“And so he was!” exclaimed Caderousse.  “How should he have been otherwise?”

The abbe had heard of the death of Edmond’s aged father, and now he was told the old man had died of starvation.

“Thus Heaven recompenses virtue,” said Caderousse.  “I am in destitution and shall die of hunger, as old Dantes did, whilst Fernand and Danglars roll in wealth.  All their malpractices have turned to luck.  Danglars speculated and made a fortune.  He is a millionaire, and now Count Danglars.  Fernand played traitor at the battle of Ligny, and that served for his recommendation to the Bourbons.  Afterwards he became Count de Morcerf, and got a considerable sum by the betrayal of Ali Pasha in the Greek war of independence.”

The abbe, making an effort, said, “And Mercedes—­she disappeared?”

“Yes, as the sun, to rise next day with more splendour.  She is rich, the Countess de Morcerf—­she waited two hopeless years for Dantes—­and yet I am sure she is not happy.”

“And M. de Villefort?” asked the abbe.

“Some time after having arrested Dantes, he married and left Marseilles; no doubt but he has been as lucky as the rest.”

“God may seem sometimes to forget for a time,” said the abbe, “while His justice reposes, but there always comes a moment when He remembers.”

* * * * *

Early in 1838 a certain Count of Monte Cristo became a great figure in the life of Paris.  His name awakened thoughts of romance and dazzling wealth in the minds of all.  It was Albert, the son of the Count de Morcerf, who first introduced the Count of Monte Cristo to the high society of Paris.  They had become acquainted at Rome, where Monte Cristo had been able to render a great service to the Viscount Albert de Morcerf and his friend, the Baron Franz d’Epinay.

All sorts of stories were afloat in Paris as to the history of this Count of Monte Cristo.  When he went to the opera he was accompanied by a beautiful Greek girl, named Haidee, whose guardian he was.

But nothing ruffled Monte Cristo.  Calmness and deliberation marked all his movements; in some respects he was more like a machine than a human being.  Everything he said he would do was done precisely.  And now the schemes he had long studied in secret he had begun to carry through as certainly and relentlessly as Fate.

M. de Villefort, now procureur du roi, had a daughter by his first wife, for he had married a second time.  Her name was Valentine, and at the command of her father, but not by her own wish, she was engaged to the Baron Franz d’Epinay.  She loved a young military officer named Maximilian Morrel, a son of the Marseilles shipowner.  But neither of them had dared to avow their affection for each other to Valentine’s father.

Meanwhile, the tide of fortune seemed to have turned with Baron Danglars.  His business had suffered many losses, but his greatest loss of all was due to some false news about the price of shares which had been telegraphed to Paris by means which Monte Cristo could have explained.