Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road.

This is your host and storyteller, John Haggardorn.

Today, another chapter from the Count of Monte Cristo, this chapter 44, part two.

I'm going to give you some background so we can catch you up to the moment.

A short summary of Chapter 44 is the house at Oteal.

And this is it.

Monty Cristo goes to visit his new summer house.

When he explores the grounds, his steward Bertuccio becomes frantic.

When Monte Cristo presses him for an explanation of his agitation, Bertuccio unfolds a complex story,

and that's what brings us, in some of the books, to Chapter 45, The Vendetta. So what I just told

is already old news to you. In the vendetta, Bertuccio explains that

years ago, his brother, who had been a soldier in Napoleon's army, was murdered by royalist assassins

in the city of Names. Seeking justice, Bertuccio visited the public prosecutor of Names, who at the time

was Gerard de Villefort, a royalist who was unsympathetic to

Bertuccio's story and coolly turned him away. Bertuccio swore revenge on Villefort. Terrified for his life

now, Villeport transferred to Versailles, but Bertuccio followed him there. Bertuccio soon discovered

that Villefort often came to visit

the summer house in Oteal, where he kept his mistress, a widow of Baroness. The house that the

count just purchased. One night, Bertuccio lay in wait for Villefort in the small garden behind the

house and stabbed him, leaving him for dead.

Villefort had just finished buying a box when Bertuccio pounced on him and grabbed the box,

thinking that it contained a treasure. Instead, he found a baby, which had been smothered,

...