Book 38: The Count of Monte Cristo [100 Great Books]
Wait and hope
Alexandre Dumas was in his early forties when the first installment of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo appeared in the Journal des Débats in August, 1844. Work was going great for him at the time. The Three Musketeers was still being serialised in another paper. A team of collaborators, the most important of whom was Auguste Maquet, helped him produce a novel that ran for 139 installments through January of 1846 and gripped a French public still wandering, half-dazed, through the long aftermath of Napoleon, the Bourbon Restoration, and the July Revolution of 1830.
Plot
The novel opens in Marseille in February 1815, with nineteen-year-old Edmond Dantès, second mate of the merchant ship Pharaon, bringing the vessel into harbour after the sudden death of its captain. His safe return seems to secure everything before him. He is on the verge of being made captain, marrying the Catalan girl Mercédès, and settling into the steady life of a respected sailor.
Three men cannot bear this. Danglars, the ship’s accountant, wants the captaincy for himself. Fernand Mondego, Mercédès’s cousin, wants Mercédès. Caderousse, the tailor next door, wants only what such men always want, which is to be in the company of his betters when they fall. Together they compose an anonymous denunciation accusing Edmond of secretly carrying letters for Napoleon Bonaparte and place it in the hands of the local prosecutor.
