Chapter 59: M. Noirtier de Villefort
While Maximilian and Valentine hold their secret tryst,
Villefort and his wife visit the room in their house in which Noirtier
lives with his devoted servant, Barrois. Noirtier’s stroke has left
him with only the powers of sight and hearing, so he is unable to
communicate with anyone but Villefort, Barrois, and Valentine. Valentine
is Noirtier’s sole happiness in life; because of her love and devotion, she
is able to read all of her grandfather’s thoughts and desires in
his eyes. Villefort and his wife break the news of Valentine’s engagement,
and Noirtier is silently enraged, since Franz’s father was his greatest
political enemy. Valentine is sent to comfort her grandfather, and
she confides in him that she does not want to marry Franz. Noirtier
vows that he will help Valentine escape her unwanted engagement.
Chapter 60: The Will
Noirtier summons a notary and rewrites his will. He provides
that if Valentine marries Franz, all of his inheritance will go
to the poor rather than to Valentine. Villefort is unmoved by his
father’s threat and refuses to call off Valentine’s engagement.
Chapter 61: The Telegraph
Downstairs, the Villeforts find Monte Cristo waiting for
them. Monte Cristo invites them to his upcoming dinner party and
tells them that he would like to visit a telegraph office. They
suggest that he visit the Spanish line, which is the busiest.
Chapter 62: The Bribe
Monte Cristo visits a remote telegraph post, where he
bribes the operator to pass along a false report. The next day,
Debray hurries to the Danglars household and tells Madame Danglars
that her husband must sell all of his Spanish bonds. Debray has
just learned—in advance because of his government position—of a
telegraph that came in announcing that a revolution is about to
break out in Spain.
Madame Danglars follows Debray’s advice. That evening’s newspaper
confirms the news about Spain, and Danglars saves a fortune as Spanish
bonds plummet. However, the following day the newspaper states that
the previous report of impending unrest was mistaken, stemming from
an improperly intercepted telegraph communication. Danglars ends
up losing one million francs.
Analysis: Chapters 54–62
The scene at the opera in Chapter 64 provides
a sharp juxtaposition of two opposing elements of The Count
of Monte Cristo. On one hand, the story is a fantastical
melodrama, with a vampirelike count, a beautiful Greek princess,
horrible betrayals, and breathtaking acts of revenge. On the other
hand, it is a highly realistic novel, depicting the customs, hypocrisies,
and everyday lives of French nobility. Dumas himself saw his novel
as essentially a tale of contemporary manners, taking great care
to provide the characters with real addresses, real restaurants,
and stores to frequent, along with behavior authentic to their social
status. Even the opera Monte Cristo attends is carefully chosen: Robert
Le Diable, an 1831 work by
Jacques Meyerbeer, is a performance that the upper crust of Dumas’s
time would certainly have turned out to see. Dumas even goes so
far in his realism as to engage in some mild social satire. He mocks
contemporary notions of propriety, for instance, by noting that
while it would have been considered a scandal if Madame Danglars
and her daughter had attended the opera alone, it is considered perfectly
appropriate for them to be accompanied by Madame Danglars’s lover,
Debray. Dumas’s impressive realism gives his novel a depth that
a mere melodrama would not possess.
