Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road.

This is your host and storyteller, John Haggardorn, and this is Chapter 40, Part 1,

from the Count of Monte Cristo, The Breakfast.

And what sort of persons do you expect to breakfast? said Beauchamp.

A gentleman and a diplomatist.

Then we shall have to wait two hours for the gentleman, and three for the diplomatist.

I shall come back to dessert. Keep me some strawberries,

coffee, and cigars. I shall take a cutlet on my way to the chamber. Do not do anything of the sort.

For we're the gentleman of Montmorency, and the diplomatist of Metternich. We were breakfast at eleven.

In the meantime, follow De Bray's example and take a glass

of sherry and a biscuit. Be it so, I will stay. I must do something to distract my thoughts,

said Beauchamp. You are like Debray, and then it seems to me that when the minister is out of spirits,

the opposition ought to be joyous.

Ah, you do not know with what I am threatened.

I shall hear this morning that Monsieur Danglars make a speech at the Chamber of Deputies,

and at his wife's this evening I shall hear the tragedy of a peer

of France. The devil take the constitutional government, and since we had our choice, as they say,

at least, how could we choose that? I understand. You must lay in a stock of hilarity.

Do not run down Monsieur Dangler's speeches, said Debray. He votes for you, for he belongs to the

opposition.

Parjeur, that is exactly the worst of all. I am waiting until you send him to speak to Luxembourg,

to laugh at my ease.'

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