The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (210 page)

3
.
Béranger
: Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857) was the author of
light-hearted and mildly satirical songs and verses, who succeeded in upsetting the Restoration government. The phrase Lucien has just used is taken from his
Chansons
.

4
.
Constantine
: The Algerian city was captured in 1837, after an unsuccessful attempt in the previous year.

5
.
yataghan
: See note 6 to
Chapter
XXXI
.

6
.
Klagmann… Marochetti
: Jean-Baptiste-Jules Klagmann (1810–67) was a sculptor who helped Dumas to decorate his Théâtre Français in 1846–7. Charles Marochetti (1805–62) was a well-known sculptor.

7
.
Prix Montyon
: See note 3 to
Chapter
XXXVIII
.

8
.
Mehmet Ali
: Mehmet Ali (1769–1849), an Albanian officer, was sent to Egypt to oppose the French in 1798 and was later made viceroy. His rebellion against the Turks during the 1830s was supported by France but not by Britain.

9
.
the Casauba
: The Casbah, a fortified citadel.

10
.
‘Punctuality… sovereigns claimed’
: The remark is attributed to Louis XVIII.

1
.
eighty-five départements
: The administrative districts into which France was divided after 1790. To begin with there were eighty-three, later increased by the addition of Corsica and three
départements
in Algeria. By the late twentieth century, after various administrative reorganizations and the loss of Algeria and other former colonies, the number stood at ninety-six in Metropolitan France and five overseas
départements
(Martinique, Guyane, Guadeloupe, Réunion and St Pierre-et-Miquelon).

1
.
Dupré… Delacroix… vanished with earlier centuries
: Apart from Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), these artists are now largely forgotten. However, most were friends or acquaintances of Dumas, so the list is intended to demonstrate Morcerf’s good taste in his choice of contemporary art.

2
.
Léopold Robert
: See note 5 to
Chapter
XXXIII
. Incidentally, according to the internal chronology of the novel, Mercédès would have been thirty-two, not ‘twenty-five or twenty-six’ in 1830, when Albert says the portrait was made.

3
.
Gros
: Jean-Antoine Gros (1771–1835), also a pupil of David, specialized in historical and battle scenes.

4
.
d’Hozier and Jaucourt
: Two genealogists known for their encyclopedic learning and erudite industry. Pierre d’Hozier (1592–1660) wrote a genealogy of leading French families in 150 volumes, which was continued by his son and grand-nephew. Louis de Jaucourt (1704–79) wrote on genealogy for the
Encyclopédie
.

1
.
‘I was almost made to wait’
: Louis XIV’s famous rebuff to a courtier who arrived insufficiently early.

1
.
the Hundred Days
: See note 1 to
Chapter
VI
.

1
.
Albano and Fattore
: The Italian painters Francesco Albano (1488–1528) and Giovanni Francesco Penni, known as ‘Il Fattore’ (1578–1660).

2
.
Thorwaldsen, Bartolini, or Canova
: Neo-classical artists, who were not in favour with the Romantics: Bertel Thorwaldsen (1768–1844) was Danish, Lorenzo Bartolini (1777–1850) and Antonio Canova (1757–1822) were Italians.

1
.
Antiquity – as interpreted by the Directoire
: The Directoire was the regime in power from 1795 to 1799, in which executive power was exercised by a five-member ‘directorate’, elected by the legislature. As a whole the revolutionary period saw a succession of attempts to discover aesthetic styles appropriate to a non-monarchical regime, usually by adapting motifs
from republican Greece or Rome. Like the Neo-classicism of Thorwaldsen and Canova, this had gone out of fashion by the 1830s, and Danglars’ enjoyment of it is a sign of his lack of taste.

2
.
Rousseau
: The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) was the author of an enormously influential treatise on education,
Emile
(1762). He recommended a method that both relied on the influence of nature and required a fairly strict regime. He would not have approved of Madame de Villefort’s mollycoddling of her obnoxious son.

3
.
Ranelagh
: A public dance-hall, opened in 1774.

1
.
the senior or junior branch of the royal family
: The Bourbon dynasty reigned in France up to the Revolution and was the branch of the royal family restored in 1815. The younger princes of the royal blood had been Dukes of Orléans since the fourteenth century and, under the Revolution, one of these, Louis-Philippe-Joseph, known as Philippe-Egalité, supported the revolutionary cause. Philippe-Egalité died on the scaffold in 1793, but his son, also Louis-Philippe, remained a supporter of a moderate, liberal monarchy. At the Revolution of July 1830, the Bourbon king, Charles X, abdicated in his favour, and Louis-Philippe’s accession was greeted as heralding a new, constitutional monarchy (though, in the event, these expectations were disappointed). It is to this junior, Orléanist branch that the present pretenders to the French throne belong.

2
.
Harlay… Molé
: Two leading magistrates and presidents of the Paris
parlement
in the early seventeenth century.

3
.
four revolutions
: Villefort was born just before the Revolution of 1789, so he had lived through the revolutionary period, the Napoleonic Empire, the Restoration and the July Revolution of 1830. It is not clear whether Dumas counts the Napoleonic coup of 1799 as a ‘revolution’ or whether he means the First Restoration (1814) and the Second Restoration (1815) to be counted separately. The implication is clear: that Villefort has managed to benefit from every change of government.

