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Villefort buries himself in work, building the case against Benedetto. On the day of the trial, he finally approaches Madame Villefort and makes clear that he knows she is a murderer. He tells his wife that he will not let her die on the scaffold, as that would bring shame to both himself and to his son. Villefort instead instructs her to take her own life, using the poison she used to commit her murders. If she has not done this by the time he returns from court, he warns, he will publicly denounce her and have the authorities execute her.
Benedetto’s trial is a major event, and all of the fashionable Parisians turn out at the courthouse to watch. During the trial, Benedetto announces that he is the son of Villefort. He tells the story of his birth—how his father buried him alive, how a man then stabbed Villefort and stole the box in which he was buried, and how he was taken in and raised by adoptive parents. The court asks for proof, but Villefort interrupts and declares himself guilty.
[H]e felt he had passed beyond the bounds of vengeance, and that he could no longer say, “God is for and with me.”
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On his way back home, Villefort regrets condemning his wife to death, realizing that he is no more innocent than she. He decides that he will let her live, and that they will flee France together. However, when he comes home, he finds that she has already followed his orders. In addition to killing herself, Madame Villefort has also killed Edward, unwilling to let her son live on without her.
Seeking solace, Villefort runs to see his father, Noirtier, who is accompanied by the Abbé Busoni. The Abbé reveals his true identity as Edmond Dantès. Grabbing him by the wrist, Villefort leads Dantès to the corpses of his wife and son, and he asks if Dantès’s vengeance is complete now. At the sight of the dead boy, Dantès’s face takes on a look of anguish. He tries to revive Edward with the powerful elixir that he uses earlier, but is unsuccessful. Dantès approaches Villefort in order to offer him comfort in the knowledge that Valentine is not really dead, but Villefort has apparently gone insane. For the first time, Dantès doubts the justice of the project he has been carrying out. Back at home, he tells Maximilian that they will leave Paris the next day.
The next day Maximilian goes to say goodbye to Julie and Emmanuel. Monte Cristo comes to pick up Maximilian, and they leave Paris together. As they go, Monte Cristo looks out over the city and declares his work of vengeance done.
Maximilian and Monte Cristo arrive in Marseilles in time to watch Albert board a ship bound for his military post in Africa. Maximilian goes to visit his father’s grave, while Monte Cristo pays a visit to Mercédès, who is now living in the small house that Louis Dantès once inhabited. Monte Cristo promises Mercédès that he will help her son in any way he can. Mercédès expresses passive resignation toward her ill fate, claiming that it must be God’s will. Monte Cristo chides her, reminding her that God created man with free will. Monte Cristo then meets Maximilian in the cemetery and tells him to wait in Marseilles in several days, since he must take care of some business in Italy.
Chapter 111 marks the second major turning point of The Count of Monte Cristo, the moment when Monte Cristo finally begins to doubt whether he is justified in taking the place of Providence. With Edward’s death, the seeds of discomfort that are sown in Chapter 95—when Monte Cristo realizes that he could easily have caused the death of the innocent Valentine—now bloom into full-fledged torment. Understanding that he has indirectly caused the end of an innocent life, Monte Cristo no longer feels that his actions are in total alignment with God’s will. Having buoyed himself all along with the belief that his mission is ordained by God, this blow to his confidence is enormous. Some versions of the novel include a scene in which Monte Cristo returns to the Château d’If, looking for a sign that his mission of vengeance was justified. He finds this sign in the form of the Abbé Faria’s manuscript, which begins with the biblical quote “Thou shalt tear out the teeth of the dragon and trample the lion’s underfoot, thus saith the Lord.” With this scene omitted, the justification for Monte Cristo’s mission is never confirmed, leaving Monte Cristo hovering in doubt as to the morality of his mission.
The last act Monte Cristo makes before plunging headlong into doubt is his attempt to revive Edward using his elixir. This potion, with its seemingly magical ability to heal, is a symbol for Monte Cristo’s hubris—his prideful belief that he, like his elixir, is capable of any feat. His hubris reaches its height in this scene, culminating in the assertion that his elixir actually gives him the power to bring a boy back to life. Of course, Monte Cristo is incapable of granting life, and his seemingly unassailable confidence in himself and his elixir is finally shaken.
Monte Cristo’s final conversation with Mercédès pits his active approach to life against her passive resignation, and the former clearly emerges victorious. When Mercédès declares that she has “become passive in the hands of the Almighty,” Monte Cristo counters that God does not approve of such resignation. Free will, Monte Cristo contends, is the thing that makes one human. Only by exercising one’s will, asserting one’s individual desires against the opposing forces of the world, can one please God. This conversation is tinged with a slightly accusatory undertone, since it is Mercédès’s passive resignation that led her to marry Fernand Mondego against her own better judgment and her own desires. Lacking the courage to resist, she resigned herself to the fate she saw spread out before her rather than struggle for what she really wanted and knew was right. In her passivity, Mercédès stands in stark contrast to Monte Cristo, Eugénie Danglars, and her own son, Albert, all of whom try to take an individual stand against fate rather than passively resign themselves to what the world offers them.
It is worth noting that the two most passive characters in the novel, Mercédès and Valentine, are portrayed as models of femininity, while the proactive characters are primarily men. The only proactive female character is the excessively masculine Eugénie, who can be interpreted as a cross-dressing lesbian. Dumas suggests that passiveness is a female trait, noting that Valentine “could not understand that vigorous nature [of Eugénie’s] which appeared to have none of the timidities of woman.” Given that Dumas portrays an active stand against destiny as far superior to passive resignation—and his further implication that passive resignation, the cause of Mercédès’s downfall, is even sinful—we can argue that Dumas is not overly generous to his female characters.
Suicide, a common motif of the novel as well as of Romantic literature in general, is presented as an obvious response to abandonment by a beloved. Even before Valentine falls ill, Maximilian has prepared to take his own life in the event that she ever marries Franz d’Epinay. As we see in the last chapter of the novel, Haydée proves her sincere affection for Monte Cristo by declaring that she will take her life if he leaves her. Yet the act of suicide—the most dramatic means of giving up the fight against fate—seems to fly in the face of Monte Cristo’s stance against passive resignation. Maximilian provides a possible insight into this seeming inconsistency, as he explains that he wants to take his own life because “all [his] hopes are blighted.” Monte Cristo considers hope the only thing that makes life worth living; thus, it is plausible that his ultimate judgment on suicide would be that once all hope is gone—as some people think it is when they lose their beloved—suicide may be reasonable, as there is nothing left for which to fight.
