Polidori, who did not discourage the attribution to the poet himself. It was soon translated into French by Henri Faber (1819) and again by Amédée Pichot (1820), and helped to fuel an extraordinary vogue for vampire stories and melodramas, including Cyprien Bérard’s Lord Rutwen, and the melodrama Le Vampire (1820), co-authored by Charles Nodier. Dumas saw this in 1823 and devoted several chapters to it in his memoirs (3rd series, 1863).

  Nodier’s play was promptly re-translated into English by James Planché, as The Vampire, or The Bride of the Isles (1820), and before the end of the same year in France there had been at least five other vampire productions on the Parisian stage: a burlesque, a farce, a comic opera, a vampire Punch and a ‘vaudeville folly’ in which one character says: ‘Vampires! They come from England… That’s another nice present those gentlemen have sent us!’ Nodier observed that ‘the myth of the vampire is perhaps the most universal of our superstitions’. It revived, of course, with Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1899); and lives on in our own century in a medium which might be said to feature only the shadowy figures of the Undead – the cinema.

  5. the Do-Nothing Kings: ‘Les Rois Fainéants’, the name given to a succession of minors in the Merovingian dynasty, during the seventh and eighth centuries, who ruled through regents.

  6. guzla: A Balkan musical instrument, like a violin with only one or two strings. The writer Prosper Mérimée (1803–70) published a collection of supposedly Illyrian songs, La Guzla (1827), under the pseudonym Hyacinthe Maglanowich, both as a satire and as a tribute to the vogue for the East and its folklore.

  XXXV

  LA MAZZOLATA

  1. Comte de Chalais: Chalais was beheaded in 1626 for plotting against Cardinal Richelieu. The execution was carried out, very inexpertly, by another condemned man.

  2. Castaing: The poisoner Dr Edmé-Samuel Castaing was executed in 1823; Dumas attended the trial (and may have used some details of the evidence in Chapter LII), but he did not watch the execution. In fact, neither did Albert, since, according to the internal evidence of the book, he would only have been six years old at the time (and not, as he claims here, leaving college).

  XXXVI

  THE CARNIVAL IN ROME

  1. Callot: Jacques Callot (1592–1635), painter and engraver.

  2. The Bear and the Pasha: The actor Jacques-Charles Odry (1779–1853) played the role of Marécot in Scribe’s vaudeville The Bear and the Pasha (1820).

  3. L’Italiana in Algeri: Rossini’s opera, first performed in 1813.

  4. Didier or Antony: Didier is the hero of Victor Hugo’s Marion Delorme, which was first performed in 1831, at the same theatre as Dumas’ own play Antony. Though Dumas himself defended Hugo against the charge, Hugo was accused by some of imitating Dumas’ play, since both central characters are characteristic examples of the doomed Romantic hero.

  5. Gregory XVI: Pope from 1831 to 1846. Dumas was granted an audience with him in 1835 and (as this passage and his account elsewhere show) was favourably impressed.

  6. Manfred… Lara’s head-dress: Manfred and Lara are two of the most Romantic figures in Byron’s work.

  7. forty at least: Dumas is sometimes inaccurate about dates, and also deliberately vague about the count’s age. In fact, on the evidence of the novel, Monte Cristo was born in 1796. It is now 1838, so he is forty-two.

  8. Aeolus: God of storms and winds.

  XXXVIII

  THE RENDEZ-VOUS

  1. Aguado… Rothschild: Alejandro-Maria Aguado, Marquis of Las Marimas del Guadalquivir (1784–1842), was a Spanish financier who opened a bank in Paris in 1815. The French branch of the Rothschild family was founded by James de Rothschild, but Dumas might be thinking of Charles de Rothschild (1788–1855), whom he had met.

  2. Colomba: A novel by Prosper Mérimée, the author of Carmen and one of the writers who had done most to popularize Spanish and Corsican subjects, in which the local colour is provided mainly by the characters’ fierce courage and sense of honour. Colomba was not published until 1840, so Morcerf’s reference to it in 1838 is an anachronism.

  3. Prix Montyon: A prize for virtuous conduct awarded by the Institut de France.

  XXXIX

  THE GUESTS

  1. Grisier, Cooks, and Charles Leboucher: Auguste-Edmé Grisier ran a fencing school; Dumas wrote the preface to his Les Armes et le duel (1847). Cooks had a gymnasium, and Leboucher was a boxing master.

