Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road.

This is your host and storyteller, John Hagadorn.

Today, Chapter 7 from Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo.

In this chapter, the narrator briefly describes Villefort as 26, about to marry into a royalist family,

eager to advance in his role within the government, and even more eager to prove that he is a committed royalist.

Before he enters his drawing room to speak to Dantes,

Villefort encounters Morrell, who has come to himself to defend Dantes.

Villefort, however, is haughty with Morrell, whom he considers middle class and vaguely linked, therefore, to bonapartist ideas.

Villefort tells Morrell he will be fair to Dantes, but that if Dantes is in

fact a conspirator, then woe to Morel, who could be implicated as his ally. Morrell leaves,

and Villefort heads into his office, where Dantes is brought in to meet him.

And now, Chapter 7, the examination.

No sooner had Villefort left the salon,

then he assumed the grave error of a man who holds the balance of life and death in his hands.

Then he assumed the grave error of a man who holds the balance of life and death in his hands.

Now, in spite of the nobility of his countenance, the command of which, like a finished actor,

he had carefully studied before the glass, it was by no means easy for him to assume an air of

judicial severity. Except the recollection of the line of politics his father had adopted,

and which might interfere unless he acted with the greatest prudence with his own career.

Gerard de Villefort was as happy as a man could be. Already rich, he held a high official

situation, though only 27.

He was about to marry a young and charming woman whom he loved, not passionately, but reasonably,

...