57 Fun Facts About The Count of Monte Cristo

Which other famous novel is by the author of The Count of Monte Cristo?

The Three Musketeers. Alexandre Dumas did not invent its hero: he found d'Artagnan in a book of 1700 that passed itself off as the memoirs of a real captain of musketeers.

How did The Count of Monte Cristo first reach its readers in the 1840s?

As a newspaper serial. The Journal des Débats ran it in instalments from August 1844 to January 1846, and it held readers so firmly that Dumas soon adapted it for the stage.

What is the name of the merchant ship on which Dantès serves as first mate?

The Pharaon. Her captain died of brain fever on the voyage home, so the 19-year-old first mate brought her into port himself, which is why the owner wants to give him the command.

In which port city does The Count of Monte Cristo open?

Marseille. Boats from the Old Port carry visitors out to the island prison, and the monument's own keepers say the novel is the main reason most of them come.

What is the name of Dantès's fiancée in The Count of Monte Cristo?

Mercédès. Believing Dantès dead, she marries his rival, yet when the Count walks into her house decades later she knows him at once by his voice and says nothing.

Which jealous cousin of Dantès's fiancée posts the anonymous letter that denounces him?

Fernand Mondego. A shipmate writes the denunciation left-handed, then crumples it and throws it away as if it were a joke; Fernand waits, picks it up and posts it.

What is Dantès falsely accused of being?

A Bonapartist agent. The charge was half true: as a last favour to his dying captain he really was carrying a sealed letter for the emperor's friends in Paris, with no idea what it said.

Which neighbour of Dantès knows the charge is false but is too cowardly to speak up?

Caderousse. He sat drunk at the table while the denunciation was written, and when the arrest came he still said nothing; the same weakness later turns him into a thief and a murderer.

Why does the prosecutor Villefort jail Dantès despite believing him innocent?

To hide his own father's treason. The letter Dantès carried was addressed to the prosecutor's father, so Villefort burned it and locked away the one man who had read the name on it.

Which island fortress is Dantès's prison in The Count of Monte Cristo?

Château d'If. Visitors to the real fortress are shown a Dantès cell, a dungeon kept up in honour of a prisoner who never existed.

Which fellow inmate tunnels by mistake into Dantès's cell?

Abbé Faria. He had dug for years toward the sea wall, took a wrong angle and surfaced in the next cell instead, then made the best of it by teaching Dantès everything he knew.

Why do the jailers think the old priest in Dantès's prison is mad?

He offers millions for his freedom. The treasure he keeps promising the governors is real, and Dantès, the only man who listens, ends up with all of it.

How does Dantès finally escape the fortress?

Sewn into a burial sack thrown into the sea. He had taken his dead friend's place expecting a grave he could dig out of, not a cannonball tied to his feet and a long fall to the waves.

How was the treasure's hiding place recorded in The Count of Monte Cristo?

In invisible ink. The note lay unnoticed in a family prayer book for three centuries until a priest, out of candles, lit it as a taper and saw writing appear.

In The Count of Monte Cristo, which Italian dynasty poisoned Cardinal Spada to seize his fortune?

The Borgias. The pope and his son Cesare asked the cardinal to dinner and poisoned him, then found his coffers almost empty: he had seen it coming and hidden everything.

What stood on the real island of Montecristo until pirates destroyed it in 1553?

A monastery. It was abandoned after the raid and the island left uninhabited, which is how Dumas's novel finds it: a deserted rock where smugglers put in and a treasure can lie hidden.

Disguised as an Italian priest, what does Dantès give his old neighbour for the story of his betrayal?

A diamond. Dantès hopes the gift will make an honest man of him; instead the innkeeper murders the jeweller who comes to buy it, so as to keep both the stone and the money.

Which drug does the Count of Monte Cristo serve a guest in his island cave?

Hashish. He offers it as a green paste, praising it as the ambrosia Hebe served at Jupiter's table, and a spoonful sends his guest into a night of vivid dreams.

What does Dantès do to save his old employer Morrel from bankruptcy?

Secretly pays his debts and rebuilds his ship. The copy sails into harbour with a full cargo at the very hour Morrel has chosen to kill himself.

