The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (209 page)

1
.
this other Pelion
: A mountain in Thessaly which the giants, in their war against the gods, heaped up on Mount Ossa so that they could scale the heavens more easily.

1
.
Alaric
: Visigoth king (d. 410), who died after sacking Rome. To ensure that his grave would not be violated, it was placed in the course of the River Busento and the slaves who had dug it were executed.

1
.
a double napoléon
: A gold coin worth 40 francs.

1
.
ferrade… tarasque
: Provençal festivities. The
ferrade
, held in Arles, Nîmes and the Camargue, marked the branding of horses and cattle. The
tarasque
is a monster which reputedly emerged from the Rhône at Tarascon and devoured children, until subdued by St Marthe. The ceremonies associated with it, held at Whitsun, were described by Dumas in his book,
Le Midi de la France
(1841).

2
.
the Second Restoration
: That of 1815. See note 1 to
Chapter
VI
.

1
.
the war in Spain
: In 1822 France intervened in support of the autocratic King Ferdinand against the Spanish constitutionalists.

2
.
the capture of the Trocadero
: On 7 April 1823, French forces under the Duc d’Angoulême captured the fort from the constitutionalists.

3
.
Ali Pasha
: Ali Pasha, ‘the Lion’ (1741–1822), was a brigand who rose to power in Greece and Albania, being made pasha of various provinces in the Ottoman Empire, including (in 1788) Janina. He attracted support from both France and Britain, who saw him as a relatively enlightened ruler. In 1820, Sultan Mahmud II turned against him and, though he was promised safe conduct if he surrendered, he was put to death in 1822.

The fame of Ali Pasha was propagated notably by Victor Hugo, in his early collection of poems,
Les Orientales
(1829). In the preface to the first edition he writes that ‘Asian barbarism’ cannot be so lacking in great men as civilized Europe would like to imagine: ‘One must remember that it [i.e. Asia] has produced the only colossus that this century can offer who will measure up to [Napoleon] Bonaparte, if anyone can be said to do so: this man of genius, in truth a Turk and a Tartar, is Ali Pasha, who is to Napoleon as the tiger to the lion or the vulture to the eagle’ (see
Preface
, p. xi).

4
. ‘
Frailty, thy name is woman
’: Shakespeare,
Hamlet
, I, 2.

1
.
Montredon
: Either La Madrague-de-Montredon, east of Marseille, or possibly Montredon-Labessonie, in south-west France, which was dusty because of its sawmills.

1
.
Signor Pastrini
: Pastrini, proprietor of the Hôtel de Londres in the Piazza di Spagna, is a historical personage, mentioned by Dumas in
Le Speronare
(1842). Dumas stayed at his hotel in 1835 and records that rooms there cost between 2 and 20 francs.

2
.
Algiers
: Using as its excuse the long history of piracy from the port, France sent an expedition which in 1830 captured Algiers and exiled the bey to Naples. It marked the start of the French colonial empire in Africa and a love–hate relationship with Arab North Africa that was to last for the next 130 years. But in the early nineteenth century the conquest would not have posed any moral dilemma, even for a liberal like Dumas. It is clear from the novel that he sees Algeria as an outlet for France’s youthful energies after the end of the Napoleonic empire.

3
.
Adamastor
: A giant who guarded the Cape of Good Hope, invented by the Portuguese poet Camöes in his epic,
The Lusiads
(V, 39–40).

4
.
Bourgeois Gentilhomme
: A reference to Molière’s play,
Le Bourgeois gentilhomme
(IV, 3), where the central character, Monsieur Jourdain, is amazed when confronted by a man, supposed to be a Turk, who says the words
‘bel-men’
, which are interpreted as meaning: ‘You must go with him to prepare for the ceremony and then see your daughter and conclude her marriage.’ ‘What!’ Jourdain exclaims. ‘All that in two words!’

5
.
The Huguenots
: An opera, with music by Meyerbeer and libretto by Eugène Scribe and Emile Deschamps (1836).

6
.
yataghan
: A Turkish sword.

7
.
Appert
: Benjamin-Nicholas-Marie Appert (1797–?), whom Dumas had known in the early 1820s, when both were employed by the Duc d’Orléans, and a philanthropist who devoted himself to aiding convicts; not the now better-known Nicholas Appert (1750–1841), inventor of a process for preserving food. The man in the blue cloak is Edmé Champion (1764–1852), a diamond merchant who devoted his later years to relief of the poor.

1
.
moccoletti
: Little candles.

2
.
affettatore
: Rogue, swindler.

3
.
Corneille’s ‘Qu’il morût…’
: In Pierre Corneille’s play
Horace
(III, 4), where the hero’s old father says unhesitatingly that his son should have died rather than (as he believes) sacrifice his honour – in the event, the younger Horace turns out to have had a cleverer plan than his father gave him credit for.

4
.
Florian
: Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–94), the author of sentimental romances.

5
.
Léopold Robert or Schnetz
: Both the Swiss artist Léopold Robert (1794–1835) and the French painter Jean-Victor Schnetz (1787–1870) were pupils of David and painted scenes of the Roman countryside.

6
.
Avernus
: The entry to Hell, according to Virgil (see
Aeneid
, VI, line 126).

1
.
Martial
: Roman poet (
c
.
AD 40
–104), famous for his epigrams. The reference here is to his
De Spectaculis
: his praise of the Colosseum was well rewarded by the Emperors Titus and Domitian.

