Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road

and Chapter 10 of the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandra Dumas.

This is your host and storyteller, John Hagadorn.

And now a short summary of Chapter 10.

The Little Room in the Tulleries.

Villaport rushes to Paris to tell King Louis the 18th of the schemes contained in the letter Dantes was carrying.

He informs the king that there is a conspiracy afoot to bring Napoleon back to power.

And now, Chapter 10, The King's Closet, at the Tulleries. We will leave Villefort on the road to Paris

traveling, thanks to treble fees, with all speed, and passing through two or three apartments,

enter at the Tulleries the little room with the arched window, so well known as having been the favorite

closet of Napoleon and Louis XIII, and now of Louis Philippe. There, seated before a walnut

table he had brought with him from Hartwell, and to which, from one of those fancies not uncommon

to great people, he was particularly attached, the king, Louis XIII, was carelessly listening to a man

of 50 or 52 years of age with gray hair, aristocratic bearing, and exceedingly gentleness attire,

and meanwhile, making a marginal note in a volume of the

Griffith's rather inaccurate, but much sought after, addition of Horace, a work which was much

indebted to the sagacious observations of the philosophical monarch.

"'You say, sir,' said the king, "'that I am exceedingly disquieted, sire.

"'Really? Have you had a vision of the seven fat kind and the seven lean kind?'

"'No, sire, for that would only be token for us seven years of plenty,

and seven years of scarcity, and where the king is full of foresight as your majesty,

scarcity is not a thing to be feared.

...