Bienvenue à Marseille | 2025 The Count of Monte Christo, read-a-long

[AgualusasLover]

Following the success of the continuing Dickensalongs, Fallen Women and various other classics, please join The Count of Monte Christo read-a-long, kicking off on 1 January 2025.

The ultimate tale of revenge, with swashbuckling, chicanery and bare faced lies - The Count of Monte Christo has it all.

Editions: most important point is an unabridged version, coming in at just over 1,200 pages. This thread discusses the various translations – the Penguin Classics, trans by Robin Buss is very popular and the one I am reading but what you have already is likely fine and the nuances of translation are always fun to discuss.

What’s the best translation of The Count of Monte Cristo? • We Love Translations

I’ve been thinking about the best way to read-a-long. There have been red-alongs by the day, in chunks and every which way.

I think we have two options:

There are 118 chapter and my proposal is we do one a day, starting on 1 January, 2025. (W&P and all the Fallen Women books worked well this way)

We could also convene weekly e.g. no spoilers until Sunday and read it as it was released, in 18 parts c.65 pages per week. (I remember The Woman in White worked well this way and so do the Dickensalongs)

For now, I have assumed a chapter a day as it has served us well so far, if the majority strongly object, I have put placeholders in my copy breaking it down and can update in readiness for January.

Schmoop very handily has chapter by chapter breakdowns. Here is the Intro https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/count-of-monte-cristo/

MN meet up in Marseille 2025!

In the dark!

I know :) I think The Count is superhuman by the sound of it. He doesn't eat much, sleep much, can see in the dark. He probably doesn't feel the cold either!

The Vendetta

And so begins Bertuccio's story.
Many years before, Bertuccio's brother was murdered by soldiers who belonged to the royalist party (the party that favored King Louis).
Bertuccio's brother was a soldier in Napoleon's army.
Bertuccio went to the city of Nîmes to seek justice for his brother's death, approaching Villefort (remember, he was kind of like a district attorney at the time), but Villefort was a royalist and sided with the murderers rather than the murdered.
Incensed by Villefort's coldness, Bertuccio swore to seek revenge on him.
Freaked out, Villefort leaves town in hopes of fleeing Bertuccio.
He moved to Versailles.
Versailles is famous for many reasons, but Villefort liked it because it was the home of his mistress who lived in the very house that the Count has just bought.
One night, Bertuccio hid in the garden of Villefort's mistress's house, waiting to kill Villefort.
Villefort buried a box in the garden, and then Bertuccio stabbed him several times.
Bertuccio then dug up the box, expecting to find treasures beyond his wildest dreams.
But instead, he found a baby boy.
The baby was almost dead (it looked like he had been suffocated), but Bertuccio was able to help the boy start breathing again.
Bertuccio took the baby to a hospital where it stayed for a few months, and then Bertuccio brought the baby home.
Bertuccio and his sister-in-law named the baby boy Benedetto and took good care of him.
But Benedetto had a cold streak, and he disappeared when he was old enough to run away.
When Benedetto ran away, Bertuccio had been off smuggling.
One night, when the police were hot on his trail, Bertuccio hid behind Caderousse's inn (remember him?), and he saw something horrible happen.
A jeweler came to buy the diamond that the Edmond-disguised-as-Abbé-Busoni gave Caderousse and his wife.
The jeweler offered forty-five thousand francs for the diamond.
The jeweler was about to head for home, when a bad storm hit town, causing him to stay the night at the inn.

Well that was exciting! And what a gruesome next chapter name.

O M G this is utterly thrilling.

Villefort is a disgusting human being (if it was him burying the baby as seems) - utterly irredeemable.

I'm exhausted after reading that!
I was wondering if it really was Villefort who was killed in the garden.

Sorry, everyone! I think I must be a chapter ahead, and I hadn't realised. I'm not sure when that happened. My last post had a spoiler.

It's just too exciting I mustn't have been able to contain myself. From now on I'll 🤐😊

No worries @LuckyMauveReader You didn't say much! I have just finished that chapter. Yikes indeed!

