THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (CHAP 30) THE FIFTH OF SEPTEMBER
1001 Adventure and Mystery Stories For The Road
Jon Hagadorn
4.7 • 519 Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
Reception and legacy
The original work was published in serial form in the Journal des Débats in 1844. Carlos Javier Villafane Mercado described the effect in Europe:
The effect of the serials, which held vast audiences enthralled ... is unlike any experience of reading we are likely to have known ourselves, maybe something like that of a particularly gripping television series. Day after day, at breakfast or at work or on the street, people talked of little else.
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The Montecristo Cuban cigar brand is allegedly named after the fondness of cigar rollers for listening to the novel read by a lector during their work.
George Saintsbury stated that "Monte Cristo is said to have been at its first appearance, and for some time subsequently, the most popular book in Europe. Perhaps no novel within a given number of years had so many readers and penetrated into so many different countries."[19] This popularity has extended into modern times as well. The book was "translated into virtually all modern languages and has never been out of print in most of them. There have been at least twenty-nine motion pictures based on it ... as well as several television series, and many movies [have] worked the name 'Monte Cristo' into their titles."[ The title Monte Cristo lives on in a "famous gold mine, a line of luxury Cuban cigars, a sandwich, and any number of bars and casinos—it even lurks in the name of the street-corner hustle three-card monte."
Modern Russian writer and philologist Vadim Nikolayev determined The Count of Monte-Cristo as a megapolyphonic novel
The novel has been the inspiration for many other books, from Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur (1880),[22] then to a science fiction retelling in Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination,[23] and to Stephen Fry's The Stars' Tennis Balls (entitled Revenge in the U.S.)
Fantasy novelist Steven Brust's Khaavren Romances series have all used Dumas novels (particularly the Three Musketeers series) as their chief inspiration, recasting the plots of those novels to fit within Brust's established world of Dragaera His 2020 novel The Baron of Magister Valley follows suit, using The Count of Monte Cristo as a starting point ] Jin Yong has admitted some influence from Dumas, his favorite non-Chinese novelist.[28] Some commentators feel that the plot of A Deadly Secret resembles The Count of Monte Cristo, except that they are based in different countries and historical periods.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road in Chapter 30 of the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandra Dumas. |
| 0:32.9 | This is your host, John Haggardorne, and this is 1001 Stories for the Road. Reviews are always |
| 0:40.3 | greatly appreciated. And now, Chapter 30, the 5th of September. The extension provided for by the |
| 0:49.2 | agent of Thompson and French, at the moment when Morrell expected at least, was to the poor shipowner so |
| 0:54.9 | decided a stroke of good fortune that he almost dared to believe that fate was at length |
| 0:59.6 | grown weary of wasting her spite upon him. The same day he told his wife, Emmanuel, and his |
| 1:05.7 | daughter, all that had occurred, and a ray of hope, if not of tranquility, returned to the family. |
| 1:12.7 | Unfortunately, however, Morrell had not only engagements with the House of Thompson and French, |
| 1:17.6 | who had shown themselves so considerate towards him, and, as he had said, in business, |
| 1:23.2 | he had correspondence, and not friends. |
| 1:26.2 | When he thought the matter over, he could by no means account for this generous conduct on the part of Thompson and France towards him, and could only attribute it to some selfish argument as this. |
| 1:37.0 | We had better help a man who owes us nearly 300,000 francs, and have those 300,000 francs at the end of three months, then hasten his ruin, |
| 1:45.2 | and get only six or eight percent of our money back again. |
| 1:49.2 | Unfortunately, whether through envy or stupidity, all Morel's correspondents did not take this view, |
| 1:55.4 | and some even came to a contrary decision. |
| 1:58.3 | The bills assigned by Morrell were presented at his office with croupilous |
| 2:01.7 | exactitude, and thanks to the delay granted by the Englishman, were paid by Cockles with equal |
| 2:06.9 | punctuality. Cockles thus remained in his accustomed tranquility. It was Morrell alone who remembered |
| 2:13.5 | with alarm that if you had to repay on the 15th, the 50,000 francs of Monsieur de Beauville, |
| 2:19.7 | and on the 30th, the 32,500 francs of bills for which, as well as the debt due to the inspector |
| 2:26.0 | of prisons, he had time granted. He would be a ruined man. The opinion of all the commercial |
| 2:33.2 | men was that, under the reverses which had successfully weighed down morale, |
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