In which Italian city does Dantès first appear as the Count of Monte Cristo?

Rome. During Carnival there he rescues his enemy's son from bandits who answer to him, and the grateful young man invites his saviour to Paris.

Which bandit chief, an ally of the Count, kidnaps a young Frenchman whom the Count then rescues?

Luigi Vampa. The Count had once captured the bandit and let him go, and in return the gang swore to respect him and his friends, so a word from him frees the prisoner.

Who is the ward the Count of Monte Cristo bought out of slavery?

Ali Pasha's daughter. A French officer betrayed her father to the Turks and sold her as a child; years later her testimony before the peers of France destroys him.

What did Villefort do to the baby born of his affair with the banker's wife?

Buried it alive. A Corsican with a vendetta against him dug up the box hoping for treasure, found a living baby inside and raised the boy who would one day expose his father.

How does the Count of Monte Cristo cost the banker a fortune?

By bribing a telegraph operator. The false signal reports that a Spanish pretender has gone home to raise a revolt, the banker dumps his Spanish bonds, and the next day the news is denied.

Which member of the Villefort household begins poisoning the family?

Héloïse, his second wife. She picked up her knowledge of poisons in polite conversation with the Count himself, and used it to clear her own son's way to the family fortune.

How does the speechless old Noirtier communicate in The Count of Monte Cristo?

With his eyes. He shuts them for yes and blinks for no, which is enough, with his granddaughter running a finger down a dictionary, for him to dictate a new will.

Which young man challenges the Count to a duel after his father is disgraced?

Albert de Morcerf. His mother tells him the truth the night before, so on the duelling ground he thanks the Count aloud for not punishing his father more harshly, and no shot is fired.

How does Fernand die after the Count exposes his crimes?

He shoots himself. He has just learned who the Count really is, and hurries home only to find his wife and son walking out of the house for good.

What happens to Villefort when the Count reveals his identity?

He goes insane. He has come home in disgrace to find his wife and young son dead, and learning that the Count planned his ruin is the last blow.

Which character's death makes the Count wonder whether his vengeance has gone too far?

Édouard, Villefort's son. The Count carries the poisoned boy off to revive him and fails; shaken for the first time, he decides to let his last enemy live.

Which enemy does the Count ultimately forgive and let go with 50,000 francs?

Danglars. Bandits had starved him into paying 100,000 francs for a single chicken until his stolen millions were gone; only then did the Count show himself and let him go.

Which two words, in the last line of The Count of Monte Cristo, sum up 'all human wisdom'?

Wait and hope. The Count leaves the words at the end of a farewell letter to the young couple he has reunited, and is already a sail on the horizon when they read it.

With whom does the Count sail away to the East at the very end?

Haydée. The Count had told her she was free to go, but she declared that she loved him, and the man who had lived only to punish found, to his own joy, that he could begin again.

Dumas took his revenge plot from a shoemaker's tale printed in memoirs drawn from which records?

The Paris police archives. The 1838 memoirs told of a shoemaker, framed by jealous friends, who came back rich to kill them; researchers now think the case was itself largely invented.

Why does Franz d'Épinay break off his engagement to Valentine de Villefort?

Her grandfather killed his father. Old Noirtier, who opposes the match, has a secret report handed to Franz and makes him read aloud how his father died in a duel, and at whose hand.

Which American playwright's father spent decades touring in the stage role of the Count of Monte Cristo?

Eugene O'Neill. James O'Neill grew rich in the part and came to feel it had ruined him as an artist, a regret his son put on stage; the family's summer home is still called Monte Cristo Cottage.

Which French film star played the lead in a 1998 television miniseries of The Count of Monte Cristo?

Gérard Depardieu. The four-part series cast his son Guillaume as the young sailor of 1815, so father and son share the one role on either side of the prison years.

Where does Benedetto publicly name Villefort as his father?

At his own murder trial. Villefort is prosecuting the case himself, and the prisoner calmly tells the court that the man demanding his head is the father who got rid of him at birth.

Where in Paris does the Count of Monte Cristo set up house?

