The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel by the French writer Alexandre Dumas. It was serialised from 1844 to 1846, then published in book form in 1846. It is one of his most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers (1844) and Man in the Iron Mask (1850). Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter, Auguste Maquet. It is regarded as a classic of both French and world literature.
The novel is set in France, Italy, and islands in the Mediterranean Sea during the historical events of 1815–1839, the era of the Bourbon Restoration through the reign of Louis Philippe I. It begins on the day when Napoleon left his first island of exile, Elba, beginning the Hundred Days period of his return to power. The historical setting is fundamental to the narrative. The Count of Monte Cristo explores themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy and forgiveness.
Edmond Dantès is a French nineteen-year-old first mate of a merchant ship. Arriving home from a voyage and set to marry his fiancée, Mercédès, he is falsely accused of treason. He is arrested and imprisoned without trial at the Château d’If, a grim island fortress off Marseille.
A fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria, correctly deduces that Dantès’s romantic rival Fernand Mondego, his envious crewmate Danglars and the double-dealing magistrate De Villefort are responsible for his imprisonment. Over the course of their long imprisonment, Faria educates the initially illiterate Dantès and, knowing himself close to death, inspires him to retrieve for himself a cache of treasure Faria had discovered.
After Faria dies, Dantès escapes and finds the treasure. Posing as a member of nobility, he concocts the title Count of Monte Cristo. Fabulously wealthy, powerful and mysterious, he enters the world of Parisian high society in the 1830s focused on vengeance.
Plot
Marseille and Château d’If
On the day in 1815 when Napoleon escapes from Elba, first mate Edmond Dantès sails the Pharaon into Marseille after the death of the captain, Leclère. On his deathbed, Leclère charged Dantès to deliver a package to General Bertrand (exiled with Napoleon) and a letter from Elba to Noirtier, a Bonapartist in Paris.
The ship’s owner, Morrel, decides to promote Dantès to captain. Dantès’s crewmate Danglars is jealous of this rapid promotion. On the eve of Dantès’s wedding to his Catalan fiancée, Mercédès, Danglars meets Fernand Mondego, Mercédès’s cousin and a rival for her affections.
Fernand and Danglars hatch a plot to anonymously accuse Dantès of being a Bonapartist. Dantès’s neighbour Caderousse is present; he too is jealous of Dantès, and although he objects to the plot, he becomes too drunk to prevent it. When Dantès is arrested on his wedding day, the cowardly Caderousse stays silent.
Villefort, the deputy crown prosecutor in Marseille, is Noirtier’s son. Villefort knows his political career would be ruined if it were known that his father is a Bonapartist, so Villefort destroys the letter and silences Dantès by sentencing him without trial to life imprisonment.
After six years of solitary imprisonment in the Château d’If, Dantès is on the verge of suicide. However, another prisoner, the Abbé Faria, an Italian scholarly priest, digs an escape tunnel that mistakenly ends in Dantès’s cell. The Abbé helps Dantès to deduce the culprits of his imprisonment.
Over the next eight years, Faria educates Dantès in languages, history, culture, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, and science. Knowing himself to be close to death from catalepsy and having grown fond of his pupil, Faria tells Dantès the location of a vast treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo. When Faria dies, Dantès takes Faria’s place in the burial sack, which guards throw into the sea.
Transformed identity and preparation
Dantès cuts through the sack and swims to a nearby island, where, claiming to be a shipwrecked sailor, he is rescued by Genoese smugglers. Months later, he locates and retrieves the treasure; he later purchases the island of Monte Cristo and the title of count from the Tuscan government.
Having sworn vengeance on Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort, Dantès returns to Marseille in search of information to accomplish his goal. Travelling as the Abbé Busoni, Dantès finds Caderousse, who regrets not intervening in Dantès’s arrest. Caderousse informs him that Mercédès eventually resigned herself to marrying Fernand.
He recounts that Dantès’s father died of starvation, and that Morrel tried unsuccessfully to secure Dantès’s release and save his father, but now Morrel is on the brink of bankruptcy. Both Danglars and Fernand have prospered greatly. Danglars became a speculator, amassed a fortune, married a wealthy widow, and became a baron.
Fernand served in the French Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Dantès rewards Caderousse with a diamond, but he does not disclose his real identity. Later, Caderousse negotiates the sale of the diamond to a jeweller, but he kills the jeweller to keep the diamond and the money. He is eventually arrested and sentenced to the galleys.