4
.
pede claudo
: The full phrase is
pede poena claudo
; ‘punishment comes limping’, Horace,
Odes
, III, 2. That is: retribution will come slowly but surely – a good motto for Monte Cristo.

5
.
Tobias
: See Tobit 7:15, where the angel reveals himself.

6
.
non bis in idem
: The principle that a person cannot be tried twice for the same offence.

7
.
carbonaro
: See note I to
Chapter
VII
.

1
.
say tu to me
: Every European language except English (in which ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ have long been archaic except in some dialects) has kept the second person singular for use with intimates, close friends and relatives. English translations usually try to get round this in some way: ‘ “Why do you address me so coldly – so distantly?” ’ is the version given in the 1852 translation, but it makes very little sense here, because Monte Cristo has said only three words (four in the translation) since entering the room, which is frankly not enough to provide grounds for her accusation. The point is that one of the three words is the formal, second person plural,
vous
.

1
.
Presse… Débats: La Presse
, founded in 1836 by Emile de Girardin, was a liberal, popular newspaper, to which Dumas contributed.
Le Journal des Débats
(1789–1944) is one of the great newspapers in the history of French nineteenth-century journalism.
The Count of Monte Cristo
first appeared in it in serial form.

1
.
aristocracy of the lance… nobility of the cannon
: That is to say, the pre-revolutionary aristocracy and those ennobled under Napoleon because of their service to the empire.

1
.
Mithridates, rex Ponticus
: Mithridates VII (123–
63 BC
), King of Pontus in Asia Minor, who fought to defend his kingdom against the Romans, ‘fortified his constitution by drinking antidotes against the poison with which his enemies at court attempted to destroy him’ (Lemprière,
Classical Dictionary
). However, Monte Cristo is wrong in attributing this information to the historian Cornelius Nepos.

2
.
Flamel, Fontana or Cabanis
: Nicholas Flamel (1330–1418) was reputed to be an alchemist. Félix Fontana (1730–1805) studied poisons and the doctor Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis (1757–1808) gave the philosopher Condorcet the poison he used to escape the guillotine in 1794.

3
.
Galland
: Antoine Galland (1646–1715) made a celebrated translation of
The Thousand and One Nights
(1704–11).

4
.
Desrues
: Antoine Desrues (1734–77), a famous poisoner. A. Arnould told his story in the series of
Crimes célèbres
(1839–40), to which Dumas contributed.

5
.
Borgias… Baron de Trenk
: Famous poisoners, spies or adventurers. The Italian perfumer René was accused of poisoning the Prince de Condé; he and Ruggieri were agents of Catherine de’ Medici, and both feature in historical novels by Dumas. Friedrich von der Trenck was guillotined as an Austrian spy in 1794.

6
.
Magendie… Flourens
: François Magendi (1783–1855) and Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens (1794–1867) were, respectively, a well-known anatomist and a well-known doctor.

7
.
that paradox of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
: Rastignac, in Balzac’s novel
Le Père Goriot
(
Chapter
II
), puts the question: ‘What would you do if you could become rich by killing an old mandarin in China, by the sole force of your will, without leaving Paris?’ He wrongly attributes the idea to Rousseau.

1
.
Mlles Noblet, Julia and Leroux
: Three dancers who performed the ‘Ballet des Nonnes’ in Jacques Meyerbeer’s opera
Robert le Diable
(1831).

2
.
Ali Tebelin
: See note 3 to
Chapter
XXVII
.

1
.
Danaro e… della Metà
: Dumas translates, in a note: ‘Money and sanctity – half of the half’ – in other words, both lend themselves to exaggeration.

2
.
Henri IV… Pont Neuf
: A reference to King Henri IV’s affair with his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées. The reason the king did not leave the Pont Neuf is that his statue stands at one end of the bridge.

3
.
Dante… d’Hozier
: The genealogist (see note 4 to
Chapter
XLI
). Dante acted as genealogist to the Cavalcantis by including Cavalcante Cavalcanti, father of his friend Guido, in Book X of the
Inferno
, ll. 52–72.

1
.
Antony
: Another reference to Dumas’ play, in which the central character (II, 5) boasts of being a bastard.

1
.
eventually revert to her son
: It was not unheard of for girls to be put into convents in order to concentrate the family wealth; above all, this discussion illustrates how few options a girl in Valentine’s position could have, despite her apparent wealth and privilege, and how powerless she is to decide her future. It also throws a new light on the behaviour of Eugénie Danglars, the unfeminine counterpart to Valentine (the latter being presented as the ideal, submissive, caring, modest, timid, selfless young woman).

1
.
the Montagne
: The name given to the radical, Jacobin group in the revolutionary Convention.

2
.
A telegraph
: The telegraph, introduced in 1793 and using a form of semaphore, was considered one of the great inventions of the age; by the 1840s there were over 3,000 miles of communication lines, all belonging to the War Department. It was superseded in 1845 by the electric telegraph, using Morse Code.