on the fifth of June, 1829 and who wrote me on the fifth of September. He’s convinced it was the same person—unfortunately he didn’t dare speak to him.
MONTE CRISTO
An Englishman you say? He was English? Then wasn’t this Englishman a man that your father had done some great service to, and who with God’s advice, found this way of paying you?
MAXIMILIAN
Sister, sister, remember, I beg you that our father often told us “No it is not an Englishman who has given us this good fortune.”
MONTE CRISTO
Your father told you that, Mr. Morel?
MAXIMILIAN
Sir, my father saw a miracle in this act. My father believed in a benefactor who had returned from the grave to help us. Oh, what a touching superstition, sir, and although I didn’t believe it myself, I was far from wishing to destroy the idea in my father’s heart. Also, how many times did he dream whispering the name of a dear friend, a name of a lost friend and then near to death, as the approach of eternity gave his soul some enlightenment from the tomb, this thought which had never been questioned became a conviction, and his last words in dying were these, “Maximilian, it was Dantès.”
MONTE CRISTO
(very moved)
Dantès! Dantès!
JULIE
Maximilian, there’s another name unknown to the Count.
MAXIMILIAN
But all these details are of little interest, besides—
MONTE CRISTO
Oh, no, you are mistaken.
MAXIMILIAN
And sir, whoever feels compassion for the wretched cannot remain indifferent to the name I’ve just mentioned if he knew how much Dantès had suffered.
MONTE CRISTO
Ah! This—this man suffered greatly?
MAXIMILIAN
All that God, inexhaustible in his rage as in his benevolence, could pour in sorrows and agonies on a single head.
JULIE
Poor Edmond!
MONTE CRISTO
Truly?
MAXIMILIAN
Edmond Dantès was the first mate on a ship that my father owned. He was twenty, he was the most loyal, most pure, the most happy of men. Life smiled on him; he smiled back at life. Edmond adored his father, a fine old man—sweet and religious as in ancient times. He was affianced to a young Catalan girl—the most beautiful woman in Marseille—and she loved him with all her soul.
MONTE CRISTO
Ah!
JULIE
Wasn’t she named Mercédès?
MAXIMILIAN
Yes, Mercédès. A charming name, isn’t it, Count?
MONTE CRISTO
A charming name.
MAXIMILIAN
Edmond, after returning from a voyage had just been named Captain of a ship by my father. He shook hands with old Dantès. He was kissing the hand of his fiancée when police came to arrest him. He had been denounced to a magistrate as being part of a political plot. Denounced by whom? No one knew. They say this magistrate found the evidence against Edmond Dantès so strong that he sent him to the Château d’If. Alas, the prisoner was forgotten.
MONTE CRISTO
Ah! No one asked after him?
MAXIMILIAN
My father, our friends, all those who were interested in this poor young man. We demanded that he be brought to trial. We offered guarantees.
MONTE CRISTO
And this demand?
MAXIMILIAN
Was forgotten like the prisoner. Time went by. It left its black crepe on the family which had seen itself so happy. Dantès’ father succumbed first, every day expecting his son, calling for him every hour. At the end of his resources, too proud to ask, too wretched to wish to live, he shut himself up in his poor deserted house, and one night when the neighbors no longer heard him pacing upstairs, they went up—he was dead; dead of sorrow; dead of starvation.
MONTE CRISTO
(choking)
Oh!
MAXIMILIAN
As for poor Edmond’s fiancée, she succumbed—
MONTE CRISTO
(surprised)
She died?
MAXIMILIAN
No—she married and she left the province. This poor prisoner, they say he attempted to flee, and that in leaping from the height of the walls of the Château d’If, he was broken on the rocks. The sea swallowed his body. God kept the secret of his sorrows! It makes no difference, I am sure, that if Edmond had miraculously escaped from prison, from death, and found under other skies a new life, a new fortune, I am sure that the death of his old father and the betrayal of Mercédès are two memories which would have prevented him from ever being happy.
MONTE CRISTO
That’s very true. But what became of the magistrate whose severity caused all these misfortunes?
JULIE
Rich, honored in the first ranks of the magistrates.
MONTE CRISTO
Who is he then, Madame?
JULIE
He’s—
MAXIMILIAN
(quickly)
Sister, let’s forget, I beg you, sir, don’t mention names.
MONTE CRISTO
Mr. Maximilian is correct. That name pronounced aloud would reawaken God’s wrath.
MAXIMILIAN
Are you all right?
MONTE CRISTO
It’s nothing. The story of this