  2. Don Carlos of Spain: Claimant to the Spanish throne, on the death of his brother, Ferdinand VII, in 1833. He and his followers (the Carlists) fought against Isabella II but were defeated; Carlos fled to France in 1839 and was interned in Bourges. In 1844 he renounced his own claim in favour of his son and spent the remaining eleven years of his life in Austria.

  3. Béranger: Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857) was the author of light-hearted and mildly satirical songs and verses, who succeeded in upsetting the Restoration government. The phrase Lucien has just used is taken from his Chansons.

  4. Constantine: The Algerian city was captured in 1837, after an unsuccessful attempt in the previous year.

  5. yataghan: See note 6 to Chapter XXXI.

  6. Klagmann… Marochett
i: Jean-Baptiste-Jules Klagmann (1810–67) was a sculptor who helped Dumas to decorate his Théâtre Français in 1846–7. Charles Marochetti (1805–62) was a well-known sculptor.

  7. Prix Montyon: See note 3 to Chapter XXXVIII.

  8. Mehmet Ali: Mehmet Ali (1769–1849), an Albanian officer, was sent to Egypt to oppose the French in 1798 and was later made viceroy. His rebellion against the Turks during the 1830s was supported by France but not by Britain.

  9. the Casauba: The Casbah, a fortified citadel.

  10. ‘Punctuality… sovereigns claimed’: The remark is attributed to Louis XVIII.

  XL

  BREAKFAST

  1. eighty-five départements: The administrative districts into which France was divided after 1790. To begin with there were eighty-three, later increased by the addition of Corsica and three départements in Algeria. By the late twentieth century, after various administrative reorganizations and the loss of Algeria and other former colonies, the number stood at ninety-six in Metropolitan France and five overseas départements (Martinique, Guyane, Guadeloupe, Réunion and St Pierre-et-Miquelon).

  XLI

  THE INTRODUCTION

  1. Dupré… Delacroix… vanished with earlier centuries: Apart from Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), these artists are now largely forgotten. However, most were friends or acquaintances of Dumas, so the list is intended to demonstrate Morcerf’s good taste in his choice of contemporary art.

  2. Léopold Robert: See note 5 to Chapter XXXIII. Incidentally, according to the internal chronology of the novel, Mercédès would have been thirty-two, not ‘twenty-five or twenty-six’ in 1830, when Albert says the portrait was made.

  3. Gros: Jean-Antoine Gros (1771–1835), also a pupil of David, specialized in historical and battle scenes.

  4. d’Hozier and Jaucourt: Two genealogists known for their encyclopedic learning and erudite industry. Pierre d’Hozier (1592–1660) wrote a genealogy of leading French families in 150 volumes, which was continued by his son and grand-nephew. Louis de Jaucourt (1704–79) wrote on genealogy for the Encyclopédie.

  XLII

  MONSIEUR BERTUCCIO

  1. ‘I was almost made to wait’: Louis XIV’s famous rebuff to a courtier who arrived insufficiently early.

  XLIV

  THE VENDETTA

  1. the Hundred Days: See note 1 to Chapter VI.

  XLVI

  UNLIMITED CREDIT

  1. Albano and Fattore: The Italian painters Francesco Albano (1488–1528) and Giovanni Francesco Penni, known as ‘Il Fattore’ (1578–1660).

  2. Thorwaldsen, Bartolini, or Canova: Neo-classical artists, who were not in favour with the Romantics: Bertel Thorwaldsen (1768–1844) was Danish, Lorenzo Bartolini (1777–1850) and Antonio Canova (1757–1822) were Italians.

  XLVII

  THE DAPPLE-GREYS

  1. Antiquity – as interpreted by the Directoire: The Directoire was the regime in power from 1795 to 1799, in which executive power was exercised by a five-member ‘directorate’, elected by the legislature. As a whole the revolutionary period saw a succession of attempts to discover aesthetic styles appropriate to a non-monarchical regime, usually by adapting motifs from republican Greece or Rome. Like the Neo-classicism of Thorwaldsen and Canova, this had gone out of fashion by the 1830s, and Danglars’ enjoyment of it is a sign of his lack of taste.

  2. Rousseau: The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) was the author of an enormously influential treatise on education, Emile (1762). He recommended a method that both relied on the influence of nature and required a fairly strict regime. He would not have approved of Madame de Villefort’s mollycoddling of her obnoxious son.

