Welcome to the Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road,

and the Count of Mardi Cristo, today, Chapter 39, The Guests.

This is your host and storyteller, John Haggardorn.

And now, our story.

In the house in the Ruta Helder, where Albert had invited the Count of Monte Cristo,

everything was being prepared on the morning of the 21st of May to do honor to the occasion.

Albert de Morse-Rf inhabited a pavilion situated at the corner of a large court

and directly opposite another building in which were the servants' apartments.

Two windows only at the pavilion faced the street.

Three other windows looked into the court and two at the back into the garden.

Between the court and the garden, built in the heavy style of the imperial architecture,

was the large and fashionable dwelling of the Count and Countess of Morsef.

A high wall surrounded the whole of the hotel, surrounded at intervals by vases filled with flowers,

and broken in the center by a large gate of gilded iron which served as the carriage entrance.

A small door, close to the lodge of the concierge, gave ingress and egress to the servants

and masters when they were on foot. It was easy to discover that the delicate care of a mother, unwilling to part from her son,

and yet aware that a young man of the Viscount's age required the full exercise of his liberty,

had chosen this habitation for Albert.

They were not lacking, however, evidences of what we may call the intelligent egoism of a youth who is charmed with the indolent, careless life of an only son, and who lives as it were in a gilded cage.

By means of the two windows looking into the street, Albert could see all that passed. The sight of what is going on is necessary to

young men who always want to see the world traverse their horizon, even if that horizon is only a

public thoroughfare. Then, should anything appear to merit a more minute examination,

...