THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (CHAP 62) GHOSTS

1001 Adventure and Mystery Stories For The Road

Jon Hagadorn

Arts, Fiction

4.7 • 520 Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This chapter marks the beginning of the Count's grand dinner at Auteuil. Bertuccio has decked out the home in preparation, save for one room, which the Count will show his guests after the food has been served. The Count sees that Lucien Debray, Chateau-Renaud, the Baron Danglars (angry from his losses on the market), Hermine Danglars, Villefort and Heloise, and Major and Andrea Cavalcanti arrive.
As in the previous scene in the theater, the narrator (and the Count) have arranged things so that all the most important characters are present in the same place. Of course, the Count has also made sure that this is not just any location, but the house in which Villefort and the Baroness Danglars had their illicit tryst many years ago.
Active Themes
Justice, Revenge, and God's Will Theme Icon Changes of Identity and Station Theme Icon Debt and Gratitude Theme Icon
Literary Devices
Imagery

As he calls for Bertuccio, the Count reveals how these characters intertwine with the servant's story of a Corsican vendetta. Bertuccio, shocked, sees that Hermine Danglars, the Baron's wife, is in fact the woman with whom Villefort was having an affair, and who bore a child out of wedlock. Furthermore, Villefort is in fact still alive, which means that Bertuccio did not murder him when he stabbed him in the garden, and Andrea Cavalcanti is really Benedetto himself, Bertuccio's adopted son who caused so much mayhem in his home life. At this, however, the Count demands that Bertuccio silently serve the dinner, betraying nothing of what he's learned.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road,
0:28.6	and the Count of Monte Cristo, chapter 62, ghosts.
0:33.7	This is your host and storyteller, John Hagadorn,
0:36.8	and this is 1001 Stories for the Road.
0:42.5	And now, Chapter 62, Ghosts.
0:47.4	At first sight, the exterior of the house at Auteel gave no indications of splendor,
0:53.1	nothing one would expect from the destined residence
0:55.4	of the magnificent Count of Monte Cristo. But this simplicity was according to the will of its
1:00.3	master, who positively ordered nothing to be altered outside. The splendor was within. Indeed,
1:08.0	almost before the door opened, the scene changed.
1:16.4	M. Burtuccio had outdone himself in the taste displayed in furnishing, and in the rapidity with which it was executed.
1:18.6	It was told that the Duke of Dantin removed in a single night a whole avenue of trees
1:23.7	that annoyed Louis XIV.
1:26.4	In three days, Monsieur Boutuchio planted an entirely bare court
1:30.8	with poplars, large spreading sycamores to shade the different parts of the house, and in the
1:36.1	foreground, instead of the usual paving stones, half hidden by the grass, there extended a lawn,
1:42.2	but that morning lay down, and upon which the water was yet glistening.
1:46.2	For the rest, the orders had been issued by the Count. He himself had given a plan to Bertuccio,
1:52.0	marking the spot where each tree was to be planted, and the shape and extent of the lawn,
1:56.6	which was to take the place of the paving stones. Thus the house had become unrecognizable,
2:02.6	and Bertuccio himself declared that he scarcely knew it, encircled as it was by a framework of trees.
2:09.1	The overseer would not have objected, while he was about it, to have made some improvements in the
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