  3. Ranelagh: A public dance-hall, opened in 1774.

  XLVIII

  IDEOLOGY

  1. the senior or junior branch of the royal family: The Bourbon dynasty reigned in France up to the Revolution and was the branch of the royal family restored in 1815. The younger princes of the royal blood had been Dukes of Orléans since the fourteenth century and, under the Revolution, one of these, Louis-Philippe-Joseph, known as Philippe-Egalité, supported the revolutionary cause. Philippe-Egalité died on the scaffold in 1793, but his son, also Louis-Philippe, remained a supporter of a moderate, liberal monarchy. At the Revolution of July 1830, the Bourbon king, Charles X, abdicated in his favour, and Louis-Philippe’s accession was greeted as heralding a new, constitutional monarchy (though, in the event, these expectations were disappointed). It is to this junior, Orléanist branch that the present pretenders to the French throne belong.

  2. Harlay… Molé: Two leading magistrates and presidents of the Paris parlement in the early seventeenth century.

  3. four revolutions: Villefort was born just before the Revolution of 1789, so he had lived through the revolutionary period, the Napoleonic Empire, the Restoration and the July Revolution of 1830. It is not clear whether Dumas counts the Napoleonic coup of 1799 as a ‘revolution’ or whether he means the First Restoration (1814) and the Second Restoration (1815) to be counted separately. The implication is clear: that Villefort has managed to benefit from every change of government.

  4. pede claudo: The full phrase is pede poena claudo; ‘punishment comes limping’, Horace, Odes, III, 2. That is: retribution will come slowly but surely – a good motto for Monte Cristo.

  5. Tobias: See Tobit 7:15, where the angel reveals himself.

  6. non bis in idem: The principle that a person cannot be tried twice for the same offence.

  7. carbonaro: See note I to Chapter VII.

  XLIX

  HAYDÉE

  1. say tu to me: Every European language except English (in which ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ have long been archaic except in some dialects) has kept the second person singular for use with intimates, close friends and relatives. English translations usually try to get round this in some way: ‘ “Why do you address me so coldly – so distantly?” ’ is the version given in the 1852 translation, but it makes very little sense here, because Monte Cristo has said only three words (four in the translation) since entering the room, which is frankly not enough to provide grounds for her accusation. The point is that one of the three words is the formal, second person plural, vous.

  L

  THE MORRELS

  1. Presse… Débats: La Presse, founded in 1836 by Emile de Girardin, was a liberal, popular newspaper, to which Dumas contributed. Le Journal des Débats (1789–1944) is one of the great newspapers in the history of French nineteenth-century journalism. The Count of Monte Cristo first appeared in it in serial form.

  LI

  PYRAMUS AND THISBE

  1. aristocracy of the lance… nobility of the cannon: That is to say, the pre-revolutionary aristocracy and those ennobled under Napoleon because of their service to the empire.

  LII

  TOXICOLOGY

  1. Mithridates, rex Ponticus: Mithridates VII (123–63 BC), King of Pontus in Asia Minor, who fought to defend his kingdom against the Romans, ‘fortified his constitution by drinking antidotes against the poison with which his enemies at court attempted to destroy him’ (Lemprière, Classical Dictionary). However, Monte Cristo is wrong in attributing this information to the historian Cornelius Nepos.

  2. Flamel, Fontana or Cabanis: Nicholas Flamel (1330–1418) was reputed to be an alchemist. Félix Fontana (1730–1805) studied poisons and the doctor Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis (1757–1808) gave the philosopher Condorcet the poison he used to escape the guillotine in 1794.

  3. Galland: Antoine Galland (1646–1715) made a celebrated translation of The Thousand and One Nights (1704–11).

  4. Desrues: Antoine Desrues (1734–77), a famous poisoner. A. Arnould told his story in the series of Crimes célèbres (1839–40), to which Dumas contributed.

  5. Borgias… Baron de Trenk: Famous poisoners, spies or adventurers. The Italian perfumer René was accused of poisoning the Prince de Condé; he and Ruggieri were agents of Catherine de’ Medici, and both feature in historical novels by
Dumas. Friedrich von der Trenck was guillotined as an Austrian spy in 1794.

  6. Magendie… Flourens: François Magendi (1783–1855) and Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens (1794–1867) were, respectively, a well-known anatomist and a well-known doctor.

  7. that paradox of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Rastignac, in Balzac’s novel Le Père Goriot (Chapter II), puts the question: ‘What would you do if you could become rich by killing an old mandarin in China, by the sole force of your will, without leaving Paris?’ He wrongly attributes the idea to Rousseau.

  LIII

  ROBERT LE DIABLE

  1. Mlles Noblet, Julia and Leroux: Three dancers who performed the ‘Ballet des Nonnes’ in Jacques Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le Diable (1831).

  2. Ali Tebelin: See note 3 to Chapter XXVII.

  LIV

  RISE AND FALL