2
.
Parisina
: From a poem by Byron, with music by Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848), who was also the composer of
Lucia di Lammermoor
, from Scott’s novel,
The Bride of Lammermoor
.
Parisina
(1833) tells of the love of Parisina (sung by La Spech) for Ugo (Napoleone Moriani), the illegitimate son of her husband, Azzo (Domenico Coselli). Dumas met Coselli in Naples in 1835.

3
.
Countess G—
: It is clear from the manuscript that Dumas is thinking of Byron’s mistress, Countess Teresa Guiccioli.

4
.
Lord Ruthwen
: The short novel,
Lord Ruthwen
,
or The Vampire
(first published in 1819 in the
New Monthly Magazine
), was written by Byron’s companion and physician, Dr Polidori, who did not discourage the attribution to the poet himself. It was soon translated into French by Henri Faber (1819) and again by Amédée Pichot (1820), and helped to fuel an extraordinary vogue for vampire stories and melodramas, including Cyprien Bérard’s
Lord Rutwen
, and the melodrama
Le Vampire
(1820), co-authored by Charles Nodier. Dumas saw this in 1823 and devoted several chapters to it in his memoirs (3rd series, 1863).

Nodier’s play was promptly re-translated into English by James Planché, as
The Vampire
,
or The Bride of the Isles
(1820), and before the end of the
same year in France there had been at least five other vampire productions on the Parisian stage: a burlesque, a farce, a comic opera, a vampire Punch and a ‘vaudeville folly’ in which one character says: ‘Vampires! They come from England… That’s another nice present those gentlemen have sent us!’ Nodier observed that ‘the myth of the vampire is perhaps the most universal of our superstitions’. It revived, of course, with Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
(1899); and lives on in our own century in a medium which might be said to feature only the shadowy figures of the Undead – the cinema.

5
.
the Do-Nothing Kings
: ‘Les Rois Fainéants’, the name given to a succession of minors in the Merovingian dynasty, during the seventh and eighth centuries, who ruled through regents.

6
.
guzla
: A Balkan musical instrument, like a violin with only one or two strings. The writer Prosper Mérimée (1803–70) published a collection of supposedly Illyrian songs,
La Guzla
(1827), under the pseudonym Hyacinthe Maglanowich, both as a satire and as a tribute to the vogue for the East and its folklore.

1
.
Comte de Chalais
: Chalais was beheaded in 1626 for plotting against Cardinal Richelieu. The execution was carried out, very inexpertly, by another condemned man.

2
.
Castaing
: The poisoner Dr Edmé-Samuel Castaing was executed in 1823; Dumas attended the trial (and may have used some details of the evidence in
Chapter
LII
), but he did not watch the execution. In fact, neither did Albert, since, according to the internal evidence of the book, he would only have been six years old at the time (and not, as he claims here, leaving college).

1
.
Callot
: Jacques Callot (1592–1635), painter and engraver.

2
.
The Bear and the Pasha
: The actor Jacques-Charles Odry (1779–1853) played the role of Marécot in Scribe’s vaudeville
The Bear and the Pasha
(1820).

3
.
L’Italiana in Algeri
: Rossini’s opera, first performed in 1813.

4
.
Didier or Antony
: Didier is the hero of Victor Hugo’s
Marion Delorme
, which was first performed in 1831, at the same theatre as Dumas’ own
play
Antony
. Though Dumas himself defended Hugo against the charge, Hugo was accused by some of imitating Dumas’ play, since both central characters are characteristic examples of the doomed Romantic hero.

5
.
Gregory XVI
: Pope from 1831 to 1846. Dumas was granted an audience with him in 1835 and (as this passage and his account elsewhere show) was favourably impressed.

6
.
Manfred… Lara’s head-dress
: Manfred and Lara are two of the most Romantic figures in Byron’s work.

7
.
forty at least
: Dumas is sometimes inaccurate about dates, and also deliberately vague about the count’s age. In fact, on the evidence of the novel, Monte Cristo was born in 1796. It is now 1838, so he is forty-two.

8
.
Aeolus
: God of storms and winds.

1
.
Aguado… Rothschild
: Alejandro-Maria Aguado, Marquis of Las Marimas del Guadalquivir (1784–1842), was a Spanish financier who opened a bank in Paris in 1815. The French branch of the Rothschild family was founded by James de Rothschild, but Dumas might be thinking of Charles de Rothschild (1788–1855), whom he had met.

2
.
Colomba
: A novel by Prosper Mérimée, the author of
Carmen
and one of the writers who had done most to popularize Spanish and Corsican subjects, in which the local colour is provided mainly by the characters’ fierce courage and sense of honour.
Colomba
was not published until 1840, so Morcerf’s reference to it in 1838 is an anachronism.

3
.
Prix Montyon
: A prize for virtuous conduct awarded by the Institut de France.

1
.
Grisier, Cooks, and Charles Leboucher
: Auguste-Edmé Grisier ran a fencing school; Dumas wrote the preface to his
Les Armes et le duel
(1847). Cooks had a gymnasium, and Leboucher was a boxing master.

2
.
Don Carlos of Spain
: Claimant to the Spanish throne, on the death of his brother, Ferdinand VII, in 1833. He and his followers (the Carlists) fought against Isabella II but were defeated; Carlos fled to France in 1839 and was interned in Bourges. In 1844 he renounced his own claim in favour of his son and spent the remaining eleven years of his life in Austria.