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“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.”
This passage appears in the parting
letter that Monte Cristo leaves for Maximilian in Chapter 117.
Monte Cristo offers this analysis of happiness as an explanation
for his allowing Maximilian to spend an entire month under the false
impression that his beloved, Valentine, is dead. Monte Cristo believes
that in order to experience ultimate happiness, Maximilian first
has to experience absolute despair, just as Monte Cristo himself
has. Monte Cristo suggests that only now that Maximilian has demonstrated
a willingness to die in order to be reunited with Valentine can
he truly appreciate living alongside her. It is clear that this
swing from ultimate despair to ultimate bliss not only pertains
to Maximilian but also to Monte Cristo, who has finally found ultimate
happiness in Haydée’s love, decades after the ultimate despair of
his days in prison. The notion Monte Cristo expresses here—that
of the necessary connection between ultimate misery and ultimate
joy—recalls one of the main ideas in
