MAXIMILIAN
(gravely)
Count, this purse is the most precious of our family treasures.
MONTE CRISTO
In fact, the diamond is very beautiful.
JULIE
Oh, brother, don’t speak of the price of the stone, although it’s been appraised at one hundred thousand francs, Count. He means to tell you that the objects contained in the purse are the relics of an angel of whom we were speaking just now.
MONTE CRISTO
That’s what I was unable to understand, Madame, and now, I don’t dare ask you. Pardon me, I have no wish to be indiscreet.
JULIE
Indiscreet? Oh, on the contrary, how happy you would make us, Count, in giving us occasion to be heard on the subject. If we were hiding as a secret the fine action that this purse reminds us of, we wouldn’t put it there on view. Oh! We wish we could publish throughout the universe to make our unknown benefactor shiver which would reveal his presence to us.
MONTE CRISTO
Oh, truly!
MAXIMILIAN
(taking the purse and putting it to his lips)
Count, this purse, which I kiss with respect and recognition, touched the hand of a man who saved my father from death, us from ruin, and our name from shame—a man thanks to whom we poor children vowed to misery and tears are now able to listen to others go into ecstacies over our good fortune.
(pulling a letter from the purse)
This letter was written by him in a day when my father had formed a desperate resolve—and this diamond was given as a dowry to my sister by this generous stranger.
MONTE CRISTO
(opening the letter and reading)
“Come immediately to the alley of Meilhan, go into house #5, ask the concierge for the key to room number five, go into the room from the corner by the chimney, take a red silk purse and take the purse to your father. You promised to obey me blindly; I remind you of your promise. Sinbad the Sailor.”
MAXIMILIAN
And in the purse, sir, there was a contract released, a contract for 287,500 francs which was the reason my father was going to blow his brains and also a diamond which is still there with two words written on a little scrap of paper—’Julie’s dowry’.
MONTE CRISTO
And the man who did this for you remains unknown?
MAXIMILIAN
Yes, sir—we have never had the joy of shaking his hand; but it’s not because we did not ask God for this favor.
JULIE
Oh, I still haven’t yet lost hope of kissing that hand as I kiss this purse which touched it four years ago. Penelon was at Trieste when he saw on the dock an Englishman who was embarking on a brig. Excuse me, you don’t know about Penelon, he was an old sailor manned the Pharaoh when the Pharaoh was still voyaging. Well, he recognized the Englishman as the one who came to my father on the fifth of June, 1829 and who wrote me on the fifth of September. He’s convinced it was the same person—unfortunately he didn’t dare speak to him.
MONTE CRISTO
An Englishman you say? He was English? Then wasn’t this Englishman a man that your father had done some great service to, and who with God’s advice, found this way of paying you?
MAXIMILIAN
Sister, sister, remember, I beg you that our father often told us “No it is not an Englishman who has given us this good fortune.”
MONTE CRISTO
Your father told you that, Mr. Morel?
MAXIMILIAN
Sir, my father saw a miracle in this act. My father believed in a benefactor who had returned from the grave to help us. Oh, what a touching superstition, sir, and although I didn’t believe it myself, I was far from wishing to destroy the idea in my father’s heart. Also, how many times did he dream whispering the name of a dear friend, a name of a lost friend and then near to death, as the approach of eternity gave his soul some enlightenment from the tomb, this thought which had never been questioned became a conviction, and his last words in dying were these, “Maximilian, it was Dantès.”
MONTE CRISTO
(very moved)
Dantès! Dantès!
JULIE
Maximilian, there’s another name unknown to the Count.
MAXIMILIAN
But all these details are of little interest, besides—
MONTE CRISTO
Oh, no, you are mistaken.
MAXIMILIAN
And sir, whoever feels compassion for the wretched cannot remain indifferent to the name I’ve just mentioned if he knew how much Dantès had suffered.
MONTE CRISTO
Ah! This—this man suffered greatly?
MAXIMILIAN
All that God, inexhaustible in his rage as in his benevolence, could pour in sorrows and agonies on a single head.
JULIE
Poor Edmond!
MONTE CRISTO
Truly?
MAXIMILIAN
Edmond Dantès was the first mate on a ship that my father owned. He was twenty, he was the most loyal, most pure, the most happy of men. Life smiled on him; he smiled back at life. Edmond adored his father, a fine old man—sweet and religious as in ancient times. He was affianced to a young Catalan girl—the most beautiful woman in Marseille—and she loved him with all her soul.
MONTE CRISTO
Ah!
JULIE
Wasn’t she named Mercédès?
MAXIMILIAN
Yes, Mercédès. A charming name, isn’t it, Count?
MONTE CRISTO
A charming name.
MAXIMILIAN
Edmond, after returning from a voyage had just been named Captain of a ship by my father. He shook hands with old Dantès. He was kissing the hand of his fiancée when police came to arrest him. He had been denounced to a magistrate as being part of a political plot. Denounced by whom? No one knew. They say this magistrate found the evidence against Edmond Dantès so strong that he sent him to the Château d’If. Alas, the prisoner was forgotten.
MONTE CRISTO
Ah! No one asked after him?
MAXIMILIAN
My father, our friends, all those who were interested in this poor young man. We demanded that he be brought to trial. We offered guarantees.
MONTE CRISTO
And this demand?
MAXIMILIAN
Was forgotten like the prisoner. Time went by. It left its black crepe on the family which had seen itself so happy. Dantès’ father succumbed first, every day expecting his son, calling for him every hour. At the end of his resources, too proud to ask, too wretched to wish to live, he shut himself up in his poor deserted house, and one night when the neighbors no longer heard him pacing upstairs, they went up—he was dead; dead of sorrow; dead of starvation.
MONTE CRISTO
(choking)
Oh!