I think Villefort might still be alive, seems far too convenient for him to have been killed off so easily. Bet he'll reappear.

Agreed, Janina! Some poor servant probably got clobbered in the garden.

I thought the house belonged to Villefort’s father in law. Takes some nerve to install your pregnant mistress in your FILs house.

I was wondering the same thing about it really being Villefort. Also do we have any idea who the mother is? ( wasn't sure if I had missed a clue?)

I don't think we know who Villefort's mistress is or was...!

No spoilers, but I’ve just read The Vendetta and thought it worth flagging that I found one part quite distressing. So a trigger warning if you will. Happy to PM anyone who wants to know.

Given we have just witnessed a baby being buried alive, it might not shock that much, but thought I’d mention.

I'm getting lost I think but was it Villefort who was getting betrothed the same day as Dantes? Do we know it was his mistress who was pregnant? I assume it must be or her wouldn't have tried to do away with the child?

Yes @lifeturnsonadime it was the same guy, Villefort, who was getting married on the same day as Edmond. Yes, his mistress was living in his father-in-law's house. Agree that this was a cool cheek.

Thank goodness I am doing this as a read along as I had initially missed there being a significance to the house in Auteuil.

I have to say that it seems an awfully small world the way the same people keep crossing paths and cropping up - what are the chances of Bertuccio having a connection with both Villefort and Caderousse?

I have also completely lost track of which chapter I am meant to be on as I read The Vendetta yesterday but it looks as if that is today’s chapter?

Awfully coincidental, everyone popping up and crossing paths after twenty years! Although isn't this a feat of engineering on the count's part to a huge extent?

Yes, the Count is definitely seeking people out but he couldn’t have engineered the historic links between Bertucci and Villefort and Caderousse….or did he???

I’m also u intentionally a chapter ahead - it was another good one! I’ll sit tomorrow out and then I think I should be aligned with everyone.

No, that's unlikely even for him (!) But he seems to have had an influence where Bertuccio is concerned with this Abbé Bussoni character.

Surely Edmond is/was Abbé Bussoni!

Edmond was Abbe Busoni when he went to Caderousse with the diamond. I don’t think he could have engineered Bertruccio but I think his network is so vast that he heard about him and intervened.

Yes, that's right. That's what I meant :)

Warning - spoilers for today’s chapter (The Shower of Blood)!

Yes, after today’s chapter it’s increasingly clear that Edmond has been masterminding far more than we would have expected - we’re hearing Bertuccio’s story for the first time, but Edmond knew all about it and manoeuvred Bertuccio first into his employment, and eventually into the garden so that Bertuccio would be triggered to tell him everything (and probably to test his honesty).

And of course he has known what happened to Caderousse for years, after first meeting Bertuccio as Abbé Busoni - he gave Caderousse a chance to redeem himself when he gave him the diamond, and then got him sentenced to the galleys once he found out that Caderousse wasn’t going to change.

Incidentally, my understanding of that part of Bertuccio’s story is that Caderousse stood by without doing anything (as when Fernand and Danglars screwed Edmond over) while his wife stabbed the jeweller (who then shot her in self-defence). Is that right? The Shmoop summary says he actually killed the jeweller but I don’t think this is what we’re meant to take from the chapter? It’s a bit ambiguous so happy to be corrected!

Finally, I agree with @AgualusasLover on the horrible event in today’s chapter (I’m assuming that’s what you were referring to above). I don’t like the treatment of women in general in the book (and it can’t all be attributed to the time he was writing), and I really hate the orientalism. Other than that, I’m enjoying it!

I thought the horrible event yesterday was what Benedetto did to Bertuccio’s SIL. Thought it was worse than the buried baby and the deaths today which we didn't get as much detail about, just saw the bodies. Although the shower of blood was pretty horrible imagery.

I think a lot can be attributed to the time it was written in, France hadn't abolished slavery yet at the time of writing and while there was soon to be universal male suffrage in 1848, women's suffrage didn't happen for another hundred years. And if we think about this being viewed as a YA novel then the graphic violence plays into this, teenagers love dystopic fiction where horrible things happen.