To rescue Morrel from bankruptcy, Dantès poses as a banker, buys Morrel’s debts, and gives him three months’ reprieve. At the end of the three months, Morrel is about to commit suicide, but learns that the debts have been mysteriously paid and that one of his lost ships has returned with a full cargo; it was secretly rebuilt and laden by Dantès.
Revenge
Dantès reappears nine years later, in 1838, as the mysterious, fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. Fernand is now the Count de Morcerf, Danglars is a baron and banker, and Villefort is a royal prosecutor.
In Rome, at Carnival time, Dantès befriends Viscount Albert de Morcerf, the son of Mercédès and Fernand. He arranges for Albert to be captured by the bandit Luigi Vampa (an ally of Dantès), and “rescues” the boy, earning his trust. Albert introduces the Count to Parisian high society. In his guise as the Count, Dantès meets Mercédès for the first time in 23 years and eventually makes the acquaintance of Danglars, Fernand and Villefort.
The Count purchases a home in Auteuil, a suburb of Paris. He has learnt from his servant Bertuccio that it is the home in which Villefort once had an extramarital affair with Danglars’s wife, who gave birth to a child that Villefort buried alive in order to cover up the affair. The infant was rescued by Bertuccio, named Benedetto, and raised by Bertuccio’s sister Assunta, but Benedetto turned to a life of crime as a young man, murdered Assunta, and was sentenced to the galleys.
Having impressed Parisian society with his wealth and air of mystery, the Count sets up the pieces for his revenge. He persuades Danglars to extend him a credit of six million francs. He discusses the properties of various poisons with Villefort’s second wife Heloïse and allows her to borrow some of his supply.
He allows his ward, Haydée—the exiled daughter of Ali Pasha of Janina, whom Dantès purchased from slavery—to see Fernand, recognising him as the man who betrayed and murdered her father and stole his fortune. Under the alias Lord Wilmore, Dantès frees Benedetto and Caderousse from the galleys; then he anonymously hires Benedetto to impersonate an Italian nobleman, Viscount Andrea Cavalcanti, and introduces him to Parisian society. Dantès manipulates the financial markets by bribing a telegraph operator to transmit a false message, causing Danglars to lose hundreds of thousands of francs.
Meanwhile, Villefort’s daughter Valentine is engaged to marry Albert’s friend Franz, but she is secretly in love with Morrel’s son Maximilien. Noirtier, her grandfather, induces Franz to break the engagement by revealing that Noirtier himself killed Franz’s father in a duel. Benedetto ingratiates himself to Danglars, who betroths his daughter Eugénie to him after canceling her engagement to Albert.
Caderousse blackmails Benedetto, threatening to reveal his past if he does not share his newfound wealth. Heloïse begins poisoning members of Villefort’s family, intending to ensure that all of the family’s wealth will be inherited by her son Édouard, rather than her stepdaughter Valentine. However, Noirtier secretly doses Valentine with a drug that will give her limited resistance to the poison.
Caderousse attempts to rob the Count’s house but is caught by “Abbé Busoni” and forced to write a letter to Danglars, exposing “Cavalcanti” as an impostor. When Caderousse leaves the estate, he is stabbed by Benedetto. Caderousse dictates a deathbed statement naming his killer, and the Count reveals his true identity to Caderousse before he dies.
The Count anonymously leaks to the newspapers Fernand’s betrayal of Ali Pasha. At the Chamber of Peers’ inquiry into the accusations, Haydée testifies against him as an eyewitness. Albert blames the Count for his father’s downfall and challenges him to a duel. The Count is later visited by Mercédès, who recognized him as Dantès upon their first meeting but chose not to say anything.
Mercédès begs Dantès to spare her son. He tells her of the injustices inflicted on him, but he agrees not to kill Albert. Realizing that Dantès intends to let Albert kill him, she reveals the truth to Albert, who makes a public apology to the Count. Albert and Mercédès disown Fernand, renounce their titles and wealth, and depart to begin new lives. Albert enlists as a soldier, while Mercédès lives alone in Dantès’s old house in Marseilles. Fernand confronts the Count of Monte Cristo, who reveals his identity. Fernand shoots himself.
At the party to celebrate “Cavalcanti”‘s engagement to Eugénie Danglars, the police arrive to arrest Benedetto for Caderousse’s murder. Benedetto flees, but he is arrested and returned to Paris. Eugénie (who is implied to be a lesbian) flees Paris with her girlfriend.
Valentine barely survives Héloïse’s first attempt to poison her, and Maximilien begs the Count to protect her from the unknown poisoner. He does so