On the Champs-Élysées. A burglar who breaks into number 30 one night finds the Count waiting for him in disguise, and at the end he leaves the house to two young friends as a wedding present.

Which 1880 American novel of vengeance was partly inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo?

Ben-Hur. Lew Wallace said that writing it left him as lost to the world as 'the Count of Monte Cristo in his dungeon of stone', and his hero too is falsely accused and comes back rich for revenge.

ABC's drama Revenge moved the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo to which wealthy American resort?

The Hamptons. Its heroine arrives there posing as a newcomer and sets about ruining, one after another, the people who destroyed her family years before.

What does the Count of Monte Cristo give the Pope in exchange for a condemned man's life?

An enormous emerald. He owned three: one bought a man's life from the Pope, one bought a woman's freedom from the Sultan, and the third he had hollowed out to carry his pills.

Who played Dantès in the 2002 film of The Count of Monte Cristo directed by Kevin Reynolds?

Jim Caviezel. The film changes the ending: instead of ruining his betrayer from a distance, his Dantès meets him, played by Guy Pearce, in a fight to the death.

Which Mediterranean island's capital stood in for the French port in the 2002 film of The Count of Monte Cristo?

Malta. Valletta's unspoiled old harbour and forts passed for the port of 1815, and a watchtower on the nearby islet of Comino stood in for the island prison.

Who played Dantès in the Mercury Theatre on the Air's 1938 radio version?

Orson Welles. His unsponsored CBS series was then two months away from the War of the Worlds broadcast that finally brought it a sponsor, Campbell's Soup.

Visitors to Dantès's island prison are shown the supposed cell of which famous real-life captive?

The Man in the Iron Mask. A sign marks the cell as his, yet Louis XIV's mystery prisoner was never held on the island; Dumas, fittingly, turned his story into another novel.

Which French king ordered the Château d'If built in the 1520s?

He had spotted the island's value on a visit in 1516; the fortress never actually had to repel an attack.

Which American writer toured Dantès's island prison in 1867 and described it in a best-selling travel book?

Mark Twain. Only two decades after the novel, his guide was already showing the cells of 'two of Dumas' heroes' as though the prisoners had been real.

Where were Dumas's remains reinterred in 2002, on the bicentenary of his birth?

The Panthéon in Paris. His home town fought to keep him, as his own will had asked, and gave way only when President Chirac insisted on the move.

What became of the château Dumas built near Paris and named Monte-Cristo?

He sold it, deep in debt. He kept the house barely two years, and it was later so neglected that it faced demolition before a public appeal saved it as a museum.

What did Auguste Maquet contribute to The Count of Monte Cristo without being credited on it?

Its plot outlines. Maquet's name stayed off the title pages, and when he went to court in 1858 for joint credit he won only unpaid fees; Dumas kept sole ownership.

Which name from the Arabian Nights does Dantès use among smugglers and sign on his note to the Morrels?

Sinbad. As 'Sinbad the Sailor' he receives a French traveller in a cave fitted out like a palace, and the Morrels keep his signed note for years under a crystal cover as a family treasure.

What is the name of the Count's Corsican steward, who once stabbed Villefort in a vendetta?

Bertuccio. Villefort had refused to hunt down his brother's killers, so he swore a vendetta; the Count, disguised as a priest, heard the whole story in confession and then hired him.

Under what false Italian name does the convict Benedetto enter Parisian society?

Andrea Cavalcanti. The Count pays him to play a rich Italian heir, and the act is good enough that a greedy banker breaks his daughter's engagement to promise her to the impostor.

What is distinctive about Ali, the Count's Nubian servant?

He is mute. His great moment is wordless: he lassoes a pair of runaway carriage horses and saves Villefort's wife and son, a rescue that opens the family's door to the Count.

With whom does Eugénie Danglars flee Paris after her engagement collapses?

Her music teacher. Eugénie wants to live as an independent artist and leaves with Louise d'Armilly; Victorian translators toned down how close the two women are.

How does the Count protect Villefort's daughter from the poisoner in her own household?

He fakes her death. A drug makes her seem lifeless, she is laid in the family vault, and a month later the Count hands her, alive, to the young man who had mourned her.