Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road.

This is your host, John Hagadorn, and Chapter 6 of the Count of Monte Cristo.

By Alexander Dumas.

And now our story.

Chapter 6, the deputy procurer de Roy.

In one of the aristocratic mansions built by Puget in the Rue de Grand Cours, opposite the

Medusa Fountain, a second marriage feast was being celebrated, almost at the same hour with the nuptial repast

given by Dante's. In this case, however, although the occasion of the entertainment was similar,

the company was strikingly dissimilar. Instead of a rude mixture of sailors, soldiers,

and those belonging to the humblest grade of life. The present assembly was composed of

the very flower of Marseilles' society, magistrates who had resigned their office during the usurpers' reign.

Officers who had deserted from the Imperial Army and joined forces with Condé, and younger members of

families brought up to hate and execrate the man whom five years of exile would convert into a martyr

and 15 of restoration elevate to the rank of a god. The guests were still at the table,

and the heated and energetic conversation that prevailed betrayed the violent and vindictive

passions that then agitated each dweller of the South, where unhappily, for five

centuries, religious strife had long given increased bitterness to the violence of party feeling.

The Emperor, now King of the Petty Island of Elba, after having held sovereign sway over one half

of the world, counting as is subject to small population of five or six

thousand souls. After having been accustomed to hear, Viva Napoleons of 120 millions of human beings,

uttered in ten different languages, was looked upon here as a ruined man, separated forever

from any fresh connection with France or claim

...